Author's Note: Sorry, this is my first time writing really any kind of story. I always have ideas but I always just kept them to myself and David is actually a character that I had a dream about but I tweaked him a little and adapted the dream to fit the Kyle XY story line because I love the show and watched it recently. Be merciless with your critique, I need pointers if I'm going to continue writing. And if you're looking for pairings then this probably isn't your story. I personally don't like stories that revolve around pairings and like more of the actual story so beyond pairing stuff that actually makes sense to have in the story there isn't going to be a ton of schmoozing. And I apologize for the format. My microsoft word isn't working so this was done on Notepad. And it jumps perspective a lot but I hope to make the jumps clearer when I get my Word working again. So again, I apologize. Enjoy and please review.
The harsh looking woman taps her nails on the railing that she is leaning against, watching the object of her interest with fierce concentration. She barely notices the coming and going of technicians monitering vitals and data exchange, instead staring deep within the slightly luminescant pink pod. A moniter beeps sedately, the consistent rhythm of the subjects heart rate tracked by its display. She snaps her head to look at the door as it opens abruptly, admitting a man in a crisp suit. He stands before her, looking at the pod with distaste. After a moment of silence in which the two stare at each other with thinly disguised hostility, the man speaks.
"Gloria," he nods briefly at her before turning about to face the capsule in the center of the room. "I do hope you have something for me. I would hate to think the funding with which we have provided you is going to waste."
"Supervisory special agent Denin," The woman seeths, gesturing to the pod, "I present to you the Neurally Interfaced Resonating Uplink System. Or N.I.R.U.S. He is developing at an accelerated rate. With his abilities, he should be able to track and interface with Projects XY and XX." She allows herself an almost imperceptible smirk of pride.
"Can it fight?"
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Cant it fight, Gloria." Denin is visibly losing his patience. He descends the small set of stairs, standing level with the pod now and approaching it. With impatience he glances into its depths at the developing subject.
"Er, HE can. Or he should be able to. He has not been outside of the apparatus so we have no real way of knowing. On a physiological he is similar to the original two, although likely not as strong or fast. While his physical abilities are beyond those of many average humans, he would have no hope of engaging XX and XY, let alone the two of them together. But his mental capabilities more than make up for his defici-"
"You're telling me this thing can't even fight? Do you think Projects XY and XX are going to just come in willingly?" He approaches the woman once more, standing less than an inch away and looking at her with incredulity. "How do you expect it to get them back? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just shut this little operation down, Gloria." Before the last word can leave his mouth, the room buzzes with a sort of hum from the pod. The steady sound does not waver, growing stronger and reverberating in the moderately sized metal room. Denin's teeth are set on edge, threatening to dislodge with the vibration.
"That is your reason, sir. With two seperate tracheal pathways and an extraneous connections between his two lungs, N.I.R.U.S. can hum for an indefinite amount of time, breathing in and out at the same time. That is the basis of his abilities. Achieving certain frequencies allows him to establish a lock, resonating and interfacing with XY and XX. I won't bore you with the details, but if he amounts to what we hope he may be able to force them to cooperate."
"Get it up and working." Denin leaves the room immediately, the humming stopping upon his departure. A technician approaches Gloria.
"Ma'am, it appears to be aware of what's going on outside its pod on some level. How do you know it will cooperate?"
"He has no choice. He won't know any better." She smiles, looking lovingly at the boy in the tank.
2:28am
He was cold, the breeze blowing across his wet body. As he looks around him, he sees green things everywhere. They come up from the ground, threatening to fall on him. He gasps, drawing his first conscious breath. As he struggles to stand he sees hears sounds from the other side of the trees. He couldn't see well in the dark, stumbling through the foliage. The goosebumps on his skin were a strange feeling, disconcerting him slightly.
Arriving at the edge of the trees, he approaches a clearing, a blanket of lush green things with, which he is not familiar, covers the ground. He looks up, seeing the green stretch far until it ends with collosal shapes in the distance. Perfect, rigid shapes stretching into the sky.
He is captivated by the sight, stumbling forward as he continues toward moving shapes nearby. The shapes were dark, shifting back and forth. They were obviously the source of the sounds. There were three of them, standing surrounding a beautiful radiance. He was drawn towards it. As he approached, one moved. It turned in his direction. It looked like him. The same shape. The cold and wet boy with no clothes smiles at the realization. They must know what he is! He shambles toward them faster, approaching the wonderful light. It warmed his body, bringing relief. The three forms scatter, circling around him. They make strange sounds that make no sense to him.
"Lettin' it all hang out, huh boy?"
"You retarded or somethin, man? Where your clothes, man?"
All of these things meant nothing to him. He looks to them, finally able to see them in the light. Behind his eyes he can feel three lights in his mind, surrounding him. They were tall, covered by a strange material. They appeared threatening, invading his space and making the sounds at him. He panicked and ran away from the warming light toward the tall shapes in the distance. The noises from the three things grow more distant as he runs farther away.
4:09am
He wandered for so long. To him it was his entire lifetime, consisting entirely of wandering in fear and confusion. The tall shapes never seemed to get any closer, he instead stumbled into a quiet place of perfect structure and silence. Strange shapes lined up along a central walkway, big enough to maybe fit six of himself walking side by side. Smaller square shapes displayed images on the side of the structures. He approaches one of them curiously, simply seeing more shapes through it in the darkness. In front of the building was a curious thing that captured his attention. On four circular legs the creature lay asleep on the ground. How could it possibly run on those?
He approaches the creature slowly. It doesn't appear to be breathing. Small protrusions extend from its sides. He touches one and finds that it is perfectly contoured for his fingers, grabbing it and pulling. The side of the beast gives unexpectedly, opening and landing him on his backside in the green blanket staring blankly at the vacancy inside the creature. Maybe it was not a creature at all, but another curious structure in the unfamiliar world. He closes his eyes momentarily, seeing in his mind's eye countless thrumming pinpricks of light. They pulse, astonishing him. He opens his eyes but sees nothing. He closes his eyes again, turning his head toward the structure nearest him. Six. There are six in that house. Two of them glow with unrivaled brilliance, threatening to eclipse those around them. They must have been why he was drawn to that place.
He stands up, opening his eyes again. Turning back to the strange thing in front of the structure, he climbs into the space revealed by the opening flap that he had pulled and pulls it again, shutting it behind him. Inside there is a bench, with a hollow to put one's feet. He lays down in the floorboards, closing his eyes and watching the specks of light. Some of them move slightly, glowing a bit brighter but many of them thrum silently, staying in one place. He slowly drifts to sleep, processing his uncertainty and confusion.
5:30am
Kyle's eyes open, welcoming a strange feeling at the back of his mind. He recognized the feeling. He felt it once before, when Jessi entered his life. Quickly running through the possibilities in his mind, he came to the conclusion of a neural misfire. He would talk to Jessi and Nicole about it later. He climbed out of his tub and got dressed in his sweat pants and hooded sweatshirt in order to prepare for his daily routine.
As he moved to open his door he heard something. A heartbeat, one he didn't recognize. It was very close but slow, likely sleeping. He glances out the window of his room, seeing nothing. He dismisses the strange sensation as an impossibility and leaves the house, jogging to clear his mind.
6:30am
Stephen sits up in his bed also, getting dressed and going downstairs to take a shower and make a cup of coffee to prepare him for work. "Josh, wake up. You're gonna sleep the weekend away." He throws open his son's bedroom door in order to make a noise loud enough to wake the sleeping teenager. Shuffling his feet into the kitchen he makes the coffee and stands next to the island, wiping his eyes. He waits for Josh to come downstairs so that he can be sure he is awake and won't be late for school before leaving, walking out to his car. "I'll see you later tonight, Josh. Make sure Lori gets up." He walks out to his car, unlocking it and settling himself in the drivers seat.
As he closes the door, he stops and sniffs. It smelled like chemicals. Like a hospital. He moves his head from side to side, searching for the source of the smell. In the silence he hears shifting outisde. Chalking it up to wind, he looks in the back seat, seeing nothing. There are small strange wet spots on the seats and floor. "Josh must have spilled something back there." He resigns himself to cleaning it later and pulls out of the driveway, not noticing the boy peering around the corner of the house.
Opening his eyes, he notices that one of the brilliant lights has left while he was sleeping. He barely managed to escape the larger thing that seemed to be able to operate the machine that he had taken refuge in for the night. He wishes that he could have followed the light that was travelling but there was still the other inside the building.
It was a nice Saturday morning and Mrs. Bloom awoke to make breakfast for herself and her daughter. She walked downstairs, looking dispassionately at the empty kitchen. She did not usually like to wake up early on the weekend but she had had some strange dreams and didn't want to risk sleeping away the rest of the morning. She looked out the window casually to see... A naked boy prowling around the Trager's property.
She gasps, apalled at the sight. Hurrying to the phone she calls the police to pick up the delinquent and get him out of the neighborhood so he wouldn't be allowed to expose himself so indecently and stalk the Tragers. Must be one of Lori's many boyfriends, she thought disapprovingly.
He is peering through the windows into the kitchen of the building when he hears noises. The loud and irritating whine hurts his ears, causing him to double over in pain. As soon as it arrived it was gone. A strange machine like the one the other thing had operated moves on the giant walkway between the buildings, going slowly. Elated, he runs to the black and white machine, bare feet slapping on strange black substance. He runs to the window where there is an empty seat, hitting it with his hand and smiling at the tall creature operating the contraption. It moves its face in a way that seems odd to him as the thing gets out of the car and throws itself on top of him, pulling his arms behind his back.
Not knowing what to do and panicking, he does the first thing he can think of. He screams. Breathing in and out at the same time, he screams as loud as he can, wondering if anything will come to stop the thing from attacking him.
The police officer drove down the street slowly, looking for the pervert that had been wandering around the street. He sees the suspect, a boy no older than fifteen or sixteen. 'Must be a prank. Stupid kids.' The boy appeared to be covered in something. Probably oil or something. 'Kids just think they're so funny.' As he is driving by and preparing to park and get him in the car, the boy runs to his passenger side window and begins slapping the glass and grinning like an idiot. Officer Hammond grabs his cuffs and gets out of the car, circling to tackle the kid and cuff him. As they both hit the ground and the cuffs click around his wrists, the boy screams louder than he's ever heard anyone scream. He screams without taking a breath for minutes. "Kid, shut up! You're gonna wake up the entire neighborhood!"
He smacks the kid on the side of the head, making no progress in silencing the scream. Doors open all over the street as the inhabitants walk out to find the source of the scream. A jogging boy runs by and stops, looking incredulously at the boy. He runs toward him and speaks up.
"Sir! Stop, thats... My cousin. He is suffering from a mental disorder and we're watching him while my aunt and uncle are on a business trip. I'm sorry, he doesn't know any better, sir." As soon as Kyle speaks, the screaming boy silences himself, watching in panic.
"This is your cousin?" The officer said somewhat disbelievingly, nodding toward the boy.
"Yes, please let him go, sir. I'll bring him inside and get him to put his clothes back on."
The officer climbs off of the boy, practically hauling him to his feet. "Make sure this doesn't happen again. This is a nice neighborhood." He gets back in his car, muttering to himself as he drives away.
His hopes had been answered. Another creature saved him from getting eaten by the other, bigger one. Silently grateful, he watches the new creature. He closes his eyes and gasps. The brilliant light in his mind, it was this one. He opens his eyes and smiles gleefully, having found what he was looking for. They stare at each other for a time and the creature grabs his arm and leads him toward the building. He trusts it, since it had just saved him. It pulls open another flap, similar to the one on the rolling machine. He gazes in wonder at the inside, being led inside by the friendly creature.
He almost slips on the ground inside, barely managing to catch himself as the pink substance that he was covered in threatened to bring him down. As he looked at the new creature with the brilliant MindLight, he saw a faintly blue light dance around its body. He looked in confusion. The creature didn't seem to notice the light. After a moment it was no longer there. The creature simply looks at him quizically before leading him to a room with strange white growths from the floor. They were shiny and reflective, beautiful and pristine looking.
The creature reaches in and pulls a lever in the large rectangular recepticle and a clear substance comes from the wall, much to the boy's astonishment and wonder.
"You probably can't understand me if you're what I think you are, but stand in the tub. I'll be right back." The creature makes the noises at him, the same noises the other ones made in the dark around the light. It ushers him into the white thing, pulling some cloth so that he was enclosed. The thing saved him, so he trusts it and waits, enamored with the wonderful hot water as it washes the pink substance off of his body.
Kyle ran to Josh's room, knocking on the door feverishly.
"Josh! Josh wake up! Its important!"
"Hang on, Buzzkillington I'm getting up!" Josh's voice can be heard from the other side of the door as he drags himself out of bed to answer the door. "What do you want?" He looks tired, his eyes barely open. "Its Saturday! And it's like 8 in the morning, dude. Go back to sleep!" Without responding, Kyle grabs his arm and wrenches him through the doorway and leads him to the bathroom door.
"Go in there and make sure he doesn't drown. I'm going to get Jessi." He leaves Josh at the door without waiting for a response.
"Kyle what are you ta- whatever." Josh resigned himself to waiting, walking in to sit on the toilet wondering who is on the other side of the curtain.
Kyle shuffles down the hall, knocking on Jessi's door. It opens suddenly, the brown haired girl standing on the other side fully dressed.
"I heard the commotion, what's going on?"
Instead of replying, he hold up his hand, covered in the pink substitute for amniotic fluid that Adam Baylin had invented. She gasps, following him to the bathroom where the strange boy stood, newly outfitted with some of Josh's clothing and staring in confusion at the sudden attention from so many people.
"This kid's as much of a space case as you were when we first found you, Kyle." Josh commented, waving his hand in front of his face for emphasis.
"Probably for the same reason. Thanks for giving him some clothes, Josh. I have to go meet Amanda. Can you watch him while I'm gone?"
"Ugh. Fine. You owe me, boy wonder." Josh grabbed the boy's hand and dragged him downstairs. "Prepare to experience TV, dude."
His head whirled with new realizations. He saw his reflection for the first time. He was like them, they were the same thing. He was one of the mysterious creatures he had come across. And he knew he was a he, so the other one with different anatomical features must be a female. He was not sure how he knew this, but it just seemed to make sense. The smaller male led him to a room full of different shapes and other things that confused him.
He sat on one of the things, pointing a black thing at another black square. This ritual made no sense to him but before his eyes the box lit up, displaying sequences of images, mostly other things like him making the noises at each other. The boy stared in wonder at the box, captivated by the images.
The creature he noticed was referred to as Josh looked at him in amusement. "Wait, do I get to name you? Last time mom got to name the freak that we picked up. I think I'll na- LORI! Come over here!"
Another girl walked past the archway leading into the room. She stopped and looked into the room, staring at the two.
"Shut up you little dweeb. Its too early to have friends over."
"No, its another head case like Kyle used to be! And I get to name him because nobody else called dibs." Josh patted him on the head. "I think Destructor will like his name. We just gotta teach him to talk!"
"Destructor?" Lori scoffed in bemusement, approaching the two. "You will not name our new idiot Destructor. Although I feel like we need a D-name. How about David?"
"David? That's lamer than your taste in music. I get to name him, so why don't you go strum your little guitar?" Josh waves his hand dismissively. "If you don't mind, Destructor and I are gonna play G-Force."
6:12pm
Stephen Trager pulls into the driveway, glad to be home from a day at work at the university. Approaching the door, he hears the voices of his family talking animatedly. As he opens the door, they fall silent as Josh disappears around a corner. They are all smiling.
Nicole Trager studied the new arrival with amusement as he fumbles with the controller and gets killed by Josh over the video game. "I think David is a nice name. He kind of looks like a David." Now that she had gotten him cleaned up and trimmed his uneven mop of brown hair, he looked perfectly normal aside from his general lack of comprehension for the world around him. "Okay, Josh you have to hide him until after dinner. Your father has been stressed and I need to butter him up before I convince him to take in another blank-slated potential super genius. Oh! He's pulling in! Josh, take him to your room. I'll say you're eating up there because you're grounded and need to finish homework that your teacher told me you didn't do."
"Mom! Wh-" Josh gasps in indignation.
"I know sweet heart, take one for the team and I'll make it up to you." She ushers him and the newly dubbed David from the room, turning to face the door as Stephen Trager walks through, greeting the family with a smile.
"What's everyone doing huddled around in here? And where's Josh?" He looks around, noticing that the game system is still turned on but his gaming son is nowhere to be found.
"He's grounded to his room for some missed homework that I got an e-mail about." Nicole says, putting on her best facade of parental outrage. "Sweetie no, I already talked to him. He's confined to his room and he's finishing it now." She says, stopping him from going up the stairs with a hand on his shoulder. "I already gave him a plate of his dinner, lets all eat our dinner. You've had a long day." The man agrees, and with that the family adjourns to the kitchen where they eat happily, all but one thinking of the newest development.
After dinner and a couple glasses of wine, Nicole believes that Stephen has been sufficiently loosened. She walks to the foot of the stairs calling for Josh. "Stephen, there's something that's come up and I know its a team decision so I wanted to wait for you and not let it stress you out so soon after work, but," She gestures to David and Josh descending the staircase, "He's like Kyle. Kyle found him today, he almost got arrested for indecent exposure. He can't speak and he doesn't seem to understand much. He needs our help, Stephen."
"Alright," Stephen sighs in resignation. "Set him up a place for the time being, but NO PROMISES. He can stay for now but we have to talk about it before we can come up with a permanent solution."
"I knew you'd wanna help. You're really great," Nicole smiles, kissing him on the cheek. "I'll see about finding him some pyjamas and a place to sleep for the night."
Why do they wear these peculiar things on their bodies? Surely they offer little to no protection against injury or exposure to the elements. Yet every one of them that he had encountered since his life had begun was wearing these materials. He lay on the floor next to the peculiar sleeping place of the one that had saved him earlier. Kyle. His name was Kyle. He knew of a Kyle but he didn't know from where. Where could it have been from? He has only been living for less than a day. Maybe he was wrong. Closing his eyes, he sees the specks of light, Kyle's glowing bright with life and brightness, and the girl Jessi's doing the same. They were different somehow... He was different somehow. He drifted to sleep again. He had only experienced sleep once but he rather liked it. It made him feel good when he woke up. Recharged. As he slipped away, the remaining thoughts became fuzzy and incoherent.
Pink filled his field of vision. The faint garble of voices, dampened and muffled by the pink fluid reached his ears. A faint repeating beaping noise, and then a shatter pattern beyond the pink. Like cracks.
3:41am
David sat up quickly, heaving heavy breaths and sweating. He did not remember what had distressed him about his sleep but he did not think he would be able to go back to sleep. He wandered out to watch the image box, being careful not to wake the other inhabitants of the house.
"He's awake. What should we do? M says the process of removing him from the pod and severing the neur.. Nurr..." The man struggles with the technical words. 'I'm just the muscle. Shoulda stayed in the service.'
"Oh gimme that you idiot." A smaller man yanks the long range walkie talkie away from the larger man, sighing in annoyance as he brushes a stray lock of blonde hair from his face. "The neural link was integrated at a young age. As such, as he developed, removing him took more doing and he suffered some trauma. Luckily, his mental abilities remain intact according to our readings so he should develop at an accelerated rate but we might encounter some problems inputting our directives. His memory might also be an issue."
A voice crackles from the other side. "Watch him but do not get caught. Latnok already had the Tragers on edge so err on the side of caution. Await further orders. Do not interact with any of the three or the Tragers. T out."
"Confirmed. M out." The man known as M puts the walkie talkie in the glove box of the car, watching with Binoculars through the window. "So much potential. Wasted on That 70's Show reruns. He doesn't even understand them." N.I.R.U.S. vaguely turns his head to look in his direction but he knows that they were not seen. "The subject knows that there is someone here but he doesn't distinguish between the rest of the minds he can sense."
"Just tell me when we can nab the little freak. My wife's been gettin' suspiscious and this job isn't worth my marriage." This gets a laugh from the young scientist.
"Its worth your job a thousand times over, Jennings. We could have XX and XY, ours for the taking. Latnok didn't know what they were doing. We can dispose of N.I.R.U.S. once we're done."
Kyle is the first to awake. Looking over the side of the tub that he has come to know as his bed, he sees that the cot laid out for David was empty. He could feel the presence nearby so he did not worry particularly about the new arrival wandering off but he decided he might as well find him. Dragging himself up and shaking the sleep from his body, he walks out toward the kitchen. In the early hours of morning the light from the refridgerator could be seen illuminating the kitchen. Getting a closer look, he could see David watching an egg curiously. Putting it to his mouth, it is now apparent that he intends to bite the egg.
"DON'T!" Kyle yells out of alarm, startling David to drop the egg. "You might not understand now, but I've been there. That will make you sick." David looks at him and cocks his head to the side, displaying a fundamental lack of comprehension. "Just sit, I'll make something."
The rest of the Tragers gather in the kitchen for breakfast, finding Kyle and David already awake. Nicole smiles at him. "How was your first night here?" She did not expect an answer. The words were lost on him but the meaning behind them he understood and he smiled back at her.
"If he's like me, I should be able to teach him to talk. We can process a lot of information and if I expose him to enough spoken word he'll probably work it out."
"And if he isn't like you?" Stephen arches an eyebrow. "You're not exactly a majority."
"Then I'll be essentially talking to a lump. If I'm wrong I'll have just wasted a Sunday." Kyle pulls David back to the couch, sitting down and staring intently at David's face to capture his attention. David's eyes wander, looking around causing Kyle to snap to recapture his attention. Kyle begins to rattle off sentences of varying complexity in an attempt to catalyze some sort of learning process in David's mind.
"The apple is red. The red apple contains seeds in its core. The worm eats through the red apple. Apples grow on trees that grow from the ground. Apples can be crushed to apple sauce." David simply looked at him, displaying no signs of understanding. "Jessi, come in the living room."
"What do you wa- Oh. The new one." The other girl did not seem to be particularly happy in the mornings. "What's his malfunction?"
"I don't know. I just kind of wanted to know what you made of it."
"I say we go into his mind and find out." Jessi says it bluntly, as if discussing telepathic intrusion was a common occurrence.
"I don't think that's an option. Any number of things could happen. He could panic, we might traumatize him, or it might just not work." Kyle didn't like the idea of barging into David's mind. It seemed like a trespass that wouldn't so easily be forgiven.
"Do you have a better idea?" Jessi raised an eyebrow, looking from David to Kyle.
"No... I guess we could try but BE CAREFUL." He gives in, grabbing David's hand slowly so as not to cause alarm. Jessi grabs his other hand and they concentrate, projecting themselves into the mind of the younger boy.
He was not sure what they were doing. Maybe this was some sort of greeting ritual. They grabbed his hands and closed their eyes. No... It could not be a greeting, they had already met. So what then? There were the lights again. The blue radiance that only he could seem to see swirled around Kyle, glimmering passively. He looked at Jessi and saw red light lighting her skin and glowing around her upper body. Looking down at his own hands, he sees a light constantly shifting colors, shuffling the spectrum and undulating with instability. This somehow worried him, but it felt fine.
Before his eyes, the two begin to concentrate. Their colors blend, separating to become a royal purple as the lights surge forward to meet David. His own light shifts to the same color, coming up to clash with theirs. Their brows crease and the lights blend, drowning out his vision. They all slump on the couch, eyes closed in concentration.
