Aberrant: The Middle Children of History - Back on the Horse

[z-Infinity]

I woke up afraid, in the darkness. For a second, I was stiff with fear, my heart pounding in my chest. Then I reached out and clicked on the lamp, bathing my room in soft light. Only then could I breathe, as I sagged into my mattress and shivered. Drawing my blankets tighter around me, I considered my life.

In the last six months, I hadn't left my new apartment and I hadn't called anyone. It was pure fear and shame that kept me locked up. Outside, in the world, Katsuro and Sasaki were fighting their war with Yaozu. I'd given them what little I'd learned from Yaozu, after I'd been rescued. Sasaki had looked at me closely and told me to call him when I was better. Katsuro hadn't looked at me at all.

That had bothered me. He'd been practically glued to me, and then after my release, he'd ignored me. Literally. He'd stared away from me, his face set in hard lines, all Asian and immutable.

The door to my room opened seconds after the soft knock. Potential stood in the entrance, his dark eyes concerned. "Infi?" he asked softly. "You ok?"

If Katsuro had written me off, then Potential had picked me right up. He'd been looking for me while I was missing, though he'd been looking in all the wrong places. He thought that I was being held by some Utopian thugs, but then, my brother probably wished that I'd been held by some Utopian thugs. It would have been another excuse to hate them, not that we needed much more than we had.

"Yeah," I said, feeling my heart still pounding in my chest. "Yeah, I'm fine."

He gave me a look that said he knew I was lying, but he didn't call me on it. Instead, he just said, "Ok, sis." He paused, looking uncomfortable.

Something was wrong. Feeling the exhaustion that had been my near-constant friend, I sighed and asked, "What?"

Potential looked me straight on, his eyes meeting mine. If I looked too closely at his eyes, I felt as though I were staring at mine in a mirror. We had those same nearly-black eyes that soaked up all the light and still left them shadowed. That made them sound a little romantic. They were not. They were flat-black: shark's eyes. Only my brother's were backed up with a quantum presence that gave them depth. Mine remained flat and black.

"What?" I asked again, more gently this time. I couldn't push him into anything. He'd tell me, or he wouldn't.

"I owe someone. They called in the favor," he said, looking miserable. "It's going to take several days."

Fear clutched me, and I had to fight not to grab the blanket, too. Potential had never been away for more than a few hours. A few days seemed forever without my bodyguard. I just wasn't strong enough to be alone.

"You could stay with Mom," he added.

Okay. Maybe I was strong enough to stay alone.

[z-Infinity]

My first day alone was the worst, despite the relative safety of my building. Potential had called in a favor - I did wonder once or twice if it was the favor that had taken him away - and gotten us a nice, big and most importantly safe apartment. It did have anti-nova intrusion measures, though it wouldn't stop, oh, say Yaozu or Bastion, but it might give me a chance to run. And it was far nicer than the shithole I had been in before I'd been kidnapped. So I guess one could say I'd gotten something out of my time with Yaozu.

I'd rather be there, and not have been kidnapped.

I jumped at every noise, and so turned on the TV, . Then I muted it half the time, straining to hear the phantom noises I was half-catching.

I turned on every light, and exposed every hiding place. Paranoid, me? You bet your ass. I could do very little, but I'd fucking do what I could.

I ordered pizzas and then paid one of the baseline kids next door to go down and get it. He stared suspiciously at my wan face, and the scars from my improperly removed piercings. But it was an easy twenty bucks, and he got his choice of the pizzas for his trouble.

I knew that I was pathetic, more than I had ever been before. I was now afraid, constantly afraid. Before, I would be wary, but at least I was willing to leave my apartment.

I may have gone on like this forever if I hadn't gotten the phone call.

It was the fourth day after Potential had left. I was hoping he'd be back that day; he'd called me that afternoon and told me things were going well, that he might be done soon. I'd felt hope for the first time since he left, hope that I'd have company soon. And hope that I'd have safety soon.

My phone rang, and thinking it was him, I picked it up. My mouth opened to say "Hello" when a masculine scream over the line stopped me. Literally stopped me - I froze in place, my breath catching in my throat as if a grasping fist had caught it there. And then the voice that chased me in my dreams, that stole my sleep and haunted me, came oozing over the line.

My lips formed his name, but I thankfully didn't say it. Yaozu said something, something in Japanese, I think. I still didn't know the fucking language, but adrenaline had sharpened my mind and the words were seared in my mind. Then the connection cut off, and I was left with a dead phone.

I checked the number the call had come from, and my stomach clenched violently - a-fucking-gain. The number was Sasaki's.

"Fuck," I said, then said it again because it made me feel a little better. I put my face in my hands, though it was crowded because I was holding the phone, too. "Think, Infi," I growled. "Think!"

If Yaozu had Sasaki, where was Katsuro? The bottle-blond Yakuza had been close to Sasaki, and one of his off-hand comments had led me to believe that he was in charge of guarding Sasaki - when he wasn't guarding me that is. What if Yaozu had Katsuro, too?

That thought hurt, and even brought a string of tears to my eyes. Katsuro hurt or dead was painful to me. I didn't even want to chase that thought through to its conclusion. I just selected a number I never thought I'd ever call again.

"Infinity," he answered on the second ring.

My stomach flipped once and I tried for casual as I said, "Actually, that's my name, Katsuro."

There was a pause, and he said, "What can I do for you?"

It was so cool and distant that it snapped me right back to the problem at hand. "Where's Sasaki?"

There was another pause, and when he spoke again, Katsuro sounded more animated. "He's... that is not your business," he replied. "You left us. You left this business behind. And rightly so."

His words stung me again. I felt a scowl twist my face, and I grabbed for my cigarettes, digging one out and lighting it with a violent motion. "Well, he fucking called me, Katsuro, so maybe he thinks different."

"He called you? When?"

"Just now," I grumbled around the cigarette, allowing it slur my words. "But I think he's in trouble."

"What?!" I was pleased to get a reaction from him besides the cool, calm exterior he had shown to date. Katsuro said something in Japanese. I didn't catch a word of it, but it was probably bad. "You waited to tell me this?"

He was right. I'd been unspeakably stupid and may have caused harm or even death to someone who didn't deserve it, to one of the few novas who never treated me as less or more because of what I was - or wasn't. "You're right," I admitted. I quickly told him what little I had heard during the brief call.

"I'll gloat unbearably later. Infinity, what did he say? Say it phoentically, it might be important." He was pleading with me, that deep voice rumbling in my ear. With effort, I obeyed, repeating the words as best I could. His indrawn breath told me it wasn't good before he said, "Yaozu said, 'No calling for help for you.'"

I sat on my couch for a long time, staring at the phone in my hands. Katsuro had told me to take care of myself, and had hung up. I knew he was busy, but his abruptness with me still rankled me. I should know better, but I remembered him being more attentive. He was busy, I reminded myself. He has a friend to find.

Despite how they had bickered, I had no doubt they were friends or something like it. Their connection was almost a living thing between them, an electric cord snapping between them. I wasn't sure they liked one another, but I think that they loved one another. It was one of those complicated things. Maybe someday, they'd tell me the story behind that weirdness.

Maybe, if Sasaki survived.

The dark thought made me stand and pace, my heart pounding. I liked Sasaki. He'd always treated me well, except for the one time he'd slapped me. But that had been to save my life. I could forgive him that.

Fuck this. I needed a distraction.

I pulled out my notepad and sat down to draw. After thirty minutes, I realized I was drawing Sasaki and I threw my charcoal pencil across the room. "Fuck!" I shouted, even as I gave in and fumbled for my phone.

"Katsuro," I said, when he answered, "I want to help."

"Help how, Infinity?" he asked, sounding annoyed. "Will you use your ability to irritate to break Sasaki out when we find him? Or can you find him with your amazing powers?"

I swallowed. "Yaozu made an effort to go after me once. If he does it again, you'll have a shot at him."

"Use you as bait? No. Will not happen. Don't call me again," he said, and hung up.

[z-Infinity]

The next day, Potential called and said he'd be home in two more days. Strangely, his announcement didn't pull me out of the funk I was dwelling in at all. I'd been waiting, but now all I could do was hate myself for not being good enough.

The phone rang, making me jump and smear a piece of pizza across my cheek. "Fuck," I mumbled, tossing the pizza back on the plate while picking up the phone and opening it. "Yeah?" I asked, sure it was Potential because no one else would call me.

"I'm going to regret this," Katsuro replied, his voice heavy, "but I have information that indicates that there is something that you can do. Do you know a Emmanuel de Vargas?"

I blinked, surprised. I would have never imagined that Katsuro would be asking about one of my more regrettable exs. "Yeah, I dated him. He wanted a nova girlfriend and he was cute enough," I added, not bothering to wonder why I was justifying to Katsuro in any way.

"Do you remember his villa in Lima?"

I snorted. "Yeah, of course I do. It's in Lima for one. He had this fantasy about it being a fuckin' mountain fortress or something retarded like that."

"Sasaki is there. We think de Vargas has him there," Katsuro said.

It made a certain amount of sense. Manuel had been tied to the Medellín Cartel, and Yaozu had allied with them against the Nakato Gumi and the C-Z. Manuel had boasted that he could hold a nova in his Lima stronghold, if necessary. I had gotten the box-and-bucket-for-a-toilet treatment but Sasaki required something more elaborate to confine him. "But why not kill him? I mean, I don't want him to - this is Sasaki! But Sassy's dangerous so long as he's alive."

Katsuro was quiet for a moment. "Yaozu is demanding that I renounce the Nakato Gumi in exchange for his life."

"And you can't do that."

"And I can't leave Jun either."

Jun? Oh, I was going to so have to tease him about that later. Sassy has a girl's name, well, he did if you manged it with American pronouncation, which I intended to do. I shook off the irrelevant thought and focused on the issue at hand. "Ok, first, are we sure he's there?"

The air twisted behind me, and I spun, my heart pounding as a warp formed. My hand was on my pistol as if it had decided to be there itself, yanking the gun from under the pillow. It was a gift from a nova friend who decided that if I couldn't stop novas at least I'd have a fighting chance with baselines. Potential had allowed me to shoot him here and there, enough that I was more comfortable with than I had been in years, and he was more comfortable with his ability to absorb damage. He got peace of mind, and I got to shoot him in this sometimes-insufferable face. Win-win, right?

Katsuro stepped out of the warp, and I felt my knees weaken as a blush crept over my face. I tried to get a fucking backbone, but it wasn't working, right up until I saw that he didn't notice a bit. Sonovabitch. Blind asshole!

He did notice the gun, and his eyebrow rose. "That's not going to stop Yaozu."

"Hi, Katsuro, dear. How you been?" I asked sardonically, feeling a tremble in my hands as I lowered the gun. It had nothing to do with his presence and everything to do with the surprise warp, actually. "By the way, bit of warning next time, ok?"

"Why? Don't you enjoy shooting novas pointlessly?" he asked.

"If I shot you in the cock, it'd still hurt," I snapped.

He smiled and even chuckled a bit. I realized that he looked tired, in that moment when he smiled. It wasn't a physical exhaustion, but deeper, more personal. What the hell had been going on while I was-

While I was hiding here. While I was playing the coward. Again, my cheeks flared with color, but this was pure shame. Before Yaozu, I may have been afraid, but I didn't let it stop me. Now, I had let my fear make me weak.

It wouldn't happen again.