Disclaimer: I have finally come to accept that I do not now, nor will I ever own Dark Angel…It took many lonely nights and several medications for withdrawal before I was able to do so. So please do not chide me for it. I do own Justin, Dalianna, her family and all her X-siblings, but I'm more than willing to share. If you'd like to use them, please just ask. Thank you.
A/N: Hey guys! Thanks a million and one for the reviews. I would especially like to thank Beth (All Grown Up) for letting me know that setting was on. I had no clue! First fanfic and all…so I'm pretty good at computers, I think I can figure out how to fix it. If it's not fixed by the time the next chapter is posted, can somebody leave me a hint as to how to do it? Thanks again.
Many thanks and Muchas gracias:
All Grown Up; Huntress k; M/L Only; Winking Tiger; Sha-Sha64; agmgdafan; barcode-babe-210; Dark Nternal; darkangel-relly; Katriona and ringo-gurl07
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Chapter 14
Oh Brother…
Max and Dali crept down the hill across the street to the side of the house. They walked the perimeter, checking to make sure that the house was still and silent, and then returned to their original position under the side windows. Dali glanced up at the three windows on the second story.
"Which one is his?" Max whispered to her.
"I don't know," Dali replied.
"What do you mean you don't know? Weren't you just watching your Aunt Bitch—I mean Brenda—with the lights?"
Dali couldn't help the smile that tugged at her lips at Max's not-so-innocent slip-up. "Yeah, but that was from the front. I couldn't tell what light was on, I just knew there was one on, and she turned it off."
"So how do we figure this out?"
Dali looked around, as if trying to find something, and then looked up at the windows.
"Kneel down," she commanded.
"What?"
"Kneel down." Max did so, but not before giving Dali a wary look. The young transgenic gave a tiny hop and landed on Max's shoulders with great precision. She stood balancing.
"You're heavier than you look," Max grunted trying desperately to climb to her feet.
Dali stomped on her right shoulder. "It's muscles mass," she replied defiantly. "Now get me closer to the window so I can take a peek."
"You're gonna be takin more than a peek if you do that again," Max muttered under her breath. But she edged right up to the side of the house, and Dali pulled herself up until her face could see through the window.
"Nope, not it. Must be a guestroom. Next one." Max sighed, and sidestepped a few feet to get to the next window. Dali was silent for a few moments.
What the hell is taking so long? Max thought. "Well?" she insisted, staggering a little.
"It's him," Dali whispered, glad Max couldn't see the tears that had gathered in her eyes. "He's here, and he's ok."
"Well, let's go get him then."
"It's not that easy," Dali replied hopping down, and landing gracefully on her feet. She sighed before continuing. "I've been having an attack of conscience the entire way here. I can't just pull him out of here based on a dream. As fickle as my aunt is, she's right. She is taking care of Dominic now. And I can't just come and pull him away from the life he's made here, and bring him to an unfamiliar place with people he doesn't know, where he's in danger all the time. I just can't. It wouldn't be fair." She looked away.
"But he won't be in danger. We'll be there taking care of him. You, me, Logan…and Alec," she said rolling her eyes. "Well, at least if you ask him he will. Something told you to come here. You wouldn't have had me drive clear across the country just for a one-time bad feeling. There's something else isn't there?"
Dali glanced over at her unsurely. "That's the second time I've had the dream. And it was the same kind of dream I had about Justin the night he was killed. I ignored it then, and look where it got me? I just couldn't ignore this one."
"Well, why didn't you say something the first time?" she asked impatiently.
Dali shrugged. "It happened when I fell asleep in the hospital closet with Alec." Max raised her eyebrows at that. "It's a long story. Anyways, we barely escaped White with our necks, and after that, I guess I just forgot about it with everything that was going on around Terminal City. In any case, the point is…"
"Yeah?"
Dali sighed again, "The point is, we have to talk to him. He'll know if something's wrong, and if there is, then we can take him. If not, well…we'll figure it out then."
"Ok, well, how are we going to get in the house?" Max asked her.
Dali pulled out a long metal tool that Max thought looked much like her old lock picker. "Got that taken care of." They both slipped into stealth mode, creeping along the side of the house, staying in the shadows until they reached the front door.
"I already don't like this," Max whispered.
"Why?" Dali asked. "We slip in, we talk to him, we slip out. We'll be in there for ten minutes at the most."
Max shook her head. "I just have a bad feeling. Let's hurry up so we can get out of here."
Dali slipped the lock pick into the metal lock on the door, and jimmied it for a few seconds before they heard a click and the door opened. They both snuck in, and closed the door softly behind them. Inside, the darkness didn't affect their eyesight, and they moved quickly and quietly. The first room they found themselves in was the living room. The walls were layered with flowery wallpaper, which peeled in several places over the years and donned pictures of the family throughout the ages. To the left of the living room was an old wooden staircase that led upstairs. Max followed Dali's lead, as she slithered slowly up the stairs. They were almost to the top when Max hit a creaky stair, and a loud groan filled the house. The noise would have been imperceptible to the normal ear, but the still silence and the dark of the house seemed to augment the disturbance. Almost immediately, a door opened, and light flooded the upstairs hallway.
"Who's there?" came a loud male voice. A middle-aged man with dark brown hair with traces of silver at the ears, and dressed in gray cotton pajamas stepped out into the hallway.
Dali and Max ducked into a doorway that ended up being the guest bedroom. They plastered themselves against the wall. The man stole out into the hallway, taking each step slowly, and looking around carefully. He walked right by Max and Dali's hiding space, albeit slowly.
I'm really, really sorry Uncle Jack, Dali thought, before leaping out behind him, and putting him in a sleeper hold. A few seconds later, he was out on the floor. Dali and Max lifted him quietly and put him on the bed in the guestroom. Aunt Brenda may have been a mean, evil, cruel cold-hearted witch, but Uncle Jack was never that way. Another reason I hate myself for having even dragged them into this…Quickly, they crossed the hall, and opened Dominic's bedroom door. After Max had followed her in, Dali closed the door behind her. They crossed over to the bed, looking at the lump under the blankets.
"Shorty?" Dali hissed, "Shorty, wake up, it's me." She reached out and pulled back the blankets, only to find a bunch of rolled up sheets and pillows. She backed up a step; a clear look of confusion crossed her face.
A split second later, she felt, rather than saw, Max fall beside her. Then she felt a blow against her back and she fell to the floor. A small, but strong hand pulled her shoulder to turn her over. Dali opened her eyes and through her blurred vision saw her little brother staring down at her. She sat up suddenly, causing a wave of dizziness to wash over her.
"Shorty?! What the hell are you doing?"
A look of realization and recognition crossed the young boy's face. "Dali?" he whispered. He threw his arms around her neck, causing her to fall back on the floor.
"Ow! Careful!" she hissed, tears filling her eyes, and not just from the bump on her head. "What are you doing here?" he asked her.
"I came to check up on you," she answered, rubbing the back of her head. "What did you hit me with anyway?"
"Oh, that…" he smiled sheepishly and held up a tennis racket.
"You hit me over the head with your tennis racket?!"
He grinned and shrugged at her. Max stirred on the floor, and slowly stood up, also rubbing the back of her head.
"Dali, what the hell was that?" Dominic looked over, as if seeing her for the first time, and smiled slyly.
"Hi," he said sliding over to her, and hooking his arm around her waist. "My name is Dominic, but my friends call me Shorty, Dom, Nick and just about anything else that comes to mind. What would you like to call me?" he said wiggling his eyebrows at her.
She almost laughed, if it hadn't been for the bump on her head, and raised an eyebrow at Dali.
"Once a playa, always a playa," Dali muttered, "Max, this is my lil brother, Shorty. Shorty, this is Max."
"Well hi there, Max," he said, smiling up at her, never taking his arm from her waist.
"Hiya, cutie," she replied with a smile of her own, before resting her arm on his shoulders.
"Uh, Shorty, isn't there something you would like to say to Max?" she inquired.
He looked up at her with confusion. About…? he thought.
"The tennis racket, you dolt!" Dali's mind screamed at him. He had grown accustomed to Dali's voice entering his mind. She had been doing it for years, only at close proximity of course, but for him, it was normal. Just something else he had to grow up with. "Oh, yeah," he smiled, and looked down at the floor. "Sorry about the tennis racket."
Max tousled his hair, and let him know that it was ok. Dali and Dominic sat on the bed, and Max perched herself backwards on Dominic's desk chair.
"So how are you?" Dali asked her little brother.
"I'm ok, I guess."
"You guess?" she prompted.
"Well, it's ok here. I like my school, the kids are ok…the teachers are ok…the food is ok…the work is—"
"Let me guess," Dali cut him off, "ok?"
He smiled and nodded. Then the smile left his face. "But it's not the same without you…or Mom and Dad." A little tear dropped from his eye, and he brushed it away angrily, embarrassed at having let himself become so emotional. He stood up and turned to smile at her. "But you know how it is, I'm dealin. And the ladies just can't seem to keep their hands off me."
Dali and Max both couldn't help but laugh at that. "I'll bet they can't," Dali replied. "Especially with you being so tall and all," she added with extra emphasis on the 'tall'.
"Hey," he said, acting offended, "was that a short joke?"
"Why, did it go over your head?" Dali joked.
Max laughed. She had never seen Dali as happy and carefree as she looked right then.
"You know I'm just playin with you," she told him, as she pulled him over to sit with her on the bed. "So Dom, has anything strange been happening around here?"
A dark look passed over his face. "You dreamed about me didn't you?"
Max widened her eyes in surprise. "How did you know?" she asked before Dali could even begin denying it.
"Because I did it purposely," he replied. "I made myself go into Dali's dreams."
"Why?" Dali questioned, not even bothering to try to understand how he could.
"To let you know what's going on. Is anything strange happening around here, you ask? Well, it seemed like nothing at first, but strange men have been coming to the house."
"Strange men?" Max wondered. "Strange how?"
"I don't know. They look like they could be policemen. Not sector policemen, they don't wear those kind of uniforms. But maybe detectives or something, and they're always talking to Aunt Brenda."
"About what?" Dali inquired.
"I don't know. I could only hear snippets of the conversation. But that's not all. She's also been talking on the phone to this same guy."
"How do you know it's the same guy?" Max asked.
"Because I can hear them," he answered slowly, as if explaining a simple idea to a young child. "But I don't know what they talk about either. I've heard snippets of conversation, but it never makes any sense. They're always talking in code."
Dali knitted her eyebrows together. "Ok, Dom, this is really important, can you remember anything you heard? Anything at all?"
He looked towards the ceiling, seemingly thinking hard. "Well, every time they talk, they don't say goodbye, instead they say 'Fe'nos tol'." Max and Dali caught each other's eyes. "And last time," he continued, "they said something about making a pickup. And some numbers…452 and 927? What does that mean?"
A feeling of dread passed through Dali like a bolt of electricity, and her breath caught in her throat making it hard for her to breathe. White's on his way here. Before the thought could even register with her, she heard an icy voice behind her.
"It means you're in very big trouble young man," White said evenly to the young boy. Dali whipped around to look him in the face, his cold gaze causing a shiver to run down her spine, but she kept her cool.
"Oh, no, here we go again," she said in a bored voice. She turned and peeked behind him to the TAC team officers at his side. "Are one of you gonna use those guns on me, because if I have to sit here and listen to one more second of his condescending, patronizing, dictatorial, egomaniacal bullcrap, I'm gonna have to use it on myself."
White looked as though he might want to say something, but Dali's Aunt Brenda showed up at his side suddenly. He smiled at her. "The Kormans have always been a priceless benefit to the Conclave. Sister Brenda…I believe you have earned that long overdue promotion." Brenda simply smiled at him and nodded.
Dali's thoughts were racing through her head faster than NASCAR at the Indy 500. Wait, Kormans! Does that mean my family has been involved with the Conclave the entire time? Were my parents? But what does that mean? Did they always know about me? Why would they keep me?
"Of course they always knew, foolish girl," her aunt's voice broke into her thoughts. "Mind-reading has been bred in our family's line for hundreds of years. They knew from the moment Mark saw you, and they kept you anyway. They ran from the Conclave, the cowards that they were. They denied their destiny, their future…our future. They wasted all their time on you."
Dali could do nothing but shake her head, in surprise. Max who had been silent the entire time stood, preparing to launch herself at White.
"Ah, ah, ah," he said, grabbing Dominic's arm. "Do it, and the boy dies a happy death knowing that yours is the last face he'll ever see." Max stood stonily for a second, before sitting back down. Brenda went to grab for Dominic.
"It's ok, Brother White. I'll take care of the boy," she offered.
He turned toward her. "You wouldn't be starting to develop feelings for him now would you?" She looked up at him in honest surprise. "We agreed, the boy is expendable. Nothing is worth the price of having 452 and 927 in my possession." She looked a little skeptical, but in the end, nodded quickly without further question. "Brenda, your vacation is here at last," White announce to her.
She looked at him confused. "Vacation?" she wondered. The next thing any of them knew, she was laid out on the ground with a dart in the side of her neck. White turned back to Dali and Max. He took one of the small tranquilizer pistols from the holster of one of the TAC officers next to him, and raised it at Dali. "Say good-night, 927."
"NO!" Dominic's voice cut in, and the distraction was all Max needed to blur into him, the force knocking him into the two officers behind him. The guns went off, pelting 2 darts into White's neck. He stood up and pulled them out angrily. The pain of the two darts not affecting him, but the sluggishness from the medicine inside them quickly overtaking his body. He took one step slowly, and then another before falling to his knees, and finally face down on the floor. The two TAC team officers stood up quickly, struggling to reload their guns. Max and Dali quickly rendered them unconscious before turning back to Dominic.
"Do I have to say 'I told you so'?" Dali asked Max. Max didn't answer her, but instead grabbed Dominic's backpack and told him to quickly pack some stuff, which he did, and then she swooped him up, backpack and all, and opened the window, before jumping out of it, and landing in the soft snow below. They stood up, brushing off flakes, and Dali landed on her feet beside them. "Let's blaze," she said quickly, and all three of them took off down the street towards Max's bike.
Post: Hey guys, thanks again for reviewing, I'm gonna try to fix it so that anyone who wants to can leave a review. Thanks again
Angie731
