Join Avery and follow along as the hard life starts to show a silver lining. Things may not be great at first but there is still hope. Dangerous hope. To have hope and lose it may perhaps be one of the worst things of all. Walls of protection firmly in place around Avery’s heart and despite the past hardships and a lot of personal issues. Avery finds people who care and finally starts to feel good about the future. Tainted future. Past experience and unplanned secrets threaten to unravel. Will hope shine or will dispare wall Avery away from the world for ever?

CHAPTER X

The prosecuting attorney told Karen he didn't believe they would get a conviction against the three men who allegedly raped her. It was her word against three men who had an alibi collaborated by the bartender. He told her to forget about it and let it drop. She should consider herself fortunate to be alive.

To Be or Not to Be, That is the Existential Question" If given the power of a comic book superhero, is that person obligated to play the part for the greater good?

To Be or Not to Be, That is the Existential Question

Chapter 6:

Last Time:

“I hate school,” I said to Rhea as we walked into the bathroom following the last bell. “It’s worse than I remembered.”

“It’s not that bad,” Rhea rolled her eyes and leaned against one of the sinks, her body toward mine. “Fix your lipstick, it looks terrible.”

“And what is this?” Mellie asked, staring at the ground with the greatest amount of disinterest that I’ve ever witnessed from any human being.

“This is a dead body,” Broderick said to her, as if he were explaining to a child.

“What a shame,” She shrugged. “Well, now what we know what it is, I’d like to get on with my day.”

CHAPTER IX

David knew he was skating on thin ice with Comm Tech. He let his lab go while he went down to Karen's lab every night and back to the hospital to be with Karen through the day. This way he hoped no one would get suspicious about the duplicates coming out of Karen's lab. The only reason the board didn't fire him was they thought he was able to do what all the computer engineers couldn't. That was make models almost as good if not as good as Karen made.

“Hello?” I called out, swiveling my head in the darkness. The hood pressed against my face, my breaths were labored. “Where am I?”

Meghan grabbed the collar of my dress and literally lifted me from the couch, dragging me across the living room and down the hall like a rag doll. Just as we reached the entrance to the hall, the house shook, an impact that rippled through the floor, knocking Meghan off of her feet and sending me sprawling back toward the couch. My head hurt. I could see a pool of red seeping onto the tile around me. It would heal, but god damn it hurt. Through my blurred vision I saw Meredith standing there, confronting the giant, but she looked different, so very different.

Mike was asked to cover a shift by a knowing friend on their birthday. Because the scheduling boss made an incorrect assumption, he ended up being something he could only dream of.

“Jasmine, sweetie,” Angela said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Go upstairs, please, into mine and Meredith’s room. I want you to stay there until we come to get you, okay?”

“Wait, what?” I turned to her, an expression of shock and confusion painting my face. “I don’t understand, I want to know what’s going on.”

“This isn’t for you to hear,” Anabelle said, her face stony. “Do as your mother says.”

“I’m not a kid!” I argued “I…”

“You are a kid,” Meredith informed me. “and you need to do as you’re told now.”

“First and foremost,” Angela said, standing maybe three feet from me. “You’re going to learn to string this bow. Notice how the arms are curved, you see?”

I nodded. For the first time I was really getting a look at my bow. It was made from a sleep black wood, very simple, but also a bit heavier than I’d expected. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit of contempt looking at it, as Meredith had forced me to run the obstacle course over and over again while holding it. Still, it was something Angela wanted me to have, and that was enough to make me love it.

Mike watched in amusement as Karl pulled the gun out thinking he was using it only to scare Karen. Then the shots rang out. "CHRIST, KARL. You didn't have to kill her. She couldn't hurt us."

"Listen stupid. If she pointed her finger at us, those goons Comm Tech has working as her bodyguards would as soon kill us as talk to us. This way nobody knows besides us. She sure ain't going to be doing any singing..., Now."

“Why did we drive a car if we can just walk through mirrors?” I asked as Meredith eased her car between two others on a temporary grass lot.

“Because it freaks people out when we just appear in front of them,” Angela told me, rummaging through her purse for something. Finally, she yanked a pink bracelet from the bag and handed it to me through the seats. It was pretty plain; there was nothing special about it, it kind of reminded me of a slap bracelet, though without the slapping part. “Put that on, it makes it easier to find you in a crowd.”

It had been several weeks since the initial attempt and now their plans were in place. "She usually leaves the building almost the same time everyday. Normally it is close to eight or there abouts when she walks out to the parking lot. She gets in that damn rocket of hers and drives home followed by the tail she picks up when she passes the gate."

I stared incredulously at the creature that had just passed through the mirror. Were my eyes deceiving me, or was this really, truly a talking armadillo? Angela and Meredith immediately rose from the couch, though I sat there, mouth agape until Angela nudged my shoulder. I climbed to my feet and leaned into her, wrapping my arms around her waist. She laid an arm around me and gave me a partial hug.

“What should we watch next?” Angela flipped through the Netflix menu on the television, I laid comfortably between the two of them, kind of curled up. It was nice being small. “I think we’ve watched everything on Netflix and Hulu, we’re going to have to wait a few years for them to update the library.”

I stared in the mirror, mouth agape as my face changed from a grown woman to a child of about twelve. She’d forgotten to change the maid uniform with me, so it was sort of hanging there, the skirt falling way past my knees.

“Steve?” Angela placed a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“How…how long am I going to stay like this?” My voice came across as a mere whisper, I saw Meredith smirk behind Angela in the mirror.

“Until you can change yourself back,” Angela smiled and ran her fingers through my hair, straightening it out. It felt good.

My body turned away from the bed just as I finished dusting the sleek wooden headboard. It was like this, every day. Was it every day? I’d lost track of time a while ago. My body was just on repeat, working its way down a never ending chore list; never sleeping, never stopping. During the first few weeks I’d tried to think about who Angela was, how she had this kind of power over me. As the days and hours waned on I just stopped caring. My body was exhausted, my muscles were throbbing, the pain in my jaw still hadn’t subsided. I guess it wasn’t mean to.

The same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of his worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

He didn't like anything he was looking at. The gauges didn't show any signs of life when he flipped the switches. Everything was dead. This wasn't good. There was no noise from below to tell him the little diesel was even trying to start when he turned the switches on.

He dropped down into the galley where Karen was pumping water into the sink. "I don't have any batteries this morning. I think I forgot to turn off the radios last night and the mooring lights drained everything."

He opened the hatch leading into the engine room. Karen could hear him complaining about boats in general, as he tried to crank the diesel over by hand.

David reached across the seat and played with her hair. "Can we kiss and make up?"

"No! I’m still mad at you for doubting me." She folded her arms across her chest.

"It wasn't you I doubted and him I don't trust."

"Same thing. I designed him and he’s a part of me."

 
“I have something that might help you," he told me, his eyes glistening with excitement. "It’s just a drup of something.”

“A drup?” I repeated. “What on earth is that?’

“Give me a break!” he cried. “A drup, a druppel, a druppeltje! It’s a drop, a droplet, a tiny drop!”

“A tiny drop of what?”

There wasn't one single company capable of matching the quality of work Karen and Henry were doing. Most of them tried to duplicate her work by ordering a model and disassembling it to find out how she accomplished it. Piece by piece, their lab technicians would dissect her models. At the end they experienced the same results as the medical research laboratories. Except for being polymer instead of skin and bone, it was an exact duplicate of the entire human anatomy. The programming she was running to complete one model had to be horrendous and yet she never made two models alike. The bytes of data Karen was using was incomprehensible to most model makers. They weren't programmers though, most of them were chemical engineers designing the plastics used in their manufacturing. Karen was a computer engineer who worked on the design of the models from a graphics equation perspective. Henry helped research the plastics used to build the models. Same problem to all the companies competing in the model market. Different approach by the engineers.