The pair spent a good portion of the afternoon checking the NASA building out and found a good rotation for them to follow. Cassie wasn’t a part of a good portion of this rotation, but she was kept in the loop.
The pair followed this schedule for the next half month and every morning, Larson dragged Cassie over to Jax. Despite this, Cassie would chicken out every time with a different excuse; and eventually, Larson got tired of taking her to him and told her if she didn’t do something about it soon, he’d ask someone else to do it and he wouldn’t go easy on whoever it was. Alongside that, Larson had gotten used to NASA’s security system. He planned out a route for them to take once they found the right time to break in.
At the moment, they were at lunch ready to discuss their ideas. Cassie was sitting at the table with her plate full of foods that weren’t good for anyone, including herself. She wiped her hands clean of the bright orange grease from the pizza she finished and now, she was currently eating a sandwich from her lunch bag.
She munched on this food while Larson told her their best odds.
“I don’t know if you can hear me over all that noise you’re making, but if you screw this up, I won’t think to leave you in a heartbeat.”
Cassie swallowed what she was eating and said, “you must really think I’m not in this the same way you are. Look, just because I’m not frowning and getting my big girl pants on doesn’t mean I’m not serious.”
“Could have fooled the hell out of me.”
Cassie ignored that and moved her tray over to him.
“Why?” Was his response.
“I’m offering you some, dude. You don’t eat at all, at least whenever I see you, you’re not.”
“Because we don’t get hungry often.”
“I know, but we still have to eat so why not just eat anyways?”
“I eat when I have to. Nothing more.”
Cassie snickered. “You must eat like a salad and some water huh?” Larson grabbed her wrist right before she was about to eat something causing Cassie to drop it. Her other hand grabbed it before she complained to him. “I must be right if you thought to do that.”
He let her hand go and rested his head in his hand. “You’re so fucking annoying.”
Cassie stared at him and then her eyes went elsewhere. “You know, I’ve been told that before. It seems people, you included, don’t like anything. If you’re too quiet, you’re annoying; if you’re too loud, you’re annoying.” She scoffed. “This is the one thing I don’t like about people.” Cassie returned to eating.
Cassie didn’t say much after that, which only made Larson look off. The noise of the cafeteria filled their silence.
“Did you find anything out?” Cassie took an intense focus on her sandwich as she spoke.
“Yeah…” Larson trailed. “The building has one door they usually leave unlocked until all the janitors are gone. They don’t leave until around nine at night, which means they’ll be in the building while we’re doing this.”
“So, we’ll have to Assassin’s Creed this?”
Larson’s brows furrowed. “What?”
“Never mind. We’ll have to sneak around?” She corrected.
“Not exactly. Those lazy ass janitors don’t clean the bottom floor until the morning. They’re only cleaning the offices and other usually occupied areas at night.”
“We just have to avoid those areas then.”
“Right. Most of which aren’t anywhere near the places I wanna check out anyway.”
“Okay, I got the idea.” She crumbled up a wrapper and cleaned the area of all her trash. “So, what about the time then?”
“There’s not exactly many holidays in March, so we can’t use that; but I know the schedule well enough to know what days they close early. Today’s one of those days.”
Cassie smirked and sat up straight in her seat. “Then what are we waiting for! Let’s go!”
Cassie got up and Larson did as well, but as soon as she was about to leave the cafeteria, she realized something.
Larson sighed at her hesitation. “What is it now?”
“Sorry, but, it’s just a little quick thing. I just need my backpack real quick.”
Larson couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was talking about, but he sighed and said, “fine, just hurry it up!”
With lunch almost over, the pair was able to leave the cafeteria to head to Cassie’s classroom. As Larson went up to the cafeteria doors, it opened and someone stood in the doorway. Upon seeing Larson, the girl smiled brightly.
“Why are you standing in the doorway?” Larson said.
“Sorry, I was actually looking for you. Lucky me huh?”
Larson said nothing, staring with a stoic expression.
“Um, well I wanted to invite you-”
Cassie walked up beside Larson, catching the girl’s attention.
Larson took a deep breath at the girl’s pausing. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing! I wanted to invite you both to a party I’m throwing!” She added, “it’s kind of far from here so if you don’t have a ride-”
“We’re good,” Larson said trying to get past her.
“B-but, you can bring each other if you want!” The girl didn’t budge. “You don’t even have to stay that long. Just drop by.”
Larson stopped, sighed and locked eyes with the girl. “I know what kind of angle you’re working, but I’m not interested in spilling my seed in some worthless being. Not even her.” He pointed behind him at Cassie.
Cassie scowled. “Ew.”
The girl’s mouth hung open. “What are you talking about? I-I wasn’t asking you to-”
“Really?”
The girl tightly pressed her lips together.
“Besides the fact that you always stare at me,” Larson continued, “you’ve slept with pretty much half the school. So I must be next on the list, huh?”
The girl’s tried responding, but all her words were caught in her throat. Quickly, she turned around and took off. Larson calmly approached the hallway ignoring the stares he was getting. Cassie tried to avoid the glares by staying hidden behind him.
Cassie stared at him for a while, the presence of her stare was palpable and eventually Larson let out a groan.
“I’ll gouge your eyes out if you keep staring at me like that.”
Cassie clicked her tongue. “See? Like that.”
“What are you talking about now?” A long exhale followed his words.
“You could have declined her in a more… human way.”
“If I did that, then I’d be leading her on. That girl hits on everyone and doesn’t seem to care if people say no. That’s just temporary for her.”
“Maybe if you were just more direct, you wouldn’t be leading her on.”
“I was direct. I think you mean I shouldn’t be rude, which is not gonna happen. I don’t have time to find pretty words of rejection.”
Cassie just shook her head. “Speaking of which; not that I want that, but why am I not ‘worthy’ of your seed?” She then laughed at herself after saying that, Larson’s gazed pierced over at her. “Okay, okay,” she said, giggling. “I’m sorry, but I still want to know.”
“It’s pointless either way. So I told myself I’d never reproduce.”
“Why?”
“I just said why!” He grew agitated. “One thing I do about our species is our longevity. Our organs probably work the same, so I could be fifty and still have kids if I cared to.
“Okay, so maybe it’s pointless right now, but wouldn’t you want to see what a little you would look like?”
“Yeah, my parents have baby pictures.”
“Boo, you’re no fun.”
Having no need to rush, they casually walked down the blissfully empty hallways.
“I still don’t get that though.” Cassie said, “if we were born the same as everyone else, what actually makes us different from these guys?”
“Maybe the fact that I punched a hole through a tree? Stood under fire and didn’t feel a thing? Like seriously, what are you even asking?”
“Like that, even if we’re different because we won’t die to anything they will, we’re still technically human?” Cassie said.
Larson couldn’t fault her there. “I’m assuming we don’t have the same functions, properties, and processes…” He paused. “Well, mostly, since for whatever reason you still have crushes.”
“I told you, it’s more like those people are fascinating because of how unique they look.” She clarified.
“You let them hinder you like humans do.”
“Oh, or maybe some of us are more human than others!” Cassie proposed.
“…I didn’t think of that.” He admitted. “But it’s hard to say when there’s only a small bit of information on us.”
“You wanna know what we should do? We should write our discoveries!”
“Neither of us know how to do that properly.” Larson shot down her idea. “No, we need someone else to write this stuff down for us.”
“Well, I can write pretty well. I might be bad at math, but I’m good at English and Literature.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re not a doctor in any right, so I’m just gonna keep telling you no.”
Cassie crossed her arms at the stagnation.
They reached Cassie’s classroom and found it empty of a teacher. She went inside, got her backpack and rejoined Larson. Cassie dug around in her bag until she found her phone.
“What are you even doing anyways?” Larson rested against the wall.
“You’re just gonna think it’s stupid. Since I don’t know how long this is gonna take, I wanna tell my parents I’m not gonna be home until late. But I gotta come up with something convincing since I’ve never been home late before.”
“Never?”
“Never.” She repeated.
As Cassie texted away a convincing message, Larson just stood in front of her tapping his foot and aimlessly trying to occupy his time.
“Hey.” Larson turned his head hearing the voice from behind him and there he saw their failed plan—Jax Barmen. He approached them with a soft smile. “Sorry if I’m bothering you two, but I wanted to ask you guys something.”
Cassie looked up, unaware of who it was, and instantly pulled her lips in her mouth when her eyes landed on him.
Jax smiled sweetly at her.
“Sure, what is it?” Larson ignored the worried presence now behind him.
Jax chuckled. “You guys are really weird, but you two are like some kind of fourth dimensional creatures… right?”
Larson looked back at Cassie. Her once frightened disposition faded and was replaced with a bit of shock.
“We’re assuming… though we’re not from there,” Larson said carefully.
“I just didn’t know how else to call you guys.” Jax admitted.
“How do you even know that?” Cassie interjected.
“It’s actually a little strange. I remembered one thing because I thought it was really cool. It was that you guys could disturb waves, in this case it was electrical ones.” He took out his phone. “Every time you guys came by, my phone would act crazy. I put two-and-two together and I guess I was right.”
“Impressive,” Larson said.
Cassie stepped closer. “We actually tried to talk to you before, but…” Her voice trailed.
“Oh, it’s cool. Not like you could just walk up and tell me you have powers like this.”
Larson stepped up now. “We were going to ask you if your family kept any of the research your grandfather did.”
“My grandfather was an eccentric person, he never once told me anything out of a book. They might have kept something, but it’s not anywhere I live.” Jax explained.
“Why?”
“Because my dad never believed my Grandfather. He called it dementia.”
Cassie stifled a laugh, Larson looked back at her with narrowed eyes. She looked down and kept a straight face, Larson rolled his eyes and turned his back to her as Jax went on.
“He passed away a few years ago, but I know he didn’t have dementia or anything like that. This stuff is real!”
“Do you guys have a family home or something?” Larson asked.
“Not that I know of, but I could always ask my mom.”
“This is great!” Cassie surged with a newfound excitement. “If you find something we might not have to go anywhere!”
Jax gave a puzzled look. “You’re going somewhere?”
“I swear you talk too much. No we’re-”
“Yeah!” Cassie moved Larson out of the way and spoke. “Lars here said we might be able to find out some stuff at NASA since we believe they may have encountered beings like us already. Then if we’re right, this means we’d have to visit another planet.”
“That’s amazing!” Jax said, “but, if you’re gonna do that, you’ll need someone to document whatever you find.”
Cassie smiled and looked at Larson. “He’s gonna wind up helping us anyways, so can he do what you said I can’t?”
Larson looked at her. “What if he tells someone about us?”
“In your words, no one can even hurt us anyways!” Cassie recited.
Larson sighed heavily and looked back at the boy who had a vibrant smile on his face. “If you tell anyone about us I’ll kill you and them.”
“He’ll kill you, not me.” Cassie clarified.
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jax said with a small chuckle, “I hoped to be a researcher anyways.”
“Damn, how lucky are we?” Cassie said, turning to Larson. “You did say we needed to find someone.”
“Yeah, but preferably someone older than us.”
Cassie put her hands on her hips. “Age doesn’t mean shit! If he thinks he’s up to the job, then we should give him a chance!” Larson sighed and said nothing. Cassie turned back to Jax. “You’ll get used to him. When he doesn’t say anything, that’s him giving in to what I say!”
Jax couldn’t help but laugh.
“Oh, but you don’t know our names,” Cassie added. “I’m Cassie and he’s Larson!”
“I guess you guys already know, but I’m Jax.” He properly introduced himself. “I’ll do what I can to help.”
Larson let out a groan at the excitable exchange the two were having.
“Anyways, look,” Larson said to Jax, “to prevent you from being totally useless right now, here.” He held out Barmen’s only bit of research.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah, Barmen’s research. Whatever little information I found, I already wrote down, so you can have the book. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”
“I can’t believe it…” Jax took the book carefully. He stared at it as if the world around him disappeared. Then, he looked up with a large smile. “If I had known about this, I would have already had something for you. I’ll work right away on this!”
“Good, you don’t need me to hold your hand.”
“Wait, did you have that book on you the whole time?” Cassie interrupted.
Larson sighed. “Wish I could say the same for her… anyways. We’ll probably meet up tomorrow, who knows how long this might take.”
Jax eagerly responded. “I’ll find you guys, don’t worry. You do what you have to!”
“Don’t forget to talk to your mama!” Cassie reminded him. “Remember to ask her about this stuff.”
“Hurry up, we’ve wasted enough time.” Larson took off without another word.
Cassie sighed. “We’ll talk later.”
Jax just smiled at Cassie. She then took off as well.
Now alone, Jax looked back down at the book and he couldn’t help the excitement he got seeing it. Almost like his Grandfather was back at their place telling him about his research. A surge of energy went through him as he went off to start reading.
