Nightmares Redux -- Chapter 6a

Disclaimer:  The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Alec, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me.  No money is being made off of this fic.  I only own the original characters (Becky/X6-405, etc.).

“So, are you guys going away for the weekend?” Alec asked as he, Brin, Max, Zack, and several of the others sat around a large table at a local pizza place the following night. “I was thinking about a barbeque at mine and Brin’s place. Don’t worry about the food, you know that grilling is the only form of cooking that I can actually pull off without rendering the food inedible and Brin makes a pretty decent potato salad. What do you guys think?”

“Tempting, and I’m being serious,” Max said. She grabbed a slice of anchovy and stuffed almost half of it in her mouth at once. She chewed and swallowed her mouthful before continuing to speak. “We’ll get back to you on that one. Unless this is a good-bye thing for Jillian, in which case we’ll be there, no questions asked.”

Brin laughed. “Close, Maxie. I mentioned the idea to Jillian at breakfast the other day and she got that look on her face and begged me not to embarrass her by throwing a party with adults.” She frowned. “Do I really embarrass her that often?”

“Nah, she’s just being a teenager,” Alec said confidently. “I can’t even begin to count the times that you said that Jillian reminded you of yourself when you were her age. The difference between you at seventeen and Jillian at that same point in time is that while you were bouncing from place-to-place with Zack here the only somewhat stable figure in your life, Jillian’s got the normal family thing going on.” Brin turned to Alec, raised an eyebrow, and Alec sighed. “Okay, I was saying more or less the same thing to Biggs about Jillian about two years ago and our resident shrink over here told me that practically word-for-word.”

“Which I got partly from Psych books I’ve read and partly from raising girls who were themselves teenagers at the time…at the same time,” Biggs said, laughing. “That was some experience. Keep that in mind whenever your own children are driving you up the wall. No matter how bad things might seem, it can’t compare to being a father of three sixteen-year-olds who are simultaneously arguing about who gets the car and the one boy that somehow asked all three of them out, plus Jade and Julia are arguing between the two of them about this shirt of Julia’s that Jade allegedly borrowed while they are having this screaming match between themselves and Andrea about the car and the guy. If Andrea wasn’t half a foot shorter than her sisters, she’d be part of that argument as well.”

Sasha smirked. “You forgot to mention the part where your son was pointing at the girls and laughing.”

“My son? Hey, he’s your son, too!” Biggs protested. “I didn’t forget about that.”

“Time out, kids,” Wayne teased. “We didn’t come all this way to fight.”

“Yeah, all the way to downtown Seattle,” Krit said.

Zack shook his head. “Please, for the love of God, behave yourselves just once.” He sighed and finished off his slice of pizza. “I don’t think a barbeque is such a bad idea. I don’t have to do any on-site work this weekend, so I’d be willing to do that. Work has been a real pain lately, so this is probably the best thing for me. Not only do we have the usual things to do, but we’ve been getting a lot of calls over the past day or so from families who have been asking for bodyguards and upgraded security systems for protecting their children because of all those missing children that have been showing up on the news lately.”

“How many has that been, now?” Jeff asked.

“There was that little boy two days ago, two girls at different times yesterday, and now another two,” Biggs said. “The youngest one was the five-year-old girl that was reported as missing on the news last night and the oldest was the fourteen-year-old boy that was reported missing on the news this morning. This is getting kind of scary. I hate crime waves, and ones that involve children…it drives me absolutely nuts.”

Alec frowned. “I don’t know. Something about this is off. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about these children disappearing like this that just isn’t right. Maybe I’ve seen one or more of these kids in passing a few times, I don’t know. Hopefully, either I’ll figure it out or they’ll catch the bozos. Maybe both, preferably now.”

There was a difficult silence for several moments. “I don’t know about any of you, but I have a real itching to get on my bike and do some serious racing out on the streets,” Zane said. “I feel like I haven’t done that in awhile.”

“Just wait until your children are old enough to race against you,” Max said. She looked slightly annoyed.

“Are you still annoyed because Jordan won when you, Zack, Gabrielle, and Derek went racing the night before you took the twins down to Cali?” Jondy exclaimed. “Maxie, get over it!”

“Jondy, this is Max,” Rena pointed out. “She’s not pissed about the fact that Jordan won, she’s pissed about the fact that all three of her children beat her.” She grinned wickedly. “And if you think that she’s not too happy, then I know that you can imagine how big brother is feeling right now considering that he finished last in that little race.”

Zack glared at her. “The difference between Jordan and me was less than a second. It was not that big of a deal and it’s not as if I haven’t been beaten in a motorcycle race by a member of my own family before.”

“True,” Rena conceded. She held out one hand and began to count off. “Maxie, Jordan, Derek, Gabrielle, and Krit beat you once but I do have to agree with you that he cheated that time. I almost beat you that one time when you came down to Texas to check up on me a month or so before I bailed. Remember that? I went out with my friends to where the underground bike racing was going to be held in Dallas that night and you just ‘happened’ because you wanted to make sure that what I was doing wasn’t sending up a ‘catch me’ flag for Lydecker. You beat me by less than a second. Hardest I’ve ever had to work in an underground race.”

“He was probably going easy on you,” Syl said, snickering.

“You are worse than your husband,” Rena said.

“I wasn’t going easy on her, Syl,” Zack told them. “Rena knew the setting better than I did so she knew more tricks, which was why the difference was as tight as it was. I didn’t go easy on her.”

Rena nodded. “I made Zack work for that particular victory. Besides, didn’t the last time that you raced against him he beat you by about…four seconds or so? I don’t know, was it that much or was it longer? Now that I think about it, it might have been closer to five seconds. It might even have been bigger than that.” She ducked the swipe that Syl took at her and laughed. “Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad about it, sis. I’ve had the pants beaten off of me plenty of times.”

“Well, it sounds to me as if—“ Alec was cut off by the sound of his cell phone ringing. He took it out of his pocket and answered it. “Yeah, Alec here.”

“You better fucking get my daughter back, you goddamn son-of-a-bitch!” a female voice screamed on the other end of the line. Alec, Biggs, and Sasha recognized the voice immediately and exchanged confused and worried looks.

“Melanie, calm down,” Alec said. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s missing, you bastard,” Melanie said angrily. She sounded as if she’d been crying and wasn’t quite finished. “Meredith went out to the store just a few blocks from our apartment to get a soda about two-and-a-half hours ago. Bryan went out after her when she didn’t come back after thirty minutes. He and the boys have been out looking for Meredith since and I’ve stayed here in case she calls or comes home. But she hasn’t come home, and I know she’s only thirteen but the store was only a few blocks away and she’s got more than enough self-defense training to take care of herself, and you better help me fucking find her or I’ll hurt you so badly…!” Melanie’s voice became progressively more hysterical until she couldn’t even talk.

Alec’s gut went ice cold. Oh God, Melanie and Bryan’s daughter…just another… Another thought hit him and for a few moments, he had a hard time breathing before he turned his attention back to his former teammate. “Melanie, calm down. I’m going to head down to Terminal City right now and we’re going to try to get to the bottom of this. Hang tight.” He disconnected, threw some money down on the table, put his phone away, and left. The others followed him.

“Alec, what exactly is going on?” Brin asked warily.

“I think I might know what,” Zack said grimly, catching onto Alec’s train of thought. “And I really hope that you’re wrong.”