Chap 117: Where Are Your Horns?

The strange boy who appeared said he had climbed the fence.

“Really? Did the guard see you?” young Tee asked.

Tee looked away from the vehicles and eyed the high fence with the MG off leaning against it. The MG off must have heard the rattling chain links from someone climbing it. If not the sound, then at least the vibration through the metal he was leaning on.

Back then, she used to swear the MG off looked the other way because he wanted her to make friends. But older Tee knew better. He didn’t give a damn. MG offs only cared about Xenosapians and ignored everything else. She could easily imagine the guard standing just as still if someone stole a car right behind him.

“What guard?” Jack’s bangs flipped to one side as he followed her pale gaze. “Oh.” He whispered, “Was that guard always there?”

Young Tee didn’t respond. She was too busy staring at Jack’s hair. “So… you don’t have an illness? I’ve never seen anyone like you before.” She looked him up and down.

Jack’s shoulders dropped so low his neck seemed to stretch. “Yeah, people say that a lot. And I can say the same for you.” He stepped closer and lifted a finger toward her forehead.

Young Tee stiffened, agitated but not stopping him. A blink later, her bangs were brushed back, revealing her forehead. Jack’s bright blue eyes swept left to right as he studied her.

“Where are your horns?”

Young Tee slapped his hand away. “What?”

“Ah!” Jack yelped, pulling his hand back with a grimace.

Young Tee planted both hands at her sides and barked, “Who told you I had horns?”

Jack backed up a step and pointed beyond the fence. “They did.”

Young Tee turned toward the parking lot behind the fence.

Older Tee had to squint until the dream sharpened. The sunlight bouncing off vehicle roofs made everything glow. She scanned the ground for the juveniles.

Young Tee found them first—shoes sticking out from behind a vehicle hovering in its dock. The windows were tinted, hiding whoever crouched behind them. But the flickering green light gave them away—a camera held out from behind the car.

“Do you have a name?”

Jack’s question didn’t break her glare, so he kept talking.

“You probably didn’t hear me before, but my name’s Jack. I’m new to this district—my parents moved here a week ago.” He spoke toward the side of her head, hoping she was listening.

Older Tee folded her arms. It made sense he was new. No one ever dared talk to the ghost girl at the clinic. She swung her hand to smack her younger self’s head in the right direction. Her hand slipped right through again.

“Don’t mind them,” Jack said. “They’re just waiting for you to eat me. The video will go to a freak blogger.”

Young Tee finally tore her eyes from the camera. “A freak blogger?” she blurted.

Jack put a finger to his lips and leaned closer. “Shh, or they’ll hear you. You have to eat me so I can get welcomed into their group.”

Tee realized how dumb Jack was. How could he expect to join that group while inside her stomach? She slapped a hand to her forehead, realizing she was stuck watching these foolish kids if she didn’t wake up soon. Her eyes darted to follow two fast-moving figures weaving around the trees. They were far quicker than they looked, but she remembered the chase vividly.

Jack had tricked her into chasing him, pretending she wanted to eat him. That scared the kids hiding behind the vehicle, and they ran off yelling for their mommy. One kid bolted too fast and slammed into the vehicle hovering in the parking lot. The way he crashed and rolled left both young Tee and Jack’s jaws dropped. The MG off facing the lot was nearly invisible in how perfectly still he stood the entire time.

Older Tee leaned forward, clutching her stomach as she laughed her head off. She stepped toward a tree to steady herself, but when her hand passed right through it, she stretched a leg out to avoid falling and rolling.

The other two kids ran off, leaving their injured friend sprawled on the ground. They didn’t notice the fiery red eyes of the man who stepped out of the vehicle. The stream of curses that followed suggested he cared more about the dent in his car than the kid.

The fallen child began wailing loudly, and it was obvious his injury was serious. Young Tee and Jack’s brows knitted as the man glanced in their direction.

“I should leave now, or my parents will get worried,” Jack said, rushing toward the small gate young Tee had entered through. Climbing the fence would drop him straight into the parking lot. But he paused at the gate and turned back. “What’s your name again?”

“T-Tee,” she stammered.

Jack smiled. “Hey, maybe I’ll come back and visit you again.” He gulped and added, “If I’m not grounded.” Then he sprinted down the open corridor and vanished through a wide doorway.

It was after Academy hours, meaning Jack had come to the clinic during his free time. Tee was homeschooled, and Tetra wasn’t far away. The word Academy reminded her of everything she was missing, but she didn’t care.

Tee glanced at her younger self brushing her bangs to neaten them, making sure her eyes were covered. But her hands couldn’t hide the wide smile stretching across her face. Jack was the reason she had fallen for him. That charming young man reminded her of Kie. Kind at first, but capable of hiding a darker side. Like Jack, she was sure Kie would soon reveal his own evil twin.

In a blink, young Tee was no longer staring at Jack’s back as he left. Now, she and he faced each other, swinging in separate swings five feet apart. Their fresh clothes meant it was a new day, but still the same time after Academy hours.

Tee didn’t know if she wanted things to speed up, so she sat with her legs folded on the grass, staring at the two. She didn’t know how to wake from that dream and couldn’t change what had already happened. If she stayed too long, the tears would come anyway—tears from burns she had tried to soothe with ice.

She listened as Jack spoke. A relative of his parents had died and was at the clinic for some mortician matters. Neither of them at that age knew what that meant, but Tee knew Tetra handled that kind of work sometimes.

“This is my parents’ home district. They decided to move back here to live in my grandparents’ house. So here I am…”

Young Tee didn’t swing high like Jack. She kept her feet on the ground, nudging herself back and forth. Her eyes stayed glued to her shoes as she listened to the boy across from her. It was hard to think of interesting things to say, hard to keep the conversation going.

Jack only looked away from young Tee when his forward swing took him too high. Whenever his feet didn’t block her view, his eyes stayed on her, and his mouth never stopped moving. Older Tee realized he was as talkative as Zod.

“I’m new at my Academy, but I’m sure I’d spot you there. Which class are you in—how old are you?”

Tee answered his questions and added nothing more. “I don’t go to any Academy. I’m homeschooled. And I’m eight.”

Jack’s voice rose as his feet reached their highest point in the air. “Eight! Hey, that’s how old I am. No wonder we click. I can’t stand people who aren’t my age.” His smile faded a little. “Home school, huh? That’s too bad. We’d be on the same block… maybe even the same class if you were at my Academy.”

Soon Jack left. The sounds of grilles sliding down and automatic doors echoed across the clinic. MG officials who didn’t stay overnight went home to prepare for the global curfew. Darkness thickened outside, visible only through the crisscrossing grilles of her room window.

Tee stared through that window countless times, only to realize the scene had changed. The lit purple wall and wooden shelf belonged to her room.

“Tee, I’ll have to cut your hair this week. Any longer than this… and I’ll need a stronger pair of medicated glasses to untangle the knots.”

The calm voice resonated in her ears, but the tears didn’t come. What was the point of tears if you couldn’t feel them rolling down your cheeks? She looked away from the window and took in the people in the room.

Her younger self sat on the bed with her legs stretched straight, while the lady behind her combed through her long white hair. Keeping her eyes on the woman’s reflection—the black curly locks draped over one shoulder, the gentle smile softening her face—helped calm her mind. It was Tetra in her white lab coat, but without her glasses.

“Tetra…”

“Mmm, my dear.”

“How do you… mortician?”

Tetra smiled and let out a small laugh through her nose as she began wrapping Tee’s hair around her head for the night. “I think you mean, what do I do as a mortician?” She rested her hands on Tee’s shoulders and looked at their reflections together in the mirror. “Let’s just say I help people who die rest comfortably. That way they don’t turn into cranky ghosts haunting the place.”

She placed a silk bonnet over Tee’s wrapped hair, then picked up a metal bottle and removed the lid. Damping a cotton swab, she pressed it to the left side of young Tee’s neck. Tee flinched from the cold, wet touch.

“…I do mortician work as a side job,” Tetra continued, “but I’m actually a scientist. Explaining what I really do wouldn’t make sense to you, my dear.”

Tee blinked slowly. She knew what Tetra meant. She was too young to keep secrets. Tetra told most people she was a mortician so they wouldn’t ask more questions. Yes, she worked with the dead sometimes—but only certain ones. All Xeno‑victims.

But a scientist needed more than dead test subjects—she needed living ones, especially since the Xenogene died if the host died before mutating. Studying the dead was rarely useful. And that was where Tee came in.

Tetra stopped swabbing Tee’s neck. The black, smoky mark was finally exposed. Wearing concealer twenty‑four seven wasn’t recommended, so it was removed at night and reapplied in the mornings.

She put away the swab and pulled young Tee into a hug. “You are not a Xeno-victim,” she said, emphasizing every word.

Young Tee repeated softly, “I am not a Xeno-victim.”

Tetra stood, letting Tee lean back into her bed, and pulled the sheet over her legs. She kissed her forehead and clapped to turn off the lights. In a moment, she disappeared behind the metal door. The strip of hallway light shining through the gap shrank until it disappeared completely.

Tee knew the exact rhythm of the levers and locks inside that metal door as it opened and shut. The faint lights in the ceiling corner had always helped her sleep. She couldn’t imagine resting in pitch darkness and once assumed that was their purpose. But as she grew older and examined the fixtures more closely whenever the lights were on, she realized they weren’t lights at all.

They were cameras.

She had always been watched.

In the dim early mornings, just minutes after global curfew, black vans appeared in the parking lot. Tee would tiptoe to her bedroom window to watch. She saw masked figures pushing beds draped with white sheets into the backs of the vehicles before leaving. It wasn’t until she was older that she connected the white sheets to Tetra’s mortician work. After that realization, she linked herself to Tetra’s scientist role.

The scene shifted to a white-lit room filled with shelves of colorful liquids in glass tubes. Like a fading memory, the view flickered between the lab’s contents and darkness. A face, obscured by goggles and a mouth mask, moved into her field of vision. The goggles were unmistakable—Tetra’s. Tee felt no pain and didn’t fully understand what had happened, yet the events left a scar on her right arm.

For most of her life, she considered the scar a simple vaccination mark. But the first time Tetra had let her into the lab, the shelves and glass tubes felt too familiar. She knew that memory wasn’t a dream and slowly began piecing together the truth of what she was. Jack’s later words would only confirm it.

The lab flickering ceased, leaving only darkness. The voices around her grew from murmurs to distinct speech, making Tee aware that she was still dreaming.

“Why does this lab look so familiar?”

Silence followed her question.

“You’ve been here before, but you were under anesthesia. Your eyes were open, but I didn’t think you’d remember anything.”

“Why did you bring me here—did you ask me—”

“No.” Tetra sighed. “It only happened once. I injected you with a strong dose of liquidized Ether energy, hoping it would cure you. But it didn’t. It only happened once.”

Tee remembered every detail of Tetra’s explanation. That was why she recalled nothing else but her voice. Tetra had never lied to her before—but how could she have known?

That conversation ignited Tee’s obsession with learning the cues of lies. She eventually learned to use that knowledge to her advantage, mastering it until it became second nature. Her body could no longer tell a lie from the truth—only her mind could.

Whether lies or not, Tetra had injected her with something she believed could cure her. Tetra was the scientist, and Tee was the experiment. At first, Tee thought being a covert rather than an overt Xeno-victim was the reward for being experimented on. The life of a Xeno-victim was harsh, and their suicide rates were high. Being homeless seemed better than being a rich Xeno-victim.

Yet the stress and depression of being a Xeno-victim could compromise results. Love and proper nurturing were also necessary, which was where Tetra’s role as a guardian came in. The unsettling question of whether Tetra truly cared for her always made Tee tremble.

It had never been her conscious choice to pretend to be normal when she was not. She had been a covert Xeno-victim before she even knew the term, and she had never broken from it. Was she to blame?