Disclaimer: Dark Angel isn't mine, but Kay and Paige are. That works for me.
Black Ice
By Be Boring
Chapter 7: Blackout
After a restless night of tossing and turning without getting any sleep whatsoever, Kay found herself bouncing on the balls of her feet outside Logan's house, waiting for Max to leave. She was already running late, but thankfully Logan had been on the computer the entire time Kay was standing outside, which was around a half hour. She hoped he had been on earlier, but even so it didn't look like he'd found much. When Max finally gave Logan a kiss goodbye and walked out to her motorcycle, Kay rushed into the house and stood by the entrance to the living room, watching him work. It took him nearly a minute to realize she was standing there, and he nearly fell out of his chair in shock. "I hate it when you guys do that," he grumbled, taking a deep breath and leaning back in his chair.
"Have you found out anything else?"
He shook his head. "There's not much left that I can find out for the moment. It's not like asking around for a male normal-looking transgenic that has light brown hair is going to narrow it down much. We don't even know if he's X series or psy-ops, and you don't even know how tall he is. For now I can't do much more than wait around for Matt to find a match for the fingerprints."
"How do you know he found fingerprints at all?"
"He would have called me if he hadn't. Since I haven't heard from him, I have to assume that he's working on finding a match. I've been keeping track of any brownouts in Matt's area. They've been pretty frequent lately, and they're starting to pop up in other sectors, but I think he should be able to get the job done today. Hopefully by the end of the day we'll have a name."
Kay sat down on the couch, fiddling impatiently with the bracelet Ben had given her so long ago. She didn't really know why she wore it anymore, but it had become habit to put it on in the morning. "You and Max seem to be doing well. Have you thought at all about getting married?"
"Well, we take it one day at a time, so we haven't exactly talked about our future. Besides, we don't know if it will be legal. Max is a known X5, just because they're not being grouped together and killed doesn't mean they've been given the right to marry. I don't think having the title is so important, frankly. I was married before and it didn't end up being worth much. We can still have a family someday without being married. It's just like Jondy, she's pregnant right now and she's not married to Alec. As long as I'm with Max, I really don't care if the world sees us as married or not." By the time he had finished, Logan was surprised he had said so much. Did he say that last part to convince Kay, or himself?
"As long as you guys are happy together. Is everyone else as happy?" She had to hold her contempt out of the last question. Her anger for Zack, although it wasn't her main concern at the moment, hadn't faded. She still felt betrayal every time she thought about that heat cycle. Then she felt jealous of Jondy, because she was in love with the father of her baby. Kay's situation had been much less enjoyable.
"Yeah, surprisingly. As far as love goes, anyway. I know Joshua gets pretty lonely because he doesn't really have many friends in Terminal City. With Mole, Luke, and Dix dead, he doesn't have anyone else to really talk to every day. Max and Alec visit him sometimes, and I know Original Cindy makes a point of seeing him at least once a week, but I'm sure that's not enough for him. People are still leery of him and the other freaks though. It just makes them uncomfortable. At least Joshua can come over to see us once in a while without worrying about being arrested. As he puts it, he doesn't always have to stay in the basement anymore."
"You know, maybe I'll go see him after our search is over. I wasn't extremely close to him before, but I had some fun with him." Actually, now that she thought about it, he had been a pretty good friend to her between the times of the escape from Terminal City and the fight. She even remembered him offering to let her hit him when she was taking her frustration out on Sate. "Hey, do you ever know what happened to that telekinetic familiar that everybody thought was a psy-ops?"
"The one that you were on TV with along with the X2s?"
"Yeah."
"I never found out for sure, but I think he's dead. Max said she saw the X2s tearing him apart at the fight while he was holding me hostage. Don't ask, it's a long story. How well did you know the guy?"
"Not very well. I thought he was the leader of the psy-ops, just like everybody else, and he was a big part of my plan to get everyone out. We only talked a few times, then I found out what he was and I exposed him on live TV with the X2s. The last time I saw him, he was chained up in the basement of Foggle Towers."
Logan frowned, thinking back to that time. "Wasn't Mole the one who was so gung-ho about escaping before he died? How did you get involved in that?"
"Actually, Mole and I switched jobs. You see, I was planning on forcing the cult to start the Coming so I would have a better shot at getting Thula, but Mole wanted me to help him with the escape. I thought it would beneficial to my cause to have a lot of transgenics outside Terminal City. Because of how much I would have to focus on that part, I let Mole handle urging the cult into starting the Coming. I found out from White that the cult was waiting for all the children to survive the initiation in a year before they started it, and that the only one who had 'died' that year was Ray. Well, I knew that wasn't true, so I gave Mole the task of making sure they found out he was alive. He took the job in a whole different direction than I had intended, though. He found out that White was being kept in Terminal City, so he took both of them to the top of the Seattle Times Building. He was planning on throwing Ray off the top and then letting White go. When I found out what he was going to do, I got over there and climbed up so I was just below them and I caught Ray. I guess seeing Ray get dropped off the top of a building gave White some adrenaline, because he broke free and knocked Mole over the edge of the roof. Then I had to take care of the entire escape. I was really only supposed to get it started, Mole would handle the rest, but obviously that didn't happen."
"Wow, these past several months must have been pretty relaxing after everything you had going on then."
She smiled with him, but at the same time found herself thinking, Actually, compared to the past several months, back then was fun.
Zack watched Brin move around the kitchen, throwing together a late breakfast because of how much she had slept in. She hadn't offered him any explanation for why he had needed to cover her shifts for the rest of the day, and it had nearly been dark out by the time she came home. He had spent the rest of the evening fruitlessly trying to find out where she'd been, but she somehow managed to avoid answering him all night. Whatever she had been doing, it had left her with a lot to think about, because Zack knew she had lain awake on her back for most of the night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about things she refused to share with him. She had finally fallen asleep near dawn, which explained why she had slept in so late. Even though she was doing everything she normally did, he noticed that she seemed completely distracted. He thought his eggs were slightly burnt around the edges, but he didn't comment on it.
It wasn't until she spent nearly an hour of walking around with her shirt on backwards that he knew he would have to say something. "Are you ever going to tell me what happened last night? You missed Jondy's celebration party, so it must have been something big."
Brin looked up at him in surprise. "She had a party? How come no one told me?"
"Because you weren't there to tell. Now, tell me what you were doing last night." It was pretty obvious that wasn't a request, it was a command. He said every word slowly and carefully, as if to make sure that she couldn't misunderstand him.
Well, Ben never told me to keep quiet about him being back. As long as I don't make a big deal about it and get everyone involved, I don't see why I can't just tell Zack. "Ok, I know this is going to come as a shock, but I was with Ben."
Zack choked on his glass of orange juice, barely managing to keep it from spraying out of his mouth in shock. "Ben?"
Brin took a step back, well out of the firing range in case some juice managed to escape. "Yeah, he's staying at a hotel right now. I ran him over with my bike, otherwise I don't know if we would ever have found out about him being here. He obviously wasn't expecting to see me, but we talked for quite a while. The reason I was there so long was because he had a migraine, and for some reason he picked up this baby from somewhere and its crying was really hurting his head, so I stayed there to take care of the baby while he tried to sleep it off. We talked after he woke up. I guess White didn't manage to shoot him directly, he just blew off a good chunk of his skull. It took him a long time to heal, but the migraines must be some kind of side effect. He'll probably never get over them."
"How much does he know about everything that happened while he was gone?"
"Pretty much everything. He knows all about Kay, he even talked to her at the fight, and I told him about Jondy being pregnant. I don't think there's anything important that he's missing."
"No, but there's something I'm missing. If he was healthy enough to talk to Kay at the fight eight months ago, then why didn't he come back before now?" He figured he already knew the answer to that.
"He's killing again. I don't know how often, but he admitted he's doing it again."
Zack's brow furrowed as he grabbed his signature clipboard and the paper bag with his sandwich for lunch, set down his glass of orange juice, and they headed for the door. Apparently he would have to see Ben after work.
With the exception of people still occasionally congratulating Jondy, Max's day started out as normally as could be. Normal gave her a few sharp bip-bip-bips when she walked in late, Original Cindy gave her a quick play-by-play of her date last night with some extremely exotic Mexican woman, Alec made a bet with Sketchy that he could persuade Mrs. McKinson, a sex addict who often received several packages a day that Max had no desire to know the contents of, to give him a bigger tip than Sketchy, and Jondy and Brin started talking about the weather. One thing they never seemed to be able to adjust to was the amount of rain in Seattle. Brin always complained about it making her depressed. After this point, however, Max's day started to go downhill at a terrifying speed.
First, it wasn't just raining in Seattle, it was storming like it was the end of the world. Max found herself walking a lot of the time, otherwise the wind would knock her right over while she was on her bike. She lost two packages, her clipboard, and her favorite hat to the wind. By lunchtime, the storm was almost nothing compared to her mood. To make matters worse, her favorite outdoor diner was closed due to the storm. Her only choice was to sit around JamPony and beg food off anyone who was willing. She didn't get much more than a chip here and there until Zack took pity on her and ripped his sandwich in half for her. In return, though, she made a run for him while she was still on her lunch break, giving him an extra fifteen minutes of lunchtime. When she finally decided that today couldn't be more dismal, today decided to prove her wrong.
Max, Zack, Alec, and Original Cindy stuck together as they all made runs to the other side of town. They had deliberately taken packages for the industrial portion of town so they would have an excuse to dawdle in the buildings and stay out of the downpour outside. They were riding up the elevator in the Seattle Surveillance Tower, enjoying the fact that the elevator was located in a corner of the building and was made out of the same special glass as the outside of the building so they could watch the storm, when it happened. As though someone had flipped a switch, the elevator lurched to a sudden stop and the lights all went out. It wasn't just in their building either, but everything went dark for as far as they could see.
"Damn, I've never seen a brownout like this," Cindy commented wondrously, staring out at the pitch-black city, brightened only by the frequent flashes of lightning. Max hadn't seen anything like this in a long time. Usually just one or a small group of sectors went out, but there wasn't even a hint of a glow in the distance, and they were nearly fifty stories high. It looked like the entire city was out. It had been a few years since this had happened, which was shortly after she had first come to Seattle, and it had put the city out of commission for over three weeks. A power outage of this magnitude was difficult to deal with, especially with the poor resources available to them. She could even see a few hoverdrones simply sitting on the ground below, rocking in the wind. With their command centers out of power, they were inoperable. It was a safety feature placed on them so that they wouldn't run amuck. The last thing anyone needed during a blackout was for a hoverdrone to come crashing through their living room window.
Alec settled himself down on the floor while Zack dug his fingers between the doors. They opened slightly, but before he could open it any more an arm shot in by his feet, scrabbling around. "Please help me, I'm afraid of the dark!" came a woman's pleading voice. He could hear other panicked voices behind her, all wanting to know what was going on and why they couldn't even see light in the distance. If they had been here for the last time it happened, they already knew how long it was going to take. Unsure of what to do, Zack kicked the woman's hand back out and dragged the doors shut again, which was considerably harder than opening them. When he was done, he surprisingly dropped down onto the floor next to Alec. "I think we should wait until things have calmed down. It's not like we'll miss much."
Original Cindy and Max also lowered themselves to the ground, staring out blankly at the raging storm outside. "Anybody want to play Spin the Bottle?" Alec asked playfully. At the foul look he received from everyone, especially Cindy, he shrugged and grinned at them all. "It was just a suggestion. It's not like we could play anyway, I don't have a bottle on me."
Max rolled her eyes and watched as one lightning strike split up into practically ten different bolts and branched out across the sky. Silence reigned for a short time, then Alec broke in again. "You know, we could at least talk about something interesting. Does anyone want to hear what the latest adventures of Mrs. McKinson are?"
Zack scowled at him. "For someone who has a pregnant girlfriend at home, you sure seem interested in everything lewd that involves other women. First you want to play Spin the Bottle, then you want to talk about a sex addict's latest exploits?"
Alec held up both hands in surrender. "Hey, it's just talk. As much as you don't like me, you've gotta at least believe that I wouldn't cheat on Jondy. I was just trying to pass the time, and I can't help it if that's my sense of humor."
Talking loudly so as to override the two men, Original Cindy asked, "So Max, what have you been up to lately?"
The two male X5s stopped glaring at each other and looked determinedly at Max, as if hoping she would be able to keep them entertained better than their fight. Well, she did have a story that would distract them for a little while. "I made a run out to Montana to talk to Ames White," she declared, studying her nails as though this was the most normal thing to say in the world. Everyone gaped at her in disbelief. Before they could say anything, she continued, "I needed to ask him a few questions, and Logan had just found out where he was living. When I got there though, it looked like he was having plenty of fun before I arrived. He was walking through the woods with a bunch of familiars tailing him. Then they started chasing this woman with a baby through the woods. The woman with the baby and some man that I could swear wasn't there before jumped into the getaway car, and this other woman that also showed up out of nowhere beat up the other three familiars and jumped onto a truck to escape. I wish White and I hadn't gotten into a fight, 'cause then I would have been close enough to get a look at everybody."
While Alec and Cindy shook their heads in disbelief, Zack's mind focused on the one part of the story that really stuck out for him. A baby? Taken by a man that wasn't with the other familiars? Was it just a coincidence that Ben had a baby right now? "Did you get a look at the people that got away with the baby?"
"Well, the woman had black hair, I could see that easily enough, but it was harder to tell with the guy because of the way he was moving. I don't know, he might have been transgenic because he was really fast. I think he had brown hair, but it wasn't dark. I don't know, maybe more of a tan color?"
If that's Ben, what in the world has he gotten himself involved in? Now he really needed to go see Ben after they were out of here.
After Paige spent most of the morning sleeping, she seemed to decide that she wanted to stay awake as the afternoon began to wear on. She wasn't hungry, she didn't need to be changed, and Ben had even taken on the task of giving her a bath. It was quick, but it got the job done. Now he was sitting on the bed, watching the baby stare at her surroundings in wonder. She had beautiful little blue eyes that struck a chord with him, but he didn't know why. If he held something shiny in front of her face, her eyes would light up and her tiny hand would reach out for it. Even though he was sure she was still a very young baby, she seemed to be developing quickly. It wasn't anything physical, it was clear that she was still an infant if you looked at her, but somehow she struck him as very smart. He knew she had to be either a familiar or a transgenic.
"You know, you're not so bad once you've stopped squealing," he cracked dryly, dangling his watch in front of her and reflecting the light from the ceiling down onto her face. He had been taking care of her for about thirty-six hours now, and that seemed to be enough for her to adjust to him. She even drank from the bottle earlier without complaint. Suddenly, the overhead light went out. He stood up and walked to the window, gazing out at the blustery weather outside. Even from his point of view, it was pretty obvious that the electricity was out all over the city. He headed back to the bed, amazed that the crashing of thunder outside wasn't disturbing the little girl. If anything, it seemed to excite her every time light swept over the ceiling in unison with the lightning strikes outside. He sat down on the bed next to her and watched as she immediately searched for the source of the disturbance on the bed. "You're smart for your age, I'll give you that."
When his back started to tire of remaining straight up when he could see such a soft bed before him, he stretched out on his stomach facing Paige and rested his chin in his hand. "To tell you the truth, I used to think about having one of you," he confided quietly. "A long time ago, when I was really happy, I wondered what it would be like to have a baby. That was when I was with Kay. I think you would have liked her, she had a way with kids, even if she never noticed it. We never talked about having kids, but I always hoped that some day in the future we'd be able to really settle down and have a family. Of course, even if she was good with kids, Kay never really was the family type. Maybe it had to do with her own childhood and the fact that we were like a family but always kept her out of that. I couldn't picture her with a baby in her arms, no matter how hard I tried. I still can't, actually, not that it matters. She's not alive to give it a shot."
As he spoke, Paige watched his face intently, as though she understood every word he was saying. Hey, maybe I just have a good storytelling voice. It was while she was staring at him that he realized what her eyes had sparked in him. "Your eyes are just like Kay's. I usually like really dark brown eyes, like Max's, because they look like deep pools that go on forever, but Kay's eyes were oceans. I never thought that blue eyes could look like that, but hers really seemed never-ending, just like yours. I always wondered about what would have happened if White had never gone back to that room and Kay and I crossed paths after the fight. We said a lot of things in anger that night, but I don't know how much of it we meant. I had built up a lot of anger towards her because of everything she'd been up to while I was gone, but I know I overreacted. I remember when we first slept together — sorry if this topic is a little too mature for you —" he held up both hands apologetically, "and what led up to it. I think the reason she was driven to me was because she was in a state of shock after that psy-ops kid died. The same thing probably happened with White, but it was more extreme because I wasn't someone she had just met that day, I was the guy she loved. At least, I thought I was until she made it sound like her feelings for me weren't as strong as I thought they were on the night of the fight. I knew she didn't have feelings for him, though, no matter what she felt for me. I wish I had been around to explain how she operates to Zack, because throwing her with White was the worst possible thing he could have done. Taking advantage of her heat cycle like that, even though he hadn't done it himself, probably made her think of the way Lydecker had taken advantage of her. I think the pain from that ran deeper than she would ever admit. She seemed to rebound from that pretty fast, though," he commented bitterly.
He reached out and helped Paige roll onto her side, which she had been struggling desperately to do. Once she was comfortable, her tiny eyes remained perfectly round as she listened to him raptly. I've gone nuts, I'm talking to a baby and explaining things to her like she's an adult. Of course, it's not like I have anyone else to talk to, and she's not going to tell anybody. "Anyways, I know she only confronted the X2s to expose that familiar, even though I don't really like it. She could have done it in so many different ways, but she chose that one. She blew up at me at the fight because of the way I accused her of everything. A lot of what she said was true; we didn't really know each other, we had just imagined the other person to be something they weren't, but I don't think that was all a lie. We were actually becoming the people we wanted each other to be, but it got cut short before we could change completely. She said it wouldn't have worked out between us anyway, but I don't think so. If we had been together longer and got the chance to really change, I think we would have been happy together. Maybe we would have had a few like you, who knows? It's too late now though. Even if she weren't dead, it was pretty obvious that she changed drastically after I wasn't around. Everything about her the last time I talked to her was completely different. I wasn't even looking at the same person I had known before." Paige's eyelids were finally starting to droop, so he lifted her up and settled her back into her pillow nest. "You know, maybe if you keep all that crying to a minimum and I don't get any more migraines, I'll hold onto you until I've taken care of those familiars. Then I'm sure you have someone out there still waiting to take you in."
When the lights went out, Kay ran straight out into the street to see if there were lights in the distance. Just her luck, she couldn't see a thing. All of Seattle was dark. She was drenched by the time she went back into Logan's house, where she had spent a lot of the day just to keep herself distracted. Bling had come over, so she listened to what they were saying while she tried to keep her mind off what could possibly be happening to Paige right now. Just the thought that her daughter could be in pain made her stomach knot up in fear. Now she didn't know how long it would take to find her. Matt hadn't called yet, which she took as a sign that he hadn't run the fingerprints through the database yet. If he hadn't gotten a chance to do it before the electricity went out, what would they do? How long would this blackout last?
Bling headed for the bathroom to get her a towel when she came back in. Logan looked up at her from where he was sitting. "Any light out there?"
She shook her head, sending droplets of water flying all over the room. "No, not as far as I could see. I think this is an actual blackout, because it looks like it hit the whole city. Do you think it will take long before the power's back on?"
Logan wiped off his cheek where some of the water in her hair had flown. "This happened about four years ago, and frankly, it took a few weeks before things were up and running again. The good news is that I don't think our target has left the city, and the sectors will be completely shut down. Nobody will be able to move from one sector to another, much less leave Seattle. Walkie-talkies should still be in use, and my police scanner can be battery-powered so I will know right away if someone manages to break through. As long as Matt has those fingerprints, we should be able to pick up right where we left off when the power comes back on."
Kay paced across the living room, hardly aware of the water trail she was leaving on the floor. Bling came back out with the towel and gave it to her, but for a long time she didn't do anything more than hold it. "Max has some clothes here if you want to get out of those," Logan pointed out, gesturing towards his bedroom.
As though she hadn't heard him, Kay said, "I just don't like that this is going to take so long. How can we know for sure that he's still in Seattle? For all we know, he could be in Canada, and while Seattle's in a blackout he could be getting farther and farther away as we speak. Isn't there anything we can do?"
Logan sighed and shook his head. "No, short of talking to the others and getting them to help us on an old-fashioned foot search, we're stuck."
"Well, involving the others isn't an option." She headed back to Logan's bedroom, noticing that Max had an entire drawer to herself. Apparently she didn't live here full time. I guess we really are stuck. The only thing we can do now is sit and wait. But what about the other familiars? While we sit and wait, they could swarm right into town and start looking for Paige on their own. That was something that she didn't even want to consider.
Ames sat quietly on a tree stump just outside the city limits of Seattle. Enough brush surrounded him so that no one could see him, but he could see them. As much as he would have liked to take the credit for his current position, he knew it wasn't anything more than dumb luck. He had been about to sneak through the checkpoint when he heard people walking through the trees. It turned out to be five familiars, none of whom had spotted him. After finding a decent enough hiding place, he watched as they walked right up to the checkpoint while still out of sight of the sector police inside, then one of them crept inside and easily snapped the necks of all the police. They probably didn't even have a chance to press an alarm before they were all a pile on the floor. When all five familiars were through the checkpoint, Ames stepped silently out of his hiding place and jogged after them. He couldn't imagine how difficult this would be if he had Ray with him, but he had left his son in Kalispell with an older woman he had worked with. She loved kids, so he knew that Ray would be safe there.
It didn't take much to figure out what this team of familiars was meant to do. He was sure the other team that came after him in Montana was meant to get Paige, so this new group must be meant to catch Kay. Good luck, you don't know nearly as much about her as I do. Once he was through the checkpoint, he started the long walk to his old house. There was no point starting a search in this weather, and he needed a place to get charged up and ready for the task ahead of him. Finding Kay while avoiding those familiars and the transgenics was going to be no easy task.
Author's Note: Please read and review! It's nice to know when people are reading. :)