Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Jondy, 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 (Elle/X5-164, etc.).

Notes: Spoiler-ish stuff for various season 1 episodes.

Chapter 3: Gale (X5-831)

We marched to the outdoor rifle range for a group lesson there, our mood better than it had been recently. We've been slowly cheering up with every day that goes by because we know that it shouldn't be long until Zack gets back to us from Psy Ops. I still can't believe that they threw him in there because of 333! I should cool it down, like Max says sometimes. We don't know what happened with Unit 7 and why they decided to try to run. I know how much all of us hate Manticore and our lives here. Personally, running wouldn't be such a bad idea. Not that it would happen any time soon with how they've been watching us. Maybe Unit 7 had it worse than us somehow. I don't know.

"It should only be another week," Max said happily as we arrived at the range and sat down on a bench and waited for the trainer to show up. "In exactly a week it will be three months since Unit 7 tried to escape from here and then we should get Zack back."

"I can't wait," Syl agreed.

"Have any of you heard anything in your morning classes about why the power went out for a few minutes late last night?" Jondy asked.

All of us shook our heads. "I haven't heard anything," Zane said. "Nobody in my IT class had a clue. Not even the trainers knew the cause."

"I didn't hear anything in Basic Psychology," Ben said.

"And I didn't hear anything in Advanced Weaponry either," I said. "I'm sorry, Jondy."

"It's okay," Jondy said. She shrugged.

"Whatever happened, it happened," Tinga said. She looked over at a unit of X6s as they went outside for an exercise. "Those poor kids. If it's hard for us X5s to have our C.O.s stuck in Psy Ops for the past few months, imagine how hard it is for them. They're so young."

"They're not that much younger than I am, at least the oldest ones aren't," Krit said.

"Even so," Tinga said. "Poor kids."

"They all seem to be keeping it together, though," I said.

"Do they have a choice?" Tinga reminded me.

"True," I admitted. I could easily remember back to when I was the same age as the X6s. Even when I was two years old and had just joined my family, I wasn't allowed to show anything ever.

"Hey, I might have found out something that should make at least some of us very happy," Max said. She grinned. "I was walking to the cafeteria for lunch from my tactics class and I heard these two trainers talking and they're going to let all X5 and younger series with maybe the exception of those X7s because of their weird DNA start growing their hair out at ten years old instead of fourteen like the X3s and X4s did."

My eyes lit up. I hated getting a buzz cut every week. "Are you serious, Maxie?"

"Definitely," Max said. "They said that the order will officially be issued tomorrow."

"Yes!" Tinga said happily. "I'm never cutting my hair again or at least for a long time."

"Girls," Kenny said.

"Yeah," Zane said. "Why do girls have to act so...girly?"

"Grow up," Jace said.

"Yeah," Elle agreed. "Do you guys think that I would look good with longer hair?"

"Wow. Unbelievable," Parker said.

"The trainer will be here at any moment so will you please shut up?" Max said. She suddenly perked up and motioned over to where a few trainers were talking quietly, but not quietly enough for us not to hear it. We all listened in on the conversation. Hey, if we didn't listen in on the trainers' conversations once in awhile, how would we learn slang or other useful things?

"I just came straight from Lydecker's office," one trainer said. "He'd been speaking with Marshall in Seattle and Warren in Syracuse. The power only went out there for a few minutes before the generators kicked in so they're both fine and running on schedule, like we are."

"This is unbelievable," another trainer said. "I can't believe those bastards managed to get their hands on something like that. Thank goodness that our equipment was shielded."

"Absolutely," the first trainer agreed. "It's always good to be prepared for anything and I'm sure that this counts as anything."

"I would say that it does," the second trainer said. "Can you imagine what it's like in the cities? Thank goodness that we happen to live on-site. I wouldn't want to deal with that kind of crap."

"I had to go into town early this morning," the first trainer said. "It was a mess out there. Nothing's running at all. Then again, Gillette isn't a big city. I can only imagine that places like LA or New York are already starting to recover. Either that or they're experiencing more chaos because they're so damn big."

"Do you know exactly what weapon was used?" the second trainer asked. "All that I heard was that it was an electromagnetic pulse of some kind."

"Yeah, it was that experimental thing that NASA was developing," the first trainer said. "Remember how I was telling you about it last week? It was designed to be set off in space to completely shut down the electronics of a faulty satellite so that repairs could be made by a crew before it would be restarted. Some terrorist had gotten into that lab down in Florida, stole the device, and then he and his buddies had commandeered some plane and set it off. It wiped out pretty much everything from the East coast to the West coast and from Seattle to LA and from Portland, Maine down to just south of Alexandria, Virginia. The southeast from southern Virginia down to Florida and on west to I believe they said around Albuquerque. The southeast got really lucky."

"Lucky bastards," the second trainer again. "I need to get going. I've got to work with a unit of X5s over at the rifle range over there in a minute. I'll see you later." A moment later, we heard the trainer approach us and we stood up and stood at attention. "It's good to see that you're here and ready to go, you little bastards. Before we begin our work with the new rifles, we will review your skills. You all know the drill. Select a rifle and go to the line and fire at the targets. We will be going in random order." He picked up a clipboard that he had with him and checked something off on it. "831, you will be first."

"Sir, yes, sir!" I said. I saluted the trainer and went over to the rack where some of the rifles were kept and picked out the model that I liked the most. I took a deep breath and went to the line. It's time to focus now, Gale. Forget that Zack's going to be back in a week or so. Forget that you're finally going to be able to grow your hair out. Forget that there's so much chaos going on in the outside world. Just forget. I blew my breath out. Easier said than done.

TBC

More notes: Thank you so much to HoneyX5-452 and angelofdarkness78 for their reviews and support! aod78, Zack did not have a twin in the unit that attempted to escape in the first chapter. The only biological sibling that he does have in this fic is Becky, who'll be appearing a little bit later. This will have at least one ship in it and I am leaning for one of them to be Max/Zack. Thank you all so much again!