Chapter 4: A Visit

"Hello, Valencia." Jeb Batchelder greeted her with a mirthless smile. "I've come to discuss a recent event. The landing at your residence of an avian-human hybrid." Jeb's eyes locked on Valencia. "You're her mother, you know."

Valencia Martinez could only stare.

Her brain was paralyzed from the sudden jerk into a reality in which long lost ex-best friends emerged from memories, so Valencia couldn't do anything except stammer.

Yes, she knew that the angel limping into her doorway, hand clamped tightly around a bleeding wing wound, was her daughter. She had always known. What kind of mother would that make her if she hadn't immediately recognized the soft brown eyes staring her down and pleading for shelter?

Of course, the wings had been a tip-off as well. Six children in the world with wings. One her baby. One with some of her face.

And some of Jeb's face, too.

But staring at Max figure on that day, Valencia had only seen herself.

Only after Max had left did Valencia allow time to ponder about Jeb's role in this. Hadn't he escaped with the six survivors? Wasn't Max supposed to be safe with him? How had Jeb let her out of his sight long enough for someone to inflict Max with a bullet wound?

All these questions and more had surfaced in the days after Max's abrupt landing, but Valencia couldn't speak one of them now.

"J—Jeb."

And then the answer was obvious. And when Valencia figured it out, she hated herself for stammering. She couldn't stammer, not when Jeb was wearing a white coat with his name scrawled on a badge clearly from Itex Labs and a clipboard and a pen and a heaving Eraser next to him.

Valencia finally noticed the second visitor.

Her grip on the doorknob tightened, and her other hand clenched into a fist at her side. Not that she could do anything if the hunk of fur decided to attack. The sharpened fangs protruding from his mouth warned her that any wrong move could easily be corrected. He was big. He towered over Jeb. Not that Jeb looked small in comparison. Dr. Batchelder still held that look of hidden power that would not falter even next to the Director. But the Eraser—he could snap heads.

Val's head.

She swallowed, and hated herself for swallowing. Jeb was always at ease in these situations. Why did her knees have to shake and her hands tremble and her throat suddenly become so thick that she felt the need to gulp, the clichéd sign of fear?

The Eraser next to Jeb smiled, a rough, tackling grin. Valencia didn't know if he had heard her swallow and was reacting to that, or if the Eraser could smell the fear wafting off of Val.

Valencia tried to rein her gaze back under her control. The monster was just so grotesque so much like a product of Mary Shelley's imagination that she couldn't stop staring at it, as much as it disgusted her.

Eventually, Valencia regained control of her eyes and returned them to Jeb.

"I've missed you, Valencia," Jeb managed to say in a completely cold, even tone that did nothing to imply any truth to his statement. "This is, however, a business call."

"Th-that's fine."

Damn. She stammered again.

Jeb clicked his pen for ink, and rolled back a paper on his clipboard. Looking over his preparations, he raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

This was not Jeb.

Weird thing to think about with a seven foot monster as a death threat and a mad-scientist with unknown intentions at her door—but all Val could think of was how this man was not her best friend.

Ex-best friend. She kept forgetting that. The cold-hearted, zombie-like creature that stepped through her doorway could not be Jeb. The look of complete indifference as he passed into her home did not belong on the face of her once-friend, once-halfway-lover, once-confidant. It didn't belong on anyone's face, not anyone that Valencia wanted in her house anyway.

Valencia could safely conclude that this was not Jeb.

But one piece of sticky evidence swayed another side to argue.

You're her mother, you know?

Yeah, she knew.

And Jeb was her father.

"So…" His voice was a transparent façade of cheerfulness. He strolled over to her fireplace and lifted a picture, examining it with a glassy gaze that really didn't pick up anything. "Pretty," he murmured.

Valencia nodded, her gaze flickering from Jeb to the Eraser and back and forth again.

"Sit," she stated, not trusting herself to say much else.

And then it hit her.

Crud.

"You know where I live," Valencia hissed.

Her gaze flew to the upstairs, and then zeroed back on Jeb when she realized that Ella was in her Chinese class study-group. Thank God.

"How? Again? I never gave you this address; I never gave you the last address! How do you always find me? How do you always—"

The dog barked. Valencia flinched.

Jeb raised a hand and the wolf-human dug his fingers into his skin. Blood emerged from the four newly-created holes in his arms. Again, a sickening pull drew Valencia's eyes to the scene and kept it there.

"Keep the blood off the carpet, please," Jeb asked placidly.

The hybrid wiped his arm clean. No blood stained the carpet. He did as he was told. He obeyed.

"I'm sorry about that, Valencia. He really needs to learn some self control." Jeb barked the last two words. The mutant growled lowly. "Now, back to the matter at hand—"

"Jeb. You found me. Do I get to know how?"

"Valencia." He chuckled. "You never left."

Itex knows all. Valencia recalled the day she tried to resign. After weeks of argument with Jeb, he had finally encouraged her to see the Director. If anything, what the Director had told her made her even more fearful of the Labs and more willing to take Fetus Max and leave. Dear, Valencia. Must you continue to entertain this ridiculous notion that you will be free with simply a wave and a return of your lab coat? You can never leave, Val. Deluding yourself now will only cause more pain later.

Of course, Valencia had chosen the optimistic route: Maybe they'll be too busy trying to destroy the world to care about me or my daughter.

Given today's events and those of four years ago, they hadn't been too busy.

"Now. About Max."

"I don't know where she went," Valencia moaned, now watching the door for signs of her daughter's early return. What time was it? Ella was supposed to come home at eight. What time was it? "She wouldn't tell me anything."

Jeb cracked a smile. A foggy-mirror image of the smile that would have graced his face a few years ago.

"That's Max. Always cautious. I taught her that."

The mutant growled again, a deep, guttural sound that caused Valencia to flinch noticeably.

Jeb's eyes flickered to the growling monster beside him. "Ari"—Valencia drew a sharp breath—"behave."

"No!" Valencia started. Ari—Ari?—growled and dug his nails into the furniture. Val almost wanted to reach out and trace the scars on Ari's face, to search his body, trying to find some semblance of the three-year-old boy who had arrived on her doorstep all those years before with the innocence of an angel. The three-year-old boy now a monster.

"What have you done to him?" Valencia shrieked against her better judgment. The—the Thing That Was Ari was now convulsing, its fists tremulous

"He was an experiment. To understand the effects of a lupine-human hybrid if the formula was implanted later in life instead of in the amniotic fluid before birth,. For the question of a more effective army."

He said all of this as though the information was completely detached from him, not as though his son was the first of an army of experiments, not as though he had once journeyed miles and battled werewolves to save his son from the life that Jeb now watched with a casual eye. Calmly, as though he hadn't risked everything in order to save six recombinants from this same fate.

His gaze flickered to Ari, checking to see if he was obeying, and Valencia watched Jeb. She knew that her observations were biased because she was specifically looking for something, anything at all, that would prove that Jeb still felt something for his son. The slightest warmth in his eyes, the minute twitch of a lip in a fatherly smile… but Valencia found nothing but apathy and a willingness to proceed with the interview.

This was not Jeb, Valencia decided.

And this was not Ari. "Oh, Ari…" Tears spilled from her eyes. She couldn't even pity the hideous thing properly because of how much it scared her.

"You might not feel as sorry for him, if you knew that his job here was to snap the neck of your daughter if you did not cooperate."

"I don't know anything. She revealed her wings to me, but nothing else. Whatever else you want from me, take it, but keep your seven year old son away from my twelve year old daughter." Valencia walked up to Jeb, filled with rage at the horrible changes made over the years and his threat at her daughter. She knocked his clipboard out of his hands, but before she could slap him one good like she wanted to, Ari came between them and pinned her by the shoulders to the wall.

He growled at her, his face caught between the decision to be a man or a monster. While his teeth were wolf-like, sharpened with the promise of pain, his eyes still held the same vulnerabilities of humanity.

Jeb bent to retrieve his clipboard from the floor. As soon as he looked up, Valencia caught his eye and held it.

With all the steel that she could acquire, she glared at this man who bore no resemblance to who he used to be because he used to be human. She told him, "You're his father, you know?"

Her last hope was to remind him of his paternal responsibility to take care of the life he'd helped bring into the world. But he took this bullet calmly, his gaze never wavering from Valencia's. With a raise of one eyebrow he asked, Is that all? He waved Ari off of Valencia and she fell to the floor.

"It's no secret that you will be watched even more thoroughly from here on in. Your daughter will have to be observed as well to make sure that she will not leak any information about the girl with wings she saw. It's a courtesy, Valencia, that we haven't killed her for reassurance. You're welcome. I hope that when we meet again it will not be on such tense terms."

I hope that when we meet again, I can remind you how to be human again. That I can remind you how to love your son again so that he may have the chance to become human instead of a warped monster like father like son.

More than anything, though, Valencia hoped that Itex would never knock on her door again, disturbing the normalcy she'd worked so hard to maintain. She hoped that when her little girl came home, all signs of tension would be removed from her face, she could smile convincingly and offer her daughter mac and cheese.

Although what would be the point except to keep Ella safe and ignorant? No point. No point in running anymore. She was officially in this war between Itex and Decency; she knew which side she was on, and she certainly wouldn't be of any use to her daughter if she kept running away, blind to reality. Instead of Valencia formulating another escape route, filled with the futile hope that Itex wouldn't find her, she would stay exactly where she was so that Max could find her.

Ella will come home and through those innocent eyes all would appear the same. But Valencia Martinez would know exactly what had occurred, what realization had changed everything. She was no longer a coward. She was no longer a target. Itex couldn't chase her anymore because she wouldn't run. Emulating the brave grin of her winged daughter, Valencia would face the boogeyman of her dreams.

And while destroying Itex, she'd find a way to save Ari and Jeb.

A/N: Another random oneshot. I'm pretty sure there's going to be fifth because I can't leave Jeb so harsh. Although his temperament is understandable because he's employed with Itex, undercover, using Itex's resources to keep tabs on the Flock, right? Or did I just imagine reading that in the books? Haven't read them in so long...