You and Me -- Chapter 13

Disclaimer:  The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Tinga, 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 (Lana/X5-204, etc.).

Notes:  Spoiler-ish stuff for “Hit a Sista Back.”

Max watched Tinga’s apartment from her spot on the roof of the building next door the following night, smiling sadly as she watched Tinga pace restlessly in the living room. Poor Tinga. Manticore’s back on her ass in a big way and they make her lose her husband. How is she not completely losing it? Then again, big sis always was strong where it counted. She sighed. I still wish that I could do something for her. Wait a second, you are. You’re making sure that Manticore doesn’t take her and her son and lock them in a cage in that God-forsaken place. That’s the best thing that I can ever think of to do for somebody. She stiffened when she heard a noise. What the…damn, is that Richie? She snuck around quietly and as she came around the corner of one of the roof accesses, she stopped short in order not to run into the young man that was standing there.

“I should have known that it was you,” he said.

“Richie?” Max breathed. She carefully listened for any soldiers nearby waiting to pounce on her, but she didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.

“Who were you expecting, Lydecker in a dress?” he teased.

Max couldn’t help laughing. “It is you, Richie.” She reached out and hugged her long-lost brother. She let go and looked up at him. “Damn, you’ve really grown up.”

“Yeah, that tends to happen as time goes by,” Richie said.

“It does,” Max agreed. She stepped back and frowned. “Are you being listened in on or peeped at?”

Richie shook his head. “I’m not, don’t worry about it. I’ve only got a location tracer and it’s showing that I’m where I’m supposed to be. And to make sure that they know that particular fact…” He gestured for Max to be quiet before he put a hand to his earpiece. “341 to 268. I’m reporting in as ordered.”

“Good,” Allie said on the other end. “Any change?”

“Nope, not a damn thing’s different,” Richie said.

Allie made an aggravated-sounding sigh. “341, how many times do I have to tell you not to use slang when making a transmission of this type?”

“I’m sorry, 268,” Richie said, rolling his eyes. “The situation is nominal.”

“There you go,” Allie said. “Check back in at 0600. When 656 and her offspring leave to go to the child’s school, follow them but do not remain there. I’ll be taking that watch tomorrow. Follow 656 to her place of employment and remain until 577 has confirmed that he is on his watch and then return to our accommodations and go on comm. duty. This is 268 out.”

“341 out,” Richie said. He turned off the earpiece and shrugged. “I think I must have transmitted to her as she was about to go to sleep.”

“Allie always hated being woken up or bothered right when she was about to sleep,” Max agreed. She looked worried. “How is she? How have you and Cody and everybody else doing since the escape?”

Richie shook his head grimly. “It hasn’t been good at all, Max. I remember that Kip and I…we were getting close to the perimeter fence when a TAC team jumped us. I almost managed to fight my way clear but they got Kip down and I couldn’t leave him behind in enemy territory, so I tried to fight the entire team off so that I could get Kip and get us both over the fence. You can probably figure out on your own how that worked out. The next thing that I knew was waking up strapped into one of those Psy Ops chairs and being worked over like you wouldn’t believe. They finally let us survivors out six months later.” He smiled sadly. “I was told while I was in there that an additional two of us not counting Eva had died while trying to escape. Another three of us, including Kip, were so badly injured from struggling with the TAC teams that they all died within a week so out of the twenty-five of us that were in our family to begin with back in the day, we were down to five: myself, Jace, Allie, Cody, and Hawk. Since there were so few of us, they split us up among the other four units. Allie went into Unit 1, Cody and I went into Unit 3, Hawk into Unit 4, and Jace got Unit 5. It was so hard in the beginning because it seemed like almost everybody in my new unit thought at first that Cody and I were traitors. We were constantly defending ourselves for at least that first year and every single time, I felt like I was betraying you guys. They let it go by the end of our second year out of Psy Ops, though. But while our new unit mates and the other transgenics in general might have eventually accepted us at least for the most part, the people in charge certainly haven’t. The trainers were almost always harder on us growing up than the rest of them, at least until we got cleared for missions. At least they slowed down the experiments as we got older, especially after we were cleared to go on solo mission. Once we hit puberty and adolescence, they cut them down to once a month when we weren’t out in the field and then once we got the go-ahead to go solo, it became once every two months. That’s something, at least. It still sucks beyond comprehension, but it’s better than nothing. While that might have gotten easier to a degree, their thing about keeping us on a short leash didn’t. Even after we were cleared to go on missions a few years after you and some of the others got out, we had the tracer-plus-audio tracking implants every single time, even after the first three missions when the others stopped having to go to the infirmary to get them put in before a mission. Hell, Cody and I only got put on tracking-only implants two years ago. Hawk got his tracking implant downgraded almost four years ago, Jace stopped needing an implant completely two years ago, and Allie’s been off the implants for a full six years. Lydecker and company seem to have trust issues.”

“Hell, let’s add that to the obvious control issues that Deck has,” Max said dryly. She sighed. “How about Cody, Allie, Jace, and Hawk? How have they been handling things?”

“Hawk’s been okay, I guess,” Richie said. “He still isn’t exactly happy with everything, but he doesn’t have an immediate desire to try to bail from Manticore again either. Jace I can never tell. She misses the hell out of everybody but yet at least ninety percent of the time she acts the way that the trainers and all of them expect an X5 to behave. Allie, though…” Richie sighed dejectedly. “I don’t know what exactly happened in Psy Ops with her because we were kept separate from each other during our stays there, but Allie was a different person when she got out than from when she got thrown in. Remember how quiet and shy she used to be when we were kids? I mean, she would rub some of the others the wrong way sometimes, but she was still for the most part a sweet girl.”

“Yeah, Lana, Cay, and Syl in particular didn’t get along with her sometimes,” Max recalled.

Richie nodded. “Yeah, I remember that. But this Allie…this isn’t Allie. It’s as if they killed Allie in Psy Ops and instead of that girl, out came X5-268. She’s just…she’s what they want us X5s to be. Cold, heartless, efficient, ruthless, all of those things. It scares me. Lydecker and everybody was happy with her. She was taken completely off flight risk status much sooner than Jace was, and like I said, Cody and Hawk and I aren’t completely off of that particular list. And don’t even think about calling her by her name, either. Cody did once by accident one time about three years removed from Psy Ops when they had our unit and hers in martial arts together and when the trainer called Allie and Cody front and center to the mats to go for a round against each other, Allie ended up sending Cody to the infirmary for three days. I’ve almost slipped and called her by her name a couple of times over the years, but then I remember what happened with her and Cody and I catch myself.” He snorted. “I’m just glad that I’m not in the same unit with her anymore. We just happened to get assigned to this mission together because our strengths worked well for what was and is required.”

“You don’t sound too happy about this mission,” Max said.

“To say the least,” Richie agreed. “How the hell can I do this to my big sister? How many years has she spent making sure that she and her family is safe from Manticore and why do I have to bring her and her son back to that hell because her kid was just being a kid? I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Max.” He snorted. “It might be causing a hell of a lot of grief for me and Cody, but it’s sure as hell no skin off of Allie’s ass. She just thinks that this is simply another mission.”

Max nodded, not quite sure what to say. After a few moments, she looked back up at Richie. “If you still hate it so much, why didn’t you try to make another attempt at an escape from Manticore?”

“I wanted to leave,” Richie said honestly. “At first I didn’t want to make another go of it because I was scared out of my mind. I know that I didn’t want to go back to Psy Ops if I tried and failed again. If six months of them going one hundred percent on me was horrible, could you imagine what they would do if I failed on take two? Then when I got older and that fear started to wear off, it just…I don’t know. I thought of it and I tried to work out a plan. I must have come up with a million of them. Every time that I would be briefed before going out on a mission, I would only be half paying attention to what was being said because I was trying to find a way to work around it so that I could leave. But like I said, I was and am still considered something of a flight risk so they always had things set up so that it would be damn close to impossible for somebody like me to be able to skip town.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Max said quietly. “I’m really sorry.” She gave Richie another hug. She brushed some of his hair away from his face and smirked. “You need a haircut.”

“Screw you,” Richie joked. He and Max laughed and he smiled sadly. “I hope you win.”

Max knew what Richie was talking about. “Me too. Take care, Richie. Stay strong.”

“I will. You too.” Riche gave her one more smile before he disappeared to his original hiding place.

Max sighed sadly. Poor Richie. I can’t believe the hell that Lydecker and everybody put him, Cody, Allie, Jace, and Hawk through back at Manticore. I’m going to have to tell Zack about this. She frowned. He’s not going to be happy that Richie and I talked, no matter which side Richie is really on where it counts. Max shrugged. Might as well get it over with. Here goes nothing. Keeping her eyes on Tinga’s living room window, she took out her cell phone and dialed Zack’s number. “Zack, it’s me.”

“What is it, Maxie?” Zack asked.

“I just saw Richie,” Max said. “As in we had a conversation.”

“You…did…what?” Zack asked slowly.

“If he had an eye on him, then I would have bailed,” Max pointed out. “I didn’t tell him that you, Lana, Zane, Krit, and Syl were all here in the city. I know what I’m doing, Zack. Don’t worry about it.”

“What did Richie say?” Zack asked.

“Well, Allie is how I thought she was,” Max said. “She’s not the Allie that we knew and apparently she hasn’t been since she got out of Psy Ops six months after we left Manticore.”

“Six months?” Zack repeated quietly.

“Yeah,” Max agreed. “God, the only people left back there from our old family are Allie, Richie, Hawk, Cody, and Jace. They had it hard over the past ten years or so. Richie’s conflicted as hell about this mission and he said that Cody is as well. Neither of them are happy about it at all and they don’t want to go through with it, but you know Manticore.”

“Unfortunately,” Zack said. “Does Allie care at all?”

“If you mean completing the mission successfully, then yes,” Max said. “If you mean about Tinga and Case, then she doesn’t give a rat’s ass. I’m just confused as hell right now, Zack.”

“I don’t blame you,” he said softly. “Be careful out there, Maxie. I love you.”

“I love you too, Zack,” Max said. She disconnected her phone and focused her attention on her oldest sister.