by Yalu Taylors
“Sorry but I have other plans.” I say over my shoulder as I walk away. I pass Braydon in the doorway and he puts his arm out like he's going to stop me, but I glare at him and he drops it to his side. I see the hurt in his emerald eyes and I nearly cave but force myself to stay strong. I have to protect them, no matter what.
After going to the bathroom, I decide to head to the library. As I'm walking through the stacks in the back, I hear a whispered conversation. Out of curiosity I slow down and casually stroll along the other side of the book shelves to listen in.
“She barely spoke to me, I think she's hiding something from us. Do you think she knows?” Zack's worry shines through his voice, but his words have me curious and annoyed at the same time.
“Did you see how scared she was last night, I don't know what she’s so afraid of, but I don't think it's us.” Braydon states.
“Did she get another message from the unknown number? Maybe that's what spooked her.” Zayne's voice sounds hopeful.
“Nothing's come through on the cloned phone.” Hunter's words have me quickly pulling my phone out and staring at it. They wouldn't. Would they? I put the phone on silent and turn off the vibrate function. I bring up Hunter's number and type out a text.
Tessa: Can we meet up after school?
Two dings ring out from where they are standing. “It's T. She wants to meet up after school.” Hunter whispers loudly. “Well at least we know the clone phone's still working.” I gasp and step back, bumping into the shelf behind me. I steady the shelf hoping they didn't hear me. My heart thunders in my chest, it's so loud in my ears I worry they'll be able to hear it.
“Well there's nothing else we can do until we meet up with her after school. You guys head to your next classes, I'll see if I can find Tessandra. She's still on school grounds so she can't have gone far.”
“Do you think it's a good idea Bray? What if she catches you following her? She's acting suspicious as it is. We'll never find out if she's one of us if she won't trust us.”
“Don't talk about that here, Hunter, anyone could be listening. Besides I'm positive she is. You saw how she dazed out. We've seen that look on your face a hundred times. I'm positive she was having a you-know-what.” Hunter has visions? No, they must be talking about something else.
“You don't think that's what spooked her do you Bray? Maybe she saw something bad.” Oh, my fucking hell. They are talking about visions.
“You know it only works a few minutes in advance.” Wow they don't know much do they? I've seen months in advance before. I hear their voices get louder and I take off in the opposite direction. Hiding behind one of the computer desks I peek over the partition trying to see if they've left yet.
“You hiding from someone?” I jump and spin around nearly tripping myself on the chair. Shaun holds my arms to steady me.
“No. I was just um.” I can't think of a good lie, so I just shrug my shoulders.
“You were just? Hiding from someone! Did you break up with that twin guy or something?” Shaun's voice sounds happy and his eyes are practically glowing with joy as he asks that question. He better not hit on me again. Just to be safe I lie. Quickly looking around I see one of the older Librarians next to a bunch of fallen books.
“No, I didn't break up with him. I was hiding from the librarian. I accidently knocked over a bunch of books.” I point to where she is and duck down as she looks our way.
“Did she see you do it? I could distract her if you want to leave.”
“I don't know.” I pretend to think about it then say, “Thanks for the offer but maybe I should just go offer to put them back on the shelves.” I grab my bag and start walking towards her. As I get within talking distance I ask if she would like some help. She accepts and hands me the larger pile of books. I cross to the shelf and start sorting them into their correct places. I see movement out the corner of my eye and watch Shaun leave without a word of goodbye. I quickly finish, and the librarian thanks me. The bell rings signaling the start of lunch and I hurry out to my car.
I unlock the door and jump in quickly shutting and locking the door behind me. I glance around checking the rest of the doors and breathe a sigh of relief. I open my bag and realize I don't have anything for lunch. “Shit.” Tapping on my window has me jumping and I hit my head on the roof. “Fuck!” Rubbing my head, I turn to glare at the intruders.
“Open up Babe, it's cold out here.” Zayne smiles at me and his left dimple shows. I really want to know what else they are hiding from me but I'm still a little scared.
“Please Babe.” I'm torn between wanting to know more and not wanting to let on I heard them. Both options require me to at least talk to them. With my decision made, I unlock the doors. Braydon and the twins fight over who gets the front seat and while they are pushing and shoving each other, Hunter lifts me up and puts me in the passenger seat. He closes the door, snatches my keys, and locks the others out.
“How much did you hear T?” He whispers low enough so no one outside the car can hear. I open my mouth and he cuts my protests off.
“Don't bother denying it, I saw you walk in and I saw you run off afterwards. You heard everything didn't you?” Braydon and the twins start banging on the windows demanding to be let in. I nod my head.
I'm not sure what I was expecting his reaction to be, but he surprises me by leaning over and giving me a side hug, he cups my face with one hand, looking deeply into my eyes. “Just don't hate me. I'll explain everything tonight when I come to your hotel room.” His whispered words send tingles shooting through me. “I won't tell the others that you know if you don't want me to. I promise we will keep you safe, but you have to trust us. We know what we're doing.”
“Meeting you guys wasn't by chance, was it?” My words are slightly muffled by his collar as I bury my head in the crook of his neck. He holds me tight and smoothes my hair in a comforting gesture.
“No. We came looking for you. We better let them in or they'll kill me.” He waits for my nod before pressing the button on the fob. My door flies open and Braydon scoops me up before sitting in my seat, I look at Hunter while Braydon sits me up on his knee. “Not cool little brother. You need to learn to share.” His weird choice of words has me turning to look him in the face. He laughs and pulls me hard against his chest.
“You really had us worried Tessandra.” He rests his chin on my head and holds me tighter, then whispers in my ear. “I thought I'd lost you.”
The bell rings and Braydon reluctantly lets me go. Hunter and I head to biology, my hand in his. We sit down in biology and he pulls my chair right up next to him. Then pulls out our notes on the blue print of life and hands them to me. He wraps his arm around my back holding me tightly against his side. “We really should have done some of this at home T.” I glance up at him and my eyes are drawn once again to his lips. He looks deep into my eyes and inches his face closer to mine, huffing out a short minty breath he says, “You need to stop looking at me like that T or I won’t be held responsible for what happens.” I turn back to the papers in front of me, my cheeks flaming with embarrassment. We work quietly on our assignment while Ms. Fredricks flitters around the room helping students. She approaches us and asks if we need any help. Hunter tells her we’re good and I’m half expecting her to tell him to remove his hand, but she just winks at us and moves on.
“I thought for sure she would tell us off.” I say with a laugh.
“Nah, she doesn’t mind PDA’s she’s pretty cool really.” Hunter winks at me and with my cheeks once again going red, we get back to work. We are nearly half finished when the bell rings. Hunter packs our stuff away and grabs my bag.
“I’ll come with you to the hotel. We can talk about everything there.” He pulls his phone out and sends a quick text to the others letting them know the plan.
Chapter 6
We sang along to the radio while we travelled the short distance to the hotel. Hunter’s gravelly voice is very suited to country music and I
couldn’t help but admire his ability to match the pitch and harmonize with the singers. “You should do that more often Hunter.” I smile at him and he smirks at me.
“What?” He looks at me puzzled. I laugh as I park the car and turn the engine off.
“Smile. You have a beautiful smile.” He glares at me all traces of his smile gone.
“Guys are not beautiful. Handsome, sexy, gorgeous but never beautiful.” I burst out laughing at his indignation. I’m going to call him beautiful more often just to stir him up from now on. I laugh to myself as I get out.
“Whatever you say beautiful.” I’m still laughing when he grabs me from behind and starts tickling my ribs, I’m laughing so much if he doesn’t stop I’m going to pee myself. “Okay, okay stop please.” I beg breathlessly. Hunter laughs as I race to the door and unlock it before dashing into the bathroom.
“What’s wrong with Tessie?” I can hear Braydon and Hunter talking in the other room. My face goes bright red as Hunter tells him that I had to use the bathroom because I was laughing too much. Talk about embarrassing.
“What’s going on?” Zack and Zayne ask at the same time. With my cheeks flaming I exit the bathroom and punch Hunter in the stomach. Punching his abs is like punching a brick wall though so it didn’t hurt him, it hurt me. Cradling my hand against my chest I huff at him and go sit on the bed.
“Meany-head.” I sulk as he comes over to check my hand. He cradles my much smaller hand in his, flexing my fingers.
“Nothing broken T. But that will teach you for hitting me.” He laughs as he pulls me into a side hug. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that to Bray. Forgive me?” He whispers against my hair. I nod slightly, my embarrassment fading with his warm body pressed against mine. “You ready to tell the guys what you know?” I nod again and take a deep steadying breath.
“I heard everything you guys were talking about in the library and you’re wrong by the way. I see visions months in advance. I ran because I had a vision of all of you being murdered by Peter. We were all back at my parents’ place and well I don’t really want to go into detail.” My tears feel really hot as they trail down my cheeks.
“It.” I hiccup. “It was awful. And then I saw my own dead body on the floor in the kitchen. It kept replaying over and over in my head and I just thought if I stayed away from you all.” I draw in another deep breath. Hunter rubs my back and motions for me to go on. “I thought if I stayed away it wouldn’t happen. But in the vision Peter didn’t have a cast on his arm so I don’t know if it’s been prevented or if it just won’t happen until after he gets the cast off.” I say the last part in a rush then I ask the questions that have been burning a hole in my heart.
“Now that you know my secret, tell me who the fuck you all are.” My anger bleeds through in my words. “Why were you looking for me and what the fuck do you know about my visions?” I pull in another breath and speak again. “Oh, and do you know who my real parents are?” My tears have dried up due to my growing anger. I look around at the guys and not one of them seems to want to speak. They all have varying degrees of shock on their faces. They kept secrets from me but so did I, I know the anger is irrational, but I can’t seem to get it under control. “Will one of you answer my fucking questions?”
Hunter continues to rub my back trying to sooth my anger. Braydon steps closer and kneels down in front of me. “Tessie, we’re sorry we didn’t tell you right from the start, but we weren’t really sure you were one of us until you told us just now.” Braydon glares at Hunter before continuing.
“Well not all of us knew. Okay I’ll give you the short version and then you can ask questions at the end.” He sucks in a huge breath and blurts it out.
“We were all experiments in a test facility. The scientists were trying to create a super soldier, but their facility was raided by a rebellious group known as the Genetic Liberation group. The scientist set off a self-destruct on the facility and the group wasn’t able to save all the test subjects. They did however manage to rescue four males and a female infant. We don’t know who our real parents are but the documents we were able to find do show that only the twins share the same DNA. None of the other test subjects were related. We discovered all of this when Uncle died a couple of months ago. He wasn't our blood uncle by the way. Uncle was more like a term of endearment. He left us some paperwork and a few computer discs with information on how we were created. He also wrote a letter that contained information about you in it. After reading the letter we packed our stuff and moved into the shop here and began our search for you. All the information we had to go on was your age and a general description.” He takes a breath and goes to continue but Hunter cuts him off.
“I knew it was you the moment I saw you. The description fit, and I could see in your eyes that you were different than all those idiot humans around you.” His words have me shocked and speechless. I open and close my mouth a few times before I can get any words out.
“Wait! Aren’t we human? Please don’t tell me all that then tell me I’m not human.” I plead with them.
“We are human, just a more advanced specimen of human. Hunter’s just being a dumbass again.” Braydon states glaring at his brother.
“Whoa, that means you two aren’t really brothers.” They both look at each other and Hunter laughs.
“We are in the sense that we grew up together, calling each other brother for almost our entire lives. We may not have the same DNA but that doesn’t make us any less family.” His words have my heart melting for him. He’s being so sincere and sweet.
Braydon picks up where he left off before I interrupted. “Uncle was the head of Genetic Liberation group, they are who rescued us. They rescued two other groups of guys as well, Ace's group hasn't checked in since April last year and Dane's group went missing not long after Uncle was killed.”
I stare at Braydon. “Wait, you guys told me he died of cancer. That was also when you told me that story about family services allowing you all to stay together.”
Braydon looks at the floor in shame as he responds. “That's the story we tell the normal humans so they don't ask too many questions. Truth is Uncle set us up with the Auto shop and the cover story before he was killed trying to rescue another group of kids from the labs. He managed to get a group of seven out but the two eldest in the group turned on him and he was killed trying to escape.”
“Okay.” I say slowly. I'm not sure what to say to all that so I change tactics. “So, what exactly did the scientists do to us?” I’m more curious about what we are then I am about finding out how we came into existence.
“We don’t really know what they did. We know they messed with our DNA and we know they made it so our brains function at a higher capacity. We’ve been searching for information for the last few months but all we have to go off is the name of the company that was destroyed and two of the scientists’ names.” My curiosity was peeked again when he explained that our brains work in a higher than normal way.
“So, I know Hunter has visions but what can the rest of you do?” The twins finally join in the conversation.
“We can communicate telepathically with each other.” They both say at once. “But it only works if we can see each other.”
Braydon places his palm over the back of my hand where a scratch is. I don't even know where the scratch came from. His face contorts in concentration and when he lifts his hand away I gasp. The scratch is completely gone. He holds my cheek and gently rubs his fingers over the remaining bruises, where he touches tingles for a little bit but soon goes away. His fingers caress the side of my face as he trails them to my lips. Using only his thumb he traces my bottom lip, rubbing gently back and forth. The tightness from the split eases and when he removes his hand I run my tongue over my now healed lip.
“Cool but won't people notice that they are suddenly gone?”
“Nope, that's where the twins come in.” He motions for them to come closer. “Don't freak her out, just keep it
simple.”
“We know what we're doing Bray.” They say together. “watch his face.” Ignoring their synchronized speech, I focus on Braydon. As I watch his face becomes bruised and battered. Two black eyes, a broken nose and a huge gash running down his right cheek. There's no evidence of pain so I assume it's just an illusion.
“How long does it last?” The surprised looks on everyone's faces as I calmly ask has me nearly laughing.
“We've been able to hold it for 24 hours without needing to see it, but it gives us dizzy spells to hold it that long.” Braydon waves the twins away and turns to me.
“There’s more.” He says in a proud voice. I watch as he lifts his hand in front of him and concentrates for a moment. In the palm of his hand a small flame flickers into existence. I laugh out loud.
“I haven't figured out how to hold it for very long though. Hunter, maybe you should show her what you can do.” Braydon shakes his hand and the small flame disappears. Hunter swaps positions with Braydon and the twins climb up on the back of the bed. I know I should be freaking out but to be honest I’ve lived with strange abilities for most of my life. Hunter walks over to the bed and with only one hand, he lifts the bed and all of us on it. He tilts the bed back a bit causing me and Braydon to fall onto our backs and the twins fall to the ground grumbling.
“So not cool Hunter!” They glare at him as they stand up. Hunter gently lowers the bed back onto the floor and scoops me up, cradling me in his arms. He holds me close to his chest as it heaves in and out.
“Unfortunately, our powers are a bit limited and using them has some strange consequences. When Hunter uses strength, he gets a little clingy afterwards.”
“He also gets really tired if he lifts something too big.” Zack chimes in. “We are awesome because our powers only cause mild headaches and dizzy spells and we can use them as often as we like.” Zayne places his hand on Zack’s shoulder.
“But we do have to be careful with what we say as we can also control weak people’s minds. That power does more than give us headaches Zack.” Hunter puts me down on the bed and goes to the tiny bar fridge looking inside before shutting the door with a grunt. Zack nods his head in agreement with his twin and sits down next to me. Zayne sits on the other side of me and puts his hand on my knee. Zack grabs my hand and holds it tightly.