Project LOSS

Chapter 4

The door creaked as Vrethie entered the hall, the familiar smell of dust mingled with treated wood hit his nose and made him feel an odd nostalgia for a time long forgotten. The cracking walls of the building, once used for recreational sports, would never again see opposing teams fight for victory and fun, cheered on by pretty girls in bright uniforms and pompoms. This made Vrethie a little sad for reasons beyond his vast knowledge and comprehension.

The city’s other defenders stood talking in their usual groups, fanning themselves with their hands or notebooks in an endless battle against the heat of the unseasonably warm day. Meredith, dressed scantily in ‘too-short’ pink shorts and a ‘much-too-cropped’ yellow crop top, was talking animatedly to her clique but took the time to shoot Kai a dirty look as they entered. She muttered something that elicited with laughter from her group.

Harpies, Vrethie thought but chose to ignore them.

Please don’t let another Meredith versus Kai argument become the main focal point of the meeting, Vrethie prayed silently. He’d really had enough.

“Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedules to grace us with your presence,” said Harry, one of the more senior officers. He was a pleasant man in his early thirties, with messy dark hair and warm brown eyes tinted with quiet despair.

“You’re welcome,” Kai replied as he took a seat and reclined, closing his eyes as though preparing to nap. Vrethie offered Harry an apologetic smile as he perched on the chair beside Kai’s.

“Not a lot to discuss this week. I only have the bus assignments, and the Lead Officer needs to see you, Kai, before you get too comfy,” Harry went on.

Kai pulled himself up with great feigned effort and sighed before leaving. Vrethie highly doubted Kai had ever experienced any physical weariness or strain of any kind, but he often acted as though he did for effect, or maybe to fit in.

You’re the lucky one, thought Vrethie, at least there are windows in the offices. There were windows in the hall also, but they had all been jammed shut since before the event. No one had ever questioned why or made any attempt at fixing the problem, for fear of breaking the fragile glass or just out of sheer laziness.

Kai returned to the hall looking peeved, but not in what Vrethie referred to as Kai’s ‘full-on rage mode’.

“Turns out people have found out what I’m receiving and are no longer happy with their wages. Well, the Lead can’t afford to pay you more, so he’s cut my pay to make things… fair,” Kai reported.

“Well, it’s not fair you get more when you don’t even turn up to half the meetings!” Meredith was all too quick to pipe up, singling herself out as the primary complainant on the wage issue.

And there goes my hope of avoiding an argument.

“Well, Meredith, maybe I should I get more because I’m the only reason this damn city exists.” Kai almost spat in her face, leaning so close to her face their noses touched. “In fact, I’d say I’m the only reason the human race still exists,” Kai went on. “Heck, I made most of you what you are. You should be on your knees thanking me but nooooo all you do is complain.”

Vrethie cringed, watching the scene from behind his fingers. The arrogant boy doesn’t know when to quit.

While Kai was indeed one of the main reasons the city remained free of Infected and Muties alike, he had to understand on some level, as Vrethie did, that the Alliance was necessary to provide the services needed to keep a sizeable city afloat. Electricity, clean water, clean land for growing crops and waste disposal were just the start. This was the reason Vrethie agreed to join the Defence Alliance, as didn’t need the credits.

Vrethie noticed Jack lowering himself to the floor with an expression of genuine fear—or convincing impression. Either way, Vrethie motioned for him to cease the play acting and for once Jack obeyed.

“You didn’t change us back on purpose. Not out of the kindness of your heart,” scolded Meredith.

“He changed me back on purpose,” Milo, all blonde curls and sparkly blue eyes, chirped up but was ignored by all.

Vrethie had to admit Meredith had a point though he would never dream of saying so. Most of the people in the room had been the consequences of paid jobs undertaken by the duo and the knock-on effect Kai’s ability generated. Vrethie suspected those saved by proxy would be more grateful if Kai had saved them on purpose or out of kindness, rather than for monetary gain. The thing these people failed to grasp: Kai and Vrethie had never seen the lost world they pined for; the brothers had been created decades after the first gods were summoned.

“Shush guys,” Harry half-heartedly tried to quieten the women. They were creating quite a din as they talked over each other, desperate to have their personal issues on the matter heard. Vrethie lost all patience and raised a hand, silencing them.

“Thank you, Vrethie,” Harry breathed, rubbing his eyebrow. How I wish I had his power over women, if only to control this bunch of C.U.N.T.S, Vrethie heard Harry’s thought and couldn’t hold in a giggle over the fact that Harry even spelt out swear words in his own head.

The meeting continued with the distribution of the city bus assignments. Harry wrote up plans for journeys between the four guarded cities within travelling distance in chalk on the board, tapping away speedily with his little white stick. Vrethie cringed at the noise it made.

“Can’t Kai just ride the bus instead of driving? His driving makes me nervous,” a girl named Sasha asked with a frown as she read the line-up.

“Because he has the driving skills of a potato,” Meredith chimed in quietly.

Vrethie could see Kai’s face screwing up in anticipation of another outburst, so jumped in and defend his brother. “And you would do so much better, Meredith, despite having never taken a single lesson?”

Meredith looked away, rolling her eyes discretely but of course, Vrethie caught her. The urge to use his telekinesis to crush her skull rose and passed quickly, luckily for Meredith.

“At least he drives faster than two miles an hour,” Faith offered. None of the others piped up in agreement, probably because the comment was a reference to Vrethie’s diligent driving style. He considered being overly cautious preferable to crashing in the dead zone between cities. Faith clearly disagreed. i***t.

“Sky Rat!” Jack shouted. Laughter filled the hall.

“Jack! Man, will you stop bringing that up?” Kai mumbled as Jack left his seat and flew about the hall, lanky arms and legs flapping wildly, eliciting more laughs from his audience.

That kid has issues...

“He is never gonna let me forget that,” Kai said. The sky-rat incident had occurred when Kai had been driving, open-windowed, and alongside a pigeon. He’d taken a corner too sharply and too fast, resulting in a pigeon flapping its way through the bus.

“Jeez, I get a bird on the bus one time and nobody will let it go.”

“I think it’s more the fact you crashed the bus—” Vrethie said.

“Whatever. You try driving with a full-on panic and feathers in your eyes,” Kai cut him off and folded his arms.

Bird attacks aside, the main problem the brothers had with the concept of the bus was that Kai could outrun it at top speed with ease, and Vrethie had the power of teleportation. Vrethie was sympathetic to the need for travel between the otherwise separate cities, though, and he tried to be as helpful as possible—when he had the time.

“Well, Since the party district attack, I believe having Kai, Vrethie or any of the more senior officers on board would be best,” Harry said.

A glum silence fell over the room.

“Those dark army bastards!” Faith cried out of nowhere, making a few of her friends jump.

“Black army. The divisions in the army of the First all have a colour,” Vrethie corrected her, partly because she was wrong but mostly because he loved to correct people, especially people he found irritating—like Faith.

“Hmm, black for the necromancers, blue for psychics, red for the combatants, green for shifters—” Harry listed.

“Okay, okay, I know it has been a long time since we faced an attack, but I do remember the basics,” Faith interrupted him, flicking her hair and pouting into a compact mirror. “I call them the dark army because they are the worst.”

“You should remain aware that all infected have the same agenda, regardless of faction. There is no good infected or bad infected … just brainwashed drones under the power of the First,” Harry lectured on, unaware no one was paying attention to him.

“Maybe I should get driving lessons. It would be preferable to him driving,” Meredith changed the subject, narrowing her eyes at Kai.

“Meredith… one day you will need Kai’s help, so if you cannot be nice, I would suggest you at least try not to aggravate him. I’ve warned you about this vision many times.” Vrethie pinned Meredith with a dark stare. “Consider this the last.”

Vrethie was no master precog, but his brief and infrequent flashes of the future, though incomplete and viewed through the milky lens of the third eye, were never wrong. Meredith, as she always did, denied the vision could ever happen since she would rather ‘take a s**t in her hands and clap’ as she so elegantly put it, than ‘go crawling to Kai’. Vrethie knew it would, for they had always done so.

“In my vision I see you on your knees, asking for Kai’s help, before a massive arena of people,” Vrethie reminded Meredith.

“What people?” Kai asked, a deep frown creasing his forehead.

“It is weird, I know, but I have no idea who they are. I don’t recognise a single one of them. They must be from a city we have no access to,” Vrethie explained to his brother as Meredith moved away, not showing the slightest bit of interest in his warning.

Mercifully, the meeting ended just before another argument could break out, or so Vrethie thought. As the shifting sounds of departure filled the hall, a meek voice, one of Meredith’s posse, plucked up the courage to inquire about the absence of a trip to the Party District on the bus schedule.

“Well, since you all insisted Kai take a pay cut, I didn’t think it was appropriate, or safe for my health, to ask him to undertake any unnecessary work. Since those journeys are far too dangerous for anyone else to supervise, I left it out. If you want to go, you’re welcome to ask yourselves,” Harry informed the outraged group of females with thinly disguised glee.

Vrethie almost jumped out of his seat as Kai let out a guffaw and planted his palms on the wooden desk before him with such force that each of the legs cracked and splintered. “I knew there was a reason I hadn’t killed you yet,” Kai smiled widely at Harry.

Vrethie saw Meredith and her posse exchanged worried glances and listened in as they huddled and decided who should approach Kai about the issue of the party bus. After a short debate, they landed on the girl with the most substantial bosoms. She was at least a head taller than any of the other girls, had longer legs and a slimmer waist, but something about her personality didn’t sit right with Vrethie. Maybe it was arrogance.

The girl played with her curls as she bounced over. She stopped a few inches in front of Kai, ignoring Vrethie completely.

“No,” Kai told her bluntly before she’d opened her mouth.

“What?” she asked.

“Whatever you were going to say... No.”

“But...”

“No buts.” Kai leaned in, placing his hands on her upper arms. Vrethie groaned as he heard Kai explain to her in no uncertain terms how he would not be taking the bus out to the Party District and that waving her oversized, fake, watermelon-shaped breasts in his face would not change his mind. Vrethie would have put it a nice way, fobbing the girls off with false promises, but it hardly seemed worth the effort.

The girls face twisted. “You’re hurting me,” she whimpered.

“Don’t be soft,” Kai huffed, but only relinquished his grip after an animalistic sound of pain escaped her more than ample chest.

Vrethie resisted the urge to roll his eyes as the girl wandered back into her pack who quickly swarmed to engulf her.

“For a girl with a spanking fetish, she sure has a low tolerance to pain,” Vrethie whispered out of the corner of his mouth as he watched the women stared daggers at his brother. Vrethie pulled a face of his own and they scattered, bar Meredith, who remained with her hands upon her hips and a disapproving grimace etched on her lips.

“How did he know they’re fake?” the girl cried, and the others assured her they looked ‘so real’. Vrethie did not have to look deeply into the minds of those young women to see their true, less generous thoughts on the matter. He chuckled to himself but did not share the insight. Vrethie tried his best to curb his mind reading and rarely used his abilities to humiliate or hurt other people—at least while out in public.

To avoid more rowing, Vrethie gently coaxed Kai away and led him on the more picturesque route home, past the rice fields and farms that had sprung up over the past year. In ever-growing patches, the arid land was slowly being rejuvenated by dedicated farmers using compost and foreign soil, most of which Vrethie had teleported in from greener pastures.

“Why is it always me they ask?” Kai whined.

“Well, they know if they ask me, I will be kind and make excuses. That way they would have nothing to b***h and get outraged about. People like that crave drama.” Vrethie explained, doing his best to give Kai an insight into the psychology of the all-girl group.

A few yards from their home, a newcomer to town strolled past the pair, seemingly oblivious to their presence until Kai shouted him over.

What are you up to, Kai? Vrethie frowned to himself.

“Say, aren’t you part of that group that arrived about four days ago?” enquired Kai.

“Yeah, Wh...” the young man said before Kai cut him off with a swift uppercut to the jaw, dropping him to the floor like a sack of s**t.

“Don’t ask,” Kai warned Vrethie before bounding up the steps to their front door.