The Taste of Freedom
WARNING-- Do NOT read unless you have seen 2nd episode of the new season.
Summary: A story about the Manticore kids Max saves on the bridge. From the POV of ...
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, episodes, etc. Don't bother to sue me, I have nothing of value.
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My name is X-6374. I---
No. I'm not a number anymore. My number died that day on the bridge when they shot at us. I have a real name now.
My name is Fixit. People ask about my name sometimes, thinking it's funny, but I like it. It's a good name. Max named me, the way she named all of us: Zero, Ralph, Bugler, Bullet, and me. Fixit. She gave us real names for the real world, the Outside as we used to call it.
Max helped us three times. She kept the soldiers from terminating us at the rendezvous point, then she saved Bullet when he was shot, and finally she gave us civilian identification papers to get us into Canada. I don't know why she helped us. I asked X-69--no, Zero, about it, and he said it was her duty to help us, like it is the CO's duty to keep his squadron together. But Max wasn't our CO. She said so.
Now we don't have a CO. Zero looks after all of us, since he's the oldest, but he doesn't give orders. We've been redeployed--free from Manticore--for three moths. At first, it was hard to adjust. Bugler would jump up every dawn and automatically play reveille before he got used to not having a training schedule. I still go to sleep at night wondering if I'll wake up in the barracks at morning call, thinking this was all a dream. Except I don't dream, so this must be true.
We're in Calgary right now. We've been moving around a lot, using evade tactics in case we're being followed. Bullet's got a job, Zero's looking for one, and Ralph and Bugler find us shelter and rations. Sometimes Bugler plays his trumpet to get money, but he only knows marching songs and troop calls. I'm working in a mechanics shop fixing everything from cars to radios to computers. I learn civilian slang from listening to the other workers, but I am still unable to understand everything they say.
The Outside is so confusing and LOUD! The city noises nearly drove us all crazy at the beginning, until we got conditioned to it. Manticore didn't have eighteen-wheelers, noisy televisions, or trains to hurt our acute auditory nerves. They also had food and blankets, both of which are in short supply here. And in Manticore, you knew what the rules were and what the consequences would be if you compromised those rules. Outside, there don't seem to be any rules.
But like Max said, the outside is much better than Manticore. There's no one to give you orders or punish you if you don't follow the orders. You can do whatever you want whenever you want. There aren't any fences with barbed wire on top, keeping you in. Besides, in the Outside you have things like motorcycles and chocolate. The first time I ate chocolate was a week or so after redeployment. bugler had stolen some and we split it up as we always do. The chocolate was delicious, better than any rations I ever ate at Manticore. I knew, the moment I tasted it, that it was the taste of freedom.
I don't know if they're still looking for us. I haven't seen the rendezvous signal in a while, but we're too far north anyway. It doesn't seem strategically possible for Manticore to be tracking all of us, because so many escaped and now they don't have a base of operations. Manticore isn't our biggest worry right now. Survival is.
But I know we'll survive, one way or another. The bar codes on our necks are proof that we can survive anything. We'll stay together, like Max told us to. We're a family, and we're free.
A/N: Well, how do you like it? Sorry if it's slapdash, I wrote it off in about an hour. Please R/R!