Disclaimer: It's mine, mine I tell you! *Ahem* Or not.

Zack's Penny

By Be Boring

Chapter 7: Morning After Regrets

*~* Penny

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the extreme body heat behind me and how good it felt. I immediately felt my heat cycle flare up. It apparently hadn't gone away. I was still a little dazed as I rolled onto my back to look at the man lying behind me. The peaceful, sleeping face of Jesse greeted me, but to my horror. I had hoped it had been nothing but another one of my dreams, but I guess I could never get that lucky. No, what I saw before me was reality, whether I liked it or not.

He's an X5. That's the only thing that could have possibly made him react that way to my pheromones. Who is he? I knew perfectly well that since he was an X5, it would be a hard task checking his barcode without waking him up, not to mention that I might lose control again. I was still a little sore, as well as curious, so at the moment I was able to keep myself in check. I wasn't sure how much longer that would hold though.

I moved as stealthily as possible, trying to look over him. No, that was no good, I would have to get too close to see the barcode and I would lose control right along with waking him up. That wasn't what I wanted at all. I slowly slid out of the bed and walked around so I was behind him, then reached down and brushed away some of his hair that was covering the back of his neck. The barcode was only half there, and faded, so it must have been coming back from being lasered off. Still, I could make out at least the first seven digits, along with the last one. 3326800....5. My eyes widened, my mind had already filled in what I couldn't see. 332680074205; Zane.

My stomach gave an awful lurch. How could I not have realized it? Those sharp green eyes of his, they should have jogged my memory immediately. The dog even was a warning; Zack had told me all about the dogs he always had. How could I have forgotten that? This was almost as bad as incest, without us actually being related. What would Zack say? He had always thought of Zane was one of the more sensible ones, how would he feel to know I fucked him on my first heat cycle on my own?

The lurch in my stomach came again. This time I couldn't stop it. I lunged for the bathroom and was damn lucky to make it to the toilet before I vomited. Chills ran down my spine, and I almost felt like I had to puke again. And I always thought it would have just been easier if Zack had taken care of my heat cycle a long time ago. It probably would have been worse than this, if that's possible.

I heard a movement from the bedroom. God, hopefully it wasn't Zane waking up. It was so hard to think of him by that name, I had thought of him as Jesse for so long. What was he doing hanging out with a bunch of ordinaries like that? The answer hit me almost immediately. Miguel and Cindy weren't ordinaries either. Cindy I might not have recognized if it wasn't for the company she kept. Miguel's eyes gave him away as well, I should have seen him for what he was sooner, especially when he threw that pervert from the bar out of the building. Krit. If it wasn't for him being around, I might not have recognized Cindy. She had to be Syl. It made sense that Zane would be with them, he'd want to be as close as humanly possible to his family as long as Zack wasn't showing up.

Zane was definitely moving around now. I peered nervously out into the bedroom. He's only moving in his sleep. I took a deep breath and slowly let it out to relax myself. The heat was really starting to make a comeback. I had to fight it off. That was when my eyes landed on the shower. That's what I need, an ice cold shower. It's not like I had to remove any clothes, so I just jumped straight in. The cold water hit me hard, it was like someone had punched me in the gut. I gripped the side of the shower, taking long, slow breaths. At least all thoughts of sex were driven from my mind.

It wasn't too long though before my body adjusted to the temperature of the water and the heat began to make itself felt again. Damn genetically engineered body. I had to choice but to turn the water dial all the way round to the other side. Now it was scorching hot. It didn't help my heat, but I knew that once my body adjusted to it then I would be able to turn it back to cold.

It was still boiling hot when I became aware of movement behind me. I could never have been more grateful for my instincts; before even checking to see who was behind me, I whirled around and sent my fist straight into Zane's nose. He certainly hadn't been expecting that, judging by the ungraceful way he crashed to the floor. Not that it would hold him for long. The pheromones had him beyond thinking. Come to think of it, I was starting to get to that point too.

I immediately turned the water back to ice cold. The shock hit me hard again, but I was much more myself when Zane started to reach for me again. "Get out! Get the fuck out of here! Leave me alone!" I knew I was shrieking loud enough for practically the entire hotel to hear me, but I didn't care. Zane's eyes looked pained as he stepped back into the shower. He could hear me, and he wanted to listen, but his body wasn't letting him. This was the first time I really noticed how much taller than me he was; it was definitely over a foot. I did the only thing that popped into my mind; I grabbed him by the neck, thrust him under the spray of the water, and dove out of the bathroom. I pulled on a bathrobe that was in the closet and lunged for the door to the hallway, then promptly ran into Zack.

I don't know who was more surprised, him or me. As soon as he recognized me, he jumped back against the opposite wall to put some distance between us. Then his eyes nearly fogged over. "What's that smell, Penny?"

Why would he ask that? He knew what it was. "I'm in heat."

He shook his head, his eyes still looking strange. "No, what's that other smell? The one from the room you just came out of."

I turned my head to sniff the air gingerly. That's when it hit me, the whole room smelled like sex. Suddenly, the lurch in my stomach started up again. What was Zack going to say when he found out?

It was already in his eyes. "Zane went back into the room, didn't he?"

I was confused, but I nodded my head. "Wasn't he supposed to?"

"I was on the phone with him. I figured out you were with him, then I remembered your heat cycle was coming up. I told him not to go back into the room, but apparently he didn't listen."

Another voice came from the end of the hallway. "It's not like he could have known, Zack. You didn't tell him the problem. You know how stubborn Zane can be; if you didn't give him a good reason to stay out of his own hotel room, then he wasn't going to listen to you. Who was the one in heat, anyway?"

I turned to see a tall, dark-haired woman at the end of the hall. I struggled to place her face, then it hit me. "Tinga?"

Her eyes landed on me, then I could see the same struggle going on in her mind. "You can't be any of the ones who escaped, Zack told me who they all were," she said after a while.

Zack groaned and rubbed the side of his face with one hand. "Turn around and show her your barcode. She won't remember if I just tell her."

I felt my stomach just get worse, but I still turned around and lifted my wet hair. There was silence behind me as Tinga tried to remember me, then I heard a hesitant "Isn't your name Penny?" I sighed, let down my hair, and nodded. I could feel my heat cycle looming again. It was still being warded off by the aftereffects of my cold shower, but it was going to come back in full force soon. It seemed Zack was realizing that too.

"Tinga, take Penny down to the car and get her somewhere far away from here. Lydecker's men are already combing through this area, it won't take them long to find us."

I walked towards Tinga, struggling to fight back tears. I felt horrible, what did Zack think of me? It just felt strange not to be a virgin anymore. Tinga took my hand and led me downstairs and out into the parking lot.

"You're going to need to get dressed. My clothes might be a little long on you, but they'll have to do for now."

I accepted the jeans and T-shirt that she handed me, then changed in the back seat of the car. My heat cycle was ever present in my mind, but this wasn't the time to dwell on it. I was too uncomfortable around Tinga, seeing as how I was more than aware of how disgusted she was. I don't think she ever thought of her brothers in a romantic way, now to find out that two of her siblings had had a roll in the hay? I know we had a legitimate excuse, but that didn't make it feel any better.

As soon as I was dressed, I hopped into the passenger seat. "Let's go."

*~* Zane

It was half a relief that Penny was out of my sight, and half a torture. The smell of her heat still filled the room, and it left only one thought in my mind. Of course, Zack would try to change that. I couldn't have been happier that he had showed up, but I could sense something bad coming. Did I mention my gut feelings are usually right?

"Why the hell didn't you listen to me?" Zack thundered as soon as he was sure Tinga and Penny couldn't hear us anymore. "I told you not to go into your room, so, what do you do? You go straight into your room! Are you hard of hearing, or just slow on the uptake? You had no reason not to believe me, you simply chose not to."

"I also had no reason to believe you," I grumbled in reply, pulling on my jeans that had been unceremoniously tossed to the floor the night before. "I thought Penny was a normal girl. She had all of us fooled. If you had told me why I shouldn't go in, then I would have listened to you."

"Bullshit, you should have listened anyway. I've never given you false information before, why would you choose to go against me now?"

"What makes you think I always took you for your word before? I take things seriously, as long as I'm sure of what's going on. I didn't see anything wrong with going back to my room. Like I said, I thought Penny was just your average girl. Not that it will make you feel any better, but I wasn't the one that initiated..um..things. When I smelled her heat cycle, I tried to get away, but she opened the door and everything just went downhill from there."

Zack's eyes flashed dangerously. "You're right, that doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't look like you worked nearly hard enough to get away."

"Dammit, I had no control! You know what those pheromones do! I was as good as gone the second she was too close to me."

"I've gotten away from her before when we were as close as we could get, and as you probably could tell, she was still a virgin!"

What was he trying to do, accuse me of rape? "Of course I could tell. I hope you don't think I tarnished your little secret," I spat bitterly.

It seemed that remark struck a chord. "You're such an asshole. This has nothing to do with me, I'm not thinking of myself right now. I'm thinking of Penny, and how this will kill her. Even though she was never close to the rest of you, you're all still considered family to her. It will feel like incest. The worst thing is that because she's in heat, I can't comfort her, and I know Tinga's more than a little disgusted by all of this. She's not going to be a great help."

"Tinga's a good person. No matter how much we didn't like Penny in the past, that doesn't hold true now."

"That's only because you've gotten to know her a little better. Tinga hasn't. Penny is still the same person in her eyes."

He had a point. If I had known who Penny was from the get-go, I probably would have done my best to dump her off somewhere. Now though, since I had gotten to know her without knowing who she actually was, I knew better. There was a lot more to Penny that any of us had ever given her credit for. "You don't think Tinga would just leave Penny somewhere, do you?"

Zack frowned, that thought had occurred to him too. "I don't think so. Like you said, Tinga's a good person. She can be tough at times, but she's by no means heartless. Penny's in good hands for the time being."

*~* Penny

"So, how did you end up with my brother?" Tinga asked softly. I could tell it wasn't a friendly question, there was a note of anger in her voice. I also noticed that she referred to Zane as her brother, not our brother. Damn, this wasn't going to be an easy trip.

"We both thought the other was an ordinary person. I knew him as Jesse, and he was living with Krit and Syl, who I knew of as Miguel and Cindy. I think Syl went into heat and that's why Zane took me out of the apartment, even though I couldn't figure it out at the time. Then Zane got a call from an old coworker in LA, so he took me along with him. We stopped to spend the night in Ludlow, but he snuck out during the night to go help his friend. That's when I went into heat. When he came back, things just happened. Neither one of us had any control."

Tinga was silent for a while, probably trying to decide if my story was true or not. "What happened to your arm?"

I glanced down. Even though I had torn off the cast while I was in heat before Zane had come back, I was still holding it in the same bent position. It hadn't fully healed yet. "It was broken. It's almost fixed now."

Suddenly, Tinga pulled the car off the road with the tires screeching and parked on the side. "Why the hell would Zack hide you from us? We're family, it wouldn't have hit us as hard if we had found out nine years ago. Now though, it feels like Zack didn't trust us."

"He didn't. Krit and Syl kept sneaking around together while getting into shitloads of trouble, Jondy kept getting involved with wealthy guys, you got married and had a kid, and Max has been seeing Eyes Only and doing missions for him; and that's only the tip of the iceberg. None of you listen to him, how could he possibly trust you?"

Something flared behind Tinga's eyes, I had stepped on a tender nerve there. "What have you done that's made him trust you? You're just a weakling who needs someone to take care of you, what could you have possibly done to make him feel that you're so special? My son's more capable of taking care of himself than you are!"

"If you feel that way, then why are you giving me a ride?" I growled angrily. My temper seems to go through the roof when I'm in heat as well.

"I'm not anymore. I took you a little ways out of Ludlow, now you can make your own way and find a way for Zack to pick you up." With that said, she reached over me and opened the passenger door. The look in her eyes said enough, so I climbed out. I had hardly been out for ten seconds when she slammed the door shut and took off. I stepped further off the road to avoid the other cars, then started scanning the area. I could see a gas station about a mile to the east, so I figured there was no better place for me to go. I could just use a payphone to contact Zack from there.

As I started out feeling more glum than ever, as well as worried in case a man should decide to pick me up, I became aware of a strange noise. Stopping in my tracks and tilting back my head to hear better, I shut out all everyday racket and tuned in to that one particular sound. It was a low rumbling, but it couldn't be thunder because the stars were clearly visible all across the sky. That's when it hit me, it was helicopters. From the sound of it, there was a lot of them. Manticore.