GEN13 - Version 2.0 (11 page)

In fact, Kat didn’t slow down long enough to put on her coat until she was out of the building and nearly three blocks away.

Kat stood on the street comer and growled under her breath. She was already well past the point where she’d had enough of this nonsense. Half of her interviews so far had gone exactly like this one. If it wasn’t computer whiz-kids barely older than herself who couldn’t get over being in a room with someone who was (as one of them put it) “even hotter than Lara Croft,” then it was balding, paunchy personnel directors mired in mid-life crises. Kat had neither the desire nor the intention to take a job where

her chief qualification was as someone’s fantasy object.

Yet, in the other half of her interviews, Kat kept facing the exact problem that Ms. Mickel had predicted back at the employment agency. The long and the short of it was that Kat had no relevant work experience. In fact, other than summers at the Kwikee Burger back home, she had no work experience at all. She hadn’t finished her degree, and hadn’t even made it halfway through the coursework for her major in computer science by the time I.O. whisked her away from school.

Finally, and perhaps most ironically when you considered her age, a lot of the computer knowledge Kat had acquired at Princeton was already growing outdated. The technology was changing at light speed. The evolution was racing forward so quickly that, over the course of the time she’d spent with Gen
¹³
, new generations of hardware and programming languages were already beginning to appear. They were displacing the stuff Kat had learned to take over the mantle of “cutting-edge.”

At her age, it wasn’t easy for Kat to think of herself as obsolete. But when you put it all togther, it didn’t exactly position Kat as the ideal candidate for a job.

Kat stood there for a bit, just watching the steam that came from her breath in the winter air. When she felt a little more calm, she hiked up her sleeve and looked at her watch.

One-thirty already?
she thought with surprise.
Where’d the day go?

Kat took out her schedule of interviews and checked it again, even though she had it virtually memorized. A glance confirmed that, as she had thought, her next interview was nearby, and it wasn't scheduled to start until two o’clock.

Kat decided to take advantage of the opportunity to grab a little lunch and recover from the blur of waiting rooms, interviews, circling and crossing out want ads, and dropping off resumes. She wasn’t especially familiar with the neighborhood down here in Tribeca. The area was harder to navigate than the bulk of the City that stretched uptown. The streets down here had names instead of sequential numbers, and some of the streets veered off at odd angles instead of maintaining a boxlike grid like most of Manhattan. Even down here, though, Kat knew that it was difficult to throw a stone in Manhattan without hitting a deli of some kind. Sure enough, when she looked around, she discovered one less than a block away.

Kat walked inside and headed straight for the salad bar. As she rummaged through the bar and made her selections, Kat took stock of her situation.

Clearly, finding the right job wasn’t going to be as easy as she had hoped. In many ways, searching for a job felt a lot like an endless series of blind dates, complete with all the nervousness and potential for rejection that analogy implied. And just as in blind dating, there was no way to know how long the process would have to continue before she found “Mister Right.”

Kat’s hand stopped halfway toward the bin of sliced tomatoes, hovering above the salad bar as she was struck by a troubling thought. What if she
never
found the right job? There were no guarantees that she ever would. Would she just have to give up? If not, what would she wind up having to settle for?

There was no way around the fact that the search was going to be hard. She’d known that from the start, much as she’d tried not to think about it. The real question was whether the ultimate payoff would be worth it. Unlike most of the other people searching for jobs out there, Kat didn’t really have to work. Mister Lynch covered the living expenses for all of Gen
¹³
, and gave each of them a generous weekly allowance besides. She had a gorgeous place to live, and more than enough pocket money for her modest needs.

But, as Sarah had pointed out to the others, that wasn’t why Kat was looking for a job. Kat didn’t need this for the money. She needed it for herself. And that, she realized with a deep sigh, wasn’t something that was going to go away anytime soon.

So yes, she figured, the search was worth it. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was worth it.

Kat paid for her salad and took it outside to sit on the bench at a bus stop while she ate. She sat alone on the comer, fighting to eat her salad before the wind blew too much of it away. The solitary, outdoor meal wasn’t the most lavish she’d ever eaten, nor was it the most enjoyable. After spending hours mired in the looking-for-work grind, there was a big part of her that wished she could be off with her friends instead.

Kat wondered what the others were doing right now. She bet it was something fun.

Roxanne lay on her stomach, sprawled sideways across her bed. She was dressed now, but that wasn’t the most distinctive thing about how she looked. No, the distinctive thing was her eyes, which were puffy and red with tears.

Despite all the things Roxy did to make herself appear older—the attitude, the cigarettes, the tank tops and miniskirts—she was still, in many ways, not much more than a little girl. Roxy worked hard to project a tough outer shell, but most of it was an act—a mask to protect the sensitive, insecure soul beneath.

What’s wrong with me?
she asked herself.

Roxy tried so hard to get close to people. She really did. But time after time, it always turned out the same way: Just when it looked like she’d succeeded... just when she’d start to feel comfortable ... the other person would push her away.

She thought about how hard she’d worked to land Grunge as her boyfriend. For the longest time, no matter what she did, it seemed like he barely realized she was alive. Or if he did notice her, it was more like a friend or sister thing than hearts and flowers. He was too interested in silicone babes with bodies like blow-up dolls ... and brains to match.

Then, one day, for no reason at all, it just clicked. Everything fell into place, and Grunge looked at her like he’d never really seen her before. And all of a sudden, Roxy’s unrequited love wasn’t unrequited anymore. The harps were playing. The angels were singing. Roxy was walking on air—and without even using her powers.

Except that it took less than a day for Grunge’s wandering eye to start wandering again.

It wasn’t that he’d been unfaithful to her. For one thing, no matter how much Grunge might like to window shop, Roxy knew that he wouldn’t ever take things that far. He was a dog, sure, but he wouldn’t do that to her. And besides, he knew full well that, if he ever did take it too far, Roxy would make sure that it would never be physically possible for him to do it again.

But even if all he was doing was looking, it still hurt. It hurt to see Grunge drooling over every other woman on Earth.

Because it meant Roxy wasn’t enough.

And while Roxy never imagined that Kat had it in her to hurt someone like that, it was starting to look like the same kind of thing was happening all over again. After all these years of feeling alone, after all these years of praying for someone who would stand by her side no matter what, Roxy discovered that she had a sister. Okay, technically, she was a half-sister, but still—a sister! The nicest, sweetest, kindest sister anyone could ask for. At last, Roxy had someone to confide in, someone who’d never turn her away.

Or so she thought. Because that’s exactly what was happening.

No matter what Kat said, Roxy had a hard time believing that the timing was coincidence. No sooner had Kat discovered that Roxy was her sister, than she suddenly decided she needed to get out of the house more.

Roxy stopped herself.
No,
she admitted silently,
that’s not fair.

Okay, so maybe Roxy wasn’t really the reason for

Kat’s job hunt. But even so, the fact remained that Kat wasn’t satisfied with her life. She was out there looking for a job because she didn’t feel like she had enough in her life otherwise. Despite having a newfound sister, Kat didn’t feel there was enough in her life to keep her interest.

And that meant Roxy wasn't enough.

Not that she blamed Kat. Kat had brains up the wazoo, and a wazoo that didn’t quit. She was smarter than Roxy, prettier than Roxy, stronger than Roxy, nicer than Roxy...

So, realistically speaking, what did she need Roxy for?

It wasn’t the first time it had happened to Roxy. Growing up, Roxy had never known her real father, Alex Fairchild. Roxy was bom of a one-night stand, and if her father ever even knew she existed, he didn’t care enough to want to see her. Not even her own father needed her.

Still, there was one person that Roxy knew loved her more than anything, and that was her stepmother. The two of them might have been dirt poor, but her stepmom— her Momma—never once put her own needs before Roxy’s. She did whatever she had to do to make sure that Roxy was fed and clothed and had a roof over her head.

And how had Roxy repaid her? With nothing but problems and bad attitude. With twenty-twenty hindsight, Roxy cringed as the arguments kept replaying themselves in her mind.

“I understand how you feel, honey, but
— ”

“No, Momma! There’s no ‘but!’ You always do that. You just dismiss my feelings! You don’t care how I feel!”

“How can you say that? Of course I care about how you feel! ”

“Yeah? Then why is there always a ‘but?’ Why is it always
7
know, but
...
? ’ Why can't you just listen to me for once?”

"You think you’re the only one who feels that way? You think you ’re the only one who wants the other person to listen sometimes? When’s the last time you paid attention to how
I
was feeling ? ”

“Look, I don’t need any of this right now. I’m going out
...”

The thing was, Roxy loved her stepmother every bit as much as her Momma loved her. Even when they were fighting and screaming at their worst, that never changed. Way down in the roots of her soul, Roxy knew that.

But did her Momma know?

For probably the millionth time, Roxy wondered whether her juvenile, immature mouthing off had pushed her stepmother away.

The last time Roxy had seen her mother was just before she left for the “special school” that was really a front for I.O.’s Gen
¹³
program. Her stepmother seemed so proud of her for getting recruited to such an exclusive school. Maybe even prouder than Roxy herself. She wrote letters every day, although Roxy, of course, was too cool to spend time writing letters back to her mother.

Was that the final straw? Maybe it was.

Because by the time Roxy got her powers, busted out of the facility with the rest of Gen
¹³
, and tried to get in touch with her Momma, her Momma was gone. Roxy’s stepmother had packed up, left the apartment, and moved on. And not just once, either. When Roxy tried to trace her Momma’s forwarding address, she discovered that her Momma had moved a bunch of times—so many that Roxy had begun to wonder whether she even wanted Roxy to find her in the first place. Roxy’s latest lead placed her stepmother right here in New York. So far, though, Roxy still hadn’t worked up the nerve to check.

Her Momma had been the one person in the world who truly loved Roxy. And Roxy had screwed the whole thing up.

If you wanted to get honest about it, that was why she started taking on the whole attitude in the first place. That was why she always pushed people away.

Because she didn’t want to give them the chance to

realize that she wasn’t worth it. Deep down, her greatest fear was that they’d leave her first.

There was a knock at the door.

“Go away,” Roxy said.

The knock came again, gentler this time.

“I said, go away!”    *

The door cracked open, and Grunge tentatively stuck his head inside. There was a look of concern on his face. “Babe? Are you okay?” Grunge asked. “The Bobster said you were acting all, like, weird before ..

“I’m fine,” she said, turning her head to hide her puffy eyes.

“Fine.”

“Yeah, fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Oh, what do you care?”

Grunge reacted to that one with genuine surprise. “What do I care?” He stepped the rest of the way into the room and closed the door. “I care ’cause you’re my sweetie. I care ’cause if this was all the other way around and stuff, and I was the one all like that, then you’d care.” Grunge sat down on the bed beside her. “I care,” he said, in a gentler tone than Roxy had ever heard him use before, “because I care about you.”

“Oh, Grunge . . .”

Roxy sat up and threw her arms around him. They sat like that for a while, not saying anything. Just holding each other tightly.

Then, they kissed.

The entire apartment was rocked by a massive explosion.

“Whoa,” said Grunge. “Was it good for you?”

“Come on!” exclaimed Roxy. She had already snapped out of her mood and was literally flying from the bed to the door to see what was wrong.

They hurried into the hall. The smoke and dust was billowing in from the living room.

“This way!” said Grunge. But there was no need. Roxy was already ahead of him.

The pair ran into the living room to find that the broken doorknob on the front door was no longer an issue. Because there was no longer a front door.

Or a wall around it.

The dust from the rubble hadn't settled yet. It filled the air, making it hard to breathe without coughing.

Yet, there, amidst the debris, stood Bobby and Sarah, poised for battle. Roxy hadn’t known what to expect, but even so, her first glimpse of their attackers took her by surprise. (And for a member of a super-team who’d recently fought a bunch of mind-controlled lingerie models, that was saying something.)