Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Logan, 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 "The Berrisford Agenda."

"Why are we eating lunch outside?" Sketchy complained that afternoon as he, Max, Becky, Alec, Original Cindy, and Jeff sat around an outdoor table at a restaurant close to Jam Pony on their lunch break. "It's the beginning of December, for crying out loud!"

"Because us girls didn't want to have our asses grabbed by those morons that were sitting by that window," Max said.

"It's only a little chilly outside," Becky said. "It's kind of warm for this time of the year. You want cold weather for this time of year? Move to where Max and I used to live when we were little kids. That's cold. There's not even snow on the ground here."

"Yeah, fool, just shut up and eat your sandwich," Original Cindy said.

"Fine," Sketchy muttered.

"No need for us to be sniping at each other," Alec said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Sketchy said.

"What's gotten into you, Sketchy?" Max said. "You're not usually this grouchy."

"I don't know," Sketchy said. He shrugged. "Maybe it's the weather. Either that or I'm starting to come down with a cold. I'm usually acting like this right before I get sick. Remember the time last year when I got the flu and how bad of a mood I was in right before I missed those two days of work?"

"Normal was ready to go over to your apartment and drag your ass out of bed and to work because he didn't believe that you were sick," Original Cindy said.

"Speaking of sick, check out this newspaper that somebody left here," Becky said. She held out the newspaper that she'd found lying on the table next to theirs. "Check out the big story on the front page. 'Man Found Shot to Death in Front of Home.' It's some allegedly gang related drive-by. The sick part is that they included a picture of the guy who'd gotten shot, bullet holes and blood and all." I actually think that picture isn't so bad. I've seen way more blood and way more bullet holes at one time than the guy in the picture. Not to mention that if I had been the one to attack that guy, I wouldn't have made as much of a mess.

"Really? Let me see," Sketchy said eagerly. He grabbed the newspaper from Becky's hand and looked at it. "Cool! The picture's even full color!"

"Give me that," Alec said. He took the newspaper from Sketchy. "This isn't so bad. You see a lot worse in the movies." He was about to say more when another story on the front page caught his eye and he quickly handed the newspaper over to Jeff. "So, how long before we should get back to Jam Pony?"

Max looked at him suspiciously. "We've got about twenty minutes before we have to get back there. Why?"

"I'm not too hungry right now," Alec said. He played with the half a sandwich he had left.

Max looked at him for a moment before she looked over at Becky, who just shrugged, and then looked over at Jeff, who was reading the front page of the newspaper and who had a thoughtful look on his face. "Jeff? You gonna share the paper?"

Jeff caught onto what Max was really saying. "Yeah, maybe later."

They finished their lunch and went back to Jam Pony. Max and Becky and Jeff discretely kept an eye on Alec for the rest of the day. When they were all finally done for the day, they said good-bye to each other and watched as Alec rode back to his apartment. Max and Becky both turned to Jeff as soon as Alec was out of hearing range. "So, what's the deal with Alec? If any of us would have a clue, you'd be the guy."

"I'm not entirely positive, Max," Jeff said. "But I definitely have an idea. Do either of you know that Alec had been put into Psy Ops about three months before the fire after a botched solo deep cover mission that he'd been on?"

They both nodded. "The night he came back into Max's cell and caught us planning to get in contact with Zack and to get Max and Zack back out of Manticore, he mentioned that six months before then he'd screwed up a mission," Becky said. "He didn't go into any details."

"I don't think I know all of the details myself," Jeff admitted. "What I do know is pretty much from word of mouth." He sighed. "Alec had what was pretty much a sterling record at Manticore before this mission, other than being thrown into Psy Ops back in 2009 after his brother and Max and the rest of their family escaped. He's the commanding officer of all of the Seattle X5s and it seemed like he could do no wrong. I know that a lot of us male X6s looked up to him. Anyway, like I said, about four months before the fire, they sent him on a deep cover solo mission to keep tabs on a guy. I don't know the guys name but I heard that he was one of Manticore's financial backers or something like that. I heard the guy's name was Berrisford. He was gone for almost a month and when he got back they took him right to Psy Ops. You guys or at least Becky knows that when anybody gets thrown into Psy Ops, the rumors go crazy. You think soldiers don't like to gossip? Think again. Some people were thinking that Alec was going to bail like Ben did years ago and some people were thinking that he'd just lost it and nobody knew what the real deal was. I did hear that they were originally going to keep him in Psy Ops for six months, but then Max and Zack and one of their brothers and one of their sisters went and blew the DNA lab over in Wyoming and they decided that they had more pressing needs than to keep Alec in Psy Ops for an additional three months so they checked him out, declared him to be good as new, and threw him back in with the rest of us."

"For him to get thrown into Psy Ops for what was supposed to be six months, it must have been something major. Heck, even for him to get thrown in there for three months," Becky said. "The longest at least in Gillette for someone to be in Psy Ops not counting the X2s that were in the basement was when this X4 was provoked by one of her unit mates when they were training in the yard one day and just snapped and almost killed the guy who'd provoked her. She was in Psy Ops for a full year."

"I saw that," Max said. "I was seven when it happened and we were in lineup a little farther down the yard waiting to be sent out to begin our Escape and Evade exercise. That was scary." She shuddered and turned her attention back to Jeff. "What exactly was on the newspaper, then?"

"It was an article about the man that Alec was supposed to have spied on during the mission," Jeff said. "It was just an article about some huge charity event that he was sponsoring. It just went on and on about the event and how something of that magnitude hadn't been put on since before the Pulse and there was even a little paragraph or two about the guy's family."

"His family? What about them?" Becky asked.

"The guy's single. His wife died four years ago and he hasn't remarried. He has one daughter. Her name's Rachel and she's about a year older than me and Becky and she's in a coma as a result of what the article called a mysterious car accident. It didn't mention specifics about the accident," Jeff said.

"Do you think it has something to do with the daughter?" Max wondered. "That's the only explanation I can think of for Alec reacting to seeing the article the way that he did."

"I don't know," Jeff said. "I told you that I didn't have all of the details."

"I guess we'll only know when Alec decides to tell us," Becky said.

"Yeah," Jeff said. "I should get going back to my place. I'll see both of you later, okay?"

"See you later," Max agreed.

TBC