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: I don't think that Zero's designation was given in the episode "Bag 'Em," so I'm making it up here.
"Hey, Kyle," Max said cheerfully as she walked through the streets of Terminal City one afternoon about a month later. "Hey, Kevin." She frowned at the two other male X6s that were with them. "I don't think that I've met the two of you before exactly."
"Nope, just in passing a couple of times in the building," Kyle agreed. "These are our roommates. This is Bullet, designation X6-787, and this is Zero, designation X6-543. Bullet was from X6 Unit 2 from back in Wyoming and Zero was originally from Syracuse's X6 Unit 5."
"Nice to meet you," Bullet said, extending his hand.
Max shook it and Zero's as well. "Nice to meet you guys, too. How did you get the names?"
"Mine was a nickname from back at Manticore," Bullet said. He looked somewhat sheepish. "I seemed to have had a knack for getting shot when out on missions. It became a running gag within my unit for them to guess how many bullets would have to have been taken out of me either when I returned or while I was out. I figured what the hell, I might as well just run with it. It's not my official name and all of that stuff, but I actually like it."
"I don't even remember how I picked up my name," Zero said.
"I do," Bullet said. "It was a few weeks after you and I and those other couple of X6s that we'd busted loose with were hanging out at a club one night and—" He stopped and he, Kyle, and Kevin started to laugh at the look on Zero's face. "You look pretty smart, Max. Fill in the blanks."
"I think that I can," Max said dryly.
"Speaking of dates, where do you think I should go tonight? As a girl, Max, what would you like more? Movies, dinner, movies then dinner, or dinner and then movies?" Kyle asked.
"He's going out with Ralph tonight," Kevin said gleefully. He laughed when Kyle punched him in the arm.
"With Ralph?" Max said. "That's great." She paused. "As for the movie and dinner thing, I personally don't care. Pick whichever, you know?"
"Yeah," Kyle said.
"Anyways, I'm off to visit the guys in the control room," Max said. "I'll catch you guys later. It was nice meeting you guys."
"Nice meeting you, too," Bullet agreed. Max waved to them before she continued to walk through the streets of T.C. before finally arriving at the main building and going inside and into the control room.
"Hey, guys," she said. "What's going on?"
"You look like you're about to explode," Mole said bluntly.
Max glared at him. "Yeah, apparently that tends to happen to pregnant women when they're only five-and-a-half weeks away from their due date. Would you like me to lay the smackdown on your ass or would you like to exercise some restraint for once in your life? Oh, one word about mood swings and the only thing that will be swinging will be your head when I separate it from your neck and hang it by a chain from the ceiling."
Mole ignored the snickers from Dix and Luke. "Thank goodness they never made us breed."
"I agree," Max said. She smirked. "I don't think the world would be able to handle your spawn."
Mole thought about it for a few moments. "Damn right they wouldn't be able to handle it."
"What's up, Max?" Luke asked.
"Not much," Max said, stretching. "I just thought that I'd come over here and see how things were going, maybe even help out a little bit." She shook her head. "I am so damn bored sometimes that it's ridiculous. I can't do most of the things that I normally like to do so I feel like I'm going to climb the walls at any given moment." The phone at Dix's desk rang and he held up a hand before he picked it up.
"Terminal City control room. This is Dix speaking," he said. He listened for a few moments before he held the receiver out to Max. "Max, you should take this call. It's the chief of police from Winnipeg, Canada. It sounds pretty urgent."
Max frowned in concern. "Sure, no problem." She waited for Dix to get up out of his chair before she sat down in it and took the phone from him. "This is Max Guevara speaking. Who is this?"
"Paul Campbell, Winnipeg Chief of Police," the person on the other end of the line replied. "Ms. Guevara, we have an urgent matter for you."
"Shoot," Max said.
"About two months ago, a local man went missing," Campbell said. "He was last seen at a nightclub in downtown Winnipeg. He was only in his late twenties, he had plenty of friends, and he had a successful job. In short, he had no reason to disappear off of the face of the Earth. We set out on a search for him but we hadn't been able to find even a trace of anything to point towards his whereabouts until three days ago. A woman jogging through a park about thirty kilometers north of the city with her dog came across a bloody shoelace that her dog had uncovered when he'd been digging to apparently hide a toy bone that he'd found earlier along the trail. The woman called the police and a search revealed the missing man's body." He hesitated a little bit. "Not only had he sustained severe blunt force trauma to multiple areas of the body, but…one arm had almost been separated from the body and the other had been completely ripped free."
"Jesus," Max said, shocked.
"It was if the man had been attacked by somebody in a rage like we'd never seen before," Campbell continued. "We identified the man through his dental records and through testing of the blood that was found on him." He paused again. "We also found some blood that did not belong to the victim on the body, enough to suggest that it might have come from a medium to large-sized paper cut. We found a similar amount of that same blood right near the body as well. Based on this evidence, we concluded that this was the blood of whoever had attacked and killed the man. We analyzed some of this blood to try to determine who it was and the blood was far from any violent criminals whose DNA we had on record."
"…it was transgenic blood," Max concluded.
"We believe so," Campbell said. "We would like to arrange to have the remaining samples as well as our own results sent over to you in Seattle so that you can perform your own tests and that you can deal with the perpetrator, as it was agreed upon by our Prime Minister and your President."
Max nodded. "Absolutely. I'm going to hand you back over to Dix so that the two of you can work out the logistics of the transfer of the samples and I'll notify our labs. Thank you for letting us know about this, Mr. Campbell."
"Not a problem, Ms. Guevara," Campbell said. Max handed the phone back to Dix and got out of the chair and just shook her head.
"I can't believe this," she said.
"God only knows where they got some of our DNA," Mole pointed out.
"Noted," Max conceded. She sighed and walked over to another phone.
TBC