Hi all, after stumbling upon Dark Angel 18 years later, I realized that I'm still very much hooked on it. There is however, one specific thing about Dark Angel that stood out back then and still does now - to me anyway. The relationship between Max and Lydecker.
So, this story is a Max and Lydecker centric. It's going to focus on Max and Lydecker in a father-daughter relationship.
FYI, I did not get to read the third book and I am not impressed with the 2nd season either. So this story is going to be much more in line with season 1.
So for this story to make better sense, here's some things to know before reading this story:
1) In this story the cloning never happened. There is only one Max, and the same with everybody else who came out of Manticore. That's because if Max was only a clone of many, then why would Max be specifically special to Lydecker if there are more than one Max? Something the 2nd season ruined. So the cloning is non-existent in this story.
2) Sure I'll leave room for the anomalies that came out of the basement of Manticore and the other more 'creative creations', but when they started with vampires and mermaids - it got out of hand. So that doesn't exist in this story either.
Just some additional info: It's not a perfect story and it's not written perfectly either, it's only to share my idea of what could've happened.
Happy reading...and reviews are welcome.
Flashes…
Flashes…
Flashes of people…..
Flashes of her people…..
Flashes of the people of freak nation….
Flashes of panic…..
Of screams…..
All around her….
Flashes of how they choke….
Flashes of how they fall to the ground…..
Flashes of them all lying on the floor….
She feels numb, her hears are ringing, she's trying to just figure out what is going on but the whole world just keeps on spinning in a blur.
And then Alec, he's moving away… almost like he's trying to get away from something.
She turns and sees Joshua lying on the floor, not moving, why is he not moving?
She turns back again and sees CC also and then Alec being pushed to the ground and then CC as she's being shocked with a tasor.
She's vaguely aware of scattered people moving around but she can't focus, she just can't, her head is spinning, and so is the world.
Turning back to where she last saw Alec and CC, her heart skips a beat before it stops all together as she focuses on the man that is making his way straight towards her… White.
She has to run, she has to get out, she has to get the others….. the others…. And then she remembers as she looks around her at the bodies littered all over the floor around her….the others. She frowns… what is going on? Everything is foggy, she can't think, she can't…
And then her attempt to try and make any sense is cut short as a taser is stuck into her side…. she starts to shake….pain… and then the floor….cold… hard.
As her head is lying on the cold cement floor, she sees the other transgenics also lying on the floor, but they're not moving, they're not doing anything.. why? What happened?
Her view is obstructed as the world suddenly turns as White rolls her over with his foot. He hovers over her as she finally makes eye contact with him, sort of, his face is blurry...
"452…"
She can see his mouth move but she can't hear anything, her ears are still ringing….with a stinging pain in it.
White stands up from crouching and says something to his men that she only notices now that are surrounding her. This is the worst tactical situation that one can possible find oneself in. Unable to move, unable to fight… unable to even stand. Cannot hear, cannot focus and surrounded by the enemy.
One of the men steps closer and then the world starts to shake but then she realizes it's actually just her shaking as a tasor is pushed into her side… again.
And then….
Darkness…
...
"Max"
"Max" It sounds like a faint echo from far away.
"Max!" That sounded closer, more urgent. She has to wake up, she has to get up, something is going on.
She tries to open her eyes but they won't. She frowns. She tries to wipe her eyes with her hands but her arms won't move. Nothing moves.
She can't move.
She starts to panic…
Max feels a slight shake. "Max, wake up." Someone is trying to wake her up. She voice sounds familiar, sounds worried.
Her eyes are heavy but she has to open them, she has to know what is going on. Did she pass out?
After willing her eyes to open with everything that she's got, the first things she sees is….
...Lydecker?
She tries to frown, what is going on! Move Max! Get up! Do anything! She starts shouting in her head but it only fades away with the fogginess she's still drowned in.
Her head is tilted up and she looks right into Lydecker's face that is going in and out of focus with her vision. She vaguely feels his hands holding her head up. She tries to move away but cannot. I knew he couldn't be killed...
Moving her focus away, Max can see blurry images of something that looks like bars …..a cell. Has she been captured?! But wait wasn't Lydecker on our side? Didn't he help blow up the DNA lab? Why is he here? Did he go back to work for Manticore?
Words that are spoken by Lydecker seems like a whisper and an echo floating around her, she can't make out any of it and the world suddenly falls away….and then it feels like she is floating. The sealing above her is slowing flying over her and the lights are drifting along. Is she dying? Or dreaming? Weird dream, I'd like to wake up now.
She didn't even realize how cold she was until she started to feel warm. It makes her feel better... more comfortable… and she's floating but to where? She turns her head a much as she can and then catches sight of Lydecker again. Why is he so close?... why is my head on his shoulder?...and then panic sinks in as Max realizes that he is carrying her.
She tries to move again but to no avail. She still feels numb, like she has been sedated. And her muscles ache like she has been shocked with a tasor.
Max is enveloped by darkness as Lydecker carries her out of the building into the dark night. He heads straight for his car that has been parked off to the side where no one would think it suspicious.
He carefully lies Max down on the back seat and then closes the door and gets in behind the wheel and pulls off into the night.
...
The slight shake of the car wakes Max but she doesn't open her eyes. She's warm and comfortable and hope that this is still like 2am and she can at least get another 3 hours of beauty sleep before she has to get up and get to Jam Pony. Normal always seems impressed when she shows up on time.
There's another shake and then Max realizes that she's not in her bed but in a moving car. She tries to jump up but it's like a thick heaving blanket is holding her limbs down. She starts to panic….. and then her memory flashes…. people screaming… another flash… White…. another flash… Lydecker.
She forces her eyes open, even just enough to see where she is and what the situation is and she finds herself staring into something black. She moves her eyes and then realizes she's lying on the back seat of a car and moving her eyes up she sees Lydecker behind the wheel, driving. He doesn't seem to notice her being awake so if there ever was a chance to get the upper hand, it is now, he's totally unsuspecting. But then Max realizes that she can't move and then her eyes slips closed as she don't even have the energy to keep them open. The only thing she seems to be capable of doing right now is just to breathe. And so she focuses on her breathing as an anchor.
...
Three hours later a black SUV moves through the woods and pulls into an area that has a camouflaged building, hidden away where a helicopter or satellite cannot spot it. Lydecker pulls into an entrance that seems to go down into a basement.
Lydecker switches the engine off and before he gets out, he first looks back at Max who is still unconscious. He then proceeds up a small flight of stairs and unlocks a door. He enters and then not long he returns. He opens the back door of his SUV on the side where Max's head is lying.
"Max." Lydecker tries to see if she'll wake up.
When there is no response he leans over her and looks at her face, he then brings his hand up and puts it on her forehead to feel her temperature. She's got a cold fever.
As Lydecker takes Max by the shoulders to move her out of the car, Max's eyes open, slightly but she's awake… if just barely.
"Max we're here." Lydecker tells her as he moves her into a sitting position.
Here? Where's here? Manticore? No wait, Lydecker isn't with Manticore anymore. Well, not that she's aware of. If Lydecker was back with Manticore, wouldn't his men be the ones to yank her around?
She slightly turns her head and she realizes that she can move, not much but at least much more than the last time she woke up and she drowsily looks around to see where here is.
"Come, let's get you inside." Lydecker's voice, right next to her. And then she feels something behind her as he slips his arm around her back and moves her out of the car. Max sees the ground and tries to move her legs but they won't. How's she going to get out? And with that Lydecker hooks his other arm under her legs and picks her up.
For a moment that floating feeling returns. And then she tenses up, or tries to, her mind is tensing up but not her body. Why is Lydecker touching her? ... worse, why can't she move?
She sighs to herself in her mind, she knows this feeling well. She's definitely sedated.
She opens her eyes that she didn't even realize has slipped closed and she looks around as Lydecker is carrying her towards the small flight of stairs. It looks like a garage, in a basement, with stuff standing everywhere, like a warehouse. They then pass through a door and then a hallway and then another door and then there's a room. But it kind of looks like a living room, with couches, table, chairs… like the inside of a house.
Lydecker places her down on a couch and then slightly comes to hover over her as he places a hand on her forehead. His hand feels cool.
"It's alright, you're safe now." Lydecker says in a reassuring tone. Like the same tone he used that night... "It's alright… I'm not going to let anything happen to you…" And then Max recalls the memory of being shot and then waking up with Renfro in her face and then the months that she spent at Manticore.
Kinda failed there Don. Max thinks to herself in a mocking voice.
As Lydecker moves away from her and leaves the room, Max looks at her surroundings and her eyes fall on a window. Keep that in mind for an escape… and that's just about the last thing on her mind before she slips back into unconsciousness.
Flashes…..
Flashes of people screaming, and falling all around her…..
A nightmare…
When Max wakes up again she feels warm and comfortable but something doesn't feel right. She opens her eyes and finds herself in an unknown place. This isn't her apartment, it isn't Logan's penthouse, this is nowhere familiar to her. She closes her eyes for a moment to try and remember what the last thing was that she remembers…..
Freak nation…..people all around her on the floor…..White….. Lydecker…..
She opens her eyes again, takes a deep breath and then slowly pushes herself up into a sitting position. She can move, she still feels the numbness in her muscles but she can move. She looks down and finds a blanket that was covering her, she looks around the room and sees her shoes on the floor and her jacket hanging over the back of a chair. How did it get there? She can't recall.
"You're awake"
Max turns her head and finds Lydecker standing in the doorway. He still looks the same, with black leather jacket and all.
"You've been out for over a day." Lydecker's tone is calm as he grabs a chair as he walks over to Max with a glass of water. He places the chair in front of Max and sits down.
Max straightens her body in an attempt to move away from Lydecker, she doesn't know what's going on and she's not going to take any chances.
"Here." Lydecker holds the glass of water out to her.
Max doesn't take it, she just eyes it suspiciously.
"Where am I?" She gets right to the point although her voice is weak and for a moment she wonders to herself if those words were even audible.
"In a safe place." Yes, that's very comforting coming from Lydecker. Manticore is his safe place….was his safe place.
"Where am I?" Max tries to put emphasis in her voice that she will beat him silly if he doesn't start to co-operate but she finds her voice is as weak as her body.
Lydecker takes a deep breath. "You're at my house."
Wait, Lydecker has an actual house? Always thought that he didn't leave Manticore, he probably slept in his office.
"That nobody knows about." He adds to reassure Max.
Well that does make sense. He wouldn't be dumb enough to hang around a place where someone can just look him up on company records or the phone book.
"How are you feeling?" Lydecker slightly tilts his head with the question.
Max wonders for a moment of how to put it. "Like I've been chased, beaten, shocked with a taser, sedated and then locked up." She gives Lydecker a look that says, I remember everything that you and Manticore did to me.
Lydecker doesn't miss the look. "You should feel better in a couple of days." He then sits back as he realizes Max probably doesn't like him crowding her personal space.
Max breaks eye contact and starts looking around the room. Lydecker takes the queue and places the glass of water on a side table and then stands.
"Get some rest." He says as he's walking out of the room.
"Wait."
Lydecker stops but doesn't turn around to face her.
"What happened?" That really is the only thing that Max is interested in at the moment. She's confused and she wants to know what is going on.
Lydecker only turns his head to the side but still doesn't turn around. "Get some rest Max." He inhales and then walks out.
Max stares at the empty doorway where Lydecker just left. Something doesn't feel right here. He couldn't look her in the eye. Why?
She then turns and looks at the glass of water standing on the side table. She contemplates whether it could be drugged or just plain, clean, fresh water that she really would like to drink. She flexes her hand and makes a fist to see if she's got enough power in her muscles and then she slowly reaches out and takes the water. She brings the glass to her mouth but before she drinks she takes a cautionary sniff just to be sure and then she downs the glass.
Flashes
Max is standing with CC as they listen to how Alec and Mole is having, in their opinion, an absolutely pointless argument. Max looks over to CC and they both pull a 'whatever' look. Max then spots one of the X7's that she named "Stare", because he can stare and stare and stare… Max looks at him as he is slowly approaching the windows as if a tiger is waiting on the other side and he is intently looking up into the sky.
"Hey, Stare, what's up?" Max pipes with not a worry in the world.
"There's something out there…up there." He points to the sky without even lifting his arm.
The next moment Joshua comes barreling into the room, "Did you hear that?!" All eyes in the room falls on Joshua – he's never alarmed. Something is going down. Joshua lifts his nose into the air as he starts to sniff and smell. They all make their way to the window and look out into the sky but they see nothing.
"Max!" Alec suddenly jerks her by the arm and points outside down to the streets of Terminal City.
The looks of confused shock finds its way onto their faces… and then panic. "What is going on?!" CC asks in an alarming tone as they look at the freaks… people of Terminal City start to stumble around on the streets like they are being choked. And then the screaming starts. And then… blood… blood coming from their eyes and ears.
"Get everyone inside!" Max yells.
The next moment she's standing in the middle of the hangar with people all around her, stumbling, bleeding, screaming, lying on the floor. Her lungs burn, her eyes burn, her ears. Is she also breeding?! Panic, panic, PANIC…
"Max wake up!"
Max suddenly jerks awake and finds Lydecker holding her shoulders, shaking her, leaning over her. Max tries to punch him but she's still weak. Lydecker catches her hand with ease, yip she's definitely not in any shape to fight.
He then slowly returns her hand as he steps back.
"It was just a nightmare." Lydecker calmly says as he moves away from Max.
Breathing in a few more labored breaths, Max moves to sit up and starts shaking her head.
"No…. no…. that was no nightmare." A labored whisper.
Lydecker takes a seat on the couch opposite Max as he watches her. His heart is breaking for her, this will break her heart…
After a long silence watching Max's face pull into a frown as she is staring at the floor trying to recall what happened, Lydecker decides to say something.
"It was a pathogen…"
Immediately Max's memory starts pulling up the scenes of how she and another transgenic jumped off that building into a water hold to not breathe in the pathogen that White had paid some crazy scientist for that they were testing.
Lydecker can see that she has some kind of idea of what he's talking about.
"It was probably created to target a specific DNA strain in the genetic code…." Lydecker stops midsentence, she doesn't care about the finer details.
"Reports say that they found 489 transgenics in Terminal City… only 13…was alive." There really was no other way of telling her the truth.
Max doesn't move, doesn't say anything.
"14 including you."
After a long silent stare, Max's face breaks and Lydecker can see the emotion of pain. His kids was trained to not show emotion, especially not in front of him but the pain of knowing what has happened is too much to keep a mask on, even in front of him.
Max turns her face away and hides behind her hair. Lydecker takes that as his queue to leave her to herself. It's not like she'll accept any comfort from him. He's probably the last person on this planet that she ever wanted to see again. Her reaction to telling her the truth about why she is so special to him clearly showed that she doesn't want anything to do with him. That's why he has disappeared altogether and decided to play dead.
But he has however, been keeping a close eye on the Manticore and 'freak nation' situation and on White and his operation and when he found out what happened and that they had taken Max captive, he couldn't just let that slide. He couldn't just leave her there. He just couldn't.
Lydecker takes a seat behind his desk in his office and picks up his phone.
It was in Season 2 ep 9 where Max hears about Lydecker's car that was pulled out of the river and she didn't believe he was that easy to kill.
Thanks for reading :)