Together -- Chapter 60

Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Logan, 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.).

I wonder if traffic falls into the ‘necessary evils’ category, like parallel parking does, Becky thought as she waited on her motorcycle at a light. I guess it does in a way. Wow, I must be bored if this is what I’m debating on in my mind. She sighed in relief when the light finally changed. It’s about time.

She rode on until something caught her eye and she pulled over to the side of the road and stopped her bike and just stared at the buildings in front of her. Terminal City. I should check it out and see if any of my other siblings turned up here. I should have done that months ago. Becky mentally shook her head. You were pretty busy since the fire, plus Kyle told you that he didn’t see any more of us over there when he went there right after the fire and that he didn’t pair or group up with any of the others when we ran that night.

Becky stared at Terminal City for another minute before she looked around and spotted a tear in the fence that was large enough for her to sneak through and bring her motorcycle in with her. She casually walked up to the fence and quietly snuck through. She chained her bike up to a lamppost and strolled around, looking for any signs of her brothers and sisters.

I hear some movement in the area and I can make out some voices, but they don’t sound like anybody that I know, much less my family. There’s someone in the… She abruptly turned around, taking out her gun and aiming it at the transhumans and anomalies that had come out, most of them pointing guns at her.

“State your barcode and designation, sweetheart, or get the hell out of here,” a lizard-like transgenic growled at her.

“330768235405, X6-405,” Becky said coolly. “I’d show you the proof, but I got it taken off and it shouldn’t be coming back for another week and a half so I’m sorry if that disappoints you.”

One of the anomalies sniffed and nodded to the others that were pointing their guns at Becky. “She’s definitely an X6. She’s good.”

“Nice piece,” the lizard guy said.

“Thank you,” Becky said. “Nice shotgun. And if anybody even thinks about touching my motorcycle, I won’t hesitate to remind them about which body parts are needed to survive.”

“We should take this inside,” a transhuman piped up. “Why don’t you take your motorcycle in with you?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Becky said. She walked back over to her bike and unchained it and followed some of the other transgenics inside one of the buildings. She looked around. “Let me guess—this is your base of operations.”

“Smart girl,” the lizard soldier said sarcastically.

“You’ve got an attitude, whatever the heck your name is,” Becky remarked.

“The designation was D3-271, but you can call me Mole,” he said. “That’s Dix and Luke over there at the computers.”

“I’m Becky,” Becky said.

“What were you doing around here?” Luke asked.

“I wanted to see if anybody from my unit has shown up,” Becky said. “My second-in-command came over and remained here for a week immediately after the fire and nobody else from our unit was with him at the time and he said that he didn’t see anybody else show up and I was wondering if some of them had shown up since then. I’ve only gotten back in contact with about half of my unit.”

“You should look over on 5th street. It’s only about three blocks from here,” Mole offered. “That’s where the majority of the X-series that have come here live. Try building #2291. I’ve heard most of them have apartments in there.”

“They’ve stuck together,” Becky said. “Why doesn’t everybody stay with each other? I mean, why should the X-series keep to themselves.”

“You’re an X-series, sweetheart, maybe you can answer that question,” Mole said.

“He means that he believes that they might be scared of us,” Dix clarified. “Weren’t you scared of us anomalies and transhumans when you were at Manticore, especially when you were a little kid?”

“Yeah, I was,” Becky admitted. “That reminds me.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the picture of the anomaly that had appeared in the tabloid the day before. “I tore this out of the front page of the Seattle Squealer yesterday. One of you needs to be a little more careful.” She handed the picture to Dix. Mole and Luke leaned over his shoulder to take a look.

“I’ve seen that guy down in the basement before,” Mole said. “I’m not sure exactly what his deal is. He barely spoke intelligible English. Must have more animal DNA in him than I do.”

“He hasn’t shown up here,” Luke said. “We’re trying to keep track of any of the transgenics that live here or have lived here. We managed to get something of a database up. What was your second-in-command’s barcode number? I can enter it into the database and have it do a search to see if we put it in yet.”

Becky was impressed. “It’s 330840673115. He goes by Kyle these days. He’s living in Nevada right now with another of our unit mates.”

“Searching the database…he’s not in it yet,” Luke said. “I’ll take care of that and I could make an entry for you, if you’d like.”

“That would be fine,” Becky said. “Speaking of databases, X5-452, her name is Max, swiped Manticore’s database off of Director Renfro the night of the fire. I could ask her to lend it to you if you want to copy the information off of it.”

“That’d be useful for sure,” Dix said. “How did she get the database from Director Renfro?”

“Basically, Renfro called Max into her office right before she set the fire for something and then taunted Max that she’d gotten the order from the committee in charge of Manticore to burn it down and Max killed her and decided to take the database with her. She thought it would be useful in the future and she knew somebody who could decrypt it for her,” Becky told them. “I don’t think she’d mind at all if you wanted to borrow it.”

“She offed Renfro? Who ever said that the ‘09ers were scum were wrong in my book,” Mole said.

“They’ve been wrong in my book the whole time,” Becky said. She saw the look that Mole and Dix and Luke gave her and shook her head. “I’ll explain later. Hell, you’ll understand that a little bit more when you see my entry in the database.” She shrugged. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“Just give me the barcode numbers and names of the members of your unit that you’re in contact with,” Dix said. “For our records.”

“No problem,” Becky said.

“If you know anybody who can make supply and or money runs for us, that would be great,” Luke said. “We haven’t had much luck trying to convince the X-series here in T.C. to help us. I wonder why.” That got laughs out of the four of them. “Maybe you’ll have better luck trying to convince someone who can make the runs who has less of a chance of getting caught than one of us lookers.”

“I’ll try. I’m almost completely certain that Max will be willing to help you out. This is her specialty.” Becky looked serious. “But speaking of getting caught, you guys really need to watch out for the NSA agent that’s in charge of hunting down the transgenics. I mean aside from the obvious fact that he’s in charge of trying to kill us or capture us so we can be sliced up and then killed. We’ve got to figure that he’s back in the city because of the picture showing up in that paper.”

“What do you mean?” Dix asked.

“There is something with that man that isn’t right,” Becky said. “Seriously not right. Back in August, I got into a situation with him. Somebody double crossed an X5 and gave White, that’s the agent, information that White used to set up a trap, only I was the one that ended up getting caught in it. I fought my way past the soldiers White sent to kill me and as I was escaping the building, I saw White and shot him in the thigh and got past him and ran across rooftops until I thought I was clear. I wasn’t. Even with a bullet in his thigh, he followed me. He continued to chase me and I put a bullet in his other leg and not only did that not slow him down, but he didn’t appear to even feel the wound. I only got out of that jam by sheer luck. That guy is not a transgenic but he is as fast as an X5 and he doesn’t feel pain. I don’t know if he’s as strong as a transgenic or if his reflexes and other senses are as good, but he’s dangerous.”

“We’ll keep an eye out for him,” Luke promised.

“I’d like to see him take a shot from this baby here,” Mole said. He patted his shotgun affectionately. “One hit from this and they’ll need the scrapers and industrial strength cleaners to clean up what’s left of his head.”

“Proud of it, huh?” Becky guessed.

“Damn straight I am,” Mole said.

“I’ll get going and see if any of my unit mates are around,” Becky said. She grabbed a pen and a piece of paper off of the desk that Luke and Dix were sitting at and wrote down her cell phone number. “Here’s my number.”

“Thanks,” Dix said. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep an eye out for this White guy.”

“Good,” Becky said. “So will I.” She waved to them and left.

TBC