Disclaimer: I do not own Dark Angel, more's the pity. I really, really wish it were different. As it is I indulge my fantasy here and leave real life to others.
A/N: I hope you are enjoying yourselves so far. This is the first tale I ever made a plan for, but there are so many hints that it's the only way I can keep it all straight. I have taken some aspects from the chronicles of Valdemar for this one. Mostly the names and how the gifts work. I suppose that qualifies this as a crossover then.
Enter the Dragonet
Forty-eight interminable hours had passed since Logan had effectively incapacitated the leaders of Terminal City. In the absence of Max and Alec he running of the city lay in the hands of Mole, Biggs and Cece. So far, nobody had barged down the door of Alec's apartment complaining.
Alec counted this as a minor silver lining on the thunderstorm that was his life. Max was closer to waking up than she was to joining a rock band.
He hated looking at her lying in there in his bed, skin gone so translucent, eyes sunken, fading away under his gaze. Arms laid out on the bedspread, the marks from frequent injections and IV's clearly visible. Seeing her so vulnerable made him want to throw back his head and howl at the injustice of it all. It wasn't right. How could one little ordinary man bring down what was supposed to be a superhuman soldier. It defied belief. 'I thought we're supposed to be stronger, better and faster. How did he manage to bring us down so low.'
"Alec?"
His head whipped around and looked at Max, heart hammering almost painfully against his ribcage.
"Alec?"
Then it finally registered that the voice he had heard was far deeper than Max's. Octaves deeper, with a hint of gravel you only got from a lot of smoking and whiskey. Tiredly Alec realised that Mole had spoken, apparently he had been wrong about there not being any problems needing his decisions. Clustered around Mole were several of the almost fey transgenic, designated X-7s. These children had been one of the most feared weapons created at Manticore, loyal only to their superiors and group. Alec had believed them to have gone down when the facility burned, believing them too loyal to Renfrew. Apparently he had been wrong, for small groups of them, never less than five, had drifted into TC from wherever they had been hiding. And behind them with an almost serious look on his face, Biggs.
With an irritated flick, Mole removed the cigar from his mouth. "We have a problem."
Alec sighed. "Another one?"
"Yeah, let me introduce you to some of the more retiring members of our happy little holiday camp." Pointing at the young boy who was slightly taller than the others, he continued. "This is X7-111. You could say he is their leader. Two days ago -" he gave Alec a significant look. "-these guys all dropped whatever they were doing and fled to the den they call home. They refused to budge until half an hour ago when this lot walked out, came to Central and started pulling at my shirttails until I agreed to go with them. I feel like a flipping kindergarten teacher."
"Well, what do they want?" Alec was impatient to get back to Max.
"Well, that's the problem. They don't -"
"Sir." A very rusty voice interrupted him.
"-talk." Mole finished, as both he and Alec stared at the X7.
"Beg to differ, sir. We do talk. We just hardly ever do because it is unnecessary. Usually anyway."
"Why, now?" Alec asked.
"She calls to us." The X7 baldly stated.
"Who?"
"The leader's own. She calls to us. Then she was gone. When her touch returned it echoed much stronger, pain and despair in every note. It was very disorientating. We had to recover. Then we came to her."
"You mean Max. But she's the leader." Mole stated.
"No, she's the leader's own. He is the leader." X7-111 pointed at Alec.
"Who me? No, ridiculous."
Biggs looked thoughtful. "Not really, when you think about it. You are the best of the bestest."
"The bestest? Is that even a word?"
"Ahem." The X-7 clearing his throat brought all attention back to him. "The Leader's own is lost. In her mind. We can sense her, but we can not reach her."
"What do you mean you can't reach her? She's right over there." Biggs gestured towards the bedroom door.
Alec sighed tiredly, wishing with every fibre in his body, Max were there to take some of the burden off his shoulders. It would be so much easier with her around. She grounded him.
"I know what he means. Dismissed, soldier." Snapping off a picture perfect salute, X7-111 turned and left the apartment the others falling in line behind him.
Mole snorted. "You know what he means. Sneaky little buggers. Always appear out of thin air. Never around when you need them. So, tell what does it mean?"
"It means I'm going to talk to Thalia. Just her, none of the others.
In preparation for Thalia's arrival, Alec had a shower and several cups of strong coffee. If he was going to meet this female then he wanted to be at his best. Psy-ops had the tendency to exploit any weakness they could sense.
Just when he believed he could not get any tenser, there was a knock at the door, heralding the arrival of the person who might be Max's last chance.
"Come in."
As stealthily as possible Alec positioned himself so he stood between the door to his bedroom and anybody who came in the entrance. The door slowly opened and one of the smallest women he had ever seen walked in.
A petite frame was clothed in oranges and yellows, instantly bringing sun into the room. A heart shaped face was crowned by brown curls with just the barest hint of red in them. Brown eyes twinkled at him. All in all his visitor radiated harmlessness and good will.
"Okay, tune down the floor show."
The woman flushed, a rueful smile playing in her lips. "I'm sorry. I just really needed you to not jump down my throat when I came in. When that happens I tend to project without meaning to." The feelings suffusing his flat dimmed somewhat, although she still appeared harmless.
"Better?"
"I take it you're Thalia."
"That would be me, sir." She bowed slightly, causing Alec's eyebrow to rise somewhat.
"What's with the sir. Far as I know, you never call anyone sir. Last time I heard it was Mama Renfrew." He couldn't quite keep the bitterness out of his voice.
"It's sir because you are the leader of us here and it shows respect." Thalia smiled at him, clearly unfazed by his latent hostility. "Why don't I tell you about my group, seeing as we snuck into your area without asking for permission."
"Would it have made a difference?" Alec wanted to know, curious despite himself. It was hard to distrust Thalia.
Thalia laughed. "Not really. We would have probably come anyway. But there was a very good reason. She called to us."
"Not another one. You mean Max, I presume. How exactly was she calling for you. As far as I know she wasn't standing on the Space Needle every night with a megaphone."
Alec's bald statement caused Thalia to giggle. "Hardly. We were almost in Florida when we first felt it. Megaphones only go so far. But, before I explain that, I have to explain a bit about us and some things you don't know about your X-series and the other series. Then I will try and explain Max."
"Go right ahead." Alec, still wary, led the way to the sofa, gesturing Thalia to take a seat there and plopping down on the armchair next to it.
"I don't know how much you know about the genetic manipulations, so I'll start at the beginning. Some of this you know, other stuff you don't." Thalia half-smiled at him, then began her speech.
"As you know, Manticore was big on meddling with the human genome in the attempt to create the perfect super soldier. I heard that before they started mixing in the animal genes, they were trying to figure out which genes were responsible for what? What happens when some are artificially switched off or on. A lot went wrong, major malforming was often the result, along with freak illnesses no-one could cure showing up years later. You might have heard of one of their failures. Testing on cows was quite advanced in the late twentieth century. I think they wanted to improve productivity. It went haywire. The test objects were slaughtered and fed back into the food chain. The result was a major BSE epidemic."
Alec nodded. This he had heard about, although not Manticore's involvement. Thalia smiled and continued: "They mixed human and animal genes to make the basic structure strong enough to endure the changes they wished to make. The X-5's were the first batch of all-rounders to make it. Superior strength, senses, not to mention looks and latent psychic ability. At this point after all Manticore was still not sure which genetic markers it was safe to switch off. That's why there are no X-1s to 4s. Didn't make it. Too unstable. Physically and mentally." Thalia stopped for a moment, clearly unhappy.
"Later of course, the Manticore scientists got better. Started creating the specialists, for example Mole and his kind, or the fish people. All very useful in war fare. And us, the psychics. Manticore managed to crack what thousands of scientists have tried to do in the last few hundred years. Not only find proof that psychic abilities exist, but that they can also be used profitably."
"Yeah, for example to mess with our minds." Alec interjected, bile rising in his throat.
Thalia didn't comment, knowing that to respond would bring this conversation to a screeching halt. And she had to get to Max, their survival depended on it.
"Most of us psychics have no intrinsic value at the front, however we make excellent backup personnel and spies of course. Some of us, for example me, were stationed in hospitals on base. Normal soldiers suffering from trauma and bad memories were brought to us to heal. That's all we did. We thought it was a good thing. Some of those men were really suffering." Thalia glanced at Alec's disbelieving face and wondered if she should say what was on her mind, then decided what the hell. "You have to believe me. I did not now, I was anything other than human until Manticore was blown up."
Alec scoffed at her. "Come on. You actually expect me to believe that? What do you think I am? Five?"
Thalia sighed. "I know it is very hard to believe. If I were in your position I probably wouldn't believe me either. But it is true. And I can give you some of the reasoning. We are weak" She noticed Alec's expression. "Physically weak, is what I am saying. Yes, Manticore managed to turn on almost all psychic abilities, but it came with a price, physical and sometimes mental weakness. They realised this early on, but we are too valuable. Some of us made excellent spies."
"Not surprising, considering you guys just waltz in where you are not wanted and snoop around."
"Quite true. I'm not saying I am proud of what some of us have done, but we did not know any better."
"And that makes it okay?" Whatever Thalia thought she was trying to tell him, Alec was having none of it. "Going in and messing with our minds, leaving behind nothing but pain and suffering. Only a soldier standing in a field of corpses. And you thought you were doing nothing wrong?" He jumped up and paced the room, anger and sheer power rolling off him in waves. Thalia shrank into her seat and gulped.
"Could you turn down the floor show?" She asked, causing Alec to stop in his tracks, ripped out of the circle his thoughts had been falling into. Just as he was about to snap at his guest, a whimper from the bedroom had him flying in there.
Max was thrashing on the bed, tears streaming down her face. Without thinking twice, Alec scrambled in beside her, and, pulling her into his lap, whispered into her ear and stroked her hair.
"Sshh, it's okay. I'm here. Maxie, it's okay. I'm here." Soothing her had the effect of soothing him. Alec could feel his heartbeat slow down and his emotions calm. From the corner of his eye he saw Thalia standing in the door of his bedroom.
"Stay away from her." He snapped, moving Max so she lay behind him. "I'll be right out. Make yourself comfortable. I'm sure that will not be a problem for you." Ignoring her he turned back to Max.
Thalia was getting bored and antsy. The emotions rolling from the bedroom did nothing for her equilibrium. It was difficult to concentrate, let alone stop herself from snapping at Alec the next time she saw him. They were not her emotions however. They came from the poor soul lying comatose in the next room, projecting without even knowing it.
Concentrating on the exercises she had been taught before she could walk, Thalia established herself as separate and waited for the tiger to return. She didn't think Alec realised how powerful he was, her leaving the room so precipitously had more to do with the power he had been unconsciously pumping into the room than with his order. So much power.
She had to make him understand, so much more than just Max's life hung in the balance.
A sound had her turning to see Alec return to the lounge and reseat himself in the armchair. As if nothing had happened, he presented her with a bland face and said: "You were saying?"
Startled, Thalia gathered her thoughts. "Right, okay. Where was I? I'm not sure I can make you understand what it was like for us at Manticore. In part, we did not want to believe what some of us were sensing. That we were lied to on a massive scale. That what we believed was true was nothing of the sort. But we were unable to really do anything about it."
"You mean you didn't want to. Sounds like a cushy place to me." Alec interjected with a remarkable lack of heat in his voice.
"No, I mean we couldn't. They had our partners. Our soul mates."
"Your soul mates? You actually believe in that?"
"What. You don't?" Thalia asked right back.
"Not really, no." Alec stated emphatically, ignoring twinges that hinted differently.
"Well, maybe it is the wrong term. The stronger the talent of the psychic, the less mentally stable we are. In the early days there were spectacular disasters, when the children sent in to deal with the trauma of a soldier who had seen his entire infantry mown down by enemy fire, couldn't deal with the sensory memories and lost it. Causing mass suicides in some cases."
Alec blanched, for the first time realising that maybe, just maybe they were all victims, but after the horrors he had been through at the hands of psy-ops it was hard to let go of hard-won convictions.
"So the techs encouraged us to form bonds, unsurprisingly perhaps the strongest bonds were between those who were more emphatic and those that had the more physical talents. The one harbouring and sheltering the other. After that it got better, for a while at least."
"So is your partner here in TC with you?"
"Yes. And he was not happy to let me in here by myself, I can tell you. He's afraid of never seeing me again. We lost a lot of our family in Manticore. Some died in the fires and their partners just sort of faded. When one half is gone, the other rarely lasts very long." Her face took on a bitter sadness. "It's what they used to keep us in line, when we started questioning things. We feel each others pain, so torturing one, tortures the other, without the side effects of being an invalid until the wounds heal. Can go right back to work."
Thalia looked away, to hide the tears threatening to fall. Alec shifted uncomfortably.
"Why did you even start questioning your orders."
Alec was very surprised when Thalia turned and looked him dead in the eye. "Because of you."
"Me?" Alec couldn't believe it.
"Yes, you. All the time we had had to work with the transgenics we were told that you were criminals, evil people who threatened the safety of all that we knew. You were bad, intent on wreaking destruction and it was our duty to form your minds, so that you could be integrated into society." She shrugged. "Or so they said. And we had no reason not to believe them. Then the youngest and strongest of the empaths met you."
"Sally." Alec stated flatly, unsure how he felt about Thalia mentioning the girl, now that he had heard so much.
"Yes, Sally. She was only little and yet she asked the questions we others refused to ask ourselves. After she was done with you, she came back and asked how it was, that if you were so evil and so bad, you had carried the image of Rachel in your heart and mind for so long. Knowing what you had done, knowing you had failed to stop your orders being executed. And yet you carried the memory of the woman you had loved with you, through re-indoctrination, torture and the worst Manticore could throw at you. Sally said that had to make you a good person, because no bad person should be able to love like that."
Alec's head dropped, as the images from so long ago tore through him once more. Although he remembered the facts, he didn't really remember much of what he had felt.
"Sally kept those memories for you." His head whipped up, disbelief written clear across his face. Thalia smiled a gentle smile and for the first time since she had entered the flat, dared to reach out a hand and lay it gently on Alec's. He was only mildly surprised when he let her.
"She kept the memories, hoping one day to give them back. They belong to you. Sally suffered through a lot to retain them. Her and her partner. But we all knew it was right. You can have them back if you want."
Alec only thought for a split second. "Maybe later. Max needs help more than I do my memories."
"I know we can help. We have to help. That's why we came back. We had no intention of staying in the country. Especially after all we had done to you and yours. So we quietly left. But then a few months ago we started feeling it. At first it was nebulous, we could not be sure if it was us or something else. Emotional surges of fear, anger, embarrassment that came and went with no rhyme of reason we could fathom. Tempers ran rather high for a while, until we figured out where it came from. So we started making our way back. As we came nearer, we could tell that one of you was awakening. We snuck in here and tried to find whoever it was." She shrugged once more. "Most of us have been spending a large amount of time shielding the rest of the transgenics. You must have noticed the rise in fights, temper tantrums, people being more emotional than usual."
Alec nodded, there had been signs of heightened emotions, random fights for no real reason but, as nobody had been seriously hurt bar a few scratches up to that point he had been more concerned with Max and had shoved it to the backburner for later consideration.
"Then we finally figured out who it was. Max was the one projecting, off and on, with very little control. And then she supernovaed. It's the only way I can describe what happened. She makes Sally look like a beginner. Her latent abilities must have been very strong. And now something has activated them, maybe the stress from what happened in Command. But she doesn't know how to deal with what is happening to her. You have to let us help her."
Alec was lost in thought, weighing all he had heard with a lifetime's experience at Manticore, centre of lies. Time was running out and he made his choice.
"Okay. I want Sally to do it."
A/N2: You know I really try to hold out. Some people have a week between chapters, but I just can't do it. Once it is written, I'm compelled to put it on the net. Can't stop myself, except in one instance that I am forcing myself to put up soon. Don't get me wrong, I like reviews as much as anybody else, although I am nervous every time, it's just that sometimes I feel I do not leave enough time between episodes to collect stuff. But then it does keep the story at the top of the list, so more people read it. Ah, never mind. I'm enjoying this, it keeps me out of trouble ;) and hey, couldn't stop if I tried.