“These days,” she continued, looking at the table and fingering her napkin, “I’m working at a factory where we sew fake designer clothes. Everyone who works there is either undocumented or, like me, badly documented. Oh yeah, a few ex-cons, too. All really nice people, all of us hardly making any money. I guess it gets me out of the house during the day, at least.”
Victor shot her a look, which Kate caught, then sighed. “I know,” she said, looking at him, then turned back to everyone else. “Victor’s told me a million times that I don’t need to work there and I should keep looking until I find something better, but with my papers…fuck, I don’t know if I could find anything better,” she finished, shaking her head.
After a moment, she raised her head and looked at the others. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you all this crap, especially not since you all came back from the dead and just after having met you, Lou,” she said, turning to look at him with a faint smile. “I’m fine, though, don’t worry about me.”
Lex shot a quick look at her three house mates and received nods and a smile from Casey in return. She cleared her throat before speaking. “Actually, this leads into something we wanted to talk to you two about. Let’s get out of here and we can talk about it in the van. Can you guys spend the night? We can get you back to where you need to go tomorrow, if you can.”
Victor looked at Kate with a raised eyebrow and a shrug, then nodded. Lex watched Kate seem to think about it for a moment, then turned back to her. “Sure, OK. I have to be back to work early Monday, and Victor has to be back at the shop then, too, so as long as you can get us back by then, it’s fine.”
“Not a problem,” Lex said, sneaking a look at Casey, who was now smiling broadly.
Lex waited until they’d gotten on the interstate headed to Phoenix before she took a deep breath and said, “We’d actually like you guys to come and live with us.” Victor gave Lex an interested look and a raised eyebrow, but Kate appeared shocked.
“So, wait a minute. You all agree about this?” she asked, pointedly looking at Riss in the front passenger seat.
Riss nodded in reply as Casey chimed in with a “yes” from the back of the van. “We wouldn’t have asked if we hadn’t agreed.”
Kate looked confused but spoke up again. “Even you, Lou?”
Lou nodded, looking briefly in the rearview mirror from his position in the driver’s seat. “Yeah. I hadn’t ever met you two, but I trust everyone else’s opinions and they vouched for you. I can see why: you seem like good folks.”
Kate looked away for a moment, and Lex could almost swear she looked a little embarrassed. “Thanks, I guess. When did you have time to talk about this, though? I doubt you had time to talk backstage.”
Lex sighed as she dropped her head, then met Kate’s eye. “It was no accident that you came here tonight. Did either one of you see a video of the band on the internet?”
Victor nodded, and Kate shot him a glance, then spoke up. “Victor saw it, then showed it to me. I didn’t know before now that he’s a music fan, but he insisted that we go to your next show. After I saw the video, I wanted to go, too. Do you think somehow we recognized you or something?”
Lex shook her head and bit her lip, then spoke up. “My eye and hair color weren’t the only new things I noticed when I woke up, Kate. I ended up with some new things I could do, too. You could say I called you to come.”
Lex waited with her bottom lip in her teeth, expecting her friend’s anger, but Kate just turned to Lex with a look of wonder. “Really? You’ve got to tell me all about it!”
“Later, later,” Lex said, feeling her cheeks heating up as she held her hands out in front of her. “First, I want to know what you think about joining us.”
Kate sighed, then frowned. “I don’t know, Lex. I think it would probably be more dangerous for all of us to be seen together than it would be for any of us to be seen separately.”
“Maybe, although the bunch of us has never really been seen together before now,” Lex said with a brief nod. “In balance, though, I think the positives outweigh the negatives. For starters, I look different enough now that you didn’t even recognize me, did you?” Kate shook her head and Lex continued. “Casey looks different as well, and I notice you’ve changed your look, too. But maybe more importantly, I think that the talents the bunch of us have together would make it far less likely that we’d get caught and more likely that we could get away if anything did happen.”
Lex paused to look at Riss with a question in her eye, which Riss nodded in response to. “Also,” Lex continued, with a smile at Riss, “we could help you with some other things. You mentioned you had problems getting good IDs. Riss could set you up with some real ones, and she could get what was owed to you from your Alpha pay.”
Victor raised his eyebrows and shot Kate an encouraging look, but Kate still sported a dubious expression. “How could we do that and not get caught?”
“I managed to do it for the three of us,” Riss replied, “so it’ll be easy to do it again, since I know all MSI’s procedures. The accounts for the M Agency and the Alpha team are separate anyway, so that should make it even easier to cover our tracks.”
Victor shot Riss a smirk as if from one tinkerer to another, which Riss returned with a small, sly smile. Kate watched the two of them for a moment, then shook her head.
Lex smiled at Kate before she continued. “I also thought we could use a guitar player and a good sound man, so I immediately thought of you two, but I think one of the main reasons I’d like you to consider is that I missed working with you guys and I’d like to do it again. So think about it,” Lex finished, glancing over at Kate and Victor without meeting their eyes, giving a small smile.
Victor gave Kate a look that Lex couldn’t interpret, and the two of them stared at each other for a minute or two before Kate gave a laugh and turned to face Lex. “All right, the two of us will talk it over.” After a beat to catch her breath, Kate smiled. “Now that I know you guys are loaded, though, I can’t wait to see where you’ve been staying,” Kate said, breaking out into a huge grin.
Casey laughed in the back as Lex echoed her in the middle seat. “You may be disappointed in the location itself, since the neighborhood isn’t all the great, but Lou taught us to make the inside much nicer than the outside probably ever was.”
During the rest of the drive, Casey, Lou, and Lex explained a few more details about how they’d arranged things between the current group members, but after a while, the conversations trailed into lively catch-up sessions. After Kate, Casey, and Lex had talked a while, Kate and Riss switched seats so that Kate and Lou could have a chance to talk. Lex felt surprised to see Riss and Victor conversing in quiet tones at one point, tinkering and computers seeming to be the main topics, and after which the two both sported smiles as if happy to have found someone on their own wavelength.
Once they got back to the warehouse, they all carried the gear inside, and Lou and Casey proceeded to give the grand tour to Victor and Kate. Victor said little but looked at everything, especially what they’d done to create the gym.
Kate expressed her thoughts much more vocally, however. “God, you guys have done a lot with the place! It’s beautiful,” she said, gazing up and around at all the space they had in the main room with all of the musical gear, the dining and sitting areas, and the kitchen.
Victor shot her a look that almost screamed,
“So, when are we moving in?”
Kate fixed him with a raised eyebrow and an indecipherable look and followed Lex up the stairs to the first floor bedrooms, Victor trailing the two of them.
While Victor investigated one of the spare bedrooms, Lex and Kate stood in the hallway near Lex’s door. She said to Kate, “If you guys don’t like this one, there’s another next door that you can check out. They’re not that different, but I think there’s a little more space in the second one.”
Kate lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s probably the one I’ll sleep in. It looks like Victor’s made up his mind on this one.”
When Lex gave her friend a puzzled look, Kate just smiled. “It’s not like that between us, though a lot of people seem to think it is.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Lex began, twisting her hands together in front of her, but stopped as she saw Kate shake her head.
“Not that I might not have been willing to try it out if he were interested, but since we’re both into guys…”
She trailed off with a shrug, and Lex couldn’t help a small smile at her friend’s description of the issue. “I guess that would put a damper on things. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
Once the two guests had been set up for sleep, Riss and Lex headed back to their own rooms. Before they parted, Riss stopped Lex with a look.
“So, about Kate’s story,” Riss said, then hesitated before she continued. “There’s no nice way to ask this, so I’ll just come out with it. Do you think they were trying to keep people from breeding outside the group?”
Lex raised an eyebrow as she glanced at Riss’ frown. “That’s a possibility I hadn’t thought about. It might be giving them too much credit, though. MSI doesn’t seem to keep its lab stock around long enough to consider breeding it.”
Riss nodded, her mouth set in a grimace as she turned and waved goodnight. Lex stood for a moment, still thinking, before she entered her own room. She credited the disturbing dreams she had that night to her upset stomach.
Chapter 28: Novel
“Guess what, guys?” Lex asked as she bounded down the stairs and into the dining area. “They’re going to come and live with us!”
Casey laughed and clapped her hands while Riss and Lou smiled at her over their coffee cups. “I had a feeling they would,” Casey replied with a smile of her own. “When do they want us to come and get them?”
“A week from today, Kate said. She said they wouldn’t have much to bring and that they could travel by bus, but I told them they could forget that,” Lex replied, returning everyone’s smiles. “I don’t know, though. She sounded mad; she didn’t really go into it, but I got the impression that Victor had already made up his mind and had to convince her it was a good idea.”
“What do you mean?” Riss asked, fixing Lex with a curious gaze.
“She said that he didn’t tell her right away, but he started closing his shop down as soon as they got back. I guess he just worked on her in the meantime, and that’s why it’ll take them a week to get things ready to go. He has to return all the broken and fixed items in his shop to their owners.” Lex said, looking down and feeling confused as to why Kate hadn’t wanted to move in, but shrugged it off since her friends would be coming after all.
Turning to Casey, Lex asked, “So, do you think we should put off our next tour until we can convince Kate to join the band? She did say she’d been practicing on the guitar her old boyfriend left behind.”
Casey smiled broadly in response. “That might be the best way to go even if she doesn’t join. I’d started setting up a few places earlier than that but I can call them back to reschedule. Maybe a month and then go on a short tour?”
Lex looked at the other band members to see what they thought. Riss shrugged and nodded. Lou gave Lex a thoughtful look, then asked, “Do you know if Kate’s ever been in a band before?”
Raising her eyebrows, Lex shook her head. “That’s a good point. Maybe a month and a half before we plan to go on tour then? And maybe something local a week or two before that to get her used to it?”
Lou nodded as he looked at Casey, who nodded in return. Lex grinned madly then as something occurred to her. “You know, we’re going to be the most badass moving crew ever.”
When they pulled up in front of the address they’d been given a week later, however, Lex just felt sad. The neighborhood, a suburb of Los Angeles, didn’t look too bad as far as the buildings went, but all around them there were the signs of grinding poverty: the battered-looking vehicles parked on the street, the large cluster of people in ill-fitting or worn-out clothing waiting for the bus, the open stares their well-kept van got. When she saw Kate and Victor coming out to meet them, though, Lex had to smile.
“Stop bouncing up and down in the seat,” Riss said, but when Lex looked over, she could see Riss trying not to laugh.
Lex did laugh as she got out of the van. “Come on, let’s get to work.”
Lou followed Victor and Kate’s advice to stay with the van, but even then it didn’t take long to clean the apartment out. “Not much of the furniture is ours,” Kate said with a shrug. “Just this table, these couple of chairs, and those boxes.”
It took about a half-hour for everyone to load Kate and Victor’s belongings into the van. “Is there anything else we need to do?” Lex asked Kate, eyeing the mostly empty apartment.
“Yeah,” Kate replied as the two of them went out into the hall. “I need to return these keys.”
Lex followed her friend to the basement and waited as she knocked on a door, talked briefly with an older woman, and then they left.
“Nice lady that runs the place, but she probably should have stopped working when she was sixty. She’s seventy now.” Kate shook her head.
Lex fell silent as she followed her friend outside. The sun peeking through clouds seemed like good luck, however, and Lex looked over to see Kate grin at it. “Come on,” Kate urged Lex, “let’s get out of here before anyone gets any ideas about the van.”
The drive home felt lively at first, with Lex and Kate singing to some of the tunes that came on the radio, but after a couple of hours, Lex was sitting leaning against one window with Kate fast asleep, leaning on her shoulder. She’d been watching the scenery go by for a while before she looked back into the van to notice that Victor was watching Kate, some concern on his face. When he noticed Lex looking at him, he gazed up at her with a look that was hard to interpret. Lex smiled back at him.
“I’m really glad the two of you decided to come and live with us,” she said quietly, trying not to disturb Kate.
Victor gave a small, genuine-looking smile in return. “We’re glad, too,” he replied.
Settling Kate and Victor into their rooms and the rest of the house didn’t take long. The next day the group decided, at Riss’ insistence, to tackle the ID situation. Riss sighed as she looked at the drivers’ licenses the new arrivals had handed over to her.