The Diaries of a Misplaced Main Character

CHAPTER 2: Do NOT Tell Tony Stark

"Noa?"

The air around me buzzed like a living organism, its tang fizzling out on my dry-ass tongue.

"Noa?"

My heart was a cobra-snake, reared up, fangs out, and prepared to strike. Only, this time, because it was cornered.

"Noa."

The blood inside me ran simultaneously cold and then all too hot, sloshing against the walls of my arteries as it boiled.

The woman in front of me, who by all accounts couldn't possibly be here, gazed at us impassively, her violet irises lazily sweeping across my face.

"... Zazie?"

My brother momentarily ceased his outcries, and I could see him freeze in my periphery. The pointed angle of his chin swiveled from me to the beautiful, corporeal figure in front of us.

Who was very much no longer Lara, the sexy robot.

"Zazie...? As in...?" I heard Kai murmur before his sharp intake of breath.

The woman cocked her head at the sound of her name.

"Right, so, where in the gods' names am I?" Zazie shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

We both startled at the sound of her voice, which was somehow as mundane as ours, but lilted with an inflection we knew we wouldn't ever be able to place.

My heart still thundered in my chest, in my ears, in my throat, and it was like all of the sense in the world had been sucked out within a single moment.

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The delicate arch of Zazie's brow momentarily crumpled as I pressed a fingertip to her cheek. She uttered a soft growl deep in her throat.

"How is this possible?" I asked Kai, who sat to my left.

The three of us had holed up in the corner of the medical wing of the building, but only after implementing an emergency-code which was set in place to warn the researchers of faulty wiring. 

This building was fueled by a ton of power and paid for by a part of the government you weren't supposed to know about. As such, we had the necessary protocols to evacuate out teams in case any of the machinery went haywire. And also, to protect super-secret secrets if we needed a lack of an audience.

So, essentially, we lied our asses off to get everyone else the fuck out of here.

We'd worry about the others later on. Besides us, only a few people had been present to witness Zazie's emergence, and even then, no one had gotten a good look at her before we called the code. If we had to, we'd come up with a bomb-ass lie to satiate them. Not that we even knew what had happened ourselves.

Kai's lips pressed together as he went to fit a blood pressure cuff to Zazie's upper arm before realizing she was clad in impenetrable, blood-red, dragon-scale armor.

I would know, because I was the one who'd bought it for her.

"You're going to have to take that off," he told Zazie, who continued to glare at the two of us in a wordless protest.

An awkward beat of silence then hung suspended in the air.

Me and Kai shared a brief look.

"You know," I started, every single atom in my brain screaming, "You can talk to us."