Chapter Eleven:  You're Not Alone

     About a year went by, and I'd begun to adjust to my new life on the outside.  I missed my siblings though...maybe even more than I do now.  At least now I know where they are...what happened to them...that, one way or another, they're okay.

     Anyway, the point is that I missed them.  I hadn't seen any of them in a year, and given the fact that we had done everything together for the entire beginning of our lives, it really left me feeling...empty.  Lost.  I remember thinking that Zack would do something.  Knowing he would.  You know, get in touch, give us new orders, I don't know.  I'm not sure I ever did.  All I knew for sure was that he wouldn't abandon us.  He just wouldn't.  One way or another he would look out for us, and I was right.  He did.  I just wasn't ready for it.

     To this day I'm not sure how he did it.  How he found me.  To my small corner of the world I was Lyse Avery, the weird, smart aleck orphan.  To the rest of the world I didn't even exist.  But somehow...somehow Zack not only tracked me, but all of our surviving siblings as well.  He managed to find us no matter where we had scattered ourselves to; even if it was a hole-in-the-wall, dump of an "apartment"-my home.  Impressive?  You better believe it was.  But that's just Zack.

     So anyway, I came home one day, and there's this blond boy in my room.  I remember the overwhelming sense of déjà-vu I had...like I should have known him.  I did.  From the set of his shoulders and his stiff posture to the hard, haunted look in his eyes...it was all so familiar and yet...and yet he looked so different than I remembered him.  His hair was a bit longer, he seemed a lot taller, but most of all he seemed older.  Yeah, I know a year had passed, but it wasn't physically older that I meant.  He seemed older in the sense that that past year had tried him.  He looked so tired...so worn out.  But then again, I guess we all were in our own way.  Maybe not as much as Zack, but tired just the same.

     And so there was Zack.  Our CO, our protector, our big brother.  I had hoped and sometimes even prayed to the Blue Lady that I would see one of my siblings, and there was Zack.  I remember being completely in shock and thinking how "unsoldier-like" it was.  The funny thing was...I didn't care.  He was there.  We were safe.  Nothing else mattered.