Hidden Danger Crouching Cat.
By Shannon Hearn
The characters of Dark Angel are owned by Twentieth Century Fox Television and Cameron Eglee productions. All other characters are of my creation.
Hannah make a connection with the young drowning victim that she saved. The origin of Rain's decision to accept her now place in the Tribe of the Alive. And Rain, Jim and Melfina's having a bad day going from bad to worse.
***
Chapter 8: Bodies in the pool, Hotels, Vampires, and Heat.
Hannah sat in the metal and plastic chair next to the young female Cherub whose innocence warmed her heart as the noonday sun warmed her skin. The human ally of her people named Logan was taking a camera to photography the young girls face so that he could run it against his system of missing persons.
The Human Asha who saw the part of the dive uniform which she and her people had taken from this human cherub's attackers. This pointed to the idea that there was a group of renegade humans similar to the ones that had taken her from the mating pit, which she was sold to after she had been caught in that fishing net. Now it was her job to make sure that the same fate did not happen again to another innocent. Her brethren felt the same way.
Max came into the room and tapped her on the shoulder. "I'll take over Hannah." She said to Hannah with understanding that the water based Transgenic's strength was weakening as she spent more time out of her fluid environment.
Hannah turned around and signed to Max "I understand, do you know where I can find water to go in?"
Max replied "Yes, Asha and Dr. Shankar found some water for you. It's a physical therapy tank. It might not be much but it should keep you wet until Asha can find a way to keep you out of the water for a longer period of time." The look between the two Transgenics was simple, but understandable. This was a battle that the both of them knew had to be fought and must be won for all. This child needed all the help she would need.
***
The trip to the physical therapy tank for Hannah was the longest walk for her; thoughts of that child went through her mind. The way that the child held onto her made her think of what this young one's parents would have been like. Hannah had never known her parents; all that she knew of them was the sections of the songs that she sang. A simple tune which she had had kept reciting all of her life. "The stars are the eyes of children yet to be born and have been. They watch over us to make sure that there is joy in the world." The lines of that song rang in her mind as she grew up in the tanks at Manticore. As she got into the tank of water, she looked at Killer's shirt. A person that if she had met other than those fishermen would have let her free instead of selling her for a mating dance and several glasses full of yellow liquid which made them act more impolite towards the females till a large male human threw them out of the building. The thought of being trapped like that for the rest of her life made her think about the time when she was young when she looked through the top of the caged tank she lived in and saw those two young land based versions of her kind. The simple signing that they were all able to communicate with allowed them to talk about each others worlds. Hannah looked into Shadow's face while they were at the beach and saw the young transgenic that told her about the stories of seeing the Moon from the outside through the trees. The concept of living structures capable of being so tall that they blotted out the sky amazed her. In return, Hannah had sung stories to her two friends about the sea, the moon and the stars being the eyes of children like them who played with joy and where no one yelled at them for being curious about the world around them. This was a dream that they all shared, of freedom. Now Hannah looked at Shadow with his brown hair and his blue eyes wondering where was the dark-skinned, green-eyed girl that had journeyed with him through the vents those nights when they were all children.
"Where is Jade?" Hannah bellowed in siren speak. Shadow turned around, looked at her with worry in his eyes, and replied.
"I do not know. I lost track of her during the fire. I am searching for her because we were breeding partners and I love her dearly."
Hannah soon realized that the fire had displaced many of their kind, but for Shadow, it was personal. He was missing a part of his family. Hannah understood how he felt, if anything happened to Richard, a part of her would be lost. This though of sadness and hope followed her as she went to sleep underwater.
***
Logan Cale was using his sources to scan through sector passes to identify the young girl who was sitting at Mercy General Hospital on his computer. Sorting through all the children with the facial recognition software would take time to go through the sheer number of faces in the system. The night was soon fading into day and Logan decided to use his laptop to search over the air tank valve that Sharky had torn off from two of the divers that had attempted to finish off the job of drowning the girl. The serial numbers of the tank valve had come up through the requisition log for the police marine patrol division. Once a powerful and noble organization, it was now wrought with corruption and under the table black-market dealings. The person that was the cause of this corruption was Eyes Only's old adversary, Pierpont Lempkin.
Now Logan had to figure out why Lempkin and his associates wanted this little girl dead. Considering the amount of drugs in the girl's system pointed to the fact they wanted this girl not to put up a fight and be so disorientated that if anyone found her that they would think that she was delirious. The cement was probably the only way that getting rid of her would ensure that no one found the remains. Logan was lucky that he had allies among the Transgenic community because if it was not for Hannah and the other aquatics, the young girl would have been dumped at some hospital and she would have been sooner or later found by Lempkin's men. Now with Shadow, Max and Asha involved the girl would have a fighting chance. Now all he had to worry about is telling what he knew to Matt Sung.
***
The phone rang like a possessed entity demanding someone to answer its summons. Detective Matt Sung of the Seattle Police Department was one of the few honest cops left on the force and reportedly being tied to Eyes Only tended to make his life hell, but making the world a better place had had its advantages. He knew that his children would be in a better world because of it. When Matt picked up the phone in his office he heard a voice that he never thought he hear so soon, Logan Cale.
"Hey Matt, it Logan."
"Logan, what is going on? I thought that ever since we took down the head of the West coast Italian Mafia you would lay low."
"I thought I would. Listen, have there been any mysterious missing person reports been filed in the last forty-eight hours? I have a case that me and Max are working on and it involves a missing person."
"Logan, why don't you contact the main authorities, I mean if it is a missing person then why is Max involved." Matt said with growing interest in what Logan was digging into.
"Max and a few of her friends found a girl a day or so ago. And given the way that Max acts around when people mess with children given her past."
"I understand, I know that Max was part of some anti-technological cult when she was a child. So why do you want me to look into a simple missing person's case."
"It is due to the fact that the friends that Max were with shall I say don't want the authorities to know that they were there."
"Oh, I understand. So why are you involved?"
"It is due to the fact the girl that they found someone had weighed her down with cement and dumped her off the shore where Max and her friends were going swimming at when they found her. I'm doing a search of the girl through the sector ID system but it going to take a while, but I wanted to warn you that there is a group of crooked sector cops and they are trying to find this girl."
"Logan... Do you know where you are keeping this girl?"
"Yes, with Max, a pack of juvenile delinquent vampires, a neurotic werewolf, a mermaid, a field medic, a sorceress, a Amazon warrior, a black-marketer and a friend of mine."
"Your joking about the Neurotic werewolf part aren't you?"
"Nope. Lets just say Joshua's size make him imposing enough to give anyone a coronary heart attack if he sneezes."
"So, in other words you have her in a safe place. So Logan you want me to dig into finding out if about if anyone has filed a missing person's report about this individual."
"That pretty much sums it up Matt. I'll try my sources with EO to see what he has on his end." There was a pause as a beep was heard on the other end of the line. "Matt. I just got a hit, the girl's name Kyla Maria Turner. I'll check back with you later there are some sources that I have to check first before I get back to you. Bye." With that, Logan said goodbye to Matt Sung as the line went dead. This was going to be one hell of a case ahead.
***
Young Jane Doe looked around her environment and saw the mermaid that had saved her life. Everything up to her being in that concrete and underwater was a blank. She was new to the world, these people that had saved her life were different and they had a need to aid her. The blond woman with the cat-like features was working on some large belt-like thing with water and plastic tubing on it. Jane looked over at a bathtub and saw the woman that had saved her life get out of it and stand up and have the belt put onto her and two tubes inserted into her gills. Jane just got up out of the bed she was in and walked on over to the Mermaid and reached out her hand to feel the hand of the person that had saved her. The soft feel of the skin was comforting to her. It was a dream, and she was safe from harm.
"Hey you. It looks like sleepy head is awake." Said the woman with the neck length blond hair as she turned away from the Mermaid whom she was working to fit the belt to. "Hannah, it looks like your little friend here wants to say "Hi" to you."
The young girl looked down at her bear feet and started making fists with her toes. The feeling of tension flowed like a churning winter ocean. Hannah got out of the bathtub, slowly letting the water slowly drip onto the floor. The child took a step back and looked at Hannah's face, it was not of fear but it was of curiosity about her gills. The young girl reached out her hand and touched one of Hannah's gills. The light fluttering back and forth as they processed the oxygen from the water. Hannah just let the girl hold her hand on the gills and she just moved her hand down and caressed the child's hands and she bent down to hug her. Hannah just let the girl run her hands through her black hair. Asha looked at the two of them and saw a connection. Humanity did not mind what was in your DNA; it was what was in your heart.
The phone rang vigorously, flashing and hopping on the bed stand. Asha walked over and sat down on the bed in the hotel room they were staying in. Shadow had used his connections at the hotel to get a discount for the room they were staying in, but it was under the terms that Hannah was his sister and they needed a place to stay for a few nights until their place was fumigated. The address that was given about the place they "lived" at happened to be Max's pal Joshua. From the feeling that Logan gave off is that the guy was over seven feet tall, an artist, ate Mac and cheese as if it was going out of style. What had caught Asha's attention was the idea that what Logan mentioned about the guy was that his face was one only his father would love. She would owe Josh Sandeman a huge favor. However, about Hannah, she felt like that that girl was more human, due to something about her that would summon her compassion out of anyone. This was a girl whose fear and material love brought about life itself to those who needed it.
She picked the phone and listed to Logan voice come over the line.
"Asha, Its Logan. So how are your roommates doing?" Logan said over phone line.
"They are doing fine. Hannah is talking to her little Cherub and the two of them are starting to communicate. Shadow is in the lobby of the hotel doing his audit material for the night." Asha said looking over into the large Jacuzzi bathtub with the sea nymph sitting on the floor with her re-breather belt on giggling with the girl telling some joke in-between both of them in some dolphin dialect. Asha could not understand the language but the look of joy on the girl's face was priceless.
"Hannah and Jane are getting along great. And they are telling jokes."
"Say what..." Were the words gasped out of his mouth.
"You heard me, Logan. Hannah and Jane are telling jokes in the bathroom."
"Whoa, so getting through to this girl will be a bit hard."
"No. It's going to be easy, at least she is talking to someone. But from what that little girl has been through, she has blocked out a bulk of what has happened to her."
"Well Jane has a name, got a pen."
"Yeah Logan, just a moment," Asha said rifling through the drawer and pulling out the stationary and one of the pens for the hotel. "Shoot."
"Her name is Kyla Maria Turner. She and her folks were listed missing three days ago. From the data I have been able to pull up, it looks like Pierpont Lempkin is using another batch of corrupt sector cops to do his bidding. Her father worked for Internal affairs and from his case load someone has been rewriting his reports about who he has been investigating."
"So Kyla here probably saw something or heard something she shouldn't have and she and her parents got turned into fish food."
"Yeah, but it looks like Hannah and her bunch interrupted the process and we have her, but I think we have to contact Aspen and see if she can get a hold of Hannah's pod and see if there have been any other bodies that might be with Davy Jones locker."
"So, sit on the Nymph and the kid until you can find the bodies of this kids parents."
"That pretty much summed it up Asha, but I would suggest that we work slowly with this Kyla till she feels safe enough to open up about what she witnessed."
"Okay, so I should keep calling her Jane from now on till she is willing to open up about what had happened to her."
"Yes, but I have a few sources to check out with Eyes Only and with some of Max's friends. Talk with you soon."
"Bye Logan." Asha said looking towards the phone in her hand as she pondered about what she and Max's people had gotten themselves into. Trouble was brewing and she was in a hotel room with a mermaid and kid who were getting along better with each other than she and Max. Life really sucked.
***
Life really sucked for Jim MacGuyver. He was setting in his third class block of the junior high he went to. Give him a screwdriver, duct tape, shoelaces and a paperclip, he could create a cruise control for a car, but English grammar was driving him nuts. Deanna Jones who was sitting in front of him with her dark hair and sea blue eyes was putting the organization of the language into strict and operational order. For an Ordinary Human Jim was seriously curious in the way that she processed the data before them.
"Hey Jimbo," Deanna said to him as she bent over to Jim to ask him a question. "What is it with you, you ace every class except English grammar."
"Deanna, take your idea of perfection and shove it. I'm trying my best here, so just guide me through it and I'll see if I can help you on that history test." Jim said combing his hand through his hair with concern about making a trade with this girl.
"Okay, I'll take the deal Jim but you have to come to the study session at my house." Deanna said putting the blackmail clamp, she held over him into position. He was an X-series and concealing what he was from the world was a high priority to him. This was one of those times that he had to talk to Max on how she handled situations like this. Blackmail just became a problem. He had to raise his grades up in the class. If there were anyway to solve this problem, he would have to do it in his terms. Heck, he only needed only four hours of sleep a night and he was making a "D". Well when he got home today at four, maybe reading over the text for the thirtieths time might make some sense of how to attack how to break a sentence up into its individualistic components. It was war, and he was going to win it. Now how do you explain a girl wanted to come over and ask you out on a study session without worrying about your secret identity being exposed would be one question that he would not like to ask Shadow when he got home.
***
Melfina was riding her bike around with her fellow bike messengers Sky and Herbal through sector three. For the young Transgenic, Herbal's mysticism and Sky's toughness reminded her of Aspen and Alec when they were there loose personae selves. Since Aspen had found that aquatic, Transgenic and that near drowning victim things had flipped around suddenly. Now they had to hide someone from pursuers with intensions similar to the infiltrators that had destroyed command. Melfina started to have a more worried look on her face as Sky rolled up behind her on his bike. Mel rather liked the guy, well since he looked kind of like an X-series. It was almost nostalgic and comforting to her with their baldheads.
"Sheesh, I want to lick your necks." Mel said not realizing that Herbal had over heard her.
"You like bald men?" He said with his thick Rastafarian accent.
The shock of what she just said aloud had shocked her. Oh Shit she was going into heat, or was she? She had to say something that would divert their attention from her. "I had a crush on this kid when I was at school. He had a bald head and it was very attractive to me."
"Oh, so you like bald men, because of this guy?" Sky said realizing that his lack of hair would land this girl in bed with him. However, the way Mel acted around them was if she was not so much dreaming of having sex with them, but it was as if she was homesick for this bald kid in her life.
"Yeah, I did." Then Mel went quiet. "He died a few months ago in a fire. I saw him die right before me." Mel had to stop her bike to wipe the tears coming from her eyes.
"Sorry, Gurl." Herbal said knowing now that Melfina had witnessed someone die before her had thrown him back to his old criminal gang banging days where several months ago an old prison buddy of his was killed. This friend of his was killed when some vigilant weapon tester at Cale Industries used a modified hover drone with a facial recognition system to track down recently released felons and blow them away. Eyes Only had persuaded these rebel researchers and had the company they worked for take responsibility for the damages done. Melfina and him had something in common; they had both lost a friend close to them. His by murdering executives wanting to expand their profit margins and her with her friend dying in a fire.
As the three of them made a corner to the private residence to drop off the eight boxes of collectors china, they ran into a very large Steelhead cyborg. What scared the shit out of Herbal and Sky was the fact that the muscles on this guy were as thick as the arms of the two of them combined along with their leg muscles thrown in as well. The metal blades on his arms just added to his imposing appearance.
Herbal and Sky were about to make a run in the opposite direction when the Steelhead reached out and grabbed Herbal by the shirt and picked him off the ground.
"Eddie says, no more pushing of your goods her Herbal Thought. This is our domain." The words were like a harpoon through Herbal's throat. Then the Steelhead felt a hard sharp electrical jolt hit him in his kidneys.
"Get away from him you overgrown jerk." Came the words from below his eye level. It took him a moment to realize it was this small Asian girl with metal studs on her bicycle gloves punching him in the side. Her red zip up sweat jacket and dark blue leggings made her kind of look like a cheap rip-off of Lady Chimera. He reached over to shove her away with his large hand. However, as his hand went out to shove her down, she blurred out of the way by a few inches. The moment it took her to blur out of the way she had shoved her size six and a half foot right into his testicles with enough force to make him drop Herbal Thought to the ground.
"Uh, Mel kicking the guy in the nuts might not be the best thing to do. Considering that this guy is three times larger than you and has the muscles to match." Said Sky looking at the Steelhead's dazed look of "What the..." on the large cyborg's face. In the time, it took Sky to think the words "We have to get out of here." Melfina had grabbed the Steelhead's free arm that he had attempted to use to knock her away and spun him around kicking the guy behind the kneecap with the same leg she had used to knock him in the nuts and drop the seven foot plus cyborg to the ground. Herbal just watched as Mel proceeded to slam the landed hand of the cyborg into the meaty thigh near his crotch then proceeded to kick the individual in the forehead.
"Uh, Mel when were you going to mention that you were a ninja." Sky just said looking at Mel's small frame.
"I'm a student of the Marshal art Slate Yakazi, and trust me, I went light on him."
"What do you mean, you went light on him." Herbal said looking at the nearly castrated Steelhead that lay before them.
"He's still breathing."
"Oh..." Was the only phrase that came out of the two male bike messengers.
"So, what was that about? How does one get a cybernetically enhanced human pissed at them?" Melfina said looking at the now unconscious Steelhead that lay on the ground. Then it hit her, it was the same guy that Max had warned her about the day she started her bike messenger job. He had run for his life when Max had given the code to attack signal. After She, Herbal, and Sky had to make their deliveries, she would have to learn what had caused this Steelhead to come after Herbal. Right now calling the paramedics in to tend to this guy was their priority concern as she pulled out her cell phone and called EMS.
***
Jim was walking home from school through the sector point as he noticed Melfina on her bike ride up next to him.
"Hey Jim, how was school today." Mel said looking at her fellow Transgenic.
"Well Mel, I have to deal with the fact that I currently have a "D" in English grammar and I have a study session with Deanna tonight. Otherwise the day has been one big continuous mess." Said Jim as he looked into Melfina's brown eyes wondering if she had the same rough day she did.
"I'm sorry, I just learned that one of my coworkers happens to be a marijuana dealer and some Steelhead wanted to kick his ass due to the fact that h is undercutting his competition by going fully organic."
"In other words they are going organic and the completion is not liking it so they sent an enforcer to solve the problem."
"Yeah that pretty much sums it up. Jim." Melfina said to Jim as she acted as a big sister over the events that had happened to them.
Melfina looked over at the street they were on, looking back on her day. Shadow and Aspen were due back at their place tonight . Mel wanted Rain to come over so that they could spend some time together and enjoy the company. Rain may have been a human once, but now she possessed the genetic characteristics of a Transgenic. Shadow liked a challenge of dealing with genetics mutations in different life forms. Since Shadow and Aspen had found Gill Girl and the near drowning victim, Most of the older X-series had switched into full combat mode. Melfina just wanted to have someone to talk to who could understand how she was feeling. Melfina knew that Jim was going no need help with his homework, well thins would be better when they got this girl located somewhere safe. Moreover, Aspen and Shadow got off their guard duty assignment tonight from the hotel. Melfina was afraid of some of her more Transgenic features which belonged to her Transgenic DNA would speak out aloud. Melfina had to use her electrostatic organ on that Steelhead cyborg earlier in the day to save Herbal's and Sky's life. She had used her powered to sneak into the physical neurostaic interface of the cyborg's implants and just shut down a bulk of the shut down the muscle chargers that enhanced a person's strength by five fold. With the implants off Mel had to simply twist, kick, slide and fall so that the person was on the ground. Fear of letting Aspen and Jim know about her little physical deformity scared the shit out of her. She had a set of fully functioning gills behind her ears and by the veins of her neck.
Taking up a stand with Jim they moved from one sector to another, Mel probably would like to spend some time with Hannah in learning to use her gills. The feeling of uneasiness was about to get more interesting in the next few hours.
***
Rain was off from her waitress job at the restaurant she worked at. Meeting with Melfina later that night would be great end for her day from dealing with snotty kids and spelt ketchup for the past five hours. Rain had come to terms with the entire "Tribe of the Alive" thing and was stating to move on with her life without Marrow. Once seeing the face of evil and noticing that it made offers that looked appealing but were lies shrouded in illusion. Rain and the rest of Marrow's original followers wanted to be better than the other around them. Stronger, faster, no weaknesses or so they thought. Marrow had them addicted to his "Perfect blood," it wasn't until Max, one of the Tribe of the Alive had found her and wanted to just protect her people from harm had she and the others learned the truth. Rain and the rest of the T-Bloods were to be Marrow's cannon fodder in a war he saw coming between Humans and the Engineered. Max and her friend Logan had knocked some sense into her read about the Tribe of the Alive in that a good chunk of them just wanted to live their lives in peace and what Marrow had done to them was a crime not just to humanity, but was a crime against life itself. Rain and the others had spent weeks getting used to the withdraw effects of Marrow's blood on their systems. It wasn't until a few weeks later Rain and the others had learned the true price that they had paid. They were no longer human. Marrow's gene-splicing had taken their bodies and moved them between being that of a human to that of being half human and half transgenic. The news just left her numb for several weeks. Not Human any more... It was not the only blow she and the others had to take in their new transformed lives as Transgenically transformed Vampires. Their offspring would also not be human, they would be fully transgenic or hybrids like themselves. Max was trying to protect her people and Rain and the other T-Bloods were now part of her people.
Rain had taken the news and gotten drunk at a bar. The raw alcohol burned her throat and sharpened the images she had gone through. She was a monster. Rain had drifted bar to bar with whatever money she had in her pocket or steal from passing people on the street with her enhanced reflexes. That was until she wound up at some bar called Crash, crying, mourning the loss of her humanity. Then in a drunken state she saw this Nubian woman come over to the table and look at her, then saw the ill done barcode on the back of her neck. The words that she heard this woman say were: "Hey Boo, one of your siesta's here needs some help." Rain's eyes were closed around the bottle of beer in her hands; all she heard next was her name being said.
The realm of monsters who were chasing after her, black helicopters, black sedans, Men in Black carrying very large guns. Werewolves and an Amazon in Black leather haunted her dreams. When Rain awoke the next morning, she saw the same black Nubian from the night before wearing blue underwear, tank top and a pink bathrobe standing in a kitchenette area. The smell of something being cooked drew Rain off the couch she found herself on. Her head was pounding from all the alcohol she had drank, demanding to work its way out of her system.
Rain looked down as she pulled the quilted blanket off of her to reveal that her shoes, pants, leather jacket and fishnet shirt she wore were gone. All she had on was her underwear and the yellowed t-shirt. Rain was very scared but something the Nubian woman said calmed her fears down.
"Ya' know for one of Boo's fellow Manticore pals, you have slept more than she does in a week."
The words shot right on through her, she knew what Rain was or close to what Rain was. She knew about Manticore and acted as if it was a normal thing to her.
"You know what I am, and you are not afraid." Rain said attempting to figure out who this Boo was. Maybe Boo was one of Max's people and was concerned about the mess she had gotten herself into walking around the city drunk.
"Yes sugar. Original Cindy knows that you are a bit scared but you looked like you needed the sleep. What were your dreams like, peaceful or nightmares?" Cindy had said moving towards the couch Rain was sitting on to sit down.
"I was being chased, by Monsters, Men in Black and this really pissed Amazon with a sword." Rain said running her hands through her mess of hair. Cindy just looked at her and understood. For over an hour Rain was comforted by Cindy as she talked about her Friend Boo and the life she lived fighting to make the world a better place. How Cindy had discovered what her friend was, about "Dog-boy" Joshua and his talent for painting, and about pain in the Butt Alec who hand made Boo's life hell in her quest to cure herself from a bug Manticore had given her to kill her boyfriend due to him knowing too much about the organization.
Rain just sat there listening to Cindy go on as she ate the mix of fried eggs and grits from the bowl before her. Trying to figure out how to word how she had been turned into a monster and just wanted to be human. When Rain attempted to say her question one way, it came out as another. "I just want to be a normal human being."
Cindy spoke up with some basic words of advice, "Boo feels the same way. She just takes it a day at a time knowing she will not be human, but all she tries is to be a girl just for a little while. This little bit of reality check of what she is and what she wants to be is based on a simple idea called "Getting a Life"." As those words came out of Cindy's mouth as the door to the apartment opened and Max walked into the room. Rain was shocked and scared at the same time. "Hey Boo, sleeping beauty here is awake and we have had a conversation." Cindy said looking over to Max,
"Hey Rain, Doctor Shankar called when you got upset and ran out of her office when she gave you the news of the damage of what Marrow had done to you." Max said moving over to the end of the couch where Rain lay.
"I know Max, I was just scared of what had happened to me. I know that you are using all of your resources to protect your..." Rain paused and rephrased that, "Our people from harm. I'm sorry." Rain continued looking down into the now empty bowl before her.
"I understand what you are going through, you're not sure what world you belong to now." Max said looking into the young hybrid. "I face the same battle everyday."
Max faced the same battle of what she was to the world everyday. Rain was in sheer awe before Max, so Rain had slid off the couch and onto the floor and kneeled before the Transgenic before her.
"I give myself over to you Max, I am your servant." Rain said looking up Max begging for answers.
"Rain get off the floor," Max said bending down and helping Rain up. "I don't want you to be my servant. You are a member of my community now. I am your equal, so no praying to me, Okay." Max said to Rain looking her in the eye. With that Rain saw and experience something in her short life she had never fully felt. The love of friendship and being truly alive, Rain was human, she had never lost it, and it just had been buried under the surface by lies and illusions. From that point forward, Rain swore to herself to make sure that her life was worth living.
When Rain had gotten the job as a waitress, she felt that her life was moving forward again. Then when Melfina came into her life with all the phobias about being around ordinary humans, Rain felt that her insecurities were like anyone else's. Honest.
Meeting with Melfina was like connecting into a deeper layer of reality. Not sugar coated, but honest that life went on, people needed friends and sometimes even a shoulder to cry on. There were levels of Hell and levels of Heaven, considering which the levels the world was now in since the pulse. Rain and Melfina lived in different suburbs that had been merged together by fate and circumstances. Rain had started to realize that she was her own master and Max had shown her that. Getting a job and putting Marrow behind her was her first step of learning what her path in life was to be. Melfina had shown her that peoples lives could be turned to dog food and with effort and friendship from those with a caring shoulder to offer.
Melfina and her had their secrets and had tough lives up to that point. Rain with her abusive parents and Mel with no emotional attachments other than being turned into a soldier. Somehow, the like wounds they shared allowed the two of them to heal. Friendship was key to their existence, Rain trading her knowledge of the street and it perils, Melfina trading her knowledge about how to harness Rain's new powers to their fullest.
As Rain walked up the steps of the apartment building which Melfina and several other of her X-series roommates lived in. She got the distinct feeling that Mel was steetish about some of her unique capabilities. Rain liked the idea of changing to a more "human" appearance with her current wardrobe of straightforward gray jeans and a simple yellow sweater. Gone was her Gothic style painted Geisha lipstick pattern, it was replaced with a light brown corner to corner style along with a bulk of the braids in her hair. Rain had looked in the mirror one day after the Max and Cindy speech and saw too much of Marrow's idolized woman stair back at her. She had taken an old rag and a lot of soap and facial cleanser to wash away the old image of what she was till she hit a face that was her true and untouched.
Rain looked at herself for an hour until she decided on what a T-Blood should look like. Keep the two tattoo dots above her nose, a couple of braids to make up some of the bangs around her face and let the rest of her hair lay flat keeping her red head band. The scar on her forehead that was part of her transformation had a bit more of a blue tint to it and she and the others had decided to make that the sign of their clan now. No longer was Rain, the Human Rain Terrell of Seattle. She was Rain Terriza of the Transgenic T-Blood clan Lighting Scar. Her purpose in life was to live it to it fullest.
Melfina had awakened something in her, that the world had not gone Darwin, but it had decided to take humanity and shake it up some. Rain was part of a new branch of humanity, not the alive, but the enhanced. Learning about life with her new powers also meant that were new evils to face. Melfina had able to lean on her to deal with the guilt of loosing her two closest childhood friends the night of the fire. Hanging around Mel transformed Rain into more of an adult and focus upon what she really needed in life. To know that the sun would raise another day and that the problems of the world seemed small compared to that miracle each day. When Rain knocked on the door to the apartment and saw little Jim come to the door. She was startled by the fact that Manticore made Transgenics as young as Jim. Hell, he was probably the new improved model that could jump a forty-foot fence in a single bound and kick ass in half the time.
"Hey Rain, Mel's in." Said the young four foot five Transgenic whose blond hair reminded her of Melfina's ushered her into the sparse apartment.
"So, Jim..." Rain said trying to put the words in the right order looking around the three-bedroom apartment and towards the main living area where a pile of school books were spread around. One of the books that she noticed open was an English grammar textbook which was slimmed down by orders of the PTA to make the page bulk lighter for students to carry in their book bags prior to the pulse. The text jumped out at her as memories of Rain's childhood came back vigorously, compared to her childhood, Mel's life was a nightmare incarnate. "How's school going?" The words were as false as she could make them without sounding corny.
"Well class is going great, except that my skills in English grammar need to be tweaked." Jim said looking down at his paperwork on the living room table with the multiple breakdowns of the sentences into their individual structures, of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The jumbled mess on the papers showed that Jim was working his ass off trying to figure out the mess in the books. Rain just looked down and understood the problems that were coming for the young Transgenic in blending into Ordinary society.
"Yeah, I understand. I hope that you can get through it Okay. So um, what has Mel been up to for the past few days? Other than doing her job at Jam Pony?" Rain said looking around at the current environment that she was in with curiosity. It was almost like the abandoned church that she and the other T-Bloods lived in just on a bit smaller scale.
"Well let's see. Mel has been going to work and handling a few errands for Joshua by dropping off his art at some gallery that likes his work. Shadow and Aspen have been helping Max deal with a mess that another Transgenic wound up with and they have been pulling guard duty at some hotel for the past few nights."
"So, Max is on another rescue mission for our kind." Rain just paused for a moment rolling her eyes around. "Right." At that moment, Melfina came out of her room from hacking on the Internet.
"Mel..." Rain said going over to Melfina whose look on her face was a mixture of worry and caring.
"Hi, Rain." Melfina said coming out of her room fully and into the main living area. "So, what has been happening. Any word about your missing car?" The words were like a warning and of caution.
"Well I have put out the usual keep your eyes open for the car to the other T-Bloods." Rain said looking towards Mel.
"I've been checking the police records and profiles on their computer system. Bad News." Melfina said looking at Rain knowing that if it "The car has been found along with a dead body." The pause of fear ripped through Rain's face of terror. Was it Marrow killing another one of his followers, or was it something worse. "The barcode was cut off the back of the neck Rain. White found them first."
"Oh, God..." The words out of Rain's mouth were of pure terror. The name that was the most feared among her people. Ames White, the mutant hunter extraordinaire, whose only goal in life was to exterminate the Transgenic species from the face of the planet.
"I know Rain, but right now we have to worry about if White has gotten wise about our kind. I have been using my sources on the Net to track down if the registration has been traced back to anyone." Mel said knowing that her powers to Tele-presence were going to be pushed towards their limits with this case. Logan made it look so easy when he did it.
"Murdered, Oh, God... If this White character is nasty as you say. Survival just might be a matter of time before we have to stop him or he kills us off." The words would have future meaning at a later date, but it exlimpafied the problem that the Transgenic community was experiencing with mutant hunters on the street.
"Rain, calm down. I have done what I have done to cover the tracks and your friends in the records system to shift the address away from you guys. Okay, so put this through your mind. This is an order to lay low. Okay. This is what Max is concerned about every day and night. This is why she sought out your Asses in the first place. Lay low and go to ground." Melfina said putting her hands on Rain's shoulders and looking the young T-Blood that was her friend in the eyes.
"Mel..." Rain said looking into the young X6's face as tears flowed like rampant streams, "How do you know that you are being hunted everyday. How do you cope with this nightmare of there being hunters after you everyday of your life?"
"I just know that the battle has to be won. White will go down when he slips up. When it happens, he will pay for the deaths that he has committed by his hands." Melfina said with certainty in her voice pointing out the strength of her desire to live free without being hunted like some rabid animal in the streets. The words were functioned to act as a warning and as a guide for the future when the light shown on their faces in freedom. "Hey, I'll make some hot coco till we can talk to Shadow and Aspen when they come in. Okay."
"Okay, I just feel numb from the concept that the person had the back of their neck cut off like some sick proof of purchase."
"It's probably his sick way of keeping tally on his score of how many his has killed." That was when the water started to hiss and Shadow and Aspen came through the door. As things on the Transgenic front started to heat up. The things on the criminal front started to develop into more lethal taste of what was to come for them all.
***
Chapter 9: Pierpoint Lempkin, bizarre stories, and whodunits.
Lempkin hears from his men, more of Kyla's origins, Rain and Mel at Iconographic, and more Matt Sung.
Buzz me on any questions, comments, and story ideas? I need comments about what you all think of my story.
Oh, Spoilers:
The members of the Yahoo.com group "DA-VS3" is working on a virtual season 3 for Dark Angel. Come on down to and check us out. We're looking for writers, proofreaders and artists to help us out to make the site worth visiting. See you for the next few chapters, and comments are appreciated for both DA 3 and HDCC.