BAY #13
"Today Alex finally met Winter. I had this wild satisfaction watching them battle it out over a chessboard. Winter has always bragged that he is the smartest one in the family because he got the highest IQ score out of all of us, which gives him this constant, infuriating sense of superiority. Meanwhile my tiny Alex sat down to play with him and… after an hour of struggling, he wiped the floor with him. I stared at Alex’s face almost the whole time, shamelessly, studying every unconscious little expression of his, the cute frowning, the pouting, the famous tapping of his chin and cheeks with that thin finger, the sighing and wheezing he only interrupted to take a puff from his inhaler.
Winter had such a deep vertical crease between his brows you would think he was trying to dig into his own brain to scrape out extra resources, but my brilliant Alex did not let Winter’s Mensa-level IQ save him. "
And then,
"Today we were sitting on the couch, and Alex was laughing so hard at the comments under Dereck’s video that he leaned toward me and rested his head on my shoulder for a moment…
He probably did not notice how I stiffened, ready to pull away, but despite that reflex something inside me, something quiet and small and stifled, wanted more of his pink-blond head on my shoulder. It's like a taste of paradise."
Time passes like that…
My journal fills up, but what does it matter?
Even as the months go by, I do not make a single move toward him.
Alex and I are like very close friends who spend a ton of time together, but we are not boyfriends. I do not have the courage to suggest anything like that. Nope, just nope.
Meanwhile, my channel keeps growing steadily.
Alex was right, covers of well-known songs turn out to be the perfect strategy, and a few of the videos I uploaded average around twenty thousand views and a lot of likes.
The subscriber count keeps rising, and even the first bits of income start appearing.
Since I am underage, my dad has to be listed on the financial side of the account, but it still feels good to be earning something real.
Even if the amounts are small for now, it gives me a boost and more motivation.
Alex supports me faithfully and helps me run my social media. We are like a perfectly tuned team. We never fight about anything, there are no cracks between us, and we understand each other effortlessly.
There is one more thing happening in the meantime, something I do not mention to anyone, not even to Alex.
After the verdict in the Hanson case is delivered, I start browsing instructional videos for martial arts online.
I have a feeling it might come in handy, and I do not want to rely only on my height and raw strength. I am a teenage alpha who has not reached his full power yet, and if any of the Hansons ever decide to come for me again, I want to have a real chance.
I know very well that trying to learn on my own is not ideal, because I can develop bad habits no trainer will correct, but I do not give up.
I subscribe to many channels and join several forums for people who try to learn martial arts by themselves when they have no access to a coach.
I clumsily do shadowboxing, push-ups, pull-ups, and kicks.
I work on deepening my split so I can kick higher thanks to better flexibility. But I know it is still not enough.
Everything changes for me one day when I get into a short conversation on one of the forums with one of its regular users.
When I ask him about certain techniques, he answers with a question about why I actually need these skills.
I write that I got beaten up, ended up in the hospital, and that people connected to my attacker might be a future threat, not only to me but also to the people I care about. The user does not reply to my post publicly.
Instead, I get a private message.
I am genuinely shocked. The guy writes that he works for a small subsidiary of Malden Pharmaceuticals called Malden Technology, a company that produces virtual reality goggles, including training programs for martial arts such as marine combat, muay thai, krav maga, and several others.
These programs are based on so-called virtual intelligence instructors, so there is an AI trainer who corrects movements. The goggles come with a set of gloves with sensors, wrist and forearm bands, sensory vests with electrodes, and a vibration system that allows the AI trainer to correct posture.
The program is extremely advanced but not yet commercially available.
However, the guy says they run a number of tests for people willing to record and monitor their progress in a special app, people who are dedicated to hard training and committed to developing for at least a full year.
He says he could get me a free set if I strictly adhere to uploading all my training results to their reporting system.
All of this is incredibly exciting, so of course I agree.
A week later, I pick up a large package from the post office, and inside I find the goggles, all the body attachments, the sensor system, and cameras that track my movements, and even an inflatable training dummy with a hit detection system that tells whether my strikes have power and accuracy.
The only problem is that I have to hide all of this. Every evening after nine, I train for an hour with my door locked, and I have to make sure I am not too loud.
The AI trainer is named f-AI-t.
He turns out to be very helpful, and I can speak to him almost like to a real person.
He asks about my situation, and I tell him about my problems. He promises to adjust my training so everything stays quiet.
He prepares an interesting training plan for me, and I follow it.
All our conversations and all movement readings from the sensors are, of course, sent to the Malden Tech company that provided me with the software.
After each session, I have to pack everything into the box again and hide it deep in my closet.
But these are not the only changes happening during the first half of my first year of high school.
There is one more, far stranger change.
And there is only one person who can help me understand it, and that person is my brother Snow.
The problem is that I have the weakest relationship with him out of all my brothers. Though honestly, I barely talk to any of them, especially after everything that happened to me.
Snow. The one everyone in the family considers so annoyingly… special, gifted with his fucking supernatural intuition. Duh.
Yup, that’s the envy talk.
One day, I force myself to visit him in his basement.
When I approach the door, I hear piano sounds coming from inside.
Snow is probably composing. He always does that, and he is really good at it.
Not that I ever told him, especially since I do something similar myself, so there is this quiet competition between us, although he has no plans to show his skills to the world and I absolutely do.
I raise my hand to knock, but the door opens before I can say anything.
Snow stands in front of me, towering over me. We are both still growing as young alphas, but he is three years older, so he has the advantage.
He fixes that rigid stare on me, the usual sign of ‘brotherly affection’ between us. We always scowl at each other like opposite poles.
"Hi Snowball, I have a couple of questions, if you would be so kind in all your immeasurable grace," I mutter with a sarcastic twist of my mouth.
"If I allow it," he throws back dryly.
"What’s with the face, do you have a problem with your younger brother knocking on your sacred gates?"
Snow folds his arms across his chest and tilts his head.
"If you want something from me, just say it. Here."
"Oh? Scared that if I walk inside, I will smell the bodily fluids off you and Denis?"
I see a slight twitch on Snow’s face. He probably did not expect that. He looks around, then opens the door wider and lets me in.
"Much better," I murmur.
"Keep your mouth shut about Denis," he growls.
"Sure, sure, none of my business, though I am pretty sure Dad would not be thrilled that you are down here in the basement sticking your dick into your teacher’s son."
"Jealous?" Snow says. "Don’t tell me Alex would not say yes," he adds with a smirk.
A wave of frustration rises in me, and I do not comment. I step inside and sit on a table near his piano, where I see sheets of his compositions spread out. I can play the keyboard pretty well myself, that’s how I create my own music bases for some of the songs I composed.
I tap out a part of the melody he wrote, trying to gather the courage to ask what I came here for.
The silence becomes too heavy.
I blurt it out reluctantly. "A few months ago, I started feeling itching on my arms, chest, back, and stomach. If I remember correctly, you had something similar at my age, and it ended with those weird white tattoos of yours."
Snow stays silent, leaning against the wall, staring at the floor.
I roll up my sleeve and show him the very pale pattern visible on my skin, something that looks like swirling lines, only unlike the soft ones he has, mine look like jagged lightning zigzags packed densely on my skin.
They are still very faint, but I have this strange feeling they are going to turn red.
"Do you know what to do with this, since it seriously looks like the same thing?"
Snow steps closer and looks at my forearm. Something strange flickers across his face, almost dislike, then he shrugs.
"Maybe that is just how our family is. We are freaks who get spontaneous tattoos that mean nothing." He says it with a kind of pressure, as if he wants me to believe it more than he actually does.
"Stop bullshitting. Dad told me an interesting story about alien DNA and powers. So how do you tap into it?"
"They don’t actually do shit," he answers, looking aside.
What is he not telling me? He is downplaying it for sure.