A/N: Same stuff applies as in the first chapter.

A/N part two: Specific episodes of Supernatural mentioned are: "Pilot," "Folsom Prison Blues," and "No Rest for the Wicked." Specific episodes of Dark Angel mentioned are: "The Berrisford Agenda."

A/N part three: So, thing is, I'd had all intention to post this yesterday, but the Fourth had a leetle more fanfare than I'd thought and, long story short, I ended up sleeping in until 1:45. (I also may or may not have consumed some C2H5OH.) Yeah. For all y'all who celebrate the Fourth of July, though, I hope you had a great time; and for all y'all who didn't, erm…hope you had a great Sunday.

A/N part four: For those also following "As You Are Now, So Once Was I," a special message: Because I see the light at the end of this story and am kinda on a roll, that one might be put on hold until this one finishes up. I'll still be brainstorming, and will ideally still have a few chapters done by the time ODATSQ is done, but for the immediacy, I'd like to concentrate on this one. Don't hate me, and know that in no way, shape, or form am I giving up on AYANSOWI, however. 'Cause I'm not.

Of Desire and the Status Quo

Chapter XXXIV: Trinity

Climbing the stairs to the third floor of the rundown building takes no time at all, and Rade doesn't bother to knock, instead forcing open the door with her shoulder. The apartment is quiet, dark, and if it were any other transgenic, she'd think they'd gone for a walk (they don't do very well cooped up like rats in a maze). But for Trinity, an ex-Psy Ops employee, it was par for the course, unfortunately.

"Trinity?" she calls, her eyes quickly adjusting to the dim light. "Trinity, I need to talk to you. It's Rade."

It's faint, but after a few moments, Rade hears a whispered "Bedroom."

Quietly, she makes her way to the designated room and steps inside. There's a blanket-covered lump on the bed, and she walks over, sitting on the edge. Since escaping from Manticore and moving to T.C., everyone had looked a little healthier (despite T.C.'s not-very-sanitary-and-lacking-in-reasonable-food), chiefly because, well, virtually anything's better than Manticore. Trinity and the other Psy Ops personnel had gained a little weight and perhaps some color in their cheeks, but they were still worse off than the others.

All of them had suffered the hell that was Manticore, but the Psy Ops members arguably had it the hardest. They not only had to endure the awfulness on themselves, but also had to delve into their fellow transgenics' minds, probe inside and jumble them up. Make them forget, or make them guilt more than they were already; messing with people's brains, memories, thoughts, was nothing anyone wanted to do.

Worse still, regardless of she being the "best coping" of the Psy Ops units, Trinity was dealing with more personally assigned shame than her brethren. For unlike the other two units, who worked on relatively low-profile transgenics, Trinity was assigned to the higher-profile ones. In fact, she was the primary unit who worked on Alec.

He didn't hold it against her personally—he's all too well versed in being manipulated and exploited—but still she felt contrition, and on many occasions simply refused to talk to him. Max either. Because while it isn't like Max and Alec tend to share overtly personal information, for someone like Trinity, they'd have a confab or two. And Trinity isn't willing to endure that.

"Trinity, I need your help," Rade says softly.

Trinity turns her electric blue eyes from the cracked, water-stained wall to look blankly at Rade. Last time I "helped" someone, they almost forgot the love of their life, just remembered that they put her into a coma, her eyes say.

"Dix was nearly killed," Rade says, staring meaningfully at Trinity. "There was an explosion, Kali was possessed by a demon…it's all kind of complicated."

Rade hadn't realized just how weird everything sounded to someone who wasn't there. Demons? Possessions? If Rade hadn't seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn't have believed it. Dean Winchester confession or no.

Rade feels a gentle pressing on her brain, smoky fingers searching, and glares. She knows Trinity hadn't meant to mind read, but it made it no less uncomfortable. "I wouldn't be asking if it weren't absolutely necessary, Trin," she says. "Dix has acute amnesia. He found something on the computer about Dean Winchester—another long, really long, story—but he can't remember it. We need you to find out what it was."

Dean who?

Rade shifts her weight and runs a hand through her hair. She hadn't really wanted to get into this. But Trinity had asked, and considering the favor being requested of her, Rade guesses an explanation is the least she can do.

"He's, uh…he came…well, we don't know much about him," says Rade. "Nothing apart from that he has a brother named Sam, and he looks exactly like Alec would ten years from now."

Trinity's eyes go wide, and she sits up in bed, her hair lank and body fragile, but her eyes remarkably, suddenly, sharp. "What?" she exclaims, her voice sounding like it's through a megaphone in the silence of the room.

Rade, taken aback, blinks. "Y-Yeah, he—he just appeared a couple days ago, we don't really know how. He said he was in Hell, but I d—"

Trinity swallows and stands up, straightening herself. "He's telling the truth," she says.

Rade frowns. She'd been willing enough to give Dean at least half the benefit of the doubt (especially given recent, possession-y events), but she hadn't been nearly as adamant as Trinity sounds.

"How do you—he was?"

"I had a vision," Trinity says, going to the door and grabbing a thin jacket from the knob. "I thought it was a fluke. I didn't think it was real."

Rade chooses not to comment on how Psy Ops units weren't made to have fluke visions. "Okay, so…what did you see?"

Trinity zips up the hoodie and, grabbing a rubber band from the nightstand, draws her hair up into a messy ponytail. "Not much," she answers. "Just…I'd thought it was Alec…but he looked different. Older. He was covered in blood, dirt. Looked like he didn't know what the hell was going on."

"So, how do you know he's not lying out his ass?" Rade inquires, not wanting to have misgiving about Trinity, but knowing that particularly now, any visions the Psy Ops units may get aren't necessarily always flawless.

Trinity turns her eyes on Rade, the brightness in them unnerving. "My job wasn't just to implant memories or take them away, Rade," Trinity snaps. "I had to feel things, sense things. I had to know what my targets were feeling in order to fuck them up. You want to think someone's lying, fine. But don't you dare think I'm lying. I didn't ask for this shit."

Rade holds up her hands in surrender. "All right, all right, I'm sorry," she says. "We're just…a little stressed over in HQ. There are—"

"Demons. I know," says Trinity. "I saw them. I knew they were there, I just…didn't want to believe they were real."

Rade bites her tongue from lashing out at Trinity for not bothering to tell the rest of T.C. that they were about to become taken hostage by their own. That Max was going to be taken hostage by a previously benign X6.

"I don't suppose you could, you know, get a message out to Alec and Dean, could you?" Rade asks. "Tell them what's waiting for them?"

Trinity stares. "I can kind of telepath with other Psy Ops operatives," she says. "But not with other transgenics, and certainly not with Ordinaries. No matter how special Dean Winchester may be, he's still an Ordinary."

"It was worth a try," Rade mutters. Louder, she questions, "You'll read Dix's mind, then? Figure out what he found on Dean and Sam?"

Trinity takes a second, but then nods. "I will," she answers. "But I'm not promising it'll be pretty." Rade narrows her eyes in query. Trinity explains, "Dean may've looked all orphan boy, but he went to Hell for a reason, Rade."

"He said it was because Sam died and he made some kind of deal."

Trinity shrugs, indifferent. "Maybe," she concedes, "but that doesn't mean he was a saint beforehand. And I'd bet all of T.C. that he didn't tell you everything."

Rade rolls her eyes. "I surmised as much," she chuckles.

Nodding, Trinity glances out the window for a moment, and then moves toward the door, hearing Rade's footsteps behind her.

The medic had just asked her to read Dix's mind, but Trinity has a sinking feeling that, whenever Alec and Dean get back, she's going to be assailed with some not-so-uplifting emotions and memories from the latter. She'd awakened sweaty and crying with just the one, split-second vision she'd had of Dean's arrival. She's not generally afraid of things, but she's afraid of what Dean's mind holds.

Alec's driving once more, and his posture, his grip on the wheel, is tighter and more tense than it was yesterday, a feat even he hadn't thought possible. He refuses to look at Dean this time; he learned that particular lesson a hundred miles ago. A hundred miles ago, he looked at Dean and saw fucking contentment. Resignation. No one would accuse Alec of being a fan of angsty, depressed, post-Sam-death Dean, but he's even less a fan of delusional Dean. The Dean that believes, wants to believe, he's in Hell and everything in the past few days has been another mind warp.

So he'd decided then and there to simply not look to his right, not for anything. Unless, you know, Dean suddenly started convulsing and foaming at the mouth or something. Then he might at least consider it.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he registers that he should be hungry, given that the last time he ate was…well, he's not quite sure right now, but he knows it was a while back. But that hunger is masked by everything else that's assaulting him at the moment; namely, the S-word.

He's tried not to think about the fact that they've got a dead body in the backseat of Dean's car—no, not just a dead body, Sam's dead body—because, frankly, even Alec finds that a little gross. It isn't that Sam has started to…smell or anything, but it's the mere thought that skeeves him out. Oh, he's killed dozens of people, but he never exactly toted their bodies around.

He plans on letting Dean do that funeral pyre thing that he'd talked about once before, but he'd rather Dean actually be in as right a mind as possible before he did it. He has a feeling sane-Dean wouldn't much appreciate burning Sam's body while he thought it was all fictional. Alec isn't inclined to entertain the remotest possibility that Dean won't return to normal (well, normal as of when he'd gotten back from Hell anyhow), which makes the whole Sam thing that much more urgent.

Now more than ever, Alec wishes he had someone who knew Dean, knew the hunting life, to help him.

Sam, Alec sulks cynically, would be an excellent candidate. Except for the whole being dead inconvenience.

He's periodically toyed with the idea of doing some sort of séance (give him a break—one of his fellow X5s was on a long-term assignment to some Wiccan chick, and she was very preachy) or something, determining that a ghostly Sam would be better than no Sam. He was even willing to overlook the probability that there aren't any good ghosts, owing to that Dean and Sam used to bust said creatures for a living if it meant getting some help, some insight.

God knows why he's having these thoughts now. Before even just yesterday, he felt no need for an outsider's assistance. Then bam, they meet Sam and he's a clueless child. He's gotten very good at rationalizing, though: he concludes that because he'd gotten more or less used to having Dean around, and Dean's personality to go with it, Sam's presence, Sam's personality, was an intriguing change. Sam was simply a foreign specimen to be studied.

'Course, he knows what Max—or Rade or Mole—would say. That he's got some inferiority complex or some intrinsic desire to have a family, a normal family, brothers, who could not only help, but would want to protect him, too.

He scoffs at himself. This absence of hardass Dean and the constant threat of White and the military has made him into a pansy.

He glances in the rearview out of habit, and wonders if Dean would have let Sam have the legroom of the front seat, or whether he'd force him to be in the back, scrunched up as humorously as if in coach airplane seats. Then he acknowledges that it'd be neither, most likely; in all probability, it'd be he in the back, Sam in the passenger seat, Dean driving. Alec suspects that, for however aww-look-at-me-I'm-cute Sam's face might be, those ten feet of muscle would have high odds of matching Alec's will.

Then there's the factor that, however much Alec would like to deny it, he and Dean are quite similar. Which would mean that Sam would know exactly what buttons to push or not push, what things would work and what wouldn't, and everything in between.

Alec curses himself out. It wouldn't do any good to dwell on what could be, or what should be. Sam should be alive, Dean should be coherent, he should be back in Seattle arguing with Max over food rations. He could be touring the countryside with Sam and Dean, he could bet Dean that he'd get more women in roadside bars, Sam could be waiting in a crap motel researching something-or-other and waiting to bitch out the both of them for being shameless sleazeballs.

He sees a minimart at the next exit, thinks about taking it (he could really do for some hard liquor right about now), but looks at the time, looks at how far they have yet to go, thinks about what horrid things could be happening in T.C., and instead floors the gas pedal. They're still only in western South Dakota, and the way the Impala, he notices, is guzzling fuel, he guesses they're going to have to stop a lot more often than they would have in the Mustang. They've got about a quarter tank left, and Alec thinks they can make it through the stretch of farmland to the next hamlet before they need to stop.

He reaches down to open the window, glad for the rush of air through the car. As much as he admires Dean's Chevy, he's more content in his motorcycle. The constant ripples of wind around him, the risk when he has to drive on water-soaked roads in the midst of Seattle's rainy season…driving a car takes that away, and he's not a big proponent of it.

As it happens, apparently all the cars coming through the aforementioned stretch of farmland ran out of gas, too, for when Alec pulls into the beat-up station, the Impala's gas light throbbing a bright orange, there are vehicles filling up at all but one pump, a couple more in the parking lot. Which, Alec scowls, would make it significantly harder to siphon fuel without being seen.

Ignoring Dean some more, Alec checks their dwindling stack of cash, then estimates the miles they have to go, then calculates the miles per gallon the Impala gets. None of the numbers crunch favorably, which makes Alec's mood even worse. If it were at any other time, he'd just find the nearest bar and hustle the hell out of the townies. But Dean's in some psychotic break, Sam's dead, and Max and Terminal City are at the mercy of demons.

To say time is of the essence would earn you a punch in the face.

But he sees no other choice, and so coughs up seventy dollars to fill up the Impala's tank. The nozzle is barely returned to its holster before they're back on the road, Alec noting with dismay that the next sign they pass welcomes them to Wyoming. Three states down, four to go.

Max wakes groggily, vision blurry before slowly focusing. Meg's still sitting on the desk, examining her gun, and looks up amusedly as Max comes back to consciousness. "Look who's finally up," she smiles. "You didn't stay out as long as I'd hoped. I'll keep that in mind."

"Transgenic," Max snaps, powering through her lethargy and post-unconsciousness headache.

Meg sneers.

"I don't suppose you'd let me, you know," Max says, motioning with her head (and immediately regretting it as a new flood of ache encompasses her brain) towards the sub-standard latrines.

"Oh no, not at all," Meg says sarcastically. "Go ahead. And while I let you run free, why don't I give you the gun, too?"

"Well, that'd certainly be helpful," Max suggests. She runs her fingers through her hair and grumbles at how sweaty it is. "Or," she says, "maybe crack open a window."

Meg rolls her eyes and sighs. "You transgenics complain more than Dean."

Max tries not to let Meg's words affect her. Truth be, the more time that elapses without Alec and Dean here, the more notches her concern rises. She's conversing with a fucking demon—she's got no evidence to back up Meg's claims that she hadn't already done something to them. For all Max knows, Meg had sent some of her cronies to go dispatch Alec and Dean before they got back.

And then what? She and T.C. would be at the whims of Meg indefinitely. And with their luck, White or the military would choose that time to execute their assault. Whenever Alec's been out on a job, Max has had a tiny wisp of worry in the back of her mind, the one that says maybe he won't come back, but that wisp is currently a full-fledged wave of terror.

She looks at Meg, hoping she'll see some kind of sign that the demon is weakening, or tiring, or something that she could use to her advantage, but sees nothing. If anything, Meg looks even more energized. Whereas Max, much to her chagrin, feels her body exhausting. Really, the only things she has going for her is her shark DNA that causes her to not need to sleep much, if at all, and the hope that Alec and Dean are badass enough to fight their way in.

And that, perhaps, Dean had bestowed some of his knowledge onto Alec. Max hadn't initially taken the whole demon hunter thing as legit, but now she trusts that it's entirely true. So if Dean had taught Alec things, all the better.

On that note, Max hopes that maybe they'd found Sam, convinced him to come with them. She's not sure how balanced Sam would be—she's fully operating on the presumption that Sam is alive; has to—considering Dean had been dead for thirteen years, but if he is sound enough in the head, well. Two experienced hunters and one transgenic with a strange affinity to the first is, in Max's eyes, the best angle they've got.

She stares at Meg again, wiping some more sweat from her forehead, and wishes she'd taken Dean's words as gospel. Maybe then…well, maybe she'd have a better chance of doing something, anything.

"All right, look," says Max wearily, "you can keep all of us hostage or whatever, but please…let Rade fix up Dalton. He didn't do anything to you. He's not a part of this. And he's—he's just a kid."

Meg laughs. "What makes you think I give a rat's ass about any of you?" she asks. "What happened to that kid is nothing compared to what I could do to him. So go ahead, push your luck some more. Maybe I'll be nice enough to let you give the freak a funeral."

Max swallows. She hadn't really expected Meg to cave, but just hearing the cold indifference towards a sixteen-year-old boy bleeding out sends needles into her heart. She looks at the floor, silent.

Though it hadn't been used for years, Trinity's apartment contains an old, wood-burning fireplace, remnants of half-charred logs still in the furnace. It catches her eye, but Rade isn't looking for something to spice up her own living area; rather, the fire poker tossed a few feet away. It's rusted, but the iron underneath is solid, and Rade smiles as she hands it to Trinity.

"Here," she says. "Apparently demons aren't big iron fans."

Trinity takes it without any argument, just peers at Rade for a moment before following the medic out of her apartment. "Is Dix okay?" she asks once they're on the street.

Rade surveys their immediate surroundings, her eyes sharp for any demons that might be milling about, and then turns to Trinity. "He's alive, if that's what you mean," she says flatly, thinking of Dix's broken body and how close he'd come to death. "What, you didn't have a vision about that?"

Trinity glares. "I'm not some crystal ball," she says, her voice cold. "I don't have premonitions. I don't even really have complete visions. I have feelings, sensations about what's going on. And even then, not nearly about everything. I have to have some idea, conscious or unconscious, about the person, or the event."

"So then how'd you have a vision—feeling, whatever—about Dean? You'd never met him," replies Rade, lamenting the three blocks they still have to go.

Shrugging, Trinity looks at the stoker in her hand for a moment and then answers, "I don't know. Perhaps because he looks like Alec."

"I don't suppose you know why he looks like Alec," Rade tries.

"I said—"

"You're not a psychic, yeah, yeah, I get it," Rade interrupts. She knows she shouldn't be so hostile; after all, Trinity herself hadn't done anything to her, and she was just as much a victim of Manticore as Rade was. But still, the mere knowledge that she was Psy Ops, that she fucked with people's heads, adds a certain amount of prejudice.

Trinity's face is deceptively blank as she stares at the medic. "You think I like having these abilities?" she seethes lowly. "You think I liked being used by sadistic bastards to scramble up the heads of my own people just because they dared to actually feel something besides brutal murder? You think I like living with the guilt that I did all that shit? That people look at me different because I did all that? Why the hell do you think I stay away from everyone and lock myself up in a crapass apartment, Rade?

"I didn't ask for any of this, and I hate it. I hate that I got this stupid vision of a guy I've never met, and I hate that I know he's as screwed in the head as if I'd scrambled it up for him. And you know what I hate most of all? That I know this guy is going to die once he gets here by that bitch of a demon."

Rade stops, staring at Trinity. She'd planned to apologize, but then Trinity's last statement catches up with her. "What?" she asks hoarsely. "What do you mean he's going to die?"

Trinity laughs humorlessly. "You really believe that demon wants him there so they can chat? She's out for blood—not yours, not Max's, not anyone's except Dean Winchester's."

Rade shakes her head violently. "No," she protests. "No. He's not. You're going to look inside Dix's head, see what the hell's up, and then Dean and Alec are going to kick the shit out of those demons in there. No one's gonna die except those evil sons of bitches."

Trinity doesn't say anything, just starts walking again towards Terminal City proper. Rade takes a deep breath and catches up, fully intending on backing up her words.

When they reach the alleyway adjacent to the medical bay, Rade gestures for Trinity to go first. The Psy Ops unit yanks the iron bars out and then hoists herself down, taking the fire poker with her. Rade checks the alleyway for any remaining demons, sees none (trying not to think of what it may mean that it's empty), and then goes through the window herself, pulling the bars back into place.

Seeing Trinity and then Rade enter, Dix turns his head, still too weak to sit up. Trinity appraises him soundlessly and with no reaction, simply stares. "How are you?" she asks stiltedly, not much for the touchy-feely crap.

"I-I've been b-better," answers Dix in a whisper. "I found some s-s-stuff on D-Dean and his brother, but I c-can't remember. C-Can you—?"

Trinity takes a few steps closer, and puts her hands on either side of Dix's head. He closes his eyes, and Rade watches as Trinity's seem to brighten to an even harsher shade of ice. Rade walks to the doors and puts her ear against them, trying vainly to hear anything, but, like she'd expected, she gets nothing.

Trinity, on the other hand, is faring better. That is to say, getting more of what she set out for.

"What do you need, Alec?"

"There's a guy, his name is Sam…"

Sam and Dean Winchester, the most famous serial killers since BTK…

Fire. Woman burning on the ceiling.

Blood. Dripping. Congealing, spreading.

Prison. Cold spots. Heart attack. Heat.

Crime scene. Blood. Death. Scratches. A woman, dead.

Basement. Chalk drawing marring the ceiling.

Trinity jerks back with a kind of chest-deep gasp, and Rade whips toward her, surprised. Dix, were he able to profess any kind of definitive motion, would have done the same. As it is, his one good eye simply widens the slightest bit.

Trinity takes a minute, her hands white-knuckled on the edge of the gurney, and then looks at Rade, then Dix. "I, um…I think there's—I think there's a way to keep the demons at bay," Trinity says in a soft voice.

"What? How?" Rade says, latching onto what little hope Trinity had lent.

"One of the reports you read, Dix," she says, looking at the transhuman. "One of the crime scenes, the one where Dean got dragged to Hell, by some…dogs. In the basement, there was a symbol on the ceiling. I—I don't know what it meant, but it wasn't going to win any interior decorating contests."

"What did it look like?" Rade asks. She has no idea if this symbol thing would work, let alone how in the world they'd be able to draw it without the demons noticing, but at this point, anything is better than nothing.

Trinity pulls aside her shirt, grabs one of Rade's scalpels from the tray next to her, and presses the razor-sharp tip to the skin over her heart, drawing precise lines and curves, liquid red staining her pale flesh and raggedy shirt. Rade, alarmed, reaches forward to take the scalpel away by force, but the look in Trinity's eyes stops her.

It's done in a matter of moments, and Trinity snatches some extra gauze from the same tray, pressing it to the wound to sop up the blood. Thanks to their speeded up clotting factor, it takes only a couple minutes for the blood to stop flowing, and Trinity peels away the gauze, dropping it onto the tray with a splat.

Rade, despite all she's seen in her medical history, winces at the crude cuts in Trinity's skin; they're deep enough so it would be a while before the transgenic accelerated healing knits the wound back together.

Trinity's face is as expressionless as ever, and Rade knows it's due to the fact that each and every one of them had had worse pain than knife cuts. "That's the mark that was on the ceiling?" Rade asks, clearing her throat.

Trinity nods. "I don't know precisely what it does, but maybe it'll stop us from being possessed," she postulates. "And maybe if we draw it on the ceiling or on the floor, it could trap a demon, too."

Rade has her doubts, but Trinity hadn't been wrong so far. And she wasn't one of Manticore's favorite Psy Ops units for nothing. "All right…so…how do you want to do this?" Rade inquires, glancing warily at the doors.

Trinity holds up the scalpel, a few droplets of blood sliding off. Rade eyes it unhappily but, weighing the cons of getting a knife gouged in her skin with having her people slaughtered by denizens of Hell, relents and undoes the first few buttons of her own shirt, exposing the same area that Trinity had.

It hurts, more than Rade had anticipated, but she shows no pain as Trinity keeps dragging the blade across her skin; they were trained not to do so, and damn it, that's one part of Manticore she's not going to erase. She presses gauze onto the new wound, soaking up as much blood as she can.

She looks at Trinity's identical mark, the flesh around it raised and pink. It's some kind of pentagram, and she has no idea if it'll do what Trinity says or not, but she sure hopes so—not just because she's got her skin sliced up, but also because if this plan of Trinity's goes south, they're all likely going to die. A cheery thought.

"Our only shot, the way I see it, is to pretend we've been possessed, somehow convince the demons in there that we're one of them. Then when we can, we draw the symbols. Hopefully, it'll trap them and we can decide what to do from there."

Rade doesn't think it has a good chance of success, but it's a better plan than what she can come up with. She looks at Dix, squeezes his leg lightly, makes sure her shirt is covering up the marks on her chest, and then squares her shoulders.

She's never seen any of those Ordinary movies that depict demonic possessions, and she knows nothing about actual demons, but the best archetype she can think of is Manticore's executives. She thinks that they're as close to demons as you can get without being the real thing.

Exchanging a glance with Trinity, she slides the bar out from between the door handles, hefts open the heavy steel, and walks through, knowing that the die has been cast, and it's time for her to bluff up her shitty hand.