AN: This is actually my first piece of fiction ever. It's been sleeping on my hard drive for some time. It takes place after the first episode of season 2, M/L, but it's supposed to be more action than romance. I'm still writing on the unfinished story but since that one is still dark for a few more chapters, I thought you could use something not so sad. It's my first and it's completed, but for some reason i have the impression that it's better than the rest, maybe because i was on vacation when i wrote it and devoted a lot more time to it.

They don't belong to me - that should be clear by now - *I would never do such a thing as cancelling the one show on air that was full of hidden truths and symbolism and lent itself to intelligent comments. But I love them all, so what can I do? It's not like TPTB miss any of them right now. I'll return them in the morning, unless Logan Cale, "protector of all that is good and true", advocates larceny and lets me keep the whole shebang or, who knows, even calls the store and has "them" charge everything to him.

www.savedarkangel.net

AN2: If things seem confusing, especially referrals to Natalie's past, please let me know and I'll explain. It's kind of mysterious for a while, but I have a good reason for that. Enjoy.

When the past comes ahaunting

Part One: Trouble is brewing

Hunger. Pain. Hunger. Blood. Thirst, his mind sung to him from the deep recesses it had retreated itself to for so many years. There was only one thing that drove the battered, weak body forward into the dark woods, toward the city in the valley and there it was again, to his left. Now! He leapt forward. The sound of blood thumping in his ears slowly faded and then vanished completely. Everything so quiet! He rose from the damp cover of autumn leaves, disregarding the mess around him. His mind had stopped singing for a moment, letting him feel the elation of success. Still, something was amiss. All so quiet! The elation was gone and now there was only emptiness in him, around him, in his mind, all over him, darkness enveloping him coldly, steadily, an icy fortress he felt he needed to blast away. His scream of rage rose like a thunder over the trees, in answer to the darkness, emptiness and quiet in him, was carried by the wind to the mountain tops, came back to him as an echo and for a moment his heart rose in victory. But the scream ebbed away, just like the thumping in his ears had and now there was silence again, all quiet, except for the faint howl of a lonely creature in the woods over Seattle.

***

As Angela could tell with her eyes closed by now - the good doctor was pissed. In such cases she always seemed to radiate an aura of strength and determination that made everybody back away for fear of crossing her. What could it be this time? More than likely, it wasn't a person. The few friends in the doctor's life were rather of the amiable type as far as the nurse could tell. Must be that that DNA resequencing she had been working on for the last 3 months had failed again for reasons that were beyond comprehension at the moment.

Dr. Natalie Brandis sighed. Sleepless nights had become as common in the Henderson Clinic labs as in the old times in Toronto.

But then, she was doing it for a good cause. Oh, if only she were in Canada, then all this would be just a bad dream. And then the nightmares she was having lately, the pain of thinking back about Toronto.... She had woken up screaming, drenched in cold sweat. She had seen a face, contorted, eyes yellow, any sign of reason gone. Then, they had become a feral, hellish red, radiating an almost palpable heat; even anger and she had woken up. "Don't go there, Gal, you left that all behind a long time ago." Shuddering, she tried to brush the experience away, concentrating on the task at hand when her assistant's voice startled her out of her reverie.

"Dr. Brandis, do you need anything before I go tonight?"

"That's ok, Angela, I'm all set, thank you." But the other woman would not budge. "Hah, too much to ask for," Brandis cracked to herself. The young assistant had grown on her in the last six months they had been working together. She probably just wanted to be friends but then there was such a thing as too much of the good stuff.

"Dr. Brandis, if I may be so bold, maybe it would help if you could work the dayshift? Since Dr. Bastian's promotion, the spot would be free."

"Thank you, Angela, for your concern. It's just that I'm so used to working nights that it would do more harm than good to change it now." She sighed, suddenly aware of the strange look on Angela's face. "Don't worry, Kiddo," the older woman forced herself to smile, "I'll be okay."

"Good night then, Doctor."

"See you tomorrow, Angela."

After the younger woman had left, the doctor thought, "I'm finally alone!" The empty hallways or the artificial light that barely succeeded in banishing the darkness from her office didn't bother her. Alas, it was the ghosts of the past that it could not keep away. "Look at the bright side, Gal, it wasn't as if you were working in a morgue. Even back then, there had been no surprises," she chided herself before admitting, "Well, except for one, maybe, a long time ago."

Working on the DNA seemed so hard now. If there had not been the work she probably would have been just some number in a coroner's list of Jane Does. No, don't think about coroners. Whatever had possessed her lately?

For years, she had not thought of Toronto, and now, for the past two days, starting with that blasted nightmare, somehow every little detail had sent her mind spinning to those times, flashback by flashback, nightmare after nightmare. It seemed she could not think of much else except for her own personal house of horrors. "Maybe I'm getting old, that must be it. Actually, oh, yes, this was it; her 40th birthday was coming up this week. Twelve years ago she had first met Nick. She should take that day off; it would not do to sit here tormenting herself over past events.

Putting down her instruments she thought for a moment to call her old friend Sam Carr, he, with his charm and good spirits might just be the one to take her mind off the past and cheer her up. They hadn't seen each other in a while, but still, just maybe... The alternative was going home. Suddenly, the perspective of crashing down between her bed sheets became more appealing by the second. She needed to sleep this out. Besides, there was Zorro to feed. She chuckled slightly. Whatever had possessed her to give him that name? Well, his being black with a white mask -like spot around his eyes might have done the trick. Still, thinking about it now made her chuckle, "Gal, your subconscious has gone down the drains a long time ago, it's too late to start fixing it now."

After exchanging small talk with the guards as she did every night, she finally got outside in the pouring rain. She needed to run to her car and the water drops were coming down so hard she could barely see anything. Why did she have to chose Seattle of all the darn American cities, why not sunny, warm Miami? Well, this was where she had finally come to herself after her bout of amnesia. Most of it had come back to her over the years, but not everything. And then, this was where most firms doing genetic research were located. It had been her only option - pathology had been out of the question - as masochistic as she might be she could not do that to herself. Not here, not alone, not after all that had happened. And, darn it, she had found it impossible to move to a sun-drenched city. Did hope really linger that deep down inside of her? "Gal, you should know better than that. The word hope should be stricken from your vocabulary," she lectured to herself. After the pulse, nothing in this country could have resurrected hope.

For a moment she forgot her dreary thoughts to focus on getting to her small pre-pulse Ford without having to hang herself to dry afterwards. Her car was quite a run away; the road was dark and quiet except for the slight humming noise of a van at the other end of the street. Keys in hand, Natalie made a run for her car, water hitting her raincoat in rivulets and small streams. Screeching tires and the sound of a car revving up made her whirl around before reaching the street walk. But it was too late, a pair of strong hands had grabbed her from behind. The car keys flew in a large trajectory out of her grasp as she reached for the arms holding her neck, dragging her backwards. Panic overwhelmed her for barely a fraction of a second. She bit the hand that was bruising her jaw and tried to elbow her assailant. She had to make it, darn, or else she was history. A sudden instinct made her stop her struggles abruptly and propping her feet in the worn out pavement, she propelled her upper body forward sending the man behind her crashing over the parked cars. With the last ounce of strength left, she lounged forward and to the right, a few precious inches away from the van, heart pounding, frantic with fear. That small respite wouldn't have helped her much if there hadn't been the sound of a sector police hummer overhead. There was no time for the driver to go get her without been filmed by the security system. The other goon was still on the hood of a red truck, groaning as he managed to prop himself up on an elbow, only to see the van screeching away into the distance. Getting her bearings, she gave in to the rush of adrenaline and broke into a run away from the scene, along small winding alleys towards the old city center. She never looked back, just focused on keeping the pace, praying she would not bump into that van again. As long as there were still people at the South Market, and there would be people, for at least a couple hours more, she deemed herself safer there than home, at least until she could think of a place to crash.

As hard as she was trying, she could not identify her assailants for certain. The police would not be able to help her. They would say it had been just another mugging. This was nothing unusual, the dark streets of post-Pulse Seattle often witnessed such incidents, even outside the curfew period. They couldn't have been linked to the Community as she still called it. They had never bothered her before, why start now? Besides, they just didn't operate that way. Life after the Pulse had become very easy for them, she imagined, with all that computerized data that hindered them from assuming new identities gone. Normal robbers wouldn't use this modus operandi either.

No, this could only be a Gentech assignment. They had been trying for days to get her to accept the new job on her own volition. First it had been just a normal job offer addressed to her over normal channels. When she had asked around about Gentech, everybody had been terribly tight lipped and noncommittal. That reaction and the fact that the work involved living on the grounds of the Gentech lab camps, cut off from the world had made her wary. Something told her that this wasn't a job you could easily quit. Panting hard she stopped for just a moment to catch her breath and couldn't help but smirk, "Rusty and old you might be, Gal, and a lousy runner at that, but you can still pick a punch. Still, this is no time for rustiness," she admonished herself a few seconds later, "Just keep on the move, Gal, faster, faster." She could barely breathe anymore and she hadn't reached the well lit and heavily guarded South Market area yet. The urgency of the situation almost made her panic again. She hadn't escaped the Gentech goons just to be done in by some gang boy on a fun trip. So she kept moving, as hard and painful that might be.

Since her refusal to accept the job, the threats had grown in intensity. Why was she so important for them? She had done good work and had achieved some international acclaim for her results with DNS recombination, but surely there were other more capable geneticists than her. She had come across some rather dirty things about Gentech during the last year, but she had no proof to back her up, just good, sound logic linking facts together and a few assumptions to complete the picture.

Feverishly she searched for a solution to her predicament. Should she dare go home? No, it wasn't worth the risk. And Zorro was set with fresh food and water for at least another day. Afterwards her neighbor would check on him. To whom could she turn for help? Suddenly the sadness of it all bore heavily down on her. There were very few people she could trust. And none really knew the truth about her; none had a clue about Toronto.

Actually there was one person she dared trust, since she had accidentally found out some secrets of his own. Sam, Sam Carr. They had met at Memorial Hospital where she had worked for a while just after the Pulse. At that time, she had still been with Gary, her ex-husband. She had gotten along well enough with Sam, each respecting and admiring the other for his work, but she had felt nothing more than that for him. Then, they had lost touch for a while, only to meet again by chance a few years ago, when Sam had needed answers on a mysterious genetic problem he was researching. Eventually she had found out Sam's secret, and she was glad she had done it. At least that way she had managed to regain some hope in the future of this world and feel useful again. She remembered the shock, the slight anger at his lack of trust and later the feeling of elation seeing the results of her research into Sam's problem broadcast by Eyes Only as part of the evidence in the indictment of Ronald Custer, scientist at Gentech. She had never approached Sam about it as she had finally understood the need for secrecy and he hadn't pursued the matter either, although he must have known that she had found out about his link to Eyes Only. That unspoken knowledge between them was proof of the trust they had in each other. Thinking of Sam had warmed her up a bit, but her fingers were still clammy and the feet, well, she had stopped feeling those many streets ago.

There, finally, she sighed and leaned shivering on a derelict house wall at the side of South Market. She had made it. What now? Before she even had time to relax and grasp the gravity of her predicament, realization hit her like a ton of bricks. To get to Sam's hospital she needed a sector pass. There was no way to contact Sam other than going to the hospital in person. She swore silently for the first time in years. Stealing a pass was a bad idea, what with all the guards around. The stress was starting to get to her, desperation and panic had finally caught up with her. Great, she didn't have a pass, not since quitting her job as a physician there. However, if she were to be injured... There was a risk in assuming somebody would actually care enough to get her to the hospital, but otherwise she was fresh out of options. Curiously, she was shocked how desperate that idea sounded to her. Two days ago, she wouldn't have been able to pull off such a crazy thing, but the perspective of being forced to work for the Gentech bastards or being killed gave her the necessary impetus. After all, each choice she had made in the last two days had somehow narrowed her way down to this one desperate measure. She might as well continue, there was no going back. Looking around the slowly thinning crowd on the badly lit South Market she saw a bus approaching the sector barrier. Without giving the matter much thought, for fear her self preservation instinct would get the better of her, she lunged forward, impacting with the bus on the driver's side.

The sickening thud was heard all over the market. People stopped and turned around. Many just went on, urged by the sector police. A few faces however bent over the wet and mud caked female on the ground as if trying to determine if she was worth the trouble of dirtying a car while transporting her to the next hospital. It was the guilt-ridden bus driver who checked her for life signs and convinced the sector police to call an ambulance.

An: So? Patience, Max and Logan are coming in next. Problems?