I put an ending on this chapter.
"And then you told him you were sorry?" Declan asked his friend from the floor.
By now Kyle knew that the various acronyms that people used for internet chatting shouldn't be taken literally. A person might write LOL or ROFL to respond to something funny when in reality they didn't literally 'laugh out loud' or 'roll on the floor laughing'. Or so he thought until today. What could be so funny that it would make someone literally roll around on the floor with laughter? Apparently the fact that he apologized to a cop before beating him up.
"I don't like hurting people! Why does everyone have a problem with that?" Kyle asked feeling rather agitated.
Foss looked like he was truly at a loss for words. He just put his head down on the table and thought about how he could explain this to Kyle. Kyle saw this and felt very embarrassed with himself.
"Okay, you know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being so weak and I'm sorry for being such a failure and disappointment to everybody. Don't worry though at least you all still have Jessi." He was just about to storm out of the building when Jessi ran up to him.
"Kyle wait!" He reluctantly turned around to face her. "You're not weak. You're one of the bravest and toughest people I know. No one is making fun of you."
"Yeah we are!" Declan said still laughing. Jessi shot him a glare that immediately made him stop laughing.
"Kyle, you just…sometimes…you're a little…too…nice."
"Jessi, isn't being nice a good thing?" Kyle asked truly confused.
Jessi didn't know how to explain this to him. Usually he was the one giving her advice, or scolding, or consoling her. Luckily Foss figured out what he was going to say.
"Kyle, you're an intelligent kid, right? You have common sense right?" he asked.
"Yes…" Kyle answered him. He wondered where Foss was going with this.
"Well, from what Jessi and Emily told me, while you were busy apologizing to your opponent, his buddy heard your voice and almost shot you. You're lucky Jessi saved you in time. Tell me. Does what you did make any common sense to you at all? Apologizing in the middle of a fight? Shit, if you really wanted to say sorry that much you could have at least apologized after you eliminated the threat."
"I guess it doesn't make sense," Kyle admitted.
"Kyle I know it's not pretty but sometimes violence is a necessary part of life," Foss told him. "I know, it sucks, and I can understand your unwillingness to kill, but you are going to have to use violence and fight back every now and then. If you were ordinary person then maybe not, but because of what you are, certain people are always going to try to mess with your life. You have to accept that. Even with Latnok out of the picture your life can never be truly normal."
Kyle stayed silent as he contemplated everything that Foss had told him. As much as he didn't want to accept it, as much as he wanted to be normal, he realized it was impossible. Jessi had told him a few months back that they were out of ordinary whether he liked it or not. Unfortunately she and Foss were right. And he had to live with the possibility of constantly being harassed by people like Madacorp and Latnok for the rest of his life. He remembered telling Jessi that he yearned for his life to go back to some kind of constant. Now he understood that this was his constant. Now it was Cassidy but next year it would probably just be somebody else.
Jessi could sense what he was thinking. She didn't want to live that kind of life either but she knew that they had to get used to it. "It won't be that bad," she said trying to console him. "We'll always each other and Declan and Foss with us. Well at least until he retires."
"And even after I retire I'll still find ways to help you out," Foss said sincerely. "No matter what happens we'll deal with it together. But in the mean time you better desensitize yourself to fighting. Because your life will be full of it."
There was an uncomfortable silence as Kyle decided in his mind that he was done being so excessively non violent. He would only use violence when necessary, but when it was necessary he wouldn't show any restraint. He still wouldn't have to kill anyone but he couldn't afford to be hesitant about beating them up if needed. He had to adopt this mentality if he was meant to survive. He nodded to them and said "I understand."
He then looked around for Emily for her input.
"Where's Emily?" he asked.
Jessi pointed to the T.V. In the last two weeks that Kyle was healing Emily had brought a lot of creature comforts into the warehouse, including the T.V., so there would actually be stuff to do there instead of just training Kyle and Jessi. They all saw Emily with her eyes glued to the T.V. screen. They all went up to her to see what she was watching so intently. It was a news report.
"…a daring break in at the Mada corporation headquarters building. Now here's the interesting part. It seems that the burglars had help from the inside…" A photo of Emily appeared. "…Emily Hollander, the former CEO of Madacorp was seen on camera leading the burglars, who were both wearing masks, to the top floor to…"
Everyone stared at Emily. She was focusing very intently on the TV with a blank expression. She was very good at hiding what she was feeling but Kyle and Jessi knew because her heart was beating very fast.
"Her family had this to say…"
"I can't believe this is happening," Emily's mother said to the reporters while holding Paige. "This seems so unlike her I don't know why my daughter would do such a terrible thing…"
Emily turned the T.V. off and just stared at the blank screen for several seconds without saying anything. She was a strong woman and would never show any sign of weakness around the others but it was quite obvious to everyone, not just Jessi and Kyle, what she was feeling at the moment. Everyone around her felt bad for her but no one dared to interrupt the silence. Finally Emily spoke.
"Well I guess I'll hide out here at the warehouse until we're ready to go down to Phoenix…" she said slowly.
She looked at everyone else and sighed sadly. "You all should go home and get some sleep. It's been a really long night."
"Emily I'm…"
"Yeah I know Jessi. Goodnight."
The three teenagers slowly left the warehouse. Foss stayed behind.
"I wonder what Paige thinks about me," Emily told him. "I'll never be able to go back to her. She'll grow up thinking I'm a criminal. When everything I did was for her, so she could live in a better world."
"You will be able to go back to her," Foss reassured her. "We'll find a way to clear your name, don't worry."
Emily shook her head and said, "Tom, they saw me on camera. How the hell am I going to explain that?"
"After we take down Latnok we'll expose what Madacorp was planning to do with them," Foss said confidently.
"It doesn't matter. I'll still go to jail for assaulting a cop and a security guard and a bunch of other crimes committed last night and when we take down the Latnok facility." She took a deep breath. "After all this is over I'll just have to turn myself in."
"What? Emily you can't!" Foss gasped.
"It's the only way I can go back to my daughter, however long that may take. Otherwise I'll have to spend the rest of my life hiding. And my daughter already had one parent run out on her. It won't happen again."
"Emily," Foss said gently holding her for the first time. "Don't worry. Kyle and Jessi will figure something out." He looked at her in the eyes and said solemnly, "I promise you. It's going to be okay."
Meanwhile Declan, Kyle, and Jessi were sitting in Declan's car outside the warehouse. "Poor Emily," Declan said. "Imagine never being able to show your face again."
"We have to help her," Jessi said. "We have to somehow prove that Madacorp was up to no good and make it look like Emily was trying to expose the truth."
Kyle agreed with her. "You're right. She's given up so much just to help us. We owe her that."
"So we are like two days away from kicking Cassidy's ass. What do you guys think about that?" Declan asked excitedly.
"I can't wait to get my hand around that fucking bastard's throat," Jessi growled.
"Um…okay then," Declan said nervously. He still didn't know what exactly Cassidy did to make Jessi so mad and it was a little surprising to hear her use profanity like that. "What about you Kyle?"
"I think we might have even less than two days," Kyle replied. "Madacorp didn't show it to the media but there's no doubt that they caught us on camera using our abilities. Jessi and I might have been wearing masks but Brian Taylor would have easily figured out who we were and he must have told Cassidy by now that we're onto him."
"So he's gonna move?" Declan asked worried that all that effort had been for nothing.
"He's going to try. But it will take time," Kyle reasoned. "He spent all these weeks getting that building ready, to just move all those pods and the fluid and the other equipment to another location is not going to happen overnight. We might just catch him. But we need to hurry. Tomorrow morning we have to meet up at the warehouse as early as possible. How does 6AM sound?"
"Uh yeah that sounds good I guess. But you want to head down to Phoenix tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow afternoon at the latest but preferably sooner," Kyle answered. "Remember we still have to analyze those building plans so we know where everything is inside. Declan you should just head home and get some sleep. Jessi and I don't need it as much as the rest of you. We'll spend the night at the warehouse looking over the data and brief the rest of you on it tomorrow. If you're okay with that," he said to Jessi.
"Of course I am," she said. "Sleeping's a big waste of time anyway."
"If you say so," Declan replied with a yawn. Kyle and Jessi got out of the car and Declan drove off. Kyle and Jessi stood there for a few seconds watching him.
"Well should we go in?" Jessi asked him wondering why he was just standing there. A few weeks ago she would have just read his mind to see what he was thinking about but ever since the incident in Hillary's house she learned to respect his privacy.
"Jessi, I need to ask you something," he said slowly.
"What?"
"Jessi what you said in the car earlier…"
"About that fucking murdering asshole who killed my mother?" she spat with rage. Unlike his parents Kyle didn't really mind if Jessi cursed like that because he was so used to everyone else. However he noticed the hate in her voice when she said it and worried. Jessi sensed what he was feeling. "Don't worry," she told him rolling her eyes. "I'm not going to kill him. You can thank your ex for that."
"Then what are you going to do?" he asked confused.
Jessi looked into his eyes with a thin cold smile. "I'm going to prove to everyone that he's a murderer," she told him confidently. "No one will ever be able to doubt it when I'm done. He'll spend the rest of his life in jail maybe even get executed since the state of Arizona has the death penalty."
"Jessi, how will you do that? There's no evidence besides your memory."
"I found a way," she said smiling that same cold smile. It wasn't a smile of happiness in fact Kyle couldn't sense any emotion from her at all as she said this. That could only mean one thing. Jessi had deliberately blocked him out of her mind for some reason. "I don't want to talk about it though. Let's go back inside and look over that data," Jessi said.
She walked back to the warehouse with Kyle following her wondering what she meant by that and why she blocked him out for that moment. As soon as they walked in the door however he completely forgot about it. Kyle and Jessi froze and stared at the scene in front of them.
Foss and Emily immediately broke apart from what looked like a very intense kiss.
"Jessi!" Emily yelled startled. "What the hell are you guys still doing here?" she asked feeling angry at them for walking in but also embarrassed for being caught.
"Oh…I…we were…just…" Jessi struggled to explain but Kyle took her by the hand and quickly led her out.
The both of them stood outside the warehouse stunned by what they just saw. For a few seconds they didn't say anything, just kept replaying the scene in their heads.
"I don't think they wanted us to see that," Kyle finally said.
"No, they definitely didn't." Jessi agreed with him. "I had no idea. Did you?"
"No. I thought Foss hated Emily," Kyle said completely confused about how this change could happen in just a few weeks.
"Well they've gotten a lot closer since then. They haven't really shown it during the meetings but I think Declan knew. He told me that they're always smiling and talking to each other while Foss has him running laps or doing something else he doesn't really need to supervise. But I thought that they were only becoming friends."
"Well I don't really care about it. It was just unexpected." Kyle said. The two teenagers stayed silent for sometime. Jessi noticed that Kyle was just staring at the sky.
"What are you looking at?" she asked curious.
He smiled as he thought back to the first days of his life outside the pod. "Did you know that when the Tragers first adopted me, before I even knew what I was, Josh thought I was an alien because of all the stuff that I could do? He even told me that my family would come from the sky and take me back to my home planet. So I spent a whole night just looking up at the sky and waiting."
"You did? You actually believed Josh?" she asked him quite amused that Kyle would actually think he was an alien.
"Yes. Wouldn't you if you didn't have any memories of who you were or where you came from but you could do all these things that regular people can't?" he replied.
"I suppose. I was only in that situation briefly. Before Emily found me and I got a bunch of fake memories downloaded into my brain. Luckily I didn't learn how to do everything from the ground up like you did."
She didn't feel lucky at all and Kyle knew it. She was just trying to be optimistic. Kyle wondered if Jessi's personality was the way it was because of everything that happened to her in her first days out of the pod. Brian Taylor believed she was like that because of her mother but Kyle didn't want to accept that. Compared to Jessi, his first few days out of the pod were much nicer. He wondered, if Madacorp had snatched him up and gave him fake memories of his life instead of the Tragers taking him in, would he be just like Jessi?
"There's so many of them," Jessi said looking up in amazement. "The stars I mean."
"You know you can't really see them all in the city," Kyle told her. "There's too much light. You'll have to go out in the middle of nowhere."
"I can see them all," she said. "Just filter out all other wavelengths except the ultraviolet light."
Kyle did what she said. "Wow Jessi that's incredible. I never even thought of that."
"That's because I'm smarter than you," she told him playfully
"And stronger and faster," he said playing along.
"Kyle, you know that there's a possibility that one of us might not come back from Phoenix?" Jessi asked him casually.
"Jessi I don't want to think like that."
"Still it is possible. Imagine this was the last night we could spend time together. What would you do?"
"Jessi it's not going to be our last night," Kyle said sternly. "I don't think that's a good mentality to have."
"But suppose you could predict the future. And you knew that one of us was going to die no matter what. How would you spend our last night together?" she asked him smiling.
"Jessi, what are you saying?" Kyle asked immediately worrying. Did she know something that the others didn't?
Jessi sighed impatiently. "Kyle I'm just being hypothetical. I want to enjoy tonight like it's our last night together so we can really enjoy it."
"Oh," Kyle said understanding then slowly smiling. "Well maybe we should go someplace else then. But what about…"
"Kyle we have six hours before you told Declan to show up tomorrow. At our speed we'll have memorized it before any of them are even awake. Anyway I know just the place to go. Follow me," she said before running off.
"Jessi wait," Kyle said. He looked back at the warehouse reluctantly.
"Come on!" Jessi yelled from across the street.
Well why the hell not? Kyle thought before running after Jessi.
Meanwhile in Phoenix, Cassidy was fast asleep when his phone rang. He wondered who would call him so late and picked it up. "Hello?"
"Cassidy. It's Taylor."
"Ah yes Mr. Taylor. Is there something wrong?"
"Yeah something's wrong alright. Emily Hollander helped two masked accomplices break into my office a few hours ago. They were all caught on camera."
"Well I'm terribly sorry but why are you telling me? Isn't this a police matter?" Cassidy asked confused.
"I'm afraid it concerns you as well," Taylor replied. "We didn't actually show this footage to the police or the media but those two masked accomplices were clearly seen on camera…jumping up to a window on the third floor and later jumping over a twenty foot wall."
"Kyle and Jessi," Cassidy said immediately. He was wide awake now.
"No shit. Emily Hollander must have told them about our deal."
Cassidy thought for a few seconds before asking, "Does Miss Hollander actually know that you're allowing us to use one of your buildings as our facility?"
"No…no I don't think she does," Taylor said.
"And you didn't store that bit of information in your office did you? Like on your computer maybe?"
"No. Not even on my computer." Taylor told him. "The only record of that is in our heads. Not even the other senior board members know which building you're in."
"Well then we have nothing to worry about, do we mate? Kyle and Jessi might know that your company is planning to buy clones from me but they have no idea which building I'm in. Relax Mr. Taylor everything is going according to plan."
Back in Seattle…
"Well here we are," Jessi said. She had led them back to Sarah's old apartment which Cassidy had been paying rent for till very recently. "It still covers the rest of this month," she told him.
Kyle looked at Jessi in wonderment. "What?" she asked him.
"I just can't believe it took me so long to realize how beautiful you are," he told her.
Jessi blushed. "I've wanted you to say that for such a long time. I've had a crush on you ever since you went out of your way to help me when I ran away." Jessi's heart was beating very fast as was Kyle's.
He leaned forward and kissed his girlfriend, gently at first, then again more forcefully. Each time they kissed it was longer and more aggressive. Jessi suddenly pulled back.
"Wait," she said. "Don't you think we should turn off everything electrical?"
"You're right I forgot about that," Kyle said. Until they learned how to control this mysterious voltage spike that occurred whenever they got intimate they always risked frying any nearby electrical circuits.
They turned off the light and their cellphones and resumed their passionate kissing. Kyle felt a little bold. He remembered what Lori told him a few months ago to try with Amanda. Slowly and cautiously he lowered one of his hands he had on her back down to her butt. Jessi laughed in her mind at how cautious Kyle was and pushed him onto the bed and got on top of him. She didn't even think and just let her emotions take control. After a few minutes of intense making out, Jessi decided to take it a step further. She began unbuttoning his shirt and kissing down from his neck to his chest. She then came back up and kissed him on the mouth again before looking into his eyes and asking, "What's wrong?"
Kyle really, really didn't want to stop now but he had to ask, "Jessi, exactly how far are we going with this?"
Jessi blushed again. "I'm sorry…I thought you wanted…"
"I do!" Kyle reassured her. "But remember that uh… that 'thing' that Steven and Nicole told us we needed just to be safe?"
"Oh that. Don't worry I bought some. You can buy them at any supermarket," Jessi told him while taking her shirt off.
"So you were planning for this all along," Kyle said smiling. "But you know, we did promise Steven and Nicole that we wouldn't do this till we moved out," he reminded her.
"Kyle, this could be the last time we ever have the chance to do this!" Jessi said impatiently.
Kyle reluctantly agreed. He would really hate himself if Jessi died on the mission without before they ever got the chance to do this. "Yeah I know," he said. "But you can't tell anyone about this not even Lori."
After a few more minutes of kissing and fondling they both slipped out of their pants.
"Jessi, why does everything you wear always have to be black?" Kyle asked out of curiosity just before Jessi unhooked her bra.
"I don't know. I guess I just like the color." She then remembered something. "Have you ever seen that movie '10 things I hate about you'?"
"No. Why?"
"Never mind then…"
Vacation sucked. I came home a week early. Yeah the pod kids definitely had sex. I'm not gonna get into detail with it because this is rated T and more importantly I would really, really, suck at writing that when I can't even write romance. I'm doing some foreshadowing in this chapter. Jessi's hiding something from Kyle. Don't worry it's not an STD or anything…it has to do with how she's going to get revenge on Cassidy.