Chapter 4.5

CHAPTER 7

 

Becky was sitting on her bed, staring at the wall. She was dressed in a blue cotton tank top and woollen trousers, her short brown fringe framing her eyes almost perfectly. She looked perfectly fine. The unnerving part was her stillness.

Mary approached slowly, searching for signs of emotional trauma in the young teen’s form. The girl had her shoulders slouched, hands folded on her lap, and an empty expression on her youthful features, making her almost completely unreadable. As Mary stepped into the room, Rebecca lifted her gaze to meet her, and a sad smile formed on her lips.

“Hello, sweetie,” said Mary. “How are you feeling?” She slowly approached, moving to sit next to her, and Becky shifted aside gently to make room. Mary’s mind began flashing back to their encounters in Antarctica, with Rebecca decidedly full of life and enthusiasm, contrasting to Mary’s brooding and aloofness. The two of them had talked every now and again, as much as any of the adults spoke to Becky. Despite this, Mary found herself awkward in the girl’s presence. It occurred to her that they had rarely exchanged anything more than small talk.

“Hi Mary. I’m ok,” said Becky, her angelic voice titillating in Mary’s ears, making her remember the amount of times Mary had heard Becky laugh, now an entire age ago.

“Ok?” asked Mary, meaningfully.

Becky shrugged, in a manner that either encompassed nonchalance or devastation. “I miss my Mum,” she informed her, matter-of-factly.

“Oh, sweetie. Come here,” said Mary. She held Becky’s head close to her chest, the girl unresisting in the affectionate gesture. “I’m sorry sweetie. I know it’s hard.”

“Yeah,” said Becky. “That guy, Michael told me everything. Have you seen Kobi and Drakken?”

“I just did,” Mary replied. “They want to see you. They are as shocked as the two of us…”

As Mary looked down on the girl’s sweet features, she noticed a strange, ironic smile on her lips, and she felt momentarily confused.

“Not something that you would expect to wake up to is it?” remarked Becky, wryly.

Mary stroked the girl’s cheek, surprised. Becky was seeing satirical humour in their situation. Mary had seen no such thing until long after she had awoken.

Mary felt suddenly tumultuous. It evolved hastily into anger at Michael.

“I can’t believe he told you, without me around,” she remarked coldly. “He should have waited for me. How did he expect you to deal with such a thing?”

Becky lifted her head from Mary’s shoulder, and as Mary shifted her gaze to her companion, she saw confusion in the teen’s eyes.

“I thought he was really nice,” said Becky. “We just talked about how I was feeling, and he said some things that were really positive, about how I would be looked after, and how you and Drakken and Kobi were around. I thought he was sweet. Waking up to a kind face wasn’t that hard.”

Mary’s mind froze slightly, as she found a severe lack of negative emotion in the teen’s demeanour. She was trying to work her head around such a thing, when Becky informed her…

“He even gave me this!” 

The girl held up her hand. Mary looked down in time to see the Spiderpal.…

…leap onto her face.

She screamed. The Spiderpal must have somehow gotten frightened, as she felt its claws dig into her hair and face, somehow avoiding her eyes. With the robot resisting her impulsive brushes across her head, her shock transformed into panic. She jumped up and began dancing around the room, trying to brush wildly over her head. It didn’t work; the innocent yet evil robot clung to her skin, determined, until she grabbed hold of it, tore it off and threw it across the room. It again collided with the wall.

“No!” exclaimed Becky, standing and rushing to retrieve the futuristic toy.

The little robot appeared undamaged. It flicked itself up and, apparently sensing a potential ally in this dangerous Mary-occupied existence, scuttled over towards Becky. She picked it up and cradled it, shielding it like a treasured pet.

Mary stood with aggression in her stance, and stared at the teen, her terrified mind rushing to comprehend the sudden turn of events. Becky was finding solace and affection in something that terrified someone who was well her senior.

“He gave you a freaked out robot?!” she demanded, her annoyance at Michael reaching new heights.

“It isn’t freaked out! …Well it is now, thanks to you. Look, you scared him,” said Becky accusingly.

“What…Scared him?” repeated Mary, deranged confusion halting her thought processes. She honestly couldn’t believe what was happening in front of her.

Becky wasn’t remotely disturbed by the advanced technology. She was embracing it.

“I mean, I just, I don’t think that’s an appropriate item to give to a child,” reasoned Mary. Her thoughts rushed to Michael, and anger burned her insides yet again. “And that moron Michael gave it to you, without a care in the world.”

Becky stared at her, with an amount of shock that seemed equal in magnitude to Mary’s. “But it’s harmless. It hasn’t hurt anyone. And he’s really cool! He’s like something out of Transformers!”

She eyed the automaton in her palm, and the device seemed to regard her in return, with an equal amount of affection.

“I liked Transformers when I was younger, and now it’s like having the real thing! A little miniature robot! Think I’ll call him Spidie.”

Mary shook her head. As Becky stood in front of her, cooing gently to a wicked looking machine, Mary began to realise what Michael was talking about when he said Becky was tough.

Beyond her boldness in embracing new technology, she could see the look in Becky’s eyes. A mixture of curiosity and optimism, basted in fearlessness. She wasn’t scared, or scarred, or traumatised. She needed help, like everyone, but her individualism and positivity made her invulnerable to the insecurities that Mary was on occasion crippled by. A smaller, more spiteful part of Mary began analysing Rebecca Long’s physical form.

Distantly, she remembered a conversation Kobi had once had with Drakken, when he had busted Rebecca in a moment when people thought she was studying for school, or lost in teen girl world, far away from adults.

“You should have seen it,” Kobi had remarked. “It was vicious.”

He had disappeared, on one of his Zen walks, when he contemplated life and his place in it. Away from the buildings and civilisation, though on this occasion, he had only meandered to the rear of the base, a place rarely frequented by any of the researchers or workers.

Long story short, he had spotted Becky exercising. It wasn’t a fair word for what he described, though. The girl, dressed in standard Antarctic gear, was a proverbial machine. While people remarked on her innocent, angelic nature, commented on her kindness and sweet actions, their perspective was only one part of her.

She would disappear sometimes, to a place of solitude, and become someone else. Someone elite. He watched her, saw her performing numerous pushups, core exercises, countless sprints across snow covered terrain. Lifting her light frame easily onto a makeshift chin-up bar, that could only have been designed and created by her, for a myriad of repetitions.

She shadow boxed, too. Swift jabs, powerful crosses, sweeping hooks, front and side kicks thrown in, with a level of skill more suited to a recruit than a teen girl. All the while, he claimed, exhibiting a determined, focused expression that was twenty years older than her age, and he admitted with slightly disturbing seriousness, an uncharacteristic level of fury.

She wasn’t exercising. She was athletically conditioning her body. She was training.

 Kobi said it reminded him of some kind of training regime he had seen US marines engage in. He had asked her about it, and she had only replied that she had read about the Corps. She wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest. She was determined to be accepted as she was. She said they had inspired her. That she liked their no-nonsense, positive approach. She had said she didn’t want to join them, but she sure as hell wanted to be like them, in one way or another.

And then, the warrior vanished, and the sweet girl reappeared. Cooked more brownies, gave more shoulder massages, made origami, read books, studied algebra, laughed easily.

Mary assumed he was joking, making a purely fantastic, absurd claim, intending to have people laugh at its ludicrousness. It couldn’t have possibly been real. Not in the case of the epitome of human kindness.

Not Rebecca Long.

Mary thought about that conversation, only one in thousands, when someone had a glimpse of the unearthed form of Becky.

It was far more apparent now. When Becky had stood and rushed to her toy’s aid, Mary was too unsettled to observe her. Now that she had calmed, it wasn’t a problem anymore.

The girl stood, one hand on her right hip, the other holding the Spider a few inches from her face, in a proud, upright stance, a good natured smile on her lips as she talked kindly to the object. She was tall for her age, only an inch shorter than Mary, who had never seen her minus thick, Antarctic clothing, and now Becky’s womanly physique was obvious. Mary was a petite woman, with thin wrists and a tiny waist. She was as girl-like as a woman could be. Despite her reduced height, Becky’s bare shoulders were broad and athletic, her arms powerful and feminine. Her thighs were well muscled, rippling obviously under the loose fitting trousers.

Mary also felt the tiny, shallow, spiteful part of her unleash a string of silent, enraged expletives at the girl’s perfect hour glass figure and developed bust, which gave her the appearance of a teen swimsuit model combined with a female Olympic gold-medallist.

There were her movements, too. They were graceful and powerful, gymnast-like. The hateful part of Mary stewed away inside her.

The skinny b***h would look great on a cat-walk, too, Mary’s thoughts simmered to her.

Mary felt one-hundred per cent stupid. She was the one who needed help. Becky wouldn’t need any assistance encountering and enduring her new life. It would be more challenging to prevent her from conquering the new existence.

A more down to earth part of Mary reminded her of something that should have been obvious.

Are you seriously jealous of a thirteen year-old? It asked her.