What's Next? -- Chapter 29

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.).

Becky sat at her desk in her office on campus and sighed. Two classes today plus these stupid office hours that I have to have. None of my students seem to want to come by…duh, Becky! It’s when most people have lunch. Damn, I must be bored. She shook her head and reached for the paper bag that was sitting on the desk. She was about to reach inside to take out the sandwich that was in there when she heard a knock on the office door. “Come in.” She raised an eyebrow in surprise when she saw Brandi enter her office. “Of all the people I thought would come in here, you were not one of them.”

“I already ate my lunch and I still have half an hour left before I have to get back to work, so I thought that I would drop by and make your life miserable,” Brandi said, smiling nastily. “Gee, nobody’s here talking with the illustrious new professor. You making fans this quickly, 405?”

“My name is Becky,” Becky reminded her. “Hell, if you really want to have some form of conversation with me, go ahead and have a seat. I don’t care.”

Brandi looked at her suspiciously. “You don’t care?”

“No,” Becky said. “I’m bored as hell. If anything, this will amuse me.”

“Amuse you?” Brandi repeated. Her expression grew darker. “If you have half of the brain that they had said that you’ve got, you would know not to keep in contact with 494.”

“Your opinion is exactly that,” Becky said. “Speaking of which, I’m almost surprised that you didn’t show up at Biggs and Sasha’s wedding reception on Saturday night, if only to ruin it for at least some people if not for everybody that showed up. Pretty much any transgenic that was in the area was invited and I know that included you, Diane, Melanie, 237, and I believe it was 532 and 859 that arrived into town last week? I don’t know their names right off the top of my head.” She shrugged. “Hell, I was expecting you to crash the actual ceremony that morning and fuck that up royally. I think Biggs and Sasha did too because they asked me and Riley to sit near the entrance to the chapel. It must have been in case you or the other members of your old unit decided to be a party pooper.”

“That would have been beneath me,” Brandi said disdainfully. “As far as I am concerned, those two imbeciles deserve each other. God, Sasha always was such a loser and Biggs always thought that he was better than everybody else. It disgusted me and I know that I’m not the only one who thought that way.”

“So I’ve heard,” Becky said.

“I bet it was a stupid ceremony, anyway,” Brandi said.

“No, it was a very nice ceremony,” Becky said. “There were only about…” She paused. “…twenty of us there at the church counting the bride and groom. It didn’t take very long, but that was fine with everybody there. Sasha wore this really nice dress. It wasn’t white, Max told me that Rena had told her that Sasha had said ‘I don’t look all that great in pure white and hell, it’s kind of obvious I’m not a virgin, so what’s the point?’.” Becky laughed. “At any rate, they didn’t write their own vows, I think they both agreed beforehand that they thought writing their own was too sappy, but when they looked at each other when the minister said that Biggs could kiss his bride…wow. I even had to wipe my eye a little bit. Syl and Brin were both bawling like small children by then, Max and Rena were both grinning like lunatics, even my brother was smiling and if you know him, then you know how big of a deal that is.”

“Your brother…that’s right, 599. I heard about the interview that woman gave,” Brandi said.

Becky’s eyes hardened. “That woman is my mother.”

“Whatever,” Brandi said. “No skin off my ass. I’m a big girl. I don’t need a mother.”

“Yeah, having Renfro as the closest thing to a mother figure that you had during your adolescence would turn anybody off to the concept of having their real mother around and having a parent-child relationship with her,” Becky said dryly.

“Director Renfro was an excellent director of the facility that I grew up in since she took over from Seattle’s original director,” Brandi said calmly. “I’ll admit that she made decisions that I personally did not like or agree with, but nobody is perfect.”

Are you naturally this screwed in the head or did all of the time that you spent in Psy Ops do the trick? Becky wondered.

“Anyway, aren’t you going to start gushing about how much fun the reception was?” Brandi continued, smirking. “Diane told me that it was boring as hell and that was why she left early.”

“Funny, I thought that she left early because she wanted to give that X4 jerk that she met a thrill,” Becky remarked. “And yes, the reception was a blast but I see no need to give every single detail about what happened.”

“Not even who caught the bouquet and garter?” Brandi said in mock horror.

“Not even that,” Becky said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Just as well I didn’t go, I guess,” Brandi said. “If Melanie wasn’t able to make it because she couldn’t find somebody in time to watch her boys and if Diane bailed early, then there was no point. Who would I have hung out with? I hate or at least dislike everybody else that would have been there.”

“Why didn’t you at least try to make more friends or even less enemies back in the good old days?” Becky wondered, genuinely curious.

“What was the point?” Brandi said. “Diane and Melanie were the only two people who deserved to be friends with me. They never did anything to screw me over, they never claimed to be better than me even when Diane passed me in the intraunit rankings, and they are the only two people in my old unit that didn’t give me an odd look whenever I would get out of Psy Ops.”

“Okay, I can see how that last one would count for a lot,” Becky conceded.

“You’ve got room to talk,” Brandi said.

“Excuse me?”

“How many friends did you have before Manticore burned down?” Brandi asked, smirking.

Becky returned the smirk. “My entire unit—I consider them to be my family—Jeff, Zack and I became friends even before I found out that he was my brother, Max, Alec I don’t think would count because we didn’t actually become friends until months later, I guess you could say that Jace was a friend of mine or at least a friendly acquaintance before she decided to leave Manticore, everybody in Jeff’s unit…funny, I seemed to have had a lot of friends by the time that Manticore got fried.”

“Bragging is unnecessary, you little bitch,” Brandi said.

“Really? You were the one who posed the question, weren’t you?” Becky reminded her.

“You are a smug little shit,” Brandi said. She started to reach back as if she was going to hit Becky, but changed her mind and took a deep breath to calm herself down.

Finally starting to learn your lesson, huh? “That was a smart move,” Becky said, her voice still perfectly calm. She and Brandi both looked towards the door when they heard somebody knocking on it. “Who is it?”

“It’s Frankie, Professor Murphy. From eleven o’clock Freshman Comp?”

“Come right in,” Becky said.

Brandi stood up and the student entered the office. “I suppose that would be my cue to get back to my area of campus. It was such a pleasure.” Under her breath, quietly enough so that Frankie wouldn’t be able to hear it but that Becky would easily, she added “Rot in hell.”

Becky watched her leave and sighed. Unbelievable. What is wrong with that woman?

TBC