The Expatriate-the story of a Prodigy

20. Labeling People By Numbers

When he returned to his room, he threw his butt back onto the bed and let his eyes close. Though the pills were just sugar, it still made him feel satisfied and warm, and he let the dust he had aroused with his jump to the bed settle on his body.
Too tired to think of what had happened over the course of the day, he let himself drift off.

He was woken up by the opening creak of his room door the next morning. Thankfully, he wasn't one of those species of people who would get up and make a fuss over how the hell they had gotten there, like Andrew, and stayed sane as Thomas with an h charged in, eyes alert and a new sweatshirt and jeans on. He gave Alex a face that told him automatically that he was in trouble, then zapped over to the foot of the bed with his Prod-speed, the morning sickness not disturbing his agility, surprisingly.
"What did I do wrong?" Alex asked.
"It's time to get up, Alex. We start our schedule now. Come on, get in these-" Alex watched as Melanie flashed a hurried grin at him from the doorway and threw Thomas a ball of clothes-a brand new T-Shirt and jeans. Thomas handed them over to Alex in less time than the garments had taken to fly through the air. "Forget of washing," "Got it. Just don't watch me stripped under," Alex muttered and felt the cool air as the door swung shut in seconds right after Thomas' leaving form even before his words could properly conclude. He quickly got safely under the covers and put the new clothes on, wondering where the Raiders had gotten him the clothes. No time to waste wondering those silly questions, he thought and threw himself to his feet and walked down to the first floor, where everyone else was assembled.
"Thomas, you should try the metal detector you uncovered last week-you swore to prove its efficiency, huh?" Alex looked up to see Miles smirking at Thomas. For a few seconds, Miles didn't seem to notice Alex, then Alex could just feel the other boy's glance detect his and stiffen. But he didn't look in his direction. He's ignoring me, that massive bitch, Alex groaned in his head. Not that I care, though.
He let his eyes wander away and felt the pressure in his veins get lower from the anger induced by Miles as he spotted Lyra, who was staring at the maze of shoes on the ground, immediately making Alex feel as if she was now pulling off his socks to check what kind of odor they had right now. Jesus, she just has to soften down her habit of staring, Alex thought as Thomas retrieved a strange device from amid the series of strange devices in the living room, grinning. "You better should work, y'all piece of Canadian junk. We're trusting ya," He smirked at the thing, then yanked the door open and walked off. The others piled out silently after hin, no one over-excited. Alex caught up with Lyra who was trailing at the end and seemed to be used at doing it all the time.
"Hey," He said first. "Hey back," She said, nodding a tiny inch downwards. Her confident stance had dissipated now in her, scattered and uncertain in the morning's coldness as they stepped out onto the path to the road, which was a bit slippery from moisture. Before thinking up of a reply for her, Alex Mars couldn't resist the smile and beam that now rose high in his chest as if making his own body rise when he saw the moisture hanging from the leaves and grass of the lawn-it was the first realistic and most natural form of water, something he was ready to give anything up for in the desert. And along with a hopeful future, it now moistened his shoes and socks, making him smirk.
How could such a daily and natural thing amaze me? He thought, eyes wide in wonder, staring at the ground beneath him, not realizing that Lyra Cannes was staring at him, amazed at his amazed eyes.
"The moisture amazes you?" She asked, still impressed when Alex looked up. He nodded. "It exists so abundantly here while it was gone when I was at the door of death, at the desert. It just makes me wonder how the world can impress us so easily," He explained. "Oh," Lyra said, and that was all she had to say until they arrived at Thomas' Bugatti Chiron.
"That car behind is Mel's," Thomas said to Alex when the group gathered in, pointing at a sleek silver Lotus Evija. "Well, obviously, she also has fast speed, but slower than me and she hates using her ability too often. We had this race to this brand new luxury car center that a great old Canadian navigation system showed us. I beat her and raided the center until I found this babe-" He grinned and leaned onto his Chiron. Melanie snorted. "Fuck. Still, the Lotus is equal or even better than yours, Tom," Miles rolled his eyes, then swooped into the passenger's seat of the Chiron. "Shit, you still did lose the race, Mel. Maybe we should race today-since we do need motivation from time to time by competing to get to our starting points of the day faster, don't we?" Melanie rubbed her hand over the Lotus, licking her lips. Alex didn't like the sight as she pressed her fingerprints onto the shiny car proudly. "That's more than I can wish. Lyra, get in, and let's show them a lesson. Wait-Alex, you wanna ride?" She asked, grinning her over-sweet smile at him. Alex narrowed his eyebrows, thinking. Well, in the boys' Chiron, he did have to deal with Miles. On the girls' Lotus, however, he was going to have a serious person to have his ride with, who was Lyra-but also the chatbox Melanie. Plus, the boys, even Thomas, would start calling him a sissy for riding the girls' car.
"You're ours, huh?" Thomas smirked friendly at Alex. Alex shrugged. "I guess-for now," Thomas grinned. "Thank you. And welcome to the wildest ride ever you'll not even be able to experience on the old Yukon Striker,"
"Gee," He murmured. He, fortunately, turned back to the girls one last time before the death game on the car to find Lyra giving him an understandable look.
Thomas shoved him onto the Chiron and got in himself. Alex muted off Miles and turned to the car window to see Melanie push in her key and let the Lotus growl.
The Chiron bust into life, groaning a soft roar, then Alex gripped the leather seat, not caring if it would end up bursting up from his strength and pressure. He still didn't wear the seat belt since he wanted to enjoy the threat and speed and he trusted Thomas.
Thomas turned on his wheel. "Connect Melanie the bitch," He said. Miles smirked at the window.
"Melanie the bitch in front of Driver's house. Connect?"
"Yeah. I love the way you impersonate the way I call out shitty people to connect for you," Thomas replied and waited as the beeps took on. Melanie received it immediately. She now looked up from the steering wheel to glare at Thomas from behind her glass. "What?" "An idea came to mind. What if we race and do our job at the same time? Like, the winner's who gathers up the most new gadgets and comes back home faster. So to sum up, we each go in different paths to pioneer the city directly from home," "You are 3, and we're 2, you fool. It's unfair," "Lyra's a treasure and we have to teach our newbie Alex, right? Doesn't that make it fair enough for you?" Alex could hear Melanie's nod through the phone without needing to look at her through the Chiron's and Lotus' glass.
"Right," She disconnected. "Good idea," Miles muttered at Thomas. "Uh-huh. Was just being the leader and pitying the girls. So, let's do this," Thomas grinned, rubbing his hands so quickly that Alex thought he might create fire on them if he kept on doing it for 2 minutes.
So the race started, and Alex looked into the Lotus and caught a sight of an unsmiling Lyra in the passenger's seat before Thomas rolled down the window, spat saliva away into the air and even before the saliva droplet could hit the ground, snapped his fingers like the great Thanos as the indicator of the start of the race, and let the Chiron accelerate away, making Alex feel as if his gut was being left miles away with each passing second.