Where Were You? -- Chapter 10: Rena (X5-120)

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 (Wayne/X5-369, etc.).

Notes: As far as I know, WBPY is not an actual radio or television station. I just made it up. If it is, I don’t own it.

“I absolutely love this unseasonably warm weather,” Zane said, grinning as he stood in the shallow water. “This is absolutely the best thing known to man and transgenic kind.”

“How can you stand being in the water for more than you absolutely have to?” I wondered. I could tolerate being in the water if the situation called for it, but to voluntarily spend more time in water than I needed to? Yeah, right. Not for me. “Have you forgotten whose DNA we were engineered with?”

“They could have thrown in some kind of fish or amphibious DNA in one or two of us somewhere,” Zane pointed out. “You never know. They did put some shark DNA in Max and Jondy, remember?”

“Yeah, but Jondy doesn’t like being in water any more than I do and Max thinks that it’s okay but she doesn’t like it any more or less than these normal people seem to like it,” I reminded him. I smirked. “And have I mentioned how stupid those swimming trunks make you look?”

Zane rolled his eyes. “Only about twenty-five times, Rena.”

"Make that twenty-six," I said. "You still look like an idiot in them."

"Who picked out these trunks...oh yeah, it was you!"

“It’s a good thing that you got those trunks based on my personal opinion. I’m scared trying to imagine what your own taste in swimwear is like,” I teased.

“Shut up, you moron,” Zane said. “Do I even need to mention that really weird thing that you refer to as your bathing suit?” He sighed, turned around, and dove back into the water. I wondered for a moment if he was going to swim off and leave me here by myself. Nah, that wouldn’t be something that Zane would do, at least he wouldn’t do that to me. Maybe Krit or Wayne would do that. No, I know that Krit or Wayne would have just swam off and then hidden somewhere and laughed as I would try to look for them. I sighed. Krit was out somewhere together with Syl and Wayne was somewhere else entirely with Tinga. I had no idea what they were doing or how they were doing. I missed them like crazy. I missed all of them.

“It’s okay.” I almost jumped and turned around and saw Zane sitting on the towel next to me. I didn’t even hear him get out of the water. “I miss everybody, too. We’ve got to believe that we’ll all be together again.”

“I know,” I acknowledged.

“Look, you need to relax,” Zane said.

“Wow. I never thought that you would be telling me that I needed to relax,” I said. “How many times was it the other way around?”

“About a million and all of them after some dumb stunt that you pulled in training or some prank that you and the other two Musketeers did to someone else or to each other,” Zane recalled. He’s been referring to me, Max, and Jondy as the Three Musketeers ever since he read that book last week. I read the story after he was done with it and it was pretty good. Zane squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, let’s go get some dinner after I dry off and then go home. It’s got to be close to nine o’ clock.”

“A beautiful rusted-out 1960s-era Chevrolet sedan lined with blankets, home sweet home,” I deadpanned.

“We were lucky to find that car in that junkyard,” Zane reminded me. He shook his head as he toweled off and turned around and changed out of his trunks and took out his shorts and t-shirt and put them on. We packed up our towels and stuffed them in my duffel bag and walked away from the beach. He grinned wickedly at me. “And lucky to find a beach that allows night swimming.”

“Enough with the water already,” I insisted. “What do you want for get for dinner?”

“I’m not sure,” Zane said. “You’ve got the money on you today. How much do we have? The last time I counted, we had about fifty dollars with us.”

“Yeah, we still have fifty,” I confirmed. “That’s plenty for dinner tonight.”

“We should make that stretch into tomorrow, though,” Zane commented. “I know that we could always—“ He and I stopped in our tracks and then dove to the side, just missing the sparks that came showering down from the neon sign that we were walking under just then. Zane blinked and looked over at me. “Rena, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. What on earth happened?” I picked my head up and looked around. “It looks like some kind of blackout. The weather was absolutely fine, though. What could be causing this?”

“I might be smart, but I’m not psychic,” Zane said. “Whatever’s going on, stay close to me. This could be dangerous. Don’t give me any of that ‘yes, daddy’ crap, I really mean it.”

I made sure nobody was paying attention and zoomed in on an apartment window across the street from us. “Nothing’s working, not ever TVs.” I saw a young man looking to cross the street who was listening to an MP3 player. “Nothing that needs electricity, anyway. The batteries in our radio should be fresh, right?”

“Right,” Zane said. He smiled. “Good thinking, Rena.”

I bent down and opened the duffel bag and took out our transistor radio and turned it on. I tuned into a station and we sat down on the sidewalk and listened to the news. “Looks like dinner’s going to wait for awhile at least.”

“There’s nothing that we can do about it,” Zane agreed. “Hey, this is our first blackout. We never really experienced one back at Manticore with all of the backup generators that they must have had there.”

“Of all the Outside rites of passage that we’re going to go through or have gone through, this isn’t my favorite,” I remarked. “It’s boring.”

“This isn’t my favorite, either,” Zane said. “What ones are you looking forward to, Rena?”

“Getting my first real haircut,” I told him. “Not until my hair’s long enough to cover the barcode, even though we get that stupid thing burned off.” I grinned and ran a hand through my hair. It’s this really neat dark auburn color. “I absolutely love my hair color.”

“Girls and their hair,” Zane teased. “Tinga, Gale, and Brin would practically cry every time they would buzz our hair.”

“Hey, don’t make fun of girls because of stuff like that,” I insisted. “Ben might have been the second most serious in our family, but he was probably the biggest narcissist at times.”

“Little Ree-Ree is using big words,” Zane teased.

“You’re right, I am using big words and I am going to put you in a big world of pain if you don’t stop using that stupid nickname,” I promised. “You know how much I hate it.”

“Sorry, Rena,” Zane apologized.

“Good,” I said. I smiled at him. “I’m also looking forward to seriously celebrating my birthday. My birthday was sometime last month. I don’t know when exactly in May it is, but actually celebrating it with something like a normal party sounds really neat.”

“When the blackout’s over, we can go get some ice cream or something,” Zane told me. “Or even better, we could go to that bakery that’s open late and get a little cake and then we can take it back to the car and eat it.”

“And get twelve candles to put in it?” I asked hopefully. “Plus one for good luck?”

“Absolutely,” Zane confirmed. “This is going to be fun.”

“Yeah,” I said. I blushed a little. “I can’t wait until I get my first kiss.”

Zane made a face. “Oh brother, and you aren’t even in heat…”

“Hey, I know that you’re looking forward to your first kiss too,” I said. “I’ve seen the way that you’ve been looking at some of these normal women. You want to have your first kiss as much as I want to have mine.”

“How about we get it over with?” Zane suggested.

“Huh?”

“I’ll kiss you,” Zane offered.

“Um…okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, at least until Zane leaned forward and kissed me on my lips. Wow. That was really…what would be the right word to describe it? It was all tingly and good and awesome and it just felt…wow. I looked at Zane and saw that he was as stunned as I was. “Wow.”

“Yeah, that was—“ Zane was cut off by the radio. We immediately stopped staring at each other and focused on what the newscaster was saying.

“We have a breaking story coming into the WBPY news desk,” the newscaster reported. “The cause of the nearly nationwide blackout that occurred almost an hour ago has now been determined. We have just learned that an electromagnetic pulse was set off by terrorists over the east coast and this pulse has permanently or at least temporarily knocked offline nearly all electronic devices from video games to personal computers to major computerized corporate databases. Officials have given no timetable on which everything will be up and running again. No terrorist group has claimed responsibility for this act yet. I repeat, it has been confirmed that the blackout that occurred was caused by an electromagnetic pulse that was set off over the east coast by terrorists. If you have emergency generators, please use them wisely. Make sure that you are stocked up on batteries and bottled water and other—“

Zane looked worried as he shut off the radio and put it back into the duffel bag. “No electricity? Nothing for a long time?”

“I know,” I said. I perked up. “Hey, that’ll make it that much harder for Manticore to find us even if they have all those backup generators!”

“True,” Zane conceded. He looked worried again. “It might make it harder for Zack to find us, thought.” He shook his head again. “No, it won’t. Zack would be able to find us eventually even if he was blindfolded and had one hand tied behind his back.”

“Like the time you and Krit and Wayne actually had the balls to do that to him while he was sleeping before the bugle to wake us up that one morning back in September?” I said, giggling. “I thought Zack was going to murder you!”

“We would have gotten the other hand if Krit didn’t get dust up his nose and sneeze practically right in Zack’s ear and woken him up,” Zane said proudly. I laughed, but then Zane yanked me to the side and a man rushed past us, breaking the window of the store that we were in front of and jumping into it. “Rena, we need to get out of here.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, looking around and seeing other people running around, looting stores and causing general chaos. As much as I knew that Zane and I could handle ourselves, it was not smart of us to stick around. I picked up the duffle bag again and we headed back towards our car. I looked at the chaos around me and Zane and I exchanged a look. Maybe this was going to be worse than a simple blackout. Much worse.

TBC