Hey Neighbor

After making sure to dress herself to appear professional while also showing her young adulthood, Dawn picked up what was left of Jessica's original clothes and went to give them to her. When she told Jessica to put the ruined clothes minus the bloody shirt on, disgusted, Jessica adamantly refused. Dawn then explained to her the seriousness of how, by wearing them along with one of Dawn's shirts, she would more closely appear to fit the story of her being rescued by the company instead of abducted and drugged.

Nervously, she agreed but explained to Dawn that she wasn't sure she'd be able to lie to her brother. Especially if he ended up being able to use his talents already.

Dawn calmed her by explaining that she herself would be the one giving the story to Jessica's brother and how they might even be able to tell him the truth if they were alone, but she would still have to dress the part in case there were other people present when they showed up.

Reluctantly, Jessica dressed as instructed and then followed Dawn outside. But when they got outside and Dawn started to head towards a car, Jessica urgently asked Dawn, "Why are we getting a car? We don't need one."

"We're on the way to your brother's house, remember?" Dawn grumpily answered.

"Yeah." Jessica answered and, pointing to her side, continued "But he only lives like right over that hill."

Surprised, Dawn skeptically asked, "Really?! How far exactly? Because I doubt he's within easy walking distance."

"He's like about what would be three or four blocks away if we were in a city. Or about maybe a half mile since you're not allowed outside this place." Jessica replied.

"Are you sure? And how are we going to get there without walking through that field that's full of weeds and briers and such?" Dawn wondered.

"I can feel him." Jessica answered as she pointed to her head to indicate her talent. "And I could see his house when you had me do that Seer thing during all that testing. He lives on the same road you do. And we could walk there just as quick as it would take to pick a car and wait for your humongous gate to open enough to let us out. Besides, he has this security thing he made that fries the electronics of any car other than his that pulls into his driveway. And it fries it so bad that he had to spend like half the day apologizing to mom and then had to buy her a new car when we came to visit last year."

With a sigh Dawn agreed to walk and they set off walking down the road. As they neared the driveway a short time later, Dawn asked, "Does he have any devices that might shock us too like the cars or otherwise hurt or disable us?"

"Not that I know of. Or, at least wasn't installed when me and Mom visited." Jessica supplied.

Cautiously, they warily walked up to the door where Dawn stopped Jessica from just opening the door and walking in and that they needed to at least start the meeting in a professional manner. She then reached out and pressed the doorbell. Startled, she yanked her hand back and exclaimed, "Geez! The darn thing shocked me! Whoever wired it up must have been ripping him off, or drunk, or something."

After a minute, Jessica timidly said, "Try it again cause he might be buried in some new project and didn't hear it or is just straight ignoring it."

Bracing herself, Dawn pressed the button again and received another shock. Surprisingly the shock didn't sting as much this time. And, as she continued to press it, the sensation grew less noticeable until finally they heard a shout from the other side of the door, "Go away! I'm not buying whatever you're trying to sell and I'm already stocked up on girl scout cookies."

Unable to resist the temptation after getting shocked by the doorbell, Dawn shouted back, "We're here Sir to get a refund on this defective model your mother sold us! It was supposed to cook and clean but it has only been useful as a disposal given the massive amount of food it has consumed!" to which Jessica giggled.

He shouted back, "Sorry but me and my company are not responsible for refunds on what my mother or whatever company she is working for sells."

Winking at Jessica, Dawn yelled back through the door, "Well then you need to take it up with this robot because it told us that you were it's brother and that you would gladly refund us for what we've spent on this thing!"

When he then shouted back that he didn't have a sister, Jessica replied, "Come on Stephan! Open up!"

Startled to hear her voice, he opened the door, gasped when he saw Jessica, and stuttered, "S-sorry. I d-didn't know you were coming." Then he turned to Dawn and sternly demanded, "And who the hell are you? How did you get here? And why did you insist on continuing to ring my doorbell every couple seconds for the past five minutes or so?"

"It was the most polite way to get your attention that was available outside of breaking in and tapping you on the shoulder." Dawn replied. Then added, "And if you had bothered to answer the door the first time or two or six, I wouldn't have had to resort to keeping the button pressed to get your attention."

"But how did you manage to keep pressing it? It's set up to shock the person that presses it so they'll get the message and leave." He proclaimed.

To which Dawn snorted and replied, "Pssss.... That little toy just tickled."

Jessica then butted in and told Stephan, "Bro, any way we can come inside, sit down, and get a drink while we tell you why I'm even here?"

He apologized and invited them in and offered, "What drinks would y'all prefer? I've got water, tea, and a couple sodas." He then went to grab their choices and humbly apologized to Dawn when he returned, "Sorry about the rudeness. As you probably already heard, my name is Stephan but you can just call me Stef. And sorry for the shock treatment given by the doorbell. Given the exclusive location and the fancy home, door to door salesmen and such stop by every chance they get."

Dawn chuckled and replied, "I'm Dawn and you can just call me Dawn. I live in that big 5 story house right next door. And the only way that we came up with to keep them from bugging us is the 10 foot tall electric fence. So I understand the nuisance. But, now that we've taken care of introductions, we need to discuss why I'm here with your sister."

He turned to Jessica and asked, 'Yeah. Why did you come without calling first?" He then gestured towards Dawn and continued, "And how did you end up with some stranger? She one of those freaks that was trying to buy your body or some other strange freaky type stuff? Or did you run into her by getting lost and going to the wrong house or something?"

Jessica shyly replied, "Me and mom got into a fight and I told her how I wanted to learn more science and stuff instead of her always cracking down when I want to learn more than what's in the schoolbook so I left and was coming here hoping you'd let me live with you until I graduated or even till I got a degree of some type and maybe even one day being able to work for you."

"I'm all for the learning." He replied, "But we'll have to see about the job part because I don't really have any easy jobs to give away or anything."

He then sternly finished, "However, you still haven't told me about how you ran into miss Dawn here?"

Jessica frowned and answered, 'You'll have to ask her because when I got off the plane I ran into some seemingly nice guys that were flirting with me and all. And they kept my attention so wrapped up in getting all that flirting that the next thing I know, they had me in some bar and they kept handing me drinks. Next thing I know after that second drink was waking up at her house like hours later."

Steph glared at Dawn and asked, "Am I gonna have to come use my fists to chat with your brother?"

Dawn held up her hand to stop him and responded, "Not so fast buddy. For one, I don't have a brother. For two, my house is actually part of the research facility slash mental hospital right next door so you'd have a time just getting past the electric fence. And that is not even mentioning the security you'd have to make it through just to get to the front door. So keep those hormones in check there Rambo and let us tell you the rest of what happened before you try to play the big tough guy or something."

"Well how did my sister end up in your mental hospital then?" He worriedly responded.

"Turns out those guys were doing some frat party thing and were trying to take advantage of your sister when one of our employees came up on the situation. They scared off the boys and then picked her up and brought her to the facility to help clean her system out before anybody took advantage of her inebriated state and tried violating her."

She started to continue when he suspiciously interrupted with, "Really? Or were they bringing back a willing victim they could experiment on in your research lab?"

Startled, Dawn asked, "Why do you think that?"

"Because," he replied, "Our mother used to work there so I know you guys do some shady stuff in your lab."

Dawn used her ability to scan his mindset, then said, "Granted our employee picking her up was originally doing so for a different reason, but it did turn out to be a lucky break for Jessica because them boys had really been trying to dope her with a date rape type drug."

"So did y'all still use her in some experiment then?"

Finishing a deeper probe and judging him trustworthy enough to entrust with the knowledge of the drug, Dawn answered, "Yes and no. They thought they were getting to test the drug with the bonus of having a valid excuse to treat her condition with the drug but it didn't effect her the way they thought it did."

With a stern glare Stephan demanded, "Explain."

Taking a breath to figure out the best way to divulge the information, Dawn then supplied, "the drug our people gave her supplies near instant healing but she didn't need it to clear the date rape drug from her system because her body had automatically used her own healing ability and had cleared the drug from her system."

To which he replied with a confused, "Huh?"

Then, having already responded to her earlier mental suggestion, Jessica had slipped into Stephan's kitchen and came back, gave Dawn the steak knife, and held out her arm as Dawn instructed Stephan simply, "Watch." as she sliced Jessica's arm and let him see it quickly heal. Afterwards, she then added, "Obviously we don't want knowledge of the drug to be shared with anyone else until after we get FDA clearance and all. Especially not your mom because, even if you wanted to tell her, she isn't allowed to know due to her signing that nondisclosure agreement dad makes everyone and their mamma sign if they quit and leave his business. Also, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want knowledge of Jessica's ability to get out there and end up with all sorts of folks coming out of every nook and cranny wanting to do everything they could think of to figure it out and be able to do it themselves and such."

Grudgingly, he asked her, "So what's the catch? You after some new device or something? Or were you serious when you said you were gonna sell my sister to me earlier?"

With a compassionate smile, Dawn answered, "Other than keeping silent on the drug and on Jessica's healing ability and her other talents, the only real 'catch' is I'd like to see if you have the same traits and would volunteer a DNA sample to take back to the lab for comparison."

"Also," she added, "Due to some of Jessica's unique talents, I would also like to have access to your sister and her talents occasionally so that I could help her learn about them and to learn how to use them and control them instead of, like with the bar incident, having to rely on them automatically working to her benefit."