Frank:

I decided to stay the night at Mikey’s house. Well, less I decided and more Mikey’s mom insisted. She seemed so happy for Mikey to have guests over that she pretty much dragged me from the front door to Mikey’s bedroom and shoved me into a sleeping bag.

Mikey was actually pretty cool, for a junior. Between him and his brother, they had a kick-ass record collection, full of British bands and classics like Bowie and the Rolling Stones. Music was my only love, mainly because it was the only thing that couldn’t love me back.

He had a guitar in his room, and I pulled it onto my lap, tuning it and playing some songs for the group of boys. They were very much in awe of me for the rest of the night, and that feeling was one I could get used to. Mikey told us a little bit about why he moved here, mainly because his mom got promoted to a job here, and then quietly adding that his brother was being bullied back in Jersey.

Midnight struck, and Mikey’s mom (or Donna, as she insisted) popped her head in the door and insisted that we go to sleep, as tomorrow was our second day of school and she didn’t want us late.

I was shaken awake by Mikey at six-thirty, and I dragged myself down to the kitchen for some coffee. Coffee was another thing I’d gotten into since waking up in this world, along with cigarettes.

Gerard was asleep on the couch with his face stuffed into a pillow so I still couldn’t see him properly. Even though six boys eating breakfast make quite a lot of noise, nothing seemed enough to wake him from his slumber. We eventually finished eating and left the house while Mikey tried to wake Gerard, and heard squeals from inside as we watched Gerard puke his guts out through the front window. I’d been looking forward to approaching Gerard at school that day, but he obviously wouldn't be going in that state.

Instead, I walked with the guys to school, and once they were out of sight, I turned around and walked back into the town of Monroeville and caught a bus home.

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Overton is a nice enough city. It has everything you need within walking distance, and is still large enough to explore. But after living in it for four years, it was starting to lose its novelty.

I lived in a small apartment in a quiet part of the city. It had three rooms and no character. I was only allowed to have basic furniture, with no decorations of any kind because the apartment belonged to the Legion. I was very good friends with Jeremy, an official, and so I managed to sneak in a CD player, a record player, a collection of records and 3 guitars, all of which I kept hidden in my bedroom. I had grown to love the apartment, mainly because it was the only place I felt that no one could get at me and where I was safe. However, on this occasion, I knew it was the one place I wouldn't be safe from Jared.

Jared probably expected me to go straight home after last night, and was most likely in my apartment right now waiting for me to get home. So I decided I’d have to take a detour to a friend’s house.

I’ve known Demi since I first joined the Legion. She was an official when I woke up, and probably the only person I've ever met who understands me and how hard the Legion can be. She was tall, slim, with dark hair and tanned skin. I knew I could tell her anything without needing to worry about her judging me. I knew she would listen to my story, and I knew she’d try believe me.

I stood outside her door at just before eight in the morning, knocking and waiting. She wasn’t answering and I was starting to worry that Jared had got to her. I should never have even considered it. The door creaked open and she peered out, looking dishevelled.

“Frank? What the fuck, it’s the middle of the night.” she said, her voice raspy with sleep.

“It’s actually the middle of the morning,” I replied, winking. “Now, are you going to ask me in or am I going to have to kick the door down?”

She stepped back, opening the door fully and curtseying mockingly. I laughed and entered her apartment, making a beeline to the kitchen. I poured us both a cup of coffee and sat down beside her on the sofa where she was smoking. I plucked the cigarette from her mouth, taking a long drag before passing it back to her with her mug.

“So, Frankie darling, tell me what you have to say before I extract it from your brain.” she said, exhaling a dense cloud of smoke.

“Well, Demetria darling, I’m not sure if you’ll believe me…”

“Come on, honey, if I believed I was straight for my first fourteen years, I‘m sure I can believe your story.”

I took a deep breath, before telling her the events of the day before. She didn’t look surprised at all when I told her about Jared’s son, however she did look surprised when I started talking about his partner. She stiffened as I described her face and her build.

“Wait, hold up. What did you say her name was again?”

“Sarah… or something like that.”

“Sierra?”

I clicked my fingers and pointed at her.

“We have a winner!” I said jokingly, but Demi was in no mood for games.

“This is bad. This is so bad.”

Her voice had lowered to a bare whisper. She jumped from her place on the couch and began to pace frantically.

“Oh my God, they’re going to kill me…” She trailed off.

“Demi, what’s up? Who’s Sierra?” I said worriedly, moving from where I had been seated on the couch and stepping in the way of her pacing.

“Demi… stop!” I exclaimed, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her gently.

“I cant bare seeing you like this. Just tell me.”

She raised her eyes from their position on the ground to meet mine.

“Please,” I pleaded, “you can trust me.”

“Okay.”

She shrugged out of my hands and went back to her seat on the sofa. She downed the rest of her coffee and patted the cushion beside her, indicating that I sit too.

“The whole thing about Jared? Yeah, I suspected that. I knew he was going to New York too often to be normal, and I’d started to suspect that the second golden rule was a sham for power too. But Sierra? That is what worries me the most.”

“You understand that when you become a Legion senior, you're assigned different tasks... right?”

I nodded, lapping up her information and trying to cement every particle of it into my memory.

“Jared and Jeremy do recruitments, and they’re training you for recruitments too. But I am in a totally different sector. Ugh, I shouldn’t be telling you this…”

“No,” I insisted, rubbing her knee supportively, “go on.”

She sighed and continued.

“My sector is called ‘Elimination’. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what that means.”

“In the sector of Elimination, there are two inner sectors; Internal and External. Internal deal with eliminations scheduled to people inside the Legion, and External deal with threats to the Legion. I’m in External.”

“In my third assignment, my job was to eliminate a target called Kay Farrell. She was a criminal mastermind, and had been trying to kidnap Legion kids before they turned fourteen in an effort to somehow gain their power for herself. I was meant to shoot her dead but she saw me coming and started running. I hit her three times, and I really thought she was dead.”

Her head flopped into her hands, and I could see she was trembling.

“But obviously, she’s not. She had a couple of aliases, and one of them was Sierra Kusterbeck. She’s probably trying to infiltrate the Legion through Jared.”

“Jared doesn’t know that she knows about the Legion,” I interjected, “he told her that he works at an office.”

“And you think she bore a child to the leader of the Legion because she actually loved him?” she said disgustedly, “She probably sees the child as no more than a pawn in her sick little game. We have to tell Jared, now.”

She got up and walked towards her bedroom. She stripped and redressed in under thirty seconds, not feeling the need to close the door because, of course, she knew I was gay. She finished getting dressed and began to walk to the door, but I stood in front of her.

“Hold up, Demi, how are you going to explain to him that you know about him being with Sierra? And would he not already know all about her history, since he is the leader of the Legion?”

She raised her eyebrows at me, giving me a ‘duh’ look.

“Well obviously, you’re going to be there, so I wont have to explain. And no, he wouldn’t know about her past. He may be the overall leader, but we work under the leader of our sector, and he only tells Jared the bare minimum. We have to go, now, Frank, the sooner Jared knows, the better.”

She sidestepped me and walked out the door, giving me no option but to follow her. I slammed the door behind me and struggled to keep up with her as she ran down several staircases and onto the street. She turned down and alleyway and froze, causing me to slam into her. There were a group of men walking up the alley towards us, deep in conversation.

“Internals,” she hissed.

She pushed me back until I was up against a wall. She then pressed our mouths together and began shoving her tongue between my lips. I was so shocked, I just stood there and tried to let her do whatever the fuck she was doing without puking in her mouth. I placed my hands on her hips and watched through veil of her hair that was covering our faces as the group walked past without blinking an eye at us. Once they were gone, I shoved her off of me and spat onto the ground, gagging.

“What the fuck was that? I thought you were a lesbian!” I said angrily.

She wiped her mouth and smiled smugly.

“I am. And everyone in the Legion knows. So how could the straight girl kissing a guy against a wall be me?”

“Why would it matter? Those guys are in your fucking sector, there are other ways to avoid small talk without sexually assaulting me! Like, I don’t know, pretending you’re on the phone?” I hissed.

“They wanted more than small talk.” she snapped.

“Then what did they fucking want?” I spat.

“My dead body.”

Her three words hit me harder than a moving truck, and I deflated immediately. Who were those guys, and why did they want my best friend dead?

“Those Internals,” she shuddered, “have been spying on me for the last week or so. I may have been a bit too loud with my suspicions about the second golden rule around headquarters and I think those guys are sent from Jared to see if I knew more than I should. Your story explains a lot about why he would care. We still need to find Jared and tell him about Sierra, though.”

I sighed, knowing that Demi was right, as usual, so I hooked my arm into hers and tugged her towards the mouth of the alley.

“Let’s get my certain death over and done with as soon as possible, Demetria darling.”

“Not certain death, Frank darling. Certain blackmail, possible torture, but not death.” she said cheerfully.

I tried to put on a smile as we began our walk to Jared’s apartment, but inside, I was terrified. Jared had hated me with a vengeance for no obvious reason since he first met me, mainly because I had a power that he didn't have. I knew he was just egging for an excuse to eliminate me. My knowing of his deepest, darkest secret was sure to be the cause of my death, and of the severe blackmailing of Demi. I couldn't stand the thought of her getting hurt.

It was at times like this when I really wondered if I would have been better off to have died on that day in the park all those years ago. Although the Legion had brought me many great friends, it had given more trouble than good, and there was no way to escape, especially for me. I had already tried to commit suicide once before, but after about seven tries, I just gave up and accepted the fact that, for now at least, I couldn’t die. I wondered why Jared was so keen on obtaining my power. Could he not see the downsides that I was living through? I really hoped that when he did eventually find a way to kill me, that he didn’t inherit my power. I didn’t wish it because I wanted to be the only invincible person on this earth, but because not being able to die is literally a living hell.

My mind wandered to thoughts of the apocalypse, and I wondered if, when the world explodes, would I still be alive floating through the vast realms of the universe for all of eternity.

I was pulled from apocalyptic thoughts by a sudden change of terrain. My eyes fell on a gold plague reading ‘Paradisia Apartment Complex’ and I realised that we were seconds away from entering Jared’s home territory. I stopped in my tracks. Demi realised I wasn’t moving and stopped too.

“Are you ready Frank?” she asked quietly.

“I’m ready. Ready to break free from this stupid fucking legion. But not ready to die.” I whimpered.

Demi walked back until her whole body was pressed into mine in a hug.

“I’ll help you break free, Frankie. I’ll hold open the gates and set you free. I’ll sit back and watch you soar to freedom.” she replied softly, but her voice hardened suddenly. “And I would throw myself at Jared’s mercy before I’d let you die.”

“I love you so much, Demi.” I mumbled into her shoulder.

I felt her body stiffen for the second time that morning, but it soon relaxed as she realised that nothing bad was going to come from those three words that it took all of my courage to say.

“I love you too, Frankie.”

Notes

Title inspiration: Thank You For The Venom - My Chemical Romance