I woke up with my right arm was reaching across Zaine's body and my left arm wedged between us. I blinked a while to wake up and slowly rose up to glance up at Zaine, but he was sound asleep, with the lightest noise of snoring. I smiled at the cuteness of it all and felt at peace as he inhaled and exhaled in sighs of sleep. I repositioned myself again to just lay there for the sleep that Zaine deserved, but then I heard knocking on the door. I didn't even think about getting up and I closed my eyes and buried my face in Zaine's chest...but then they knocked again.
"Open up! I know you're not asleep!" Cheshire yelled through the door. Sh!t. I felt my heart beat speed up as Zaine's breath remained the same. There was more banging on the door. "Union, there are important things going on!"
Important things? Before I got to question it there was another rhythm on the door before I heard him grab the doorknob. But by then, I had stopped feeling the serene breathing from Zaine's slumber as his hand on the opposite side of me slightly moved as he felt the fabric of my shirt with his arm stretched around my shoulder.
"And don't freak out, but Aspen isn't here..." he was warning as he opened the door, but then stopped when he saw me at Zaine's side as he started to awake and was adjusting to the bright room and groggy state. Zaine removed his arm from around me as he sat up against the headboard. "...never mind."
"What?" Zaine asked, confused, with a light yawn.
"Nothing," Cheshire said, glancing between me and Zaine with a playful smirk. I could only hide my smile by falling back onto the bed and start to get off of it.
"What's going on?" Zaine asked as he got up from the bed and walked over to the coat closet and pulled out a pair of jeans, opposed to some gym shorts that he was wearing. I didn't know why he was changing his clothes. Everyone else had extra bags and outfits from Cheshire's never ending wallet, but Zaine only bought clothes if he really had to. Yet, no matter what, no one cared what we wore here.
"The news," he sighed.
=XXX=
"With devastated families all over the country questioning why this is happening to ordinary children, responses have been made to propose an injection to prevent the mutiny amongst—" the national news reported towards the end of the section before moving on. "Our very own president will speak on behalf of the epidemic."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked Cheshire as Zaine stood in front of the TV with his arms crossed and his back facing me.
"Someone is convincing the freaking national medical department that Special People are dying off from our extra genes, but somehow whoever this government organization is, is targeting mutants that weren't at the Academy, giving them some makeshift cure to kill them off, only to try and distribute the real cure to everyone to make sure mutants no longer exist," Cheshire explained, after, I'm sure Jane did.
"We don't have some disease; they can't cure us!" Zaine yelled.
"Zaine, you saw the syringes and you saw the school. They have a cure—"
He turned around to look at me.
"What I saw was bodies and bodies laying lifeless on the floor," he retold in a whisper. "If they had the cure, they wouldn't have needed to massacre all of those—"
"You heard the radio when we were there," I reminded. "They were ordered to take back all of the ones that were cured and not killed."
"Like they know the difference!" Zaine yelled. "They probably disposed of all of them just to be sure none of this blew up in their faces—"
"The real cure works, Zaine," Cheshire said. "Jane looked at it and—"
"I don't care," he interrupted, looking away from the both of us as he took this all too personal. "We need to start planning for Sunday."
Cheshire looked over at me as Zaine started taking out things from the backpack like gear.
"Where's Jane, Isaac, Anthony, and Chance?" Zaine asked as he messed around on his mini-Tablet and didn't look up. I walked over to him. "Cheshire, where—"
I grabbed his arm.
"Stop," I mumbled at him and he stopped operating the Tablet and looked down at me in calmness. "We can't plan about Sunday so far in advance when we still don't know what's going on."
"We do know what's going on," he insisted. "That's why this needs to happen."
"Well I'm not going to just storm into some military base when we don't know all of the facts," I reasoned. "Sure, they invaded the school and stuff but—"
He frowned ever since I said I wasn't going to leisurely storm into a base, but now he held up a hand and I stopped talking. What now?
"You're not going on Sunday."
"WHAT!?" both Cheshire and I yelled.
"You're not going on Sunday," Zaine shrugged and then walked over to the bed to pull off his plain, white shirt, throw it on the bed, and switch it with a nice blue one. I walked over to the other side.
"Um, why am I not going on Sunday?" I questioned.
"Other than the fact that you said it yourself—"
"I said if we didn't really know what's going on and aside from Chance and Sumer's knowledge even you said it last night that you knew who it was—"
"You know who it is?" Cheshire asked. Zaine looked over to him for acknowledgement, but didn't answer. Then his eyes returned to me. We stared at each other. His eyes proved that he was trying to find a way to explain something, but I was just glaring at him. I knew my powers weren't offensive, but I could easily not get hurt in any event and could actually be useful if he only let me—
"I can't let you go," he whispered. "I promised you—"
"I won't get hurt," I said, walking over to his side of the bed as he placed his hands on the mattress and looked down. I sat right beside where he stood. "Listen to me, Zaine. I'll be fine and you should know by now that—"
"What if they cure you and then shoot you?" he whispered. "You can't just assume that you'll be okay and keeping you here is an assurance that you will be."
"But Zaine, I—"
"Don't make the same mistake I did," Cheshire spoke up, stepping inside the room finally and closing the door. "I thought Alice was safe even when I had to leave her, but that's when they got her. You can't just keep Aspen here when it's—"
"The Agency taking Alice is different than killing Aspen," Zaine reasoned.
"They didn't take Alice; they killed her," Cheshire corrected. "And as much as I can sit here and be bitter over it, I'm trying to make you realize that you can't keep Aspen cooped up in here."
"Chance and Sumer and Jane are going to be here—"
"It doesn't matter..." I tuned out what Cheshire replied because I realized that keeping me here was because I was just as useless as Jane was. She could be super smart, but she couldn't go into battle. And that was an insult to me. But then again, he never said Wib's name. So he would be going. "...they can't do what she can!"
"You're taking my brother," I interrupted their argument. I didn't know if it was a statement or question, but Zaine would determine that. "You're choosing to take my Deaf brother who doesn't even know what's really going on...and not me?"
I never wanted to use Wib's deafness as a disadvantage point, but I was being realistic and somehow jealous over it. I had the same powers as him and I could hear and heal. Under my understanding, healing was more useful than a straight-shooting fifteen year old.
After no response, I stood up from the bed (shoving lightly past Zaine) and started to pull my hair into a ponytail.
"Come on, Cheshire, let's go train—"
"You're not—" Zaine said and then I felt arms locked around my wrists. "—going with him."
"If she—"
"Get out," Zaine growled at Cheshire. He looked to me as I rolled my eyes, but then lightly hid his smirk and obliged. As soon as the door shut, Zaine's arms uncoiled from my wrists and I spun to him.
"You're being unfair."
"I'm being your boyfriend!" he restated. "I promised you that I would protect you and I am. So please just let me—"
"You're not protecting me, you're belittling me," I said, crossing my arms. "I can do this, Zaine."
"You don't understand how dangerous this is going to be and I—"
"You're going," I reminded.
"Of course I am," he replied. "But I'm impenetrable."
"But the rest of you aren't. At least if I go, they won't get hurt and—" he started shaking his head. I groaned. "Zaine!"
"I can't lose you, Aspen," he reasoned. "It's not happening."
"Are you sure you're not just speaking as a leader who wants to bench the weakest link?" I asked him and meant it as an insult. He just stared at me and I scoffed and paced just two steps before he was facing me again.
"I'm not doing this just for you, Aspen," he reasoned. Yeah. Because there are twelve other people who can do it better than me? "I can't be speaking as a leader of the unit because I would be selfish."
"Selfish? It's not you wanting to participate in all of this—"
"But it's me denying your participation just so I don't have to deal with the idea of losing you!" he yelled and I shut my mouth. "I can't do that, Aspen. I promised you and your brother and your parents that nothing would happen to you! None of us want anything to happen to you. I don't know what would happen if something did."
My brother and my parents? When did that happen?
"Then let me go train with Cheshire and nothing will," I muttered, my mind still trailing back to him referring to my parents and Wib. I walked away from him and opened the door, only to find Cheshire stepping away from it as if listening the whole time.
"Uh, I was just—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I said unconvinced, grabbing his wrist and hauling him off.
=XXX=
"Ow," Cheshire said as I had him pinned in a hold and then I rolled off of him. I helped pull him up from the ground. "You're really...feisty today."
I narrowed my eyes and produced a sarcastic smile briefly before glaring. He held up his hands and I started punching. It really did nothing to help me, but it was just what we did in the meantime. I was mad and confused and just so incredibly UGH that I was smacking the heck out of his palms. And then suddenly, he grabbed my fist with his hand and I gave him a second glare before twisting an arm behind his back, but then he reached his opposite arm around his back and around my waist to pull me away from him and pin me to the ground with a forearm over my collarbone. I attempted to get up, but he held me down by my shoulders.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk about—"
"You've asked me a million times already," I reminded.
"Well you know he's—"
"—been sitting on the porch watching us, yes," I finished and then he rolled off of me. "He's just...jealous and unreasonable."
"Maybe that's what you two need; to spar so he can tell that you can't get hurt," he suggested. I started repeatedly smacking his leg in excitement before he frowned and moved it with questioning eyes.
"That's genius," I commented, standing up.
"Of course I am," he replied and then I started to reluctantly walk over to the buff boyfriend of mine who had been sitting there with his arms locked around his knees as he watched me and Cheshire for the past half hour. And I was glad he didn't have the nerve to ask "What?" rudely as I stood above him.
"I dare you to fight me," I said and he scoffed. I frowned. "Fight me."
"That would be called domestic abuse," he grumbled in rejection.
"We're not married."
"Whatever," he immediately responded.
"Fight me," I challenged once more.
"I'm not fighting you," he declined. I pouted and crossed my arms.
"Fine. We'll wrestle then."
"I'm not fighting a girl," he sighed.
"Cheshire did!"
"Cheshire doesn't have the strength I have," he reasoned. "I can crush you."
"I can heal it," I determined and then reached down to grab his hands to pull him up after unwinding them from his grasp, but then he reached out to grab my forearms and keep me there.
"Why are you so desperate to prove me wrong?" he asked.
"Why don't you find out?" I asked, pulling him up—or at least attempting, in which he playfully rolled his eyes and obliged as Cheshire was already walking back toward us, smirking and shaking his head.
"Good luck man. She's actually gotten better," he said, rubbing the joints in his hand. Oops.