User Name/Nick: A.J.
User DW:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wyrish
AIM/IM: surfaceshine
E-mail: surfaceshines @ gmail . com
Other Characters: Dean Winchester (surfaceshine) and Letty Ortiz (leavetreadmarks)
Character Name: Alec McDowell / X5-494
Series: Dark Angel
Age: Early to Mid 20's
From When?: From the end of 2x03, Proof of Purchase. Our heroes will run out of time to keep Ames' bomb at the base of his skull from popping and killing him.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Alec is someone who has never had much control over his own life, and so he's learned as a coping mechanism to detach from being responsible for the consequences of the actions he takes; this started out as not caring about the fates of his brothers and sisters at Manticore and the missions (many of them assassination and sabotage-related) he was assigned to, but graduated to pretty much everything by the time he reached adulthood. He is selfish and self-serving, and never had the opportunity - or the need - to live by the same moral system that most people do, and so he has no idea how to conduct himself in a situation that isn't every man for themselves. The groundwork is there, he can be loyal and thoughtful and is not as ruthless as he probably should be to be a successful soldier at Manticore, but he needs a chance to develop it and learn about who he is where he won't get himself or others killed or worse. Again.
Abilities/Powers: For more information on full transgenic powers and abilities, see here. Where Alec is concerned:
Personality: As one of his closest and only friends says of him, "Alec only outsmarts Alec. He doesn't know himself. Look outside: lots of pretty colors, tricks and treats. Inside darkness, confusion. Alec." Alec is a far more complex character than he allows others to realize, because it's much easier to just be the reckless, smug, happy-go-luckysociopath jerk with charisma and wit. He's able to have fun and then move on, which is just how he likes it. Or how he thinks he likes it.
As with all transgenics, born straight into Manticore's training programs to be products rather than humans, he was conditioned to the life of a soldier and later an assassin; he spent the first 21 years of his life at Manticore and still managed, unlike some other transgenics, to foster an independent enough attitude that he immediately separated from them the moment he got the chance, knowing they would eliminate their products rather than face the exposure and able to cope with that despite his conditioning to depend on them. He is capable of being passionate (he loves life and everything about it, vices in particular), sensitive (he won't allow Max to use him as an excuse to break up with her boyfriend and does not take advantage of a drunk woman he picks up at a bar as a rebound), and charismatic (people he has inadvertently gotten beaten up, infected with retroviruses, and almost killed still genuinely like him), but is also selfish (he sometimes gets people beaten up, infected, and almost or actually kills them - also, this was the only way to survive Manticore intact), cocky (he's awesome and he knows it, unfortunately), and quicker to act than think (fearless, but sometimes too fearless). What really sets Alec apart from his contemporaries is his resiliency: Manticore wanted the X5 series to be leaders, and to double as field operatives that could be sent on deep cover missions or trusted to carry out military operations on all levels. He embraced it as his salvation, as something to give him the tools he would need to eventually escape, and he bided his time despite everything.
Alec is also capable of thinking and acting with merciless practicality, to the point of turning off his own morals to meet an end for survival; for example in order to maintain a clean, obedient record for himself, Alec posed as Max's breeding partner, pretended to cover for her while she planned and executed an escape, only to follow her back to her boyfriend's house where he explained that she had infected him via touch with a fatal genetic virus that only Manticore could cure, and he was meant to take them both back as prisoners, which he did attempt to do. Also, later, when he was captured by the man hired to clean up the mess of Manticore and the escaped transgenics, to save his own life he offered to help track down the other escaped transgenics; he was implanted with a bomb at the base of his skull and told to kill and collect the barcodes of three transgenics in 24 hours or he would be killed himself, so instead of escaping as he probably intended to do, he actually set out to do it. Alec first showed little hesitation in killing another transgenic that was more cat than human, clearly using the logic of her just being an animal even though she hadn't hurt anyone and was actively hiding in the sewers, because the next target he finds is a younger transgenic in poor shape but fully human and this time he only cuts off the barcode and dumps him at a hospital, though he is caught out doing this and the X6 is killed anyway. He later uses the same "animal, not human" logic when in desperation to save his own life he tries to kill Joshua only to discover he has no barcode and goes after Max instead; he's not happy about any of it, even defends his actions with the X6 by saying "he was just a kid," but he does it anyway when his life is the consequence. This is what he needed to do to survive growing up there without giving them reason to send him through PsyOps and thus effectively steal his free will. This is his greatest fear.
In an existence where transgenics owned literally nothing, not even their own bodies and abilities, and no one in the rest of the world either knew about them in order to fight for their rights or cared to, his mind and his free will were all Alec had and he managed to navigate the odds to keep them. He learned that people could be taken from him and he could be used against other people on his first deep cover assignment, when he fell in love with the girl and tried to thwart her assassination and succeeded, instead, in causing her to fall into a coma when Manticore planted the bomb he refused to anyway, and earned himself a trip to PsyOps for re-conditioning. After that, he buckled down to the only thing that really matters: himself.
Alec is someone who has had his means of survival dictated to him throughout his entire life, but has still managed to find wiggle room in between to build a sense of self. He is highly intelligent, calculating and self-serving, keeps his emotions rigidly compartmentalized, and is not keen on letting anyone in close where they can get the chance to turn on him; he has suffered horrific institutionalized abuse from the time he was born to only a few months prior to appearing on the Barge, and he hasn't the first clue how to overcome any of what he's dealt with in his life other than by shoving it down and soldiering on. Despite all of this he remains vivacious and charismatic, deliberately making himself into Manticore's golden boy and model soldier in order to place himself in a position to take advantage of any opportunities that might pass him by without giving them a reason to force his loyalty through brainwashing. He is a survivor, against every odd.
His loyal streak is present, but it's been abused so much by Manticore and by knowing that at any time his unit mates and fellow transgenics can be brainwashed by PsyOps into turning against him that it might be difficult to believe it exists at all. He is very, very wary of applying it to anyone; still, even though Max constantly pushes him away and insults him, Alec sees potential in her for leadership and compassion and sticks by her when he could very easily have abandoned her to be killed.
People just meeting him will see him as sarcastic, quick to joke and laugh - often inappropriately - friendly, and willing to try almost anything once; people who take the time to get to know him a little better may find themselves aware that this is just the front he puts up and that beneath it is he capable of being ruthlessly practical and self-serving but not always entirely sure that's what he wants. While Alec doesn't exactly hold grudges, people who betray him will find themselves cut off quickly and completely; people undecided will find him quick to serve his own interests, be that by helping them or abandoning them, until they climb down off the fence and make up their minds about what they want to be to him or vice. He doesn't have a lot of patience for uncertainty, in himself or in others.
Barge Reactions: Alec will thrive in the Barge community. He'll be furious that he's an inmate again, but fall very easily back into his Manticore-built survival mode, and that will be much easier here: if he's cooperative, and engaged, and cheerful, there's less of a chance that anyone will look at him twice or suspect him of being a security risk and he knows that. Additionally, despite the fact he'll be pretty pissed off about being confined again, the Barge is like a minimum security prison compared to Manticore's super maximum security: there are worse places to be held captive, and well Alec knows it. He won't mind a place with good food, hot showers, personalized cabins, and a pool and bar.
The floods and breaches will rattle him, especially the ones where he isn't himself at all; his sense of self is the most important thing to him, and he will resent having it taken from him even temporarily. His trauma threshold is very high, though, and he should seem to recover pretty quickly and paint his thrillseeking story over top of it given sufficient opportunity.
As for the other denizens of the Barge, well. Alec comes from a top secret government facility that genetically engineers everything from human-like soldiers to all manner of creatures, and he's pretty much okay with that. He won't bat too much of an eye at any of the shapes and sizes on board the ship, or the power sets, and he's not well versed enough in most pop culture to pick out the fictional characters. He'll fit right in, though he'll run his mouth quite a lot every chance he gets.
As to the presence of his canon genetic clone, Ben, having been on the ship beforehand he will not be terribly surprised; clones are a part of his life. He'll be angry about it but, like his distaste for being imprisoned at all, won't likely show it unless pressured immensely to do so. I've also had him around for several previous fourth wall days and while I'm okay with anyone that wants to remember anything about him from those conversations, he is from a much earlier canon point now and wouldn't remember them anyway.
Path to Redemption: Alec will be a longterm project no matter how it's sliced. The first obstacle will be overcoming the outward perception that most should have about him, which is why is he even here? Alec presents himself as easygoing and canny, with a lack of respect for authority that never seems to have teeth and a willingness to be cooperative, even helpful. He's obnoxious but friendly, and seems to have his shit together.
This is exactly what everyone is supposed to think, and he will guard that secret with everything he is because this is his armor.
The truth of the matter is that Alec knows very little about himself in relation to only himself. Every action he's taken, decision he's made, every aspect of his personality that's developed past his late teens has been extremely deliberate and in direct relationship to some threat or obstacle posed him at Manticore. He is very much the soldier they intended him to be but even more dangerous than that, because he is a soldier with no loyalty: he wasn't allowed any friends, had no family, inside the corporation and he certainly couldn't be loyal to those responsible for keeping him as property.
So once any warden even gets him to admit that there's a problem, the next step will be to sort out what, exactly, it is: his habit of detaching from the consequences of his actions and of acting only in his own interest, once some of his strongest assets, will only hinder him in a life where he needs other transgenics to survive. And he does need other people. He doesn't actually know how to be alone and, left to his own devices, will quickly and messily self destruct. He needs to learn how to view others as more than just threats or victims. And he needs to learn that the world doesn't actually operate on self serving motives at the expense of all others and nothing else.
History: Dark Angel Wiki Page: Alec McDowell/X5-494 and Additional History
I am cutting Alec off pretty early in his canon appearances, killing him off before he gets to join Jam Pony as a bike messenger or begin to get close to Max or any of her friends. I may canon update him later but for right now, I want him to start fresh with people on the Barge and go through the character development he does in the show on the hellboat instead.
In addition, I have some headcanon as we do not meet Alec until his early 20s in the series. I've decided that his unit did give him a name in his youth, and (somewhat arbitrarily) that it was Knox; he buried this when the '09 Escape happened and he was put under duress with the rest of the remaining transgenics, giving Manticore absolutely no excuse to think he would be remotely independent-minded (such as having his own name instead of his serial designation, X5-494), and goes exclusively by Alec now. At his introduction in the series he was also given what was, at the time, a very high profile assignment requiring a lot of trust in his abilities and loyalty, which leads me to believe Alec has had several successful solo missions throughout his early adulthood, proving himself a "true blue soldier." That's all pre-Series, and while we are shown Max's experience as a child at Manticore and later Alec hints at some of this, we are never explicitly shown any of it except his single assassination assignment for Robert Berrisford (which is also pre-series) and his interaction with Max and Logan in first episode of season 2 when he was acting on Manticore's behalf.
Sample Journal Entry: Alec on the Test Drive
Sample RP: You won't even know what hit you. That's what Ames had said about the bomb, and Alec had believed him then, but he has no room for doubt now: he remembers the forceps digging into the back of his neck, Max's tight-lipped glower in front of him and the seconds ticking down on the watch, the sound of his own heartbeat, and then nothing.
He opens his eyes to his cell back at Manticore, a splitting headache the likes of which he has endeavored to avoid experiencing for years now, and a blinking 00:00 on the watch on his wrist. He'd swear, except it hurts when he opens his mouth to breathe, and his instinct is to lie as still as possible while the rest of his wits come back online; what he does instead is close his eyes again and go still, trying to think.
When that particular part of his brain comes online, the first thing he is - before surprised, before afraid, before panicked or pained or determined - is pissed off. He'd been free. He'd actually been free, he'd had a chance to disappear into the world, he'd been his own person for less than a month and then he'd gone fucking soft. Ames would've kept him on if he would've just killed that boy, killed Max, brought him three barcodes like he asked; he would have done exactly what Manticore did if he'd just been obedient, would have fed out the slack on his leash, would have eventually stopped looking at him so closely and he could have slipped away. He'd be free. He'd be himself. He'd never have to answer to 494 ever again. But no, now the X6, now Max are undoubtedly dead anyway and he's right back here and as soon as they realize he's awake it's probably right off to PsyOps for him.
It's somewhere in there that he remembers this can't be his cell at Manticore. He watched the compound burn, he turned his back on it, he left and it was ruined. This makes him open his eyes again, turn his aching neck so he can look for the markers he put there himself, that would differentiate this cell from every other Manticore cell, putting everything else on hold. They're there. The marks are there, and he squints at them as he breathes in, braces himself, and sits up.
That's when he notices the two other differences that he wasn't looking for: the barred reach-through window on his door is blocked, and there is a device nearby. His neck and spine ache once he's upright but he can ignore that, stays very still while he listens for any voice, for any indication that anyone has realized he's awake yet. There are voices in the hallway but his head feels like his eyes and ears have been plugged with cotton, and he can't make them out. He guesses at how far away they are anyway and when a thirty count passes and no one opens the door, he narrows his attention to the device. As long as he has options, he can deal with this, he thinks; he can figure out how to spin this if he has enough time before they come for him. If he has enough information.
The controls are unfamiliar to him but simple enough to understand. He doesn't know how long he has, if this is some sort of test, some sort of resource he's meant to take advantage of, if he can somehow turn this to his advantage, but more information is definitely the first thing he needs. He begins to scroll through this network, the random posts of people he doesn't recognize, and he forces his blurry vision to focus. He forces himself to concentrate.
He doesn't know how much time he has, and he isn't going down for Max and her friends - for anyone - any fucking more.
Special Notes:
Headcanon Notes:
- Explaining PsyOps
- He remembers Shila screaming she was sorry as they dragged her away but he never found out what she was so sorry about, he doesn't think. He hopes.
- He thinks, briefly, of Jer, who always was the most sensitive, who never complained even when the dark circles beneath his eyes became near permanent. He doesn't know what happened to Jer. He lost track of him in the shuffle.
User DW:
wyrishAIM/IM: surfaceshine
E-mail: surfaceshines @ gmail . com
Other Characters: Dean Winchester (
surfaceshine) and Letty Ortiz (leavetreadmarks)Character Name: Alec McDowell / X5-494
Series: Dark Angel
Age: Early to Mid 20's
From When?: From the end of 2x03, Proof of Purchase. Our heroes will run out of time to keep Ames' bomb at the base of his skull from popping and killing him.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Alec is someone who has never had much control over his own life, and so he's learned as a coping mechanism to detach from being responsible for the consequences of the actions he takes; this started out as not caring about the fates of his brothers and sisters at Manticore and the missions (many of them assassination and sabotage-related) he was assigned to, but graduated to pretty much everything by the time he reached adulthood. He is selfish and self-serving, and never had the opportunity - or the need - to live by the same moral system that most people do, and so he has no idea how to conduct himself in a situation that isn't every man for themselves. The groundwork is there, he can be loyal and thoughtful and is not as ruthless as he probably should be to be a successful soldier at Manticore, but he needs a chance to develop it and learn about who he is where he won't get himself or others killed or worse. Again.
Abilities/Powers: For more information on full transgenic powers and abilities, see here. Where Alec is concerned:
- Enhanced strength: At normal strength Alec can lift and carry three times his own body weight, leap great distances and heights, and break through walls made of most building materials that are not actually cement or brick. As a starting inmate he'll be the equivalent of a very fit normal human.
- Enhanced speed and reflexes: At normal speed, Alec is capable of moving so quickly his form will blur to the normal human eye and has caught crossbow bolts fired at his face and been able to dodge rounds from semi-automatic weapons. Starting out, he'll be about as quick as a baseline human who trains regularly.
- Enhanced stamina: At their peak a healthy, uninjured X5 can exert themselves for several hours before their muscles begin to weaken. Alec will start out at the level of a fit human who trains regularly.
- Enhanced agility: At full strength Alec would be capable of performing cat-like feats of physicality, including walking along high wires, flipping through the air at near-impossible angles and distances, climbing nearly smooth surfaces, and squeezing through small spaces. Alec will start out at the level of an experienced gymnast.
- Enhanced durability: At full strength, while they can still be damaged and killed by knives, stabbing weapons, bullets, shrapnel, and kinetic impact, X5s' bodies hold together much better than normal and they can get right back up from falling several stories. Alec will start out at the level of a fairly tough baseline human - you guessed it, one who trains regularly.
- Enhanced immune system and metabolism: At full strength Alec is virtually immune to most poisons and drugs, except in very large doses, and his accelerated metabolism allows him to stay in near perfect shape with only light exercise. This also makes it extremely difficult for them to become intoxicated from alcohol, but means they require an abnormally high caloric intake. Alec will start out at the level of a very healthy baseline human.
- Enhanced regenerative capabilities: At full strength, X5s have been able to heal and fully recover from injuries such as gunshot wounds, broken bones, damaged organs, and pulled and/or torn muscles at incredible rates. Alec will start out with a rapid healing rate, but reduced and decided per incident and permission.
- Enhanced senses: X5s can see in the dark, zoom their vision in on narrow areas at will, and have exceptional hearing and sense of smell due to the animal DNA used to create them. This isn't particularly dangerous but as a side effect of everything else being dampened, Alec will be at the levels of a particularly wary human.
Although it is not explicitly stated at any point, because the X5 series was intended to be the officer class of transgenics and useful in a broad array of fields, it's likely that Alec speaks several universal languages competently if not fluently, as well as has some technological and engineering foundation as well as tactical. I will use these with discretion.
Personality: As one of his closest and only friends says of him, "Alec only outsmarts Alec. He doesn't know himself. Look outside: lots of pretty colors, tricks and treats. Inside darkness, confusion. Alec." Alec is a far more complex character than he allows others to realize, because it's much easier to just be the reckless, smug, happy-go-lucky
As with all transgenics, born straight into Manticore's training programs to be products rather than humans, he was conditioned to the life of a soldier and later an assassin; he spent the first 21 years of his life at Manticore and still managed, unlike some other transgenics, to foster an independent enough attitude that he immediately separated from them the moment he got the chance, knowing they would eliminate their products rather than face the exposure and able to cope with that despite his conditioning to depend on them. He is capable of being passionate (he loves life and everything about it, vices in particular), sensitive (he won't allow Max to use him as an excuse to break up with her boyfriend and does not take advantage of a drunk woman he picks up at a bar as a rebound), and charismatic (people he has inadvertently gotten beaten up, infected with retroviruses, and almost killed still genuinely like him), but is also selfish (he sometimes gets people beaten up, infected, and almost or actually kills them - also, this was the only way to survive Manticore intact), cocky (he's awesome and he knows it, unfortunately), and quicker to act than think (fearless, but sometimes too fearless). What really sets Alec apart from his contemporaries is his resiliency: Manticore wanted the X5 series to be leaders, and to double as field operatives that could be sent on deep cover missions or trusted to carry out military operations on all levels. He embraced it as his salvation, as something to give him the tools he would need to eventually escape, and he bided his time despite everything.
Alec is also capable of thinking and acting with merciless practicality, to the point of turning off his own morals to meet an end for survival; for example in order to maintain a clean, obedient record for himself, Alec posed as Max's breeding partner, pretended to cover for her while she planned and executed an escape, only to follow her back to her boyfriend's house where he explained that she had infected him via touch with a fatal genetic virus that only Manticore could cure, and he was meant to take them both back as prisoners, which he did attempt to do. Also, later, when he was captured by the man hired to clean up the mess of Manticore and the escaped transgenics, to save his own life he offered to help track down the other escaped transgenics; he was implanted with a bomb at the base of his skull and told to kill and collect the barcodes of three transgenics in 24 hours or he would be killed himself, so instead of escaping as he probably intended to do, he actually set out to do it. Alec first showed little hesitation in killing another transgenic that was more cat than human, clearly using the logic of her just being an animal even though she hadn't hurt anyone and was actively hiding in the sewers, because the next target he finds is a younger transgenic in poor shape but fully human and this time he only cuts off the barcode and dumps him at a hospital, though he is caught out doing this and the X6 is killed anyway. He later uses the same "animal, not human" logic when in desperation to save his own life he tries to kill Joshua only to discover he has no barcode and goes after Max instead; he's not happy about any of it, even defends his actions with the X6 by saying "he was just a kid," but he does it anyway when his life is the consequence. This is what he needed to do to survive growing up there without giving them reason to send him through PsyOps and thus effectively steal his free will. This is his greatest fear.
In an existence where transgenics owned literally nothing, not even their own bodies and abilities, and no one in the rest of the world either knew about them in order to fight for their rights or cared to, his mind and his free will were all Alec had and he managed to navigate the odds to keep them. He learned that people could be taken from him and he could be used against other people on his first deep cover assignment, when he fell in love with the girl and tried to thwart her assassination and succeeded, instead, in causing her to fall into a coma when Manticore planted the bomb he refused to anyway, and earned himself a trip to PsyOps for re-conditioning. After that, he buckled down to the only thing that really matters: himself.
Alec is someone who has had his means of survival dictated to him throughout his entire life, but has still managed to find wiggle room in between to build a sense of self. He is highly intelligent, calculating and self-serving, keeps his emotions rigidly compartmentalized, and is not keen on letting anyone in close where they can get the chance to turn on him; he has suffered horrific institutionalized abuse from the time he was born to only a few months prior to appearing on the Barge, and he hasn't the first clue how to overcome any of what he's dealt with in his life other than by shoving it down and soldiering on. Despite all of this he remains vivacious and charismatic, deliberately making himself into Manticore's golden boy and model soldier in order to place himself in a position to take advantage of any opportunities that might pass him by without giving them a reason to force his loyalty through brainwashing. He is a survivor, against every odd.
His loyal streak is present, but it's been abused so much by Manticore and by knowing that at any time his unit mates and fellow transgenics can be brainwashed by PsyOps into turning against him that it might be difficult to believe it exists at all. He is very, very wary of applying it to anyone; still, even though Max constantly pushes him away and insults him, Alec sees potential in her for leadership and compassion and sticks by her when he could very easily have abandoned her to be killed.
People just meeting him will see him as sarcastic, quick to joke and laugh - often inappropriately - friendly, and willing to try almost anything once; people who take the time to get to know him a little better may find themselves aware that this is just the front he puts up and that beneath it is he capable of being ruthlessly practical and self-serving but not always entirely sure that's what he wants. While Alec doesn't exactly hold grudges, people who betray him will find themselves cut off quickly and completely; people undecided will find him quick to serve his own interests, be that by helping them or abandoning them, until they climb down off the fence and make up their minds about what they want to be to him or vice. He doesn't have a lot of patience for uncertainty, in himself or in others.
Barge Reactions: Alec will thrive in the Barge community. He'll be furious that he's an inmate again, but fall very easily back into his Manticore-built survival mode, and that will be much easier here: if he's cooperative, and engaged, and cheerful, there's less of a chance that anyone will look at him twice or suspect him of being a security risk and he knows that. Additionally, despite the fact he'll be pretty pissed off about being confined again, the Barge is like a minimum security prison compared to Manticore's super maximum security: there are worse places to be held captive, and well Alec knows it. He won't mind a place with good food, hot showers, personalized cabins, and a pool and bar.
The floods and breaches will rattle him, especially the ones where he isn't himself at all; his sense of self is the most important thing to him, and he will resent having it taken from him even temporarily. His trauma threshold is very high, though, and he should seem to recover pretty quickly and paint his thrillseeking story over top of it given sufficient opportunity.
As for the other denizens of the Barge, well. Alec comes from a top secret government facility that genetically engineers everything from human-like soldiers to all manner of creatures, and he's pretty much okay with that. He won't bat too much of an eye at any of the shapes and sizes on board the ship, or the power sets, and he's not well versed enough in most pop culture to pick out the fictional characters. He'll fit right in, though he'll run his mouth quite a lot every chance he gets.
As to the presence of his canon genetic clone, Ben, having been on the ship beforehand he will not be terribly surprised; clones are a part of his life. He'll be angry about it but, like his distaste for being imprisoned at all, won't likely show it unless pressured immensely to do so. I've also had him around for several previous fourth wall days and while I'm okay with anyone that wants to remember anything about him from those conversations, he is from a much earlier canon point now and wouldn't remember them anyway.
Path to Redemption: Alec will be a longterm project no matter how it's sliced. The first obstacle will be overcoming the outward perception that most should have about him, which is why is he even here? Alec presents himself as easygoing and canny, with a lack of respect for authority that never seems to have teeth and a willingness to be cooperative, even helpful. He's obnoxious but friendly, and seems to have his shit together.
This is exactly what everyone is supposed to think, and he will guard that secret with everything he is because this is his armor.
The truth of the matter is that Alec knows very little about himself in relation to only himself. Every action he's taken, decision he's made, every aspect of his personality that's developed past his late teens has been extremely deliberate and in direct relationship to some threat or obstacle posed him at Manticore. He is very much the soldier they intended him to be but even more dangerous than that, because he is a soldier with no loyalty: he wasn't allowed any friends, had no family, inside the corporation and he certainly couldn't be loyal to those responsible for keeping him as property.
So once any warden even gets him to admit that there's a problem, the next step will be to sort out what, exactly, it is: his habit of detaching from the consequences of his actions and of acting only in his own interest, once some of his strongest assets, will only hinder him in a life where he needs other transgenics to survive. And he does need other people. He doesn't actually know how to be alone and, left to his own devices, will quickly and messily self destruct. He needs to learn how to view others as more than just threats or victims. And he needs to learn that the world doesn't actually operate on self serving motives at the expense of all others and nothing else.
History: Dark Angel Wiki Page: Alec McDowell/X5-494 and Additional History
I am cutting Alec off pretty early in his canon appearances, killing him off before he gets to join Jam Pony as a bike messenger or begin to get close to Max or any of her friends. I may canon update him later but for right now, I want him to start fresh with people on the Barge and go through the character development he does in the show on the hellboat instead.
In addition, I have some headcanon as we do not meet Alec until his early 20s in the series. I've decided that his unit did give him a name in his youth, and (somewhat arbitrarily) that it was Knox; he buried this when the '09 Escape happened and he was put under duress with the rest of the remaining transgenics, giving Manticore absolutely no excuse to think he would be remotely independent-minded (such as having his own name instead of his serial designation, X5-494), and goes exclusively by Alec now. At his introduction in the series he was also given what was, at the time, a very high profile assignment requiring a lot of trust in his abilities and loyalty, which leads me to believe Alec has had several successful solo missions throughout his early adulthood, proving himself a "true blue soldier." That's all pre-Series, and while we are shown Max's experience as a child at Manticore and later Alec hints at some of this, we are never explicitly shown any of it except his single assassination assignment for Robert Berrisford (which is also pre-series) and his interaction with Max and Logan in first episode of season 2 when he was acting on Manticore's behalf.
Sample Journal Entry: Alec on the Test Drive
Sample RP: You won't even know what hit you. That's what Ames had said about the bomb, and Alec had believed him then, but he has no room for doubt now: he remembers the forceps digging into the back of his neck, Max's tight-lipped glower in front of him and the seconds ticking down on the watch, the sound of his own heartbeat, and then nothing.
He opens his eyes to his cell back at Manticore, a splitting headache the likes of which he has endeavored to avoid experiencing for years now, and a blinking 00:00 on the watch on his wrist. He'd swear, except it hurts when he opens his mouth to breathe, and his instinct is to lie as still as possible while the rest of his wits come back online; what he does instead is close his eyes again and go still, trying to think.
When that particular part of his brain comes online, the first thing he is - before surprised, before afraid, before panicked or pained or determined - is pissed off. He'd been free. He'd actually been free, he'd had a chance to disappear into the world, he'd been his own person for less than a month and then he'd gone fucking soft. Ames would've kept him on if he would've just killed that boy, killed Max, brought him three barcodes like he asked; he would have done exactly what Manticore did if he'd just been obedient, would have fed out the slack on his leash, would have eventually stopped looking at him so closely and he could have slipped away. He'd be free. He'd be himself. He'd never have to answer to 494 ever again. But no, now the X6, now Max are undoubtedly dead anyway and he's right back here and as soon as they realize he's awake it's probably right off to PsyOps for him.
It's somewhere in there that he remembers this can't be his cell at Manticore. He watched the compound burn, he turned his back on it, he left and it was ruined. This makes him open his eyes again, turn his aching neck so he can look for the markers he put there himself, that would differentiate this cell from every other Manticore cell, putting everything else on hold. They're there. The marks are there, and he squints at them as he breathes in, braces himself, and sits up.
That's when he notices the two other differences that he wasn't looking for: the barred reach-through window on his door is blocked, and there is a device nearby. His neck and spine ache once he's upright but he can ignore that, stays very still while he listens for any voice, for any indication that anyone has realized he's awake yet. There are voices in the hallway but his head feels like his eyes and ears have been plugged with cotton, and he can't make them out. He guesses at how far away they are anyway and when a thirty count passes and no one opens the door, he narrows his attention to the device. As long as he has options, he can deal with this, he thinks; he can figure out how to spin this if he has enough time before they come for him. If he has enough information.
The controls are unfamiliar to him but simple enough to understand. He doesn't know how long he has, if this is some sort of test, some sort of resource he's meant to take advantage of, if he can somehow turn this to his advantage, but more information is definitely the first thing he needs. He begins to scroll through this network, the random posts of people he doesn't recognize, and he forces his blurry vision to focus. He forces himself to concentrate.
He doesn't know how much time he has, and he isn't going down for Max and her friends - for anyone - any fucking more.
Special Notes:
Headcanon Notes:
- Explaining PsyOps
- He remembers Shila screaming she was sorry as they dragged her away but he never found out what she was so sorry about, he doesn't think. He hopes.
- He thinks, briefly, of Jer, who always was the most sensitive, who never complained even when the dark circles beneath his eyes became near permanent. He doesn't know what happened to Jer. He lost track of him in the shuffle.
