Chapter Five
All three of my projects went wrong today, one broke, one short-circuited and caught fire, and the last one I ran out of materials for. Throwing things around angrily, I try to curb my ever-mounting frustration for when Click comes home. I don't want to explode at her, I know she is super stressed with school right about now. Starting to cook dinner, thoughts of things I can mess with flood my brain as I angrily daydream.
"I'm home!" Calikta screams before I hear her boots slamming on the metal stairs. She walks over and stands next to me, looking down at her, I notice the four inches I have on her five-foot-five frame.
"How was your exam?" I ask as I finish cooking.
"I did better on this one," she says confidently, and I give her a small smile in return. She was struggling to get back into the swing of studying and taking exams.
"What's wrong?" She follows up with and I sigh.
"Nothing big, it was just a bad day at work," I say honestly, and she gives me a sympathetic look.
"I figured as such considering you are actually cooking dinner at a normal hour," Click muses sadly before grabbing the pot and serving dinner.
"We should go out tonight," I say.
"Yes!" Click agrees.
"What do you want to do?" I ask her as I check the weather. It's not safe for us to fly in heavy winds or rain.
"I saw those paintballs you whipped up," Click says innocently and I raise an eyebrow.
"You mean the neon green exploding paint pellets I created for that one paintball company a few months ago," I comment. It was a freelance job I did.
"Yes, you made more," Click says excitedly.
"They had a few tweaks and wanted a neon green rather than the yellow," I say, and she bobbles her head.
"Then why do have massive ones at your workstation?" Click asks me and I grin behind my scarf.
"Well you see, the paint is so reflective it could be massively dangerous and blinding, but I was angry today," I say with a shrug, and Click just looks at me amused.
"So, what I am hearing is we should cover Voyager," Click says and I cackle. That thought had certainly crossed my mind once or twelve times today.
"This is why we work," I say as I finish washing the dishes and heading out to change. Making sure I have my boots with the magnets, I yank the mask on my face and head out to the roof where Click is eagerly bouncing around.
"We each get twenty, but when they burst, they explode so try not to get hit with any flying paint or it'll be easy to track us home," I say as we load them into a box that hooks in-between our legs.
"Sounds like a plan," Click says and we both reach a hover before taking off. Turning on my Bluetooth earpiece, I can instantly hear Click humming happily.
"There is no more freeing feeling than this," I say to her as we zip through the skies, avoiding helicopters. Leaning into the wind tunnels, we pick up even more speed and our boards easily keep up. Starting to circle Voyager, I see that some of the lights are still on and shoot up.
"I'll start from the bottom," Click says.
"I'll take the top," I say as I unlock the box and grab the first ball and load it into a makeshift gun. Using the wind to my advantage, I stray further back before firing the massive paintball. It splashes back quickly but I keep moving as I roll the second one into the chamber.
"Nice shot," I hear Click says before there is a sound of a big splat.
"You too," I say amused as we smother one of the most famous buildings in the country.
As I finish up, I still have one glob left as I see two figures run out onto the roof. Hovering pretty far above them, I feel something yank on my board and instantly send sparks flying through it, someone yelps and let's go. Overloading the system, the board works hard to not overheat. Glancing down I see none other than Cathleen Winters herself standing there next to Arlington.
"Ten points," I say quietly before firing the paint at them. I watch Arlington bat it away, but it still explodes all over them.
"I hope you know I got that all on video," Click says and I cackle before immediately moving away from the powerful married couple.
"Can you get it all over the internet?" I ask as we continue to move further away.
"I can certainly try," Click says before something is violently hurled at me. Flinging myself out of the way, I almost clip a building and start plummeting. Spinning my board back on, I barely stop before I smash into the top of a bus. Rocketing back upwards, I see Click isn't where I last was. Glancing around confused, I see Macie and Orion standing on the rooftop and Click on a nearby lower-lying roof.
"What happened?" I ask her alarmed and I zip past them.
"She bent my board!" Click spits out angrily and I drop down next to her. She hands me the board frustrated and I attach it to my watch.
"Stop," I hear a male voice say and I stay silent and glance at him.
"Wait a second, it's you," he says, putting a few puzzle pieces together.
"Now," I mumble, and Click grabs me hard and her boots magnetize to my board. Shooting up quickly, I almost become dizzy from the sudden pressure change. Bolting forward I try to zip out of the range the Mavericks are loitering. I see Arlington on a rooftop as I whizz past and I build a charge in my hand.
"Watch your heart Beta," Click says.
"I've got this," I say and as she vanishes, I can tell she is going to land on the next one, she's following us without trying to knock us from the sky. Predicting where she will land, I barely slow down as I launch a black lightning bolt at her. She screams and is knocked out on the spot.
"Alpha!" I hear a few voices scream and we make our grand escape.
Once we get within a mile of our warehouse, we land and walk the rest of the way there. My board is completely depleted of energy from having to carry the extra weight. Normally I can easily get eight hours of moderate flying time but doubling the weight did not allow for that. Setting everything to charge, I start breaking apart Click's board as she goes to shower. Checking which mechanisms were crushed, I separate the completely ruined, the fixable, and the alright parts.
"How bad is the damage?" Click asks me, she still has the towel wrapped around her hair.
"I don't think we can salvage the shell of this once again, the bend is pretty severe, and we've already fixed this one three times," I say sadly and I know that isn't what she wanted to hear.
"Can we re-melt it?"
"No, the melting point of this metal is far beyond something I could accomplish in this archaic lab," I say sadly. The metal we use is a custom magnesium alloy that I have to import from Australia. It's one of the strongest and lightest metals in the world, but the only thing I can do is cut and bend it with enough time and effort.
"Damn," Click says sadly before plopping onto a stool.
"Most of the components are salvageable, only two seem beyond repair. We can have it as good as new by the end of the week if we put our minds to it," I say, and Click nods and her towel falls off her head.
"Smooth," I tease, and she chuckles and grabs one of the broken components. We work quietly until my phone starts vibrating. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I see it is almost eleven o'clock. The only person who ever calls me is Nathan and he generally stays within my business hours which end at ten. Checking my watch, I nearly fall off my stool at the name on the screen.
"Who's calling?" Click asks baffled and I make a motion of being quiet. Answering the call, I try to figure out what to say. Yanking my scarf down quickly, I don't want my voice to be muffled.
"Are you there?" Lyle asks me after a long pause.
"Yeah," I say.
"You really know how to stir up some trouble," Lyle says frustrated.
"I don't know what you are talking about," I say calmly.
"You literally painted Voyager neon green, the light pollution in that area is insane and they had to stop traffic," Lyle says, and I smother a laugh.
"I've been home working all evening," I say trying to smother my amusement.
"In the same way you didn't attack Lena," Lyle says coldly and my delight fades.
"I told you I didn't do that Lyle; I can admit to painting a building neon and disrupting some traffic. But I didn't attack her," I growl out and there is a really long pause. I took his bait, damn it.
"I believe you," he says, his voice much softer and I relax.
"Good," I snip.
"She's refusing to say what happened that night, Aviva is frustrated. Do you know of anyone or anything that could have done that?" He asks me worried and I pause.
"I can honestly say I have no clue Lyle; I wish I did. It was scary to find her like that..." I admit and Click looks at me surprised but gives me a sympathetic look. We know how terrible this area is and I worry about Click every time she leaves.
"Can I pay you to do some recon on the area?" He asks me seriously and I pull the phone away in shock.
"No, you can't. I don't want anything to do with this situation or anyone involved in it," I say seriously.
"You can't run from everything forever... Beta," Lyle says sadly, and I can feel his pain through the phone.
"It's been a whole decade Lyle, there is nothing left to salvage," I say bitterly before hanging up. Pulling my scarf back up, I can feel Click staring at me.
"Why did you keep in contact with just Lyle and no one else?" Click asks me curiously and I pause.
"There was one other person I kept in contact with..." I trail off and Click's eyes widen.
"Who?" She asks me curiously.
"Talia Hayes," I say carefully, knowing there is a high probability that she would know the name. Click pauses for a long moment before something dawns on her.
"That's Zana's legal guardian!" Click says shocked and I nod. Click kept tabs on Zana after she put Viro in jail.
"It's a very small world," I say solemnly and continue to tinker.
"I know what happened between you and... them. But what happened with everyone else?" Click asks me, being excitedly nosy. I can't seem to deny her the story she's been poking me for as long as I've known her.
"It all happened pretty quickly, you already know what happened with me and those involved. Lyle and he never got along, to begin with, they fought worse than most siblings and something just snapped after everything and they both damn near killed each other," I say honestly, and Click bites her lip.
"You need to say his name Beta," Click says and I grit my teeth.
"You mean Alexander?" I ask her wryly and she nods.
"You never say his name," she points out, and I sigh. She knows how much I've been hiding and has been patiently waiting.
"I know... Talia and Greyson were never super close because of their age gap, but when she didn't want to do anything in the medical field her father was angry. Dr. Hayes was the kind who only found value in lawyers, doctors, and a few select other professions. Their familial relationship had always been on the rocks, but when I cut everyone out, I got a call a few months from Talia herself saying that she left after another fight and that she upped and moved to a school in Circa City," I say.
"She just left?" Click asks surprised.
"I think you should take into account the age differences, Greyson and Cathleen went off to college first. Lyle followed shortly after and Alexander was a few years behind them. We were all separated except for Talia and me; we are almost the same age after all. When I went to college after the... incident; I cut everyone off and used the money I saved up to finance my own way," I say seriously, and I can tell she's putting more of the massive puzzle together.
"I need to ask this before you stop letting me ask questions, why do you hate Arlington so much?" Click asks me, the curiosity burning in her face, her elbows are on the table and her body is angled anxiously forward.
"I want to hate Arlington, but I can't say I do," I say disappointedly. I should hate her; she is everything they are, and I want to hate her for associating with them.
"I'm confused," Click says.
"I'm jealous of her Calikta, she's everything I was supposed to be... She's the engineer and the leader of the team, that was supposed to be me," I say solemnly, and I swallow hard. My heart and my chest ache and I find it hard to breathe for a few moments. Glancing up, Click looks rocked. I can't say I blame her for that reaction, it took a lot for me to admit that aloud.
"You were supposed to be the leader of the Mavericks?" She asks me carefully. The engineer part was obvious, but not the rest.
"Yes," I say and look back down at the table.
"When was that decided in the timeline of the incident?" Click asks me very carefully.
"It all happened on the same day," I say angrily, and she falls silent.
That is what caused the incident, that is why part of my face is paralyzed and I have burns on my cheeks down my neck. That's why I am partially blinded in my one eye. That 'incident' is why I lost everything all in one fell swoop. I never want to forgive them for what happened.
This is my attempt at writing vandalism lol, neon green paint 😂😂. What do you think of Beta so far? Has anyone figured out where Calikta is from, you have met her briefly before!!
Please don't forget to vote and comment!
XX CC