Lani had watched the SUV pull straight into the garage from her bedroom window. This was unusual to her because he always backed in. Not once had he ever pulled forward. As she put on her new shoes in hopes of showing them off, she heard a hard thud. He's collapsed?
She ran downstairs and found Michael laying on the floor, passed out. I've failed, her first thought. She knelt down beside him and took his jacket off. Finding the tourniquet, she pulled the shirt away from the tape. Blood had seeped out and around his self treatment. She picked him up and carried him into the basement.
Once there, she set him down and layed out a sleeping pad on the floor and placed him on it. After that, it was on to inspecting him for further injuries. Cutting his shirt all the way off, she found the taped piece of gauze that was barely holding on. She put on blue rubber gloves and proceeded to rip his remedies straight off. Michael was so out of it that he didn't react much other than his head trying to turn left and right occasionally.
After some time went by, there was a chest seal glued over a stitched chest wound, a closed flesh wound on his arm and a bag of blood in an IV line being fed into his arm. Lani sat beside Michael as she waited for him to wake back up.
Michael eventually opened his eyes very slowly, looking around to figure out where he was. He looked down at his arm, finding it taped up with a catheter inserted. He began breathing faster until Lani placed her hands on his chest and forehead.
"Stay calm," she whispered softly, "You hadn't fixed your wounds right, so I had to give you blood and stitches."
"how?" Michael managed to say through a groan.
"Oh, there's some awesome stuff I wanted to tell you," she replied as she slowly petted the side of his head. "That you aren't the only one who was enhanced with a crystal, that I've been repelling attacks against this house, that I'm also infused by the power of the other half of the same red crystal that you are, or that there's a special place in my heart that knows only that your safety and well being are what matter."
Michael stared upward as he breathed deep, slow and hard. Blinking rapidly, his mind raced as he tried to process what she had just said. His mind fixated on the part about him belonging in a special place. While the idea that there were other enhanced people out there wasn't as much of a surprise, given the manner in which he had just gotten his injuries. The concept behind a crystal having been in two pieces may not have made sense yet, but that was something he expected an explanation on. "you," Michael began to attempt speaking, "have been in danger?"
Lani giggled and shook her head slowly. "No Michael," she said through her grin as she leaned closer to his ear, "I'm the danger. None of them survived." She caught a tear trying to escape his eye and wiped it with her thumb. "I have to keep you safe, and they wanted to hurt you."
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"I," he tried to generate words as she placed a finger over his mouth to shush him, "I matter," he managed to say as she pressed against the bottom of his jaw with her thumb.
She nodded. "You always mattered," she said softly, "you just never had anyone smart enough to tell you." She adjusted the pillow under his head. "You need to rest so you can get better before whoever managed to do this realizes that they failed."
Michael gently grabbed her arm to get her attention before she could walk away. "You matter too," he blurted out. "I don't know why I can't express things, but I never told you because I didn't want you to hate me."
Lani began giggling in a maniacal fashion. "I was more worried you'd think I was some creepy yandere, if you even know what that is." She took a soft slow sigh as she shut down the blood transfusion line. "I also kinda like the little bit of money I get for cleaning your house. You're like a big brother to me."
Michael smiled. I'm big brother. it suddenly clicked in his head, the looks of admiration, the extra distance she'd go to make sure he was taken care of, the fact that nobody had yet succeeded in breaking into his house this whole time. He also had the question in his mind on how he had never figured out what was going on.
“Michael,” Lani said as she rubbed the top of his forehead softly, “you need to lie down. Sleep,” she said softly as she began rubbing her thumb on the side of his head in a slow circular pattern.
He could feel himself getting drowsy, though his heart was racing. He tried to open his mouth and object, being that there were questions and curiosities, mainly what had been happening to the bodies and how there hadn’t been any police investigations. What is she doing to me? His last thought before passing out.
As Lani laid his head down gently, a tear escaped her eye. I won’t lose you. She reexamined her work on the catheter in Michael's arm, the bandaging and the stitch job on his injuries. Doctors would do half as good and charge for this. She wiped the sweat from his forehead, then proceeded upstairs to get her kit and wait with him to make sure nobody could come around to finish their work.
As she pulled her kit out and put it back on, she dragged the M60 out of her closet. Hauling it downstairs, with all the ammo in a large backpack. With her strength and ease of movement, an observer would not believe that this was a real machine gun, nor would they believe that she was carrying two thousand rounds in the bag. She made it back to the basement safe room where Michael was left to sleep off his recovery. She made a few more trips to bring down more equipment, since she hadn’t bothered to unlock any of the storage in the basement to see what Michael had available.
Her last trip down, she brought down a rolled cloth with what looked like a sling hanging from it. This was in fact a special katana, custom made of high density metal and a razor edge. Her proficiency with this weapon would seem like something out of a fantasy if an observer tried to describe it. This was part of the point in the displays she had done at a time in her past.