The Red Nights

The dawn was just coming when Jamal woke up on the bed of Lina . He tried to move out of the bed without disturbing her sleep with very slow moves but at the end she had woken up too before he left the bed.

" It's already time for you to go ? You're very mean ,you know ?" " So you are the kind of guy who , after having s.e.x , sneak out and leave the woman there alone " she was faking like she was hurt " so for you, I'm just a toy you can use to play with and drop it when you are bored ".

Jamal just ignored her and headed for the bathroom. Lina waited a few moments before she followed him . " You're very a boring man you know? " she said a bit disappointed.

" You wanted me to come at you and pretend seeking for forgiveness and promising you to never try leaving you again? " Jamal replied

" Yeah for example, or at least you could show a little sign of reaction to my jokes " she said when she reached her side , she took a serious low voice " Are you really forced to go there every morning? Could you not skip your duty for today and stay with me ... just for today? " she said when she was hugging him from his back.

This question, Jamal asked it to himself every morning when he prepared for his patrol . Why do I have to go? Why someone else doesn't do it instead of me ? But the answer remained always the same " Because you have to do it " . His elder sister never stopped telling him that a real man never complained, he achieved his duty whatever it takes and he never gave up. He always asked her why she told him that as she was not a man and she always replied with a smile " you're right of course I'm not a man... but you will be , and that day I hope you will remember my words and achieve your duty in the manliest way possible " .

Sometimes he wondered if she knew from the start what will happen before she disappeared , or if she would do better than him in the protection of people. She was the person he admired the most and all his actions until now he did them by referring to his sister. " I'm seriously far from the man you had seen in me " he thought.

He turned and faced Lina " it's really what you want from me. To abandon my tasks and stay here f.u.c.k.i.n.g your p.u.s.s.y until the end of the day " , she had a mischievous smile " I'm not specially talk about having s.e.x, you pervert . Just having you by my side ... "

" Even though many people might suffer " Jamal cut her . Her face became gloomy. It was always like that, she could never be happy long while with her own boyfriend because his duty of protecting the town's people always passed before her . It was not like she didn't like this aspect of him to devoting himself for people's sake , it was ,on the contrary , one of the reasons she loved him so much . However she was like any women , looking for some more attention from her man .

" You're right, I'm kinda too selfish. You can go protecting everyone . After all that is how I lov... " she could not finish her sentence like usual and it was really frustrating her . It didn't matter how much she tried , it was beyond her forces. She never could express verbally her love to her man , it resulted that some times she couldn't bear crossing his look . "Why can't I tell him , to the one who told uncountable times how much he loves" she asked to herself ." Sorry, I go back to my bed , tell me when you finish " as she said that, Jamal grabbed her hand, turned her to face him and then he dropped his hands to go squeezing her soft n.a.k.e.d a.s.s .

" You don't have to be like that any time you failed to tell me ' I love you ' " he paused " since I already know that you do love me, words are useless when you show it to me and since your b.u.t.t is so soft I can't be happier " as he saw that she was smiling, he gave her an enormous kiss which lasted more than one minute. She felt like she was the luckiest woman having the kindest and the most handsome man as her boyfriend .

•••

" You're late " Natasha said a bit irritated " You was the one who pressed me to not come late and yet it's you the first to break your rules you're such an hypocrite teacher " . She was waiting for more than 20 minutes before she saw Jamal ran to her. " Sorry it took more time than usual to get ready " said Jamal not even breathless from the long race he ran, though .

" What happened? No , let me guess , Lina pouted again and tried to convince you that instead of coming you should stay on her bed a little while, right ? "

Jamal didn't know whether he was astonished or embarrassed, he stayed there and for a moment he couldn't reply " How do you know that I was with her ? " . Natasha rolled her eyes, crossed her arms below her c.h.e.s.t and gazed at him few seconds before she made a sign to show something on his neck . She handed him a little mirror, he took it , looked at his neck through the mirror and find on it a little hickey, which embarrassed him even more. As he tried to erase it he said. " I can't believe she did something like this ".

" I can believe it though, and I'm pretty sure she did it on purpose." Natasha thought " She wanted to tease me ."

She sighed " I think it's time to go, isn't it? What shall we proceed? " . Jamal looked at his watch and frowned, " As you said before, you can defend yourself alone, so I will ask you to go watch one half of the barrier and I will take the other half , got it? ".

Natasha looked surprised, she didn't expect him to let her go alone, she thought they would go inspect the hole barrier together and then he would tell her to go alone looking for some fugitives in a part of the city . " Are you sure ? I mean it's okay for me to go on my side ? "

" Of course, though it's not the very dangerous part of the patrol , you must be okay alone. Moreover I already showed you how managing to find signs of intrusion, how to fix the barrier in case of intrusion and even how to reactivate the security system in order to prevent any kind of escape from the criminals ones during the day."

Indeed, during the fighting trainings, Jamal used to teach them the different steps of the patrol, started by the inspection of the barrier to the patrol in the city. One of these steps was the reactivation of the security system.

Even though, Lina ensured him that the criminals ones would never dare trying to cross the barrier during the night, the rest of the population wanted a real certitude, so Jamal and some engineers managed to add a security system on the barrier which will alarm the whole city if someone crossed it . However they couldn't manage to make it work 24h/24 , instead Jamal had to reactivate it every morning during his daily round .

All these stuffs Natasha knew them on the top of fingers , that was not that the problem. What was bothering her was that Jamal was giving her all trust to achieve the mission. " What is it? " She asked suddenly .

" What is it what ? " Jamal replied a bit confused.

" Previously you were totally opposed to let me join you on your patrol and now you're telling me to go on my side " She paused " Why this sudden change of behavior ?"

" I figured it out. This morning when Lina told me to stay with her , I finally understood that I would never be able to do it all only by myself ... I didn't want to avow it before, but the reality is that I need help ". Before Natasha could reply something , he added " So I will go on my side and you will go on yours and at the end of the morning you will give me your response whether you want to continue on this path with me or not ".

Natasha wasn't back yet from her astonishment but yet she somehow managed to reply " Why not now ? Why couldn't I respond to you right now? I want to tell you now that of course I will walk with you on this road of yours "

Jamal , without reply anything, headed toward the direction of the barrier , and Natasha just followed him on hiding her anger .

They walked for about 10 minutes overpassing house after house, building after building before they arrived just in front of an abandoned building and behind it we could see the long barrier in a desert area, running the long of the city , it was a structure composed of thick metal grids and metal spars of about 3 meters of height . Each spar was distanced from an other by 20 meters of grids and on the top of each spar was laying surveillance cameras which , with other movement detector devices , composed the kit of security system and all these devices were linked to the control post which was located in a locked room in the abandoned building which only Jamal had the keys.

" We will separate from here , I will take the right part of the barrier and you the left , okay ? " Jamal ordered. Natasha nodded as she already knew what to do . In brief in this part of the patrol, she had to walk along the barrier verifying whether there were signs of someone who crossed or not . When it was found that there were, it meant that whether the barrier or the materials of security were messed . In that case she should take note of the places where the criminals crossed into and then reported it to the control post in order for it to be fixed. It was quite easy though.

From there , each of them headed to the direction indicated. It took more than one hour to Natasha to finish inspecting the barrier. She noticed two traces of infraction in two different and in the two cases only the barrier itself was messed, so noted the locations and headed back to the control post to register them .

Arriving at the building she surprisingly found that Jamal was not at the entrance , she inferred that whether maybe he hadn't finished yet his part of the patrol or he wasn't even waiting for her arrival. As he previously explained to her where was the control post's room , she decided to enter in to complete her part of the job . The door was not locked so it was without any surprises that she found Jamal there , sitting on one of three chairs in the room , his attention caught by the screens on the wall in front of him .

" How much did you note ? " He said without looking at her .

" Only two actually and none materials were messed only the barrier" She said while she was reaching the desk next to him . She used another computer to register the location of the infractions . She finished and turned to him . " And you ? How much you found? " . He turned his chair, faced her and said " only one and none broken materials registered too , I also identified who are the trouble makers today " he paused , looked at the screens and continued " Ed from the books store on my side and Paul and Edna on your side . Ed and Paul are surely after some little girls to **** them and Edna is here to try to kill Nadine whom her husband used to cheat on ."

Natasha looked at surveillance video and said " it's been only 20 minutes since they came in we have to hurry . It seems like only Edna has a weapon but anyway we have to still be careful ". She made a move to stand up but with his right hand , Jamal stopped her " calm down we can't just run outside along the streets and looking for them blindly. The residence of each person in this town is quite well equipped to resist any kind of intrusion attempt. So will wait for some rescue calls in order to who is attacked and where . All people were warned to lock their doors very carefully, so it will resist until we get there ".

While they were waiting, Natasha started asked some questions " Why the surveillance cameras are working 24h/24 but not the rest of the devices? "

" I don't know, technicians are still working on it " Jamal responded. Natasha thought a little while and said " You'll not ask me what I obtained from Matteo ". Jamal turned to face her again " It was a private conversation between you and him , I cannot come and order you to tell all you know, it's at to reveal them to if you don't mind "

Natasha rolled her eyes " You're acting quite innocently even though it was you the one who told me to interrogate him " .

" Yeah but only in purpose to help , people feel better when they entrust their fears to a trustworthy person, doesn't it? " . After he said that Natasha blushed a little bit " Anyways, listen, Matteo told me that he was special, like some powers just like me ... not exactly like me because his powers are different from mine . It is just like you said there are other people like me and Matteo ".

Jamal was not looking as astonished as Natasha expected . Instead it seemed like he was wondering about something. He gazed deeply at her " did he say something about his powers? Do you actually have a clue of what he can do? " . As she didn't have any one, Natasha shook her head " He just told me he was kinda like me and went to bed, why ? What are you thinking about? "

" Do you recall how he was when he told me to bring you with me, I had the feeling that he was right and it was crucial for you to come with me, even if I didn't know why ." Jamal said. At the moment Natasha wanted to add something a slight red light started to shine showing that there was a rescue call . Jamal hurried , looked at the screen " they came from two different places, one from Nadine's house and the other from a new citizen's house. I'm heading to rescue the new citizen and you will head to Nadine's place, there are some motorbikes at the garage of the building, no time to discuss "

In the garage when Natasha was up on her bike Jamal stopped her and handed her a knife like his usual one . " What shall I do with this? " She asked when she took the knife . " We will see if Matteo was wrong or right, I told you before that you will have to make a choice. " He got on his bike " Here we go "