Disclaimer: I know, I have no rights to anything of Dark Angel, minus literary freedom to write what I want how I want without repercussions from the creators as long as they are given credit. So, JC and CE here you are: credit.
A/N: Here it is, chapter two…It took a little longer than I intended, but it's worth it ;) Enjoy, and don't forget to review.
Always a Woman
Chapter Two: Asking for Help
Seattle. It may have been a few years in the making, but this city had become Max's home. She had hesitatingly made it her place of residence, unsure of how soon Lydecker and his team would discover her identity and location after the incident with Seth. But now it meant so much more to her. She had gone through a lot: lost a lot, gained a lot. Now that she was well on her way to making transgenics an accepted part of society, she felt well satisfied with where her strange little life had taken her.
Max stopped in her walk to work, her bike rolling beside her, halted by her holdup, She pricked up her genetically engineered ears, focusing on any obscure sound. Something had her unconsciously on her guard.
Unfortunately, the danger did not lie in external factors.
She didn't know what it was, she just knew it hurt. Worse than her seizures had been, it hurt. Her skull throbbed with earthquake-grade shudders, sending her to her knees in an instant, dropping her forgotten bike on the pavement. As she lifted her hands to grab her head in a vain attempt to dispel the pain, her muscles began to burn. All over her body, with each beat of her heart, her blood ran with fire. It wasn't a fire of passion; it was a flickering, flaming, going-to-char-skin, on fire.
Oh, God, help! Max screamed in her mind, pain shooting through her like a continuous electric jolt. Electric-chair-type-sedition came to mind, but there was no one around to pin it on. No tasers, no weapons, nothing.
"There she is!" Someone yelled. She didn't know which direction it was coming in, but instinctually she knew that they were talking about her.
"Oh, hell, no!" Max recoiled from her place on the dingy sidewalk to a darkened alleyway. The dimmer light lessened the intensity of her convulsing headache.
Four men clad in dark military garb approached her. Martial law was a wonderful thing in a broken world, except when the sector police who were supposed to be protecting man-kind from riots and general unrest were easily bought and turned the other way. This, however, seemed to Max like they had been paid to grab her specifically. Well, they wouldn't have her. Not without a damn good fight.
She raged in her moments of lulled pain to throw them off, anything to escape unjust capture. But her movements seemed sluggish and weakened. There was no way that she could get away on her own. Darkness soon enveloped her and she fell limply into the waiting arms of the sector police.
When she finally woke, she could barely move to lift her hands, testing the restraints pinning her to a steel table. She gazed at the ceiling above her, loose tiles threatening to fall around her, and absently prayed that someone would find her—she didn't want to give up hope. No one knew where she was, of course, but if she gave up hope of escape—of salvation—she might as well will herself to die. They would certainly kill her, she had no doubt of it. Whatever they had done to her was close enough.
"We nearly lost her that time," a voice said. A high-pitched screeching, obviously from a charging defibrillator, sounded somewhere above her.
She opened her eyes slowly, fuzzy images meeting her gaze. She counted seconds, passing into minutes as her vision cleared gradually. Above her stood a doctor, obviously so due to the white smock he wore, and a guard of some kind, dressed in plane black fatigues. "What is this?" Her voice rasped.
"452," the doctor looked at her gently, but Max cringed at the use of her designation. "You're undergoing some radical changes to your genetic structure. While the cause is largely unknown, we did know it was going to occur. You have to trust me. I'll get you through this."
"Yeah, like all the other lab techs from Manticore have promised, and given me worthless trash. Believe me, I can give you examples." Max thought about the virus, about the Manticore-designed neural explosive implanted at the base of Alec's brainstem, about the would-be cure for the virus and the money-hungry tech that didn't even complete his work, about the tests and experiments done to Tinga, about the reindoctrination of Brin, about Zack's mental impediments courtesy of a faulty repair job to his brain. She blamed them all on Manticore. Though, she did admit that she blamed the whole neural explosive thing dually on Manticore and White.
"452, I am not a Manticore lab tech. I must admit that I used to be, in the project's early stages I was. But when Dr. Sandeman left the facility, I had no choice but to follow suit."
Max stared at the man for several minutes. Unable to come to a conclusion about the validity of his statement, she frowned at him giving a noncommittal reply. "Uh-huh. And what exactly do you mean by 'radical changes' to my genetic structure?"
Alec approached sector police headquarters with stealth only capable of an X5. He slinked around corners and under lighted windows with the agility of a cat, searching for any inconspicuous point of access. Taking a card from Max's deck, Alec nimbly climbed the exterior of the building to the roof. Using the roof access door, Alec entered crouching low. He would take no chances. This was a mission that he could not afford to go sideways.
The building stood seven stories high, ample ground to cover for a single transgenic in search of another. When he got to the second floor, traveling down from the roof, examining every room, he began to get frustrated. Where could they be keeping her?
He got to the end of the hall on the first floor with no success. Max simply didn't exist in this building. He dropped to his haunches in a corner. Something wasn't right, it was like he was missing something. He looked at a wall placard which indicated what departments were located on which floor. Scanning the information with transgenic speed, he saw it. The last indicator on the sign listed the basement. Why would the building list the basement on the directory, unless there was another department. But nothing was identified as being on the basement level.
That's where Max was being held. He was sure of it.
Alec stood up and made his way to the main stairwell of the station, the only access to the basement level. If she was in the basement, there was more behind this capture than any other they had faced. The basement. He nearly shuddered with the association it brought of Manticore's basement. If there was any kind of connection between the two… He swore to himself that he would get her out of there, and when he did he would keep her from getting caught ever again—even if that meant following her around for the rest of her life. She would hate him for it, but at least his mind would be at ease.
"Radical changes. Your genetic code is unraveling. A lot is still unknown, but we have fragments of information based on recovered files—Dr. Sandeman's files." The doctor picked up a syringe from a side table and drew some blood. "We'll need to do some more tests to be certain," he looked at the guard, handing him the syringe of her blood, "but the progression is constant. Within the hour, you should be able to function as any other human."
The male X5 slithered along the wall all the way down the stairs. He wasn't sure what he would meet. It was highly probably that the only thing he would meet would be ordinary sector cops and other ordinary officials. The only problem was he didn't know how many he would come across at a time.
The hall was quiet, and dark. If Alec were any other, he probably would have turned around and gone home, giving in to the niggling thought that Max was not the one who was captured. But he knew it wasn't true. He trusted his instincts, and his instincts told him that Max had been captured, and that they had taken her here. This basement was the last place to search.
"Come on, Max," Alec whispered into the dark corridor, "where are you?" Frustration escalated as he reached the last two doors of the hallway. Light poured out of a window in the door on the right. Chances were that's where she was being held. But what did "being held" entail?
He slowly peeked in through the small window, his eyes growing wide with what he saw. Max was there alright, but she was strapped to a table a short balding man with glasses leaning over her. Alec pried the door open quietly, opening it just enough to hear if anything was being said within the room. He really wanted more information about why they had taken Max. It wasn't your every day, run of the mill sector police arrest. They needed to know more.
"We'll need to do more tests to be certain," a man in a white lab coat spoke to one of the guards. Alec couldn't see the man's face, but he had a disturbing feeling that he was more than familiar with him. "But, the progression is constant. Within the hour, you should be able to function as any other human."
What the hell? What did he mean 'as any other human'? Alec knew they needed more information, but with how this doctor was talking, he didn't think he could allow himself to wait any more. He was going to get Max out of there now.
A/N: There it is: chapter two. (This is the second time I've loaded this chapter…I made a few changes.) What do you think? Please review and let me know. (Chapter three should be up along with this one).