Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, I own nothing. We all got it by now.

Family Relations

By Be Boring

Chapter 3: Not What Was Expected

The first thing that Jondy noticed was the horrible aching in her skull. It felt like she'd had a sledgehammer slammed into her head. Her entire body felt heavy, as though all her body parts had been replaced with lead. Even her eyelids were too much for her to handle. She wasn't able to get them to stay open for more than a second, but in that brief period of time she could see a poorly painted pale blue ceiling. Well, I'm definitely not in the Casteau mansion anymore. Wait, am I with Lydecker? That snapped her completely awake. In spite of her body's weakness, she sat bolt upright and stared frantically at her surroundings. It looked like she was in some kind of cheap hotel, judging by the peeling wallpaper and the strong scent of mothballs.

Taking a deep breath, she slid her legs over the side of the stiff bed that she had been laying on and gently eased herself up onto her feet. She could only take baby steps, but she determinedly started making her way towards the door. It didn't matter where she went, she had no plans on staying with Lydecker. The other bed in the room had a few guns on it, so not only did she have little doubt that it truly was Lydecker she was with, but she also had some weapons. It felt so unfamiliar when she picked up the piece that appealed the most to her. The cold weight was something that she hadn't felt since she was a child, but right now it was comforting.

The light sound of the doorknob turning caused her to spin around, aiming the gun directly at where she guessed the middle of Lydecker's forehead would be when he stepped through the door, but the shock of who stepped through the door made her drop the gun. Instead of attacking, she ran right to Zack and threw her arms around him. "What took you so long? I've been waiting for you for years!" She had to hold back to keep her voice from shaking, her emotions had hit her much stronger than she'd expected them to. She hadn't seen any of her family since she had seen Max's face under the ice on the day of the escape. The sudden appearance of the only person other than Max that she had loved the most in the world suddenly overwhelmed her.

As if he sensed that she desperately needed comfort and love right now, Zack wrapped his arms around her as well, letting her collapse against him. Without saying a word, he picked her up and laid her back down on her bed and let her cry in his arms. After a few minutes, he whispered, "Don't worry, Lydecker doesn't know where we are. I waited until his men went outside to check the grounds, then I snuck in and carried you out. After you passed out, Lydecker and your foster father took you into the living room so that they could keep talking out of your earshot. I had to get the chains off of you myself, but I managed."

Jondy sighed and curled her legs up against her body, still leaning on him. "I don't care about Lydecker, I'm just so glad not to be alone anymore." He nodded quietly and squeezed her shoulder, which was an affectionate gesture coming from him. They sat in silence for a moment, then a new thought occurred to her. "You're not going to relocate me, are you?"

Something in her voice made him look down at her. "I take it that you don't really want to be set up somewhere and be alone again, huh?"

Even though she could tell that that was what he had been planning to do just by the tone of his voice, she nodded. "Yeah, I'd much rather be with someone right now. If not you, couldn't you at least let me be near someone else? Who else made it out? Where are they?"

Now he let go of her and slid a few feet back. "I can't let you know that. I guess you'll just have to make due with me for now."

"Does that mean you'll let me stay with your for a while?"

Although he looked apprehensive about this, he nodded. "Yeah, for now I guess. I can't guarantee that it's going to be for very long, but you can go around with me for a bit."

Jondy glanced around. "So we're not staying here? Not that I'm disappointed or anything, but just how much are we going to be moving around?"

"As often as I need to so that I can check on everyone as much as possible." Jondy noticed the definite emphasis on "I". He obviously didn't want her hanging around. That hurt so much more than when she hadn't known where he was or what he was doing.

Zack looked a little panicked at the glisten of tears in her eyes. "It's not that I don't want you around, it's just that I think it's a lot easier to prevent exposure when I'm the only one who knows where you all are. It's nothing personal, I don't break these rules for anybody."

"I understand," she replied softly, refusing to meet his eyes. This just wasn't what she had expected a reunion with one of her siblings to be like. Well, he is the C.O. Maybe it would have been different if I had run into one of the others first. Brin would probably welcome me with open arms. Why did Zack have to be the first one I found again? She brutally forced the thoughts away. Even if it wasn't the meeting she had imagined, she was still grateful to be with him right now.

Zack was obviously trying to come up with a topic for conversation to break the uncomfortable silence. "Were the Casteau's treating you badly? I've managed to check up on you a few times, but it wasn't until I saw Lydecker's men around that I decided to join you in school for a while. After gym, I could tell that we'd be having a problem so I stopped by the house. You were lucky I got there when I did, we had just barely gotten off the property when a military unit came by to pick you up. If I had come fifteen minutes later, you would have already been on your way to Manticore."

She offered him a smile, but she had the feeling that he was just trying to lighten up her feelings towards him. Even though he didn't make as much of a show of his emotions as she did, she could tell that he didn't want her to be angry with him. "Thanks," she whispered, staring down at her feet.

He sat there watching her for a few moments before standing up. "Do you want something to eat? There's a really nice little family restaurant around the corner, I could pick you up some chicken and potatoes. Interested?"

Thinking it over for a moment, she nodded. "Yeah, that actually sounds really good. Do they have any desserts?" She looked up hopefully.

He smiled down at her. "More than you could imagine. How about a cake? I'll get it with tons of frosting if you want."

Now her face brightened. She hadn't had any desserts before, not even a cake. Manticore, school, and the Casteau's weren't big on the sweets, and she'd never been anyplace else. "That sounds great. Try not to go overboard though, I'm not sure how much my stomach can handle." Although he nodded and left the room almost immediately, she saw the concern in his eyes. As soon as he was gone, her weariness returned completely. Her head felt overstuffed with everything. How were the kids doing back at the mansion? How would Jason and Mindy get along without her? Was Victor going to hurt Cassie eventually? The worst thing was that all she could do was wonder, she'd never be able to do anything about it.

Jondy was still thinking this all over when Zack returned, loaded down with the cake, two covered plates of chicken, two containers of mashed potatoes, and two cups of gravy, as well as a couple sodas shoved into his pockets. She immediately jumped to her feet and grabbed the potatoes and gravy to give him a chance to set everything else down. "Geez, how big do you think my appetite is?" she joked feebly, overwhelmed by the food in front of her. She'd never even looked at a meal before that appeared so delicious.

"If it's anything like the others, then you're a bottomless pit. Do you think this will work for now?"

She just looked at him in shock. "Will it work? This looks like some sort of feast! Do you eat like this all the time?"

Not seeming to know what to do about her reaction to the food, he mumbled with some embarrassment, "Well, most of the time I just end up getting fast food, but if there's a restaurant like the one here then sometimes I eat a little better. Didn't they feed you well at your foster home?"

She shrugged as she picked up a chicken leg and tried to keep from devouring it in one gulp. "Their food wasn't bad, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't what they were having for supper every night. Then they sometimes forgot to feed us, or made us skip meals because we did something they didn't like. I wish I could take this food back to the kids that are still there. Some of those kids, especially the younger ones, probably aren't even sure what chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy are, much less ever had a soda."

Rather than act uncomfortable at the mention of the other kids she had lived with, which she would have suspected he would do, he just sat down next to her and picked up a wing. "I take it you were close to those kids?"

"Yeah, I loved them so much. I think we had to become close to make it through where we were living. At first glance, even with our isolation up on the second floor, most people wouldn't say we had it that bad, but that's not how we felt about it. When you came down to it, we were just a bunch of kids that had to make it without any adults, without any control over what we had to eat or any medication anybody might need, and we had to live so crammed together that we hardly had room to breath. There were two older teenagers, a middle child, and two little kids in each room except for one, and we all just had to take care of each other. There was a little boy in my room who got sick so much that I can't believe he's still alive. He got pneumonia every winter, and it took forever to convince Mrs. Casteau to let us take him to the hospital. Then they'd take away our supper for a few weeks, telling us we had to make up for the hospital bill. The other teenager in my room, Victor, was always sneaking out and sleeping around, and just before Lydecker got me I found out that he was taking advantage of Cassie, the middle child in our room. It just felt like our tiny little world was collapsing in on us. I'm not sure if I'd say it was worse than Manticore, because were allowed to love each other and show emotion, but at least we were taken care of back at Manticore. I always thought the outside would be so much better, but it's just bad in a whole different way. Is anyone else having that kind of problem?"

Zack sat silently for moment, and she suspected that he was trying to figure out a way to tell her the truth without telling more information than he wanted her to know. "Yeah, I've had to get a couple of them out of similar situations. There have been some physically abusive places, as well as neglectful ones. I guess I just thought you had it pretty good where you were, so I didn't want to interfere until I absolutely had to. Now I wish I had showed up years ago."

"Don't worry about it. I'm still going, aren't I?" She swallowed a large mouthful of mashed potatoes and gravy, then a new thought occurred to her. "Do all our other escaped siblings know that you're watching over them, or are there a couple of them that are doing okay so you're not interfering, just like you'd been doing with me?"

He sighed, almost as if in regret. "There's a couple who don't know about me, but most of them do. In fact, I see some of them much more than I want to."

"Troublemakers?"

He smiled slightly. "Yeah, some did grow up to be handfuls. I think my life would be a lot easier if I wasn't the one in charge of them, but I can't give it up. I don't know, maybe it's in my nature because I'm the oldest and I was made the C.O., but I just can't fathom leaving any of you alone and living my own life. I just can't do it. Honestly, I don't know what I'd do with myself. How would I pass the time? What kind of job would I end up getting? Right now I just steal whenever I get the chance because every now and then I have to take care of someone's financial situation. I'm pretty sure that if I was only taking care of myself, I wouldn't be doing that so much."

Jondy studied his momentarily nostalgic face and smiled. "Are you saying you'd be lost without us?" she teased.

He rolled his eyes. "Don't get ahead of yourself, I'm just saying it would take some getting used to. How special do you think you are?"

At first those words stung, but then she saw the look in his eyes that showed he was just joking. She gulped down the last of her soda and grinned playfully. "Well, I don't know about the others, but I think I should be extra special to you."

He feigned a look of scorn and crossed his arms. "Oh really? What makes you so special?"

She pouted at him. "Don't you think I'm irresistibly cute?"

"Answering a question with another question isn't fair."

"Just answer it," she insisted, grinning with the relief that he had loosened up a bit. Now he seemed so much more brotherly.

He leaned back against the wall at the head of the bed, pretending to seriously think about it. "Well, I suppose you're kind of cute, but not cute enough for special treatment."

"Am I your cutest sister?" She threw the pillow at him for emphasis.

At that he finally laughed. "You're the weirdest one, that's for sure. Nobody else would dare ask me if they were cute or not. Maybe you're fearless or something." The word "fearless" was given a touch a sarcasm, but he wasn't trying to use it cruelly, just as a joke.

"Who knows? Maybe cuteness and fearlessness are somehow connected."

"You're hopeless."

Before she could retort, a ringing sound came from his pocket. He reached in and pulled out a cell phone. "Hello? … What happened? … Ok, hold on. I'll be right there." He turned to her, the playful look now replaced by a very grave expression. "Will you be alright here for a couple of days? I'll leave some money so you can get food, and I'll call to check in on you every day. Will you be okay?"

His seriousness was starting to scare her. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Who was that? Who's in trouble?"

"I can't tell you," he said quickly, shoving the few clothes of his that were out into his duffel bag. "I just know this is going to keep me busy for a while. Even after I get back to you, I'll have to keep checking in on him." He froze, suddenly realizing he'd made a mistake.

"Him? Who is it, Zack? Why won't you tell me? Maybe I can help somehow."

"If I haven't been able to help him, how could you?"

She felt tears of frustration burning in the back of her eyes. "I don't know, but I at least would like a chance. What's going on with him, whoever he is?"

Rather than replying, Zack threw a wad of money in her direction and headed for the door. "I'll call you later to check up on you. Take care of yourself." With that, he was out the door.

Jondy sat without moving for several minutes, in shock that he could leave her so quickly without letting her know what was happening. "God dammit, Zack!" she shouted, standing up and kicking the bed so hard that it flipped over and the mattress gave one full roll before it flopped down. She groaned and grabbed the bed frame to pull it back into position, then walked over to the mattress and picked it up. After a moment, she realized that she had also knocked over the bed stand. As she set it back up, she noticed a notepad on the floor. It was the same kind that waitresses used to take orders, so she guessed he had stolen it from a restaurant. What would he need that for? She sat down and looked at the blank top piece of paper, trying to understand. "I'm being ridiculous," she muttered out loud. "This was probably left by a different guest, Zack wouldn't need this kind of thing anyways."

Just as she was about to set it down, she realized there were some indentations on the top piece. She grinned as she realized that they'd been made from when the paper that had been above this piece had been written on. She squinted as she tried to see what the numbers had been. Most of them were easy enough to make out, but a couple had obviously been written very lightly so there wasn't much indentation left over. After a couple minutes, she was pretty sure that the numbers were (858) 436-2979. She grabbed the phone quickly and dialed the number, hoping this really was Zack's paper.

The phone rang three times before there was an answer. "Hello?" It was a feminine voice that answered the phone. Jondy thought for a moment, struggling to place the voice. Finally, she just decided to be more direct.

"Zack went after someone. They're in trouble, do you know anything about it?" She figured it was a safe enough thing to say. If it wasn't an X5, they'd either hang up on her or ask who Zack was. If it was an X5, maybe she would get somewhere.

"Who is this? What's wrong with Zack?" Now the voice sounded nervous, but also suspicious. Jondy was starting to get excited, she was pretty sure it was another X5 that she was talking to.

"It's Jondy."

There was a pause, then suddenly a squeal of delight. "Jondy?! Oh my God, I didn't think Zack had contacted you!"

"Just out of curiosity, who is this? I wasn't quite sure whose number I called."

"This is Tinga. How are you? I didn't even know you'd made it! Oh, and what's going on with Zack?"

"I'm okay, but Zack just left to go help one of the others. He keeps referring to them as 'him', but I don't know which one of us it is. Do you know?"

"Uh-oh, Ben's not still… Wait, how much do you know about this whole situation?"

Ben? Jondy didn't understand, why would something be wrong with Ben? And what was he still doing? I seem to have missed out on a lot. She decided to try lying to Tina, even though she wasn't sure she'd be able to pull it off convincingly. "Yeah, I know what's been going on, I just didn't know which one of our brothers was doing it. I thought he'd stopped?"

It must have worked, because Tinga continued on. "Yeah, so did I, but I guess he's just gone crazy. I never thought that would happen to our sweet Ben, but he always was a little eccentric when it came to the Blue Lady."

Jondy didn't quite know how to continue lying, so she changed the direction of the conversation slightly. "How did you find out? I was under the impression that Zack didn't want anyone to know."

"I found out by accident when Ben attacked someone from my area. At Zack's request he left, but not before asking me to join him. I guess he didn't forget that day at all. I haven't really either, but it's never driven me to repeat it. I wonder how many victims he's had by now? Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, but I always thought that if anyone could get through to him and make him stop killing, it would be Zack. It might just be out of his hands now, though."

Jondy was speechless. Ben was killing people? She knew the day that Tinga was talking about, how could anyone ever forget? They had become animals for a short time, and it had somehow burned a hole through her in some unseen way. She felt sick just thinking about how easily it was for her to become a danger to everyone around her. Forcing herself to not allow Tinga to get suspicious, she asked, "Let's talk about something else, this just makes me feel depressed. How are you?"

"Oh, I'm fine. Did you know I'm married? Charlie's a wonderful man, I know you'd like him. Zack doesn't like him very much, but I don't think he considers anyone good enough for any of us. Then there's our son, Case. He's only a year old, but he's so wonderful."

Jondy smiled at the thought of Tinga in the family life. Amazingly enough, she could picture it easily. "How old were you when you got married? You can't be older than eighteen right now."

"Well, I was sixteen, but Charlie thinks I'm older. He's a few years older than me, but I love him so much. I don't think things could be any better. Hey, you're probably sixteen right now, aren't you?"

"Yeah, at least I'm somewhere around there. No plans to get married though. So, you're happy?"

"You have no idea. I think it's just the kind of life that Zack always wanted for us, which is kind of sad because he's not giving himself the chance to have that kind of life. Then he gets mad at me for having it. I don't think it's that he resents me being happy, but he is a bit jealous. I don't think he's even had a girlfriend in all the times he's been out. Poor guy just needs to get laid." She laughed when Jondy gave a grunt of disgust. "Sorry, I forgot, you're still a kid. You're probably still a virgin, aren't you?"

Jondy blushed so deeply that she was sure Tinga could feel it through the phone. "I don't see how that's any of your business, but yeah, I am."

Tinga laughed again. "Sorry to embarrass you so much, I guess I'm just a protective big sister. Even though I have to say that I can't believe you've managed to stay a virgin, even through your…" Suddenly she trailed off as a shout was heard in the background. "I hate to do this, but I have to go. Call me again soon, okay? I take it that Zack doesn't know you have my number?"

"No, I didn't find it until after he left. Trust me, I'll be calling again. I've missed you all so much."

"I missed you too. Love you, little sister."

"Love you too. Bye." Jondy sighed as she hung up the phone, not sure if she should feel happy, sad, or worried. She was happy because she had finally talked to Tinga again, sad because something was seriously wrong with Ben, and worried about what Tinga had been cut off from saying. What had she meant when she'd said that she was surprised that Jondy had managed to stay a virgin even through something? What was that "something" that she hadn't gotten the chance to say? After all these years, she would have thought that reuniting with her family would be the most wonderful thing in the world, but now she was starting to think her life was less complicated in the Casteau mansion. She looked sadly at the uneaten cake. Odd, and to think that just twenty minutes ago the prospect of having a cake was important.