FM April Topic - Siblings
Siblings. Who’s to know just how many she really has, what with Manticore reduce, reuse, and recycling her DNA. Max knows of at least one clone of her, as well as a mini version of herself that had actually shot her once they’d found her again.
To her, she has 11 brothers and sisters. The same x-5’s that she grew up with and escaped with that night when they were still just kids. Not that they ever really got to be kids, but still. They were family. They gave each other names instead of calling each other by the impersonal numbers they’d each been assigned. And they looked out for each other, trying to keep any of them from being taken to the Bad Place with the Nomlies. It was all they knew.
For the longest time after she escaped, she thought of them. She wondered where they were, and if they were okay. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that they’d been captured, or that they were living just like her - constantly on the run. Instead, Max made up lives for them. Lives where they were all happy and safe and okay. It never matched up with the reality whenever she’d find one of them again. But it was still what she hoped for. Even though hope was for losers.
Most of them are dead now. Manticore got Tinga, and then they drained her dry. Drained her until she was dead. By the time Max got to her, she was already long gone. Zack had supposedly died, but then it turned out he’d gotten a metal make over and was still around. But it was best for him to have a new identity, to not even be Zack anymore. So for all intents and purposes, he had to be dead to her for his own sake. Brin got killed in the cross-fire after being re-programmed. And Ben… Max had killed Ben with her own bare hands. She’d tried to help him, but she couldn’t. They’d made him into a real Frankenstein. And though she could never be sure if it was something they’d fucked up in his DNA or if it was just that not everyone could handle what that place did to them, she had a feeling that it was both. He’d been born bad, and the Hell the fine people at Manticore put them through just seemed to activate it.
She never did run into Jondy again, so she still continues to hope that she’s out there somewhere, being a fashion photographer. Or maybe even an architect. And even though the others are mostly gone now, she still finds herself almost pretending that they’re still out there, living the lives she made up for them. Max knows it’s not true, and maybe it makes her sound like some kind of sucker, but when it comes to your family, who wants the cold, hard truth anyway?
Max Guevera
Dark Angel
491 Words
To her, she has 11 brothers and sisters. The same x-5’s that she grew up with and escaped with that night when they were still just kids. Not that they ever really got to be kids, but still. They were family. They gave each other names instead of calling each other by the impersonal numbers they’d each been assigned. And they looked out for each other, trying to keep any of them from being taken to the Bad Place with the Nomlies. It was all they knew.
For the longest time after she escaped, she thought of them. She wondered where they were, and if they were okay. She didn’t want to think about the possibility that they’d been captured, or that they were living just like her - constantly on the run. Instead, Max made up lives for them. Lives where they were all happy and safe and okay. It never matched up with the reality whenever she’d find one of them again. But it was still what she hoped for. Even though hope was for losers.
Most of them are dead now. Manticore got Tinga, and then they drained her dry. Drained her until she was dead. By the time Max got to her, she was already long gone. Zack had supposedly died, but then it turned out he’d gotten a metal make over and was still around. But it was best for him to have a new identity, to not even be Zack anymore. So for all intents and purposes, he had to be dead to her for his own sake. Brin got killed in the cross-fire after being re-programmed. And Ben… Max had killed Ben with her own bare hands. She’d tried to help him, but she couldn’t. They’d made him into a real Frankenstein. And though she could never be sure if it was something they’d fucked up in his DNA or if it was just that not everyone could handle what that place did to them, she had a feeling that it was both. He’d been born bad, and the Hell the fine people at Manticore put them through just seemed to activate it.
She never did run into Jondy again, so she still continues to hope that she’s out there somewhere, being a fashion photographer. Or maybe even an architect. And even though the others are mostly gone now, she still finds herself almost pretending that they’re still out there, living the lives she made up for them. Max knows it’s not true, and maybe it makes her sound like some kind of sucker, but when it comes to your family, who wants the cold, hard truth anyway?
Max Guevera
Dark Angel
491 Words