AN: After a looooong hiatus, I'm back with a new chapter. Please forgive me for the EXTREME lateness! Thanks to every~one for all the favorites and story alerts and the reviews.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dark Angel, Supernatural or any of the characters.

Chapter 4: Time

It's a cold, wet and dark on this lonely back road in the middle of Nowhere, USA and it grates on the nerves of couple waiting here. The man is outside of the car, a sleek black Impala that he had been driving for a couple of years now, dressed in a heavy cotton coat with a maroon hoodie pulled over his long hair. He is leaning against the hood with his hands tucked deep in his coat to warn off the cold as he lets out a puff of frosty air.

"Damn it where is he?" he grumbles, mostly to himself but nothing gets pass the woman, who is sitting in the car with the window rolled down.

"You know John," the woman said, leaning her head out the window. "He'll get here when he gets here. Calm down Sam."

"Come on Jess, you heard him on the phone." Sam said, leaning down to look at his wife of fifteen years. "He sounded-strange."

"You can't know that. We haven't seen John for over three years. Not since you and him had that falling out." Jess said, reaching up to brush his hair back from his face, her fingers running over the scar that hid at his hairline. She pulled her hands back to keep him from seeing them tremble, but Sam knew better and pressed a kiss to her lips.

"Yeah I know." Sam said against her lips. "But at least he doesn't-"

The quiet air was broken as the rumbling of a truck could be heard coming up the road. Sam pulled back from Jess and straightens up as he put a hand in his pocket, this time his fingers curling around the gun he kept on him. Jess did the same, her fingers reaching for the cut off shot gun that sat next to her in the car, pulling it on to her lap.

The truck, an old lifted Chevy, came to a stop behind the car, its headlights shining to show both Sam and Jess and the Impala. Making sure that this wasn't a trap, Sam guessed with a hand up to shade his eyes from the light. A second later, the engine shut off but the light remained on

A man climbed out of the driver's seat and stopped in front of one of the headlights, casting a large shadow on the Impala while hiding his face. A few seconds went by before he walked forward and they could see his grizzly face with a peppered beard and deep lines around his dark alert eyes.

"Hello Sam. Hello Jess." he greeted.

"Hello John." Jess greeted as she climbed out from the car as Sam said nothing. She really hoped that it would end up in another fight between those two but it didn't look to good right now. Both men were stubborn as hell.

"You look-the both of you-look pretty good. How are things going?" John asked, trying to break the tension in the air.

"Thank you." Jess answered when Sam refused to speak. "We're doing great. A few cases here and there." She added; it looked like she would be the one talking.

"Yeah. I heard about that case in St. Louis. A shapeshifter huh?"

"Yeah. We had to lay low for a while there but it worked itself out, thanks to a friend of ours in the FBI." Jess said with a smile.

"Good. That's good." There was a pause and unbelievably the tension grew heavier. "How are the ki-"

"Stop right there." Sam interrupted sharply and Jess looked up at Sam with a slight frown on her face. "You called us for a reason. What is it?"

John bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from snapping at Sam. Jessica on the other hand, hit him none too gently in the stomach, making Sam grunt and turn wide eyes to her. She gave him a dark look. She had forgiven John a long time ago, so why did he still bear a grudge? Wasn't she the one most affected by John's rather impulsive and dangerous action?

"That's enough Sam." she said, pushing open the car door to stand toe to toe with him. "John called us for a reason after years of no contact what so ever because you told him too." That wasn't completely true, but Sam didn't need to know that. What he doesn't know, won't bother him. "He has something he wants to share with us-" She turned to John, her arms crossed. "And that has to do with Dean...doesn't it?"

Sam's mouth lost its frown and gaped at John. Can it be true? Did John find a clue that would re-ignite the long since cold trail that has for years occupied his mind? Could he quiet the demons that taunted him year after year of claiming that Dean is dead, that Dean is suffering, that Dean is cursing his name for the torture they are putting him through? Have they finally found him after all this time?

"I need you to come with me." John stated.

"Where?"

"To Seattle."

It's been years since any of the Winchesters had been to Seattle. Not since the Pulse when a group of terrorists detonated an electromagnetic pulse weapon 80 miles in the atmosphere and wiped out majority of the computer and communication systems. It threw the country into utter chaos as people soon realized that there was no immediate solution to the problem. Since all monetary transactions and business deals were monitored by computers, the database was wiped clean and people lost all their money.

America quickly went from super-power to third-world country in a matter of days.

Lucky for the Winchesters, not so for the rest of the country, John had been taking out money in large increments for years and had passed that paranoia of banks stealing money from honest hard working folks, which they were since hunting monsters was hard work though not so honest, to Jess. She had been taking out large sums of money from her account for months when the Pulse hit.

It was a very good thing, because with her money and John's hidden stashes placed all around the country, they had continued to function and hunt and continue their search for Dean when everything fell apart.

The last time they were in Seattle, it was before they put itself under martial law and made its city into sectors to better control the population from rioting, looting and running amuck like a few unlucky major cities had back east to hunt down a rather nasty poltergeist that was terrorizing an apartment building. They got out before the lockdown and never looked back.

But now anything you heard about Seattle was about the monsters, human-looking and the obviously not-human-looking ones, had been using the city as their home base. Manticore soldiers created and trained by some back door government program or such. All Jess knew really is that people really didn't like them in their city or the fact that they were alive at all.

So far the hunter community had given them a wide berth because of all the publicity they seemed to gather and the fact that even though they looked like monsters, there were worst ones out there that needed to be killed now. And so far, no one had proven them to be demons so that was a strike in their favor.

John's truck slowed to a stop in front of some rundown office building, though admittedly, it looked a sight better than a few others she saw pass by but not by much. Sam parked the Impala right behind him, checking the area for any suspicious activity. If anything, he wanted to be sure that no one would steal or break into the car that Dean loved so much. It was dirty, wet with rain and the back window was practically impossible to see through and the rims were mismatched and the tires worn around the edges but he knew that with a few hours of tender love and care, that it would be back to its prime condition.

It would be something, Sam knew, Dean would happily work on when they got him back.

"Sam?" Jess' soft tone broke through his thoughts. Her brows were turned down in a worried look.

"I'm sorry. I just-" Sam sighed, trying to put what he was feeling into words. "I don't have any gray hair do I? I mean, this is just-it's been so long since Dean disappeared and since we hit a brick wall with no clues, no ideas, nothing and now..."

Jess nodded in understanding. She had been thinking that the search for Dean would be going on until they were old and gray. Sometimes, no matter how hard or how long you searched, you would never know the truth of what really happened to the ones who disappeared. Sometimes, families just had to accept that they would never know. But most families weren't the Winchesters.

She leaned over and pressed a soft kiss to his lips, brushing her fingers through his hair and ran them down his cheek to his rest under his chin. She leaned her forehead against his after the kiss, just to breathe in the same space of air that he did. They needed this moment of peace.

After a moment they broke apart and climbed out of the car.

Alarms triggered in the early morning were a huge pain in the ass, Max decided as she quickly made her way to the command center. Alarms triggered two hours after you managed to fall asleep after a day of making decisions that affected an entire nation of tightly wound soldiers blockaded by trigger happy humans who wanted to see you dead made her want to hang the head(s) of whoever triggered the alarm in command like a trophy.

Yes she was in a bitchy mood.

So sue her.

She pushed through the gathered crowd of her fellows that had managed to pull themselves from their beds to gawk at the scene in front of them and decided that she didn't really want to deal with whatever this was and make Alec or Zack handle the big crisis and she could go back to sleep.

But since it was her, of course her luck didn't go that way.

When she finally got through, pushing and shoving her way through, she finally got a look and groaned. Yep, it so wasn't her problem right now. Three humans, an older man with a peppered beard and hair to match with a much younger but older than her couple, a man with brown hair and a blonde hair woman were standing with their hands up in the air to show how defenseless they really are.

Two sentry guards she recognized as X-3's held their guns on them, waiting for one of the higher ups to take control of the situation. Whoever the humans were they must have rattled the sentries enough to warrant them a guarded escort to command. Max stepped forward and sent the sentries back to duty while deciding that she would have Luke or Dix to call up Logan and pawn them off on him.

At least that was the plan until Alec showed up, hiding a yawn behind his hand and practically caused the older man to lose all color in his face and the younger man start violently before paling. The woman stared at him with her mouth open.

She gave Alec a this-is-your-fault-I-know-it look and kissed the rest of her early morning goodbye. He had an unnatural talent in messing up her life with his problems. So far, she had yet to find a defense against it.

"All right, everyone not on shift clear out," Max ordered. When there was a slow withdraw she added. "Unless some of you would like to volunteer overtime?" There was a rush for the exits. Max reached out for Alec. "You. Stay."

"Aw Max!" Alec grumbled sulkily. "It's not my turn to deal with alarms. Let me go."

"Not likely as seeing this mess has your name written all over it and I have to clean it up." Alec frowned and took a good look at the trio that were still staring at him and back to Max. She sighed as she has known Alec enough to know that he didn't recognize them.

"This isn't my mess." Alec muttered finally. "I don't even know them."

"Is he okay?" A soft deep voice asked. Max turned to see that Joshua had shown up at some point. He was asking about the older man, who seemed to be uneasy on his feet.

"It's been a-" the younger man said, staring at the tall dog, man?, person who asked. Max felt her hackles rise before he started as the woman standing next to him elbowed him in the side. "I'm sorry I didn't mean to be rude." he said to Joshua and Max felt her shoulder ease a bit. Alec felt a smug smile on his lips as he felt the tension leave her. She was so touchy sometimes. "It's been kinda of a shock to him, to us-"

"Yeah, seeing monsters close up tend to do that to normals." another voice said from above them. Mole had made his arrival with his shotgun slung over his shoulder and a cigar in his mouth. He made his way to the stairs and started coming down.

"Oh...uh, it's not that exactly-"

"Take a seat." Max said gesturing to a chair and the older man sank down into it gratefully. The woman was behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders, rubbing slightly. Max waited impatiently for them to give her something, anything to why they were in the middle of Terminal City, how they've gotten here and most importantly, what they wanted.

"I'm Sam Winchester." the younger man said finally, deliberately holding his hand out to Mole. Mole stared at him before laughing loudly and shook it. "This is my wife Jessica and my father John." The blonde gave them a smile and the older man took his eyes off of Alec to look around at the rest of the room.

"Why are you here?" Max asked. Sam and Jessica looked at each other and Sam shrugged out of the backpack he had on and moved over to the table near John and unzipped the bag. Max fell into a defensive position and Alec fell in line with her. In fact the whole room did and the tension in the air rose considerably. Sam withdrew a somewhat thick folder and they all relaxed.

Silently, he flipped the folder open and started removing what was inside, laying them down on the table in a row so all could see. They were pictures. Once he was done, he stepped back to stand next to John and waited. Max stepped up to the table and stared down at the pictures. Her eyes flicked up to Alec, down to the pictures then back again. Joshua and Mole where doing the same she noticed while Alec just stared.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded, his eyes narrowing as he stared up at Sam.

"That picture is of you-" Sam started.

"Yeah. I do recognize myself. And that other picture is me too right but with a really horrible photo enhancement? You know I can hook you up with people who can do a much better job than that."

"No." Sam shook his head. Alec growled in frustration when he didn't continue. Max felt like doing the same.

"The other picture is of my oldest son Dean." John spoke up, his voice heavy. "Twenty-one years ago he was on a job and vanished. We searched for years but could never find him. And then a couple of days ago, I got a call from a friend of mine, someone I had help with the search and he gave me this file. Everything indicates that he was taken by a military organization." John's voice, though low but could be heard by their advanced hearing was losing strength as he continued. "It didn't have an official designation back then." His eyes rose and met with Max's. "About five years after he was taken, they were given the official designation of Manticore."

AN: Ta Da! New chapter!

Don't worry, if you're wondering about the time skip, some of it will be explained in the next chapter, I promise. I know many of you were wondering when we got to see Alec and Max and here they are!