by Palladian
“So, about Kate’s story,” Riss said, then hesitated before she continued. “There’s no nice way to ask this, so I’ll just come out with it. Do you think they were trying to keep people from breeding outside the group?”
Lex raised an eyebrow as she glanced at Riss’ frown. “That’s a possibility I hadn’t thought about. It might be giving them too much credit, though. MSI doesn’t seem to keep its lab stock around long enough to consider breeding it.”
Riss nodded, her mouth set in a grimace as she turned and waved goodnight. Lex stood for a moment, still thinking, before she entered her own room. She credited the disturbing dreams she had that night to her upset stomach.
Chapter 28: Novel
“Guess what, guys?” Lex asked as she bounded down the stairs and into the dining area. “They’re going to come and live with us!”
Casey laughed and clapped her hands while Riss and Lou smiled at her over their coffee cups. “I had a feeling they would,” Casey replied with a smile of her own. “When do they want us to come and get them?”
“A week from today, Kate said. She said they wouldn’t have much to bring and that they could travel by bus, but I told them they could forget that,” Lex replied, returning everyone’s smiles. “I don’t know, though. She sounded mad; she didn’t really go into it, but I got the impression that Victor had already made up his mind and had to convince her it was a good idea.”
“What do you mean?” Riss asked, fixing Lex with a curious gaze.
“She said that he didn’t tell her right away, but he started closing his shop down as soon as they got back. I guess he just worked on her in the meantime, and that’s why it’ll take them a week to get things ready to go. He has to return all the broken and fixed items in his shop to their owners.” Lex said, looking down and feeling confused as to why Kate hadn’t wanted to move in, but shrugged it off since her friends would be coming after all.
Turning to Casey, Lex asked, “So, do you think we should put off our next tour until we can convince Kate to join the band? She did say she’d been practicing on the guitar her old boyfriend left behind.”
Casey smiled broadly in response. “That might be the best way to go even if she doesn’t join. I’d started setting up a few places earlier than that but I can call them back to reschedule. Maybe a month and then go on a short tour?”
Lex looked at the other band members to see what they thought. Riss shrugged and nodded. Lou gave Lex a thoughtful look, then asked, “Do you know if Kate’s ever been in a band before?”
Raising her eyebrows, Lex shook her head. “That’s a good point. Maybe a month and a half before we plan to go on tour then? And maybe something local a week or two before that to get her used to it?”
Lou nodded as he looked at Casey, who nodded in return. Lex grinned madly then as something occurred to her. “You know, we’re going to be the most badass moving crew ever.”
When they pulled up in front of the address they’d been given a week later, however, Lex just felt sad. The neighborhood, a suburb of Los Angeles, didn’t look too bad as far as the buildings went, but all around them there were the signs of grinding poverty: the battered-looking vehicles parked on the street, the large cluster of people in ill-fitting or worn-out clothing waiting for the bus, the open stares their well-kept van got. When she saw Kate and Victor coming out to meet them, though, Lex had to smile.
“Stop bouncing up and down in the seat,” Riss said, but when Lex looked over, she could see Riss trying not to laugh.
Lex did laugh as she got out of the van. “Come on, let’s get to work.”
Lou followed Victor and Kate’s advice to stay with the van, but even then it didn’t take long to clean the apartment out. “Not much of the furniture is ours,” Kate said with a shrug. “Just this table, these couple of chairs, and those boxes.”
It took about a half-hour for everyone to load Kate and Victor’s belongings into the van. “Is there anything else we need to do?” Lex asked Kate, eyeing the mostly empty apartment.
“Yeah,” Kate replied as the two of them went out into the hall. “I need to return these keys.”
Lex followed her friend to the basement and waited as she knocked on a door, talked briefly with an older woman, and then they left.
“Nice lady that runs the place, but she probably should have stopped working when she was sixty. She’s seventy now.” Kate shook her head.
Lex fell silent as she followed her friend outside. The sun peeking through clouds seemed like good luck, however, and Lex looked over to see Kate grin at it. “Come on,” Kate urged Lex, “let’s get out of here before anyone gets any ideas about the van.”
The drive home felt lively at first, with Lex and Kate singing to some of the tunes that came on the radio, but after a couple of hours, Lex was sitting leaning against one window with Kate fast asleep, leaning on her shoulder. She’d been watching the scenery go by for a while before she looked back into the van to notice that Victor was watching Kate, some concern on his face. When he noticed Lex looking at him, he gazed up at her with a look that was hard to interpret. Lex smiled back at him.
“I’m really glad the two of you decided to come and live with us,” she said quietly, trying not to disturb Kate.
Victor gave a small, genuine-looking smile in return. “We’re glad, too,” he replied.
Settling Kate and Victor into their rooms and the rest of the house didn’t take long. The next day the group decided, at Riss’ insistence, to tackle the ID situation. Riss sighed as she looked at the drivers’ licenses the new arrivals had handed over to her.
“I’m guessing you bought these on the street somewhere,” Riss said, flipping one and then the other over as if she couldn’t quite believe what she saw.
Kate shrugged, looking at the floor as she nodded. “Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess,” she said in a low tone.
Riss shook her head as she looked up again. “I didn’t mean it as an insult, Kate, I was just thinking that people will try to get away with anything these days. Give me an hour and then we can go downtown and get you two fixed up. Pick some new names, too, please, so that we can start you both fresh.”
Victor and Kate looked at one another, Kate with a raised eyebrow while Lex nodded in, she hoped, an encouraging way. Riss turned her laptop around moments later. “Here’s a name database, in case you need some inspiration.”
After they’d picked their new names out and gave them to Riss, she turned the laptop back her way. “Rose Lewis and Peter Pombo. Pretty solid, but I notice you’ve kept your former first names as middles.”
Kate shrugged, throwing a glance at Victor. “We thought it made sense, since I don’t think we’re going to stop calling each other what we always have.”
Riss nodded as she collected her laptop. “You’re probably right; the rest of us did something similar, as well.”
“So,” Kate asked as she watched Riss head to her room, “what’s she going to do?”
“Well,” Lex answered, “she’ll cause everything to get created for you—birth certificate, social security number, everything. No one will be able to tell the difference, because all your IDs will come from the people who normally issue them.”
“She’s that good, huh?” Kate was silent for a moment, considering. “She must have kept most of what she could do under wraps, didn’t she?”
“Pretty much,” Lex agreed. “We’re lucky she’s not stuck in the labs.”
The weather seemed pleasant for late summer as they made their way to the DMV offices, not as hot as it had been the previous week. Lex, Kate, Victor, and Casey sat there for fifteen minutes or so, conversing in murmurs as Riss typed furiously into the laptop she’d brought with her for a minute, then a number of screens flashed by quickly before Riss nodded.
Riss looked at Victor and Kate before she leaned over to whisper to them. “Your data is in the computers now. Just wait until the person taking photos calls you,” she finished, sitting ba
ck into her chair and fiddling with the laptop again.
Kate looked at Lex, who shrugged and nodded. Five minutes later, the person at the photo counter called Victor’s new name. Victor smiled at the women and got up to move over to the counter. About ten minutes after that they called for Kate. Giving Lex a big grin, the other woman went up to get her picture taken.
As Lex watched, however, waiting for her friend to get her photo taken, she felt her stomach clench as she watched Kate and the woman taking the photos begin a discussion that seemed to turn into an argument. They argued for a minute or two, until Kate turned towards the wall and gestured the woman to come nearer.
Suddenly, the woman who’d been taking the photos ran for the back room with her hands over her mouth. She nearly ran into a man who’d been coming out of the door, and he just looked after her, stunned. Lex watched as Kate finished adjusting her eye patch, then sat in the photo chair and waited. After ten minutes, a different woman came out from the back room and took Kate’s picture.
“Finally,” Kate said as she came back to the chairs where all her friends were waiting. Victor’s new license had been finished some time before, and both he and Lex fixed Kate with anxious glances as she sat heavily in a chair near them. Kate busied herself by looking out the window, however, avoiding her friends’ eyes.
They all fell silent until Kate’s name was called, and once her license was ready, made their way back home. Lex tried to catch Victor’s eye along the way, but he wouldn’t return her look for some reason. Finally Lex just sighed and tried to put the incident out of her mind.
Over the next few days the group of them had settled into a routine much like the one that Casey, Lex, Riss, and Lou had become used to before the other two had arrived. Lou and Casey seemed to wake earlier than everyone else, followed by Lex and Kate. Victor usually followed and Riss invariably woke last. The four early risers usually worked out after they awoke and the group would then eat breakfast together afterward. From late morning to sometime in the afternoon the band members practiced while Victor tested the sound equipment or recorded them and Casey researched show venues. Everything had been going well with working Kate into the existing songs, and they had even recorded a new song that all four of them had written together.
One morning, however, Lex came into the main room from the gym sometime after she’d become used to Kate joining them. She noticed that it seemed someone was in the big bathroom downstairs and knocked.
“Hey, Kate! Are you in there? I was wondering if you were coming to work out with us this morning,” Lex called, then waited for an answer, but there was no sound from behind the door.
When she tried the door, she found that it stood ajar, so Lex slowly opened the door. “Kate? Are you in here?” she asked. Still hearing nothing, Lex opened the door wide enough to enter the room and walked in. Lex gulped in a big breath as she saw Kate’s body sprawled on the floor. Her friend lay in the robe she usually wore in the mornings, and Lex felt herself start to tremble as she saw a trickle of blood near her friend’s head.
“Kate,” she almost whispered, kneeling near the other woman. Lex could see now that Kate had her eye patch off, and she took in a sharp breath of air as she saw Kate’s eye socket. She’d expected to see something like the injury Kate had described, looking as if someone had poked a hole into her eye and then cooked it like an egg, but what she saw looked like the entire socket was empty. It looked red and angry, as if infected, with a blood trail coming from the socket. Blinking against her tears as she tried to focus, Lex grabbed for a clean towel and wet it. She used it to gently clean along Kate’s hair, face, and eye socket.
“Your poor eye,” she remembered whispering at one point, and then Lex gasped as she distinctly saw something move within the empty socket. Looking more closely, she saw the flesh pulse again and sighed, closing her eyes. She finished cleaning up Kate’s face and then grabbed another towel to put under her friend’s head. Quickly, Lex ran to the gym to get Casey.
“Hey,” she said, leaning in to get her friend’s attention, her fingers tapping on the doorframe as she struggled to reign herself in, “I need your help to carry something, Casey. Lou, can you come to talk to us in five minutes in the kitchen?”
He looked at Lex with a quirked eyebrow, then at Casey. The two nodded at one another, and then Lou answered. “Sure, I’ll see you then.”
“So, what’s this about?” Casey asked as she followed her friend into the next room.
“Kate’s collapsed. There’s something wrong with her injured eye. It looks infected or something. It actually looked like the flesh in there was moving when I looked at it,” Lex said, looking up at Casey.
Casey stopped walking for a moment and looked down at Lex. “Pulsing, kind of?” she asked. Lex thought about it a moment, then nodded. Casey looked away from her friend, then continued walking towards the main room. “Yeah, that’s what Lily said they called it at the lab. It’s normal for people that they’ve given the ‘treatments’ to. It happened to you a lot while you were sick. Your neck and face, especially,” Casey said, her voice uncertain.
Lex grabbed her friend’s hand and said, “Don’t you worry about this. Everything’s going to be fine. OK?”
Casey gave Lex’s hand a gentle squeeze in return before letting go with a sigh. “Everything will be fine,” she repeated, her tone of voice not convincing.
Casey lifted Kate into her arms carefully, making it appear as if the other woman weighed nothing. When the two came out of the bathroom, Lex spotted Victor on the stairs. His face went pale as he saw whom Casey carried.
“We’re all going to talk in the kitchen in a few minutes,” Lex said as she and Casey moved past him on the stairs.
Victor just nodded, then mutely followed the two women back upstairs into Kate’s room. Lex could feel him watching as Casey put Kate back into bed and Lex tucked the covers in around her friend, shut the blinds, then fiddled with the glass of water by the bed. She touched Kate’s forehead and sighed, looking up at Casey. Casey nodded as all three of them left Kate’s room.
Riss had emerged from her room as the three of them came out into the hall and gave them a look with one eyebrow raised high. Lex gestured with her head for Riss to follow as they headed back downstairs. Lou was already in the kitchen making a pot of coffee and quietly watched them come down to the main room.
When they all sat around the table some time later, some looked at Lex while others tried to catch Victor’s eye.
“Why don’t you start this out, since you found her?” Casey asked Lex. Riss and Lou’s eyes both flew to her and then fixed on Lex. She sighed and then explained to everyone at the table what had happened.
“I was hoping that Victor could shed some light on what’s going on,” Lex finished, her eyes turning to the man in question.
He’d been staring down at his hands but looked up and around the table before he started talking. “I would have said something sooner, but Kate made me promise not to tell you.”
“Since we already know now, you’re not breaking a confidence,” Lex replied. “Could you tell us what you know?”
He sighed, then continued talking. “I don’t know exactly when it started, because I found out by accident. I figure it wasn’t long after we got away, though, because I noticed that she’d never take the eye patch off anymore and she seemed grumpier than she used to be most of the time. I caught her once with it off and saw that it looked like it had been infected. I told her to go to a doctor, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t talk about it, either, but I got the impression that something scared her. I know it hurt her because she’d go through these huge bottles of aspirin in a couple of weeks. At first, I could tell she didn’t want to come here because she thought you wouldn’t want her because of this, but then she changed her mind. I’m not sure, but I think she started thinking, I don’t know, that she didn’t want to leave me alone.”
Lex stared at Victor as he spoke, letting his words sink in
. After his last couple of sentences she’d gazed over at Casey to see an upset look in her eye. Lou had reached over the table to grab her hand, though, and Casey gave him a little smile in return as Lex watched.
“She’s not going to die,” Lex said, the sound of her own voice surprising her. “I didn’t die, and neither will she. We’ve just got to figure out what to do.”
Closing her eyes, Lex stopped to think. After a moment, her eyes popped back open.
“Riss,” she began, turning to look at her friend, “I know you said that you wiped out the records at the lab we broke into to find Lou, but I was wondering, do you think you could look at whatever’s there now and see if you can find Kate’s records? I don’t know if they’d help much, but at least it could be a start.”
“I could probably get back in there if I wanted to,” Riss said with a shrug and the ghost of a grin. “But I don’t think there’d be much reason, since I still have all of that information even though they don’t.”
Lex knew her mouth had dropped open. “Riss, I don’t believe you!” she said, shaking her head and looking at the other woman with a little smile. “In that case, could you see if you have Kate’s records in the data you have?”
Riss smiled a little more broadly. “It’ll take me a little while to figure out what’s in there, since I haven’t looked at it since we got it, but I’ll search for them.”
Nodding, Lex looked at the other three at the table. “Now all we have to figure out is how to get some help for Kate—”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” a voice broke in from the stairs.
Everyone turned quickly to see Kate, in jeans and a t-shirt and with her eye patch back on, walking down the stairs, focusing on the steps under her feet and clutching the hand rail. Lex heard her chair hit the ground somewhere behind her as she realized she’d leapt to her feet.
“Kate! How are you feeling?” she asked, happy that her friend was up and about, but not sure what to do next.
