denouement } { application

[im_apimp]

Player Information
Player name: Emily
Contact: AIM – iluvroadrunner6
Are you over 18: Yes.
Characters in the game already: N/A
Proof of Reserve: Ta-da!

Character Information
Character Name: Alec McDowell / X5-494
Canon: Dark Angel
Canon Point: 221: Freak Nation
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Alive
History:

X5 – 494 was born sometime in 2000. He’s not sure exactly when as Manticore didn’t record it. He was raised in a covert military facility where he and other transgenics like him were begin raised to be the next generation of super soldiers. Over the course of the next seventeen years, he was trained in multiple forms of martial arts, weapons, and means of killing people. He killed his first person when he was eight years old with his unit, a convict on loan from one of the local prisons. When he was nine, his genetic twin escaped with the rest of his unit, and 494 was subjected to six months in Psy-Ops to make sure that he wasn’t going to do the same. When he was released from Psy-Ops, he was placed back into his unit, and returned to his training. He quickly became one of Manticore’s star transgenic, performing successfully on several solo missions for the group.

In 2017, he was assigned to his first deep cover assignment, surveying a man named Berrisford to determine whether or not he was a threat to Manticore. He went undercover as the new piano teacher for his daughter, Rachel, and used that access to spy on her father. Over the course of his time with the Berrisfords, he fell in love with Rachel and she fell for him as well. When the time came to end the job and kill Berrisford, 494 built the bomb required, but when the time came he couldn’t pull the trigger. He broke his cover with Rachel and told her that he was sent there to kill her father. Rachel rushed out to tell her father, and was caught in the collateral damage of the blast and fell into a coma. 494 was brought back to Manticore and sent through another round of Psy-Ops to block out the memories, before being returned to the rest of the group again. That was the first and last deep cover mission he was assigned on where he had to pretend to be someone else.

In 2020, Max was returned to Manticore and Madam Renfro wanted to use her to get to Eyes Only. She put 494 on the assignment, and had him go to her as her “breeding partner” in order to get information out of her. While together, Max gave him the name “Alec,” but he didn’t get any information out of her until he helped her “escape” from Manticore, and followed her right to Logan Cale. He waited until Max infected Logan with the DNA specific virus before revealing his true allegiance to Manticore. He needed to get to Eyes Only before he revealed Manticore’s location, but Max stopped him before he could destroy Logan’s computer. With the mission scrubbed, he returned to Manticore, only to find that Renfro had cauterized the site. He went back in with Max, trying to pull out as many of the transgenics as he could, but eventually he went to ground to keep his nose down. He holed up at a motel not far where Manticore was located to wait out the storm, but he happened to come across some other transgenics who were trying to manage in a world they didn’t understand. When Ames White from the NSA arrived in order to exterminate the transgenics, Alec helped Max take out the camp they were drawing all of them to, despite protests that he didn’t care and would be fine on his own. Once White was temporarily taken out, he took off in the car he was stolen and headed for Seattle.

When he arrived in Seattle, he needed to make some money. He managed to stumble onto an underground fighting ring and began to make a lot of money betting on himself in the fights. He managed to make quite the name for himself and that managed to catch the attention of the NSA, who caught him. After injecting a mircoexplosive into his neck, White made a deal with Alec, telling him that he would let him go if Alec killed three transgenics and brought White their barcodes in the course of twenty-four hours. The first he killed, because she attacked him first. The second was an X6 that he happened to come across, and he didn’t kill him, only removed his bar code and left him in front of a hospital. White caught on, however, and told him that if he didn’t actually kill his victims, he wasn’t getting out of it. He then went after Joshua, who he didn’t know have a bar code, but he couldn’t follow through with it and kill one of his own. He went to Max for help, who reluctantly helped him remove the explosive and stop White.

After that, Alec found himself semi-permanently in Max’s debt. He became the guy she would call when she needed a little extra manpower on a job for Logan, and eventually became her sidekick. He also became very close with Joshua, helping him launch his art career and interact indirectly with the outside world. He also became involved in helping the transgenics coming into Seattle organize themselves in Terminal City, a toxic waste dump in the middle of Seattle. Over the course of the year, the Berrisford assignment came back to haunt him when he was assigned to deliver a package to the Berrisford home and the memories came rushing back. He went to confront Robert Berrisford, and allowed the man to capture him, and even kill him for what he had done to Rachel, but the man couldn’t pull the trigger. He allowed Alec to say goodbye to Rachel before she died, and then demanded that he never see Alec again. He temporarily went back to cage fighting when he was put under the mind control abilities of another transgenic named Mia, who needed him to win a fight to get her boyfriend out of trouble with the mob. Alec did so, but later had his ass kicked by Max to make sure that the mob didn’t get what they wanted. Alec was also mistaken for his twin, Ben, by the authorities and was arrested for Ben’s crimes which he didn’t commit. Max later retrieved him from jail, however, and he was forced to lay low in Terminal City due to their inability to clear his name.

After the news of human looking transgenics was leaked to the media by Ames White, things became increasingly more complicated for Alec and his kind. They began hiding out more and more in Terminal City, but the regular humans around them were starting to become more and more aware of the transgenic presence. Alec began to step up as more and more of a leader, becoming Max’s second in command, but even with their awareness and protecting their people, they couldn’t protect everyone. Joshua became the target of a manhunt in the Seattle sewers, in which his girlfriend, Annie Fisher, was killed by White. Later, another one of the X5s, Biggs, was murdered by a lynch mob. After finding Biggs’ body, Alec and Joshua gathered up a group of the transgenics and went after the people who did it, leaving them as they left Biggs. He still managed to keep a low profile up until Joshua was trying to take a pregnant X6 named Gem to Terminal City but were only able to get as far as Jam Pony before she went into labor. They were forced to take over Jam Pony and it turned into a hostage situation. They tried to get out, but before they could, a mob and SWAT teams had formed around the location. The transgenics were forced to fight their way out, while Gem was giving birth, and they managed to overtake their attackers and escape to Terminal City, where they decided that they weren’t hiding anymore and were going to fight for themselves instead of just trying to blend in.

Personality:

There are two distinctive facets to Alec as a character: X5 – 494, the soldier he spent most of his life becoming, and Alec, the person who’s free of Manticore and still trying to figure out who he is, as a person. There’s not a large difference between the two, but one can’t exist without the other and it shows Alec’s growth as a character, even over the course of one season. That, as well as the impact of several important relationships in his life, helps form the ball of Alec and who he is as a person. There are some general traits that accompany Alec at any point in his life just based on his genetic make-up, regardless of how he was raised, and they are as follows:

1) He does not consider himself human. A person, yes, and he can pass for human, but he’s not. He knows he’s not, and he’s comfortable with what he is. It’s the who that gets a little sketchy a lot of the time. He’s just recently come to the realization that he deserves to be treated as a person instead of a thing, and he’s fiercely protective of that. He will not tolerate anyone trying to treat him or anyone else of his kind like he’s less than they are. Because they’re wrong. He’s better.

2) He relies on his nose. A lot. He’s been seen in canon sniffing his money to make sure that it’s real, checking his food to make sure that it’s good. He’ll always try and get the smell of something first before he moves forward into it. He relies on his hearing and eye sight as well, but his nose is his best friend, especially for things he doesn’t understand.

3) He has a penchant for high places. In canon, he and Max have both been seen as sitting on the rim of the Space Needle when they want to go somewhere to think. That’s a kitty thing. Cats like to be up high because they’re a) out of reach of predators, and b) can see everything that’s going on around them. That’s a little bit of the instinct that’s slipped in as far as the X series of transgenics is concerned.

4) He likes things that go fast, fast, very fast. He has a motorcycle (he calls her Shelley) and has been seen in other pretty, fast pieces of machinery. He takes better care of the motorcycle than he does most of the other items he owns, mostly so that it can continue to go fast, fast very fast.

5) His fighting style preference is hand to hand first, guns and other weapons second. He’s always armed as a precaution—he is living around a group of people who want him deader than dead—but he’ll always disarm and knock unconscious before he’ll go for the kill with a gun or a knife. The people who go after him are human for the most part, so he tries to do the best he can to not be the killer he can be/people think he is unless he absolutely has to be.

6) His speech patterns are an odd mix of military slang, street slang and correct civilized English. He always uses his proper “be” verbs in the right place. The street slang can sound a little odd and off when he uses it because he learned it in a class and not in the world, but after a year outside with the rest of the world, his ear’s accustomed to more of the proper usage. He’s still much more comfortable with the military slang. This is very easy to notice because Alec Never. Ever. Shuts up. And it’s not because he likes the sound of his own voice, he just really likes to talk.

X5 – 494:
For the first twenty years of his life, Alec wasn’t Alec, he was X5 – 494, and he wasn’t a person, he was a weapon. He was raised in an absolute military lifestyle, with the same structure as any military set-up in the country. He was trained, from a young age, on how to be the perfect soldier, and for the most part, he was their golden boy. He followed orders, performed well on missions, and on the surface, was the perfect example of what Manticore was looking to create, even at a startlingly young age. He performed in the function that he was created to perform—nothing more, nothing less. He didn’t have a life outside of Manticore, no friends, no family. He didn’t even have a birthday—the only reason he knows how old he is, is because he adds one every January. He didn’t view himself to be a person because the people who were running the show, training them and teaching them, told him that he wasn’t, and he toed the line with the people running Manticore, under fear of death or worse—reindoctrination. He already had to go through it once—there was no way he was going to go through it again unless he had to. There was no exposure to art, music, or literature unless absolutely necessary, as well as popular television or world news because they didn’t want them to start thinking for themselves and forming opinions of their own. They were forced to swallow whatever Manticore wanted them to believe, and 494 did exactly that, no questions asked.

He never had a childhood, he never had parents. His early years as an X5 focused on training for simple basic skills that every X5 would be required to perform, from holding his breath for extended periods of time underwater, up to and including his first kill at age eight. He never looked at the world with awe-like wonder; he never was innocent by any means. Manticore wanted these children to be killers, to eventually grow up to be the best assassins in the world, and therefore they didn’t believe in the importance of establishing a moral code that would be deemed acceptable by most societies. They were taught that it was okay to lie, steal, cheat or kill for the good of a mission, regardless of the consequences, and if you got caught you were as good as dead, so it was best not to get caught. The only thing that deviated from the “the only line is the bottom line” mentality is the idea that you did not leave your unit behind, no matter what the cost. They taught the kids to have loyalty to each other, which is something that strongly stuck with 494.

Their “unit” became the closest they had to a surrogate family. They looked after each other, took care of each other, and on occasion fought for each other. When the unit that Max was in escaped from Manticore in 2009, all of the X5 class was brought in for what they called “reindoctrination,” which essentially amounted to brainwashing to make sure that the kids weren’t thinking too much for themselves. Because 494’s twin (an X5 with the same genetic code) was in the group that escaped, he spent six months in their Psy-Ops division to make sure that the impulse to escape wasn’t accidentally written into their genetic code. He was nine years-old, and it was one of the closest things to Hell that he experienced at the hands of the doctors at Manticore. They drugged him (large amounts due to his high metabolism), white washed memories, and reinforced his place as X5 – 494, and his position in the Manticore hierarchy. To this day, he still carries a heavy resentment towards his twin and the rest of that unit, even though he hadn’t met them before that point, because in his mind, they committed the ultimate crime one transgenic could do to the other, and left their kind behind. This is the first time that Manticore used the reindoctrination techniques on 494, but it won’t be the last. (See: Rachel.)

When Manticore was training the X series to hunt and to kill, they appealed to a lot of their natural cat instincts. They made deals with the local prisons and recruited death row inmates for their kids to practice on, released them into the woods, and said if they could get to the fence without being caught by the kids. They gave the man a gun and a head start, and exploited the natural hunt and kill instincts that the kids possessed and praised every kill they made. This instilled an idea that killing, while always acceptable behavior, because they didn’t want them killing anyone they happened to find on a mission aside from the target or any of the Manticore employees when they did something the kids didn’t like, was a good thing when necessary—for example, on a mission or when they needed to get out of a situation and not leave any witnesses. They were taught the best way to dispose of bodies so that they would never be found, and as a result, the element of wrong in taking someone’s life never fully sunk in. 494 kills without remorse or apology—in fact, on a level he even enjoys the hunt and culmination in the kill. It soothes the predator instinct in him. He understands the permanence of death, but the moral ramifications don’t always affect him the way it should. Post-Manticore, Alec understands the idea that killing someone is wrong, but he doesn’t allow the past deaths to weigh on his conscience. He only kills as a means of self-defense or in defense of someone else, and if he’s exhausted all other means. But when he does kill, it’s quick and ruthless, and it’s highly likely that he won’t be feeling bad for it later.

The people who were raising him at Manticore were not the highest shelf of human beings. As far as they were concerned, 494 was a creation of science and not a person. They did experiments on the kids, cutting them open without the appropriate anesthesia, due to their fast metabolisms. Alec is pretty much traumatized in terms of all things medically related, and would rather treat his own injuries himself. He doesn’t have to worry about illnesses or infection; he mostly has to worry about bleeding out and making sure the bones set right, and he can do that on his own, or with the members of his unit. He has a violent reaction to any other kind of medical attention and he will not set foot in a hospital on his own behalf. He will go to save a friend, a person he cares about, but he will not do it to save himself without being forcibly put there—and it takes a lot to force him there.

Manticore also tried to raise their X series operatives without emotions influencing their actions. As a result, they’re supposed to emotionally detach from what’s happening to them and keep focused as soldiers. 494 could handle short term missions where he didn’t have to deal with the people involved, but when he was placed on a long term deep cover assignment, he managed to connect with one of the targets romantically. Having never experienced that before, nor understanding what the feeling was, he fell for her hard and nearly blew the mission trying to protect her. He was again sent to reindoctrination and had the memories filed away in his brain, but that mission still colored the remainder of the missions he did for Manticore, up to and including his working as a double agent against Max in 201: Designate This, his first appearance, which is when 494 switches over to Alec.

ALEC:
Alec didn’t really become Alec until Max named him in that first episode. At first, he didn’t really care about the name—his designation number had been his identity for so long that he didn’t feel he needed a name, but when Manticore was brought down, he needed to use some kind of name to get around in the world—he couldn’t go around calling himself 494. He had liked Alec when initially named it, and decided to keep it. And it was good that he liked it, but because her second choice was “dick.” That possibly would have been more appropriate, considering that in the beginning, Alec really was. At first he came off as being Max’s friend—not forcing her to copulate with him due to their being breeding partners, and vouching for her in front of Madam Renfro. That was all to earn her trust, however, as he intended to use her to get to Logan. Even as he had Logan dying on the floor and a gun on Asha, he maintained that it wasn’t anything personal—he was just doing what he was built for. Eventually Max took him down and managed to release the location of Manticore to the world regardless, but by the time Alec returned to Manticore, Renfro was already sterilizing the site, and the only home he’d ever known was coming down around his ears.

At first, Alec’s intention was to get as far away from the mess as possible, but that ingrained loyalty to his unit and to the other members of the X series brought him back. Alec is intensely loyal to his own kind, including Max, and will do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Even when he was captured by Ames White and told to kill three of his own kind and collect their bar codes in order to obtain his freedom, he didn’t go through with actually killing one of them, and when he tried to get Joshua’s bar code, unaware that he didn’t have one, he couldn’t go through with actually killing them. He was taught to never leave a man behind, and he wasn’t going to turn on them and start killing them either, no matter what it meant for him.

His own kind, however, is where the selfless streak ends, with a few notable exceptions. Alec is not a hero. He isn’t out to better the world, and he isn’t out to save people he doesn’t know. He knows about his abilities and what he could do with them, but he’s not going out of his way to save a world that doesn’t want him and would only kill him for doing so. Alec will fight to the death for the people he cares about, those he considers his friends and family, and he would kill for them, but only them, and it is very hard to make his friend list. You need to show that you would do the same for him, or he would really have to like you in order to really make it stick. He plays his cards very close to the chest, and will more likely offer up a smartass, out for himself façade than let people know he actually gives a damn.

Alec is a smartass, however, with an insatiable knack for getting himself into trouble and trying to talk his way out of it. The phrase “Curiosity killed the cat” is incredibly appropriate for this particular X5. After growing up in such a structured and isolated environment, being faced with all that freedom was a daunting position, and he wanted to try and experience as much as possible. He had been out in the world before, but always with Manticore’s leash around his neck. He wasn’t allowed to explore on his own, which meant he needed to learn relatively quickly which areas he was allowed in and which areas he wasn’t. He also wasn’t sure how to handle keeping what he was from the general public. Max hassles him a lot in his early days as a free agent to keep his bar code covered and not doing anything that grabbed too much attention, but he didn’t always listen. He got busted by White when he was street fighting to hustle up some quick cash and betting on himself.

Seattle in 2020 is in the middle of an economic depression and people do whatever they have to do to make a quick buck. Aside from betting on himself in the beginning, he also got a job working at Jam Pony as a bike messenger, while supplementing his income with some light burglary. He’s an unrepentant thief and a firm believer in finders’ keepers. Considering that everyone else was hustling to try and make a quick buck, he didn’t see the problem in doing it himself, and he was better at it than most people. He also is a person to take advantage of opportunities, no matter how awkward it may seem. When a fellow X series transgenic was killed on the course of a mission, Alec all too quickly moved into his now vacant apartment, taking the space his family had left behind without seeing a problem. It made things uncomfortable for him and Max at first, but he needed a place to live, and it was only natural for him to take what had belonged to his kind and made sure it stayed where it belonged.

Alec does have a temper, however, and a violent one at that. When a fellow transgenic, Biggs, was killed by a lynch mob in 221: Love Among Runes, Alec was one the one leading the transgenics to find those responsible and make them sincerely regret the decision. Alec would kill for the people he cares about, and he would feel one bit of guilt about it. The way he sees it, humans have the police, the armed forces, and their rights to protect them from other people, but transgenics aren’t afforded the same courtesy. They need to protect themselves, whether the rest of the world likes it or not. As soon as they get afforded the same rights and privileges as the rest of civilized society, Alec will stop protecting his people his way.

It’s also important to mention that along with being shut away from the rest of the world and not understanding how it works around him, he didn’t really have a childhood. Therefore, he will have the potential to get excited about things that a six year-old would, like it was the first time he’s ever experienced it, because odds are, it is. He doesn’t look at the world with awe-like wonder, and he’s not a big believer in magic—he’s a byproduct of science. If you tell him that fairies/demons/werewolves/etc are real he’s going to look at you like you’re crazy—but he might tell you that a slinky is one of the coolest things he’s ever seen.

Items on your character at canon point:

1 – set of riot gear and body armor, minus helmet

1 – high powered rifle

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:

Alec is what’s called a transgenic, meaning he’s not entirely human. In fact, to be specific, he’s a third human, a third kitty DNA, and a third that’s the X5 cocktail. In the Dark Angel universe, transgenics were created to be a better class of soldier, and the X5s were trained to be the generals, while the X6-8s are more of the infantry class of soldier.

As far as the X5 cocktail is concerned, it comes in two parts. Mentally speaking Alec has an eidetic memory and a genius IQ. This allows him to pick up new skills extremely quickly—for example, he went from beginner to classically trained pianist over the course of a few days. He’s also multilingual. Physically, his body produces bonus stem cells which allow him to heal more quickly from injuries. All transgenics are also O negative, so they can swap blood quickly in battlefield situations. He has a much faster metabolism which allows him to process drugs and other narcotics more quickly, has been inoculated for every disease known to man—and some that aren’t—and his natural body temperature is several degrees higher than a normal human. He also has enhanced speed, called blurring, which allows him to move faster than the human eye can process, making him a literal blur, as well as enhanced strength. Max has been shown as having the ability to hold a full grown man upside down off a balcony several stories up without breaking a sweat or losing her grip. Alec, having more muscle mass and concentrated training, probably is stronger. All that extra strength allows him to jump higher, hit harder, and throw further than any normal human would.

As far as the kitty DNA is concerned, Alec has all the senses of a big cat. He has enhanced sight for seeing long distances and night vision, as well as a stronger than normal sense of smell and hearing. He has a better sense of balance, a natural grace, and enhanced flexibility. He lands on his feet—most of the time. He also has a taste of cat instincts, which can include sensitivity to the supernatural—there’s a reason cats were used as familiars for witches—but it’s nothing overtly informative. It’s mostly a feeling, like something’s rubbing against him the wrong way—he won’t know what it means. It also includes a strong kill instinct—cats are natural hunters and killers, and Manticore was especially careful to nurture that instinct in their soldiers.

As for his soldierly skills, Alec’s been trained to be a killing machine since he was old enough to hold a weapon. He’s proficient in almost every weapon known to man, as well as multiple forms of hand-to-hand combat, and he could probably kill you with just his pinky. He was raised to be a field leader, so he’s a strategist, and trained in infiltration, retrieval and assassinations. He was also trained for deep cover, so he can fake accents and slips on another identity just as easily as he would a pair of jeans.

With regard to weaknesses, Alec is as vulnerable as any human—if you shoot him in the heart, he’s still going to die. He’s immune to most biochemical and genetic warfare, but physical trauma can kill him—it just might be a little harder than it would be for a normal human due to Alec’s skills and training. He also has no mental shields or protections there at all. Manticore wanted their transgenics to be malleable and controllable, especially given their assets were all stronger than they were. Anyone looking to use any kind of mind control or compulsion will find a very easy mark.

Alec also has his fair share of mental trauma and PTSD that comes with memories that were conditioned and erased out of him. It’s not something he actively acknowledged, but needless to say he’s not exactly the most emotionally healthy person in the world. He can react sharply and strongly to certain situations without warning, and doesn’t process emotions most people take for granted well – love, parental relationships, most postitive and “softer” emotions do not come easily to him, as well as the opposite end of the spectrum – grief, anxiety, etc. Keep him in the median, he’s fine, but drag emotions into it, and he loses focus and can become erratic.

Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample: Alec meets his facetwin. It goes about as well as can be expected.

Prose Log Sample:
[This was a sample written for a previous game he was in and is like … two hours before his intended canon point, but it’s two hours, so I figure it wasn’t that big a deal.]

Alec hadn’t passed out since he was seven years old.

He was in the pool, holding his breath. Every X5 had to hold their breath for five minutes. It was a standard, and if standards weren’t met, bad things happened. Kids got taken back for ‘reconditioning.’ The doctors cut you open and made sure you were working properly, and you couldn’t move a muscle. The room smelled of fear and pain and all you wanted to do is run, but you couldn’t. Those doctors had their hands inside you, and if you’d run you’d die. Who would look after your sibs then?

So he was in the pool, weight tied to his ankle pinning him to the bottom, and he could feel that internal struggle starting to take hold. His body wanted to kick, to get him to the surface and where he could breathe, and he did start kicking, on instinct alone, but the COs weren’t letting him up. He hadn’t his finished his five minutes yet. You didn’t get out of the pool if you weren’t under for five minutes, no matter how hard you struggled. That was how you learned. Eventually it got harder to struggle, his limbs feeling as heavy as the lead weight attached to his ankle, and not long after everything went black.

When he came to, someone was forcing the water out of his lungs and he was on dry land again, lying on the side of the pool. Colonel Lydecker was standing over him, face full of disappointment. Alec hadn’t understood a lot of emotions at the time, but he knew a look of disappointment when he saw it, and the tone of the words backed it up.

“I expected more.”

Alec hadn’t passed out since. Reindoctrination, blood loss, whatever the case may be, he stayed wide awake, alert and focused. He could do better, and he was out to prove it. Until now.

Alec had been shot. Normal was holding the gun. As far as he was concerned, he had two options. Bitch like a girl about the bullet wound and abandon his people, or disarm Normal and out himself. It was a no brainer, and he knew what he was going to have to do, but there was still hesitation there. Normal was his friend. He didn’t go full out X5 on his friends. It just wasn’t fair. The world, it seemed, wasn’t going to give him the chance to make that choice. He could feel everything slipping away, blackness coming up through the corners of his eyes and the next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground in the middle of the woods, a little woozy and very confused. This wasn’t the first time he had been shot and it was a superficial flesh wound at worst. Passing out because of that? It was downright embarrassing.

Once that idea had passed, however, his nose started to kick in, and he realized that this place didn’t smell like any place he had ever been. There was something off about it too. It got under his skin like someone was rubbing his fur the wrong way. Not that he had any fur, but the point still stood. It was uncomfortable, and automatically set him on edge. Maybe this was all a hallucination, and in a moment, Joshua would be smacking him awake and he’d be back in the Jam Pony again, and just as FUBAR as he was before. But hey, at least for the duration of the hallucination he wouldn’t be bleeding out of a hole in his shoulder.

Oh, wait.

Nope, still bleeding. Thank goodness for small favors.

He pushed himself to his feet, readjusting the strap on his messenger bag so that it didn’t irritate the wound and started to survey the place a little more. He had grown up in back woods like this—where the trees were so thick that you had to move in order to see where you were going, but this wasn’t Manticore. He would know that smell in a heartbeat and this wasn’t it. There was nothing familiar about this place, and he was hesitant to move forward without knowing what he was getting into. He also knew, however, that he wasn’t going to get any answers without moving forward. He moved one hand, slipping it into the bag to make sure that he still had his Beretta with the extra clip, before closing the bag and starting to take a step forward, making his way further into the woods.

“Alright,” he sighed. “Let’s go find some people.”