Disclaimer: Sue if you like, I could use the experience since studying law doesn't seem to help.
Previously on Dark Angel
"Well if he put all this stuff there for a reason, why couldn't he give me something useful like x-ray vision?" "Maybe he did…and it just hasn't shown itself yet."
"It's only because she's hot.""What?""You think we'd be creeping around dank sewers if she was ugly?"
Chapter 1"Let me know if the situation changes," Max requested, as she strolled passed what was effectively the Communications centre, sitting pride of place in the middle of their makeshift headquarters.
Luke nodded, his eyes never leaving the six screen they had hooked up the main news channels. To his right sat another four computer screens, broadcasting live feeds of the surveillance around Terminal City. The baying crowd had returned in strength, placards growing ever bigger in calling for their blood, shouts becoming ever louder in ordering their removal from Seattle. The siege had gone on so long now Max was almost beginning to find the rumble of protests comforting in a bizarre sort of way. Obviously she didn't forget exactly why they were outside but their presence had become familiar and she had settled into the routine of their noisy demonstration every morning til night.
"Where you headed?" Alec wondered, coming through the doors from what resembled a mess hall. Clearly he wasn't only ever in there for food because for all the time he spent in the place he shouldn't look in as good physical shape as he did.
Max arched an eyebrow.
"Since when did I answer to you?" she asked with an unimpressed look.
Alec shrugged.
"Curiosity killed the cat?"
"Too bad you got even more lives than our genetic ancestor," Max threw back at him with a smirk.
At that Alec chuckled. It always threw her boyish he could be and yet one of the most accomplished soldiers in Manticore's ranks. It was frightening to an extent, just how well adjusted Alec seemed to be in any and every situation. Only on one occasion had Max ever seen another face to his cynical optimism. On any other day, he would always be on hand for the smart-aleck comments after which he was named, never betraying any sign of discomfort with his past or who he was. Unlike me, she thought to herself.
"You always leave a guy waiting?" he directed after her retreating figure.
"You stalking me now?" Max wanted to know, a hand on the door.
Alec gave her a look.
"Even if I didn't live a block away and we didn't pull heists on the same bad guys, you're technically my boss. Not exactly difficult if I wanted to."
Max arched an eyebrow before heading out the door. She stopped short, her eyes unable to believe the sight before her. She didn't notice the door close on her heels. Couldn't feel a thing but shock. She was still in Terminal City; she knew from the stench of toxic waste that mildly irritated her keen sense of smell, could hear the bustle of activity as the genetically empowered around her never stopped preparing for the war they expected on a daily basis, and the –
When was the last time she heard the movements of the transgenics over the sound of anything else? The occasions on which Max hadn't wanted to do something for sheer fear of what might happen, she could count on one hand. But she didn't want to look, to turn her head, terrified of what she might see. While she had escaped Manticore almost a decade ago, the soldier in her had never followed suit and it was that part of which forced her to turn. And for once, she rued her instinct.
It was a joke, a sick joke but a joke nonetheless. It had to be. This was too horrifying to be real. As a child of Manticore, it had never occurred to Max that anything could provoke the kind of reaction in her as when she witnessed the acts committed at its hands and in its name. The shocked disbelief she should not have been capable of at such a young age.
But what dark secrets she thought her past haunted her present with, were nothing on the row upon row of headstones now staring back at her. Instead of a crowd out for blood she found herself looking at row after row of names, carved into slabs of stone. Ordinaries. Max couldn't utter a word. She couldn't breathe. She felt beyond sick.
"Well I guess I owe you a thanks for escaping from me all those times," a voice said from somewhere above her.
Max's enhanced feline vision scoured the rooftops but found nothing. Blurring up a set of outer stairs, Max emerged on the roof of the building upon which the transgenic flag pole stood. And there, standing alongside it in his usual arrogant manner, was the figure of her nightmares.
"Look at what you'd be missing," Ames White added, waving a hand at the apparently endless headstones.
"And to think we gave you so much credit as to think we wouldn't be able to do this without getting rid of you first," he commented, smiling. It wasn't an evil smile or sadistic or satisfied. It was a perfectly normal smile. As if he had just told Max he putted a birdie on the golf course earlier.
Max was still in too much shock to speak. And even if she could, what could she say? They were dead. Thousands and probably millions more that she couldn't see. The earth groaned from the sheer weight of dead it carried. She had failed them. She had been sent to save them. Created to fight on their behalf. One purpose. And she failed. She didn't know how to fail. At Manticore, she had been one of the best. Her only failure in their eyes was her independence and her ability to see through the regime. How could she have failed now so spectacularly?
"As a token of my appreciation, I'll only make you suffer two deaths," White continued, the smile never leaving his somewhat handsome face. Max hadn't seen him remove it from inside his coat but she saw it in his hand now, cocked. With a look at her, he turned. Max followed the direction of his gaze and if she could have any more wind knocked out of her it would be with the sight of Alec being marched into view on the ground below.
She called to him but no sound came out. He saw her mouth his name but it was the look in her dark eyes that would haunt him forever as White squeezed the trigger. Max fell to her knees as she watched him collapse in the arms of the two Familiars. It only took one of them to hold his weight with ease but White no doubt wanted her to see only his head loll like a rag doll as they dragged him round the building.
For some reason, White caught her before her knees hit the concrete. She had no strength to ask any questions as he pulled her roughly to the other edge of the rooftop. And then she knew why. If she believed in souls, she knew had just felt hers die as she saw the Familiars dump Alec's lifeless body into a freshly dug pit. Alongside a hundred others. Without thinking, Max knew instinctively, those were the graves of the residents of Terminal City. She stared, not knowing what else to do.
She was alone now. Finally it had come to this. It was just her. There was no one else. No Logan. No Alec. Or OC. No family. No friends. Not even Manticore. She was well and truly alone. And that was her last thought as she suffered the last of the two deaths White had promised.