Generations Beyond

Two weeks passed since she was released and returned home. Before, she choked down at least half the food that Jonathan cooked her, now she barely took more than a few bites. She wasn’t able to go on their morning runs anymore. Instead, she chose to stay in her room, in bed.

Christina didn’t leave the house and chose to work from home. She offered the contractors more money to increase their productivity and move the timeline up like Penn demanded. Less than three weeks remained. They should be scheduling walk-throughs and final inspections, not still ordering equipment and signing off on shipments. When she finished working at the end of the day, what little food she had eaten come right back up.

Jonathan focused on the base, spending long days and the occasional night at the Mountain to make sure that things were running smoothly. The progress was good, considering the shortened timeline. It still wasn’t the preferred performance he wanted to see from the vendors. In any other circumstance, Jonathan would be at the house with Christina. With Alex there, he was free to take care of business.

Alex knocked on the closed bedroom door. “Hey, Blondie,” she said and let her mastery over sound carry the words to Christina’s ears like a leaf on the breeze.

“Come in, Alex,” she said. Christina propped herself up on her bed using pillows with her laptop on her legs.

Alex opened the door and slipped into the room in silence and closed the door. “How’s it going?” Alex asked as she walked to the bed.

“It’s alright. It’s going to be tight, but we might make it. Good.” Christina commented as she looked at where Alex’s fingers pressed against her stomach. “When can I go running again?” She asked Alex with hopeful eyes.

The look that Alex gave her, lifting her as her fingers continued to trace the edges of the wound, searching for any abnormal heat or lumps. “You keep healing like this and I’d say another two weeks. But not like Jonny does every morning. It’ll be months for that.”

Alex frowned. “And if you keep on with this no food business, you won’t be running anymore at all.” Her forehead creased. “I’m worried about you, girl.”

Christina let her body sink back into the pillows. “I’m trying Alex, I am.” Her eyes closed. “I promised Jonathan almost a mo-”

She lifted a hand and pressed a single finger against the talking. “I ain’t talking about trying. I see you eat, and I don’t think you’re one of those crazy skinny bitches that likes to eat and puke.” She took the finger away and sighed looking at her with a tilted head. “We need to figure out why you can’t keep it down.”

“I’m pretty sure I know why,” Christina said as she looked out the window. “You don’t know what the base is going to be used for?”

“I’m guessing that it’s going to be used to do to other people what has been done to you. That whoever your bogeyman is wants to grab up people like you and me to use for their own nasty purpose. Kids, like that Gabriela chick you have a file on back in your apartment out east.” She offered a smile. “This all mental shit from all this stuff going on. That’s why you can’t keep food down?”

“He… Penn… is a collector. It’s a lab to test people like us...and Jonathan,” she said looking at Alex.

“Well, Blondie, based on what I kno-,” she blinked. “Fuck, you say?”

“Jonathan’s one too. Our mission is to track other Generations and return to the base with them for testing. The thought of him doing this to anyone else sickens me. And he’s making me help him,” she said looking into Alex’s eyes.

It took Alex a moment to digest the bit about Jonathan. She twisted and lay next to Christina. “You know how to read blueprints?” She snuggled closer and laid her head down on Christina’s shoulder. “Electrical diagrams and shit like that?”

Christina nodded and looked at Alex. “Sure, Jonathan showed me how to read them when we got the base schematics a month or so ago.”

“So can I,” she said. “And so can contractors. And military project pencil pushers. But Jonny’s good. Real good.” She draped an arm across Christina, mindful of the abdominal wound, “I think Jonny’s not being honest about what he’s doing with your lab, Hon. Looking at some of the plans, they don’t feel right. Might be worth a talk. Plus, I don’t think the plan’s going to work. But I have a better one but it’s gonna take a lot of trust from you.”

Christina took a look at the blueprints again and squinted. “He’s sabotaging the lab?” she said the phrase that was half statement, half question with a soft laugh at the end. “That man is a genius,” she said and a real smile spreading across her face for the first time in weeks. “I trust you, Alex. What’s the plan?”

“Well, first you need the truth. I work with an organization,” she said, fingers playing with the fabric of Christina’s cami. “We know about Penn. We had suspicions of what he was up to.” She closed her eyes and drew in a slow, deep, breath with a lazy smile. “We’ve been trying to stop it for a while.”

“How long have you known about him?” she asked, trying to avoid saying the man’s name at all costs.

“Five years?”

“Did you know about me?” she asked, her body stiffened.

Feeling the tension set in, Alex lifted herself up to look into Christina’s eyes. “We knew you existed,” she said, brushing her fingers against Christina’s cheek. “We knew you worked for him. But not what you were, or what you did for him.” She smiled. “We didn’t know that you were being experimented on. We’ve had chances to take you in the past, but we wanted to leave you in place to watch you.” Alex cupped her cheek. “If we had known, we would have gotten you out.”

Christina closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s no way you would’ve known the leverage he had on me,” she said. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. “Your organization, what plan do they have?” she asked.

“It’s changing, with new information that I am feeding back to them every day, but the current version is to get you back to our compound in Montana. Your family is the sticking point.” She brushed back a stray strand of Christina’s hair. “We don’t want to move until we know we can get them safe.”

Christina felt a ball forming in her throat. She nodded and rolled toward Alex and pressed her forehead to her upper chest.

Alex smiled and wrapped Christina in a gentle hug. “We’ll take care of you,” she said, kissing the side of her head against her ear. “Promise.”

Christina took another deep breath. “Alex?” she asked. “Do we have anything in the kitchen?”

“There’s lots of stuff,” she said. “Think there’s some leftovers from last night. We’ve got stuff for sammiches. You feeling like eating?”

Christina lifted her head and smiled at Alex. “Yeah, I think I do,” she said with a smile.

It turned into a mental health day for the two women. Alex made them some sandwiches for brunch and they cleared off the dining room table to eat while she told Christina about a compound in Glacier National Park near the Canadian border.

They spent the afternoon napping in Christina’s bed in between girl talk ranging from high school crushes to favorite designers. Some of the conversations were more biased toward Christina, some toward Alex, but the important part was that it was a day without worrying. They spent an entire day without thinking or talking about what was going on and having a normal day.

Late in the evening, Alex decided to do Christina’s nails. “So, he asks me,” she laughed and reached to grab a rich purple polish with metallic cobalt blue flecks from the coffee table. The pair sat on the couch with Christina’s legs laid across Alex’s lap. “Hey baby,” she forced a deeper tone into her voice, imitating a guy. “How about I buy you a drink?” She shook her head and started painting with meticulous care and a well-practiced hand. “I looked him up and down and said…” She pulled the brush back laughing more. “I said G T F O.”

After one grand fit of laughing, Alex took out her cell phone and held it high above the both of them. Christina laid her head back against Alex’s shoulder with her hands out in front of her, careful of the painted nails. Without a word from either one of them, both women smiled for the camera before breaking into laughter again.

It was a good day for Christina. The food didn’t taste half bad for once, and it managed to stay down. She felt better and stronger than she had in weeks. It wasn’t as great an effort to stand and walk. She wanted to get out of her room. She started to feel hopeful again. But there was one thing left that weighed on her mind.

“He looked so confused.” Alex started painting again. “I swear his little brain overheated.” She paused, looking toward the kitchen and garage. “Lover boy’s coming,” she commented before going back to the task at hand.

“He’s not so much a lover boy anymore,” Christina commented, her smile dropped as she looked toward the door. “How do you know he’s coming?” she asked as a brow raised in the silence of the room before the deep rumble was heard. She looked back at Alex with a slight smile. “I bet you’re awesome on recon missions.”

“I’m pretty good at anything sneaky,” she said. “What do you mean not so much a lover boy? That boy is head over heels if I ever saw it.”

“It feels like he’s either afraid of me or disgusted by me.”

She winced and paused, looking at Christina. “Yeah, so, about that.” She blew on the drying polish, having finished one hand, before taking the other. “You and he need to chat, but it’s my fault.” She started painting again as the sound of the garage door opening crept into the house.

“What?” she asked. “What do you mean it’s your fault? What happened?”

“I called him on his bullshit,” she said before the door between the kitchen and garage opened. “Speak of the devil,” she said, but those words never made it farther than Christina’s ears.

Alex paused and looked at Jonathan. “You and your girl need to talk. And I swear if you make her cry, Jonny, I’ll kick you in the nuts.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked at the two women. “What the fuck did I do now?”

Alex looked back at Christina’s hand and started painting again, miming Jonathan’s question. “You get him, girl.”

“Jonathan,” Christina said as she looked up at him. “I have an important question for you and I need you to be honest with me when you answer.”

“Can I admit to whatever I did, or will do, and apologize now?”

“If you want to admit it now, go for it,” Christina said.

“Uh,” he walked to the chair and sat. “So. Yeah. I drank out of the milk carton. And I left the toilet seat up. And I probably left something laying somewhere that I shouldn’t?”

“Jonathan, stop,” she said. “I need you to think back to how we used to be when we would sit and talk, do you remember that?”

“Yeah.” He nodded.

“And what happens now when you talk to me?” she asked.

“We talk. I don’t think I understand.”

She sighed and went on, “Easter Eve, we sat on the back patio and ate dinner, we pulled our chairs together and talked, had a real conversation.” She used her free hand to gesture to the sliding glass door. “And last night, last night,” she said, moving her hand to point at the hallway leading to her bedroom. “You come to my door to deliver your report from across the room, Jonathan… across the room. You couldn’t come near me. It wasn’t a conversation, you delivered it like a SITREP, you asked me how I was doing, and left.”

“Mmhmm,” Alex added in, “asshole.”

He opened his mouth, but closed it again and frowned with a deep crease in his forehead. “I,” he said, looking at the two women. “Alex said something to me the night you got back. She said that I was chasing the high when I touched you.” He looked at Christina. “I didn’t think too much of it, but the more I thought, the more I recognized my behavior. I didn’t mean to get distant.” He splayed out his hands with a shrug. “It wasn’t my intent. I knew I needed to stop touching you as much.”

“So I’m right,” she said, looking between both Alex and Jonathan. “Fear and disgust. You’re afraid to touch me because you don’t want to get hooked on the high, and you’re disgusted because you like it.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “yeah. I see what addiction did to my dad, and I don’t want that happening to me. So I ran.” He looked down “Instead of trying to beat it, I ran away.”

She felt his emotions pour from him, and heard Alex gasp. “No wonder Alex called you on your bullshit,” she said, unable to stop the tear from sliding from her unblinking eye. “All the times you told me you would find a way to help me, find a cure, find a vaccine or anything to help me have those things that normal people have, it was your excuse.”

“No.” He stood and took a step toward her. “No. I promised and I will. If anything, I used my promise as an excuse for me. To hide the truth from myself.” He swallowed and looked at her. “Never. Not once, did I touch you with the intent to feel that high. Never.”

Christina looked at Alex. Her day went from bad, to great, to the walls caving in. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, help me.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, putting the polish down to wipe tears away from Christina’s cheeks. “Jonny’s a lot of things,” she leaned to kiss Christina’s forehead, “but a liar isn’t one of them.” She looked at Jonathan. “He’s a damned fool, but he means well.”

Christina nodded her head and leaned back to look at Jonathan. “Rule number one, no more SITREPS, okay?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“Rule number two, no more standing on the other side of the room from me.”

“Got it,” he moved closer and tried to smile.

“And number three, what’s for dinner? I’m starving.” She looked into his eyes.

“Salad,” he answered, with a better smile, “with grilled salmon.”

“Sounds great,” she said, smiling back at him. “We have some other important things to talk to you about, but we can do that over dinner prep.”

“Yeah,” Alex chimed in. “We decided we want a threesome.”

He looked from one woman to the other, with parted lips. “Uhm, okay.” He scratched his head and squinted. “I mean, the hot tub’s roomy enough.”

“I can’t go in the hot tub yet.” Christina motioned to her stomach.

“Right,” he nodded, “the oil? That’d work too.”

“You could sit out,” Alex commented, fanning the painted toes in her lap. “A suggestion.”

“But it’s not a threesome,” he said. “It’s you two.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, “problem?”

“Good point, Alex,” Christina said, nodding to the other woman.

“It’s decided.” Alex nodded and waved Jonathan away with a shooing gesture. “Go make us dinner. We’ll be in Blondie’s room.”

“But,” he started and shook his head, “alright. It’ll take about an hour for dinner. You’ve got your timetable.”

“Jonathan?” she called.

“Yeah?” he asked. “What’s up?”

“Come here, please,” she said, waving him to her position on the couch.

He walked to the back of the couch and put his hands on the ridge, leaning down. “Okay?”

While being careful of her nails, she pulled the top part of her cami up to her nose covered her mouth. “Kiss me. We were joking with you.”

“Yeah.” Alex laughed. “Cross, you’re gullible.”

He looked between the two women and frowned. “So no threesome?” He cracked into a grin and kissed Christina through the cami shield.

“Not this time, lover boy,” she said once his lips withdrew.

For the next hour, Christina wasn’t allowed to help. She wanted to move around the house, rather than be confined to the couch. When she tried help prepare dinner, Alex shooed her back to the living room.

Once the salmon was cooked and the salads prepared, Christina was allowed to go onto the patio and enjoy the outside air. The food tasted good. It didn’t take long before three good bites disappeared from her plate.

Jonathan bowed his head and said his own private Grace while Alex and Christina started their meals. “So, what did you two get up to today, other than Alex working some kind of miracle and getting you to feel better?” he asked Christina with a smile.

“I think we accomplished jack and shit today,” Christina said with a smile between bites. “I have to tell you, Jonathan, this salmon tastes marvelous!”

He put his fork on the plate and stared at the two of them for a while. “No, seriously. Who are you and where’s Christina Cross?”

Christina laughed and looked at Alex. “Do you want to tell him or should I?” Alex took another bite of her salad and waved between the two of them. “Alex has a way to get us out of this hell hole situation we’re in, and we don’t need to leave the country. All of us.” She took another bite before continuing. “She’s part of a group that is like us, like the Generations program, but they have a place up in Montana in the mountains,” she said before taking a drink of water.

He blinked and picked his fork up again, taking a few bites as he chewed on the information and his food at the same time. Swallowing, and washing it down with a drink, he drew a slow breath. “Okay. Montana. And why trust this organization?” He looked at Alex.

“Fair point.” Alex put her fork down. “If we wanted you two, and we didn’t care if you had a choice, we’d have you already,” she said. “We’re not asking you to come to some secret lab or come help us with some plot. We want to get Christina safe with her family. That includes you, Jonny.” Alex looked at Christina before turning her eyes back on him, “if you choose to help us after that, it’s up to you.”

“I understand your reservations, but this is the best plan I’ve seen. Alex told me about their operation in the mountains, it’s not some hokey, fly by night set up. It’s a facility and they aren’t testing on people,” she said. “I have to trust that something like that is a million times better than what is going on here. And the information I can provide them can help.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked between the two women, “Alex,” he said in an even tone, “can I trust your people on this?” He locked eyes with her. “Brutal truth.”

She met his gaze, unafraid. “If they hurt either of you, I’ll deal with them.”

Christina took another bite of her salad as she looked at Alex. “How soon could we move on this, if Jonathan gives his stamp of approval? I’ve already funneled a substantial amount of money from the base budget into offshore accounts.”

“Depends on how quickly we can move on your family,” Alex answered with a shrug, taking a small bite of food. “Don’t want to move you before them. They’re harder to protect.”

Christina looked at Jonathan. She might not know where she stood with him; partner, lover, friend. But she knew she didn’t want to move on this without him by her side.

After a long silence, he spoke up, “Z should be calling in a few days with an update,” he looked over at Christina. “I’ve had people watching your family, trying to figure out if there’s anyone else there. Trying to identify any threats. We should know more when we hear from Z.”

“Alright, as soon as we know, then we move my family, get them up there. What about you, Jonathan?” She asked as she put her fork down.

“Let’s worry about you and your family first, I can take care of me.” He went back to eating and thinking.

Alex reached under the table and gave Christina’s thigh a squeeze. “I’ll make contact and start the preparations,” she said, looking at Christina with a smile.

Christina smiled back at Alex. She didn’t miss that Jonathan dodged the question. “Fuck you,” she said to him. “That’s right, I finally said it. Fuck you, Jonathan. It’s not just you. We’re partners, so stop this I can take care of me bullshit,” she finished by picking up her water and looking away from him.

He looked at her for a moment. “What do you want me to say? That we should risk you or your family for me?” He put his fork down. “It has been my job to lay down my life for the people I protect.” He gave her an unwavering stare. “If I worry about me before I know you and your family are safe, then I’m not focused on doing that job. We need to make sure that the exfil plan for your family is airtight before I even think about me.”

She looked back at him, her eyes showing bitter anger. “I am not saying that we put you above anyone else, I’m saying we include you with everyone else. You’re not some fucking martyr.” She turned in the chair to face him. “You have to, for once, trust that someone else will do their job, let go of that control. I have to trust Alex and her people with my family’s lives. We can’t be down there, we can’t oversee that everything will go as it should. We have to worry about us, here, getting out of this. If we don’t, we’re going to run out of time.” She started to reach for his hand, stopped and pulled her hand back and set it on her lap.

“Getting out of here is as simple as getting in the car and driving away,” he leaned back. “We could do that right now and not risk anything to ourselves. But I will not blindly trust someone with your family.” He pushed his plate back and leaned forward on his elbows. “I can’t be there, but I have men that I trust who are. They will handle Florida, and that is where my focus will be until they tell me the plan is good. That’s my concern.”

“And I agree, and as soon as my family is pulled, we have to leave. If Penn suspects anything, he will have people here, right on top of us,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

“We’re ready now,” he said more sharply than he intended. “There’s nothing here that needs planning and preparation.”

Christina jumped at his words. “The complex blueprints, all my files, account numbers,” she said, naming off some of the things to take with her when she left. “Anything they might need to help them when we got there,” her eyes searched his face. “Why are you getting angry now?”

“I’m not angry,” he said, shaking his head, “frustrated.” He looked down at his half eaten dinner. “Let me keep you and your family safe.”

“Fine,” she said. “I hope one day you will let us keep us and my family safe.” With that, she stood and took her plate into the house.

Alex had been eating during the conversation, but when Christina went inside, she shook her head. “You don’t understand, do you?” She looked at the door Christina had gone through. “She isn’t some doll on a shelf to be protected, Jonny. You never got that about some of us.” she stood up and took her plate with her into the house, leaving him on the patio by himself.

“Shit.” he sighed and pushed the plate further away, looking into the distance at nothing in particular.

Alex followed after Christina into the kitchen. “Look, Blondie,” she spoke up, making sure Jonathan could not hear anything, “he’s got a chauvinistic streak.” She jerked a thumb back toward the patio. “He’s a good guy, but he gets lost in his own head sometimes.” She put her plate into the sink and gave Christina a gentle nudge with her elbow. “The kind of guy that pisses you off when you love them that much.” Her tone was not teasing, but understanding, as she started to rinse her plate.

Christina already cleaned her plate off and put it in the dishwasher. “I don’t love him,” she said, shaking her head looking at the racks in the machine. “But, we’re supposed to be in this together, and it doesn’t feel like it sometimes. It feels like he’s all in, and I’m in the shadows behind him, watching. That’s not what I’m used to. Hell, I’ve never had a partner before,” she said.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” she put her plate into the dishwasher, “thing is, he gets that way when he feels stressed or like it’s going to go bad. He’s worried about something.” She shrugged, “It’s the stress of the long days and that you’ve not been well.”

“I would think that after all this planning is in place, it would get better not worse.” she said, looking over her shoulder at Jonathan still sitting outside by himself.

“I don’t know what it is, Blondie, but it’s something.” She leaned against the counter. “Hell, it could even be he just needs a good fuck.” She shrugged and headed back toward her room. “And, you do love the boy. Even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself.” She headed down the hall.

She took a deep sigh and let it out. “Fuck,” she whispered. She looked down the hall where Alex had disappeared and then back to Jonathan. Christina closed the dishwasher and walked back outside, closing the sliding glass door.

Christina walked behind Jonathan, but didn’t put her hands on him. With Alex around, she had got into the habit of not wearing her gloves all the time. It was nice not having her hands feel so chapped and dry from the moment she woke up until the time she went to sleep. Instead of putting her hands on his shoulders, she settled for running her nails through his hair and along his scalp like she knew he enjoyed. “I almost forgot how good the view is up here,” she said.

He didn’t look back at her. When he felt her touch him, her nails moving over his scalp, he blinked. The goose bumps rose along his neck. “Yeah,” he agreed with a soft sigh. “It’s beautiful.”

Her fingers kept moving as she spoke, “Going to miss it?”

“No,” his eyes closed on their own, “I miss the ocean.”

“Are you leaving once my family and I are safe?” she asked.

“What?” he asked, pausing for another little sound to escape. “And leave you? No,” he shook his head. “You’re not a partner, Christina. This doesn’t end when you’re off in the middle of nowhere Montana safe and sound.”

She smiled and chuckled. “You sound like you’ve got too used to playing house with me, Cross.” She let her nails slide down and rake along the back of his neck. “I want you to do what makes you happy. Hell, I don’t know what it means for me,” she admitted with a wrinkled brow.

He leaned his head forward to expose more of his neck. “I don’t know what that is, either,” he answered.

“I’d like to see Europe one day when I’m not there to do someone else’s job,” she said still giving him the soft scratches. “Travel without worrying or looking over my shoulder.”

“I think I’d like this,” he said, his voice thicker in tone, “living without the constant everything.”

Her fingers worked their way around to his ears and teased along their delicate shells.

He let out a soft, short, moan before he turned his head to look at her. “Either you don’t remember me telling you about that turn on of mine, or you’re an evil evil girl.”

She looked at him with a big grin. “Oh no, I remember. I wanted to build up before asking you to come to my room. You know, with you scared of me and all.”

He shook his head a touch, “I’m not scared,” he assured her, “but you’re in no condition to do anything.”

“I trust you to be gentle with me, Jonathan.” Her fingernails toyed with his earlobe. “Will you please come to my room?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he drew a short, deep breath, “I will.” He stood and grabbed his plate. He stepped around her and opened the door, leaving her there as he dropped his plate off on the kitchen counter on his way back to her room.

Christina turned and followed him. She walked into her room with him and closed the door.