A/N... Holy crap! 71 reviews... I never thought it would be even half this successful. And when I checked earlier, P.L. Wynter had me on her favorites list. That is a honor, as I consider her to be one of the most talented Supernatural fanfic writers out there. But I have a problem now, as I just went to check my stats, so I could get everyone's name to I could thank you... but won't let me. Says that a unknown error has occurred.
So right now, it's just going to have to be a giant collective thank-you! Just until (rolls eyes) decides to fix whatever problem they have now.
By the way, you guys catch the season premiere last night? If you didn't, all I can say is... wow. Great episode.
Disclaimer: Some of Alec's following dialogue comes from the Dark Angel: The Eyes Only Dossier by D.A. Stern. I reiterate that I make absololutely no money off this; it's strictly for entertainment only.
P.S. I had to change the year of Dean's birthdate, to make it fit with the Dark Angel time frame.
But Logan had followed Max out, and stopped her before she left.
"Max!"
"Yeah?" she asked, gazing up at him with her large dark eyes that made his breath catch in his chest every time he looked her way.
He forced himself to focus at the task at hand. "Uh… what did you say those kids' names were again?"
"Winchester. The younger one is Sam, the one Dr. Carr is patching up is named Dean," Max's eyes narrowed. "Why? You're not going to go snooping around on them, are you? I do think they have something to hide, but need I remind you, Dean did save my life."
"No-no, it's just… their name sounds familiar."
Max stared him down a moment longer; obviously gauging to see if he was telling the truth. Finally she nodded. "If you come up with anything before I get back, call me."
"Will do."
Leaving them to head their separate ways.
They sat down together, Alec taking a deep breath.
"Okay… since the early 1990's, billions of tax dollars have been diverted from legitimate government programs in order to fund secret experiments in genetic engineering. A genetic engineering program known as Project Manticore. Their goal was to create the perfect soldier…" Alec paused. "They used recombinant DNA technology to manipulate the human genome. Genetically enhanced for superior strength, speed, and intelligence, these kids were held against their will and submitted to relentless training and propaganda."
Sam's hazel eyes were huge. "A-and you… and Max. You're from there? You guys are those Manticore soldiers?"
"Yeah. Max escaped with twelve others in 09'… I didn't get out until earlier this year."
Sam was silent for a long moment. "Isn't Manticore a legendary creature… a kind of chimera? Has the head of man, and the body of a lion?"
Alec narrowed his eyes. Although Sam had obviously tried to make the words casual; there was a underlying intensity beneath them.
"Well, that's what the Manticore symbol is. But Manticore itself was just a secret government program that was busy churning out kids like Max and me by the dozens." Alec turned, and brushed back his blond hair
Sam peered closely at the man's neck, and his eyes widened.
He had a barcode.
Yeah, maybe it could've been a tattoo, but something instinctively told Sam that it wasn't.
Max's words, which he really hadn't been listening to at the time, came back to him.
At first, I thought he was you. When I realized he wasn't, I checked the back of his neck. No barcode.
"So… uh, Max has one of these, too?"
Alec gave a wry grin that contained little humor. "Yeah. Everyone from Manticore does."
"Uh…" Sam searched for a way to broach the subject. "What did you mean by my brother being 'another' clone?"
He watched as Alec stilled, and he automatically regretted asking the question.
The silence stretched out, long and tense, and Sam wondered if Alec was even going to answer the question.
But finally, in a even tone that didn't fool him one bit, Alec said "I had a clone from Max's group… X5-493-"
Sam interrupted. "What? Sorry, but what does that mean?"
"That's our barcode. Our designation. Mine is X5-494. Max's is X5-452," Alec cleared his throat. "Anyway X5-493... His name was Ben. Manticore drove him crazy. And when he was outside; he turned into a serial killer. He'd hunt down people, capture them, tattoo his barcode on their neck… and kill them. And he'd also rip their teeth out."
Sam was horrified.
"And because I was his clone; they put me in psych-ops."
Sam didn't know what psych-ops was, but from the expression on Alec's face; that it was bad.
He had to ask. "What was psych-ops?"
Alec's face stiffed. "Psych-ops was short for neuropsychology. The X5's clones of the ones who escaped in '09 were to be considered especially "at risk" for aberrant behavior. They specialized in physical and mental torture. I was first put in because of that… then when Ben went psycho, they threw me in again…."
Alec paused. Was he going to reveal the most painful experience of his life?
"The third time was when I was cleared for my first solo mission," Alec noticed the look confusion on the kid's face. "Basically, solo missions, were in short, assassinations."
To his credit, Sam didn't show revulsion, didn't even blink. "Go on."
"I was supposed to watch a man named Robert Berrisford… back then he was the CEO of Mercidyne Industries, which was one of Manticore's main subcontractors. He'd been nosing around, asking questions. Which immediately put him on Manticore's hit list."
Alec paused. "So they sent me… although at first I was just supposed to poke around, and see what he'd found out."
"How did you get in? I assume you had to stay there for awhile?" Sam asked.
Pain, close to agony spasmed across Alec's face, and Sam felt sick.
"Berrisford had a daughter… her name was Rachel. She was seventeen, so at the time, around my age. My cover was to be her piano teacher, Simon Lehane."
"Can you even play the piano?"
"Yeah. Manticore taught me. I must've had some gene or something. Picked it up in a day."
"A day?" Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Wow."
Yeah, my only obstacle was killing the real Simon Lehane.
But he didn't really think that the kid wanted to hear that. So he skipped that part, saying. "So I… um got inside without any trouble… the only problem was Rachel."
Sam raised an inquiring eyebrow. "What about her?"
Although he suspected he already knew, from the look on his brother's… twin, clone, he wasn't sure what to call him, face.
"I…" Alec swallowed hard. "I fell in love with her."
Alec looked over at Sam's face.
He was watching him; looking closely for a reaction. To see if the other young man believed him or not.
Because he knew that some people wouldn't believe the story. That the man ordered to potentially kill a young woman's father, a man who had lived his whole life as a soldier conditioned to obey orders… could fall in love.
Especially with said young woman.
But what he saw was not disbelief, but continued interest in what he had to say… mixed with sorrow and pain?
"Is something wrong?" he asked.
Sam started with surprise as Alec asked him if something was wrong.
He had been listening, enrapt with fascination, but as Alec spoke of Rachel… and of his love for her, which was conveyed so clearly on his face, and in his green eyes… it struck a painful chord in Sam.
As clearly as if she had been standing in front of him; he had pictured Jess's sweet face, and his heart wrenched.
The pain must've been written across his face in neon or something, for a total stranger to notice.
"Um…just the way you talk about her… about Rachel… it reminds me of my girlfriend. Her name was Jess. Jessica Moore."
Was.
Alec heard the word, assimilated it's meaning. That, coupled, with the sorrow that was thick in Sam's voice.
He swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. What happened, if you don't mind me asking?"
He watched as the kid's eyes shift to his tightly clenched hands in his lap. "In-in a fire. Our apartment at Stanford burned down."
"You went to Stanford, huh?"
"Uh… yeah. For a few years… I had a full-ride, but I… left after Jess died. I couldn't stay."
"So you're one of those mega-smart people too, huh? Like Logan?"
Sam shook his head. "I just studied hard in school. But we're getting off topic, we were talking you, not me. So what happened?"
What happened…?
Alec closed his eyes briefly, but only for a moment.
"Well… after so long, I was so completely in love with her. I loved everything about her, from her eyes, to how she played the piano."
He watched as Sam nod slightly, in understanding.
"Then during one my briefings to Manticore, they tell me that I was to eliminate Berrisford. To plant a car bomb so it would go off… while he was taking Rachel to school. They wanted me to kill both of them. I protested, that I could eliminate Berrisford without killing Rachel… and they threatened to send someone else."
Sam was quiet, still waiting for him to finish.
"I had the bomb… had planted it, because I knew what would happen to me if I failed," when Alec saw Sam open his mouth, he elaborated. "They'd put me back in the neuropsychology ward. It's… uh, not a fun place to be," Alec found himself fidgeting at the mere memory of psych-ops. "As I said earlier, they torture you… both physically and mentally."
"Why?" Sam asked, and Alec saw to his amazement, that there was something that looked like sympathy on the young man's face.
"Reindoctrination," at the look of confusion on Sam's face, he elaborated. "They try to re-wire your brain… to make you blindly and completely obedient to Manticore."
Alec swallowed hard. "But I could never kill Rachel. I want to say I could never hurt her, but by lying to her…" he trailed off.
"I told her the truth. That my name wasn't Simon Lehane, and that I had been sent to kill her father. And that they needed to run, fast, and get far away from Seattle," Alec blinked hard. "Naturally, she freaked out. And ran outside to warn her father, who was in their car, waiting for her… she was screaming for him. He got out of the car… and it exploded."
Alec bit his lip to keep any tears from forming.
Why was he telling all of this to this kid? A nightmare that haunted his every waking moment, something that had secured his spot in Hell?
He blamed it on the fact that Sam an excellent listener, quiet and attentive.
He was also his… clone or twin's, or whatever the hell this guy Dean was…brother.
Maybe that was working for him too.
Your job, and your only thought, is to follow our orders…
Alec cleared his throat, which had became tight with the awful need to cry. "Right then, a SUV pulled up from Manticore… I guess they hadn't trusted me when I said I was capable of carrying out the mission. So they followed me, with a second remote and when Rachel came outside, they detonated it."
The look on Sam's face was horror, mixed with sorrow.
"Berrisford had gotten out… but I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know anything. I was automatically dragged back to Manticore, and threw into pysch-ops before you could say failed mission. But it was funny… before I had been so afraid to go back there, but knowing what I'd caused, what I'd done. It didn't bother me at all."
In fact he had welcomed the physical pain, the torture, as punishment for what he had done to Rachel.
"So I never knew anything… until I got back to Seattle a few months ago. And while Max and I are delivering a package…" Again, Sam looks confused.
"We work at a company called Jam Pony. It's a bike messenger service." Alec clarified for him.
Sam nods. "Okay, gotcha."
"Yeah, well the house we're delivering to is none other than Robert Berrisford's. I'm panicking, because I sure as hell don't want to be seen there… but they catch me on the video surveillance."
Alec sighed. "Make a long story short… Berrisford was alive and pissed off. He starts calling my cell phone, and when I answer… I can hear piano music. So I start to wonder… and hope that maybe Rachel was alive, too. I go by the house, and see a woman pass by the window…"
He chuckled, the sound of the man who found nothing particularly funny. "It was all a trap… Berrisford had been setting it all up. When I got inside, it wasn't Rachel."
"What happened? What did he do?" Sam asked.
Slow exhalation from Alec. "Well, he tied me up to a chair, and pointed a gun at me. But I didn't care, because I got to ask him what happened to Rachel."
"The blast had knocked her unconscious, and she'd been in a coma ever since. She was in the house, in her room, dying, inch by inch for the past two years." Alec's face was stony, but his voice trembled slightly, betraying him.
Sam hurt just listening to him.
"Max came then… by then she had figured out that I had gotten myself into trouble and did what she does best. Kicked ass. Knocks out Berrisford, and lets me out."
Alec stood then, and walked over to the window, so he wouldn't have to look at Sam while he talked.
"Then I went down to Rachel's room… and I told her that I was sorry, that I didn't understand what her love was to me back then. That I should've fought Manticore harder. I stayed with her until I heard her father waking up… then I told her goodbye."
Alec's head dipped low. "She died two days later."
"I'm sorry."
Alec purposely kept his back towards Sam, so the kid wouldn't see the tears glimmering in his green eyes.
"Yeah… me too. I wish it could've been me."
Every single damn day, I wish it…
Logan sat in his living room; unaware of Alec and Sam's conversation. He was completely absorbed in the information on his computer screen.
He scanned it again, disbelieving.
He had found something all right, but not what he was originally thinking.
It was a newspaper headline from St. Louis, Missouri.
Authorities say that they have found the man responsible for the recent outbreak of brutal murders.
The killer, identified as Dean Winchester, age 26, was fatally shot while he was attempting one of the murders. The victim asked not to be identified. During a search, evidence was found implicating Winchester for the murder of Emily Arnold, age 22 and others. He was also guilty of the attempted murder of Rebecca Warren, age 21, as police caught him fleeing the scene.
There was also an obituary…complete with a picture.
Dean Matthew Winchester died Thursday, June 13th, 2021, at St. Lucas Hospital, due to complications of a gunshot wound.
Born in Lawrence, KS on January 24th, 1995, Dean was the oldest of the two sons of John and Mary Winchester.
He is survived by his younger brother, Samuel Jonathan Winchester, and his father John Winchester. He is preceded in death by his mother, Mary Winchester.
Funeral Services will be held Sunday, June 16th, 2021 at Mt. Hope Cemetery.
Logan frowned as he stared in confusion at the picture. It was the young man… Dean Winchester, no doubt about it. If you looked closely, you could see the telltale scar on his forehead.
What the hell was going on?
Okay everyone... I hope that was okay.
