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: Sorry it took longer than I planned to get this chapter posted. It's been mostly done for a while, but as the chapter title indicates, this is heavy on past action. Since present action depends largely on what came before (especially in this story), I needed to make sure I knew exactly where the story was headed before I posted this chapter. I think I've got it all worked out now and, to be honest, there's really only one scene left to write. The rest is all editing… lots and lots of editing.
Additionally, sorry for the gore in the previous chapter. I'd initially put in an extra warning about content in an author's note, but then I realized doing that would clue in the reader to the fact that something bad was going to happen, and I hate doing that. In the end, I figured the fact that I rated the story R should pretty much be all the warning I really need. I feel that the chapter had to be a bit over the top in order to send Alec where I need him to go, and that's all the justification I'll give for eviscerating Max (and Keri).
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A Stroll Down Memory LaneAlec gazed vacantly out the cracked windshield of his beaten-up Mustang, once again indulging in a moment of doubt. There's gotta be another way, he argued silently, trying to figure another method of self-support. If Max were alive, she'd beat the living…
"Stop it," he growled at himself, cutting off that avenue of thought. "Max is dead, along with most everyone else. The handful of us that are left are done, we're splitting up. Recent events have demonstrated quite clearly that there may be only one thing I excel at, and I need money."
But not like this, his conscience pleaded in a voice eerily reminiscent of a certain X5 he'd once loved. Alec allowed himself a few moments to consider other alternatives, from being a busboy at some restaurant, to being a concert pianist, to living out his dream as the shortstop for the Seattle Mariners.
"Most anything that would get me the kind of money I want would bring with it the scrutiny of living in the public eye," he reminded himself. "And the stuff that would allow me to remain safely anonymous wouldn't let me live the lifestyle I want."
So this is about money? Alec wanted to deny his conscience's question, but the simple act of glancing at his car's fuel gauge forced him to admit the truth.
"I don't even have enough cash to keep my car gassed up," he muttered miserably. "I could be an All-Star athlete in any professional sport, I could be a virtuoso with pretty much any musical instrument in the world, I could even do something as simple as sell my story to a publisher. But all of that would bring attention, and attention would get me killed. This is bullshit. I need money. Now."
He opened the door and climbed out, taking the briefest moment to survey his surroundings, searching for threats as he went over his plan one last time. He'd taken his time setting up this meeting, knowing that the slightest misstep could lead to the uncomfortable situation of having Russian hitmen shooting at him. That was not the way he preferred to start his day.
Not to mention it'd be a shame to waste a month and a half of planning, he reminded himself. When the dust finally settled after the end of their war, its bloody aftermath, and the weeklong drinking bender Alec had undertaken to drown the pain, he'd come to the shocking realization that he would need to get a job. After a weekend of thought and more drinking, he'd decided that the best starting point was to find a crooked politician. There were plenty of them about, so that first step in employment turned out to be the easiest. His target was one Washington State Congressman Jonathan K. Reece, Republican, married father of two children – Jonathan Junior, 11, and Kathryn, 7. Reece had amassed enough cash from bribes, kickbacks, and the three embezzlement schemes that Alec had actually uncovered (though he suspected two others) that the Congressman literally had enough money to single-handedly fund Seattle for a fiscal quarter.
Given the vast magnitude of Reece's graft, Alec found it easy to enact his plan. He first posed as a local college student so he could get a position as an intern on Reece's staff. Alec wanted to take his time in this phase of his scheme, but the fact that it was an unpaid position forced him to advance his timetable. After only three weeks he asked his bookie, Sasha Primokov, to pass a message up the chain to Sergei Ivanov, the de facto head of the Russian mob in Seattle. Alec kept his request suitably vague, and was told a week later to show up here and now.
And now it's show time. He walked slowly, keeping his hands visible at all times, knowing that he was likely in the crosshairs of at least one sentry, probably two. He wasn't surprised by anything that followed – he reached the side door of Sergei's waterfront warehouse, was frisked by a guard, walked in, was frisked again, and then was led up to the second floor, where Sergei apparently had an office. Inside sat Sergei Ivanov, a man who'd always reminded Alec of John Malkovich in Rounders. He'd seen him many times, but this would be the first time he had a chance to speak to him. And if this is gonna work, I'd better remember to be on my best behavior.
"I hear you have some information for me," Sergei said in a flat, uninterested tone of voice that indicated his doubts that Alec had anything to say that would get him much money. Alec noted that the Russian also lacked the thick accent most of his thugs had; he could only assume that Sergei had come to the States as a child.
"Yeah."
"And?" the Russian prompted, waving his hand impatiently.
"And I'd like to cover the topic of compensation before I say anything," Alec replied, doing his best to keep his voice devoid of the arrogance Max always accused him of when he was in these types of situations. Sergei only had two guards in the room – one on Alec's right, just out of arm's reach, and one on the opposite side of the room, standing next to the largest safe Alec had ever seen outside of a bank – so the Russian was more than vulnerable to his transgenic guest, despite the fact that Alec was unarmed. Ivanov seemed confident, though, and that ill-advised overconfidence made part of Alec want to break a leg or two just on principle. But he maintained his composure.
"Compensation…" Sergei repeated. "You afraid you won't be paid?"
"I have no doubt that you'd be willing to pay me what you think the information is worth, but money isn't what I'm after," Alec answered.
"Oh really?" Sergei asked, either unwilling or unable to hide the fact that he was intrigued. "So what is it you want?"
"I want a reference," Alec responded without hesitation. "Someone you've done a lot of business with has been talking to the Feds, and this individual is getting a Get Out of Jail Free card for giving you up. I'm offering to take care of the problem for you in exchange for a reference," Alec explained. "I'm new to the area, and I'm looking to break into the field of problem-solving. It's a tough market to crack when you don't know anyone important."
"I have no idea what you mean – 'problem-solving,' " the Russian replied with a smile, obviously playing to the audience he seemed to suspect was listening in on the conversation. "I have no idea what you mean – 'take care of the problem for me.' " Alec couldn't blame him for his wariness – he'd expected the problem, but there was really no way around it. He wasn't likely to get the gangster to believe he wasn't wearing a wire, so he would just have to speak plainly.
"I understand your suspicion, so I'll make it easy for you," Alec offered. "A certain individual is gonna talk. I am willing to murder this person for you, thus allowing you to keep your hands clean. I'm not interested in payment, either, for the information or my services. All I would like is your agreement to connect me with someone who might be looking for a new employee with my skills. That's it, and that's all."
Sergei's smile broadened. "Who is this individual?"
"Do we have a deal?"
"You got balls, coming in here making demands of me," Sergei sighed.
"I'm not demanding anything," Alec responded simply. "I'm only offering an item of information for sale and suggesting a method of valuation for said information."
"Balls of steel," Sergei chuckled. "I like you." He reclined until his back was almost parallel to the floor, forcing Alec to wonder how Sergei's chair didn't tip backward. "Is deal. But three conditions. First, you have to tell me who the individual is, of course. Second, you have to do it publicly, so there's less chance of police involvement. As part of that, I also expect an opportunity to see the body, so no blowing this person up and leaving no identifiable body parts. My cousin had the cops pull that fake assassination shit on him in Moscow. Third, you have to take care of a second problem, as well. You know, as an demonstration of good faith on your part."
"Fine," Alec agreed, also having expected that possibility. Sergei was famously paranoid about police entrapment, which was the primary reason he was still a free man. He knew the police might send in an undercover officer to make the deal and set up a hit that could somehow be faked, but that officer would never actually be authorized to go through with a second hit just to make his ruse that much more convincing.
"Good," Sergei replied with a thunderous clap of his hands. "Is settled, then." Alec suddenly noticed that Sergei's accent was curiously becoming thicker with every passing moment. Almost like he's stepping into some kind of internalized Russian mobster role as he prepares to do business. Weird.
"There's one of my guards who's been looking at my girlfriend, Natalie, in a way that I find less than professional," Sergei explained. "I want this guard killed."
"Tell me who, and I'll take care of it." Sergei opened the drawer in front of him and pulled out a .38 caliber revolver. He tossed it to Alec and pointed to the man standing to the transgenic's right.
"Is him," Sergei said. In one fluid motion, Alec leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger, only to find the chamber empty. The guard's eyes had gone wide, and he took a step back, not seeming to realize that Sergei had given Alec an unloaded weapon.
"Needed to make sure you weren't gonna just shoot me as soon as I gave you a pistol," Sergei said apologetically. He produced a second .38 and, like the previous one, tossed it to Alec. "That one is loaded," Sergei said unnecessarily; the weight of the weapon had immediately let Alec know the second revolver's chamber held at least one round, maybe two.
The guard didn't even have enough time to draw in a breath before Alec put a bullet through his left eye, showering a mist of blood, skull fragments, and brain matter all over the wall.
"You a quick-draw, like Billy the Kid or something," Sergei commented with a smile, completely indifferent to the fact that half the head of one of his guards was now sprayed across the corner of his office.
Alec wiped down both pistols and indulged in a smile of his own. "No, I'm way faster than Billy the Kid," he bragged, knowing he would only ingratiate himself more with such a claim.
"So who's the son of a bitch talking to the Feds?"
"Congressman Reece," Alec answered as he placed the .38's on the desk in front of the Russian gangster. "I'm an intern at his office downtown, and I've seen the Feds around late at night. Heard them talking, and Reece is giving up everything. Mentioned you when he was talking about an off-shore super-tanker pier or something."
"You do it tonight?" Sergei asked, suddenly anxious. Alec heard the gangster's heart rate increase and his breaths become shorter and more frequent. He'd definitely chosen the right project to mention.
"He's probably gone home by now," Alec answered. "Can't make it public for you that way."
"Doesn't matter, I guess. Take him out tonight. The family, too."
"I'm not killing the family," Alec retorted firmly, his tone brooking no argument on the matter. "The deal was for Reece, not the family."
"It make you feel bad, killing a woman and kids?"
"It makes me feel unprofessional," Alec countered, sidestepping a question he only could have answered in the affirmative. "Reece went looking for this when he started talking. The family, as far as I know, hasn't done anything. I don't have any personal rules against killing women and children if it serves a purpose, but this would be sloppy."
"This would serve a purpose," Sergei objected coolly, calculatedly. He'd obviously had this conversation before. Alec knew the gangster was about to start his spiel about how it would frighten the next dozen guys who thought they could flip on him, so the transgenic decided to beat him to the punch.
"I suppose," Alec admitted. "It would send the message that doing business with you meant not only getting killed, but also getting your family taken out. It would send the message that anyone who worked with the Feds should pull his family off the street and go into protective custody immediately, thus depriving you of your chance to deal with the situation." Alec could see that Sergei wasn't used to having his orders defied, but he thought a little logic would do him some good. As long as a little logic doesn't get me shot. I'm so not in the mood…
"Fine," Sergei relented. "Kill the Congressman, leave the family alive. Or kill them, if you prefer. I don't care. Come back tomorrow and I'll introduce you to the Old Man."
"The old man?"
"He runs a business north of the city," Sergei explained. "A… how you say… clearinghouse for your line of work. Pay a visit to the Congressman tonight, and I'll get you a job tomorrow."
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"Hey," Alec muttered weakly to the gravestone at his feet. It read simply, 'Max Guevarra.' No date of birth or death, no inspirational epitaph, no reference to loved ones. She would have wanted it that way, I guess, Alec decided. By the time she died, most of her friends were already gone. Joshua, Original Cindy, Sketchy, Zack… Nope, if we buried her someplace public, the only ones who would have come are twisted bastards who would've dug her up for the sole purpose of defiling her corpse. Just a simple stone that has enough markings for the last of us to be able to find her, to ask her for guidance. Or forgiveness. That's all she'd ever want. No medals, no memorials. Just peace…
"I need to do something," Alec said, his eyes directed away from Max's grave and toward the bright green leaves of a nearby oak; five years after her death, and he was still unnerved by the thought of meeting her reproachful stare. "I know I promised never to kill like this," he admitted. "I know I promised I would limit myself to work, never to make it personal. And I even know you would have kicked my ass for doing that much, for what I do for a living," he added.
"And maybe you'd have been right, too. I don't know, Max, it's not like I have any other marketable skills; it's not like I have the luxury of doing anything that might attract too much attention. I am what I am, and I've accepted that. I was very careful to make sure I never got to like it, though," he assured the cold, uninterested gravestone. "You told me that's what you thought might have happened with Ben… that somewhere along the way he discovered he liked being superior, that he liked the feeling killing ordinaries gave him, that he used his Blue Lady as an excuse to do what he'd secretly wanted to do all along. No, Max… I've kept a healthy sense of self-loathing that would make you proud. But not anymore, at least not for awhile."
Alec shrugged helplessly, trying not to think about the absurdity of speaking to a corpse, hoping for a feeling of forgiveness or approval from the one person who had never given him either when she felt he didn't deserve it, who had always been honest, whether he liked it or not. She was more than a friend to me – so much more – even though she never let me be more than a friend to her.
"I need to let go of the reins for awhile," he explained. "You probably know all about what happened to Keri, and you know what I'm gonna do and why I'm gonna do it. I just… I don't know; I just wanted to let you know, I guess. It's bad enough that I'm gonna let myself be the man that Lydecker always wanted me to be; I couldn't also feel like I was being sneaky about it, like I was trying to keep it all from you. So this is your heads-up, Max. I only hope that when I die, if there is something that comes after, that you forgive me for what I'm about to do."
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He picked the perfect time to strike, Alec fumed as he struggled to focus on the task at hand. Every time he thought about White, he was reminded of why he needed to hunt him down and kill him. Thinking about that prompted unwelcome memories of Max, of the ruin White had made of her body, of the bloodbath White had left for him to find. He fought to regain control of the involuntary reaction of his nervous system to the all-too-familiar memory that made every Manticore-inflicted trauma pale in comparison. He focused on his heart rate, consciously ordering it to slow; he took a deep breath, willing his breathing to settle into a more relaxed rhythm; he wiped the sweat from his brow and lied to himself, silently making the case that it was simply too hot in his hotel room.
He picked the perfect time to strike, Alec thought again, trying to get his mind to stay on task, to allow some modicum of logic and deductive reasoning to complement his primal fury. I don't believe anyone could be that lucky, so the only logical conclusion is that he had Max under surveillance. He attacked her at home, so whether or not he followed her everywhere she went, he was at least watching her apartment. I guess that's as good a starting point as any.
Alec went over to Max's home, ignoring the yellow police tape ordering him to stay out. The doorframe had been shattered by White's entry, but the cops had secured the door with a latch and a padlock. Alec made short work of picking that and then, only after a Herculean effort, willed himself through the doorway. The heavy scent of blood had grown stale, practically gagging the transgenic as he cursed the advantage of heightened olfactory senses. He averted his eyes from the familiar surroundings as much as he could, hoping that might help him pretend the now brown and caked blood splatter belonged to some random, unfortunate stranger.
He made his way over to the window – the one where a small piece of gray tissue, once spongy but now resembling dried-up clay, was held fast to the frame by a large spot of blood. Alec took another deep breath, trying to steel his resolve, but he felt the room start to spin. He realized immediately that there was no way he would be able to fight off the sudden wave of nausea, so he simply dashed to the bathroom, barely managing to reach the toilet before he regurgitated the sour-smelling, partially digested bourbon and cheese-fries he'd had the night before. It wasn't until several minutes of dry heaves later that the transgenic felt capable of standing and walking back into the living room. He wiped down the bowl and flushed away the evidence that anyone had been there, and then went back to work.
The apartment had three windows, all along the west side of the building. Alec smiled as he remembered Max explaining how she'd purposely selected an apartment with no east-facing windows; on the rare occasions she actually fell asleep, she hated sunlight streaming in and waking her prematurely.
Okay, so if I were White, I'd want a vantage point that allowed me to look through all three windows at once, Alec decided, pushing away thoughts of his lost friend. He'd have to see as much of the place as possible if he were going to make sure that she was alone before he attacked. Alec pulled a small telescope from his pocket and began to scan the skyline spread out before him. A quick estimate told him he was looking at thousands of windows that might fit his initial criterion. Okay, time to trim the field a bit…. He'd have to be close, Alec decided as he mentally crossed out the buildings that were more than five blocks away. After all, he couldn't be sure he'd have much time to get the job done. The last thing he needed was to waste valuable seconds just getting here.
The transgenic continued to scan the surroundings, deciding that he could also eliminate the three office buildings that were in his five-block radius. He wouldn't want to be watching from someplace where he might be noticed. So I'm looking at apartment buildings and hotels… No, I'm only looking at hotels, Alec concluded, deciding to play a hunch. The last thing White needs is attention, and that's what he might get in an apartment building. There's always the chance of some nosy neighbor taking an interest in him, or simply noticing something unusual about him. Hotels, by their very nature, are impersonal. People almost go out of their way not to notice each other. Taking his time, scanning far more carefully, Alec picked out five hotels that fit all of his criteria.
Just one of those five, Alec decided, feeling a strange calm descend upon him. I can't imagine he's still there, but someone will remember him, someone will point me in the right direction. He won't get away this time.
To be continued……………………………………