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Ex Multus Familia: Part 2

Chapter 17

Mona was not happy at all with Everett. She sat by his side as Seth bandaged him up, alternating indecisively between wanting to scold and lecture him, and then just wanting to hug and kiss him and be thankful he was there. "Will he be all right?" she asked Seth anxiously.

"Of course I will be," Everett said, undermining his statement with a low moan as Seth bandaged his side. Although it was the stab wounds that were being bandaged, it was the bruises that were sorer than anything. Tolerable, but not exactly comfortable.

"I was asking the medic," Mona said, her voice a half growl. She didn't want to be too upset about this, but seeing her mate walk into the room in worse shape than she'd ever seen him hadn't exactly put her in a good mood.

"Seth," Everett sighed, "Tell Mona I'll be okay." He looked over at his mate whose hands, clenched around his arm, were hurting almost more than any of the wounds he'd gotten from his 'initiation'. He wasn't about to ask her to let up though.

"He'll be fine," Seth assured Mona. "Though you should stop by the clinic so they can treat those fingers of yours," Seth said to Everett sternly. Seth had splinted them, but still, he didn't exactly keep everything necessary for all of this at the apartment. And he'd feel better if one of the doctors at the clinic also looked at Everett.

Everett nodded and looked at Mona. "Then will you be happy if I go?"

"Happier," Mona said with a sigh. Still not totally happy. Happiest if he left off all this crazy-human stuff.

As soon as Seth let Everett go, Everett curled his arms around his mate and pulled her in close to him, letting his head rest against her dark auburn hair.

"I'm okay," he said quietly, stroking her hair a bit. "And in the future, you won't have to worry about me as much." He chuckled wryly. "This whole beating me up thing means they trust me." He hoped she didn't think about the fact that that might also mean they would involve him in a lot more sketchy, dangerous tasks…

Mona nodded. "I suppose…I suppose you're right." She nodded again, as if it would help her convince herself. She gave the rest of them a weak smile. "Well, we better get going if we're heading to the clinic. We'll see you guys tomorrow."

As soon as the couple was out of the door, Sidda turned and thwapped Alec on the arm. "You better not ever get yourself hurt like that," she threatened, glowering at him. "If you do…"

Alec laughed at her. "Don't worry, I'll keep myself safe, if only to make sure you don't get yourself into too much trouble."

Terminal City was relatively quiet for the next few days, most of the transgenics a little less antsy after the Cultural Center party. Unfortunately, the teenagers of Terminal City hadn't had their desire for something to do satisfied at all.

"We're faster than the X5s, I don't see why we can't go outside as well," Dalton muttered angrily, glaring at Gem's retreating back. His plea to go out for a little while into Seattle had just been shot down by Gem on the grounds of it being unsafe.

When he'd tried to argue that there were plenty of X5s who were getting to still go out into the city, Gem had replied that it was only for T.C. business. Well, then Dalton had tried to ask for a job that would take him outside. Gem had simply said no.

Twizzler looked at him and shrugged. "Well, I haven't gotten to go out yet either, if that makes you feel any better."

"Doubt it," Emma said, smiling up at him. Dalton was sitting on a railing that went into their apartment building, while Emma leaned against it. Twizzler was sitting on the top step.

The three of them, and Anika (who was currently on patrol), had slowly formed into a group over the past month or so; Twizzler had been pulled in through his association with Emma in a human infiltration mission. They were widely-varied in personality, but found that they were all fairly-laid back, except for Anika, who could get really uptight about stuff sometimes. They often fondly referred to her as the "symbolic psychotic" of the group.

Dalton rolled his eyes. "Really, I don't see what a short trip into the city would do. Or even out to the farm. The farm's been deserted for a while so it shouldn't make a difference; the Familiars are probably bored with looking there by now."

"I would like to go to the farm again," Emma said wistfully. "I've only been once, but I really liked it. It's so much…cleaner there than here in the city."

"Reminds you of Manticore?" Twizzler said, smirking at her.

"Hey, it wasn't all bad," Emma said. "Most of it was, but I always did like the woods."

Dalton snorted. "Yeah, if it wasn't for the whole ultimate obedience, perfect soldier thing that was pretty much our life, I guess it wouldn't be so bad."

"Oh, shut up," Emma replied, stuffing her hands into her jeans.

"Maybe we could go to the farm," Twizzler said slowly. "If Anika's on patrol…"

"You're actually suggesting we do something against the rules?" Dalton asked, raising an eyebrow. Twizzler was usually the one on the group who dissuaded them from doing anything crazy. He grinned at his friend proudly. "I have taught you well!"

Twizzler shook his head, an amused smirk on his face. "Just because I usually follow the rules doesn't mean I always do," he said. "I just use a bit more common sense when I'm deciding whether to break them or not." He shrugged, "And you're right, there isn't any reason not to go to the farm. We should be perfectly fine there. So I think it's perfectly fine to go there."

"I like your reasoning," Dalton said. "Remind me to use it when Gem gets mad at me for leaving."

"Wait, so we're really going?" Emma asked. If they were…she couldn't believe she was about to do this. But really, they were right. What could possibly go wrong?

Actually, a lot could go wrong, as they found out soon after leaving Terminal City. Their "escape" was rather simple and anticlimactic, thanks to Anica. Although she wasn't entirely sold on the idea, she also wasn't adverse to it. While patrolling the east side of the city, she turned and let them get out through the tunnel system, making them promise to wait until she could catch up with them to leave the city. They were going meet in Sector 12, at the docks near Elliot Bay.

Dalton took the leadership role, even though Twizzler was an X5 and older. Dalton's first order of business was to get to the meeting point, so they trekked through the city, heading toward the docks. A car would come later, after Anica had joined them and night had fallen. It would be easier to get away with stealing a car in the dark, when they had the advantage of night-vision and humans didn't.

Since all the sectors were fenced off, it felt like they had left Terminal City just to find themselves in a similar situation. Every time they came to a fence, they had to find a way around it that didn't involve going through the gate, and unfortunately, it was still daylight, which made sneaking around that much harder. Dalton's hoodie now had a nice-sized hole in it thanks to getting snagged on a coil of barbed wire; Emma had cut him loose with a rather wicked-looking hunting knife she had produced from who knew where.

"Do you even know where you're going?" Emma asked as Dalton headed down yet another random side street.

He tossed an easy-going smile back at her. "Sure. Why, don't you have confidence in me?"

Emma snorted, and Twizzler let out an actual laugh. That automatically put Dalton in a darker mood. He could handle this, all he had to do was get them a car and then get them out of the city and all the way to the farm without anyone realizing they were gone…easy, right?

Dalton took them down a few more alleys, relying more on hearsay from other transgenics rather than personal experience to guide him. As day faded into night and they got closer to the docks, their surroundings became even more decrepit and the people who populated those areas became sketchier. Beside him, both Emma and Twizzler went on high-alert, and he kept his eyes roving, always on the look-out for danger. He hoped Anica would make it down here safely; of course, she would probably come over the rooftops or through an underground tunnel system since she was often overly cautious. It seemed like that method could come in handy tonight.

"Great," Twizzler spat out under his breath, "Just great."

It didn't take Dalton long to figure out what he was griping about. A small group of the humans had broke away from one of the buildings and was now following them, coming a little closer with each step they took. Emma gave him one long, narrowed look, and he shrugged. Human street gang, he supposed. They weren't really a threat, as long as the group wasn't too big…like the group that had killed that friend of Alec's.

Dalton wasn't weaponless; no one walked around Seattle without a weapon, even if it was just a can of mace. He fingered the switchblade that was resting in his pocket and hoped he wouldn't have to use it…mostly. A small part of him wanted to fight, wanted to beat up on some stupid humans that thought they could threaten transgenics. In reality, the humans probably thought they were just some regular teenagers who had strolled into the wrong territory.

They walked on for at least one more block before one of the gang members sped past them and then blocked their way. He was a short guy, dark hair poking out from beneath a grey skull cap, and lots of unnecessary muscle on his stocky frame.

"Where you going?" he asked, leering at Emma before glancing at Dalton and Twizzler. "This ain't a park. You can't come through here without a little somethin' somethin' for the Chain Gang."

"The Chain Gang?" Dalton laughed. "Is that really what you named yourselves?"

"Dalton, don't," Emma hissed, throwing a glare at him. She obviously didn't want to get into a fight.

The gang member didn't think anything was funny. "You got a problem, blondie?" He shoved Dalton in the chest, knocking him back into Twizzler. The X5 caught Dalton by the shoulders, but Dalton was already moving forward again, launching himself at the gang member. Pent-up frustration and irritation exploded out of him through his fists as he let loose a combo attack that would have made his martial arts instructor back as Manticore proud.

The gang member crumpled beneath the attack, but his buddies weren't slow to come to his aid. Dalton was aware of Twizzler and Emma holding off the other gang members while he pummeled the spokesperson until the short musclehead started screaming for Dalton to stop.

"Look, hey, you can go, go! Stop! You can go!" he shouted, covering his bleeding face to shield it from anymore of Dalton's punches. Dalton sprang up from the ground and nodded his head.

"Glad we're in agreement," he said, thinking it was probably something Alec would say right then. He turned to smile at Emma, but she was already moving forward. He could tell by the stiff way she was holding herself that she wasn't pleased with him.

"Smooth move, Dolt," Twizzler said, using the nickname the other X6s in Dalton's building had come up with to tease him. He passed by Dalton too, leaving him by himself as the gang members ran off.

"You'll regret this," one of them said before scurrying off after the others.

Dalton rubbed his sore knuckles and scowled. Okay, so he beat up the bad guy and Twizzler got the girl? How did that work?! Glaring, Dalton trotted to catch up with them and shoved his hands into his pockets as he reached them.

"That was stupid," Emma said after a few minutes of tense silence, "We could have avoided that whole situation if we had just talked it over with them."

"We couldn't have talked our way out of that!" Dalton exclaimed, staring at her, "They were going to beat us up, or try to, not matter what we did." He had seen enough of this city to know a mugger when he caught sight of one.

"Still, don't try to be a hero," Emma told him, "It's better to just survive than to pull stunts like that."

Geez, she sounded like Gem and Max and Robin and Sidda! The tone was exactly the same, and she was lecturing him! All transgenic females sounded the same, what was with that?! Manticore did an awful job of creating different female types, obviously.

There were many female transgenic types displeased with Dalton by the night was through. Female and male, actually.

"Gem is going to kill you," Sidda said matter-of-factly, surveying Dalton's bruised and bloodied body.

"You don't know the half of it," Dalton muttered, staring moodily at the glass of water that had been handed to him a few minutes ago. Gem had told him not to go out a few hours before he did, she had warned him about the Familiars and how dangerous was. And of course, he hadn't listened.

Sidda made a noise, and Dalton looked up; he was surprised to catch what could possibly, only possibly, be a fleeting sympathetic look on Sidda's face.

"How is Twizzler?" Dalton asked.

"I'm not sure. Sibil's still looking at him," She sighed, "But I think he'll be ok."

"And I guess they haven't found Anica?" He was hoping that somehow, by phrasing the question the way he did, she'd say yes, yes, they had found her and everything was fine. But Sidda just shook her head.

"As far as I know, they haven't."

The night had gotten totally screwed up, and it hadn't taken long at all. First, Anica hadn't shown up at the appointed time. They'd waited an extra half hour, figuring that it was possible that traveling through the city in her normal paranoid mode may have made her a bit slower than anticipated. But then she still hadn't shown up.

They'd tried calling her on her cell a few times, but after she didn't answer and didn't call back, they'd really started to worry. But they'd been indecisive about what to do. They were afraid if they backtracked they might miss her entirely, and then she'd get to the meeting point and find them gone.

"At least she'll be able to assume we left her and head back to T.C.," Emma had argued. She had been highly uncomfortable with staying in a dangerous place for such a long period of time.

So even though Dalton had wanted to stay, he'd been overruled by Emma and Twizzler, who had strangely decided to pair up on every decision since the meet-up with the human gang. And, of course, they wouldn't leave him behind. Twizzler seemed to think that that was the worst possible idea, splitting up the group even more.

So they'd headed back the way they'd come, keeping an extra-sharp lookout when they were in the "Chain Gang" territory. Everything had seemed fine when they got out the neighborhood safely, and they'd even relaxed their guard a bit.

But then the Familiars had found them.

Luckily, it was only two, and apparently not the two best fighters in the world. They'd seen the still-bloody, dark-haired Chain Gang member down the street, pointing them out, which had given them just enough warning to be prepared when they'd been rushed by the Familiars. Except for the fact that they hadn't exactly expected them to be Familiars...

They'd tried to fight, but they were basically an even match with the Familiars. So then they'd run, and Twizzler had called for help on the way. Seth, Alec and Sidda had luckily been making an official run into the city for some supplies and had shown up. When the Familiars had seen that they were outnumbered, they had fled the scene, leave the three young transgenics to make some very embarrassed explanations.

Besides the cuts and bruises, it hadn't seemed too bad until they realized that Anica was still missing. Max had sent a few X5s back to their designated meeting place in Sector 12 to see if she was there, and two other teams were combing the streets on the way there and the sewers.

They had managed to cause a whole lot more trouble than they'd ever intended.

"Where is he?!" Dalton looked up, face white, as he recognize Gem's voice at its angriest. He glanced at Sidda, who lifted her eyebrows and have him a weird smile.

"Sorry, kid, can't help you out of this one," she said. A few seconds later, the door banged open, and Gem strode in, her mouth straight and thin, her eyes narrowed as her gaze focused on Dalton.

Dalton sunk into his chair as she simply stared at him for a few seconds. If they were worried at all about him learning a lesson from this, they really didn't have to. He was pretty sure this had quickly turned into one of the worst nights of his life.

Gem continued to stare at him, then finally snapped and spoke in a low, controlled tone. "I can't even trust myself to talk to you right now," she said, "I'll be back in a bit." And then she turned and left, pulling the door shut behind her.

"Wow," Sidda said after a moment of dead silence in the room. "I think I'll just leave next time she comes in here…"

"Probably a good idea," he said glumly. He stood up and moved over to the windowsill to look outside. No unusual amount of activity, so he supposed that they hadn't found Anica yet. As soon as Seth had finished looking over his injuries, Dalton had begged to be allow to go on one of the search teams since the whole mess was basically his fault, but they hadn't let him. No, instead they'd trapped him in the hospital room with Sidda as his guard dog.

"Dalton…" Sidda said warningly. She crossed the room to stand near him and leaned against the wall, facing him.

"I know," Dalton said. "I was just looking to see if they brought Anica in yet." He turned and looked at her. "Do you think Gem will even talk to me tonight?"

"I have absolutely no idea," Sidda said. "I've never seen her look so angry. Though, to be fair, she was probably already a little on edge anyway with the whole tattoos-on-Crystal thing." Sidda gave him one of her stern looks. "Although, also to be fair, you knew that."

Dalton avoided talking about the tattoo mess. "If Gem doesn't talk to me, could I crash at your place or something?" Dalton asked. He really didn't want to spend the night in an apartment filled with angry silence.

Sidda chuckled. "I suppose, if you really want to sleep in that awful baby room Robin made up." She pushed Dalton over a little and hopped up to sit on the windowsill. "But you really should try to talk to her tonight. Waiting will only make it harder."

"Well, I can't exactly do much about that when I'm trapped in here," Dalton replied with a touch of sarcasm. Sidda smacked him lightly on the forehead.

"Hey, look..." Dalton trailed off as the door opened. He turned around hopefully; maybe they had found Anica. But it was just Alec, probably come to relieve Sidda or something. "Hey, Alec," Dalton mumbled, looking away. The X5 wasn't exactly happy with him at the moment either, and Dalton didn't want to see Alec give him one of those condemning stares that he'd already gotten from several people tonight.

"Hey, Dalton," Alec said. He walked into the room, his hands in his pockets. "Thought you would want to know, they found Anica."

Dalton sprang away from the window and rushed the X5, ignoring the aches that wanted him to stay still. "What?! When! Is she okay?"

"Couple minutes ago," Alec said, holding up his hands to stave off any more questions from Dalton, "She's fine, for the most part. She spent the whole day playing cat and mouse with a couple Familiars."

"Let me guess, she got the role of the mouse?" Sidda asked even though she knew the answer already. Alec nodded.

"Yeah, but she's smart. They didn't catch her. She's exhausted though." He shook his head. "Kid ran damn near everywhere in Seattle trying to drop them."

Dalton bit his lip and clenched his fists. "But she's all right?"

"Yeah, better off than you," Alec said, looking over Dalton. The kid looked bad; maybe not as bad as Twizzler, who had been trying to protect the two X6s, but still. A couple of cracked ribs, a sprained ankle from being grabbed and thrown against a wall, cuts from falling on broken glass, bruises from being pummeled by the freakishly strong Familiars. "Shouldn't you be in bed or something?"

Dalton crossed his arms over his thin chest. "Can I see her when she comes back?"

"We'll see," Alec said, using that phrase that older people LOVED to use. It was more ambiguous than 'maybe', and the result usually hinged on some kind of behavior they might or might now tell you about.

Dalton stalked over to a chair near the bed. He wasn't going to lie down right now, even though he really, really felt like it. He wouldn't show that sort of weakness in front of Alec and Sidda.

"You know," Alec said, walking over to stand beside Sidda, "I thought I saw Gem come down this way…" He glanced at Dalton, a smirk on his face. "Guess I saw wrong though, since you're still breathing."

"Only because she left before she could murder me," Dalton said, "She's self-restrained." Sighing, he leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "Damn it. This is bad, isn't it?"

Alec glanced at Sidda, an eyebrow raised curiously. It wasn't often that Dalton admitted a mistake; he usually just went along, pretending it was all right. Sidda smiled softly and nudged Alec's shoulder, looking pointedly toward Dalton.

"Yeah, it's bad," Alec said. He wasn't going to lie to the kid. "In the list of your many screw-ups, this one might suck this worst." Sidda thumped him on the thigh, and he looked back at her, rolling his eyes. "But it could've been worse. Nobody died, none of you are severely injured. All in all, you got away without much better off than I'd expect."

"That's because you guys showed up," Dalton said, looking up from his hands.

"True," Sidda said, "But you weren't doing an awful job of handling the situation." She turned to glance out the window at the rainy autumn night. "Of course, you shouldn't have been out there in the first place."

"But we were going nuts in here!" Dalton replied. He kicked one foot out and slouched back in the chair, looking for all the world like any regular petulant teenager. "There's nothing for us to do here, except hang out at the Cultural Center or work on the clean-up crews. It's so annoying. And boring." He looked up at the two X5s. "Can't we do something? You don't let us do anything…"

Alec rubbed at his face, trying to come up with a good answer for that. He personally didn't see anything wrong with letting the X6s go out on supply runs, but Max was entirely against it. She seemed to think that because they looked like teenagers, that was really all they were. Someone needed to remind her that the X6s were a little bit more than that, more like well-made killing machines currently without a purpose.

"Maybe we can come up with something for you guys to do," Alec said, "You need to get to know the city better anyways, since you were dumb enough to go to the docks to meet up."

"It was a central location," Dalton replied sullenly, "And there were trucks there…"

"City survival training," Alec said, nodding. He looked at Sidda, hoping that at least she would agree with him. Her half-smile made him continue. "Supervised by other transgenics, yeah, but at least you guys can go on runs. Does that sound better?"

Dalton considered it for a moment. "Do we graduate from this training, or is it on-going?"

"Don't know yet," Alec said, "Just thought of it."

"Better than sitting around in Terminal City so bored that you're willing to risk your lives for some excitement," Sidda said, smirking at Dalton.

He managed a half-smile. "Yeah, that's true."

"I'll ask Max about it in a few days, after she's done being thoroughly pissed at you," Alec said.

Dalton winced. Oh yeah, he had forgotten about the wrath of the female transgenic leader. He had a feeling that that particular chiding was going to be planned and brutal, consisting of a lot of berating language and hand-on-hipness.

There was a knock on the door, and it swung open to reveal Robin, carrying a plate covered in tinfoil in her hands. "Hey, did I interrupt a lecture?" She winked at Dalton, and he felt like he had gained an ally in the face of a hundred enemies.

"Hey, Robin," Alec said, grinning at the blond woman, "Coming to feed the prisoner?"

"Wow," Robin said. She glanced at Dalton. "Prisoner status now. You're special."

"Okay, now see, I don't like the sound of that," Sidda said, frowning, "Because that means I've been reduced from solo-mission special ops to warden." She tossed her short hair. "I don't think I can deal with the demotion."

"You make a very sexy warden, if that helps," Alec said, his arm wrapping around her waist as he pulled her off the window ledge.

"Huh, sure," Sidda said, smiling, "You remember that in a couple months when it looks like I've swallowed a basketball."

Robin walked over and handed Dalton the plate. "Here, it's chicken and a couple sides. I guessed that you hadn't eaten, and they probably forgot to feed you." She glanced over at Sidda and Alec.

"Not my job to feed him," Sidda said.

Alec shrugged. "I wasn't here."

"Thanks, Robin," Dalton said as he pulled the tinfoil off the plate.

Robin grinned and ruffled his hair. "Wouldn't want the troublemakers to starve."