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: I know I'm taking my own sweet time getting this story going, but as I warned in the first place, this is going to be more character driven than Unnatural Selection. Please be patient as I spend time with the characters. Things'll get moving along pretty well soon enough.
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VI – Time to BreatheMax leaned back against the pitted concrete wall, wrapping her hands around a Styrofoam cup of coffee, allowing its warmth to sink in through her skin. It was good to feel warm… it seemed as if it had been too long since she'd had the luxury. The last time I was really comfortably warm was out in the desert, she thought absently. And of course, I ended that trip being so cold.
"Hey, Boo," Cindy said as she walked up, a broad smile on her face. Max wondered how her friend had been able to maintain such high spirits, even after being under siege for a month when she could likely have left whenever she wanted to. "How's it goin'?"
"It's goin'," Max muttered, wondering at the strange feeling of becoming more tense even as Cindy came up to her. I must really just need to be alone, she realized. There's no other reason for preferring even to have Cindy go away. "I was just pondering the situation," she added, deciding to start up a friendly conversation despite her desire for privacy.
"You mean the whole deal about a senator comin' to visit?" her friend asked with a smile. "I know I'd be buggin' if I had to do that. Too much formality or somethin'."
"He really wasn't like that," Max muttered, her hands closing around the coffee ever more tightly, distorting the shape of the cup's lip from a circle to an oval. Max watched the liquid inside slide across the smooth white surface, losing herself in the simplest of diversions.
"You aight?" Original Cindy asked. "Max?"
"Huh?" Max asked, realizing she must have been zoning out again. "Sorry. Just have a lot on my mind is all."
"I guess so," Cindy agreed. "You've become a leader, and now you're meeting with senators and stuff. That's cool."
That's cool, Max thought with a smile, grateful that her friend still saw anything she did as being 'cool.' It was a welcome change from the cult of personality so many others seemed to be building up all throughout Terminal City. "Thanks," she muttered, though Cindy's expression told her she had no idea what she was being thanked for.
"You're welcome."
"It's nice just to talk, isn't it?" Max asked. "Especially at night… it seems so peaceful. You'd never know, just looking around this small room, that we're surrounded by thousands of troops, and thousands more civilians that are champing at the bit to spill our blood."
"It'll be aight," Cindy assured her. "You've handled worse, right? I mean, when you were in Israel you actually died." Max gasped as her friend said the words, and she knew her eyes were wide, most likely seeming half-crazed, as she stared at her friend. "What?" Cindy asked uneasily. "What I say?"
"I didn't die out there," Max said, shocked and hurt that Original Cindy, of all people, would ever have bought into that story. She knows me better than most anyone else in the world. Why would she start believing I pulled a modern-day Lazarus?
"Everyone says you did," Cindy responded. "You had to have noticed."
"Just because they say it doesn't make it so," Max argued in a low voice. "You actually believe I came back from the dead?"
"I don't know what to believe," Cindy said with a shrug that told Max she didn't even think the matter was worthy of much thought.
"You lived with me for how long?" Max asked. "You worked with me day in, day out. You've gone drinking with me God knows how many times. Now you're buying into this 'coming back from the dead' crap, too?"
"You shot yourself in the heart, right?" Cindy asked.
"So?' Max countered.
"Then you fell into a pool of water and floated around for a bit while your blood all drained out, right?"
"What's your point?" Max hissed.
"And when they pulled you out, your heart wasn't beating, right?"
"It was," Max objected, seeing exactly where Original Cindy was going with this conversation. "Just very slowly, that's all. I wasn't dead."
"And were you breathing?" Cindy asked.
"Sure I was," Max answered. "Just very slowly."
"Like your heartbeat."
"That's right," Max responded, feeling as if she wasn't succeeding in her argument at all.
"Alec is a transgenic, isn't he?" Cindy asked, suddenly changing the topic.
"You know he is," Max retorted. "He's an X5."
"Which means he has heightened senses and all, huh?" Cindy asked with a rueful smile.
"Yes."
"And he didn't hear a heartbeat," Cindy stated. "He didn't hear you breathing. He was convinced you were dead, just like Logan was."
"But I wasn't," Max continued to argue, though she could see she would never convince Original Cindy.
"You were, Boo," Cindy said. "You have to accept that."
"I was no more dead than a bear that's in hibernation," Max countered.
"Is that so?" Cindy asked. "You see, I look at it this way – over a hundred people here in Terminal City believe that you died and came back to lead them. It seems only you believe otherwise."
"And Alec," Max replied. "He doesn't believe it, either."
"Oh, I think he believes it more than the rest," Original Cindy retorted. "Like that doubting Thomas guy in the Bible, he actually examined your wounds and saw for himself that you were as dead as a doornail. I don't think anyone could ever convince him that were still alive, no matter how well they explain the science behind your so-called torpor, or whatever the hell you call it."
"That's not true," Max said evenly, convinced she was right about Alec, if nothing else. "He doesn't treat me like the rest of them do. Even you treat me differently now."
"Alec is just an irreverent little cuss," Cindy said. "You could line up Mohammed, Moses, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Jesus Christ, and wouldn't get so much as a how-do-you-do from him unless he thought he'd get something out of it."
"Huh?" Max responded, still stuck on Cindy's reference to Lao Tzu. She'd never heard Original Cindy reference some of the more obscure Eastern religious figures, and she was completely unsure of what to say next.
"Alec is only treating you like he always did because he knows that's what you want," Cindy explained. "Don't you see that?"
"You're wrong," Max said. "He's the only one --"
"-- That what?" Cindy interrupted. "He's the only one that what?"
"Never mind," Max grumbled, deciding that she would just watch Alec carefully next time she saw him to decide for herself if he was really just faking his reaction to her. She didn't have to wait long.
"We might have a problem," Max heard Alec say, drawing her gaze as he and Joshua joined the two women. "I think we're almost out of tryptophan, Max. Of course, that's only gonna be a problem for the X5's, but there are plenty of us here."
"Crap," Max muttered. It had been hard enough getting food and water for her people, and now she was faced with tracking down tryptophan. She had no idea how to deal with this problem.
"How much more do you have left?" Cindy asked.
"Assuming no one's body starts to crash, we should be okay for about three days," Alec told them. "But if just a few of us start getting seizures, we're gonna fly through the little bit we have left."
"Any ideas?" Max asked.
"Well, I do have one," Alec replied. "I was reading the Bible last night and --"
"You were reading the Bible?" Max asked, trying to imagine what the punchline to this joke would be. Something about Alec saying, 'I was reading the Bible last night,' sounded so much like Sketchy saying, 'So three guys walk into a bar, an Irish guy, an English guy, and a Scottish guy.'
"You find that surprising?" Alec countered.
"Yes," Max and Cindy said in unison.
"Well, maybe it's something about being in this terribly hopeless situation or something," Alec explained, "but I just felt the need to find some spiritual guidance." Max was certain that even Alec was having a hard time keeping a straight face with that particular line.
"Fine, you were reading the Bible," Max said, deciding to go along with Alec for now. She still waited for the punchline, though.
"That's right, I was reading the Bible. And there's this story about where Jesus is preaching to thousands of people, and they start to get hungry and all, and he turns, like, a cheeseburger and some Twinkies into enough food for everyone."
"I don't think that's how the story goes," Cindy muttered with a thin smile.
"Me either," Max agreed, trying to keep a stern expression on her face.
"Well, maybe a few of the details are off by a little bit or something, but it got me thinking," Alec said. "Since Max is apparently some kind of divine savior, maybe she can miracle up some more tryptophan for us."
"That's not funny," Max snapped, her slight feeling of mirth melting away in an instant.
"Well neither is the way people have been acting around you," Alec shot back. "But you don't seem to be trying to convince them that you're not what they think you are."
"What are you talking about?" Max asked.
"I overheard you and Cindy talking," Alec admitted, "and I think you'd better start either accepting the way people view you, or otherwise do something to stop it. Pretending that people don't view you as some kind of cult-like figurehead isn't going to solve the problem."
"And what about you?" Max asked.
"What do you mean?"
"How do you view me?"
"What exactly do you mean?" Alec said, trying to clarify her question. "You want to know whether I think you came back from the dead?"
"Yeah," Max said. "That's exactly what I want." She felt her pulse quicken as she waited for Alec's answer, part of her dreading confirmation of what Cindy had told her, and the other part confident that he would prove to be far more rational than Cindy had given him credit for being.
"You didn't come back from the dead," Alec muttered. "I've seen enough people die, Max. My experience in the 'real world' might be limited, but I've seen enough to know that dead people don't come back." The friendly light that had been behind his eyes just moments before suddenly blinked out, giving way to the dark, forbidding gloom that Max had always thought made Alec look haunted. Once again she was reminded of all of the horrors she had avoided by fleeing Manticore when she had, horrors that Alec had ended up confronting on an almost daily basis.
"Alec, I --"
"Forget it," he said, cutting her off as he stood to leave. "It doesn't really matter, anyway. I know you didn't mean anything."
"You don't have to leave," Max responded, curious at how eager she was to keep him around.
"I have to check the perimeter," he told the two women as he stalked away, disappearing into the first shadow he reached. Max watched him go, replaying the conversation over and over in her mind, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong, and how she could have done any better.
"Boy's got issues," Cindy commented.
"He feels guilty," Max replied.
"He feels lonely," she heard Joshua say from behind her. Max whirled to look up at Joshua's large body looming over her.
"How long have you been there?" she asked, amazed that she seemed completely incapable of getting some alone time.
"Long enough," he said with a trace of a smile, his gaze darting back and forth as he seemed to struggle with the dueling desires to make eye contact with a friend, and to avert his eyes in the presence of the Transgenic Savior. "I heard you say you don't like the way people look at you."
"Sorry, Joshua," Max said quickly. "I didn't mean for you to hear that."
"I don't like the way people look at me, either," Joshua responded. "Well, the people out there, anyway," he added, gesturing out toward the perimeter. "I know what it's like to feel different."
"I know," Max muttered. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad, Joshua."
"I didn't mean to make you feel bad," he replied. "This is whack, huh?" He sat down heavily, gathering a light blanket around him in a makeshift cloak.
"Yeah," Max agreed. "None of us is ever gonna fit in, are we?"
"Sure you will, Boo," Cindy said. "Don't be thinking like there's anything out there that's actually normal, k? There's no such thing. All right, so you're a transgenic messiah, come back from the dead. Joshua here is a two-legged version of man's best friend, I'm a black, pro-transgenic lesbian, and Alec is a guilt-ridden, borderline sociopathic former assassin. Oh, and let's not forget your old friend Zack, who's not only a transgenic cyborg, but also the leader of his own private army. And Logan is a formerly paralyzed cyber-journalist who broadcasts his version of the truth through his pirated webcasts. We're all freaks, Max – every one of us. Bein' either transgenic or ordinary don't give you a pass on that. We a whole nation of freaks, girl. It's just easier to tell with some of us."
"You really believe that?"
"You tellin' me you don't?" Cindy asked with obvious surprise. "So your people think you came back from the dead for them. So what? Like Alec said, it ain't really like you've tried to discourage them or anything. Let me tell ya – if they don't see you as different because of that, it'll be for something else. The truth is that they need you to be different, boo. You're their leader, and to them that means you're better than them, that something about you gives you the moral authority to command them."
"So I might as well shut up and accept it is what you're saying," Max concluded.
"Damn skippy," Cindy agreed. "You have to get them out of here alive, Max. You think it'll hurt any if they believe you came back from the dead? Let them have their cult, Max. Just keep focused on the big picture, okay?"
"And the big picture is keeping them alive."
"That's right. Keep them alive and get them somewhere safe. Getting them to see you as just an ordinary person is so unimportant compared to those other things that you shouldn't even worry about it right now. There'll be plenty of time for that other stuff later."
To be continued……………………………