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 (Becky/X6-405, etc.).

Notes: Spoiler-ish stuff for "Designate This."

Max just stared out at the burned building as she sat in a room in the building next door. Fourteen hours ago, I nearly lost a good friend and a sister and somebody who might have become a friend did die. It had to have been White behind it, it had to have been. She turned around when she heard somebody behind her. "What are you doing here?"

"Probably the same reason that you're here," Jondy said. She walked over next to Max and they sat down on the floor. "The shark DNA is keeping me up and I'm still shaken by what happened this afternoon."

"You weren't the one who was in the building and on the fifth floor just minutes before the RPG was fired," Max pointed out.

"I know," Jondy said. "But Rena still almost died."

"I know," Max said. "I'm sorry."

"I know you are," Jondy said. "At least Rena's going to be 100 percent again in a week or so. She got lucky that Zack and Zane got to her before she could finish breathing in that second lungful of smoke."

"Yeah," Max said. "Too bad Val wasn't as lucky."

"Too bad," Jondy agreed. "I didn't even get a chance to meet her. You met her before, right?"

"Yeah, I was in the main building when she came here and I helped get her checked in with the guys and all of that," Max said. "She seemed nice enough. A little edgy because I'm an '09er, but she got over that pretty quickly. I think she could have been a pretty good friend if she had lived."

"If someone had lived…those words certainly have come up in our lives more than once, haven't they?" Jondy remarked.

"You're telling me," Max said. "I still think about who the others would have become and what they would look like now if they were still alive. Would Elle still be relatively short or would she have had a late growth spurt like she used to swear to us all the time would happen? Would Kenny have laughed at that movie because it seemed like what his sense of humor used to be or would he have grown out of stuff like that and hated it? Things like that."

"I know what you mean," Jondy said. "I think about things like that sometimes, too." She started to say something else, but she and Max abruptly turned around. They looked surprised. "What the…?"

"It's okay," the large, clearly canine-like man said. "Joshua didn't mean to startle you."

"Joshua?" Max said. "Is that your name?" The man nodded. "Cool. I'm Max and this is Jondy."

"You two are X5s," Joshua said. He sniffed. "You have cat…and a…what was that word that Father used?...dash of something else. Just barely enough for me to smell. Like other X5s, cat with a little something different, just barely enough for me to smell. In you two, something different is the same."

"We both have a little shark DNA in us," Max said. "Because of it, we don't sleep a lot. That's why we're here at almost four in the morning. What about you?"

"Joshua having trouble sleeping tonight," he said. "I like to wander around sometimes. I can wander around here more than at Manticore."

"You must have been in the basement with all the other anomalies," Jondy said. "That must have been hard for you. Max and I only passed through the basement a few times back in Wyoming before we escaped years ago and it scared us every time."

"It wasn't so bad," Joshua said. "They all liked me and respected me. I had to feed everybody sometimes because the people upstairs wouldn't feed them."

Max winced. "That must have been awful. Why wouldn't they feed you regularly?"

"Scared," Joshua said. "Scared not like you two, but…" He paused as he tried to find the right words to describe the guards. "…angry-scared. Like most of the people outside the fence here."

"Oh," Max said. "So, what are you supposed to be or should I say what were you supposed to be?"

"Joshua was first transgenic," he said proudly. "Father said I was supposed to be the prototype for the X1s, but they thought I didn't come out right. I don't even have a barcode."

"You're lucky about that," Jondy said. "We do. We can get it removed, but it always comes back."

"You got off lucky," Max said. "I read what happened with the X1s. The first official X1 was so screwed up it wasn't even born and after that, only ten more were born and they were all much worse off than you."

"That's what Father said," Joshua said. "Father said they didn't know a good thing when it was under their noses."

"I don't know who this Father guy is, but it sounds like he's right," Max said. "You sound like a cool guy, big fella."

"Little fellas cool, too," Joshua said. He cocked his head. "Little fellas sad about something? You look sad."

"Yeah," Jondy said. "We were thinking about the fire that happened next door earlier. We almost lost one of our sisters and another X5 died, plus three of our other friends and a guy who's like you were there but got out relatively okay. We're not exactly sure yet who did this or why they did this. We have ideas, but we're not completely certain yet."

"I wish I could help you," Joshua said. "But I was never trained like you were. Most of the upstairs people left me alone, except for Father before he left."

"Father…was he your real father?" Max asked.

"I don't know," Joshua said. "But since I can remember, he wanted me to call him Father, so I did. I think he created all of us or he started or wanted to create all of us."

"He founded Manticore?" Jondy guessed.

"Yeah, I think so," Joshua said. He yawned.

"Why don't you go and get some sleep, big guy," Max said. "Where are you staying?"

"In apartment in 330 Drake Avenue," Joshua said.

"Hey, that's the building where our apartments are," Max said. "We'll walk back together. After we drop him off, I'm going to make some coffee and bring it over to Zack and Zane and Wayne over in the med bay."

"You make it for Zack and Zane, and I'll make Wayne's coffee," Jondy said. "He likes that French Roast nut blend stuff that I do and everyone else can't stand."

"Sounds like a plan," Max said. "Ready to go back to your place, Joshua?"

"Sure," Joshua said. The three of them got up and left the building.

TBC

More notes: Thank you so much again, angelofdarkness78! Your reviews and support mean a lot!