James Cameron and Charles Eglee own Dark Angel. My use is in no way meant to challenge their copyrights. This piece is not intended for any profit on the part of the writer, nor is it meant to detract from the commercial viability of the aforementioned (or any other) copyright. Any similarity to any events or persons (either real or fictional) is unintended.

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Author's Note: I'm initially going to try to keep this solidly in the universe of the show as it currently exists, although I wouldn't be surprised if the direction I go in takes me away from the show's story arc and create a bit of an AU fic. Not that this should be a problem, though, since Dark Angel likely won't be renewed for next season, anyway, so I'll probably have carte blanche to do as I wish soon enough. For those of you curious about where this might be going, check out my story Meditations Upon the Abyss. It's not really a prequel, but it helped me get my thoughts in order as I prepared to write this.

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Unnatural Selection

by

Nevermore

I – Fight or Flight?

Max walked into Crash and scanned the bar quickly, once again stuffing down the feeling of paranoia that washed over her. For years following her escape she had felt hunted, always fearing that Lydecker and his cronies were waiting around the next corner. As time had dragged on, though, she had slowly allowed herself to believe that she had finally escaped her former masters, or at least that they no longer had any significant interest in tracking her down. This foolish belief had led her to settle down in Seattle.

Within months she had put down roots and done something she never had before – she made friends. Kendra, Cindy, Herbal, Sketchy, and even Normal made her feel as if she was actually like everyone else. Finally comfortable taking a breath and looking around her, Max had dared to start looking for information on her siblings once again. She should have known that her inquiries would freshen the scent for Manticore's hounds. Once again she had been hunted, but in the end she turned the tables on her pursuers and became the hunter. In one night she, Krit, Syl, and Zack had struck a mighty blow against Manticore. Then, shortly after a brief stay in her childhood home, she had put Manticore down for the count. The transgenics were freed and bureaucrats were sent scurrying to complete their cover-up of the whole project and the fiasco that resulted from its destruction.

Freedom. That's what Max had done it all for, so that she would have a true taste of freedom. For a few weeks, all too brief a time, she had actually felt free. Then Agent Ames White, initially just another government flunky she felt destined to outsmart, had become something greater. Now Max fought constant paranoia, knowing the fear she thought she had left behind as a child.

When Max had originally escaped from the Gillette facility, she had been terrified that Lydecker would find her. In her eyes, so inexperienced in the ways of the world, Colonel Donald Lydecker had been a god. He was all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful. As Max grew older she learned what it was like to be human, and that human was all Lydecker was. He could hunt her and double-cross her at every opportunity, but at the end of the day he was simply human, and she was better. He was no bogeyman.

The attack against Manticore had officially destroyed the slim chances that Lydecker would ever return to the project, and Max thought it had been her final victory. Instead, it had been White's opportunity to move into position to strike at the transgenics. Himself the product of a millennia-old breeding program, he was a man that not only had all of the resources that Lydecker had possessed, but who also was able to stand toe-to-toe with any of Manticore's 'super-soldiers.' So now Max was hunted again, and now she knew that she might never be able to get on the offensive. She might forever remain on the run.

Countless times she wished that she had never agreed to attack the Gillette facility in the first place. Her 'victory' had only created a new enemy and left her in a worse position than she had been in before. Now there was no telling how to get her life back on track.

Not immediately seeing any threats, Max sauntered over to the bar and sat down next to Alec, immediately noting that he smelled like a small distillery. He had obviously been there for some time. "Cindy coming down here tonight?" Max asked casually.

"I don't know," Alec answered. "Isn't she your roommate? You should know better than I do."

"Haven't seen her since this morning," Max replied, raising her right hand to get the bartender's attention. She then sat in silence until a beer was placed in front of her. One large gulp had her back in the mood to talk. "Anything new on the Normal and Sketchy front?"

"Not that I know of," Alec answered absently as he decided to get a refill on his own drink. Rather than wave his hand to get the bartender's attention, he simply placed another ten-dollar bill on the bar. He had found that without breasts, the fastest way to get the man's attention was by dropping money around all over the place. "Last I heard, both of them still hate transgenics, and I still think they have some suspicions about you."

"And for some reason Normal hasn't pondered the facts that you're one of my friends and that previous to your lucrative employment as a bicycle messenger you used to be an unbeatable cage fighter?" Max asked with surprise. It was the same question she always asked, the same question that she was always afraid Alec would one day answer.

"He'll put two and two together eventually," Alec replied, his voice holding a hint of something that Max had rarely heard. What is that? She asked herself once again. Concern? Sadness? Amusement? It was always so hard to tell with Alec. Growing up at Manticore hadn't done any wonders for his ability to express emotions. Max often wondered if Alec was still figuring out his feelings, trying to learn when it was and wasn't appropriate to feel, or more importantly, reveal, certain sentiments. She chased away the thought and instead tried to clear her mind, to simply relax in nothingness for awhile. The two sat in silence for several minutes as Max enjoyed her drink and the fact that Alec seemed to relish the feeling of being alone in a crowd as much as she did. "It can't go on like this," Alec suddenly said, startling Max out of her reverie of non-thought.

"What do you mean?"

"Every day I wake up and wonder if this will be the day that White finally catches up to me," Alec muttered. "It never used to be like this."

"You used to be a virtual prisoner at Manticore," Max reminded him. "At least now you're free."

"You think we're free?" Alec asked incredulously. "You're kidding, right? Sure, at Manticore I was restricted to base when I wasn't on a field assignment, but I didn't exactly have it all that bad, either. I had a bit of business on the side, remember? And at least I could go to bed at night without the fear that the result of some twisted breeding cult might kill me in my sleep. Think about it, Max – doesn't it seem strange that I enjoyed more freedom behind the walls of Manticore than we actually do out in the real world."

"You'll get used to it," Max said, trying to get herself to believe the words even as she spoke them. "I faced this for ten years with Lydecker, remember?"

"Ames White ain't Donald Lydecker," Alec countered. "He's smarter, stronger, and has all of his cult-mates backing him up. It's some kind of secret army, and we don't know who they are, where they are, or how many of them there are. We don't even know for sure what their capabilities are, Max. I know what White looks like, so I can at least defend myself against him. But what if he has some cousin that's sent to get me? I won't see him coming until it's too late. Hell, I might never see him at all. I miss the old days."

"You drunk?" Max asked quizzically, wondering where all of this was coming from.

"Maybe," Alec admitted, "but that doesn't change anything. Trust me, no matter how many times I try, every time I sober up my life still sucks."

"I know," Max admitted, finally saying the words she had been thinking for so long. "I can talk about Lydecker until I'm blue in the face, but you're right – it was never like this. As twisted as it was, he cared about us. He wanted to bring us back and turn us into robotic killing machines, sure, but he still cared. White just wants us dead."

"He doesn't want you dead," Alec pointed out. "You're special."

"I'd rather be dead," Max said evenly. "I decided long ago that Ames White won't take me alive. I'm not going to be some kind of guinea pig or brood mare to him and his gang."

"So what do we do?" Alec asked as he dropped yet another ten-dollar bill on the bar. "We're faced with a serious enemy, and that means we have two choices – fight and flight."

"A year ago some of us decided that we had had enough," Max said deciding to express her views in a roundabout way, "and we went to war against Manticore. We took them out."

"And that helped release White on us," Alec reminded her.

"What if we take out White?" Max asked.

"And how do we do that?" Alec shot back. "He's strong, Max. Maybe stronger than us. And worse than that, he has friends. Even if we kill him, someone else from that breeding program will just step in to take his place. We might be better off running."

"We'll just have to make sure we get them all," Max replied.

"That's impossible," Alec said.

"Okay, then how about just killing enough of them so that they realize it's not worth their time and effort to keep tracking us down?" Max suggested. "There can't be that many of them, really," she reasoned. "Maybe a thousand, even two-thousand. Can't be many more than that, right?"

"That still outnumbers us by a lot," Alec said.

"But each of them represents the result of centuries of selective breeding," Max answered. "Do you know how valuable that makes each of them? All we want is to be left alone, right? All we have to do is make it too costly for them to keep messing with us."

"Maybe," Alec admitted. "That might work. So how do we go about doing this?"

"When we all attacked Manticore last year we had Zack," Max said. "He led the strike."

"And he's not around to do that this time."

"But he isn't the one that did the planning," Max said. "We need someone with years of combat and leadership experience. We need someone that knows what our enemies are, if not exactly who they are. We need someone who likewise knows exactly who we are, and what we're capable of doing."

"Don't even say it," Alec warned.

"You know we need him," Max said. "He's still alive… somewhere. I can feel it."

"You would follow him?"

"I did once before," Max said.

"And look how that turned out," Alec shot back. "We were just talking about how that's the reason we're in this position in the first place."

"We were also talking about how he actually did care, despite the fact that he had a twisted way of showing it," Max responded with a thin, mischievous smile that she knew would help get Alec interested in this plan.

"You really wanna do this?"

"I'm not running," Max spat, disgusted with the very thought of turning tail in the face of her enemies.

"Then I guess it's a good thing I'm drunk enough to think this is a good idea," Alec replied with a mischievous grin of his own. "Okay then… how do we find him?"

To be continued……………………………