Breakdown by Star24
Disclaimer: Dark Angel and its characters are property of Twentieth Century Fox and James Cameron and Charles Eglee. This original story is property and copyright 2003 Star24
AN: Breakdown is part two of an Alternate Season 2 for Dark Angel that I've been playing with. My premise is simply based on the concept of Dark Angel continuing the mythology and character relationships that were created in Season 1. This is the "might have been" that many of us would have liked to see, instead of what we were given. I'm working on a part three and will probably be posting that shortly after Breakdown is finished if all goes well. You really need to read part one – Smoke & Mirrors – for this to make sense. It's posted in its entirety here on fanfiction.net and I will be putting it up on my website shortly.
Previously in Smoke & Mirrors
It's three months after AJBAC and mysterious assassinations have been taking place around the country. Their targets are prominent politicians who have shown an interest in genetic experimentation. Logan is suspicious of the motives behind them and he is also deep in an investigation of Manticore, determined to revenge Max's death. He has obtained a disk that allows him to hack into the Manticore database but his hack is detected and traced to Seattle before he can get out of their system.
Meanwhile Max is fighting re-indoctrination at the hands of Renfro. But when she learns that Renfro is going to use new techniques on her, she uses the Manticore selective memory techniques to forget her relationship with Logan (and that he is Eyes Only) in order to protect him. She knows she risks re-indoctrination by doing so because her memories of Logan have been her anchor point, and have allowed her to resist Renfro, but she refuses to take the chance of betraying him to Manticore.
Max escapes Manticore and makes her way back to Seattle but as it turns out she has apparently been re-indoctrinated successfully by Renfro's new techniques. At the end of the story, after having been unable to hack into the Eyes Only Informant Net, she kidnaps Logan and takes him away from Fogle Towers with her. Her plan is to force him to open up his Informant Net files to her, after which she has been ordered to kill him…
Prologue of Breakdown
A Safe House, somewhere in Seattle
Logan was lying on a bed, minus the exo-skeleton, with his hands bound in front of him.
The room was dark, and as he waited for his eyes to adjust, he thought back on the events of the night…
After he had left Max and went into his bedroom, he had stripped down to boxers and a T-shirt and settled in for the night. Propped up against his pillows, he had booted up his laptop and pulled up the Manticore database records he had downloaded several days earlier. He scrolled through the records until he found a file named Psyops. Inside of it was a long list of files. He scrolled down and finally found one labeled X5-452. He clicked on the file and waited for it to open. Before he could begin to read, he had felt a prickling on his neck, and he glanced up in alarm.
Max stood in the doorway of his room smiling triumphantly at him. "Did you really think those 'police special' cuffs would hold me for very long? You disappoint me." With that she launched herself at him, and within seconds he was her prisoner. His hands were trussed in front of him. She carried the exo-skeleton over to the bed and expertly snapped it onto his legs over the boxers he was wearing, first slipping his boots onto his feet without bothering with socks. Once the exo was on him, she grabbed his discarded cargo pants and pulled them over it. She released his hands long enough to pull a light cotton sweater over his head, then tied them securely once again.
"Get up, we're moving out." Her voice was cold and emotionless, a soldier giving an order.
"I can't walk if the exo isn't turned on," Logan pointed out to her reasonably, "and I can't turn it on with my hands tied."
Max flushed in annoyance, then reached down and snapped on the power to the unit. As soon as the unit hummed to life, she dragged Logan roughly up from the bed and pushed him in front of her. He could feel the cold steel of her gun in his back. The fact that she was using a gun told him, more than anything else could have, that Manticore had done a thorough job of re-indoctrinating her.
"If you want to live a bit longer, and if you don't want to see your X5 friend with a bloody hole in her forehead, I suggest that you stay very quiet." The menace in Max's words was soft but real.
Logan had taken her point and went with her without protest. All the while his mind was racing through possible alternatives. Max had maintained silence through the elevator ride down to the parking garage. She had blindfolded him as soon as he was safely stowed in his own car, forcing him to lie on the floor in the rear so he had no chance of seeing where she was taking him. When they had arrived at their destination and were safely inside, she had removed the blindfold so he could walk without falling and then pushed him in front of her into a small bedroom, where she shoved him onto a bed and stripped off the exo-skeleton, leaving him helpless. Then she had left him there, alone in the dark, dusty room.
Logan decided his best bet was to attempt to rest and conserve his strength for whatever Max had planned. He closed his eyes and dozed off, wondering if she would be returning alone, or if she would be accompanied by a squad of Manticore troops.
End Prologue