Chapter Five

Chapter Five

I haven't seen the man with the red eyes, and no one else has either. The thief and murder seemed to have vanished from everyone's radar and I am thankful, he has already tried to kill me once, I don't exactly want to see him again anytime soon, never would be preferred. Although a sinking feeling tells me that I will see him again.

Sitting in class, I notice the girl with red hair across the room. She still sits across the table from me every day at lunch, yet we never speak. I sometimes glance at her, but she never looks up from her lunch. Not that I blame her, nobody talks to me either.

Standing up in my seat, I put my books into my bag and sling it over my shoulder as I head out of the classroom. Weaving through the crowd, I try to avoid everyone and just focus on getting out of this blasted school. As the front doors enter my vision, I see the downpour going on outside and I can't help the grimace. I hate the rain with a burning passion. I know how some people love the sound and smell of the rain, but here in this part of the city, everything floods, everyone is miserable, and the stench is almost amplified.

Stepping out into the rain, I start my trudge home from school and am not even phased when multiple cars speed by, hitting the massive puddles, splashing my pants. I don't really care, because for once I do have a place to do laundry and shower now.

Dragging myself across the city, I stop under a few buildings and watch as the raindrops fall from the grey sky. I know that the minimal greenery in Circa city needs this water, but I just prefer it when the sun is out. Continuing, I stop at a crosswalk and look around. My hood is now soaked through, but it's not like my hair will care. T shaved my curls off yesterday, I prefer it that way, I don't have time to deal with the thick textured nature of my hair.

I watch as an older woman continues into the crosswalk adjacent to me and the light flicks red. She hobbles along obliviously with her cane and her umbrella. I hear the squealing of the tires and my head flicks sideways as a car tries to screech to a halt. Lunging out into the street, the car hits my shoulder first as I push the women and move her out of the way. She stumbles and trips, but I barely notice as I am thrown a few feet into the intersection. My body hits the ground hard and my skin hardens upon impact. My head smashes into the ground and I recoil.

Blurry memories cross in front of my eyes and I can feel a hand smashing my head into the sidewalk. The buildings seem tall around me and everything is out of focus as the pain radiates in my skull. I can see the large red boots of the man, as he stalks away from me, and the sense of relief in my chest confuses me.

Hands grab me, and I shove them away and yank my hood on tighter as I push myself to my feet. I can see a few people around me, and traffic is completely stopped. Keeping my hood close to my head, I cover the hardened spot of my face and avoid eye contact.

"Are you stupid?!" A voice screams at me and I grit my teeth.

"Back off, you could have killed her!"

"She's the one who jumped into traffic!"

"She was saving the old lady you were about to turn into roadkill!"

Looking around quickly, I duck out of the circle and run over and grab my bag and phone off of the ground before sprinting away. My body starts to ache the more I move but I try to ignore it. I stop in an empty alleyway and I know I need to release this energy somehow, but I am still so disoriented. Going to lean against a wall, I miss and hit the ground again. Lying on the ground tears form in my eyes and that image pops up again.

I call T and she answers quicker than I anticipated. Her voice is irritated, and I can hear people yelling in the background. I just tell her that I am back from school and she acknowledges my statement before hanging up. Climbing back to my feet I drag myself home and barely make it through the door. I shrug off my now completely drenched sweatshirts and throw them in the dryer and yank off my pants and hang them to dry.

Collapsing onto the couch, I turn on the news and see M5 plastered on the screen. I watch as the five superhero's I love to jump into action saving people from this bombing that happened. The footage cuts out and the newscaster comes back on and talks about what happened, but I space out. It's still weird to think that there is five of them now, I like Alpha though. Dozing in and out of consciousness I am caught off guard when I hear a tire screech. Bolting upright I look at the TV and see cellphone footage of a familiar intersection and black sweatshirt on the screen. I watch as the older woman is thrown off of the screen and I am hit by the car.

The screen blurs and cuts out. The newscaster talks about how an unknown male saved an older woman from being hit by a car. She is in the hospital with a sprained wrist and some minor cuts but will be released by the end of the day. The savior fled from the scene and police have no clue who it is due to traffic cams not working and the face not being shown.

I am not sure if I should be offended or not by the fact that they thought I was a guy, but then again, I was wearing two very large sweatshirts and my hair is shaved pretty short. I definitely had the hips of a woman, but I guess it would be hard to notice that sort of detail so quickly and with my baggy clothes.

I strip out of the rest of my clothes and go shower and the smaller, less hardened areas, I get the energy to release from without having to struggle too hard. My head and my shoulder are still really tough though and they don't want to release yet. I hope it isn't like the bullet again because that is something that I would rather not repeat. As I lie back down on the couch, I think about the superheroes in M5 and something inside me gets giddy thinking about the way they run around and save people. I wonder if they have day jobs or if they just run around saving people all the time. That would be an amazing, but dangerous job to have. I've always loved watching them on the TV's that they have in window displays.

Thinking about school, I can't help but to groan, I didn't do any homework. An uneasy feeling churns in my stomach as I think about the college fair at the end of the week. I have only half-heartedly thought about what I want to after high school because as hard as I am working, I still doubt I will be able to afford a four-year university. I also haven't decided what I want to do, law has just been my default response. I haven't found something that I have been super passionate about doing for the rest of my life. The only thing I know that I like to do is to help people. I love helping at the shelter and although I have gotten 'hurt' the few times I have thrown myself into danger, the rush of it and knowing that I save people is well worth the reward.

The next day I get the rest of my injuries to release the pent-up energy. It happens in a lot of small bursts which is strange, but I am thankful for my skin slowly returning to normal. I don't have school for some ludicrous holiday, but I don't mind, it gives me time to help T out.

Her assistant had just quit to pursue a job that pays better, and now T is drowning in work. I tell her I will help her out with all of her paperwork today that has built up over the last two weeks. We spend hours going through everything and I spend the gist of the day running her errands and filing things away for her.

As the evening approaches, I switch over to the kitchen and start working on tonight's stew. T bought a few extra ingredients for me to play with, so I get lost cutting everything up and trying to season it to a moderate taste. A commotion starts in the main area and I immediately duck out of the kitchen and see a crowd of people gathering over by the little hallway to the entrance. Running over I cut through the mass of people and see T standing in the doorway with one of the other women that work here. A man is yelling in the doorway and my temper simmers.

"I know she is here!" He screams, and I start ushering people back.

"Sir, we are not allowed to reveal the names of the people who are here to anyone nor can we let you in. All visitations have to be done elsewhere," T says firmly and the dude steps closer to her. I tap her shoulder slightly letting her know that I am behind her. The man's face reddens with anger and I can see a familiar glaze over his practically bloodshot eyes. The man is plastered.

"I want to see my wife!" He screams, and I hear a few noises from the other room.

"I'm afraid we can't let you in," T says standing firm and I see his hands moving and I yank T out of the way.

Stepping closer to him he grabs the front of my shirt and I don't break eye contact with him. I can see the confusion in his eyes as I glare back and don't cower away from his touch. Grabbing his thumb, I bend it backward and shove him out of the doorway and we take this out into the street.

I hear Agnes corralling people back and T is blocking the doorway with her body. The man gains his footing and lunges for me and I sidestep him clumsily. I really need to take some self-defense lessons one of these days if I insist on being the one to get in a fight. He lunges at me, fist coming towards my face, but I am quicker than his drunken body and I let him hit me in the stomach. I barely feel the blow as I raise my own fist and smash it into his jaw. He stumbles back, and I land a kick square in his crouch before he goes down.

Pulling out my phone, I dial the police and they reassure me that an officer would be over shortly. Within five minutes an officer is here, and I tell him what happened, and he sighs. It wasn't uncommon for us to get belligerently drunk, or abusive people on our doorstep. Most of the women here are homeless or they are trying to get away from someone in their life. This isn't the first time I have pulled T out of the way and stepped into a fight that certainly wasn't my battle. It's a bad habit of mine, I always nose into situations that aren't necessarily my problem to protect someone.

"Are you okay, Zana?" T asks me as the police car drives away.

"I've dealt with worse," I say rubbing my stomach, it had barely hardened.

"I've told you not to step into those fights," she says.

"And what do I always tell you?" I ask amused and she shakes her head.

"That it's better you, then her, because you will heal a lot quicker," Agnes says coming over.

"Exactly," I say before heading back inside to finish dinner.

T and I finally leave after dinner has been cleaned up and the night shift people have arrived. We inform them of the incident and give them a general description of the man so that they know to keep their eyes peeled for him to come back, there is a high probability that he would if he was let off with no charges or he'll make bail.

"Zana?" T asks me as we walk home.

"Yeah?"

"Does it hurt when you get hit?"

"A little bit, but most of the time the pain is from my skin hardening, it's pretty uncomfortable and the skin around it is pulled on a lot. The more it happens the more I get used to it though," I admit.

"I brought you into my home because I wanted to protect you, but you always seem to find a way to protect me," T says staring at the dark sky.

"I swore I would never let anyone be hurt the way I was a long time ago, and I certainly plan on keeping that promise. I would never forgive myself if I let someone hurt you," I say seriously. T is the only person I have and that's not something I take lightly.

"You know Zana, you never told me what happened to you," T says as we take the stairs.

"That's the thing... I only have fragments of the memories," I admit.

At this point, I can finally recall the moment where I had my head smashed into the concrete and then something about losing my mind in the hospital. But I can't remember anything else before that. The first memory I have is waking in a hospital bed before being sneaking away so I didn't end up in an orphanage.

"What is the earliest thing you remember?" T asks me curiously. I know this is something she has wanted to talk about for a while, but I also know she was trying to keep out of my business.

"Very few things before I woke up and eventually escaped from the hospital. There are a few memories that are blurry but have become stronger with time. I don't even know who my parents are, or where I came from. I think my parents' names are on file on my birth certificate, but I was never given that information," I ramble aloud.

"Do you want that information?" T asks me.

"Some days I do, and some days I don't. It feels like it won't make a difference either way and maybe I am better off not knowing," I admit.

Some days I wish I could remember everything that was taken from me and find out the truth about myself, but other days I don't want to know. I don't want to know where these abilities came from and why the two people that created me aren't here, it would only bring about more pain.

"What are the things you remember before waking up in the hospital?" T asks me tentatively.

"There was a man, I know he wasn't blood because he was Caucasian and blonde, but he took care of me. I don't remember who he was, but he wasn't good. I think a lot of my memories are lost because I blocked them out subconsciously. But we were walking somewhere, and we were arguing. Things are so blurry, but everything shifts into focus as he shoves me to the ground and proceeds to use his hands to smash my head into the cement. I think that was the first moment my meta ability surfaced. The last thing I remember is obnoxious red boots walking away from me, and then everything goes dark until the one scene in the hospital before I went under..."

"What do you mean?" T asks confused.

"It's very distorted in my memory, everything was intensified, and I could barely see the faces of the people in the room, but the conversation is still clear. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamt it..." I admit.

"What happened in the conversation?"

"It was between me and a police officer, and a nurse was in the room. The officer told me that they couldn't press charges against the man that hurt me, that they couldn't even find him. He had disappeared from their radar and because it was such a low-level offense, assault, they weren't going to expand the search area. There was nothing they could do. I screamed at him T, I told him to come closer and look at the wounds he had inflicted, I told him that it might seem small to them, but I had nothing. I think I was so hysterical they sedated me..." Trailing back to that moment, I don't think I would ever know what happened, everything was just to grey.

"Would they have done that to you?" T asks me, and a bitter laugh leaves my mouth.

"I was a metahuman in a normal hospital and I was causing a ruckus. I don't doubt for a second that they would have," I say. It wasn't an uncommon thing for humans to do in a panic.

"That's awful," T says, and I smile at her.

"People idolize teams like M5 that are always in the news and proving that they are good metahumans. But it's amazing how the world sees you when you are just an average person, but also a metahuman," I say ironically.

"A lot of metahumans cause trouble," T says.

"No, there are thousands of metahumans who never reveal themselves and live perfectly normal lives. The media likes to create this idea that there only two types of meta's in the world, the absolute good and the downright evil. But that isn't the way the real world works," I say in a serious tone.

"I never thought about it that way," T admits bashfully, and I chuckle.

"It's one of the things I think about when I can't sleep," I say.

"Have you been thinking about what you want to go to college for?" T asks me, and I sigh. She's just bringing up all of my least favorite things to talk about at this point.

"I guess..." I grumble.

"You do want to go to college, right? It's okay if you want to go to trade school instead," T says trying to be reassuring.

"I don't know where I want to go or for what and on top of that I can't afford to go to school," I say.

"Don't worry about the money right now, just focus on figuring out what you want to do and where you want to go," T says. But how can I ignore such a massive financial burden when even thinking about college?

"How can I not worry about that T, I only have a place to sleep because you let me live with you," I say exasperated, trying to voice my frustrated thoughts.

"Do you think I won't help you take out loans? How long have I known you, Zana? Three years now? From the day I met you I knew you were meant to do great things and I will do whatever it takes to help you get there," T says passionately.

"Why do you care so much?" I ask as I struggle not to scream, tears blur my vision and my throat closes painfully.

"I don't have any family either Zana, and the more I got to know you the closer we became, and I realized that you were more than just someone in my shelter, you were like the younger sibling I never had," T admits.

I sit there in silence for a few moments trying to process what T just said to me. I know T didn't speak to her family anymore and in a way, I guess I had started to consider her family, but I never thought the feeling was mutual. I always assumed that it was just me becoming overly attached to the people around me. I don't know what to say, so I just lean in and hug her.