Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel so don't sue me. Thanks. :-)

A/N: Thank you to Tina, Winchester girl, Aggie2011, TwilightEclps , nattylovesu for reviewing the last chapter!

Ex Multus Familia: Part 2

Chapter 10

Hey Schnookims: I'm glad you decided to take up cooking. I know I should've called you and left you a message instead of writing you a message because you hate reading so much... Kidding, kidding, sorry, not a time for jokes. You're probably mad at me right now, and that's okay, I really completely understand. If you ran out on me, I'd be pretty pissed, but just give me a chance to explain, this isn't running out.

There's nothing I would rather do than put down this pen, rip up this paper and throw it in the trash and wait for you to come home, but something's happened that I can't ignore. It's not you, so no self-deprecating, self-hating angst, please, Alec? I don't want to hurt you, ever, but I have to leave for a little while. Let me reiterate for your doubting soul: this is not your fault. This is a personal problem, stemming from myself, and I'll tell you about it when I come back, I promise, but you're just going to have to trust me on this. I'm going to be all right where I'm going, so don't worry about me. I love you, Alec.

~Sidda~

Alec had memorized every word on that paper he had found folded up and addressed to him in the oven in their apartment. Sidda's poor hand-writing was now seared into his mind, and it kept scrolling over the inside of the visor of his motorcycle helmet. Did she really expect him to just let her go off like that with some ridiculous reasoning that she needed some time alone? Stubborn woman…who loved him. She had said so.

He was currently in South Dakota. East had seemed like the most likely direction for Sidda to take; some of her missions back in Manticore had been over on the East Coast. North was out of the question because she hated the cold, and the extreme heat of South America wasn't exactly her thing either. And she hadn't gone west. No, she was traveling east, heading toward the Atlantic.

He pulled his motorcycle up beside a blue hotrod and peered inside. The elderly man driving the car shot him a scowl before slowing the car down, causing Alec to go shooting past him. No, not her. Again.

Back in North Dakota, he had found her street bike stashed in a storage unit. Now that he couldn't even look for that, he was passing the time by looking at every driver he came across on the road. Tracking Sidda was harder than he thought it would be. At first he had tried going to straight across through Montana, but there hadn't been a trace of her.

Alec had gone to North Dakota after that, and some serious searching and having Logan put out his extensive informant network had eventually gotten him to Oacoma, South Dakota, where someone on one of those weird, fanatical Internet boards where people wrote about their opinions on transgenics claimed to have seen a woman with a barcode on the back of her neck. He had confronted her about it and had woke up a day later tied up in a basement with a gag in his mouth. Sidda never did like people staring at her barcode.

Sidda had a three day gain on Alec, and every minute he spent looking for her put more miles between him and her. If she would just use a credit card from Terminal City and show off her barcode a little more, he would have her by now, but no, Sidda was too well-trained for that. She hadn't even called back to Terminal City since the first day.

Alec pulled off the road and into a service station. The bike needed gas, and he needed something to eat. A microwave burrito would be good right now.

'Alec,' she laughed, 'You eat way too many instant-meals. You're going to be such a fatty one day. Alpha male equals couch potato much?'

Alec shook his head, trying to stop Sidda's voice from speaking in his head. Having an eidetic memory sucked when you missed someone. Besides, as an alpha male, or any male even, he needed a lot of food, for energy and stami— Alec rubbed his hand across his forehead and half-smiled. Was he really arguing with her when she wasn't even there?

He walked into the store, the little bell dinging above his head. The young woman at the counter perked up when he came in, smiling at him with heavily-massacred eyes over the top of her women's magazine. She was covered in tattoos, mostly of them of flowers, hearts and stars, and all of them were colorful. It made her look like a walking piece of art instead of a person, but it was okay; it sort of made her striking.

Alec nodded to her before walking over to the frozen section. It was a pitiful selection of food, but, as always, there were frozen burritos. He grabbed four of them and snatched a bottle of water too. See, he could be healthy… After a moment, he put the water back and went for the darkest soda he could find before going over to the microwave to heat up his burritos. Take that, Sidda.

The woman at the counter grinned at him as he put the burritos and the soda down on the counter. "Is that all?"

"That and," Alec said, pointing to his motorcycle outside, "Whatever thirty bucks will get me."

The girl whistled, her bright red lips forming an 'O.' "Nice bike."

"Thanks," he said. He paid for the food and the gas and started to go out the door.

"Hey, you have that tattoo!" the woman suddenly exclaimed. Alec went rigid. He turned back to her slowly, wondering if he was going to have to shut her up somehow. Her eyes were shining as she motioned to the back of her neck. "Are you with the group too?"

"What group?"

"H.F.T," she said. When he only stared at her, she sighed. "Humans For Transgenics. They all have that tattoo, or that's what the girl said. Just like the transgenics."

Alec raised an eyebrow and started to have an idea of what was going on. "Oh, her? The blond one, about this tall?" He motioned to a place a couple inches below his shoulders, right where the top of Sidda's head would have come. "She was here?"

The woman nodded. "Yeah, about couple days ago. She said that there's a convention going on in Seattle, but it's supposed to be a secret." Her eyes suddenly widened, and she put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, shit, I wasn't supposed to say anything."

Alec smiled, completely disarming her. "It's okay. I'm with her. Did she say she was going anywhere besides Seattle?"

"No, no where," the woman said, "Look, I'm sorry I said anything."

"Don't worry about it," Alec said. He motioned to the road. "Do you remember which way she went? We're supposed to be meeting up, and I have a really bad sense of direction."

"Um, I think she took a left, towards the highway," the woman said, "But like I said, it was a couple days ago."

"Thanks," Alec said, giving the woman a charming grin. As he headed for his motorcycle so he could fill it up with gas, he scarfed down one of the burritos. Now he knew that Sidda had been here and at least which way she probably headed. That was more than he had before.

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Sidda smiled as she stroked the steering wheel of her newly-stolen silver convertible Mustang. If she had to give up her Ducati, the Mustang wasn't a bad replacement. And it wasn't like her Ducati would be gone forever; when she came back, she'd pick it up. She'd be the envy of every vehicle-lover in TC: a Ducati and a Mustang all to herself.

Sidda glanced out the window again. The scruffy-looking dude who was using it was beginning to get on her nerves. He had been at the pay phone for twenty minutes, and in Sidda's mind, if you were going to use a phone for twenty minutes, you might as well buy your own cell phone. Then again, the scruffiness sort of suggested that he was hitchhiking… maybe he couldn't afford a new phone. Still, twenty minutes on a pay phone wasn't exactly cheap either. Maybe he was a criminal on the run.

Or maybe you're just a bored idiot who has nothing better to do than to speculate why perfectly ordinary people are using a pay phone, which they have the right to do without being questioned, she told herself.

Sidda looked back at the phone. Good, the guy was finally leaving.

Sidda threw open her car door and then shut it quickly against the rain. It was almost dark now, so Sidda blended into the night, especially since she had the collar of her leather jacket pulled up around her face. What could she say? She was part cat, and cats didn't like rainy weather.

Just as she was about to reach the phone booth, a man cut in front of her and went in, shutting the door in her face. Sidda made a face; she knew she blended in, but she also knew she wasn't invisible. Sidda disliked rude people, but she decided to give the guy a chance just in case he really was blind. Sidda tapped politely on the glass to catch his attention. The man turned around and gave her an annoyed look.

"Sorry, but I think you didn't see me waiting. It's my turn to use the phone." Sidda smiled as an added bonus.

"Well, I already paid, so you can just cool it."

Sidda went for the door, and the man grabbed it to keep her from opening it. "Back off, bitch," he said.

That was it. Sidda hissed and decided she was done with being polite. Her boot made contact with the glass, and she smiled at the satisfying crunch and then the resulting shower of glass.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" The man said.

"You caught me in a bad mood," Sidda said, yanking the guy's collar and pulling him out. "I tried to keep it in check, but you just weren't being polite." She threw the man onto the sidewalk. "And I don't like being called a bitch. I'm not a fan of dogs."

The man stared at her, but Sidda ignored him and went into the phone booth. How convenient; the man had already paid what she estimated half the price of a call to T.C. to be. Sidda paid and dialed the number, then turned around so that she could keep her eye on the guy. Never take your eye off the enemy.

"I thought you didn't like being up at 5 a.m.," Robin sounded slightly grouchy on the other end of the line.

Sidda smiled. "I know you're feeding Taylor, so you're probably alone and nowhere that someone can track the call."

"I am so getting Krit to lend me the software I need," Robin grumbled.

"Well, then, I won't call."

Robin sighed. "Can you even tell me where, in general, you are now?"

"Oh, sure," Sidda said. "Kansas City."

"Sidda! There are two Kansas Cities."

"Well, I told you what you wanted to know; you'll just have to guess the rest." Sidda raised her eyebrow as the man started to walk toward her again. Acting sensibly, the man decided to stop and lean against a nearby lamppost.

"You're awful."

"I know. How is everyone?" By everyone she meant Alec, but she didn't really want to say it. And she knew Robin would guess what she really wanted to know.

"Everyone's fine at the moment. You should call Alec."

"Why? Is he not doing ok? Did he find my note?"

"Yes, he did… that whole 'learning to cook thing, use the oven'… Sidda, you're absolutely ridiculous, do you know that?"

Sidda snickered. "I thought it was clever."

"You would."

"But he was ok with it and all?"

"I don't really know, seeing as he took off about an hour after he found it. And don't tell me I should've tried to stop him; I wasn't home. Seth answered the door, and Alec said he'd found a note in the oven and he was going to go find you because you were being a stubborn idiot."

Sidda's heart stopped. "Alec's trying to find me? Why? I told him I'd come back!"

"Yeah, well, apparently he didn't like not being told when either," Robin said dryly.

Sidda looked at the man and almost groaned; now she couldn't help but think back to every person she'd encountered on her way to Kansas City, Missouri. Great, more people for Alec to use to find her.

"If he calls, don't tell him I said I was in Kansas City," Sidda said warningly.

"Nuh-uh, I'm not swearing to anything this time," Robin said. "And you shouldn't really make me pass messages; you should call him yourself."

"Yeah, I'll get back to you on that." Sidda needed to leave now. "There's a guy wanting to use the phone, I'll call again soon."

"Sidda…"

"Bye, Robin."

"Gah. Fine. Bye."

Sidda hung up the phone and stared at it. The man started coming toward the phone booth, his stride determined. Sidda held up a hand. He flung his arms into the air.

"Damn it, give me the phone!"

"Get your own," she snapped back, her voice more like a snarl than any human-sounding speaking voice. "I have an important call to make. Now get!"

The man looked at her, his eyes widened. He glanced over her one last time before bowing his head and walking away, scolded into submission. Sidda turned back to the pay phone and fed it a few quarters before dialing a certain cell phone number.

It rang twice before he picked up. "Hello?"

"What the hell, Alec?"

There was a pause and then a heart-wrenchingly relieved reply. "Sidda?"

"No, it's actually Lydecker." Sidda stepped farther away from the broken door of the booth. Maybe breaking it hadn't actually been a good idea with it raining and everything, but she wasn't always rational nowadays, what with the crazy mood swings and all. "Yes, it's me."

"Where are you?" The question was more of a demand, and it took all of Sidda's stubbornness to not answer him.

"Somewhere you shouldn't be following."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah, it's so." Sidda leaned against the opposite wall of the booth. "Didn't I tell you to trust me that I know what I'm doing?"

"Yeah, but you forgot to factor in that I like to know what you're doing." Alec growled under his breath. There was a long moment of quiet, and Sidda just listened to him breathing. "Why can't you just tell me what's wrong?"

"It's not really something you can fix, macho man," Sidda said, smirking at her pale reflection in the glass panes of the phone booth. "Seriously, Alec, I'm doing this for both of our good, and it'd be best if you'd just go back to TC."

There was a bark of laughter on the other end of the line. "For our good? Sidda, if this is good, please, stop already. I'd rather be tortured than live the good life you've come up with for us."

Sidda put a hand to her forehead. "You don't even know what you're saying."

"I'd have a better idea of what was going on if you'd just tell me," Alec said. He sighed. "But it's looking like I'm going to be chasing you across the country instead of sitting down and having a nice, peaceful conversation back at Terminal City. Or even somewhere else."

"Alec, just go home!" Sidda demanded, "Why can't you go home?"

"Why should I? Why don't you go home first, and then I'll meet you there?"

Sidda clenched her fist and almost broke the phone. "You are so aggravating!"

"And this is coming from you?" Alec gave a real laugh this time. "Do you have any idea how extremely irritating you're being right now?"

"At least I'm not following someone who doesn't want to be followed."

"Sidda, tell me that you hate me and that you never want to see me again, and I'll leave you alone."

Sidda's breath caught in her throat. "You're such an idiot."

"And you can't say it, so I guess I'm following you." Static broke their connection for a moment. "Sidda?"

"I'm still here," she mumbled into the receiver. "Is this a part of the whole alpha male thing? You have to chase women relentlessly?"

"Yeah, if running away is part of the alpha female thing, then sure." He gave a long sigh, and she imagined him running his fingers through his hair, his face sort of hard. "Can you at least tell me if you're okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. It was true, mostly. She hadn't felt dizzy or weak since she left TC, but the headaches and exhaustion really hadn't faded.

"Why were you at the infirmary?" he asked.

Sidda put her free hand on her hip. "Are you going to interrogate me right now?"

"Yeah, possibly. Maybe I just like hearing the sound of your voice."

"You're ridiculous," Sidda said, but a small smile drifted onto her face.

Alec laughed. "You're smiling."

"And now you're delusional," Sidda replied.

"No, if I was delusional I would think that you're going to stay exactly where you are and let me come find you. But you're not, are you?"

Sidda pressed her free hand flat against her stomach, reminding herself of why she wasn't doing just that. All she wanted to do right now was tell Alec where she was, wait for him to find her and curl up with him. "No, I'm not. I'm sorry, Alec."

"That's what I thought. I guess I'll just have to drive faster."

"Try not to get arrested."

"Would you come get me if I did?"

"Oh, Alec." Sidda shook her head. "Love you."

There was a brief pause. "I love you, too, Sidda. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Everything," Sidda mumbled before she hung up the phone. Hot tears bit her cheeks as they fell down her face. She roughly wiped them away before going back to her car, trying to remember exactly why this was a good idea.

--------------------------

Things weren't going so well anymore in Terminal City. Everything had been coming together, looking good, and now it was like someone had decided to take all their lives and shake them just for fun, to see what happened. But nothing fun was coming out of it.

Max sighed as Logan gently massaged her shoulders.

"When are they getting here again?" he asked.

"Five, tonight," she replied, arching her back slightly so that he could get the really sore spots.

"Any good news?"

"No, not really. They're having trouble with some of the pipes and the wiring in the Cultural Center, the humans are trying to throw handmade grenades over the fence, and Alec and Sidda are playing Keep Away somewhere out East."

"Mmm, yeah, sounds like typical bad news." Logan sat down on the desk in front of Max. "But, there's good news too."

"Really? Do tell."

"Well, the government is meeting with us, and they're upset about the Familiars too. That means the rogue group of Familiars doesn't have government support, which is a good thing. Also, I just heard from Krit that they solved the wiring problems in the Cultural Center. So if nothing else goes wrong over there, the Center will be done sooner than if they hadn't fixed it now."

Grinning, Logan held up a finger to keep Max from speaking. "And, statistically, only about 30% of those grenades that those people have been throwing over the wall actually work. So that's good news."

Max laughed. "Your way of being optimistic is slightly disturbing."

Logan shrugged. "Can't help it, I've been in a pretty good mood lately."

"Yeah, I bet you have," Max said, smirking at him. They'd both been in a very good mood up until the incident with the Familiars.

Max waved her hands at him. "Now get out of here. I can't concentrate when you bother me."

Logan grinned and grabbed his coat off of the arm of the empty chair on the other side of her desk. "I'm heading over to the Cultural Center then. See you at five."

The Cultural Center was quickly becoming the new place to hang out. There was pretty much guaranteed to be work there for anyone who felt the need to be doing something, and there was space for all the people who wanted to be there. Plus, they had set up a temporary daycare in one of the rooms, and those transgenics who had babies found it very convenient.

This Cultural Center was one of the best ideas they'd come up with as a community, Logan thought. It would give everyone something to do, keep them from feeling like they were being cooped up in Terminal City. The farm was going to help with that too, but not everyone could make it out there whenever they felt like it.

"Hey, Joshua, what's up?" Logan asked as he entered the lobby. Or what had been the lobby in the old building. A few walls had been knocked down, and the large room now sported comfortable couches, a large flat screen TV, a pool table, and a fridge where sodas were kept.

Joshua was, at the moment, busy hanging one of his paintings on the far wall above the couch.

"Hey Logan. Joshua making room look good. Robin say art make walls nice."

"Indeed they do." In fact, the painting Joshua was hanging actually sort of matched the room. It had a very vibrant yet woodsy feel. Robin definitely knew her stuff when it came to the whole decorating thing.

"Do you know if they fixed the pipes yet?" Logan asked.

"Mmm, noo, don't know. They're in the back of building."

"Well, I'm going to head back there then. I'll see you later Joshua." Joshua simply nodded his head; he was very intent on making sure that his picture was perfectly level.

In the back of the building he found Seth, Twizzler, Everett and Mole messing around with the pipes. Logan didn't want to ask if they even knew what they were doing since Logan didn't know much about pipes, but from the looks of things, it was going to be a while before the pipes were fixed.

Seth spotted Logan first. "Oh, hey, Logan. While you're here… is the government still on schedule for tonight?"

Logan nodded. "Yeah, they're supposed to be here at five, Max said. So I guess we'll probably have the meeting around six."

"Good," Seth said. "I hope they plan on having some real answers to our questions this time, because when it comes to Familiars, I'm not willing to sit around and wait for things to get better."

"I know what you mean," Logan said. "Familiars tend to make me nervous."

"Familiars make me want to beat the crap out of them," Mole grunted.

"These pipes make me want to beat the crap out of them," Twizzler said before hauling off and whacking one of the pipes. It cracked, and water gushed out of the hole. Mole, caught right in the face by the small geyser, turned toward Twizzler with a vicious scowl on his face.

"I think I'm going to beat the crap out of you," Mole growled.

Twizzler gave a nervous laugh and edged away from the transhuman while Everett worked on fixing the new leak. Logan shared a look with Seth who looked especially frustrated. Something told Logan that plumbing wasn't Seth's calling.

"Let's save it for the Familiars," Seth said, trying to calm down Mole's frustration. The lizard-man wiped at his face.

"As long as candy-head here," Mole jerked a thumb at Twizzler, "quits being a maggot."

Twizzler frowned at Mole. "Who're you calling a maggot—"

At a glare from Seth, Twizzler trailed off into an unintelligible grumble and moved away from Mole, heading for a new pipe. Logan clapped Seth on shoulder and motioned to the pipes. "Have fun with that."

"I'll try," Seth said, a forced smile on his face. "See you at six."

"See ya."

---------------------

Max hated these government meetings. This time she had made sure that the transgenics in the room outnumbered the government agents. Seth and Robin were here, along with Joshua, Mole, Krit, Syl, Gem and a few others who were respected in the community.

She glared across the table at the government spokesperson, Chairman Johnson or Johansson or whatever. He wasn't a Familiar, he didn't smell like one, but he knew what they were, she could tell. Agent Kenton gave her a steady, even look that told her to stop boring holes into the chairman with her eyes, but Max wasn't in the mood to oblige. She was, however, in the mood to drum her fingers on the table while the chairman tried to explain the situation.

"No one could have foreseen the unfortunate incident in Canada—"

"Incident?" Max hissed, her voice full of venom. "That wasn't an incident. Our people walked into an ambush."

The chairman blinked. "As I said, it was unfortunate, but we had no idea that it was going to occur. Our own intelligence of the rogue group, the Familiars, did not foresee that it was a tactical entanglement."

Max lowered her eyelids into a deeper glare. "Tactical entanglement? Is that what you're calling a set-up nowadays?"

The chairman tilted his head to the side and clasped his hands in front of him on the table. "Miss Guevara, we are doing all we can to figure out how that information about the mission made it out and into enemy hands—"

"I've told you multiple times, through Agent Kenton and other ways, the Familiars want us dead no matter what," Max exclaimed, "And there are Familiars in your government."

"I would appreciate it if you would let me finish a proper sentence." The chairman frowned back at her, and Max sat back into her chair.

"Fine, go ahead," she said. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him.

"Thank you." The chairman straightened his tie before he looked around the room. "As I was saying, we're looking into this Familiar problem as we speak. For now, travel out of Terminal City is to be restricted for your own protection—"

There was a round of grumbling and arguing at that new development, but Max held up her hand. "All right, but in return, you're going to be providing us with everything we need, including supplies."

The chairman nodded, his lips tight. "Not that you come by those goods by innocent means in the first place."

Max shrugged. "Playing Robin Hood hasn't ever been looked down at."

"Unless you're the rich," he replied.

Max smirked. "Well, we've never really had to worry about that." She glanced over at Logan. Okay, so one of them had, but she didn't count Logan among the rich and snooty.

"I'm certain," the chairman said in his dry tone. "But, yes, your needs will be provided for."

"But what about the Familiars?" Seth exclaimed. He had been silent so far, but now he turned those calculating blue-green eyes toward the chairman. "We're better equipped to take out Familiars than your normal soldiers are. Wouldn't it be tactically advisable to let us deal with them?"

"We're looking into that possibility," the chairman replied, "But, for now, we want you all to stay in Terminal City. Your safety is our greatest concern at the moment."

Max almost burst into incredulous laughter. The safety of transgenics being a top priority for the government? As if! But it was a little strange that the government was actually putting on a front like this; if the Familiars in the government were trying to get them all killed, it would seem like they would want to send them all out of missions at once and then kill them or something like that. This…this was strange. Max would have to think about this before she came to any real conclusion.