Amelia had long, curly brown hair that was somehow always done in exactly the same style that would be incredibly popular next week. Today it involved some strange bun thing on the back, with loose curly strands falling down all around. Her clothes seemed brand-new and were shockingly close-fitting. The blouse was some sort of a lavender, the skirt purple. Her face was pretty and small, just a bit round and always properly made up. She wore fairly high heels today, but somehow managed to walk impossibly quickly.
In fact, Amelia led Caitlin at a faster pace than she was used to, pulling her wrist as though it was a wagon tounge, and talking nonstop about how great Tim was and how he was going to kick the shit out of that big loser Johnny Sparc. Caitlin wasn't paying too much attention to any of the tirade, instead concentrating on keeping her gigantic feet from catching on anything as they marched along.
"So, what are they fighting over, anyway, Ame?"
Amelia changed her topic in mid-sentence without even seeming to notice. Caitlin had learned that the only way to get Amelia to answer your question was to interrupt her, which she apparently completely expected people to do.
"Well, Katie said that Bill saw Johnny looking at Melissa Waters last Saturday at the football game, and so Tim said he was going to kick Johnny's ass for it, and that little fuckhead Sam found out and told Johnny, so he said..."
Caitlin lost interest again. So, it was something stupid about a girl that probably never even happened. It seemed like boys were always using girls as an excuse to hit each other, or else that girls were always trying to cause trouble, Caitlin could never figure out which. Boys were definitely always trying to find reasons to fight Johnny Sparc, for some reason. Amelia said it was because he was a dirty shithead stoner, but Mr. Mansfield said it was because he was big and tough and always beat up the rich boys, so they wanted a piece of him. Whatever that meant.
As they cleared the corner of the schoolhouse, Caitlin saw a great ring of kids standing packed shoulder to shoulder. Johnny was easy to see in the center, being the tallest kid at school - he was even bigger than Caitlin. She couldn't see Tim, but he was undoubtably in there too.
Caitlin tried to stop when she hit the ring of kids, figuring she could use her height to an advantage, but Amelia just kept going, forcing her way into the crowd, and pulling Caitlin's arm behind her. Caitlin tried to apoligize to the people they jostled as she went by, and took care not to step on anyone's feet.
At last Amelia reached the inner rank of high schoolers, mostly football players who had no intention of standing aside, and she gave up. "Cat, can you see?"
Caitlin nodded. She had no problem seeing over the heads of the two jocks in front of her, and could clearly make out Johnny Sparc standing quietly with his hands in his pockets while Tim gestured emotionally, apparently explaining why exactly it was that Johnny needed his ass kicked. His reasons seemed to mostly involve a lot of "talking shit". Caitlin had never figured out exactly what that meant.
Caitlin looked around at the faces of other kids, all with attention fixed immovably on the scene in the ring. She looked at the thin puffy clouds and the waving leaves that topped the trees, and she even looked at the brick schoolhouse she had seen so many times before. Eventually the cries around her became more excited and she glanced back into the ring just in time to see Tim step forward and swing his fist at Johnny.
As the fight progressed, she decided that she had been right. Tim was a bit of a bully and had been in almost as many fights as Johnny, but neither of them really knew what they were doing. After the sixth time Tim missed an obvious strike that would have finished the fight, she became distracted again and stopped watching. What had that riddle said again? I make you weak... Johnny had Tim in a head lock and was punching the top of his head, hurting his own knuckles more than anything else, but Caitlin saw only words from a book.
Suddenly the teenagers' yells began to quiet and various whispers began moving around. Caitlin felt the bodies pressed up against her moving away and realized the kids were spreading out, getting ready to run if need be. She looked into the ring and saw that the fight had temporarily stopped, due to the presence of Mr. Mansfield. The skinny janitor shouted at the kids to "Stop all this! Get inside right now, this is all over!". He had Tim Evans in a bear hug from behind, and was trying to use his own body to shield Tim from Johnny, who was looking as though he was thinking about the consequences of trying to hit a school employee.
The crowd of kids slowly began to disperse, though most kids left reluctantly, craning their heads over their shoulders to attempt to get a view of anything else exciting happening. Caitlin began to pull Amelia away, but had to pull with a fair amount of her strength in order to provoke any movement. Amelia, Caitlin suspected, had a crush on Tim Evans and wanted to see what was going to happen to him.
"Come on, Ame! It's over!"
Unexpectedly, Amelia's eyes widened in alarm. "No, Tim! You can't!"
Caitlin glanced back to see the unthinkable happening: Tim had pulled back his right fist in preparation to strike Mr. Mansfield. The janitor was busy trying to grab Johnny by his coat, and was unaware of the attack.
Caitlin let go of Amelia and clapped her hands to her mouth. She watched, too slow to do anything else, as Tim's balled up fist slammed into Mr. Mansfield's crotch.
The janitor let out a great cry of pain and surprise, and let Tim go. However, it was apparently not enough to be free. Tim had found a new target for his agressions, and this one didn't know how to fight back.
He doesn't know how to fight back. This isn't right. Caitlin brought her hands down from her mouth. Her head lowered like a bull's, and her weight shifted downward, her legs spreading for balance.
Tim's fist connected with Mr. Mansfield's chin in a powerful uppercut, football-trained muscles driving a fist that had practiced on many chins in its day. Mr. Mansfield's head snapped back and his hair waved in the wind. The look on his face was awful.
Tim reached into his letterman's jacket and around his back. Caitlin knew what he would pull out before she saw it, but even though she was already moving, she might be too late. The switchblade popped open with a loud click.
"Tim! Nonono! Please!" Amelia was shouting now, but her cries were lost among those of the crowd of regathering spectators. No one seemed about to do anything.
No one but Caitlin.
Caitlin's charge was an unstoppable force. Her powerful hand was extended forward and caught the blade of the knife on its way up in a deadly attempt to stab into the janitor's heart from below his rib cage. Her hardened shoulder caught Tim's own and slammed him halfway to the edge of the asphalt court, as the knife came away in her hand. Johnny, apparently of the opinion that altogether too many people were trying to break up his fight, had advanced on her and the janitor and was swinging his fist. Caitlin knew she was too slow to get out of the way herself, but she managed to spin Mr. Mansfield around behind her back and took Johnny's punch directly on the right side of her jaw. Johnny was huge and outweighed most of the kids in school, but Caitlin had been hit much harder than this. She would be black and blue tomorrow, but the only part of her body that moved was her head.
Johnny's eyes widened as Caitlin caught his wrist in her hand and squeezed. She thought of Mr. Mansfield's face, and suddenly Johnny was on the ground, kneeling, and crying. His left hand clutched and beat at her grip on his right wrist, but he might as well have been slapping at the school building.
Caitlin realized that she was breathing very heavily. She felt hot. She looked around and saw that the other teens were staring at her, some talking quietly, most silent. She would never be like them. Her hands felt sticky and wet, both of them. She released her grip, forcing her forearms to relax. Tim's switchblade fell to the ground, clattering, broken in two. Johnny collapsed to the ground, grasping at the white bone that had sprouted from his wrist. Tears stremed down his face and he shook.
Caitlin turned back to Tim and saw him lying on the ground at the edge of the court, working his right elbow, which was bloody after stopping his fall. His eyes were so big that they seemed about to pop out of his head. Caitlin kicked the two pieces of his knife at him, and he flinched, shivering.
She turned back to Mr. Mansfield, who had also fallen to the ground, and said to Amelia without looking, "Call an ambulance." She smiled at Mr. Mansfield, but for once he didn't notice.
Jenni pushed the large yellow button labeled 'St rt'. It lit feebly from within and then flickered out, but she knew by the humming machinery that the autoclave was working. None of the sensors or buttons worked correctly anymore, but the device itself was kept in decent condition by the staff.
She wiped her hand on her mostly white lab coat and walked back to her lab bench. Now that the agar was being sterilized and the DNA gel was running, there was nothing to do but wait for thirty minutes.
Jenni pulled a photocopied article from the top of a stack and began reading the abstract. Apparently someone had spent their graduate work proving that a tiny variation in Hans Kloerig's procedures for viral breeding would be successful. She snorted and tossed the article into a second stack which was growing into a disordered pile. She had learned Kloerig's procedures in high school and was more than familiar with their results.
The next article was on a technique used to develop binding abilites to match a specific protein stucture common to many of the more stubborn forms of bacteria which remained in the mainstream population. Immediately she settled down in her creaky wooden chair and curled one leg underneath her as she began to read. This was exactly the kind of thing she was looking for.
As she read, she tried not to think of her mother, the nameless, faceless woman who had been killed by one of the seemingly endless series of plagues in the last two decades. The human race had been hit hard, and scientific fields such as genetic engineering and molecular biology were now the most popular fields of study among incoming college freshmen, as well as the most well-funded areas of modern research. The steady push of minds and resources had driven the biological fields to advance far more quickly than anyone could have predicted thirty years ago.