Nightmares Redux -- Prologue

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.).

Notes:  I couldn’t resist doing one more story in this AU series:) The fic itself takes place after “What’s Next?” but the entire prologue is a flashback so it’s in italics with thoughts and things like that in regular type. The prologue takes place before season 1 of the show (March of 2018).

Daniel Warren, Colonel in the United States Army and the director of Manticore’s facility in Syracuse, slammed his hand on his desk in frustration. How is this possible? How in the goddamn hell could this have happened? He took a deep breath and picked up the phone at his desk. He speed dialed a number and spoke a few words to the person on the other end before he turned to his computer, opened up a program, and typed in a few commands. Only minutes later, two windows popped up on the screen. One of them showed Colonel Lydecker in his own office in Gillette and the other showed Elizabeth Renfro in her office in Seattle.

“Warren, what is going on?” Lydecker asked immediately.

He might have his faults, but at least he always gets to the point. “Remember the mission to check out that abandoned complex in Poland?” Warren asked. “I just got a report transmitted here from X6-543, one of the members of the unit that was sent from my facility on the assignment.” The expression on Warren’s face was grim. “The unit was ambushed. Seventeen out of eighteen members killed. The only reason that 543 knows what had happened is through the radio link that their communications specialist set up at their med station prior to heading to the primary target.”

Renfro raised an eyebrow. “What did happen?”

“X6 Unit 7 entered the main building in the complex as planned,” Warren said. “Once they had made their way into the building, a group of enemy soldiers ambushed them. According to the transmissions that 543 caught, they appeared to have been transgenics.”

“What?” Lydecker said angrily, though the actual level of his voice remained fairly low. “Transgenics?”

“That apparently moved with the speed, agility, and strength similar to that of the top-rated X6s,” Warren continued. “They wiped out all sixteen X6s that entered the building before they began searching the nearby area and found the communications specialist of the unit, 753, and took him out. When 543 heard that happen on the radio, he took his vital equipment and managed to get out of there before the enemy could have found him as well. We’re lucky that X6-753 had the foresight to set up the link to automatically send everything that his equipment was recording to the computer behind at the main camp otherwise we would know nothing. X6-543 is sending us those files and our technicians here are reviewing them as they are being received.”

“I see,” Renfro said. “Did your X6 unit make any mistakes as they entered the building? It could have been a slip-up…”

Warren was furious. “You’re blaming me for this, Renfro? Let me take you back to when we were discussing which unit was going to be sent on this mission. Lydecker wanted to send that one X6 unit of yours, I believe it was Unit 4, on the mission because they were the best qualified for it out of all of the X6 units at all three facilities but because you are in this permanent pissing contest with Lydecker, you insisted that we send my Unit 7 on the assignment and for whatever reason that day, I decided to agree with you and now look what’s happened!”

“That’s enough from both of you,” Lydecker snapped. “No good can come out of this arguing. The most that we can do at this point in time is to wait for the technicians in Syracuse to finish analyzing the information that is being sent from Poland. Once that has been completed, we will determine what is to be done with regards to these apparent transgenics. Warren, what is the current status of X6-543?”

“543 is currently en route to a safe location in the Czech Republic,” Warren replied. “He started the transmissions from his unit’s original accommodations in Poland, but the equipment that he is using is portable so the transmissions will not be affected in any way. He will be remaining at the safe location until evening local time before he heads back here.”

Lydecker nodded. “Very well. As soon as you receive the final analysis from the techs, call us immediately.” His window on Warren’s computer screen went dark and a moment later, after a dirty look from Renfro that Warren wasn’t sure who it was directed at, Renfro’s window went dark as well. Warren closed the program and shook his head.

What a disaster, he thought. Lost an entire damn unit. He snorted. Lydecker lost one unit because those X5s ran, I’ve lost a unit because those X6s got ambushed…looks like it’s your turn coming up, Renfro! He sighed and sat back and waited for the reports to come in.