The Second Key
By Be Boring
Chapter 2: Friends Can Be Made Or Lost
Brin sat in the main room of the hotel room she was staying in. Thankfully, Zack and Sandeman were sharing another room, so she didn't have to put up with the old man. Sandeman had wanted to go back to his old house in Seattle, but Zack had forbid it. There was too much chance of someone waiting for them there. Brin just wanted to be alone more than anything, she could deal with her feelings better that way. When Zack had said he was going to Terminal City to talk to Max, Brin had declined his offer for her to come along. She didn't want to see the look on her sister's face when she found out more of her family was dead.
At the moment, Brin was drinking another beer. She wasn't sure how many she'd had so far, but it wasn't enough to get her drunk. It took a lot to get an X5 drunk, but right now she was determined to do it. Maybe it would make her feel better. She was starting to show a few signs of being tipsy when Zack returned. He had come to make sure she was okay, knowing that he probably wouldn't like what he saw. That was most certainly true now.
Brin hadn't even noticed him come in, so she was more than surprised when he pulled her beer can out of her hand. Looking up into his face, she could tell he was angry. "Is this what you do to get rid of pain? Try to drown it?"
She shrugged and reached for the can again, rolling her eyes when he moved it out of her reach. "As a matter of fact, yes, and I'm not done yet. Gimme the beer."
At hearing the slight slur of Brin's words, Zack walked to the sink and poured the rest of the beer down the drain. She must have been drinking for a while before he got back for her to start to sound like she'd been drinking. "Brin, I want you to take a nap or something, anything that will make the effects of the alcohol go away. After you're yourself again, I'm taking you to see Max. I know you'd rather go through everything alone, but you shouldn't and Max is feeling the same way you are. She's either going to lock herself into a room by herself or she'll run to Logan, and I don't like either of those choices. At least this way you can both figure out a way to get over it together."
"I don't want to get over it together, I don't want to get over it at all. Why would I want to forget them?" Zack sighed and sat down next to her on the lumpy thing that passed for a sofa in this place. "I never said I wanted you to forget them, that's not what I want at all. I just want you to get past the pain enough to move on with your life. You're a young woman, you've got a lot of years ahead of you. Do you really want to spend them all missing your family?"
Brin's shoulders slumped in response. "Not really, but I don't know if I can think of them without missing them. There's no way for me to get around that."
Zack hesitated for a moment, then tentatively put an arm around her shoulders. "For a while there won't be, but someday you'll remember the better things and you'll be able to smile when you think of them rather than just feel sad. It's kind of like when we first ran away from Manticore. I had a hard time looking back on my memories of the others that didn't make it out, but later and even now I can remember the better times. Not that there were very good times at Manticore, but there were some nice times when the adults were gone that I can still smile about even though I know that now the vast majority of them aren't around anymore. It'll be the same with this. We'll feel bad for a while, then we'll move on and we'll be able to put the bad stuff behind us."
Brin was mildly impressed, Zack wasn't usually the one to make speeches like that. In fact, it was very rare that he ever let his emotions show. It surprised her even more when she turned to look at him and realized he was trying to blink back tears. He didn't look like he was going to start bawling or anything, but his eyes were damp. She reached her hand up to give a gentle squeeze to the arm that rested around her shoulders, then just left her hand sitting there, perfectly content as they sat there like that until the sun finally set on that awful first day without part of their family.
Max wished she could have someone to hold her hand. Holding hands with Logan through a glove just didn't comfort her enough. Her only relief was that Zack had promised to bring Brin the next day and they'd get Sketchy, OC, and Logan out of this place. Cindy normally would have been her other source of comfort, but Cindy just wasn't feeling up to a whining friend right now. Max knew she'd give it her best shot, but she didn't want to endanger her friend's health any more than it already was. Alec had locked himself up in his new apartment, refusing to come out for anyone. Somehow, he had made Jondy mad, so she wasn't talking to anyone. Logan was even starting to show more serious signs of illness, so there was no point working him up by telling him about Kay. He had been friends with her too, and had even seen her more often than Max did.
Max was laying on her bed, curled up into a fetal position, struggling to fight off her tears. All that crap about people being their own best friend was definitely not true, she didn't have the ability to comfort herself. She only moved when someone knocked on the door, but even then she wasn't in a hurry to reach it. In fact, she took so long getting there that she hoped the person outside had already left, but no such luck. Still, she had to force a tiny smile on her face when she saw Joshua waiting patiently in the hall.
"Hey big fella, what's up?" Max tried in vain to sound cheerful, but she knew it wouldn't fool him.
"Not you, little fella," Joshua said softly. Now the little smile on Max's face was real, he always had a quaint way of putting things. She stepped to the side to let him in, then shut the door, following him slowly to the small dining room table. Her cup of coffee from early that morning was sitting there, it almost made her cry to think that just this morning she had been wondering why Kay hadn't shown up to help her when she had actually already been dead a few hours.
Joshua noticed her reaction to the coffee cup and quickly set it onto the counter and out of Max's line of sight. It still didn't change the look on her face. Joshua felt bad, he had liked Kay. He could still remember taking her to Max to save her from the fever, and even before that when she had lived with him while hiding from White. She had been fun, and her spirit couldn't be held down. Even that fever couldn't get rid of her. It only made his rage for White worse to think that he'd killed another good person in Joshua's life.
Joshua snapped himself out of his thoughts and put his arms around Max's tiny body. It was tiny for him, anyway. Max nearly disappeared against his chest as he held her. It felt so good just for someone to hold her. Joshua wasn't nearly as comforting as Logan would be, but at the moment having someone there felt better than anything else.
Jondy sat on top of one of the buildings in the center of Terminal City. This was the only place where the guns on the perimeter couldn't shoot at, it was too far for them and it was nearly impossible to see someone there even if you did have a gun that could shoot that far. She wasn't really affected by Kay's death, and Lydecker's death came as a relief to her, but Ben was a different story. She had always felt close to him as a child because he had told his stories to her and Max when they couldn't sleep. He and Zack had been the two to make their childhood bearable, Zack being the one everyone could turn to for help and Ben being the one who could explain things so well and make you feel better. He had been the one she had wanted to see most after the escape, and she had driven Zack nuts with her begging. He finally let her see Ben when she was fifteen. Jondy had never been more excited, and seeing Ben's sweet blue eyes had lifted her spirits more than anything else could.
Her life after the escape hadn't been that easy. When she had first gotten out, she had hitch-hiked with a group of rather strange people. They had an obsession with ghosts, voodoo, and for some reason, vampires. The first couple nights Jondy's sheer exhaustion helped her to sleep normally, but when they started telling her stories about the greatest vampires and about vampire movies they'd seen, her sleep nearly stopped completely. Her nightmares were made ten times worse, her mind put vampires under the same category as Nomlies. When she stopped the normal pattern of sleep, the people started to believe that maybe she was a vampire. They kept making her go out in the sunlight and they made her eat plain garlic once. That had been disgusting, but Jondy had done it just to prove she was a normal kid. Somehow, being thought of as a vampire was worse than being thought of as a genetically-engineered lab rat.
The turning point had come when one of them snuck up behind her to see her reaction. Her Manticore training still fresh in her head, Jondy had flipped him onto the ground with ease and was dangerously close to snapping his neck when she realized who he was. She had been the first one Zack had to save out of all the escapees when her little outburst convinced her guardians that she truly was a vampire. By the time Zack showed up to get her, Jondy had suffered the worst two days of her life.
It was because of her that Zack was able to escape. Manticore had heard the rumors about a vampire in Casper, Wyoming, so they headed down there with Zack in tow. Zack had convinced them that he was fully under their control again, and they decided they would need him to lure Jondy out. Of course, they hadn't known at the time that it was Jondy, just that one of the X5s had screwed with the wrong people. Zack also convinced Lydecker to let him go in after Jondy on his own, reasoning that she wouldn't come out if she knew it was Manticore waiting for her. Seeing his logic and believing he was in control, Lydecker let Zack do what he wanted. As soon as Zack got Jondy out of there, they took off. That was the last time Lydecker ever made the mistake of trusting an X5. After Zack had set her up with a place to live, he'd gone after the others. Manticore had found out where they all were and had shared this information with him, knowing he would need to know it if he was to get them back. After he was free, Zack went after them all and relocated them before Manticore could get to them. After that, he was their protector, always saving them from Manticore.
He couldn't always save them from everything else, however. Jondy went from one bad foster home to the next, being completely ignored and sometimes beaten. She was an outcast from kids in the schools she went to, and when her heat cycles started she was also known as a slut. It wasn't until after a couple years of heat cycles that she saw Zack again, and she had never been more relieved when she found out she didn't have some sort of defect. It was when he found out that the boys in the area had started to predict her heat cycles and showed up at her place when she was in heat that he took her far away from there. She'd lived with him for a short time, begging every five minutes for him to let her see Ben. She missed her other close big brother and she refused to let Zack forget it. After a few weeks, he finally agreed. When Ben had first looked at her and recognized her, his face had lit up as only his could and he'd pulled her into the sweetest hug she'd ever received. She had begged Zack to let her stay with Ben, he'd be able to take care of her, but Zack forbid it. He relocated them far away from each other, then moved on by himself to check on the others.
Jondy wished she had stayed with Ben. She knew they would have become close, maybe even fall in love, but Zack wouldn't allow it. It hurt her more than ever now to find out that Ben was dead, and even worse, that he had fallen in love with Kay before he died. Why her, of all people? He had hated her, and as Zack said himself, even wanted to kill her. What had made her so special that not only had Ben gotten together with her, but Zack had allowed them to be close? The only thing that came to mind was that maybe Zack had felt something for her too. That thought disgusted her nearly as much as the thought of Ben and Kay. Zack had hated her just as much, if not more than Ben had.
Jondy was still pondering this when she heard footsteps behind her, then a groan.
"What are you doing up here?"
Jondy turned her head to see Alec standing there, looking less than pleased to see her. "I wanted to think, is there something wrong with that?"
"Well, maybe the fact that this is where I live. What are you doing on my apartment building? There are plenty of others in this area that you could have sat on."
Jondy stood up to face him directly, not bothering to hide how annoyed she was by his selfishness. "I didn't know you lived here, and besides, it's not your building, you just happen to live in it with some others. Don't flatter yourself into thinking that my first priority was to find out where you live so I could avoid it. I have other things to think about."
"You mean like how jealous you are of a dead person?"
Jondy was completely taken aback. "What?"
"You're jealous of Kay, I could see it in your eyes. The look on your face when Zack said Ben and Kay were together wasn't exactly nice. Did you have something going on with Ben?"
"That's none of your business."
"I'll take that as a no, but you wish you did."
"How do you get that out of 'none of your business'?"
"I learned to read between the lines."
"Yeah, well read between these lines." Jondy held up three fingers: her pointer, her middle finger, and her ring finger. Alec rolled his eyes.
"That's mature. No wonder Ben picked Kay over you. I certainly would have if I were in his shoes."
That was when Jondy allowed herself to lose a little control and slapped him. It didn't have as much of an effect on him as she would have liked, but it made her feel a little better. "What was so damn special about her anyways? Were you with her too?"
Alec's eyes flashed dangerously, making Jondy a little nervous. She had never seen Ben angry, and seeing his clone angry wouldn't be much different. "For your information, I wasn't with Kay because she was devoted to Ben. I wouldn't have been able to get with her if I tried just because of how she felt about him. You wouldn't have been able to get together with him either because he was as close to her as she was to him. Besides, we would have gotten our asses kicked if we'd tried. There's no point torturing yourself about it because it's never gonna happen, and I don't need you disrespecting the memory of a very good friend of mine. Kay was a good person, no matter what your childish beliefs are. If even Ben could see that, you should be able to as well."
Jondy made the smart choice in not replying to him as he turned and headed back downstairs. She had replies running through her head, but his last remark had stopped them from coming out. That was true, if Ben could see what kind of person Kay really was, she should be able to as well. There was no point though, Kay was gone and that was that. Personally, that fact didn't bother Jondy in the least.
Kay stirred slightly when she heard the door open and shut. Her memories were still clear in her head this time, and she knew whoever had just come in had to be the person who had tied her up. She tried to appear asleep while peeking to see who was there, but was saved the trouble when she was shaken hard by her shoulders.
"Wake up, you're not that pathetically weak."
Kay's eyes snapped open at the sound of the voice. She didn't even get the chance to see what was happening before a needle plunged into her arm. The syringe was already empty by the time she realized what was being done. Ames smiled down at her when he saw that she was fully awake.
"What is that stuff?" Kay asked immediately. Knowing him, it wouldn't be good.
He shrugged and put the empty syringe back into its case. "Just a little something to ensure I don't have to consider you a threat."
Kay saw the other full syringes in the case. If he had been planning to kill her, he wouldn't need the other needles. "How does it ensure that?"
Ames didn't reply, instead he walked over to her and unlocked her handcuffs, letting her loose. He didn't even seem to be phased by what he had just done. Kay sat up and the pain in her back nearly made her scream. Why was he letting her go? He didn't say anything as he walked over to where his suitcase was and pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, then walked into the bathroom. Now he was leaving her alone? Okay, the explosion drove that man crazy. Why is he making it so easy for me to get out of here? She eased herself to her feet, biting down hard on her bottom lip to keep from making the squeak of pain that threatened to burst out. She moved slowly across the room, keeping her mind focused on each step. All her strength had seemed to just disappear. How badly was she hurt?
Kay had just reached the door when Ames came back out of the bathroom. Instead of going to her and pulling her away from the door, he just smirked and watched her. Kay paused before going to turn the doorknob.
"What's going on here?"
"Nothing important, but I have some people set up in the hall. You don't stand a chance against them."
Kay remembered what Sandeman had said about her being the second key, a genetically-engineered key at that. "What makes you think that?"
Ames shrugged and walked over to his coat. "You might have been able to handle them before, but now that I've made sure you're no stronger than a normal woman your age, you don't stand a chance."
So that's what was in those shots. Kay opened the door and peeked out. Sure enough, there were men in the hall. Kay figured they were Familiars, she doubted the government knew anything about this. She shut the door again and turned to face Ames, who had now pulled a bottle out of his coat pocket.
"This is for your back so you don't get infected."
Kay crossed her arms, that was the most comfortable position with her back feeling the way it was. "How am I supposed to get that stuff onto my back? I can't exactly do it myself with how much my back hurts."
He smirked again, this time with amusement in his eyes. "I could always put it on, but why do I get the feeling you won't like that idea?"
"Maybe you were bred for telepathy. There is no way in hell I'm letting you put that stuff on me."
"Have it your way. You'll change your mind soon enough. Want anything to eat?" He pulled out a couple sub sandwiches he had picked up on his way back. Kay was ready to shoot a smartass comment at him when her stomach growled loudly. Ames smiled mockingly and threw one of the sandwiches to her. Kay studied it carefully, he might have done something to it. He saw her examination of the sandwich.
"It's perfectly safe to eat." With that, he bit down into his own.
Kay pulled the plastic off hers and sat back down on the bed she had been tied to. "Why would you bother with this? I'm fairly sure it's not out of the kindness of your heart."
"The Conclave has plans for you. Since I'm pretty sure my father is still out there somewhere, we're going to use you to get to him, maybe 452 as well. But first, I have some questions of my own."
Kay was furious. They were going to use her to get to Sandeman and Max? There was no way she was going to help them with the Coming, she was made to stop it. "I don't care what you need to ask me, I'm not helping you in any way. You should know enough about me by now to know I wouldn't do anything to betray the other transgenics."
Ames's eyes grew colder, losing the amusement that had been in them earlier. "What you choose to do about what the Conclave wants is your business, I don't care if you become dispensable at that point. My concern lies with what you have to say about my question."
"Ask if you must, but don't get your hopes up about an answer."
Ames set down his sandwich and was at her side in an instant, gripping her throat tightly in one hand as he slammed her down onto the bed. "I expect an answer from you if you care to live to even have the choice of whether or not to help the Conclave. Where is my son? 452 may have been the one to take him, but I'm sure you know what happened to him too."
Kay grabbed the hand on her throat and dug her nails in until he got the point and loosened his grip. There was no way she was going to tell him the truth. The Coming would be postponed if they believed Ray wasn't alive. "You should know the answer already. Didn't he look a little too limp when you saw 452 carrying him outside that school? He was dead before she even got him out of your sight. I would count it as a blessing for him. Who knows how he would have turned out with you raising him!"
After hearing this, Kay thought she saw something in his eyes like pain, then Ames pulled back a fist and hit her. She felt the pain in her cheek right away, he had cracked her cheekbone. Without even saying anything to her, he was off the bed and out the door. Kay lay there for several minutes, then sat back up and resumed eating her sub. She looked out at the setting sun and realized it had been nearly a full day since she had lost Ben. What would he do if he was here with her? She had absolutely no idea. If only he really was here with her, at least things wouldn't look so bad. With White drugging her and keeping her strength down, she really couldn't fight her way out. That was when she remembered something Ben had said whenever she felt like things weren't going the right way. Something will happen to make things better as long as you don't give up. Well, just for his memory, she would take his advice.