Justin

Over the next week or so, things outwardly seemed to be going on like normal, but nothing at all was the same as it had been before. Jhondie had gone home the next day and everyone was acting weird, like it was all some play and they were all afraid to adlib anything outside their appointed lines. Life fell back into its routine, but not as neatly as before. There was still school and I was working on some articles of my own and some for the boss and Jhondie was studying and helping out with Eyes Only, but nothing was the same. She was too calm. Too composed. All of the fire and passion just wasn't there anymore.

And yes, I do mean all of the passion. Since the night in the car, we hadn't had much of a sex life at all. Actually, we hadn't had one at all. Yeah, yeah, I know, the girlfriend's going through a major trauma, and I'm still thinking with the pants. It wasn't like that at all though. Well, not completely. I was trying to be caring and sympathetic. I was trying to be understanding and patient. But that can only go on for so long and then the dark attitude really starts to get to you.

I was also busy as hell right then and that wasn't helping. I just didn't have the time to pander to Jhondie's moods. I had a couple of final projects due so that I could get my degree and was working on three articles that could be published locally. Also, the boss had some leads and I was hot on finding the shadow man that so many of the local crime bosses had been answering to. Brent Lake, Gorgeous George Simon and a lot of others, many of who were deceased and replaced quickly had been reporting to whoever he was, and I was determined to find the guy. My partner not being in a mood to help was seriously hindering the effort. If it hadn't been for Nikki, I wouldn't have been nearly as far along. I would be doing better if she knew exactly what I was up to, but I couldn't tell her everything yet. I was starting to think that I could trust her enough, but it just wasn't safe for her to know about my connection to Eyes Only.

Jhondie was also spending a lot more time over at my place. I didn't mind having her there normally, but now she was moping. And thinking. Thinking while depressed was not good for her. I was starting to expect to come home one day and her just be gone from the city. Maybe with a note trying to apologize, and maybe not. It was the uncertainty that was getting to me the most and making me feel like I was stretching like a rubber band. She was still tense about her mother and sister, but I figured in time that would get improve as Kayla got used to having a unique sister and her mother accepted that Manticore wasn't a summer camp. Those kids were being trained to kill, and they had been put into a serious survival situation.

But things were getting better. That was what was keeping me holding on. Jhondie had smiled a couple of times in the last few days and I had actually heard her laugh finally. So I knew things were going to get better. It was tough what she was going through, but she needed to get over it and move on with her life. She had stopped mentioning the possibility of leaving and I felt a thousand times better for it. She was going to get over it and then we could go on like before. Our anniversary was coming up soon and I had been making some plans for it. Nikki knew about them and she approved highly. She knew Jhondie had been a "little down" (I told her that Jhondie was having family problems) and she said that if this didn't perk Jhondie up, she would gladly sub for her. I had to laugh at that. Nikki had no idea how hazardous to her health that might be. The important thing was that it wouldn't be needed. Things were getting better.

Of course, if you want things to go from bad to excruciatingly horrific, get a teenager.

Jhondie

I was tired of hiding from my family. That's the main reason I went home that evening. I had been spending so much time over at Justin's because I didn't want to deal with them. I loved being at his place, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't there just to spend time with him. I would rather be somewhere that I could relax rather than being tense all of the time, waiting for the next volley of questions.

The worst part was that Mom was going out of her way to show that everything was fine and that I was perfectly accepted in the family, just as before. It was those little reminders; like that I could wear a ponytail any time I wanted now. Or the fact that if there was a jar with a tight lid, I was the one it was suddenly given to rather than pounding it on the edge of the counter until Mom could open it. It wasn't the point that I could open it. It was the fact that she was so determined to make me feel normal, that I was feeling more freakish. And that was getting to me more and more.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the situation with my other family as well. Guilty. That's one way I could say that I felt. Guilty that I was free and Bryn wasn't. Guilty that I hadn't been there to help her. And in a way, guilty that I didn't have the guts to call Zack and tell him that I wanted to help and really be part of the team. It's what Eva would have done, but I wasn't Eva. It still killed me to think that maybe there was something, anything that I could have done. It wasn't likely or Zack would have brought her to me, but I couldn't help think it anyways. I could see now why Zack preached so hard against having ties. If it wasn't for my family here and Justin, I would have stepped into the role that I assumed the night Eva was murdered.

But if I couldn't bring myself to do that, then I needed to learn how to live here all over again. I knew it would get better in time. Mom would calm down and Kayla would stop asking me questions. That was the worst part. She was forever asking me something totally out of the blue and not caring how much I didn't want to talk about it. I was glad that she mostly left the subject of Manticore itself alone and wanted to know more about me. What was I trained to do and what could I do? I didn't tell her the disturbing stuff. As a matter of fact, I gave her just enough to get her to leave me alone.

But I should have known better. Kayla had asked me lots of things about myself, and I had chalked it up to natural curiosity. But she was not by nature an intensely curious person unless it pertained to something she wanted. Then she would pester you to death. And at the time, her two interests in life were popularity and her boyfriend. And my little sister was smart. Smart enough to be stupid at any rate. She thought she had the pieces. What she didn't understand was that there was a lot more to my abilities than being able to open a jar of peanut butter.

Kayla still didn't know that I didn't sleep. It wasn't something I thought to tell her, and she had never questioned it. She never had a reason to think I didn't. I had long been in the habit of turning off my light when it was time to sleep and reading in the dark. I could see just as well in the dark. It was a nice quiet time for me to study. I had gotten a little behind in the last week, and I had some reading to do to catch up. I normally never got behind, but I had missed a couple of days of school while waiting for my black eye to heal. The last thing I wanted was someone questioning me about having an abusive boyfriend.

And that would have been questioned in my Women's Studies class. The girls in there were mostly of the "Men Are Pigs" set. The last thing I wanted was to say that it wasn't my boyfriend; it was my brother that kicked the crap out of me. Maybe it would have gotten me kicked out of the class. That would have been a plus. Then I would have gotten out of all of the reading that I had to do that night for it.

Stupid class anyways. Why were we required to take such stupid "diversity" classes anyways? I wanted to be a doctor. I already knew what it was like to be a woman; I didn't need to study it. It irritated me because there were all these women out there that spent twenty-five years in the home raising a family, and then decided that they were going to be empowered and overthrow the male oppression that forced them into that life. And then they wrote a book on it and I had to read it. Idiots. For some reason, that whole "I didn't think I had a choice" excuse didn't fly with me.

I had stopped listening to music when I studied about a year or so ago. I found myself putting the parts of the body to music and humming it during tests. It kind of freaked people out to hear a rather ghoulish version of popular songs. So at three in the morning, it was deathly quiet in the house. I wasn't really into what I was reading; like I said, the women that wrote this crap needed to stop whining that it was all men's fault and deal with the consequences of their decisions. If there had been a breath of wind that night, even my super-sensitive hearing wouldn't have caught it, but it was an incredibly still night. So when I heard the soft scraping sound, I was immediately on alert, every hair on my body standing on end. A window had just opened in my house.

My first thought was that they found me. Even though logic defied it, I couldn't help but think it. Somewhere I knew that if it were Manticore, then a whole bunch of TAC teams would have come crashing into the place, not sneaking in. My second thought was a burglar. I slid out of my room, moving with absolute stealth. The creaky floorboard didn't even make a sound. And that was when I heard a tiny giggle from Kayla's room.

I moved to her door and listened. They were being quiet, but there was no quiet enough when an X-5 was listening on the other side of a bedroom door. I heard the other voice and had to bite back either a groan or a snarl, I wasn't sure which would come out. My darling sister had decided that since her boyfriend wasn't welcome through the front door, he would be allowed to come in through the window.

"See baby," Frankie was saying to her, "Nobody can keep real love apart. And that's what this is. They think you're still a little girl. But I know you're a woman. A woman ready to be loved." And then there was the distinctive sound of the bed creaking as their weight slid down on it.

I didn't hesitate. With everything that had been going on, my tolerance level was zero, especially when some future three-striker was working on committing statutory rape on my little sister. Kayla's door was locked and she had a chair against it, but it was still no contest against a powerful spin kick being delivered by a pissed off X-5. The door literally exploded open, slamming against the wall so hard that the handle was embedded into the wall behind it.

When I recounted the story a couple of years later, I started laughing hysterically when I remembered the looks on their faces as the door flew open. Frankie was mostly on top of Kayla and her pajama top was unbuttoned. I had never seen such "busted" looks in my life. It was probably somewhere close to the way I looked when Zack caught me and Justin together, but I wasn't reminding myself of that just then. The shock and fear on their faces was just pissing me off all the more.

Frankie leapt to his feet, more composed than Kayla was. I was willing to bet that he was a veteran of getting caught in the act by parents or his other girlfriends or maybe even a husband or two. He quickly began zipping his jeans back up and buckling his belt.

"Get out," I growled low. I heard Mom's bedroom door slam and her footsteps running up the hall, but I was more focused on this piece of trash in front of me.

"Sure, sure, I'm going," he said casually. His back was mostly to Kayla and he gave me an apprising look. I was just in cut off sweat shorts and a tank top, my usual bed attire. "There's no need to rush," he added. Maybe Kayla was naïve enough to not know what he meant, but I wasn't.

My eyes narrowed and I advanced. "Get out and you better never come near her again," I hissed.

He snorted. "You and what army gonna stop me?" he asked, the testosterone answering before his brain could engage. He was big, way bigger than me, and to prove his point, he put his hand on my shoulder and shoved me.

Wrong answer. I had his wrist in my hand before he could even think about pulling away and jerked him forward, bringing my knee up hard into his ribs. The air woofed out of him and he stumbled back a step. Just the room I needed for a kick into his chest, slamming him hard against the wall.

"C'mon little boy," I jeered at him, waiting for him to twitch so I could go into round two. "This army's just getting warmed up."

Now Kayla was screaming bloody murder and from what seemed like a distance I heard my mother shout, "Jhondie! Sta...stop it!" She had almost said 'stand down'. She had heard Zack use those words on me a few times, and it was one of the very few military phrases that still got to me. I froze in place. Now Frankie was completely stunned. I bet getting caught had never gone like this for him before.

Kay was still screaming at me. I think she was trying to say words, but they were all tangled up in sobs as well. Mom looked at her sharply. I was the one that had been trained to be a killer, and even I took a step back from that look. "Young lady," she said, her voice carrying over the screams, "shut your damn mouth." Kay's screeches cut off cold. I had never heard her cuss at one of us before. Ever.

Frankie was getting to his feet and Mom approached him. He wasn't ready to tangle again with another woman in my family and besides, from the look on Mom's face, I was backing off and I hadn't been the one to do anything wrong. "Get out of my house," she said in a low, menacing tone. "And if I ever see you near my daughter again, you're ass is going to be in jail so fast, you won't even have time to grab your soap on a rope, you understand that?"

He nodded. For a second I thought he was going to say something, but then he showed far more intelligence than I had given him credit for and shut his mouth. Mom escorted him out of the house and for a few minutes, Kayla and I were alone.

"HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?" she screamed as soon as Mom was out of the room. "YOU HAD NO RIGHT TO DO THAT!"

I knew that her anger was based on the embarrassment of being caught. I knew that she was lashing out at me because of that anger. These were things I had learned in a psych class. So, armed with that knowledge and being a mature adult, I replied by screaming back at her, "BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO BE LIVING WITH A FOURTEEN YEAR OLD SLUT!"

Her jaw dropped. "I am not a slut!" she yelled indignantly. Mom chose that moment to come back into the room. Kayla looked to her for support. Keep looking kid. That was the last place you were going to find it. "We're not being bad, Mom," she protested. "We're in love!"

Mom was quiet for a long moment. "Button your shirt," she said with pointed calmness. Kayla flushed even redder than she was and snatched her pajama top closed. I had never heard Mom use that tone of voice with me. Even when she found out that I had sex for the first time, she didn't use it with me.

"At fourteen it's very easy to confuse love and lust," Mom said in that same tone. Her eyes narrowed. "But the next time that he tries to help you sort it out, he will be in jail and you, little girl, will be enjoying an all girl's school with bars on the windows." I didn't know what school Mom was thinking about, but I was willing to bet that it would make Manticore look like a dream.

Kayla glared at me furiously. "Happy now?" she spit out. "I didn't know you'd stoop to spying on me!"

I rolled my eyes. "You're not that interesting," I sneered. "Just that stupid. I don't sleep. You never bothered to ask me about that. And I can hear your heart beating right now. If you're going to be sneaky, be quiet while doing so." I blew out a breath. "Love?" I muttered in disgust. "He's not into love. He's into getting some tail."

Kayla snorted. "So you're all 'normal' till you feel like screwing someone over with your mutant freak powers." Her eyes narrowed maliciously. "No wonder you don't understand me and Frankie. You'd have to be human first to know what love is."

If she had hit me full force it wouldn't have had the same power her comment did. I couldn't believe that she would say that to me. Neither could Mom. "KAYLA SUSAN HARRIS!" she shouted, shock taking most of the strength from her voice, "Apologize to your sister at once!"

"It's true!" Kayla cried. "She's not!" She looked back at me. "Why else aren't you living with Justin or married to him? Because he doesn't want some freak permanently. You're not real to him either. You're...you're just a pet."

"Kayla, downstairs now," Mom ordered. Kayla went to protest, but Mom overrode her. "NOW!" she shouted. Kayla got off of her bed and went to the door, pausing to glare at us both one more time.

"I see how it is now. She's special, so she gets all the special treatment and the real humans get shit on." Her nose went in the air and she walked away with the air of the unjustly wounded.

Mom came to me, trying to be sympathetic and apologetic all at once. "She didn't mean it," she was saying. "She's just mad, and...and..."

"I know," I said hollowly. I did know. So why was I so cold? So empty?

Mom tried to say something else, comforting and reassuring probably, but I was gone before she could finish.