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.).

"I can't thank you enough for letting Krit crash at your apartment," Syl said as she shut her refrigerator and handed Max a can of soda. "I'm glad I only have two more days to go until this is over. Well, it'd be over sooner if I just…"

"Been there, done that," Max said. "Way too many times. I'm lucky I haven't gotten pregnant yet."

"Me too," Syl said. "Just another thing for one of us to be grateful for."

"Thanksgiving was in November," Max said.

"I know," Syl said. She took a sip of her soda. "I can't wait until I have a niece or nephew that I can get to know."

"Hey, you might get to meet Case someday," Max said. "I know where he and his father are. You never know about Jace and her daughter, either."

"Yeah," Syl said. "Have you ever thought about having kids? I mean seriously thinking about it."

"Sometimes," Max admitted. "Zack and I aren't ready yet. We aren't even living together. I'm still rooming with Original Cindy and Zack still crashes over at Becky's when he's in Seattle. We've actually talked about the moving in deal, though, since Zack's in Seattle so much more since most of us are in this area." She sighed. "I wish he'd be back sooner than three days, but I can't help that. Hey, at least you'll be done with your heat by the time he's back in town."

"That's a relief," Syl agreed. "Did I ever tell you that when Zack finally found Krit and me after the escape, I was starting my first heat?" She picked up on the way that Max tensed and smiled. "Relax, little sister, we didn't have sex. We came close, but we didn't make it. It's actually kind of a funny story."

"Then tell me it," Max said. "I love a good story."

"No problem," Syl said. "About a month after the escape, Krit and I got to Chicago and hooked up with a group of kids that had been living on the streets for some time. They were about our age or so. I think Jasper, he was the oldest and the leader, was a little older than Zack and the youngest member of our group, who joined us about a year after we got to Chicago, was a little younger than you and Krit. It was actually pretty nice. Yeah, we lived on the streets or wherever we could find some temporary shelter that the cops wouldn't care about, but it was still fun. It almost felt like a family again, you know? We had a new family. We were with those kids for a little more than three years so I was fourteen when this happened. I was starting to be both a little worried and a little relieved that I hadn't had my heat yet. I knew that Tinga had her first heat when she was only eleven and Elle and most of the other older girls that we knew back at Manticore got their first heats when they were about twelve. I don't know about you, but that's how it seemed to go. Kinda normal, wasn't it?"

Max nodded. "I know how you feel. I didn't have my first heat until I was fifteen."

"You must have been how clueless as I was when you started getting the first…I guess you would call them 'symptoms' for a lack of a better word," Syl said. "I felt a little warmer than normal that day and I noticed that Krit and Jasper and the other boys but Krit especially were looking at me like they were ready and waiting to make out with me or something. Definitely one step from mentally undressing me. I still felt in control of myself so I didn't think too much of it. It was kind of a hot day to begin with, too. We were shacked up for the past week on the top floor of an abandoned factory kind of close to downtown. Needless to say there was no air conditioning to the point where it was actually cooler to stand outside which is what I ended up doing. I was standing out there trying to stay in as much of whatever shade there was as I could when I see this guy standing on the street corner staring at me. He looked so familiar but I didn't recognize him yet and I didn't care because holy shit, he had the most luscious body, the kind that you could just li—"

Max leaned over the table and slapped Syl hard across the face. "Feel better?"

"I do, thanks," Syl said gratefully. "I should have had a clue because he looked like was seriously trying to resist the pheromones that I was sending over to him. You've seen back at Manticore how impossible it was for an X5 guy to resist jumping a girl that was in heat, even when it was a first heat and the girl was pretty young. Zack couldn't resist forever, the fact that he managed to resist it for a full five seconds speaks a lot about how strong-willed he was, or just how crazy he was about you even back then. He had me pinned against the wall of the building and we were practically playing full contact tonsil hockey in public." Syl laughed. "And that's when your sweet little brother, who had finally woken up from a nap that he was taking because the heat was draining even his energy, smelled the pheromones, saw me making out with an apparently random guy, got jealous, and grabbed the jug of water that one of the others had left on the windowsill and dumped it on us. I swear, it was right out of one of those really old pre-pulse comedy flicks."

Max was laughing. "You got seriously busted there, sis. That had to have sucked."

"It wasn't until after I had come out of it that I first found it funny," Syl admitted. "At the time I was just happy that the water was actually cold. It shocked me enough to go running to somewhere safe and out of Krit and Zack's respective ranges. Krit then had the nerve to go outside and confront Zack about it, even though we weren't even thinking of dating then."

"When will Krit ever learn?" Max said.

"I've been working on that for those first three years and then the last year or so, since we've been dating," Syl agreed. "He told me that he ran right out there and threw a punch at Zack and he almost pissed himself when Zack blocked it. He thought Manticore had caught up with him and I and he would have bolted if Zack's head hadn't cleared then and he recognized Krit. Zack stayed just out of town until my heat was over and then he came back and took Krit out of town somewhere and then he came back and relocated me."

"That must have been so hard," Max said. "I guess I was kind of lucky in that respect, you know?"

"I think Zack was the lucky one," Syl said. "I can only imagine the kind of hell you and Jondy would have put him through when he would have tried to separate you two if you hadn't fallen through that ice the night we escaped."

"What kind of sucks now is that I actually know where Jondy is, but Zack won't let me go see her," Max said. She rolled her eyes. "What sucks even worse is that I'm actually agreeing with that now, especially with the situation the way it is."

"Yet he still sent Rena here when she ran into trouble," Syl growled.

"What's the matter?" Max said innocently. "I thought you liked Rena."

"Rena's our sister and I love her but covering my bathroom in slime wasn't exactly necessary," Syl said. "I'd like to know how she got her hands on that stuff."

"Oh, you know Rena," Max said. "She'll—" She turned towards the window. "Did you hear something? It was pretty faint."

"I heard it," Syl said. "Across the street coming from a window on the same level as us. I couldn't identify the exact sound."

"It sounded familiar to me," Max said. She motioned to Syl and they walked over to the window and looked outside and to the window directly across the street from them.

"Oh, it's only Rena," Syl said, relieved. She sat down on the floor and stretched. "I only caught a glimpse of her as she ducked around a corner, but it was enough to let me see her face for a second. It was definitely her."

"It couldn't have been her," Max said. "Her new apartment is four or five blocks from here, not across the street." She took another look. "Whoever it was, she's not there." She frowned. "I found what we heard before, though. It's a portable surveillance device."

"It is?" Syl said. She got up and zoomed in. "I've never seen that one before."

"I didn't either until October," Max said. "Becky showed it to me. It's a military model that came out around the beginning of 2016 and they taught them how to use them at Manticore. It was apparently a favorite of a lot of the soldiers there. Becky has one and she used it when we were doing recon on a job and she even showed me how to use it. It does everything. Records video, records audio, the works."

"Rena wouldn't know how to use one of those, would she?" Syl asked.

"She shouldn't," Max said. "I guess she could have picked one up on the black market and figured out on her own how to use it, but I don't know." She zoomed in again on the other window. "It's not Rena."

Syl zoomed in and saw a glimpse of the woman just behind a corner. Her face was hidden, but she could still see part of her, including her neck and the last couple of digits on the barcode. "121? What the hell?"

"Rena's twin," Max said. "She was in Alec's unit back at Manticore. She doesn't have any reason to be spying on us, though. I can't come up with anything…" She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Alec's number. "It's Max. Shut up, you ass, I'm being serious. I'm over at Syl's and we spotted somebody spying on us from a window across the street. This has to do with you because that someone happens to be X5-121. No, don't actually come to Syl and Krit's place. Syl's in heat. Thanks a lot, Alec." She hung up and started to dial another number. "I'm going to call Rena and get her to come over to stay with you at least while I get back to my place to change out of these clothes."

"Max, I might be in heat but I do not need a babysitter," Syl said.

"Syl…" Max started to say, but she saw the look on Syl's face and sighed and nodded. "Don't leave."

"I won't," Syl said. She laughed a little. "I thought you were going to go all Zack on me."

"Nothing wrong with wanting to protect my sister," Max said. "Stay safe." She turned around and left the apartment.

TBC