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: Just so nobody gets confused about who is who among the previously unnamed X5s in Alec's unit, Randy is 665, Lark is 578, Ian is 107, Walt is 263, and Nikki is 619.
"I'm sorry that took so long," Riley apologized as she finally joined the others nearly half an hour later. There were too many of them to wait in the small med bay waiting room, so they were gathered in the control room in the main building. "They wanted me to stick around for a few while they made sure that they secured Brandi and Cam in the cells downstairs. Jeff, Mole, and that guy Frick are down there pulling guard duty if and when Brandi and Cam wake up from the tranquilizers on the wrong side of the bed. I need to get back down there soon so that I can join them. I wanted to update you guys on what was going on and also to see if anything has changed here." She looked worried. "Are they okay?"
"They called in with an update ten minutes ago," Max said. "They're both still in surgery. They think Rena will be okay, though. She has a mild concussion and the bullet missed a main vessel by less than an inch, but she should pull through no problems. No other word on Gem, though."
"Okay," Riley said. "I'll check in again with you guys later." She left the room.
"I hope they get done with the surgery soon," Zane said. He'd arrived as soon as he could from the shop and even though he knew that Rena was going to be all right, he still looked very shaky. "This sucks."
"It does," Zack agreed. "Krit got everything under control back at the shop?"
"Yeah, little bro's got everything under control back at work," Zane said. "Jace is cool at your place of business?"
Biggs nodded and shifted Andrea on his lap. As soon as he'd arrived from his and Zack's offices, he and Sasha had grabbed their daughters from the Terminal City nursery. Both of them didn't want to let any of the three young girls out of their sights for even a nanosecond. "Jace is holding down the fort. Everything's fine there."
Alec shook his head and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. "Jesus. How could this…two of my own. As much as I didn't like either of them, I still knew them for almost my entire life and I was their commander for half of that time. How did I fail them? Where did I go wrong?"
"There wasn't anything that you could have done any differently," Zack said. "Trust me. From what I've heard, Brandi was lucky to make it as far as she did before she lost it. If I had to guess, all of that time in Psy Ops may have saved her life or at least extended it. What if she'd continued along the eating disorder route? What if Sasha hadn't caught her that one morning and she'd let herself go to the point where her body got so weak that it shut down or that if she was sent to Psy Ops for that or another reason, her body wouldn't have been able to take the abuse that those bastards loved to dish out? Alec, you…" He turned his head to give Sasha a sympathetic look as well. "…and Sasha and Biggs have all done everything that was possible for you to do to help Brandi."
"How did you know that's what I was thinking?" Sasha said. She adjusted her grip on Jade and laughed bitterly. "Oh wait, you know Rena like the back of your hand. My bad."
"Sasha, sweetheart…" Biggs started to say 'calm down,' but decided against it and just rubbed his free hand against Sasha's back. He looked over at Alec. "Have you reached any of our out-of-towners about this?"
"Yeah, I was actually able to speak with all of them," Alec said. "Neither Randy, Ian, Nikki, Lark, nor Walt were too happy to hear from me to begin with and all of them were flat-out shocked when I told them what had happened."
"Are any of them on their way to Seattle at least for the time being?" Sasha asked.
"Randy is going to come over for a week or two," Alec said. "Lark and Nikki both said that there was no way that they'd be able to find somebody to watch their kids while they were away and they're both on the East coast so it would be a long trip for a one-year-old. Ian said that would definitely not be able to get the time off from his job and Walt said that it doesn't look too possible that he would be able to get time off either, but he would ask and he'd get back to me or Dix later." He shrugged. "I guess we'll see."
"Here's what I don't get," Syl said. She pulled the wiggling and eager-to-escape Julia back onto her own lap. "I know that all of us are furious beyond belief at what Brandi and Cam did to Rena and Gem, but how much room do some of us have to work with, you know what I mean? Was Cam and especially Brandi any better or worse that Ben was?"
"Good call," Max agreed. "Ben…as far gone as he was when I'd finally met up with him again, I could still see traces of the real him beneath all of the madness. When we'd had our final fight in the woods, he didn't want to kill me and I don't think that he would have wanted to get other innocent people get hurt." She sighed. "Brandi, on the other hand, obviously didn't and probably still doesn't give a rat's ass about collateral damage." Max frowned uneasily. "Unless said collateral damage was Diane or Melanie. Damn, this mental going around in circles can give you a migraine. No matter how much on one level I can't believe that I'm saying this, I think the bottom line is that as heinous as what Brandi did and what she got Cam to agree to do, we should at least partially forgive them. Not let them go for this and the murder that Brandi committed up in Canada, God no, but…you know what I mean?"
"Do you think that Gem or Rena will forgive them on at least one level when they recover?" Brin asked.
"I think that Gem will," CeCe said. "That's the kind of person that she usually is. She definitely won't forget, but she'll at least somewhat forgive." She wiped her eyes. "You're right. This whole situation makes me more sad than anything else."
"But hell, the ordinaries have people as messed up as Ben was and Brandi and Cam are," Zane said sarcastically. "Why should transgenics be any different?" He sighed. "It's times like this that make me understand why some ordinaries smoke." He smirked when he saw the look on Zack's face. "Chill, Zack, I'm not going to start smoking." The typical exchange lightened the mood somewhat and several of them laughed a little bit.
"Yeah, it's bad enough too see Mole with his cigars," Max said. "Can you imagine if Zane smoked those things too?"
"Oh, somebody help us," Syl groaned. "The two of them standing around smoking those disgusting things while Mole's practically surgically attached to that shotgun of his and talking about nothing but weapons, mechanics, and explosions and things like that. It'd be like watching two small children." Syl stopped suddenly and her eyes and those of the other waiting transgenics drifted over to Andrea as it hit them that she could conceivably lose her mother. Syl sounded subdued when she spoke again. "Me and my big mouth."
"It's okay," Max said. Time for a subject change. She turned to Zack. "Do you have any idea when Wayne's going to be getting out of that surgery that he's doing right now over at Harbor Lights?"
Zack shook his head. "All I know is that it's going to be awhile. The nurse that I'd spoken to said that he had gone in to the O.R. not even half an hour before to help that car accident victim and due to the nature of the patient's injuries, she guessed that it was going to take several hours at the very least that was only twenty minutes ago. Maggie should be finished with her own surgery within the next couple of minutes, though, so she should be reachable soon." He ran a hand through his hair. "I even called my parents to update them on the situation. I…" Zack stopped and sighed. "How many more times?"
"If we're really lucky, this will be the last one," Max said. She had one hand on her stomach and one hand on Zack's shoulder as if she was trying to calm both her unborn child and her fiancé. "It'll be okay, Zack."
"Eventually…but when?" Zack said quietly.
"I don't know, but it better be really soon," CeCe said.
"Absolutely. I am so sick of waiting for just anything," Brin agreed. "God, I just want something to do."
Sasha managed a small smile. "Do you want to hold Jade? She's getting restless and I'm having a hard time holding on to her." She turned to the child. "What do you say, Jade? Do you want to go to Aunt Brin? Huh?"
"Want go, Mommy," Jade agreed. Brin walked over to them and picked Jade up.
"You are getting big, girl," Brin said. "What has your mom been feeding you and Julia?"
"Ceweal," Jade said with a smile. That got some laughter out of the others, but it stopped when they heard footsteps approaching the main building from the direction of the med bay. The adults held their breath as the footsteps came closer and a few moments later, one of the medical transgenics approached them.
"I have an update for you," he said. "Rena is still in surgery, but she should be out within an hour. Like we said before, the bullet just missed a main vessel and further investigation showed that nothing else that was critical was damaged. The bullet has been removed and we're repairing what damage had been done."
"And Gem?" Alec asked tensely.
"The bullet clipped her heart," the transgenic doctor said. "She lost a lot of blood. She received transfusions of both X5 blood as well as blood from my type and we tried everything else that we could have done, but there was too much damage. Gem was pronounced dead eight minutes ago."
There was complete silence not only from the X5s, but from everybody else that was in the control room as well. "No," CeCe said shakily. "That's not right. That can't be possible. She—I was told that she was alive when the paramedics got to the apartment. How could she have been alive then and dead now?"
"She was alive when Riley and I got there," Zack said. "How could she have died?"
"To be honest, I'm surprised that Gem lasted as long as she did before she died," the doctor said. "I'm really sorry."
"Sorry? You're sorry? My best friend just died and all you are is sorry?" CeCe exploded. She broke down in tears. Most of the others began to cry as well.
"What now?" Zack asked.
"We'll make the necessary arrangements," the doctor said. "Someone can talk to us when you're ready. I'm sorry." He left the control room.
"Oh…my…God," Alec said slowly. He tried to wipe the tears from his face, but they kept on streaming down his face.
Biggs shook his head, his shoulders shaking with the effort of trying not to cry. "I just don't know—Andrea, oh Andrea…" He couldn't hold back the tears any longer.
"Let me take her," Sasha said softly. She took the toddler from Biggs' lap and looked at her, her heart breaking for the child. She's less than two weeks short of her first birthday and she's lost her mother. The poor girl! She gently stroked the side of Andrea's face and Andrea looked up at her stepmother, confused.
"Where Mommy?" she asked.
"Mommy—your mommy isn't here," Sasha said. "Mommy went away up to heaven. She didn't want to go at all, she wanted to stay right here with you, but she didn't have a choice."
"Come back?"
"No," Sasha said tearfully. "Your mommy can't come back."
"No?" Andrea whimpered.
"Oh, Andrea," Sasha said. She hugged the little girl. "I am so sorry. We all wish that your mommy could come back and if there was absolutely anything that we could do that could bring her back, we'd do it." She pulled away so that she could look at Andrea. "I'll tell you what can and will be done, though. Your father is going to be there for you and so will your sisters and all of your aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and I'll be there for you, too." She kissed the child on the top of her head. "I love you, Andrea, and I'll make sure that you'll be okay and safe and everything good, just like your mommy would want me to. I'll be there, I promise." She felt Andrea's little arms tighten around her and she turned to look at Biggs. The look of love and gratitude that she saw in his eyes brought a soft smile to her face and she reached over and squeezed his hand.
TBC