Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Alec, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me. No money is being made off of this fic. I only own the original characters (Wayne/X5-369, etc.).
Notes: Spoilers/spoiler-ish stuff for various season 1 episodes (I forget exactly which one(s)).
Zane (X5-205)'s P.O.V.
"Is everybody ready?" Zack asked as we marched towards the gym.
"Yes, sir," we all said in unison.
"I don't know why we have to meet in the gym for our debriefing," Syl complained.
I snorted. "The trainer probably doesn't want to be out in that stupid cold weather for more than he absolutely has to. He's probably lazier than Krit is in the mornings."
"I am not lazy…at least not as much as you claim that I am," Krit insisted.
"Give me a break," Wayne said. "It took me, Ben, and Zack to drag your butt out of your bunk yesterday morning so that you and the rest of us wouldn't be late for live ordinance training. 'Five more minutes, you guys. I didn't get a good night's sleep last night.'"
"Which was a big lie because you slept like a baby from lights out until the crack of dawn," Jondy said.
"I was the one who didn't get a good night's sleep last night because I am the lucky one who has the bunk next to you on your left and when you snored you sounded like a goose that got caught in a jet engine," Jace said.
"Jace, that's really disgusting," Tinga said.
"Well, his snoring was disgusting and it kept me up that night," Jace said. "I think I only got about twenty minutes total of sleep that night because of him."
"You could always go request some earplugs from somebody," Eva suggested.
"And have them drag my butt to the infirmary for the doctors to do some kind of nasal surgery when Jace tells them why she needs earplugs? I'll bet you anything that it'll either be that or them throwing Jace into the infirmary for some testing or surgery to see if she has some kind of hearing problem," Krit said. "They've been stricter with us lately. If the guards or trainers or Colonel Lydecker sees one of us or hears about one of us having a problem, the unlucky one gets tested to within an inch of his or her life. Don't tell me that they do this all of the time. I'm not an idiot. I was born here and I've lived here all of my life so far just like the rest of you and I've been experimented on like a lab rat like all of you have and I hate it as much as any of you, but I know that I can't be the only one here that's noticed that some of us soldiers have been taken away for testing a lot more frequently lately." Krit looked upset. "You guys remember 738 from Unit 3? She was injured in a training exercise that she participated in with her unit and they took her to the infirmary to be treated for her injuries and she never came back. Unit 3 never found out exactly what happened to her. The only thing that their commanding officer was told was that 738 was dead. He wasn't given a reason. 738 didn't even have a fatal injury when she was brought to the infirmary."
"Lydecker wouldn't dare to do that to one of us," Max said. "He practically loves us."
"He loves us?" I said skeptically.
"You know what I meant, Zane," Max said. "He treats us like hell, but compared to how he is with some of the other units, he treats us like we're teachers' pets." She frowned. "That's actually a really bad analogy considering who we are."
"I personally have had as much as I can take from Lydecker," Jack said.
"We all have," Zack said as we entered the gym. "I know that we were created and are being raised to be soldiers, but ordinary soldiers aren't trained or treated like us. They're given a choice. They're given free will. Their commanding officers give them a choice about whether or not they want to participate in medical testing. They can choose whether or not they even want to become soldiers. Being a soldier might be all that we have known, it might be who we are, it might even be literally written into our DNA and considering Lydecker I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's the case, but we do not have to take this. Nobody should have to put up with the physical and psychological torture. Nobody should be looked upon and treated by other people as if they were animals and not people. Nobody should be looked at and treated like lab rats whose sole purpose is to be experimented on. We're humans, too. We might have some feline and maybe even other animals' DNA in us, but we are definitely human. Nobody can tell us otherwise. We have emotions. We laugh, we cry, we get angry, we get sad, we get happy. The most important thing is that we have free will. Lydecker and the trainers and those bastards in Psy Ops want us to forget that, but they can't do that. We can choose our own destiny. We can choose what we want to do." Zack's eyes had never been so serious before. "We need to take control of our lives. We should get out of Manticore."
"To what? What's on the outside?" Jace asked.
"Everything," Zack said.
I looked at Zack. I have never been as proud of my oldest brother as I do right now. He had never been more right. "There's no way we're going to stay here forever," I said. "There's no way that I'm staying here forever. If and when you want to leave, I'm there. Count me in."
"Me too," Max said. "There's no doubt about it. You're not going anywhere without me."
"Me too," Ben said.
"Me too," Jack said.
Zack nodded as more of us agreed. Jace, Parker, Syl, and Tinga looked a little hesitant and he noticed it. "I don't blame you if you're not certain about this. I just want you to trust me."
"It'll have to wait," Parker said as we all looked towards the gym door. "I hear the trainer coming."
"Fall in line," Zack ordered and we formed one neat line. The trained nodded approvingly and began to pace in front of us.
"Group A was able to slip past Group B to get to its target," the trainer said. "987, you were the leader of Group A. What did you and your group do to get past Group B?"
"We did reconnaissance first, sir," Kenny said. "537, 210, 417, and I spread ourselves out in the area where we spotted Group B and got ourselves positioned for optimal surveillance, sir."
"First rule in the book, excellent," the trainer said. "Group B had one more member than your group. How were you able to overcome this deficit?"
"It was easy, sir. We know 766, 369, 157, 798, and 493 very well. We know their strengths and more importantly for our mission, we know what their weaknesses are. Out of that group of five, we knew that 493 was the strongest at hand-to-hand and his accuracy with weapons is among the best in the unit, so we wanted to draw him away from his group so that we could…" Kenny stopped suddenly and turned his head in the direction of the thump that had distracted him. I did the same thing and I felt heart jump into my throat. Jack had fallen to the floor and was having a seizure.
"As you were, soldiers," the trainer said calmly. He motioned to two of the three guards that had accompanied him and they dragged Jack off out the door. Max and Jondy and Rena and I turned to look and the trainer caught us. "Eyes front!"
"Sir, yes, sir!" we yelled. I looked out of the corner of my eye next to me and saw Max discretely make a hand gesture to Zack. I'll follow them. Zack barely nodded and we focused our attention back on the trainer. Well, we pretended to focus our attention back on the trainer. All I could think about was Jack. He was the second youngest boy in our unit and he was definitely the most fragile physically. We were all protective of him, even Eva, Jondy, Krit, and Max, who were all younger than Jack. Jack was the calmest one. If Zack was a mountain, solid and unmovable and strong, then Jack was the quiet lake at the mountain's foot. Jack was the only one in our unit that everybody could honestly say that they were never mad at him at one point or another. We just loved him. He was our baby brother and they were dragging him away. We had to see him again. He had to be okay. He was going to be treated for the seizure and he was going to be returned to us as good as new. There wasn't any question. There couldn't be.
"All right, soldiers," the trainer said. He looked at his watch and sighed. "You lucky little maggots got to finish early and you've got a full hour of rec time until lights out. Report back to your barracks and spend that time there. You're dismissed."
"Sir, yes, sir!" we yelled again. We turned around and marched out of the gym. Once we were out of sight of the trainer and the remaining guard, Max gave Zack another signal and slipped down a hallway while Zack continued to lead us back to our barracks. We quietly entered them and got ourselves ready for lights out. Most of us sat down on our bunks. Ben stood against the wall near the window and Zack paced back and forth near the door.
"How long do you think it will take Max to find out what's going on with Jack?" Reese asked.
"It shouldn't take long," Zack said. "But I guess it depends on what they are doing to Jack. Hopefully, he's just being taken to be treated and he'll be fine."
"He's got to be fine," Gale said. "If I got through that seizure that I had last week, then Jack can get through this one."
"Jack won't let anything stop him from getting out of this place," Rena said. "You saw the look in his eyes when Zack was talking and mentioned leaving Manticore. He wants to do it and he wants to escape with all of us. He's going to get better and we're all going to escape together."
"I really don't know if escaping is such a good idea," Syl said. "I do trust you with my life, Zack, but what if the outside turns out to be as bad as or even worse than here at Manticore? What will we do then?"
"The outside has to be better than Manticore," Zack said. "This is the bottom of the barrel. It can't get any worse than this place."
"Even if we go through with this and we get out, we'll be hunted down for the rest of our lives," Parker said. "You all know how Lydecker thinks. When he gets angry or when he does something that he believes is wrong, he doesn't stop for anything until he fixes the situation. We're going to make for one big situation if we decide to leave."
"So what? I think that goes without saying," I said. "At least we'd be in control of our lives. We'd know how to evade Lydecker. We can and have evaded other units of X5s in our training. Evading normal soldiers won't be as difficult as evading X5s. I think that the pros outweigh the cons by a long shot. A life on the run is better than a life in this place."
"What if they send other X5s after us?" Jace asked.
"They'd have to know where we are," Zack said. "I don't plan on letting Lydecker find out where I am if I escape."
"Besides, not even two-thirds of the X5s are qualified to go on even group missions right now," Elle said. "X3s and X4s can't catch us. They've got to send out normal soldiers after us if they find us. I don't know how well you guys were paying attention in class, but I know that I was and I know that I learned my lessons very well. I'm all up for giving them a practical demonstration of my lessons. How about you?"
"That sounds sweet," Wayne said. He grinned. "I love the idea of throwing their own lessons and Colonel Lydecker's words and actions back in their faces. Heck, that reason alone is enough to make me get out!"
Some of us laughed. We definitely needed that. "It's enough reason for a lot of us," Rena said. "Seriously, I'm ready, willing, and able to leave if and when we decide definitely that we're going to do this."
"I'm still not entirely sure that I want to do this," Tinga admitted. "This is a really big decision, Zack."
"I know," Zack admitted. "This is the biggest decision that I've ever had to make so far."
"If Lydecker gets even the slightest hint about what we've been talking about, we are going to be in trouble beyond trouble," Ben warned. "We better hope that the Blue Lady protects us from Lydecker's wrath."
"That sounds a little dramatic, Ben," Eva said.
"It's true, though," Ben pointed out.
"He's right," Zack said.
"How long has it been since our debriefing finished and Max went off to follow the guards who took Jack away?" Brin asked.
"It's been at least ten minutes," Zack said. "She should be back soon."
We just sat around and waited quietly. Rena walked over to my bunk and sat down next to me. "I'm scared, Zane."
"I'm scared too, Rena," I admitted. "I don't want to think about the possibility of Jack not being okay."
"I know. Neither do I," Rena said.
Things remained pretty quiet after that. There wasn't much noise, other than Zack's pacing and the ticking of the clock on the wall and Jondy chewing on what little fingernails she had. It was the weirdest feeling, like we were in suspended animation. The silence was finally broken by the sound of the door opening. We all turned to it and saw Max coming back inside the barracks. I took one look at her face and I felt my heart sink. Jack was dead. He had to be.
"It was—Zack, they did—" Poor Max couldn't even finish her sentence before she started to cry. Zack put an arm around her and Tinga, our resident mother hen, went up to Max and gave her a hug and we waited for Max to stop crying.
"What happened, Maxie?" Zack asked softly once Max had stopped crying enough to be coherent. "What happened to Jack?"
"They took him to the infirmary," Max said. "He was starting to come out of it and regain full consciousness. He was going to be okay and I thought that everything was going to be fine. Lydecker was there and I saw one of the guards that had brought Jack to the infirmary speak to him and then Lydecker spoke to the doctors and then he stood there in the operating room and they put Jack on the table and I thought they were going to give him some kind of treatment like maybe they actually found a way to fix the seizures now. They didn't give him any kind of treatment. They cut him open. They didn't cut him open like they were performing some kind of surgery to help him, they cut him open like they were performing an autopsy. Jack was still alive when they cut him open! They cut open his head and they started poking around in there and slicing his brain like it was the meat they serve to us in the cafeteria at lunch on Tuesdays. They killed our brother! The worst part was that Lydecker was just standing there watching them and he didn't say a word. He must have given them the order to slice Jack up like he was nothing. He let them kill Jack for no reason at all. It was so horrible."
I was speechless. I knew that Lydecker was capable of and I've seen him do some nasty things, but to have our brother autopsied when he was still alive? How could anybody do that?
Zack gritted his teeth and gave Max's shoulder one last squeeze before he resumed his pacing. He stopped suddenly and turned to face us. "That's it. We're going. We're not spending any more time in this place than we absolutely have to. Jace, Syl, Parker, Tinga, are you guys in now?"
"Absolutely," Tinga said. "There's no question anymore."
"Count me in," Syl said. "All the way."
"I'm going," Parker said. "I want out of Manticore."
Jace still looked really nervous. "I'll go with you."
"Excellent," Zack said. He looked around at all of us. "We'll leave at the first opportunity that we get, but no further than a week from now. By this time next week, we'll be free from here."
TBC