Chap 120: For The Worse

Young Tee never wanted to join the Mid-Guard. Jack had to convince her it wasn’t as terrible as she thought. The time they spent patrolling the streets with fellow troopers was the reason so many found their soul mates during those two years. By midday, the confinement of HQ was gone, and the streets became their playground. But all the smiles always shifted to anxiety as the blue sky dimmed to purple.

Jack told her he would make sure they both got into the same Mid-Guard and made it out alive. His statement was only missing one thing—the part where he would ask her to spend the rest of her life with him, and give her a ring with his name on it. How things eventually turned out was proof that fate had been writing her story blindfolded and drunk.

For their monthly meetings, Tetra would pick them up after Academy hours so they could make it on time. Tee noticed the absence of familiar faces on her side of the room sometimes, but it never bothered her. Jack was the only human there, and his eyes never focused on anything but her and the games they played.

The sparkles in Jack’s eyes whenever they landed on her were exactly as she remembered. His blue eyes were steady, and his voice was always calm when he spoke to her. She could identify him by the touch of his hand on her shoulder, or by the familiar warmth of his fingers around hers.

Tee wanted to roll her eyes so far back she could see the darkness inside her skull. All that lovey-dovey nonsense was making her sick, and the fact that she hadn’t thrown up yet meant she apparently couldn’t in that dream. When the white badges on the students began to take shape around her, she held her breath. It was that day…

The memory surfacing was the reason Jack eventually began looking at her like she was a homeless person taking a crap in the street. It was the day she became an eyesore—something he wished he didn’t have to see, someone he wanted gone from his life. But Tee welcomed it. Maybe once that memory played out, the dream would end.

The condolence ceremony always took place on the last day before students went off for Free Week. Free Week held the only holidays of the academic year, so kids usually went wild. But the last day of school before they left was always a quiet one.

The hologram boards all over the Academy no longer displayed important details. Instead, they showed the faces of all the Xeno-victims who had mutated during the academic year. Every normal civilian was encouraged to wear a white badge that day.

At the end of the day, everyone congregated outside, surrounding the compound. In their great numbers, they pressed their fists over their hearts and spoke in a unified roar:

“United, we honor the fallen. May their legacy endure in the everlasting ripple of life.”

Warren’s whisper cut loudly through the moment of silence that followed.

“…And good riddance.” He chuckled, covering his mouth with one hand.

Tee remained calm, just as her younger self had while standing beside Warren. The low murmur around them came from other students whispering similar things. When the minute ended, the crowd dispersed in all directions.

Since the academic day had ended early, not all students went straight home. Many first-years ran around spraying water guns and blowing horns. Tee got sprayed in the face, and Jack’s low growl warned he was about to yell something obscene at the culprit.

“Let it go,” young Tee told him while wiping the water from her face. When she opened her eyes again, she held his hand.

Jack looked away from the fools running off and down at their linked hands. He smiled, adjusted the bag strap on his other shoulder, and walked with her.

As expected on the day before Free Week, the trains were packed with students. After getting off, younger Tee and Jack took the stairs back to the surface and walked the rest of the way home. Their clasped hands never parted—still the only thing between them.

Tee walked behind the two youngsters, eyes fixed on the ground. Their voices were as clear as the ones that haunted her mind.

“Another meeting is coming up,” younger Tee said. “There are fewer people on our side these days. I wonder if they moved to another district that’s too far away.”

“Those meetings…” Jack’s voice was soft as wind. “Other kids don’t have to go to them. It’s one of the creepy things about having a scientist for a parent.”

Tee could picture the smile she spoke with. “Yeah. That’s true.”

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Yes, anything.”

“I have this one nightmare where my dad injected me with something. It had to be a dream, since I know he wouldn’t do something like that.”

Younger Tee stopped cold. Jack halted and turned to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked, smiling. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Tee stopped walking too, mirroring the two younger versions she had been following. She kept her eyes lowered, her ears twitching as she waited for the next words.

“I had a dream like that once too. But when I asked Tetra, she said it really did happen. It only happened once, she told me.”

Silence fell as Jack slowly pulled his hand from hers. They stared at each other with deep concern. His eyebrows tightened, then drifted apart as he spoke.

“Do you… happen to have a mark that you…” His voice wavered. “A mark that you have to hide?”

It took her a while, searching Jack’s eyes under his twitching brows, before she answered. If she had heard the question correctly, he was hinting that he, too, carried a deep, dark secret—one just like hers. Something overtook her body, and she heard herself answer before she even realized it.

“…Yes.”

Her gulp was loud. It was the sound of someone realizing they had said something they were never meant to reveal. At that moment, she hoped desperately that all of that was just a dream.

Jack’s voice hardened.

“Then we’re both the same. Why was I so blind not to see it? We’re both Xeno-victims… It’s why we have to go to those meetings… It’s why my real parents didn’t want me… And it’s why you don’t have real parents either.”

His breaths came in harsh bursts, as if something inside him was trying to break loose. “All my worth… has boiled down to being a test dummy for people who claim they love me… But you… you’re no different from me. That means…”

He didn’t finish.

Tee remembered the twitch at the corner of his lips before he vanished from in front of her. He stormed away without even saying good evening, and they were nowhere near her home at the clinic. She stared at his retreating back until he disappeared, her face twisting as tears rushed down her cheeks. She had said something she never should have. 

Tee stood beside her younger self, staring at the trembling girl. Why hadn’t she lied back then? Everything would have changed. 

That was the last time she saw Jack. The version of him she met the next day was not the caring, open-hearted boy who stole her heart. It was a distant, spiteful brat. She had been around fifteen—and then came four years of being pushed away… four years of coldness. 

Jack had long disappeared around the corner without his younger Tee. The few people walking nearby appeared like moving blurs. Their lack of detail either reflected their unimportance… or the tears clouding her younger self’s vision. 

In a blink, she found herself following four teenagers out of a movie theatre. The white and blond hair on two of them instantly gave her and Jack away. The other two were Warren and Brenda. The multi-level roadways and artificial grounds overhead blocked out the sky, but she could tell it was daytime—when she should have been in class.

It was the next day, the first day of Free Week. She could have counted the number of words Jack spoke to her on one hand. And his eyes had absolutely no trouble focusing on everything except her. Still, she assumed he just needed time—and maybe a gentle push—to break the ice. And what better topic than the movie they had just watched?

“Wasn’t that movie romantic? I liked that they both killed themselves in the end,” she said.

Brenda opened her eyes wider than their usual half-size when she looked at younger Tee. “Huh? That’s how it ended? Damn, I fell asleep after the female lead turned out to be a Xeno-victim. Was it good?”

“That was a waste of my money, and the trailer lied!” Warren kicked a can out of his way, and it smacked a passerby in the leg. He ignored the glare directed at him and kept walking.

Young Tee walked up beside Jack and tugged lightly at his arm. “Jack, don’t tell me you also hated the movie. I heard it had great reviews, so I wanted us to watch it.” Her lips curved downward, her brows dipping into a sad little expression.

Jack kept his head straight and spoke casually. “Yeah, I hated the movie.”

Young Tee paused, taking a deep breath before forcing herself to keep up. But she stayed behind Jack, falling into step beside Brenda. Brenda gulped down a soda, then tossed the empty can into the tray a homeless man held out.

“Have you guys ever noticed the Xeno-victim stereotype in movies?” Brenda asked. “They’re always psychopaths or mentally unstable. They’re always the dweeb in class, with poor stamina and terrible grades…”

Warren laughed and glanced back at her. “Yeah, I’ve noticed that. I think it’s hilarious. That humor made up for the unsatisfying ending. I’ll give the movie a three out of five.”

Young Tee spoke to the back of Jack’s head. “Jack, was it the ending that made you hate the movie?”

“No, it’s the entire concept… It’s too unrealistic. How can anyone love a Xeno-victim? We’re monsters.”

“We humans are monsters for liking them, huh?” Warren asked.

Tee felt herself slip into another world at Jack’s words. She finally understood how he felt about her. Everything they had built over the years had been shattered by one reveal. Yet it was confusing—because he was one too. Would he have expected her to still care about him if she had remained normal and he had revealed his truth? Or would he have never told her at all?

Jack’s distancing didn’t end with Free Week. In the mornings, he buried his face in his tablet before class, and he stopped showing up at their usual lunch spot. On the train ride home, even with several empty pairs of seats, Jack would stand until someone else sat beside her.

The next month, he got his hoverbike, and that became his excuse to avoid taking the train altogether. Soon after, Brenda and Warren got hoverbikes too.

Tee watched her younger self make the entire journey home alone. A low whistle from behind drew closer.

“This is the third week I’ve caught you walking home alone. Where’s your boyfriend?” came the mocking voice.

Tee turned the same moment her younger self did, spotting the MG trooper gliding on his hoverboard to match her pace. Young Tee stopped and shrieked—not because of his sudden appearance, but because the thick black eyeliner circling his hazel eyes made them pop out in a disturbing way.

Why didn’t she take that as a sign to run? She had been too nice back then, and the trooper mistook her silence as an invitation. After that day, he started following her the short distance to the clinic. The candy stick at the corner of his lips flicked constantly as he talked nonstop. At one point, he even swore she was dumb because all she did was nod.

When the trooper left her at her gate, she always gave him a forced smile. But his voice lingered in her mind for an hour after, giving her a headache. He was the reason she developed a distaste for people who talked too much.

The red blooming flowers on the trees Tee passed told her instantly which memory that was. It was the last day she ever saw that trooper—because she demanded that Tetra get her a hoverbike the next day so she wouldn’t have to walk home again.

After she stepped behind the gate, she turned around to nod at the trooper—her own silent way of saying good riddance. He smiled and blew her a kiss. But unlike the real event, his eyes flashed red before he glided off on his hoverbike.

Tee blinked twice, staring hard at the trooper as he grew smaller in the distance. Those red eyes drew her brows together in a tight unibrow, and her thoughts jumped to Kie. How strange. That was the first thing that didn’t match her real memory. Was it a sign her strict dream was about to twist into a nightmare?

The road dimmed into darkness, then brightened into the view of Jack’s back as he took things from his locker. The bright red hoodie he wore told Tee exactly which memory that was. It was the day she finally accepted that Jack was intentionally ignoring her calls.

She looked to her right and saw herself peeking around a corner, phone pressed to her ear. Jack pulled his own phone from his pocket, glanced at the caller ID, and shoved it back in without answering. Young Tee pursed her lips, turned away from him, and pressed her back against the wall. When the tears streamed down her face, she hung her head so no one in the corridor would see.

Tee stepped out from behind the corner and marched straight toward Jack. She knew she couldn’t touch him—it was only a memory—but she couldn’t just stand there and watch. The jerk was acting like she was the only one in the wrong. He was a covert Xeno-victim too!

The hand she swung at his head never made it through. In a split second, Jack’s head twisted unnaturally on his neck to look at her. His eyes were pitch black, and his blond hair flickered into grey, reshaping into Sade’s face. Tee stumbled back in shock as Jack turned and vanished, taking the entire scene with him.

Normally, something like that would have sent a sharp ache slicing through her heart—but it didn’t. It reminded her that she was in a dream. But that was the second creepy distortion she’d seen. Her strict dream was breaking, and it was breaking in the worst possible way.