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Chapter One (really the final version)

I had fallen asleep after fighting with my mother. It was a normal fight over very normal things, my going back to college, my job, my boyfriend and girlfriend, my coming in after curfew. I fell asleep, still slightly sniffle-y and upset, curled around Jonathan, ******** buddy and general good friend to damsels in distress, or at the very least, me. The doorbell rang, clanging in my head like cathedral bells warding off demons. Ugh. I rolled over, trying to get Jonathan to answer it for me. That’ll show them for waking me after a fight and on my day off! Not finding him in the bed, I tried to ignore it, then the very insistent knocking started, and then the gong again. And again. And again. Oh gods, what had I done to deserve this? I roused myself, wondering if Jonny-buck had left his key again or if one of my many packages had finally arrived. I felt slightly better about either of these prospects as I threw on a plush robe to answer. I sniffled again.

“Who is it?” I inquired, trying to check through my painted over eye-hole. That worked as well as expected.

“Package,” came an oddly familiar voice. I couldn’t place it, slowly cracking the door.

Sighting my new found prey, I snarled, “Jeremies.” I gave a lop-sided, shark-toothed, sarcastic smirk of unsuppressed glee, as I slapped my side for a no-longer-there weapon. “Dammit, this better be good. I’m going to go for my gun, and when I get back you have thirty seconds to explain why you’re here, you ******** life-ruining a*****e.”

The good doctor cowered for me. Good. That made the pounding a little more bearable, not that he would know. Hopefully. I was pissed, livid in fact. How had he found me? Why had he found me? As I grabbed a pair of jeans, digging in the pillows, blankets, and general mess on my bed, I heard the door, then nothing. Dammit. Was he in or out, here or already gone? I threw on the jeans, not bothering to be bothered to put a shirt on for Dr. James J. Jeremies. He had seen me in less than a bathrobe and jeans, not that I’d admit that to just anyone. I didn’t bother with the gun I knew I was searching for. I wouldn’t get sent to prison for him, not like I’d ever see the inside of jail anyways. I was still too valuable.

Rushing toward the door, I realized I was too late. Dammit, dammit, dammit. A couple of unopened packages lay to the inside of the door now. As considerate as ever, the doctor had disappeared, just like I had tried to. Obviously I had failed. More than ever. Why couldn’t I just be the normal I wanted so badly?

I thought back on the encounter, realizing how little Jeremies had changed. Still barely taller than me, a middle aged research looking man wearing glasses and a lab coat, he had showed up once again and I knew my life would take a turn for the worse. I could feel my life, my hard earned sense of normality slipping away. Using the wall as a support, I slid to the floor, my eyes blurring as I picked up the packages. One of them, new clothes that had finally arrived, now meant nothing. It was shirts and skirts, pants, corsets, clothing I would under normal circumstances be ecstatic over. My magazines were also in the pile, but I now saw them as a clue, a way to track me. My loves were being turned against me, used. I started to tear up, still flipping through the things that were piled there. My brushes had come in. Dammit. Another thing to track me, another well known love used against me. An unmarked package lay among the threads that bound me to a stationary life, a normal life I was still trying to build, and like the Tower of Babel, too tall and starting to crumble.

How could I be such a fool? I had believed him when he told me. “Project discontinued.” “Be yourself.” “Go live your life.” I believe I was free. Ha ha, joke was on me. a*****e. I did what I normally did when confronted with stress, I ate, then I cried. And then, once I had pulled myself together, back into a thing resembling a somewhat normal (ok, not so normal) person, I planned and executed.

First, I cleaned, resorting to years of ingrained Southern training. Ice cream was my drug of choice, but not now, but deep cleaning the bathrooms woudl work. Ew. I do not ever want to know how mold gets where it does… But bleach combats the mold and keeps me numb enough to get this to the very farthest edge of my mind. How could I have believed him? Because I wanted it to be true. I desperately wanted to live my own life, to not be a lab rat, a guinea pig, a number in a file and I was one of the so called “successes.” And then It hit me. I would never be normal, I would never be left alone. I would never, ******** that. I would, if it killed me, and I knew it just might.

I had years to know this was coming. Alright, not really. I should have expected this, but I didn’t. Who could I call, who could make this all better, who could make this just go away? I debated several options, Jonathan, the ******** buddy; Zach, the actual boyfriend; Anna, the ex-girlfriend; or Drew, the ex-fiancée. The last person I could call would be Val, my girlfriend, who calmly accepted me and Jonny and Zach and all the requisite weirdness that comes with a boyfriend who was normal, a ******** who was an ex-merc, and a girlfriend who was strange and probably psychic. Who had betrayed me though? I burst into tears at the thought. I had known I would eventually, I inevitably do when stressed out. I wanted to run to Zach, who I knew was the least likely to have done something like that, especially as we were living in two totally opposite states, I in Texas, him, far to the north in the UP of Michigan. I missed him terribly, but could I call him? No, as he was still working on his thesis and didn’t even have time for phone sex, much less something like this. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, take that away from him, from us, potentially. Jonathan knew about me, about Prime, about the whole of my past that made me who and what I was. He knew why I was a dye-hard, he knew, and he just accepted. He accepted that I was just getting back on my feet, not questioning why even if it was my first credit card I had a seemingly unreasonably large line of credit. He didn’t press, he never asked. And… Well, he kept a room available when my mother, who didn’t know about everything, got to be too much. He let me in one day, just to have sex after work one day, to blow off some steam, and we just kinda stayed.

We were both pretty good about not asking questions of each other. He never asked why my government paid expense account still worked (well, to be perfectly honest, neither did I, until now) and I never asked him about the mysterious packages, trips, and sundry other details that went into an ex-mercenary’s now day-to-day life. To stay the way we were, we pretty much had to not ask too much, not pry too far, because we knew that when we did, we A) wouldn’t like what we found, B) would kill each other to protect ourselves, or C) would not be having explosive sex any more. He knew the right things, and I probably couldn’t turn to him. Anna, she I could turn to, but it would be bouncing off ideas off myself, to call an Iteration would be just that, especially a younger one. s**t. I could call Zach, but he didn’t know the whole story yet. That left Drew, the impossible to get a hold of ex-fiancée. s**t.

I thought about it more. I had some other options on who to call, but didn’t want any of the other Primes put in danger of being found. She had just gotten Dina and Ashe settled in Indiana. Crap… That really did just leave Drew. Dammit! Dammit, dammit, dammit. I began cleaning the living room, nominally looking for the uncorded phone, but mostly just avoiding all my new packages, and especially the unmarked envelope. I couldn’t get that off my mind, when I stumbled on the phone, actually almost tripping over it. Why was the phone never where it was supposed to be, I groused. Dammit, I found the phone, I continued to complain to myself. Dialing, but not expecting any real response, I cradled the phone to my ear while continuing to clean.

I knew I was falling into a defense mechanism pattern, cleaning while letting my mind go numb, wondering who would actually get home first, Val, or Jonny. Both of whom it would break a little to see me like this, wounded and wandering slightly aimlessly. The phone continued to ring, I knew, ok, hoped, he wouldn’t pick up. If I was lucky, I would get the answering machine, not Amelia, Amy, the first in the Lola Iteration of 213, my personal number being 11213. The numbers meant something, the only real meaning we had determined was the first two numbers told the researchers what point in our life we were at. I was stuck at 11, one-one, adolescence, stunted. Most of us were, when it came down to it. Stuck, I mean, we’re stuck. We plateau at a certain point, some of us never reaching our full potential, and becoming an INC- an inconclusive end to our little part in the sorry sordid branch of whatever thing we were supposed to be. Amy was like that, until I came along. Amy was an unobserved INC until me, which I still don’t know if our meeting was staged. It certainly played like that. Her married to an ex-G-man, me engaged to one of the better success stories trotted out for more funding for Prime. We all knew we were always on the chopping block. Always. We, well, I knew that I was watched, monitored, my whole life one big open book. And then, one day, it wasn’t any more. I was cut loose, let go, lost funding, not even shelved, cut off. And then, I began meeting the others. I wasn’t alone, even without Prime, we were still out there. And others knew more, knew less, knew.