Together -- Chapter 64

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.).

Notes: More spoiler-ish stuff for “Dawg Day Afternoon”.

Becky took off her hat and shook the snow off of it. “Beautiful early-February Seattle. Instead of gray and rainy, it’s gray and snowy.” She shrugged and opened her locker. “It could be worse.”

“How could it be worse?” Sketchy whined. “It’s snowing outside and Normal still made us come into work!”

“Where I grew up, it usually started snowing around my birthday and didn’t stop until the end of March,” Becky said. “That’s about five consecutive months of snow. And if we were there, Normal would still call us into work.”

“The girl’s right,” Original Cindy said. “So you can lay off the whining.”

“Thank you,” Becky said. She threw her parka onto the bench and looked around. “I beat Alec and Jeff here?”

“You did,” Original Cindy told her. “It’s not like Alec to be so late.”

“Brin didn’t have the baby yet,” Max said. “She would have let me known.”

“No, I was late because I almost ran over this little dumb ass when he stopped short on the way over,” Alec said, glaring at Jeff.

“What did you expect me to do?” Jeff protested. “If I didn’t stop short, I would have run over that kid’s basketball and then I would have fallen and then you definitely would have run me over.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Alec muttered. He threw his things into his locker.

“Somebody woke up in a bad mood this morning,” Max said innocently.

“Hey, I’m going to be a father sometime in the next two weeks. Cut me some slack,” Alec said. “Do you have any idea how nerve-wracking this is? I almost jump a mile whenever my beeper goes off now because I think that it’s Brin calling me because she’s gone into labor.”

“Relax, my man, you’re going to be a great dad,” Sketchy assured him.

“Thanks,” Alec said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax until my son or daughter is born.”

“And then you won’t be able to sleep,” Max said cheerfully.

“Will you guys knock it off?” Becky asked. “Normal’s being pissier than usual. The last thing that we want to do is to get him mad.”

“Okay,” Alec said.

“I’ve got a couple of hot runs over to sector 8,” Normal yelled. “1178 West 8th street and 600 West 14th street. Who wants them?”

“I’ll take one of them,” Sketchy volunteered. “I’ll catch you guys at lunch.” He took one of the packages from Normal and left.

“I guess I’ll take the other,” Original Cindy said. “Don’t kill Alec today, boo, he owes me money from that bet we made on that pool game at Crash last night.” She left.

“Which bet was that?” Jeff asked. “Was it the bet over how long it would take Sketchy to crash that trick or was it the one over whether Max would beat you at pool?”

“Does it matter which one it was?” Alec said.

“The pool one,” Becky answered.

“Hey! Young man, you have the whole rest of the day to speak with your sister. While what she is doing only resembles working in its most vague form, she is still working,” Normal shouted to someone from his counter.

“Relax, this is only going to be at most a few minutes.” Krit jogged up to Max and the others. “Hey, Maxie. I need a small favor from you.”

“Let me guess: your girlfriend went into heat and you need to crash with her or someone else for the next few days,” Alec said.

“How did you know?” Krit said.

Alec pointed to the rips on Krit’s shirt that were mostly covered up by his jacket. “They look like they were made by relatively long female fingernails. Judging by how deep those tears are, I’d say a female X5 in heat. Trust me, I’ve seen X5s jump each other before when the female is in heat. It happened to my buddy 511 one time. Your sister Rena’s twin jumped him when she was going into heat about a year before you blew the DNA lab and her nails made a similar impression on his t-shirt when some of the other girls pulled her off of 511.”

“If she was anything like Rena…” Jeff said.

“Hey, I saved you from banging Rena, remember?” Becky said.

“Yeah, those scratches that I had you stitch up when we got back to our motel room that afternoon that she left when you pulled us apart reminded me of it,” Jeff said.

“I’m glad I kept enough control over myself to get out of the apartment before it was too late,” Krit said. “There is no way in hell that I am ready for a baby right now. Being an uncle is great, but a kid of my own?”

“Ooooh, that was just the right thing to say in front of Alec,” Becky said sarcastically.

“Sorry,” Krit said.

“It’s no problem,” Alec said. “I mean it. No offense was taken. I’ll just remember to drop the kid off with you one night so that he or she can spend quality time with Uncle Krit.” He grinned wickedly. “When Aunt Syl is nowhere near your apartment so that Uncle Krit can have plenty of time to have his new niece or nephew all to himself.”

“You bastard,” Krit said.

“Didn’t you just say that being an uncle was great?” Alec continued.

“Yes, I did you little—“

“We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin,” a female anchor said. Max, Krit, Alec, Becky, and Jeff all turned to look at the TV that was in the corner. “A news conference given by Franklin Walsh, the head of the NSA, is set to begin in Washington D.C. at any moment. Details are sketchy with regard to the exact reason for this news conference. We’ll take you now to our reporter for our D.C. affiliate.”

“Thank you very much,” another reporter said. “As you can see behind me, the news conference is about to begin. Let’s listen in on what Mr. Walsh has to say.”

“Thank you very much for coming here on this short notice,” Mr. Walsh said. “Many of you might have noticed the occasional story or picture of these so-called ‘mutant men’ in your local or national tabloid magazines or tabloid newspapers. It is my sad duty to tell all of you that these mutant men are not just ‘so-called,’ they are real.” He looked around at the reporters and cameras that were gathered in front of him. “These creatures are human-animal hybrids that were genetically engineered by a former government project that was known as Manticore. Manticore’s purpose was to engineer genetically-enhanced soldiers that would surpass ordinary soldiers or even ordinary human beings in general. Manticore was first created more than forty years ago and was dismantled this past June after its main facility, which was located just outside of Seattle, Washington, burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances. When this facility was destroyed, these genetically engineered soldiers escaped. Many of these soldiers were designed for specific purposes, such as this one right here.” He held up a picture of an anomaly that had been clearly designed for an Arctic environment. “This soldier was designed for combat in an Arctic region. He would have been engineered with something such as Siberian Husky DNA. A soldier designed for combat in the desert would have been engineered with some form of reptilian DNA.”

“Dude, is this for real?” one of the other messengers exclaimed in disbelief.

“Be quiet,” Max hissed.

“Manticore also produced soldiers to blend in with normal human beings,” Mr. Walsh continued. “These are known as the X-series soldiers. There are nine known generations of them, the last seven of which are alive and well. They range from toddlers to thirty-something adults. Like most of the soldiers that were created by Manticore, they are stronger, they are faster, and they are smarter than any of us could hope to be. While they were all engineered with some kind of animal DNA in them, they all look as normal as you and me and as such, are the most dangerous of anything to come out of Manticore. One of them could be standing next to you and you wouldn’t know it. However, you can tell one of them from a regular human being. All of the Manticore soldiers, whether they are desert class or Psychological Operations or X-series or whatever they happen to be, have a barcode across the back of their necks. This was Manticore’s means of tracking their soldiers. It is encoded into their DNA. In closing, I would like to tell all of you to be alert for these creatures. If you spot one, report it to your local law enforcement officials immediately so that the situation can be dealt with. Thank you all for your cooperation and I wish you all a good day. Thank you.”

The channel went back to the talk show that had been originally showing on it, but neither Max nor Krit nor Becky nor Alec nor Jeff noticed. Nobody noticed how the five of them just stood there, their eyes and faces as grim as they’d ever been. The whole room was quiet for a minute.

“Wow,” a messenger said. “Real sci-fi freaks? Walking among us just like that? How awesome!”

“How awesome? How awesome would it be if one of them went up to you and ripped your head off,” another one snapped. “No thank you. That’s too freaky.”

“Look, I agree with you that it’s a scary situation, but we still need to get back to work,” Normal said. “All of you need to be extra careful out there, got it? Contrary to popular belief, I actually care about what happens to you reprobates.”

“Think he’d care about us if he found out exactly who we are?” Becky wondered low enough for only the other four to hear.

Max nodded grimly. “All of you have your ‘codes taken care of, right? I’m good.”

“So am I,” Becky said.

“Me too,” Krit said.

“I’m good,” Alec and Jeff said.

Krit sighed and gave Max a hug. “I better get going to work. Be careful out there, okay sis? You already died once.”

“It won’t happen again,” Max said. “Don’t worry. The tightrope might have gotten a lot thinner, but we can still walk it. You’ll see.”

TBC