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: So now I guess I get to see how many readers come back after I killed Max. I hope no one is too upset about that… but it needed to be done. After all, it was the only sure way to stop her whining about that damn virus. Just kidding. It'll all be clear real soon.
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XII – Those That Are Left BehindA stiff wind blew in off the Mediterranean, bringing the refreshing scent of the sea with it as it cooled the airport tarmac where Logan, Alec, and Set were loading the bodies of their dead teammates into the back of their 747 cargo-conversion airplane. Logan kept his eyes closed as he lifted each of the makeshift, plywood caskets, allowing his companions to do the job of guiding the bodies into the plane. It was hard enough to accept that Lydecker was dead – he had escaped death so many times that Logan had started to think the colonel was as invincible as any of 'his kids' – but having Max die – again – was inconceivable to him.
She had become so important to so many people. He would miss the one woman he felt he would ever truly love, the transgenics would miss the leader that had risen unexpectedly from their ranks, and the world would miss the savior it never knew. After placing Max's body into the plane, Set closed the cargo door and nodded to Logan and Alec, his face a blank mask.
"We'd better get out of here," Set commented. "I'm not comfortable in this part of the world." For the briefest of moments Logan wondered at the transgenic's remark, and the irony of such a statement given his chosen name, but he held his tongue and followed the two soldiers up onto the plane. With most of the aircraft converted to accommodate cargo, there were only a handful of seats behind the flight deck. It wouldn't even be crowded if we had all survived, though, Logan reflected gloomily. He remembered the silent trip over from the States, the emotionless, identical expression that each of the transgenics had worn. He had thought it amusing then, having pondered if, back at Manticore, Lydecker had taken an afternoon to teach all of his charges to make that same, grimly set face. Now Set seemed emotionally and physically drained as he collapsed into a chair, and Alec seemed... off, somehow, as he walked up into the cockpit and took the controls.
The bribes they had slipped the local officials worked like a charm, and they were given priority clearance for take-off. In Logan's mind, they couldn't leave the Mediterranean region quickly enough. All he wanted was to get home, and he sat silently, trying to figure out what he would do once he returned.
"Thirsty?' Set asked as the plane's engines quieted down a slight bit. They had finally settled in at their flight altitude, and according to the plan all would be well all the way to Seattle.
"No," Logan muttered. He eyed up Set's canteen, though, suddenly aware of just how parched his mouth felt. Since the team – or what was left if it – had returned to the bunker, Logan had felt strangely detached, just as he had after the botched raid on the Gillette Manticore facility. He had already seen Max die once before, and had barely recovered from that tremendous emotional blow. To have her come back to him, to have his feelings continue to grow, only to lose her again… He wondered if this time it would all be more than he could bear.
"You really should drink at least a little," Set advised. "Dehydration's a bitch."
"Fine," Logan muttered, taking the offered canteen and gulping down the water, surprised at how absolutely wonderful it felt going down his sand-coated throat. "Can you leave me alone now?" Set only grunted in response as he picked his duffel bag up off of the floor, looking inside and pulling out what appeared to be a doctor's bag. He then spent the next several minutes closely examining a scalpel, a small mirror, surgical staples and stitches, and several small vials. Logan simply gazed in morbid fascination at the X5, waiting for Set to predictably roll up his left sleeve and go to work treating the gunshot wound he had all but ignored since returning from Megiddo. After about twenty minutes, Logan realized that his eyelids were suddenly getting very heavy, and his chair was feeling extremely comfortable. All he wanted to do was sleep, despite his inability to stop reliving the events of the day over and over again.
"You gonna make another broadcast?" Set finally asked, finally breaking the deathlike silence when they were well out over the Mediterranean.
"No," Logan replied groggily. With Max gone he just didn't seem to have his heart in it. And it's not just the transgenic issue, either, he realized. The gaping emotional hole in his chest seemed to have swallowed his heart, and he couldn't even find the will to report on anything, whether it was evidence of political corruption or a story on the repainting of crosswalks in Seattle. He felt nothing other than an overwhelming desire to be alone, to cower from reality under a blanket in his old bedroom.
"It's been awhile since Eyes Only said anything," Set pointed out.
"And it's going to be awhile more," Logan replied caustically, stifling a sudden yawn. He turned toward the window, hoping that Set would get the hint that he should shut up and drop the topic.
"The plan includes regular reports," Set continued, something in his voice holding a hint of a challenge. "We're supposed to target public opinion. We can't do that if we remain silent… if you remain silent."
"Yeah, well... the plan also seemed rather dependent on Max leading the transgenics," Logan muttered. "I don't see you giving her a hard time for failing to uphold her responsibilities."
"Fine," Set said. Logan heard movement behind him, and he turned to see Set standing, slowly moving toward the back of the plane.
"I didn't really mean it," he said quickly, wondering at the mental image he conjured depicting Set bawling out Max's corpse for having the gall to up and die on them.
"I know," Set responded. "I'm just going to stretch my legs a bit, that's all. Zack kicked my kneecap pretty hard... it gets pretty tight if I sit still for too long."
"Fine," Logan replied, turning again toward the window. He felt a gust of cold air as Set opened the door to the cargo compartment and disappeared inside, and before he knew it, Logan had unexpectedly escaped into the bliss of an invigorating nap.
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Logan was jolted awake as his ears popped painfully, clueing him in to the fact that the plane was likely making its approach into Sea-Tac. He looked out the window as they broke through the low clouds, bringing the familiar panorama of Seattle into sight below.
"Already?" Logan asked. Set only nodded in reply.
"We're here," Alec said over the intercom. "Fasten your seatbelts; I was never good at landings." For the briefest of moments Logan wanted to smile, but he found it impossible. First of all, he noted that Alec's voice held none of its usual mirth – it was almost as if he had made the small joke out of habit as much as anything else. Logan knew that the recently escaped X5 was not dealing well at all with Max's death. And neither am I, Logan admitted, checking off a second reason not to smile. I don't know that I'll ever smile again.
The landing was amazingly smooth, given Alec's apparent lack of confidence in his piloting abilities, and the plane rolled toward a large cargo hangar that Lydecker had leased for their purposes.
"We're here," Alec announced as the engines' steady whir calmed into a retreating buzz. They were out of their seats and in the cargo hold before the engines had fully died, and Logan fought a sudden urge to vomit as he looked again at Max's casket. He hated having to unload her body from the plane. It was the performance of such mundane tasks that made him face the reality of it all. He moved over to the foot of the casket, straining the still-weakened muscles in his legs as he fought to maintain his balance with one end of the dead weight. Set easily hefted the opposite end while Alec opened the hatch and lowered a small staircase.
"Help, get me out of here. Logan? Help me, I'm not dead!" The words raced through Logan's mind, seeming to erupt painfully from inside the makeshift coffin, and then he realized it was just his imagination. If Max had been alive, if she had been calling out for help, surely Set would have heard something; surely he would have reacted somehow.
Logan's mind felt as if it shut down then, allowing him to be free of any painful thoughts or memories as he, Alec, and Set finished unloading the bodies of their fallen friends. Once the simple job was complete, he turned to his two comrades, feeling dumbstruck. "Now what?" he asked, hoping that one of them would be able to give him something else to do, something to keep his thoughts occupied.
"Now we leave," Set replied. "At least for now. A customs agent is going to come in to examine the plane and its cargo. The guy's on Deck's payroll, so it's no real biggie, but he prefers if no one is here to watch him as he shirks his duties." Logan nodded. "I guess we can meet up here again in two hours. Then we can take Max and Krit to Terminal City… I'm sure they'd want that."
"And Lydecker?" Alec asked.
"I'm taking his body," Set informed them. "He was concerned that someone might figure out he'd been alive all this time, and if that happened, that they would then start trying to figure out what he'd been up to. I have to make certain his remains are completely destroyed, so that no one can ever figure out what he knew and what he'd been able to build."
"Fine," Alec said evenly as he turned from Set and faced Logan. "So, what are you up to, Logan? Feel like goin' to the airport bar and getting' a few drinks with me?" Alec forced his face into a grin, but Logan could hear the pain in his voice. His nonchalant demeanor was, at least this time, all for show.
"No, I don't think so," Logan replied grimly. "I think I just want to be alone." He turned to walk away, and suddenly decided he had no idea what he would do for the next two hours. Surprisingly, he found he didn't want to be alone, and even more surprisingly, he found he wanted to spend time with Alec. I must be in shock or something, Logan reasoned. There's no other way in the world I could possibly want to spend time with him. "Alec, wait up," Logan suddenly called out. "I think I'll have that drink with you, after all."
The two men walked out of the cargo hangar quickly, making a beeline for the bar. As they walked through the tunnel, Logan's attention was drawn to a young boy, maybe fifteen, standing by a public phone bank and staring back at him. Just as he started to turn away, the kid motioned for him to walk over. Wondering why he was complying, Logan did so, looking the youth over carefully, noting every feature and searching for possible threats.
The boy was about 5'10" and maybe 150 lbs., with short-cropped brown hair and dull, unimpressive eyes. "What?" Logan asked as he came into talking distance.
"I'm Puck," the child replied.
"Okay," Logan said hesitantly, wondering what he was expected to say to that.
"I'm one of Deck's kids, an X6," Puck explained. "I was told that if he didn't come home, that I should report in to you."
"Oh," Logan said, finally understanding. "And what makes you think you should say anything to me?" He finally confronted the question of whether or not he would, or even could, take over for Lydecker, if he dared pick up where the colonel had left off in his fight for the transgenics. I'm no soldier, he reminded himself. If I do this, I could get people killed. On the other hand, if I don't do it, there's no telling how many might die.
"You fit the description I was given," Puck answered. "Maybe I'm looking for someone else."
Okay, moment of truth, Logan told himself, knowing that his next words would likely decide the course of the rest of his life. "No, you're not looking for someone else," he said. "I'm the one Lydecker --"
A loud bang woke Logan with a start, and he gazed around, seeing that he was still on the airplane. A quick glance out the window confirmed that they were indeed still at their cruising altitude, and that they were now over land. What a weird dream. He looked around, trying to see what had knocked him out of his deep sleep, and saw Set's duffel bag sitting on the floor. Remembering that Set had left his bag on the seat, Logan assumed that it had fallen and woken him up. Gotta be at least a few heavy weapons in there, he reasoned. He looked around the cabin and saw that Set was nowhere to be seen.
"Set?" Logan called out weakly, vaguely remembering the X5 mentioning that he needed to move around a bit to keep his knee loosened up. Logan stood wearily and walked back to the cargo hold. He opened the door, and settled his gaze on Set. What the hell?!
"Get out and shut the door!" Set yelled, his booming voice reverberating off the cold steel walls. "Biohazard, Logan!" Logan realized what Set meant, and quickly closed the door. The X5 had, for some reason, opened Max's casket. There had been blood all over the floor in the small confines of the hold, and if it was Max's blood, with its genetically targeted virus in it, Logan knew that he might very well die if he didn't get out. He hadn't had time to process everything he'd seen, and now Logan closed his eyes, trying to piece together everything that had been laid out before him moments earlier.
"What are you doing in there?" Logan called through the door as he struggled to fit together the pieces of his mental image.
"Hold on," Set yelled back. "Stand back from the door, Logan. I'm coming out." Logan did as he was told, backing away from the door and going to sit once more on his seat. A minute later, Set had emerged from the cargo hold, his hands clearly stained with freshly applied iodine, the dark brown contrasting sharply with a deathlike pallor that made him appear as if he was a member of the walking dead. His weak, ghastly appearance was only enhanced as he all but collapsed against the doorframe, barely managing to keep his feet under him.
"You look like hell," Logan muttered.
"I bet," Set murmured in reply. "Feel like it, too."
"What are you doing back there?" Logan asked.
"When I got up before, it wasn't because of my knee," Set explained. "It was because I felt sick."
"Sick?" Logan asked, wondering at such a weird occurrence. Transgenics aren't supposed to get sick… "Oh, no. You were exposed to the pathogen? Could I --"
"No," Set cut him off. "If you had been exposed you'd probably be dead by now. But I couldn't take the chance that I could infect you, so I went into the back and cut into Max a little until I found a bit of blood to draw out. Then I injected it into me. She's the cure, remember?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm trying to get as much as I can out of her while it's still possibly viable," Set explained. "I know Lydecker has some people culturing the antigen that her body produced, but I don't see any harm in coming up with an emergency supply for the transgenics that set up shop in Terminal City. I think she would have wanted it that way."
"Yeah, probably," Logan agreed, fighting off a strange wave of dejávouz as he remembered a part of his dream. Set turned his back and staggered back into the cargo hold, amazing Logan with his ability to keep functioning while obviously so sick.
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It was a couple of more hours before the door to the cargo cabin opened again, and Set walked out, looking, if anything, even worse than he had before. He now wheezed with every breath, and he stared intently at the floor ahead of him, as if he needed to concentrate on the simple act of walking.
"Are you all right?" Logan asked, standing from his seat and moving to help the X5.
"Stay back," Set warned in a raspy, barely audible voice. "The virus, Logan. Don't forget the virus." He managed to reach his seat and collapsed into it, closing his eyes immediately.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you look even worse than before," Logan commented. "I would have expected you to get better after injecting Max's blood into you."
"I can imagine," Set replied. "Could you do me a favor and find some water around here?" Logan was up in an instant, rooting through his own travel pack and producing two bottles of water. He handed them to the transgenic, who immediately drained them and seemed to relax a slight bit.
"Did you finish what you needed to back there?" Logan asked.
"For now," Set responded with a nod. "I'll probably have to get Alec to help me with some things later, but he's rather busy at the moment." Logan found himself wanting to keep the conversation going, hoping that as long as Set was talking, he wouldn't die. With the way he looked, Logan was quickly deciding that death was a very real possibility for Manticore's escaped slinger.
"So you stopped Zack," Logan commented. Set nodded. "Why?"
"Why?" Set repeated. "Are you serious?"
"Of course I'm serious. Don't take this the wrong way, but of all the people I've ever met, you're not exactly the most likely to inspire warm fuzzies."
"Gee, thanks Logan," Set answered with a surprising amount of sarcasm that belied the painful grimace that erupted across his face.
"Seriously," Logan prodded, "why'd you stop him? Zack wanted to bring on The Coming to wipe out the ordinaries, to sort of remove one threat so that your people could then focus on the Familiars. It seemed like a tactically sound plan."
"To most people, maybe," Set agreed. "Most of the transgenics would likely have thought so, anyway. I'm just not one of them. My training was different than theirs, remember?"
"Of course."
"Well, the slingers were actually allowed to watch some television from the outside," Set said. "We had to keep up on pop culture and the like, to better fit in if our presence was exposed, and Lydecker thought certain valuable lessons could be gleaned about a culture's society by watching what it produced as entertainment. There was one night when he had the slingers watch a show called The Twilight Zone. Have you ever heard of it?"
"Sure," Logan responded with a nod. "It's one of my all-time favorites."
"There was one episode in particular, it was called 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street'," Set continued. "I don't know if you ever saw it, but a bunch of normal, everyday humans are driven into hysteria because a power outage is blamed on aliens that look human. Accusations fly, violence and mayhem ensue… it was an enlightening look into humans' ability to be terrified by the unknown."
"Like they are with you," Logan commented.
"No, not at all," Set answered, his eyes narrowing, making him look almost reptilian. "More like they're going to be when they hear about the Familiars."
"What?"
"The Familiars," Set repeated. "They look human, they sound human, hell, they are human… except they're not. And the Familiars want nothing more than to wipe out every non-Familiar human. Think about the paranoia that'll cause, Logan."
"And the senseless death," Logan replied, shocked that Set seemed so pleased by such a possibility. Then again, causing chaos is exactly what he was trained to do.
"The ordinaries would kill us if they had a chance," Set countered. "So would the Familiars. I don't see anything wrong in getting them to vent their paranoid hostilities on each other. Zack had the right idea, but the wrong approach. He wanted to kill the humans all in one shot. I say let the humans and Familiars destroy each other – kill two birds with one stone, so to speak."
"You would do that?" Logan asked in horror.
"Do what?" Set asked, a disturbingly innocent look spreading across his face. "All I'm gonna do is make sure the truth gets out there. I figured you'd be fine with that, Mr. Eyes Only. The humans will learn the truth, and they'll forget about us. After all, they can see us coming a mile away. The Familiars don't afford them that luxury. They'll engage in one of their oh-so-productive witch-hunts… I can see it now – 'If she can hold her breath three minutes underwater, then she must be a Familiar, and we can burn her. If not, well, then… she's innocent… but still dead.' It'll be fantastic, Logan, and it'll give the transgenics the time they need to get their act together. By then I would assume that the hysteria will have run its course, and the humans will be far more willing to accept us on equal terms."
"And that's really what you want, then?" Logan asked curiously.
"Equality?" Set asked. "Yes, that's all I want. If there's a way to do it now, then fine. If not, I say let them kill each other for a few years."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," a third voice interrupted from the back
Logan almost shot out of his seat and rubbed his eyes, doubting his own sight. "Max?"
To be concluded……………………………---------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Endnote: Sorry for taking awhile on this. As you can see, this was a bit of a long chapter, and I've also been wracking my brain trying to decide whether or not it'll be worthwhile writing a sequel to this story. The thing is, if I write a sequel, I have to know what it'll be about before I finish here, so that I can better set up the action that will follow. So I apologize about the slowed pace. Now I guess I'd better go finish up that last chapter.
