Title: Manmade Monsters
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Supernatural is not mine, incidentally, the same goes for Dark Angel
Summary: Dean makes a kill that happens to have a barcode on the back of its neck. Lydecker is not happy. Dean-centric, crossover with Dark Angel. Prequel to What Comes Around.
Author’s Note: What Comes Around originally began as a story about Dean getting kidnapped by Manticore and it evolved into something completely different, but the original concept started nagging at me again. So yeah, Dean, Lydecker, Logan and Manticore. A huge thanks to mayatawi for editing.

The What Comes Around 'Verse (COMPLETE)
1. Manmade Monsters
2. What Comes Around
3. What You See
4. What You Dream About
5. What Can Hurt You

---

Manmade Monsters

The kid reminds him of Sam and in the end that’s what gets him into trouble. The demon takes out both of the kid’s parents when the kid’s off looking for firewood, and Dean only just manages to fend it off before it gets the hat-trick. The kid stares at him through cracked and smudged glasses with wide green-blue eyes. He’s on the small side, kind of scrawny, but he’s got that gangly look Sam had the summer before he grew eight inches in nine months.

“What’s your name, kid?”

The kid shuffles his feet, sits down hard on the log and stares at his parent’s mutilated corpses. “Logan.” His voice is little more than a whisper. “Logan Cale.”

“I’m Dean,” he replies awkwardly, not quite knowing what to say. What could he say? The kid and his parents had just gone on a camping trip. He couldn’t be prepared for any of this.

“The police aren’t going to believe this,” Logan says quietly. It’s a logical statement despite the atrocities in front of him, detached almost. It strikes Dean as the kind of thing Sammy would say. Then again, with Sam off at college, everything reminds him of his brother.

“There are a lot of things the police can’t handle,” Dean says. Logan looks at the ground and he immediately feels like an ass. The kid may not be crying, but Dean recognizes the glazed look in his eyes as a kind of shock. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

“It’s not your fault,” the kid says tonelessly. “It’s just…” Dean can see he’s biting back tears. “You’ll get it, right? Even if the police can’t?”

Something about the kid reminds him of Sam. Whether it’s the geek boy glasses or the quiet determination or just the way he looks at Dean like he’s some kind of hero, Dean can’t turn him down. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch that did this,” he says. “Trust me, it’s going to pay.”

Logan nods once and bites his lip. Tears well up, but he doesn’t cry.

Dean stays with him until the police arrive.

---

He goes in blind. It’s the kind of stupid impulsive thing Sam and Dad always used to stop him from doing. But they aren’t here.

Dean doesn’t know what he’s after. Rule number one of demon hunting has always been to know the enemy; demons tend to require a specific method of disposal. The pattern of wounds on the bodies was similar to those a Wendingo leaves, but when Dean stepped between the thing and Logan Cale, he got a look at it and didn’t recognized it.

He should know what he’s fighting, what it wants, how to kill it, but he remembers the kid biting back tears and only knows the demon needs to die. He’s got a pair of pistols in his waist band, one loaded with salt and the other with silver bullets, holy water and some lighters in his pocket, and a knife in his sleeve.

He hopes to God it’ll be enough.

---

He gets lucky. The thing’s not bothering to cover its trail, and he finds it within the hour, crouching at a creek bed to drink. He still doesn’t recognize it. The thing is vaguely humanoid, two arms and two legs and all that, but it’s covered in a coarse black fur and has claws where it should have hands. Dean quickly pulls out the silver-loaded gun and clicks off the safety.

The demon’s catlike ears prick upwards, and it jerks its head to the right as Dean’s bullet whizzes by it. Dean curses and tries to take aim again, but the demon’s suddenly running, moving almost too fast to track. And then it’s gone completely. Dean swings his gun across the empty landscape in shock.

And then there’s a slash at his back, cutting smoothly through his jacket and two layers of shirts before connecting with skin. He hisses in pain, but forces himself into action, spinning around and slipping the knife out from under his sleeve. The thing’s moving again, a blur whizzing by on the edge of his vision. He spins slowly in place, waiting for the attack.

He thinks this is where he will die. Alone. No Sam, no Dad, just Dean.

He hopes the kid is safe now. He hopes this demon doesn’t have some sort of vendetta against his family. Logan seems like a nice kid. He’ll get over this. Probably grow up and head to college…

The demon lunges for Dean, landing a glancing blow to his head, and he thrusts the knife at its fast-moving form. It hits something, though he can’t tell what damage it does, because the thing is out of his sight again.

“Come on,” he hears himself whisper, “come get me.”

He shouldn’t be taunting this thing, he should do research first. Find its weaknesses, find what it wants. Dad would kill him if he were here. Sam would tell him he was an idiot.

But they’d still save him.

He remembers Logan Cale’s stoicism, the glazed look in his eyes that comes right before tears.

You’ll get it, right? Even if the police can’t?

And the next time the demon lunges for him, Dean grabs it and holds on.

The thing’s faster than him, stronger than him, but hand to hand at least, Dean’s just better. He gets a grip on one of the thing’s legs and just holds on, dragging it down by pure persistence.

When it’s on the ground, he kneels on its back and gropes for its neck. He grasps it in both hands and he twists.

There’s a crack and suddenly the thing stops struggling. Dean rolls off of it, breathing hard.

That’s when he sees the gun aimed squarely between his eyes, held by a thirty-something man wearing army fatigues. Dean vaguely wonders if this whole night has been some sort of whacked-out dream.

“We can do this the easy way,” says the military man, “or the hard way.”

“Bite me,” Dean says.

The butt of the gun smashes against his forehead. “The hard way it is.”

---

Dean wakes up in a white room. White walls, white floors, a white ceiling. The only color is a black insignia of a manticore on the opposite wall. The door across the room is the only visible exit. He groans and tries to raise his arms, but they’re latched down. This is quickly becoming one of his worst nights ever. He says, “When I get out of here, I am going to kick your ass.”

“Interesting threat, considering your unfortunate predicament,” a man says, entering the room.

Dean fixes him with a stare. “I’ve broken out of places with more security than this.”

The man grins at him and reaches into his pocket. “You had quite a few unusual items in your possession when we brought you in. A few knives, lock picks, holy water, a gun loaded with rock salt.” He pulls each item out as he lists them off, and Dean can’t stop his eyes from widening.

“Look, I don’t know who you are--”

“I’m sorry. How rude. My name is Donald Lydecker. You’re currently in a medical care facility called Manticore.”

“Medical care facilities don’t usually have chains for their patients.”

Lydecker continues as if he hasn’t heard. “Now that I’ve told you my name, I’d like to hear yours.”

“No,” Dean says flatly.

“Fine,” Lydecker says, and pulls a wallet from his pocket. Dean recognizes it as his own. “We’ll try process of elimination.”

He starts to go through Dean’s fake IDs, one by one, reading the name and flipping to the next one. “Jerry Wanek, Gregory Washington, Edwardo Martinez.”

The litany of names is longer than Dean remembers and his own name doesn’t appear once. There’s something fundamentally wrong about that, as if Dean Winchester doesn’t truly exist.

He cuts Lydecker off in mid-sentence. “My name is Dean.”

Lydecker pauses and his lips curl up in what appears to be a smile. “Interesting. Dean. I don’t believe I saw that in any of your identification. I don’t suppose you have a last name.”

Dean doesn’t answer, just stares past Lydecker and keeps his mouth shut.

“Well, either you don’t know it yourself, or you’re not telling. But you know what, Dean?” Lydecker leans in close to him. “I don’t think it matters. Because I don’t think anyone is coming for you.”

Dean thinks of Sam in Stanford and Dad hunting in Idaho and smiles. “Good.”

“My sentiments exactly. I will enjoy finding out what makes you tick. You’re going to do a great service to your country. You may not know it, but you’re about to become part of something big.”

---

Dean spends the next few days in a drug-induced haze. At least, he thinks it’s only a few days. There are no windows in the room, and he’s just too out of it to keep his internal clock running. He keeps thinking of Sammy off at college and Dad off somewhere in Idaho hunting a shapeshifter without someone to back him up and Logan Cale with his smudged glasses and dead family, almost but not quite breaking down.

Doctors keep coming and going from the room. He barely notices them except for when they draw blood. All around, there are mumbles about DNA and prototypes and some of that technical genetic shit Dean can’t make heads or tails of. He tries to lash out at the doctors’ blurry, formless faces, but his arms are still latched to the bed.

They feed him semi-regularly, and even though it’s military rations and it tastes like shit, Dean eats every bit of it. He’s got to keep his strength up if he’s going to have any shot at getting out of here.

He gets his chance sooner than he expects. A pair of nurses, one male and one female, come in one night when he’s feigning sleep. He stays as still as he can as he feels them undoing the latches on his wrists. He feels a needle sliding into the crook of his arm and makes his move.

Either the nurses are better built than he expected or he’s even more out of it than he thought. He catches the male nurse off guard, knocking the needle somewhere into the distance. He takes them by surprise, but they recover far too quickly, and Dean’s more than a little overmatched. The man, a big black guy with a shiny bald head, manages to catch his wrist. Dean reacts quickly, slamming his knee into the guy’s groin. The guy goes down hard and Dean delivers a quick kick to his head, putting him out of his misery.

The female nurse hits him hard from behind, and he forces himself to spin even as his breath leaks out of him. She’s nice looking, he notices despite himself. Solidly built, but not big. She’s got thick blond hair and gorgeous dark eyes and if it were a different time and place, Dean would have her number scrawled on a napkin. But it’s not a seedy bar off a major highway, it’s a secret medical facility that has held and drugged him.

And that makes it personal.

So he chokes on his chivalry and decks the girl with only the slightest hesitation.

After all, she deserves it. As far as Dean is concerned, anyone associated with this place deserves what’s coming.

---

His escape doesn’t go quite as planned. In fact, Dean later qualifies it as an outright disaster. He’s not exactly used to rescuing himself; Sam usually breaks in and bails him out before Dad even discovers he’s missing.

Stumbling around in the labyrinth of hallways that makes up Manticore is definitely not what Dean wanted for his great escape. Alarms blare from somewhere in the depths of the building and, not knowing what else to do, Dean tries to move as far away from the deafening roar as possible.

The hallways are too small and too dark for his tastes, and there seem to be bars on all the doors, like he’s walking through a high security prison. He’s going to come back here after he gets out and torch the entire place. No sane medical facility keeps demons in their basement.

He actually makes it to the exit, can feel the cold air on his face, can see the star-speckled sky.

And then a gun presses into his neck and he stops cold.

Lydecker’s gruff tones invade his ears. “I was wondering if you’d make it this far.”

Dean spins and tries to knock the gun out of Lydecker’s hands, but the older man anticipates his move, and the gun slams into Dean’s skull with a sickening crack.

---

When he wakes up, he’s in a completely different room and Lydecker’s standing over him with an odd look on his face. Dean scrambles to his feet, but doesn’t attack. Lydecker stares at him intently. “I’m only going to ask you this once. How did you do it?”

“You hit people hard enough in the head,” Dean says, “and they go down. It’s not rocket science.”

Lydecker ignores him. “Your DNA workup came back. One hundred percent human. Ordinary. And yet you take down X-3 386, our finest prototype to date. How did you do it?”

“Not hard. Rock salt, silver bullets, matches. What I wonder is why you guys are caught up breeding demons. That can’t be the safest line of work.”

“Not demons,” Lydecker says tersely. “Soldiers. Faster, smarter, and better than anything you’ve ever seen.”

“You can’t control them,” Dean warns. “You have not idea how many times I’ve seen things like them bite the hand that feeds them.”

“I don’t think you understand, son. Those things aren’t demons.”

“So what, you run a gene-splicing business out of your basement?”

The look on Lydecker’s face tells him that his guess hit close to truth. Dean says, “You’re a sick bastard, did you know that?”

“How do you do it, Dean? How can you possibly take down your genetic superior?”

Dean smirks but doesn’t answer.

Lydecker backs out of the room. “Your things are in the far corner of the room.”

Dean eyes them suspiciously. “What are you playing at?”

Lydecker smiles.

The door slams shut.

Behind Dean, something growls.

---

He realizes three problems almost immediately.

One, his weapons are on the far side of the room, and standing between him and them is whatever fucked-up chimera Lydecker and company have managed to come up with.

Two, the thing is huge. Easily bigger than the biggest Wendingo he’s ever seen, and it looks like the thing was probably made with a considerable amount of bear DNA. If it is half as fast as the last thing this place had cooked, he’s screwed.

Three, he’s tired, the kind of weary, bone-deep tired he hasn’t felt since the night Sam left. He doesn’t think he can stay on his feet, much less take down something twice his size without someone backing him up.

He wishes Sam were here. The two of them could take down anything the world threw at them.

But Sam isn’t here. He’s off at Stanford, playing at normal. Despite everything, Dean’s temper flares at the thought.

He latches onto that anger and eyes the bear-thing. He’ll be damned if he’ll let Manticore win.

---

Half an hour later, he’s half-collapsed in the corner of the room, clutching his bloodied knife in one hand as he stares at the kill. He has none of the normal satisfaction he usually gets after killing a demon, just a blank void that makes him feel dirty and used.

The door cracks open and Dean struggles to his feet, ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest. He thinks he must have cracked a rib.

Lydecker’s staring at him from the doorway, looking slightly less stoic than Dean’s used to. “You have a brother.”

Dean’s blood goes cold. There’s no possible way Lydecker could know about Sam. Dean’s made absolutely to give him nothing. No last name, no mention of a father or a brother…

“Sounded like a nice kid. Seemed real worried about you.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean hisses. “If you touch one hair on Sam’s head, I swear to God--” He brings up the bloodied knife.

Lydecker catches his wrist and holds it firm. “If your brother is half as good as you are, this entire program is facing exposure. Needless to say, this is a situation I would prefer to avoid.”

Dean doesn’t reply.

“When we brought you in, we had no idea anyone would be looking for you.”

“If you do anything to Sammy, I swear--”

“One disappearance we can cover, but two? With a definite connection linking them? We can’t risk that kind of exposure. So I’m going to offer you a deal.”

Dean narrows his eyes.

Lydecker swallows. Dean watches his throat and thinks of how easy it would be to just slice it open then and there. But he doesn’t kill humans. “You’re going to call your brother and make sure he doesn’t get curious and come investigate this little project, I’m going to let you go, and you’re going forget this ever happened.”

“Why the hell,” grits Dean, “would I agree to that?”

“Because if you don’t,” Lydecker says, “it’s Sammy I’ll be using as a lab rat.”

Dean fights down his anger and holds Lydecker’s gaze. If this were just him and Dad, he’d tell the older man he could eat shit, but it’s Sam in danger, not John. And if anything happens to his brother, Dean will never be able to forgive himself.

He grudgingly offers a hand to Lydecker and says, “Deal.”

The hand shaking his makes him feel like he’s made a deal with the devil.

---

They give him back his clothes, his weapons, and his identification, and they watch him as he makes the call to Sam. He keeps it short and simple and tries not to look at Lydecker as he talks.

When he’s finished, Lydecker gives him an almost paternal look. “Take care of yourself, son. You could be a damn fine soldier.”

Dean gives him a look of pure disgust. “I hope your monsters decides to eat you.” He flips up the collar of his jacket and walks away.

---

He manages to ignore almost all thoughts of Manticore for almost nine years. Then one day, Sam’s shoving a paper in his face and demanding information about possible offspring.

Nine kids have run away from an orphanage in Wyoming. They have pictures, but no names. His eyes latch onto a quote, Colonel Lydecker saying that all he wants is to get these kids back to safety. Dean feels his throat clench.

“Second from the end,” Sam insists, jabbing a finger at one of the pictures (Christ, they look more like mug shots than photographs). “It could practically be you.”

But Dean hardly hears him. He closes his eyes and tries to forget the voices whispering about DNA and gene-splicing. Son of a bitch, he thinks, but keeps his face blank, that son of a bitch.

“I think there’s a werewolf in Utah,” he tells his brother. “They’ve found a couple mauled bodies outside of Salt Lakes. It’s worth checking out.”

Sam eyes him suspiciously as he carefully folds up the paper and pockets it.

---

He sneaks out the next morning before Sam wakes up and heads to the post office. He found the address he needed after a few hours on the computer last night. Logan Cale would probably be nearing his twenty-first birthday by now, and Dean feels a little guilty dropping something like this on the kid, but telling Sam is out of the question and he suddenly can’t stand the idea of keeping this to himself.

Besides, the kid apparently got himself into journalism. Dean found a few stories with his byline scattered across the net. Who better to go after Manticore than a journalist? Dean’s just a guy a rock salt-loaded shotgun.

He scrawls a hasty message on a spare scrap of paper and staples it to the article.

Manticore, the note reads in glaring block letters. The kids are from a genetics lab in Wyoming. It’s called Manticore.

He shoves the paper into an envelope, seals it shut, and shoves it in the mailbox with only the slightest hesitation. He doubts anything will come of it, but he walks away feeling better than he has in years.

END

---

A few notes on the Dark Angel cannon relating to this story.
- It was never specifically said how Logan’s parents died.
-In the pilot, Logan says, “I got an anonymous report a few years ago about a covert genetics lab in the Wyoming mountains...”
-Logan’s pretty damn nice to Alec considering when he met him, he had a gun to his head.

So yeah, this, minor timeline fudging asides, could be exactly what happen. : )

(series continues in What Comes Around)