Disclaimer: I own nothing even related to DA. No posters, clothes, merchandise of any kind, and I haven't even preordered any DVDs. Believe me when I say I don't own the show.

Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

Chapter 10: So Much To Do, So Little Time

*~* Zane

Obstinate. That's the only word I can come up with to sum up what Zack is today. He refused to even hear of me going to Albuquerque. That's why I'm headed there now without him. I know he's not going to be too happy when he wakes up and realizes that I'm gone, but I can't worry about what he's going to think. The only thing that I can think about is getting to Penny. I know she's smart, but something in my gut tells me she's with Manticore, and like I've said before, my gut is usually right.

"She's not so stupid as to go even closer to Manticore! Knowing her, she probably would have gone to Mexico. It would be the logical thing to do!" Zack snapped angrily. He was quickly losing his temper with the way Tinga and I kept badgering him.

"That's always your line of thought: as soon as something goes wrong, get the hell out of the country!" Tinga growled. "Well, some of us don't think like that. Didn't it ever occur to you that it would actually be wiser to get close to Manticore? That's something they would never expect, they would have moved their search further away and you could live right under their noses. Just because Penny lived with you all those years doesn't mean you two share the same thought process."

"I think I would know more about what goes on in my sister's mind than you do," came Zack's dark reply. Uh oh, he was getting quiet. The big explosion would come soon if we didn't stop this.

"You know, I might know more about her than either of you," I said as calmly as possible. Perhaps if I made it sound logical, then Zack would calm down a little. "After all, Tinga, you don't know Penny at all. Zack, she might have hid herself from you. I know you don't intend for it to be that way, but the easiest way to get along with you, and most likely live with you, is if we just shut up and agree with everything you say. That doesn't necessarily mean that we actually agree, just that we don't want to fight. How do you know that Penny wasn't stringing you along for years, agreeing with everything you said just so she could avoid any confrontation with you? That would be extremely wise on her part, and she struck me as an intelligent person when I met her. As much as I know you'll hate to hear it, what happened last night might have happened with or without her heat cycle. That's how close we were getting. I got to know quite a bit about her personality while I was with her, and I don't think she's the type to just run out of the country when the red flag goes up. She would stick around and fight it out, otherwise I don't think she'd be able to live with herself."

Ok, logical wasn't the way to go with Zack, that much was obvious from the way his nostrils were flaring. "How dare you tell me that you think you know Penny better than I do. I lived with her for nine years, doing everything with her. I should know her better than anyone else!"

I was going to shoot something back when Tinga grabbed my arm and motioned for me to follow her. Zack didn't even look at us as we walked out into the hallway. "You're not going to get through to him, that's just the way he is. If you want to get to Penny, you're going to have to do it yourself."

"Sure, and I'll set up an X5 reunion in Manticore while I'm at it. You know, that just might happen anyway! This is ridiculous, if I run off he's just going to follow me."

Tinga rolled her eyes. "Oh please, you underestimate the power of a woman. I'll keep him distracted."

I couldn't help but feel a little nervous at that. "What do you mean by 'the power of a woman'? You're not going to..."

Her eyes widened in shock. "No! What would make you think that? No, I'm just going to start a fight with him. A woman knows how to keep a man going in one of those when it suits her purpose, and in this case, it does. I can't believe what I did."

"Neither one of us blames you. So, how am I supposed to get out during this fight?"

"I'll make sure it happens later tonight, when you're already in bed. I'll start the fight, and you'll just sneak out the window while he's yelling. He won't even know you're gone until morning."

She let out a slightly surprised squeak when I threw my arms around her and squeezed her tightly. Sometimes my sisters could be the most brilliant people in the world.

That plan had gone even smoother than I'd expected it to. I got out without a hitch, and Tinga called me later after Zack was asleep to let me know he didn't suspect a thing. I just wished there was a way that she could have come along with me. All of my sisters are the best source of comfort I have, not to mention how good they can be in a situation like this. Well Tinga was out, and Jondy probably would have been forced to move as well. Hey, what day is it? Syl might be out of heat by now. Today was the 20th, it had to be over by now. Penny's would be ending soon, so Syl had to be done. Hopefully she could come with Krit, that would make things a whole lot easier. I was in such a hurry that I nearly dropped my cell phone while I was dialing.

"Hello?"

"Syl, are you out of heat?"

"Zane? Where have you been? We figured you'd be at your place, but when we went to check we couldn't find you. Where are you?"

"I'm on my way to Albuquerque, where are you guys?"

"Tulsa. Do you need our help?"

"Yeah, more than you'll ever know. I don't want to tell you over the phone, but could you get to Albuquerque as soon as possible? Bring Krit with you, we have a major problem on our hands."

*~* Penny

I groaned as I rolled over onto my back. Why was I so cold? There was the faint burning in my middle that reminded me of my heat cycle, but it was much weaker. It seemed I was going back out of heat, but it didn't seem like I had been in it that long. I tried to do the math in my head. I'd gone into heat the night of the 18th, slept with Zane and ran off on the 19th, and ran into Brin at about noon that day. I glanced up at the bars of my tiny cell. I was at the edge of the building, so sunlight was trickling in. It seemed to be the middle of the day, but that was impossible. That would either mean that I'd only been out a few minutes and was already back in Manticore, or I had been out for twenty-four hours. The last one seemed more likely. They must have kept me drugged, otherwise I would have woken up a long time ago.

"She's awake," came a rather blank voice from outside the door. Damn, I didn't want to have a confrontation with anybody just yet. I felt like crap; my heat cycle was ending, my head hurt from getting knocked out, and I was freezing my ass off. That's not the way I like to receive company. My headache got about ten times worse when I saw who my visitor was.

"None of you has ever truly impressed me, but you've changed that. You were right next to me, in heat no less, and you had me completely fooled. You offered to ride with me to get to where you wanted to go. I don't think any of the others would have dared to do that." Lydecker almost had a fatherly look as he sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the room.

I just smirked up at him and moved up the sit on the coverless bed that was in the cell. "Am I supposed to feel honored? I don't work to impress you anymore."

That only seemed to amuse him. He smiled slightly and tilted his head to the side. "You've lived with Zack for too long, you've developed some of his attitude. I never would have expected that from you."

"I've done a lot of things that you wouldn't have expected. Yesterday was just the tip of the iceberg." I think my voice gave away something more than I intended, his eyes flashed with an almost triumphant look.

"You've been having a very bad couple of days, haven't you? We've been busy while you were asleep. The gynecologist says that you lost your virginity in the last forty-eight hours, and DNA tests with semen we found proves it was an X5. We're doing further testing to find out who it was, but it would be easier if you would just tell us."

"I don't plan on making anything easy for you," I spat. It disgusted me that a doctor had been violating my body, even if it was a medical procedure. Having anyone touching me intimately while I was unconscious wasn't an appealing thought.

"That's your choice, but what's easier on us will be easier on you in the long run. We want your reprogramming to go as smoothly as possible." He didn't even give me time to process that comment, he was out the door before another word could be said. A horrible chill flooded through me. That was exactly the effect he wanted his words to have on me, he wanted to scare me. I couldn't let him win, I had to beat it. I could make it through the reprogramming, I was almost sure of it. It was just the thought that Zack might not even know I was here. How would I stand a chance of getting out without him? When I heard the door open again, I thought that it was Lydecker coming back in. If only.

"Enjoying your stay? I tried to make the room as comfortable as possible," Brin said snidely as she came in and took the chair that Lydecker had vacated.

I smiled sweetly at her. "Of course. You were so kind as to remove the blankets from the bed completely, and not even set me on it while I was unconscious. I greatly appreciate everything you've done for me." The sarcasm in my voice had a bite to it, but it did nothing more than elicit a sneer from her.

"You're lucky that Lydecker's been having a long few days. Ever since Zack slipped up to Max where half of you were, he's been busy going out and finding all of you. He hasn't been very successful other than catching you, and it's starting to run him ragged. If he wasn't stretched so thin, he would have recognized you."

"How? It's not like he's seen me in the last nine years. He has no clue what I look like."

Now Brin took on a rather condescending smile. "That's where you're wrong. He told one of the officers earlier that he had been giving a ride to someone who looked a lot like Caroline Philips. Do you even know who she is?"

"How am I supposed to know?" I growled. I just wanted her to go away and leave me alone. If they were going to try and reprogram me, then I had to be rested up and ready to fight it.

"I'll make it easy on you. She was his wife. Philips was her maiden name. You see, Lydecker did a rather selfish thing when he created us. He wanted to keep his wife alive in some way, so he got permission to do a little something special with two female X5s in the making. He figured he'd be training us for most of our lives, so he wanted to do something to make that time more enjoyable. He slightly configured the DNA of one X5 to have Caroline's eyes, then he made one to have her features. You're the second one. Your face and body shape are complete replicas of his wife's. The only differences are that she was a darker brunette and had large brown eyes. If he wasn't so rattled after all the time he'd spent without sleep, he would have realized who you were. You look too much like Caroline to be anything but the X5 he made to look like her."

That was news to me. It was kind of disgusting to think of what he might have done if he had known I was in heat at the time. Would he have tried to relive some memory of being with his wife? Just the thought made me shudder. Brin was watching my face almost like a predator watches its prey. She had been trying to initiate that exact idea in my mind about Lydecker, I just couldn't let her know that it had worked.

"Do I have something on my face?" I asked almost politely. That irked her a little, but I got the feeling she wasn't done yet. So much for getting some rest.

*~* Zane

The problem with going into a large city like Albuquerque is that there's no way to know where to start. I didn't know if I should start with the hotels, the malls, the clubs, or even the local pharmacies. Where would she go? Was she even here? I had come straight into town on the interstate, and the first place I had pulled off next to was a mall. After about fifteen minutes of wandering through it, I decided she probably wasn't in there. The problem was where to start looking next.

"Well, why not? It can't be any less possible than the other places around here," I grumbled to myself as I crossed the street to enter the nearest hotel. There was a teenage boy standing behind a counter, chewing gum and flipping through what appeared to be a Playboy magazine. I had to bang the bell on the counter a few times and wave my hand in front of his face before he noticed me. "Has a young woman checked in lately?"

The kid's eyes widened. "You haven't heard? No one's checked in here since yesterday. There was a military thing going on, they dragged out someone who I guess was trying to hide here."

I could feel my stomach dropping. "Was it a young woman? Just short of five feet, curly brown hair, big green eyes, very pretty?"

"Yeah, I think so. She was in one hell of a hurry when she got in here. As soon as I gave her the key to her room, she took off down the hall. It wasn't a minute later before I heard some yelling, something about a soldier, then they dragged her out of here. They told me she was a fugitive, and ever since that got out nobody's come in here. I think they're scared it will happen again."

So they do have Penny. Thank God Syl and Krit are coming. I had no sooner thought that as I was walking out to my truck before someone grabbed my shoulder. I couldn't help but grin with relief as Syl's bright face stared up into mine.

"What's going on, little brother?"

I gave her a quick hug and slapped Krit on the back. "It's kind of a long story, I'll tell you on the way, but for now all you need to know is that we're going to Manticore."

*~* Penny

Brin seemed to not want me to get any sleep. That was the only reason I could come up with for why she was talking so much. I know it's not because she enjoys my company. "I figured it was my duty as your sister to warn you about your reprogramming. I know what you're thinking, I can see it in your eyes. You think you'll find a way to beat it, somehow retain part of the person you've become in the outside world. Just to let you know, it isn't going to happen. I thought the exact same thing, but it wasn't until afterwards that I realized how futile it was. What's the point of fighting the inevitable? All they're going to do is revert you back to what you really are, a soldier. In the end, you'll thank them for it. You'll be happy to be rid of all those weaknesses you developed while you were out of training. You'll even reach the point where you'll beg to be taught everything you've missed."

"Like hell I will," I replied angrily. "They've changed you already, so you don't see the foolishness in your words. The traits that we picked up when we were out of here only make us stronger. What do you think you're likely to fight harder for: something that you've been forced to do or something like that really means a great deal to you? Personally, I would pick the second one. We'll take Zack for example. I would fight like hell to keep him safe, but if I was ordered to fight for something else that my heart wasn't a part of, then it would be an entirely different story. I'd fight, but without the same vigor."

"You'd lose either way. You're a weakling, not even training with Manticore will change that."

"I've got my strengths."

Brin rolled her eyes. "I doubt that."

A knock on the door pulled her attention away from me for a moment. "X5-826 is to be brought for rehabilitation immediately."

I couldn't help but laugh. "Rehabilitation? That's what they're calling it? Why don't they just be honest and call it brainwashing?"

Brin clenched her jaw and walked over to me to grab me roughly by the arm. "Call it whatever you wish, but I can guarantee that you're not going to enjoy your time in that room."

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Author's Note: Now I'm going to be devoting my typing time to yet another history report. It's the last one of the year, so after that I shouldn't have anything to worry about other than my semester exams, but those are a couple months away. I'm hoping to update this sometime next week or the week after that, so don't be surprised if I don't update for a while. :( I hate history.