Authors: Palladian
Lex sighed sadly. “I'm sorry to hear it. It's a terrible thing to have someone in your own family that you can't trust.”
Casey laughed softly but without humor, looking at her with the ghost of a smile. “It seems you know all about that.”
“That's the truth,” Lex replied with a grim smile of her own.
They ate in silence for a while longer, each caught up in their own thoughts. Once they’d finished, Lex moved to collect up the dirty dishes in order to put them in the dishwasher and Casey stored the leftovers.
“Do you still want to help me put my bed frame together?” Lex asked Casey, looking over at her friend to gauge her mood.
“Sure, if you're still up to giving me a demo afterwards,” Casey responded, nodding decisively.
Lex smiled in reply. “I was planning on it. Come on upstairs and we'll get started.”
The two of them froze for a moment after entering Lex’s room, looking around in surprise since it appeared the number of boxes and packages had doubled since lunchtime. The scent of the room had gone from slightly stale air to a fainter version of the new car smell, probably due to the number of new things. Finally, Casey turned to Lex with a grin. “Feels like Christmas, doesn’t it?”
Lex found herself giving an answering grin as the two of them moved the new boxes to the corners of the room to make space to work. After following Casey’s directions to find a well-stocked toolbox in the storage room down the hall, Lex smiled to find Casey laying out the pieces of the futon frame on her return.
“This is about the extent of the help I can offer you, though,” Casey warned. “I’m not real handy with tools.”
Letting out a brief laugh, Lex replied, “Don’t worry about it. For most of my childhood we had only girls in the family, so my father seemed to designate me the honorary boy and I learned all kinds of handy things as a result. I’ll probably just need you to hold things in place now and again.”
Casey grinned broadly then. “That I can do.”
The two of them worked carefully through the instructions, and a little over an hour later Lex proudly inspected the completed frame with the futon mattress on top.
“Piece of cake, right?” Lex asked Casey as she put the tools back in their box.
“Whatever you say,” Casey replied, looking a bit dubious. “So, are you ready to give me that demo?”
“Sure, just give me a minute to put some workout gear on,” said Lex, disappearing into the bathroom with a handful of clothes after quickly fishing them out of her bags.
When she emerged ready to go, they went downstairs. At ground level they both paused, hearing the small noises of someone moving around in the kitchen.
“Do you know who it is?” Lex asked Casey quietly, curious since they hadn’t run into anyone else all day.
Casey shrugged. “Let's find out.”
Both of them poked their heads around the corner and saw Serena sitting at the kitchen island, looking downcast and eating out of the ice cream carton Casey had showed Lex earlier.
Lex looked up at Casey questioningly. Casey shrugged. “Hey, Serena,” she called, “Lex is going to show me one of her martial arts forms. Do you want to come along and watch?”
Serena looked up at them for a moment and sighed. She shook her head negatively before putting another spoonful in her mouth and looking back down at the table, seemingly lost in thought.
“OK, then, see you later,” Casey responded.
When they got to the staircase going down, Lex asked Casey, “Is Serena OK? She seemed upset.”
“She gets into these bad moods sometimes,” Casey replied, shaking her head. “When she does, it's usually good to keep out of her way until she feels better.”
Lex let out a small sigh of worry for her teammate and continued to follow Casey. They climbed down a few levels, but when they started to go past the fourth level down, Lex had to speak up.
“How many floors does this place have?”
Casey briefly looked to be mentally counting. “Seven I guess?”
“Seven?!”
“Yeah, if you count from the top floor down.”
After a moment to think about that, Lex shook her head as if to clear it and asked, “What's on this level? I haven’t been down here yet.”
Casey laughed and pushed the door open. “Check it out for yourself.”
Lex saw a glassed-in area with a pool and attached hot tub to their right as they came through the door, and she gaped at it for a moment.
“To the left are the lockers and saunas,” Casey continued, “but we're going this way.”
She led the way down the hall and through a door straight ahead. Inside lay a nice sized gym, the type Lex had studied martial arts in as a child. She felt a jolt in her stomach as they went through the door and she recognized the setup. In reaction to the familiarity, she felt her shoulders tighten as if waiting for a blow and felt a mix of wariness and resignation seep into her mind. Lex shrugged, trying to loosen her shoulders and throw off the feelings.
“This is probably where you'll be studying, once they find you an instructor. Hopefully they can get you Mr. Chen.”
“Who's he?” Lex asked, although something in the back of her mind stirred in dim recognition at the name.
“He was my martial arts instructor when I first came here, and he’s great. Anyway, is this a good space for you to do your demonstration?”
Lex nodded, looking around a little more now that she’d calmed down from the initial surprise. Highly polished tongue and groove wood flooring covered half the room, and in the other half padded mats covered the floor. Mirrors ran the length of all four walls and a heavy bag hung in one corner. Additional padding sat in another corner, but other than that the room looked clean and empty. As Lex breathed a deep, calming breath, the familiar scent of old sweat and floor polish greeted her. Lex took off her shoes and socks and did some light stretching in the section with the wood flooring. Somehow the cool, solid feel of the wood under her feet grounded her enough to cause her to lose the rest of her shakiness. Casey went to the edge of the padded floor and sat, leaning against the wall and watching Lex.
She cleared her throat before addressing Casey a moment later. “The form I'm going to show you isn't an official one. I came up with it as a little girl while practicing some hard moves and trying to perfect them. So, I designed a form that strung them all together so I could practice those things in particular. My dad hated it of course, so I had to do it in secret. I eventually mastered all of the moves I'd been working on, so I changed the form to include some other bits I liked a lot, and eventually it took the shape it has now. Anyway, it's my favorite, probably because it includes some of each type of martial art I know, so it should give you an idea of the range I have. Ready?”
Casey nodded from where she sat on the edge of the mats, watching intently. Lex turned to face the long mirror in the front of the room. As she stared at her reflection, her bare feet firmly anchored to the wooden boards, she could almost hear her father's words in her ears:
See your enemy
. Beginning her personal form, Lex clearly saw her father standing before her in her mind's eye. He wore the uniform everyone wore at the school he ran and he loomed over Lex, his hands in fists in front of him, giving her a derisive sneer.
In the past, she’d seen her mother sometimes, heard her endless insults and wishes that Lex had never been born, but lately it had been solely Lex’s father. She saw his jaw rock as she punched him. Lex watched him try to dodge her kick but got him from behind with another blow. She punched him in the windpipe then and kicked him so hard she could hear his knee splinter. Lex moved, dodged, kicked, and punched, seeing her father before her the whole time. Finally, as she wound the form down, she saw him one last time, bleeding on the floor. And then she stood motionless on the wooden floor, sweating and breathing heavily, again seeing Casey by the mats, standing now. Lex felt tired from the workout, but her mind still buzzed uneasily, having thought too much of her past today, and she clenched her fists tightly before letting her hands fall open.
Casey shook her head, her expression incredulous. “That was something. I've never seen anything like it.”
Lex looked at Casey, puzzled, as she eased onto the mats to stretch out. “What do you mean?”
Her friend laughed. “Well, I couldn't actually
see
a lot of it, which made it pretty unusual. Some of the things you did just looked like a blur of motion to me. I've never seen anyone move like that, not even Mr. Chen, and he's been practicing martial arts all his life. Sometimes he can move that fast, but I could barely see your arms and legs the whole time you were moving.”
Lex considered that for a moment, feeling surprised since no one had ever told her that before. “Well, maybe that's why they asked me to join the team. I'll have to take your word for it, though, because I could see my reflection fine. Aside from the fact that you couldn't see some of it, what did you think?”
“Very impressive. I wouldn't want to tangle with you,” Casey replied, shaking her head again.
“What do you mean? You've got extra dense skin and all; what could I do to you?”
Casey chuckled. “Just because I've got an advantage doesn't mean I'm invincible. If you throw sand in my eyes, for example, it's going to affect me the same way it would you. Poison still works, too. If you make me lose my balance, I’ll fall on my butt like anyone else. And, although my body is denser than most regular people’s, for others like me, each of us seems to have a different level of density. Given your response to Joan about improvising based on the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents, I wouldn't want to take my chances.”
“You're just saying that,” Lex replied, trying to scoff but feeling secretly pleased. Then, she surprised herself with a yawn that she tried to hide behind her hand.
Casey looked at her watch, her expression registering her surprise. “I hadn't realized how late it’s gotten. We should probably get some sleep now.”
Lex tried to bite back another yawn, but failed. “I guess you're right,” she said with a grin. “Let's head up.”
When they got upstairs, Casey paused a moment in front of Lex's room and pulled a sheet of paper out of a holder next to Lex's door. She handed it to Lex, commenting, “What do you know, they’ve posted your schedule already.”
Lex looked it over and remarked with some chagrin, “It seems like I've got more tests tomorrow at nine.”
“Well, I'm usually in the kitchen eating breakfast by 8:30 or so. See you then?”
“Sounds good.”
The two said goodnight then and Lex went inside. She dragged herself to her bags and pulled out a t-shirt to sleep in but felt barely able to reach the bed. Once dressed, she stumbled through her bedtime routine, her eyes closing as she did, and then she was finally able to try her new bed out. She didn't even remember later what it felt like because she fell asleep almost as she lay down.
The only thing Lex remembered from that night was a short burst of a dream. She sat by the river on a huge rock at sunset. The colors seemed to stream out over the water, and as she turned to see the painted sky, she could see her uncle next to her and then Casey sitting beside him. She nodded to them, and the three watched the sky turn colors as the light dimmed.
Chapter 7: Misunderstandings
Lex groaned and put her arm across her eyes to ward off the morning sunlight coming through her windows.
I’ve got to put up the drapes today
, she thought, realizing the light had gotten her up so early that Casey wasn’t due downstairs for another hour and a half. She got out of bed and stretched, thinking that it was going to be another bright, hot day if the sparkling river outside her window was any indication, and was glad that at least the window faced roughly west.
Deciding to make the best of waking early, Lex took a quick shower and then went to the kitchen to make some tea. As the water heated, she wandered over to the common room and looked out the picture windows along the back of the building. The water was so dazzling at close view that she barely noticed the ever-present trash gliding by, and Crystal City looked like a glittering kingdom in the distance.
She spent the next hour unpacking, and by the time she went back downstairs, her stomach sounded as if it had begun to eat itself. When Casey arrived a bit later, Lex realized that her friend had as much trouble getting moving in the morning as she usually did, so Lex put the water on for tea for Casey. The two breakfasted in a companionable silence, Lex crunching on the sweetly tart cherry granola she’d found and Casey slowly sipping her English breakfast tea, until Lex had to leave for her scheduled tests.
Lex ran down to the medical level and emerged in the hallway, unfolding the schedule from her pocket. Looking to the right, she saw a couple of people in the area behind the first door and the large window beside it. According to her schedule, this was her first stop for the day, so she reached for the doorknob and gently opened the door.
“Excuse me,” she said as she stepped inside, wrinkling her nose slightly at the antiseptic smell. “My name is Lex McKilliam, and I was told to report here this morning.” Her voice sounded a little unsure, even to herself, but the people inside seemed to stand at attention now as if they’d been waiting for her.
“Ah, Ms. McKilliam, please come this way,” a man in a lab coat responded.
“Please, call me Lex.”
“Lex, come through here and change into this. Make sure you remove any metal you might be wearing.”
Lex rubbed the thin, wash-worn, hospital-style smock they wanted her to wear between her fingers. “Can I at least keep my socks on? It’s chilly down here.”
The man looked at her oddly, as if he hadn’t expected her to speak in return. “Yes, I'm sure that would be fine.”
After changing and returning to the previous room, Lex was brought to the CAT scanner. The man in the lab coat told her that she would be imaged and to try not to move during the procedure. Lex arranged herself on a tiny shelf which then moved back into the machine. For the first few minutes, she breathed the stuffy plastic smell and felt uncomfortable with the small, darkened space and the faraway sound of banging on pipes. Eventually though, while trying hard to not move, she realized she’d begun having trouble keeping awake. The dimness and the prone position finally got to Lex, and she fell asleep several minutes after the procedure began.