Chapter Fourteen - This is the story of a girl...
The things that Marx found on the files were less than encouraging. I didn’t understand most of it but just from the looks on Pandora and the gang’s faces I could tell that things were getting bad and fast. The hideout was also starting to get very cold and I didn’t exactly come prepared with backup clothing. I rubbed at my arms which were developing goose bumps as they continued looking through the hordes of plans and secret stages that Jacobs had developed.
Instead of waiting around for the results of the findings, I pushed my way through the crowed of jaw drooped faces. I couldn’t help but continue drawing my attention to my sister. I had known what Master… Ethan… had said was right. There wasn’t a real connection there. I couldn’t gaze upon her fondly like any other brother could to his older or younger sister. Instead she was someone who saved me and yet an acquaintance.
It wasn’t stupid that I felt close to her in this way. It also still astounded me how it was she looked so young and yet far surpassed my own parents in age. This world around me had changed so greatly and it was only changing further. I suddenly felt my stomach churning. It wasn’t until that second of thought had I really considered never getting to lead the strange and yet boring life I once had.
And I missed my parents. I missed them more than I allowed myself to show. Surrounded by a team fighting for the survival of humanity I really was just some ignorant kid. They didn’t need me here but they wanted me and it was good to feel wanted but would this ever end?
There were photos on the screen now. I drew back in disgust. It looked like a preview of what had happened to the Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
“What is that?” I asked as I placed my hand on the mouse and scrolled through several of the images. My stomach only began to hurt worse and worse.
“These are the experiments on live human subjects. And these…” Marx scrolled through further, “Are the images of them using our kind to try and change humans into this super soldier Jacobs and his company are trying to create.”
Red was sloshed all over the walls and floors of some of the images and I couldn’t quite handle it any longer. I stood up and ran to the center of the room next to the Independence. The silver was glistening under the florescent lights above. I missed Scarlet. Her sister must have been with her although I still had this lingering feeling something had happened to her and it was my fault.
Most of the time I was under Master’s control was still a blur. Only the faces I had harmed were still with me. I didn’t think I could ever let those go. If Bradley had still been alive I would have done anything to beg his forgiveness.
Anything.
As I rushed through the horrific memories, the group began to disperse and Pandora walked back over to me in the center of the hideout. She had a large smile on her face, as usual. I didn’t know what she always had to be so happy about but she sure seemed to be ecstatic.
“What is on your mind, cowboy?” She asked as she shoved my shoulder.
“Didn’t you see the photos? That was horrific. I just… I was almost a part of doing that to people. It eats away at you. “
“Don’t let Jacobs have that power over you. It was going to happen no matter what.” She walked before me and placed both hands on my shoulders. I only wished I could see the world through her eyes, “In order to do this job you need to realize one thing.”
“Oh, and what is that?”
She gave another large smile and looked over to Casey who had been watching the scene. He was smiling too as he ran his fingers through his light blond hair. I had a feeling I was missing some sort of inside joke, “Evil people are always going to do evil things. As the good guys we are just going to have to stop it as we can. The minute you feel like it is your responsibility to solve the world’s problems and place that onto your shoulders is the minute you fail.”
“But I…”
“No butts. C’mon, let’s break out of this cage for a bit and get a bite to eat.”
I was glad she had made the recommendation. If I’d had to endure another minute of this space food I would have started to gnaw on the walls. Casey and Pandora both took me to a little diner in a nearby town. It seemed my sister and myself were continuing to have things in common as I loved diner food and she devoured it.
Once seated, she ordered nearly half of the menu, as did Casey and I. We were all pretty worked up from the mission while the other guys were nerding up in the files we had obtained. It was clear the people who were more of the physical work and then the behind the scenes guys in the missions. I liked that they had all found a place here. I liked that I was finding a place too. Maybe it would feel like home soon.
Pandora had taken off her P. P. A. jacket and finally looked like a normal 20 year old girl and a black sweater. Casey was in the same as I wore my black t-shirt which exposed the scars on my arms. It was a little embarrassing under the lighting of the diner. It seemed to emphasize them more. I quickly placed them back under the table and watched as the two before me analyzed my movements.
“So what do we do when this is all over?” I asked as it seemed no normal conversation would begin.
It was as if the question itself was a foreign language. Casey’s face dropped as Pandora tilted her head in confusion. She then placed her long black hair up into a tie and cleared her throat.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean once we finally stop Jacobs and this network of super soldier. What do we do after that? I personally don’t see how I could go back to a normal life and finish high school.”
Pandora was silent for a moment before she turned to Casey and laughed, “Why don’t you take the reigns on this one.”
He chuckled. I could tell Casey was also a good looking dude when he was younger. The idea that Pandora had known all of these men for so many years and looked just like a girl barely older than me was still baffling.
It wasn’t until that thought traveled through my little brain which was still sore from all this that I wondered how hard it must have been for Pandora. I thought about Scarlet and the one kiss we shared and how each memory of her made me just want to see her more and then how she must have felt never being able to really love anyone.
Did she ever love Casey or maybe Connor? Had they tried and worked it out and then time just got the better of them? My complaining about not getting back into the groove of my dull life was suddenly just a child wanting candy. Nothing more.
“I suppose we would try and get back to our planet. Our people are in trouble there too from other things and it would be nice to be surrounded by people who are like us. It’s hard always being afraid of who and what you are.”
Pandora nodded her head quickly and took in a deep breath, “When you have been around as long as I have, which mind you is a long time, you learn to just go with the flow. After this I will probably just try and reconnect with mom and dad as much as possible. I never really had that, not in 95 years. And then as you all grow old and pass I will just do as I have always done… just… survive.”
She seemed ok with saying that. There wasn’t a hint of sadness or fear in the idea of walking this earth along forever. The people… the aliens, that Casey and the rest had been a part of during their trip and attempt to co-exist on Earth, they were not Pandora and myself. We were something different. Something you couldn’t explain. Simply an evolutionary gold mine.
“When you knew Ethan, he was different. He was more like us, right?” I then asked. Saying his name was very strange. It still gave me the chills even though he was no longer in control of me.
The waitress then brought our food which my stomach had been dying to see and I dug right in. The wonderful smells traveled in through my nose and spread through my body. Bacon, eggs and buttered toast with hash browns, the fluffiest and sweetest pancakes you would have ever tasted. There were juicy blueberries and thick syrup which stuck to my face as I shoved it in.
In moments I could feel my body getting into a state of normalcy again. My heart was beating at a regular pace. My skin was turning the bright light peach it had started out as instead of this sick grey color. Even the scars seemed to fade. It was like a miracle drug.
“He was just a normal guy who had been misguided. I think Jacobs made him what he is now. Originally he was more of a peon than anything else. Now he is just this essence of evil. That man… he has a lot of power over people.”
“So the two of you were friends?” I asked. There was an emotion bubbling I couldn’t quite read and I could see Casey was trying very carefully not to become involved in the conversation.
“Well yea, we were. I mean, he had me thinking he was falling for me which pissed off Liam… I mean…”
Her and Casey exchanged looked of regret and then sighed. Dr. Wilcox was definitely a part of this little mix up.
“The doc? Why was he so mad?”
Pandora now had stuffed half of a crepe into her mouth and turned to Casey to respond. He was blushing a little, embarrassed obviously over having to involve himself in the conversation. I could see he had been more on the receiving side of the doc’s side than Pandora’s. She may have even been a bit curious herself.
“Well you know, Liam was Pandora’s doctor for a long time and they had been close friends.”
“Close friends?” I laughed. It was like watching a soap opera.
“He and Pandora may have secretly been crazy about each other.”
Pandora now spit a mouth full of water across the table, luckily away from where I had been sitting. My jaw dropped as I thought back in my head to the man who had been in his mid-forties, fairly attractive and yet old enough to be my dad. The girls weren’t exactly falling over themselves for the guy who I got my checkups from.
But the blush in Pandora’s cheeks said enough. She smiled but this had been where her sadness came in. It made sense too. It was easy to love and spend time with family and enjoy the most of what you could have with them and then move on. It was all she had done. But she’d never loved, not in the way a man and a woman, a man and a man or even a woman and a woman should love.
It was clear not that she had once fallen for a guy who wasn’t far off from how she looked and then had been ripped from the short time she could have enjoyed it. Liam and the look he had on his face when he saw her for the first time was all the evidence I needed that he had felt the same and in all the years he waited, dateless and politely brushing off the moms at my schools who would flirt with him. He only wanted Pandora.
My heart hurt at the thought. I wished instantly there was something I could do to fix it but with ever second they grew further and further apart.
We left the diner in a significantly different mood than we had arrived. When we returned to the base, Liam and Connor had been the only two up only making the situation a slight bit more awkward. Pandora smiled to Liam who exchanged a silently happy response to see her. Instead of being bashful, her long years of wisdom had brought her two him and the two walked off away from the group to talk.
“That is probably the saddest love story ever written.” Connor smiled as he patted me on the shoulder. We watched as the two of them disappeared out of sight and I shrugged.
“Everyone knew about them?”
Casey shook his head, “Most of us just guessed. There is a look two people give one another when they have found the right person. It’s deep and intense and even though words are not spoken it affects everyone around them.”
“I held a bit of a torch for your sister back in the day but it was obvious when she was around Liam how she felt. He was the only stable person in her life before she came to us, a friend at first and them silently more. They might have gotten to spend a few years together, happy, if it had not been for what Ethan did.”
I turned to Connor now, he was tired and pale from the long hours he’d just spent before the computer. His hair was a mess as he was in just regular, kick around sweats and a white undershirt.
“What do you mean?”
“He tried getting your sister to believe Liam was this bad guy, tried getting her to fall for him instead. It might have worked if your sister wasn’t as smart as she is.”
The idea of Ethan and my sister made me want to puke. It was just another reason for me to kill him when I finally saw him again. Stories like this made Romeo and Juliet look like kid stuff.
I turned to stretch when I had noticed a girl standing in the doorway of the hideout. She had been holding a bag and had long, dark hair. It was Scarlet. I turned to Casey and Connor to find they had both been smiling.
“Let’s just say your sister wanted more for you than she was able to have.”
An excitement built up in me that I tried very hard to push down. I ran over to Scarlet and I could tell she was reading the smile on my face. My parents walked in behind her only causing me to grow more excited. That empty spot I had been feeling since the master had left was filled again. I just needed to be reminded.
I hugged my mom and dad. They had been so worried. I could see it in my mom’s face and my dad had a few more greys than normal. I then looked down at Scarlet who was not smiling but with a worried expression on her face.
“Are you ok? Do you need mom to kick someone’s ass?” My mother pushed past her and hugged me again and then looked me up and down. Her long blond hair was tied up and the makeup under her eyes indicated she had slept or cried most of the way. She was also gaining a little weight which made my mother even cuter than she normally was. This woman was a squirrel but attacked like a pit bull.
“Mom, I am ok.”
“My god, look at your arms. I was so worried. I was scared and worried and you wouldn’t talk to me. Is it better now? Can you talk to mommy,” she began to sniffle and a tear ran down her cheek, “Please tell me my baby boy is back.”
I hugged her tightly as my dad tried to pass off pushing away a hair from his eye when it was really a tear. I must have been just awful to them when I was under the control of that man. I felt guilty but I wouldn’t let that emotion ruin the dose of love that I needed.
“Mom, I am ok. Pandora has taken very good care of me.”
My dad stepped forward and hugged me as well, “We thought she would but you need your parents. From now on, no matter what, you talk to me when you need help, son. I may not be some super spy but I am your father. There is a lot of power that comes with being a dad.”
He was right. I couldn’t have loved my parents more in that moment. They were good, no, great people. Casey and Connor came over also and provided loving welcomes to my parents and they began to speak.
As I watched them, a cold, tiny hand grabbed my own and pulled me back into the hallway, away from the crowd. I looked down at Scarlet who had red eyes. She also wanted to cry but was holding it back. I looked to find her sister but saw nothing. I knew, under the bright lights and her sad face, her sister was gone. She didn’t have to speak.
“How have you been?” I asked stupidly as I watched her beautiful face. She didn’t know it had been me that scared her sister away. I could feel her emotions pushing onto me now and she was overwhelmed with different and contradicting thoughts.
The only stable one was that she had been happy to see me.
“I feel like I am responsible for some of the things that have happened. I bring trouble with me and your parents missed you so much and I…”
“This isn’t your fault,” I placed my hand onto her cheek. She did not pull away and instead closed her eyes as if relaxed at the mere touch of our skin, “My parents took good care of you?”
She giggled and sniffled a bit, “They practically adopted me. They are so wonderful.”
“They are very wonderful. I am glad you are ok. You know, I think I was starting to miss your snarky attitude around here.”
She didn’t reply and instead looked up at me with her new purple eyes. Her hair was still long but had transformed into a purple like the morning sky would bring over the Rockies. She just wanted to be near me and I wanted to be near her. I started to bend over to share another kiss with her, a kiss I had waiting for, for so long and the words behind me had caused me to jerk around.
“What did you just say?” I rushed over to my mother and father and a crowd of pale, stone cold faces. Pandora and Liam had also run over and were shocked and whatever they had heared.
“Well um, Perses, Pandora… I am pregnant!” My mother giggled hysterically.
It didn’t take long for my head to spin and the world go black. I was matched only by Pandora’s body slamming the ground before my own as we allowed the rush of that reality to hit us.
My mother was pregnant.