Where Were You? -- Chapter 14: Max (X5-452)

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.).

I’ve been here in Nevada in this place called Henderson for a few months now. It’s pretty good considering how everything got so chaotic since the Pulse happened back in June. Despite everything, there are still enough tourists going to Las Vegas so that a quick trip up there to pickpocket will get me at least a hundred dollars per trip. Not bad, huh?

I’m just sitting up here on top of this building that I found. I guess I still need a High Place. I should be letting go of anything and everything that had to do with Manticore, but the High Place didn’t have to do with Manticore, it had to do with my family. There was no way that I was going to let go of anything that had to do with them. You couldn’t make me do that for anything in the world.

I think about my brothers and sisters all of the time. I wish that I had been able to stick with Jondy instead of falling into that ice. I wish that Jace had decided to break out with us. Why did she change her mind? She was there with us when Lydecker killed Eva. She was there with us when I came back to our barracks and told everybody what Lydecker had done to Jack. Maybe Lydecker scared her into staying. I don’t know and it looks like I won’t get the opportunity to ask her why she stayed behind.

I miss everybody like crazy. Did all fifteen of us that got to the rendezvous point make it out? I hope we did. I know we did. We had to have all made it out. We all wanted to make it out too badly for us not to succeed. I want to have my family back together. We’re all separated or maybe a few of us are together, depending on if Zack’s found them or not, but I’ll find them eventually. As soon as I get the opportunity, I’ll go find them.

I sighed. I hated being by myself. I should probably make some friends and try to fit in, but that would most likely end me up with another foster family and I didn’t want to repeat that experience again. I should go get some more Tryptophan, though. I wasn’t able to get much the last time I had to get a refill. I hate taking medication but if these will keep my seizures away or at least keep them from being too bad, then I’ll take them. I’d wished that they’d figured this out back at Manticore. Maybe they did figure this out already but they just wanted to wait until they had a more permanent solution for the seizures. If they had given us Tryptophan, though, would we have stayed? Would Jack have not had that last seizure and had not been dissected? Then again, maybe we wouldn’t have stayed. Our life at Manticore was like a time bomb that was just waiting to go off. I think even if things had been different and Jack hadn’t been dissected and had lived, something else would have happened and we still would have left at some point.

I shook my head, stood up, and started to climb back down the fire escape. Speaking of Tryptophan, I should get going. It was easier to get some of it in Las Vegas than it is here and the bus that I want to take into the city leaves the bus station in twenty minutes. I’m not far from the station but I still should get going. I jumped down the last three feet off of the fire escape and I checked to make sure that I had enough money for the bus before I walked down to the station. There were a few kids there. I should be glad that it’s a weekend and kids are out of school so I don’t look suspicious standing in public in broad daylight. I waited for the bus to pull up to the curb and once the thing finally did get here, I boarded it and gave the driver my money and a big smile. The driver smiled back and I went down and took a seat. There’s an important lesson that I’ve learned since I’ve been on the Outside. Adults think kids are cute and harmless. Give them a big smile and they won’t suspect a thing.

A noise behind me and to my right distracted me from the view outside of my window and I turned and saw a brother and a sister nagging each other and I smiled sadly and I turned back towards my window. The boy looked a little bit like Zack. It definitely wasn’t him, but the boy physically resembled him just enough to make me sad again. I swore that I saw Zack last month. It was the weirdest thing! I was sitting on top of the building like I’d just been doing and I looked in the distance and I saw a boy about Zack’s height standing around on the street a few blocks away. I was convinced that it was him so I ran, just barely slow enough to not be suspicious, and by the time I’d gotten to where I’d thought I’d seen him, Zack was gone. I looked all over town that day, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was the saddest I’d been since it first sunk in after the escape that I wouldn’t be seeing my family for a long time, if ever again. It had to have been Zack! I knew my oldest brother better than any of my family and I knew that it was him. Why couldn’t he have still been there by the time I was able to get down to him? I missed him so much!

I sighed and turned back to the brother and his sister. The sister had now fallen asleep and the brother was listening to a MP3 player. I smiled. Maybe I had missed Zack that one time, but the next time that I saw him, I would catch him. I’d see him and I’d let him know how much I’ve missed him. We’d be together again one day. Zack and me and Tinga and Jondy and everybody. We were meant to be a family and you can’t keep apart what’s meant to be. You just can’t.

The end!