Chapter two:

Welcome to the family!

(Dylexa: Hope you guys enjoy...)

(Marissa's POV)

My days here with the Saturdays were very nice...but it was a little weird being here as well.

Instead of only eating once a week, like I used to at the lab, I was fed everyday. It was very difficult to eat more than fourteen bites without feeling sick to my stomach, but eventually I started eating a little more.

Cleaning myself was a little easier...although, unfortunately, my time in the lab has effected my body;

While normal eight-year-olds only had to bathe around once to twice a week, I had to bathe every other day, due to that one experiment Dr. Alanes had done on me about half a year ago where he had fast-forwarded my emotions to make me act older, and to make my body think it was older, meaning that if I didn't wash after three days, I'd probably start to smell pretty bad. (Although I probably wouldn't mind that if it weren't for the fact that I was actually living with people who didn't stick needles in me daily).

Solomon Saturday, or as we liked to call him, "Doc" (Who was Zak's father and Drew's husband), a tall muscular man who looked similar to Zak, except with darker skin and a scarred eye, had mentioned that if it weren't for my appearance (Including my height) and my voice, that he could pass me at least as age sixteen. In a way, I thought that was kind of funny and partly ironic; before Dr. Alanes had found Gratis and I, my old family had mentioned at least once a day that I was very childish.

But anyway, as I said before, some things around here are easy to adjust to. Others...well, not really.

Doc and Drew both agreed that I needed to gain some weight and some muscle, so not only was I being fed more than I was used to, but I had to do some very hard exercises too.

Okay, obviously they didn't go too hard on me since I was still just a kid, and I was kept in a cage for about a year of my life, meaning I couldn't move much, so it was very difficult to do simple exercises, such as running, sit ups, push ups, ect...

Zak however was very athletic for a boy his age. He was ten times faster than me, and he was able to lift more stuff than me.

I guess it was because of all the missions the Saturdays always had, and even though Zak had just started less than three months ago, he was already very athletic. He was very energetic as well...very strong, both physically, and emotionally. In a way, he kind of reminded me of...Gratis when we were kids.

Oh Gratis.

The other secret scientists had looked all over for him in the abandoned lab...but he wasn't there.

It was an unspoken message...it meant that I had to move on, no matter how much it hurt.

The whole family, including Komodo worried about me, but I told them I was fine.

Okay, maybe that was a lie, but what should I do? My time in the lab has made me tough. It was alright to keep my feelings inside me where they belonged.

Right?

"Hey Maris!"

I jumped at the sudden out burst from Zak. I hadn't even realized he had walked up to me.

Something hit my stomach from the inside when I had realized that Zak had shortened my name out to Maris.

Gratis used to call me that.

But instead of breaking out in tears like my body wanted, I forced a smile, ruffling his spiky hair. "What's up kiddo?"

Zak looked confused. "Well, the sky is up...and, the roof is up...OH! And the sun!" I giggled at how serious he sounded.

"I don't mean literally!"

Zak, embarrassed that he had thought that I had actually asked him what was up, said, "Well...I was just wondering..." his eyes suddenly widened in horror. "Your hair is smoking!"

Just as he had said that, the smoke alarm went off.

"Oh man..." To Zak's surprise, I was completely calm. I looked around for some water, and to my relief, I found a bottle of water; I opened it and poured it on my head, ignoring the icy cold fingers of the water crawling down my back.

"FIRE!" Doc came rushing in with a fire extinguisher. When he saw that there wasn't a fire, he awkwardly put the fire extinguisher down. "Um...what just happened?"

"What happened? ! ?" Drew rushed into the room beside Doc. Seeing that there was nothing out of the ordinary, she relaxed a little, but looked confused at the same time.

"Yeah, what hap-"

"Nothing! I have no idea! My hair just...sparked?"

Zak wasn't buying it, and neither was Doc and Drew, who were slowly catching on to what happened. Komodo glared at me, as if saying "Wait, you mean you didn't tell them yet? ! ?"

The truth was that I never told them. I was afraid...no, not afraid of Doc and Drew. No, I trusted them.

But I was afraid of the other secret scientists finding out. Unlike Doc and Drew, they didn't have kids. They didn't understand that kids needed to have as much as a normal life as possible.

No, I was pretty sure that if they found out...they'd be sticking needles in me and doing tests on me right away.

Then again, I was still a kid. Maybe I was just exaggerating...their not like Dr. Alanes.

I sighed sadly, wishing that my big brother was here to tell me what to do. He would know exactly what to do.

But I had to face reality, and in reality, I had no big brother to help me.

I was on my own.

"Maris?" I looked into Zak's innocent brown eyes...was I ready to scare a little kid to death? Was it even right?

I decided to use my words very carefully in front of Zak, while still being clear with Doc and Drew.

"Well...while I was in the lab...Dr. Alanes decided to...well...he thought it would be interesting if I was able to make fire...so...he...gave me this...ability..." I frowned at how childish my words sounded, but at least they were Zak-safe.

But Doc and Drew seemed to understand completely. They looked mortified.

"He did this with Komodo too," I added. "He can blend in like a chameleon now..."

Komodo growled at me, scowling in anger at me for telling them.

"They were gonna figure that out eventually!" I snapped at him. He started to crawl away, but I grabbed him. "Oh no you don't!" I lowered my voice in a whisper. "Please, I don't wanna do this alone boy..." I hugged him a little tighter, his warm body against mine half way comforting me, and half reminding me of the true horror I had felt in the time I was in that horrible laboratory...every day, I was in fear of loosing a limb, or getting an extra limb, or getting beaten...the sounds of that horrible whip haunted me, and I felt the sting of it on my back, feeling so much like the Devil's whip.

I payed my attention back to Doc and Drew. They were silent in shock. This silence went on for several minutes. I assumed that nobody was going to say anything, and I was about to leave when Doc finally said;

"This stays a family secret...nobody, and I mean nobody out side of the family can know...does every one understand this?" Everyone, including me nodded. His voice was ice cold, filled with hatred that scared me half to death. I wasn't sure if it was aimed at me, but something told me it wasn't. I felt that it was aimed at Dr. Alanes. "Drew...can I talk to you for a minute?"

Drew nodded, silent. They both walked into the kitchen.

...

Later that night...

The sky was cloudless and full of stars. Just the way I liked it. I hugged my knees tightly as I watched the sparkly sky filled with history of the planet that only God himself can read...that's what Gratis and I used to think at least.

Tears filled in my eyes at the thought of him...I missed him so much it ached.

"Where is he?" I asked. The star filled sky winked at me in reply. "Is he still alive?" The stars didn't reply this time. "Is he?"

I knew that the sky didn't hold the answer...and even if it did, it couldn't tell me. The twinkling stars Gratis and I used to look at together taunted me.

"Couldn't sleep?"

I looked behind me to see that Zak and Komodo were there. "I was just about to go back to bed," I lied.

The truth was that I didn't want Zak to get in trouble for being up past his bedtime...besides, he was young, he needed the sleep.

Apparently Zak was very good at reading the tone of someone's voice when they lied. "You didn't really look like you were."

I shrugged. Zak and Komodo sat down next to me on both sides, making us a human/cryptid sandwich. I felt my claustrophobia rise slightly, but the level was still bearable.

We were quiet for a while, just looking at the sky in wonder and amazement.

I hope your okay Gratis...I really hope you are.

I glanced at Zak in wonder; he really did remind me of Gratis, except younger. He even looked like him, minus the shock of white in his hair.

"Can I ask you something?" asked Zak.

"Sure."

He paused for a second, as if wondering if he really should be asking this, but then said; "I don't get it...you made it seem really scary having such a cool power...why?"

I frowned. That was a very tricky subject to explain, especially to someone so young. "It's...difficult."

"Why?"

I shuddered. "You don't want to hear...it'll give you nightmares."

"Then don't go into full detail...just tell me what's so difficult about it."

Komodo suddenly walked away, obviously not wanting to hear this. I was on my own.

I sighed. "Fine...well...okay, let me put it this way...um...okay, you watch super hero shows, right?"

Zak nodded.

"Okay, so obviously you know that a super hero sometimes wants a normal life, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, it's kinda like that...except...well, this is kind of like a mix of that and...well...sort of how sometimes the FBI will chase a really bad criminal...you get what I'm saying?"

"So your a criminal?"

I groaned. "Okay, maybe I didn't give you enough info...you know that former secret scientist I was talking about before?"

Zak nodded again. "Mom, Dad and the other secret scientists talked about him a lot, even before we found you."

"Well, that's because...well, lets just say he's kind of...I guess you can say kind of like the Joker in Batman...you know that show, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, good, because I don't."

We both snickered.

"Anyway...ugh, okay, can you describe the Joker for me really quick? All I know is that he's bad."

"He's kinda crazy."

"Okay...yeah...um...he doesn't really scare you, does he?"

Zak shrugged. "Not before the nightmare I had about him."

Oh, so close.

"Alright...okay...um..." I realized my mistake. "Okay, forget everything I just said. I'm just gonna say that Dr. Alanes was...well, is chasing me...you get what I'm saying?"

"Sort of...but what if he wasn't chasing you? Would you still be unhappy about your powers?"

I often thought about that...usually the answer was yes.

"Yeah...I think I would be."

"Again, why?"

"Well..." I ran my fingers through my hair nervously. "It's...it's really hard to explain Zak...do I have to explain this tonight?"

Zak shook his head. "No...I was just curious, but I don't want to make you talk about something uncomfortable."

I heaved out a relieved sigh. "Thanks Zak."

We were silent again for a few minutes. I was about to leave when I spotted a shape in the sky. I connected the stars together to see that the shape was an angel. It looked like another star had been added.

"You see that?" Gratis's voice rang through my head, and I saw us, a year younger, sitting together on a summer evening on our old back porch in the quieter part of New York. This was our last night together before our parents died. "Those stars are making an angel...you see, every one hundred people that die are created into a star, and that star will be part of that angel...some of them are hard to see because not everyone's spirits are bright enough because some of them are really bad. If there are more good souls, then the star will be bright enough to see in the angel."

I brushed a tear from my eye.

"But won't they be cramped?" My seven-year-old self asked. "Stars are so tiny!"

Gratis chuckled. "Well, they might look like that from here, but their actually really big! Some of them are actually planets."

I grimaced, pointing to the angel shape in the sky. "You see that?"

It took Zak a minute, but then he said, "It looks kind of like an angel."

"Exactly! You see...every one hundred people that die are created into a star, and that star will be a part of that angel, making it bigger...depending on the amount of good and bad souls, sometimes the star will be visible..." I sighed. The angel didn't look like it grew much in the year.

"Where did you learn that?" Zak asked, interested.

"...my brother..." My grimace faded. "He...he taught me on our last night of freedom..." tears trickled down my cheeks. I tried to brush them away, but it was too late; Zak had already seen them.

"You miss him...don't you?"

My tears won the battle this time, trickling down my cheeks. I couldn't keep my emotions bottled up any longer...it was too much. "I want him back." I sniffled, shuddering at the same time. "I want my brother back!" I felt the temperature around us rise, so I forced myself to calm down a bit...not so much to stop me from crying, but enough to control my fire. The temperature immediately went down.

"I'm sorry," said Zak sadly.

"Don't be...it's not your fault." I wiped the fresh tears away. "I should be sorry...I...I didn't mean to freak you out..." I started to get up, but Zak's small hand grabbed my own.

"You didn't freak me out..." his brown eyes were filled with sorrow and almost pity. "You know, Mom said it wasn't good for you to keep your feelings bottled up."

"Who said I was bottling them up?" I snapped.

"I'm smarter than you think."

I sighed. "Yeah, you are kinda different from most kids your age...smarter too."

We sat there for a few minutes, then Zak said something that nearly broke my heart into millions of pieces.

"Maybe I can be your brother...if you want..."

This time, my smile was real for a change. I was touched...truly, truly touched that anyone would ask me that...to be a part of their family for real.

"Yeah...I-I'd like that."

...and from that night on, I had always called Zak my little brother...