Falling Skies Invasion Alone

Tests

I pulled the syringe from my arm and nabbed the vial of blood from the bottom to set it down on the worktop. I had been running a series of tests. On myself.

"Cass."

I glanced over my shoulder to the door of the self set up medical area to see Ben.

"Hey, hon." I turned back away, focussing on my tubes of blood I had set up. He had gone out with Maggie earlier on. He was going to break it to her that Alexis had been meeting with the Espheni Overlords. I couldn't wait for that fallout.

"How did you get on with Mags?" I held a cotton ball to my arm, but my healing had come back and the blood disappeared within seconds.

"As well as expected." Ben leant against my worktop I was using with folded arms and looked at me. I raised my eyebrows and threw the cotton in the garbage. "What...are you doing?"

I took a breath and flicked my hair out of the way. I could feel Ben's confusion at me, I could see him looking at the clothes I was wearing; the outfit I had woken up in post memory loss confusion- basically workout gear. I don't know where I had gotten it, and I don't know why I had been in it, but hell if I was going to waste an outfit. "I'm testing everything."

Ben didn't say anything, just creased his eyebrows in question.

"I just want to make sure that everything is as it was four months ago. So, I've been doing a shitload of tests. I examined my blood, this morning, and I timed my run. Normal people can run a mile in like ten to fifteen minutes, if they're pretty fit, like. I can normally run it in eight minutes, six if I'm being chased. You can do it in four, I know." I rolled my eyes and put my hand up as he went to tell me that fact. "But today, I did it in eleven minutes, which is the longest it's taken me since we started measuring it."

"We who?" Ben questioned.

"Anne and I mainly, Maggie used to come out with me too. We started doing tests with me when we got settled in Charleston, which I guess was like a year ago now." I frowned. He knew this. He was with me during that.

"Oh yeah." He spoke vaguely. "So you've slowed down."

"Yeah. I mean, I hit eight minutes in the first time, I never really changed throughout my tests. It wasn't like I was increasing fitness or whatever, I was just standardly fast. But I've lost three minutes."

"Yeah, but you've been AWOL for four months. We don't know if you even moved in those months. You could have been lying in the one place for all that time." Ben rubbed his hands up and down my arms. "No matter how advanced your body is with the Volm DNA, you'll still lose muscle memory."

"I know, I know." I picked at the skin beside my nails. "I ran again, just half an hour ago, it took me twenty five seconds less, so I might just have to train."

"I don't understand why you're being so obsessive about the running thing. I mean, I'm pretty sure the Olympics have been called off." He tried to joke with me.

I wasn't in the mood. I slumped over the worktop and knitted my fingers in my hair. "Ben. I'm not the same as I was." I felt his hand on my back, and I knew the words that were going to come from his mouth.

"Cass, it's fine, you don't need to be the same."

Yup. I predicted that sentence.

"Ben. Yes we do. We need me to be invincible. We need me to be as on point as I always was." I stood up straight and pursed my lips.

"But you're healing again. I mean, idiotically, you sliced you're arm already, and it healed in the same amount of time as you used to heal." He said.