Chapter 11: In Dreams
by: Mochaije
Disclaimer: I do not own Dark Angel or its characters. Other than that, the story and characters are mine.
Summary: Ima and Logan's pasts are revealed; Max recovers from a severe seizure that left her without a short-term memory.
Rating: PG 13
Max's POV
We darted over the hills and came to a cliff, clad only in Manticore-issue gowns. The cold air nipped at my skin and mostly-bald head, and I tried to forget about it, attempting to wiggle my toes in the icy snow. Zack stopped us then and we debated whether or not to go around it and the rock patch, over stream over the cliff to the river bank. They all disagreed with me and ran off, back down the hills, in an attempt to sneak up on our victim, who was also deciding his next move.
I darted over the cliff and landed in the snow on my rickety, frozen legs. A boy, not much older than Zack--who is four years my senior--turned and glanced at me. I was on him in about a second, my hand going to his throat, but he grabbed it in mid-air and locked his eyes on me. I stared at him, struggling. I remember his face, his big blue eyes and his gorgeous, dark brown curls that Manticore had allowed to grow to a decent length just recently--a little longer than a usual boy's cut, to show that his hair was indeed curly. I pushed harder, forcing his arm an inch towards his body.
"Don't remember me, 452?" His tone was arrogant, as if he's done so much for me and I was about to pay him back by killing him, but the look on his face was kind, trying to jog my memory. "If somebody hadn't slipped you some drugs, you would've been hauled off long ago because of those seizures you get. Do you remember yet? I'm the one you guys forgot to name, you never use your names around me." His voice fell to a whisper then. "I've saved your sorry ass so many times, 452, let me go before 599 and his minions find us."
"693?" I whispered. He nodded impatiently and struggled some more against me, eyes searching frantically for a noise I can't hear.
"It's Scott," he practically barks in my face. "I had to name myself, you stupid punk." With that, he threw me off him and into a nearby tree trunk and blurred out of my eyesight. The last thing I saw was Zack's dissapointed glare.
My eyes snap open, my head pangs. I wish I hadn't let Scott go back then, three and a half years before we escaped--even though his life depended on it. After that, it was up to my true siblings to save me whenever I seized. Scott hadn't actually been one of barracks-mates, but belonged to another barracks of slightly older X5s--he was infatuated with me however, and not just because my siblings saw me as a disadvantage, with my seizures and all. I had always been the baby of the X5 class, no one beneath us, I don't think, but my siblings still wouldn't look after me when I fell ill. But the kids in my barracks really took me under their wing with Scott gone, and even Zack grudgingly accepted me. I figured out a while later that they gave me my name from maxipads, though, and Max is just a shortened form of Maxi--which is what they called me for a long time, what Zack still often calls me. I try to cringe but my body feels like lead.
I seem to be in Logan's guest bedroom, under the effect of some kind of drug, or I've got the flu really bad. My limbs feel like incredibly heavy Jell-O as I slip out of bed, the pain ricochets in my brain, and lights dance before my eyes. I'm almost out of the room when Zack slips in, closes the door behind him and pulls me back over to the bed. We sit, and the sullen look on his face grabs my attention.
"Max... Look, I'm so, so sorry about what happened..." I've never seen Zack this worried, this gentle, this caring. It scares me--something horrible must have gone on while I was asleep. My expression shows confusion, and he returns it. "You... You don't remember what happened in the past six days, do you?" I close my eyes and shake my head slowly at him, and I ache to lie down.
"Three days after we got back from Asha's... We found out that there was Pulse bombs floating overhead and we found the detonators at Ima's headquarters... We blew the place to kingdom come, I doubt they'll be pulling any shit now, but we've all got prices on our heads. " He's leaving something out--I know him that well, not to mention the fact that what he said doesn't explain how I woke up in here. I ask what else happened and he continues.
"You and Logan were rigging the detonators in the eastern end and..." His voice falters noticeably and I almost know what happened, but I can't feel any wounds except for a couple bruises, so I rule out being shot. I give him a glance that says, "yeah, and?"
Zack's POV
The events of the last weekWe left from Asha's apartment, and Ima spilled the beans--there were bombs floating around, and the detonators were in the telepaths' HQ. She explained that she conned Manticore into thinking that they were getting the only civilians that knew about their Pulse-y plans, and they had accepted her. Our next stop was, of course, the HQ, which we planned to blow up. Me and Ima took the west end detonators and disarmed them, Logan and Max on the east, Asha and Ben going for the main ones. Ima and I disarmed them quickly and then headed to Max and Logan.
"Almost done," she said, pressing numerous buttons as Logan stood watch, just thirty feet away on a catwalk. A heavily armed man came out of somewhere as me and the women lurched over the detonators, and Max sprang on him.
"Scott?!" I remember her yelling. It had taken me a second, but I remembered who he was--Max's protector from our early days at Manticore, the one who seemed obsessed with her safety after he noticed that children with seizures got hauled off to somewhere. She's special, he told me on the only occaision that I talked to him. I don't know if he said that because he had some kind of bond with her, or because of something to do with her DNA. Whatever it was, it made me jealous as hell--she was the baby X5, and we were trying to assimilate her into her own barracks and not into his. I wonder if she knows that the only reason we let him run off was because we were all envious of him.
Scott was too strong for Max and he threw her into a nearby wall, and his expression turned sick when he realized who me, Max, and more strangely, Ima and Logan were, and he opened fire on the latter. Max and Ima tried to stop him mentally, but they couldn't. He's not like us, or anything we've ever seen--never was, he tossed Max around all those years ago. I knocked him out--almost easily, wierdly enough--as Max rushed to her fallen boyfriend.
"Logan, no," she sobbed. He clutched at his hip and took the hand away, and her face lit up--No blood, I guess. Scott didn't seem to be much of a shot, because he hit Logan's exoskeleton. With only five minutes left on the countdown until the place blew up, we sprinted out of there and back to the Aztek, with an uncomfortable Max and a passed-out Scott in the backseat. Everything seemed okay after that, except Logan in a wheelchair and Max going through one of her worst seizures I've ever seen, on the third day that we got back. Even with all of us sitting on her, we still had to get drugs from that Dr. Carr guy to stop it. We didn't think she was going to make it, and Logan looked uncomfortable for the entirety of the last two days. The drugs must have induced amnesia.
I explain a more simplified version of what happened that night to Max and she sits there, taking it all in, nodding every so often to get me to keep going. We leave the room then.
Max's POV
My body feels like lead. Ooog. Ima and Scott are talking on the couch, practically catching up, as if they knew each other back in the day. Asha and Logan are loading guns on his old excercise and I go over there instead, avoiding the others.
"Hey." Logan doesn't turn around, but tries to load a small gun instead, not to much effect. Asha snaps it out of his hands, pops the ammo in easily, and sets it down on the table. I put a hand on his shoulder and peer over it, trying to see what he's doing.
"Hey yourself." Asha acknowledges my presence then and leaves in a huff, I don't quite know why. I've barely been around her for twenty seconds and I'm getting a bad vibe off her. Hopping up on the table, I try to see if engaging Logan in some kind of conversation will work. "What crawled up her ass and died?"
"You did," he says plainly. The look on my face says, "um, right."
"What'd I do? Seriously, I don't remember anything that happened in the past six days..."
"I'm kidding," he smiles and I take the chance to change the subject.
"S1W business is a bitch, huh." Shaking his head, he tells me it's Eyes Only's time to shine. "Geez, if you guys need something stolen or whatever, I'm on it. You don't need all this firepower. Didn't your exoskeleton break?"
"No, it's fine. And what was the problem the last time we tried to take down Manticore? We got our asses kicked, and we only took out the lab. I figure with guns--"
"We didn't get our asses kicked, Zack got his ass captured and then we got our asses kicked trying to spring him from that place. And what are we going to do, rig the place and blow it up just like we did with that mountain base? Or maybe, we'll just go and shoot everyone because they're in your way of making the world less corrupt or whatever it is you do."
"Other stuff happened in between there, y'know." We both blush slightly and he speaks again.
"I never told you how my parents died, did I." His tone is quiet and I peer at him, waiting for him to continue. "We'd just bought a new minivan--I must've been twelve--and I asked them if I could run into the store for a second, because I wanted a Slushie. I opened the door to the little Mac's Mart and the van exploded... A few years ago I found out that the people who were originally going to buy that van were trying to shut down the same group that set off the Pulse."
Scott's POV
I tune Ima out a bit and just notice they way she acts. If she's around someone she knows as well as she knows me, she's vibrant, using her hands, face, and voice to express whatever's going on the that copper-covered head of hers. I remember when she was just X5-694 to everyone and I was just X5-693. I remember standing there, being yelled at to face my eyes front as Ima was pulled off, seizing uncontrollably. I never saw her after that... That must have been a year or two before Max and her troop came along.
"You home in there, six-nine-four?" She smiles, using my designation to get my attention.
"Err, what? Yeah. Where'd you go after they hauled you off, anyway?"
"A small off-base site. They were doing tests to try and stop the seizures. It was horrible... I escaped about a year after, they broke my limbs and stuff just to see if my implant affected anything." She's lying through her teeth here. When you know someone when they're only a few years old and spend a lot of time with them, you could tell if they were lying about murdering people.
"Life's a bitch," I put in.
"And then you die." She completes my sentence in a mockingly morbib tone and I almost laugh. "You knew Max, didn't you?"
"Yeah. We were good friends... I saved her ass from getting hauled off when her brain went nuts and she didn't kill me. Remember those seek and destroy games? Send off an older X who's been back-talking lately and have the younger ones kill it."
"What happened after that?" Ima brings her feet up on the couch and rests her iced cappucino on her knees, stirring it with a straw and taking a big gulp.
"This telepath group that's in bed with Manticore found me... It was a bitch getting around, they wouldn't make me a telepath." She chokes on her iced cap a little bit but covers with a nod and a cough.
Max walks over then and sits down across from us, silent as the front door to the apartment closes. Crossing her legs, she fingers the knee of her jeans, possibly picking out a little piece of food that got stuck there. She looks a little upset as Asha plonks herself down beside her, probably just trying to make her uncomfortable with her proximity. I'm getting the feeling that they're civil to each other and nothing more.
"You could, um, stay at my place tonight. Cindy said that she's moving into the new apartment tomorrow... I was, um, talking to her at the Crash last night." Asha looks almost as uneasy as the woman beside her does.
"Did something happen while we were talking?" I ask, confused at the tension between the two and the fact that Logan isn't here any more, obviously. They both say "no, nothing at all" at the same time and excuse it with a quiet, unfeeling giggle.
"So," Max says, changing the subject. "How did you know Ima?"
"You mean X5-694, right?" I hope Max gets the point, but then, of course she will, she's a genetically engineered supergoddess. If she wasn't with Logan, I'd ask her out in a second. Me and Zack always had a thing for her, but we were just kids; it was more of an attention thing. I wonder if she ever noticed me and Zack constantly fighting over her. She looks a little disgusted that I'm talking to her, but also looks suprised--she didn't know Ima was an X kid.
Max's POV
I'm a little wary of Scott. He was captured after I freed him, and then got out of that telepath agency a little easily. He didn't mention if he was in the resistance or not, and I noticed that Ima didn't even mention going to that telepath place.
Is he against you guys or something? I question Ima privately and she responds fairly quickly.
Yeah. He's looking to kill anyone resisting what the group is doing. Whatever you do, don't let on that any of us are revved-up in a mental ability way. Just act normal, we'll kill him if he pulls any shit, accept him if he doesn't. I notice Asha look around suddenly, and I know she got the message as well.
"I need a walk. Gotta think about some stuff... Um, did Zack go to the Crash?"
"Probably. I don't think he's likely to go the mall or go out drinking or anything." We all give Asha a look when she says that. "Well, I just don't think..." Sighing, I throw on a coat and head to the Crash on foot.
I try not to be upset about what had happened with me and Logan just before we'd left. I remember saying sorry about his folks but not really going into it--what the hell can I say to repair that? Watching your parents explode... No wonder Eyes Only came into existence. At least he tried to keep it from happening to others, you gotta admire him for that.
"I think it's better if we just stay friends." There was silence again. I love him, but I've put him in too much danger lately. Not to mention the fact that we're going nowhere fast, and he's more than a decade older than me, and... Heck, I could go on forever.
"Eh?" He looked like he knew that the conversation was going to get more uncomfortable from here. He puts down the gun he just loaded and looked at me. We were eye-level because I was sitting on the table. Both of us are quiet for a moment, just looking at each other.
"We're too different, it's too..." He left then.
Footsteps behind me snap me back into the present tense. I whirl and look at Scott.
"Hey. Finally, I get you alone." I punch him in the gut and he's alarmed by my power.
"Fuck off."
"Don't think I wasn't lying to the system as well? Ima could be faking it, who knows, she could be leading you back to Manticore." He smacks me right across the face, blowing me back a foot or two.
"Why the hell are you following me?"
"You guys should've kept your little mental conversation to yourself... Don't you trust me, Max?" I leap at him and we land on the ground as my hand goes to his neck.
"I don't trust people who shoot at the guy I love and then sneak up behind me in an alleyway," I practically spit the words.
"Why else don't you trust me? Think I've been brainwashed?" It hits me then. People who've been brainwashed lose their personality... Scott hasn't changed in the least since the night I let him go. I roll off him and stand up, offering him a hand.
"You even breathe wrong and I'll snap your fucking neck."
"Kay," he smiles. "You goin' to the Crash?"
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CHAPTER TWELVE PREVIEW: MY LIFE IS A STEREO
"I got some news on Manticore. Turns out we burned them bad, and they've decided to systematically murder all of their subjects, and then burn Manticore to the ground. See." The mouse cursor moves over to the play button and my X7 self turns away from the camera and over to the tree she's standing beside. Decked out in overalls and a t-shirt with hair growing out a bit is not the way I'd imagine genetically enhanced folk to be dressed. There's an orchard or something around her, but she's alone except for the now unhidden camera.
She reaches up and grabs at a handful of berries dangling from the tree with both hands. The berries pop at her touch and she shrieks in pain. The image zooms at this point and I can see that the skin on her hands is trying to get away from the berry juice, and pulling itself away in curling strips, revealing raw veins and bone. The blood flows from her hands as she screams, and I lean over to turn the sound down from its already low position. The skin continues peeling up her arms and the video ends, going back to the picture of her face...
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AUTHOR NOTE
This chapter was a bitch to write... But stay tuned for twelve... It's short but good. :)
