Together -- Chapter 65

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.).

Rena parked her motorcycle by the curb, jumped off of it, and started to walk down the street. She shoved her gloved hands in the pockets of her parka and walked quickly down the street.

This place is at least as cold as Gillette used to be. Yeah, great idea, Zack, telling me to go to freaking Montana after you asked me to leave Madison a few weeks ago. Get real, Rena, Madison would have been this bad. It was freaking Wisconsin! Nothing like beautiful middle of winter weather in the northern United States, huh? And it’s starting to snow now. Beau-ti-freaking-full. All I want to do is to get the damn barcode removed again and then head back to my apartment and curl up in front of my TV with a mug of hot chocolate and watch what passes for good late night television these days. Just because I can withstand the cold a million times better than a regular human doesn’t mean that I like being out in the cold! She looked around and saw a group of people gathered around a window at an electronics store, watching whatever channel that the TVs in the window had been set on. Rena froze when she heard what was being said by the reporter.

“…these projects’ appearances can vary. They can look very much like an animal or they can appear as ordinary as you or me. Regardless of whether they are armed, they are to be considered extremely dangerous. All of these transgenics have one common identifying factor: they all have a barcode mark across the backs of their necks. If you see one of these transgenics around, please report it to the authorities so that they can take care of it.”

Son-of-a-bitch! I’ve got to get out of here and call Zack and let him know. She quietly backed away and turned around and headed back towards her motorcycle.

“Hey! That chick has a barcode on her neck!” a man who had been watching the news report in the group of people suddenly said. He pointed directly to Rena. “Get her!” Rena’s eyes widened and she jumped onto her motorcycle and floored it. Behind her, she could hear the people jump into their cars and chase her. She whipped around a corner and just managed to swerve out of the way as a bullet went flying past her.

Damn! I just had to run across the group of morons who had at least one shotgun with them! She frowned as she continued to fly through the streets. I don’t even have time to call Zack for help! I’m on my own for this one. She almost laughed to herself. He’d call me crazy for leading a chase on my motorcycle at about 100 miles an hour in what’s damn near a snowstorm! He’d think it’d attract too much attention. Max would be impressed, though. She grinned as an idea came to her. I knew all those late night rides on this bike would come in handy! This will also definitely fall under the ‘Zack Will Have A Heart Attack And Max And Jondy Will Congratulate Me’ category. As long as it works, I don’t think that Zack will be able to complain!

She hit the throttle on her bike as she swerved onto another road. She could still hear the cars behind her trying to keep up and occasionally trying to shoot either her or at least shoot out one of her tires. Rena turned onto another road and started climbing up a large hill. She swerved around a few cars, somehow managing to stay on her bike despite how fast she was going.

Perfect! They won’t be able to get around those cars as easily as I can. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on her plan. Those blind turns should be coming up right…one turn…second turn…5…4…3…2…1…last turn!

She whipped around the last turn and then flung herself off of her motorcycle to the side, landing several feet away from the road onto her back into the fairly deep snow. She heard the whistling noise of the air as the motorcycle fell almost two hundred feet and then the loud crash and explosion as it hit the ground. Rena got up and quickly looked for a place to hide. She saw the huge snowdrift by the side of the road and froze for a moment, but then heard the distant sounds of the people who had been chasing her coming closer and mentally shook herself and crawled into the snowdrift. She huddled into a ball in the middle of the huge pile of snow and shivered at not only the cold, but the memories that the snowdrift brought with it.

Zack gave them the order to split up and paired them off. He paired Rena and Zane together and gave them a direction to go off in. The two of them nodded and ran off.

They climbed the fence easily and continued running. They could hear the helicopters flying overhead and just managed to stay ahead of their spotlights. They breathed a little easier when they heard the helicopter that had been chasing them turn around and fly off in another direction, but froze when they heard the sound of Humvees on the nearby road. The looked around frantically until Zane spotted a nearby snowdrift that they could hide in and signaled to Rena. She nodded and they buried themselves in the snow until they no longer heard the Humvees or the helicopters.

Rena made herself come back to the present. Grow up, will you? That was almost twelve years ago! You’re twenty-three now, not eleven! You and Zane got out of that situation. You can get out of this one even easier. These people are nothing more than idiots with a shotgun or two and even fewer brain cells, not the soldiers of the U.S. military that are guarding a top-secret military research and training facility! This will be a piece of cake. Just focus and you can get out of this one with no problems. She listened carefully as she heard some of the people get out of their cars and start talking to each other.

“Damn, so much for the freak bitch,” one man said. “I guess it was kinda too bad. She was pretty hot.”

“She was still a freak bitch,” another guy, the one who’d spotted Rena’s barcode, pointed out. “I guess even one of them couldn’t handle a motorcycle at that damn speed in a snowstorm. It’s her loss and our gain. Can you imagine what the ones who don’t look completely human look like? That’s gotta be sick. Do you see anything around here? Maybe she left something behind.”

“Like what? What would she have left behind? If her body hasn’t been toasted in the explosion, it wouldn’t be up here,” a woman snapped. “All that’s here is just those damn snow angels and snow men that those kids left behind. They shouldn’t be playing this close to a cliff, but that’s beside the point.”

“I hear ya,” another man said. “Come on. Let’s get back into town. The replay of the hockey game’s gonna be on in the bar in twenty minutes and I don’t want to miss it.”

Rena waited patiently as she heard them get back into their cars and drove away. After they had been gone long enough for them to be back into town, she pulled herself out of the snowdrift and to her feet. She quickly ran away from the road, making sure that she only stepped in the footprints that other people had left behind and not making any new ones of her own. She kept on moving until she reached a highway several miles away and saw a department store that was closed down for the night. She crossed the road and broke into the store and grabbed a change of clothes, some new boots, some makeup, a hair dryer, and took a trash bag from a package of them. She snuck into a bathroom and took of her wet clothes and changed into the new ones and put on the new boots and dried her hair. She used the makeup to cover up her barcode and shoved it into the pockets of her jeans. She grabbed her wet clothes and shoes and parka and shoved them into the trash bag and found a trash disposal chute and threw the bag inside. She took the money from one of the cash registers and left the store and walked a half mile down the highway until she got to a diner that was open and went inside and sat down at a booth and opened a menu and looked at it.

“Miss? Do you know what you want to eat?” the waitress asked her.

“I sure do,” Rena said. “A cup of hot chocolate and some scrambled eggs and sausage would be great.”

“Coming right up,” the waitress said. She scribbled Rena’s order down on her pad and went off to the kitchen.

Rena sighed and took out her cell phone, happy that it was working. “I guess it wasn’t false advertising. These things really are waterproof,” she muttered to herself. She dialed Zack’s number.

“What’s going on, Rena?” he asked.

“Hi, big bro,” Rena said cheerfully. “I got a little problem. I had a big fight with my asshole boyfriend. I’m fine, but I need a ride home.”

Zack knew from Rena’s words and tone of voice that she was making the call in a public place. “Where are you right now?”

“At a diner about eight or so miles west of Great Falls,” Rena said. “You remember it, we passed by it on the way home that one time? I’m getting some food while I’m waiting for your sorry butt to come and give me a ride back home.”

“I remember the diner,” Zack recalled. “Unfortunately, I’m in Georgia right now on my way to check on one of the others so I can’t get to you right now or in the immediate future.”

“That really sucks,” Rena said. “When can you come and pick me up?”

Zack thought for a few moments. Max was wondering a while ago when the line between being separating being the safest thing for us and safety in numbers was going to completely blur. I think it’s starting to get to that point, at least for now. “Continue heading west. I want you to go to Seattle. When you get into the city, call this number.” He gave her Max’s cell phone number.

“Great! I’ll see you then. Bye,” Rena said, still sounding cheerful. She disconnected and put her cell phone away as the waitress brought her food and hot chocolate over to her. She thought things over as she was eating. I wonder why Zack wants me to go over to Seattle. I remember that’s where that girl Becky said she was living. I wonder if she's still living there and this is her number. Yeah, right, like that’s the truth. The odds of that are kind of slim. She is Zack's sister, after all! Whoever’s number this is, I can’t wait to find out. Seattle should definitely be interesting.

TBC