Miranda did the only thing she knew to do in a lightning storm, psychokinetic or otherwise. She made herself small and prayed she wouldn’t get hit. That strategy took the form of dropping into fetal position on the sand. Instead of signaling submission to Ellen, the posture just released another guttural snarl of rage and a hurricane of kicks. Miranda laid there and waited, making her mind small and attempting to erect a bomb shelter in her mind.
Finally, the thought touch hit Miranda like an explosion's pressure wave. Her own thoughts were blown backwards flattened on the inner surface of the back of her skull, throbbing there. Or was the throbbing pain from Ellen’s boot knocking into the back of Miranda’s skull a few too many times? Miranda couldn't clearly recall. Everything floated in a blood temperature haze, while she tried to blink away star speckled blackness. Memories of time in the sensory deprivation tank served themselves up like a plate of scrambled eggs, with a side order of panic.
“Shh little child you're not alone I'm here,” Ellen- the woman- the healer- the gardener and more cooed to soothe Miranda.
Miranda leaned towards her mental voice then struggled away as the voice became a maelstrom. Forever passed in an instant, and an instant hung forever. All of everything Ellen zip-zapped into Miranda, setting her synapses buzzing. The sudden sensory overload blew all thought from Miranda's mind and she dropped neatly into a coma.
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Chapter 23
Turnabout
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Erica peeled back the paper wrapped around her burger and took a bite. Her mind wasn't on the food, and neither were her eyes. Her eyes peeked over the food and out the window at the building across the street. By all external and internal appearances it was a nice, clean, mental hospital. After four weeks of observation, Erica knew better.
Erica walked past that building every day on her way to her 'fake' job. At first she didn't see it, paying more attention to the people on the street, looking for dark influence. When she did finally see the building she pretended not to, after her own unfortunate experiences in a place like it. It was the third day of her second week on that world before she began to notice there was something wrong with it.
On that day, when she was at her most sensitive point on her telepathic cycle, Erica forced herself to glance up as she passed the building. That glance led to a stare, but it wasn't what she saw that disturbed her. It was what she felt, or rather didn't feel. Despite the fact that such a place was usually filled to brimming with latent telepaths, empaths, and other strong if disturbed mental presences, she felt nothing. She knew there were people inside, she'd seen them come and go, but there wasn't so much as a telepathic whisper from inside.
That was what began Erica's surveillance in earnest. She focused scanners, cameras, and recording devices on every possible entrance or exit. She also began eating all her meals, and taking all her breaks at the diner across the street, even though the food was horrible. She had her eyes ears and mind focused almost constantly on the building. That was how she discovered the man.
At first he seemed almost normal, except for the dark shadow that seemed to cling to him. Actually it wasn't so much a shadow as a feeling. He was almost forcibly nondescript. It was like he wore the dark afterimage seen after staring too long into a bright light. Telepathically he was like a hole. It wasn't that she didn't sense him. It was that she sensed an active, aching sort of nothingness. In the end when most people saw him; they did everything possible not to 'see' him.
Erica checked her watch, losing the pickle from her burger. One-fifteen, the dark man was overdue. Observation, and Erica's discreet surveillance equipment, had recorded his arrival each day at one, but not a single departure. Today he was late. One-thirty rolled around, with still no sign of the dark man. Absently, Erica finally dropped the pretense of eating the cold burger and stared openly at the building.
"Not to your tastes today?" The waitress asked clearing the table. Erica jerked her head non-committally, not really having heard the woman. "Or do you have a lot on your mind?"
Erica swiveled to eye the woman and shrugged. "How about a piece of pie Alice?" The waitress nodded and trotted back to the counter.
Erica checked her watch again. She needed to make a decision, either go back to 'work' for the afternoon or stay in the diner and do her real job. Her surveillance equipment would record anything that happened. Erica nodded to herself at that knowledge, but made no move to leave, even after she finished the pie Alice brought her. Alice cleared that plate away too, and left the check. Erica tossed down a wad of cash, and stayed.
The sky began to shade towards dark before anything happened. Then it was only the arrival of a deceptively simple van, not quite a delivery van, not quite an ambulance. Erica wasn't deceived. After hundreds of hours of observation, she knew it didn't belong. Casually, Erica tossed another wad of cash to the table and left. She walked up the street and doubled back, approaching the van from the cover of bushes.
Erica was close enough to hear men grumbling as they loaded the truck with long bundles. Her suspicions were high, even before she figured out what the bundles were. She crept closer, practically up to the driver's side door. In the retreating sunlight Erica recognized the bundle slung between the two men as a person. She shivered at the thought of a pile of corpses in the back of the van, until the bundle struggled and moaned. Reluctantly, Erica reached out to what turned out to be a her, and felt insane panic and dread at some amorphously dark fate lying ahead.
Erica quickly formed and rejected several plans, coming up empty. She leaned back into the door of the van, and realized the ridiculously simple solution. Silently she opened the door and slid behind the wheel. Going quickly through the zippers of her factor pack she retrieved three things. First, a universal lock pick which she jabbed into the ignition. Second, an emergency mass transporter, which she attached to the dash and set for return to Sanctuary. Third, a small sidearm which fired stun capsules, which she placed in her lap. Erica waited for the men to finish loading the van. On hearing the back doors slam shut she turned over the ignition and gunned the engine. Erica and the van were three blocks away before the stunned men could pull themselves together enough to realize what happened.
Following some semblance of a plan, Erica pulled the van into the garage beneath her apartment building. As a precaution against hidden guards, she took the gun, went around to the back of the truck, and opened one of the doors. Inside it wasn't a pretty sight. At least twenty people, ranging in size from child to adult, lay tied up in canvas sacks.
Erica cleared her throat and her mind of her concerns, and addressed the bundles, "People, I know you're scared, but you have been officially rescued. I'm going to take you somewhere safe now, but it may be a bit of a disorienting trip. Hang in there."
A few whimpers answered her, and one compellingly distorted telepathic voice, "Don't let them take this baby from me too! They'll give me to another monster!"
Erica weighed the urgency of completing the rescue against a nagging curiosity. Her hands moved to unwrap the pregnant source before she had decided to. The drawstring and knots were no problem, but a sticky mucus made it difficult to peel the fabric back from the face. When she finally succeeded Erica recognized in terror what remained of the face from her past. Her memory shifted back to a darkened closet filled with the fear from many other girls. That memory focused in on one pair of eyes as the men came and took two more girls. That pair of eyes had been taken, and had not come back. Those eyes belonged to what was left of this woman.
"Don't worry, you're safe now." Erica said as she lowered the woman's head back down. Then she raced around to the driver's seat, to the sound of approaching sirens. Before they arrived, van and all were gone.
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Ben watched with satisfaction as, Ellen and Miranda disappeared. It meant he could use the sterilization charge to wipe out a
ll the samples from existence. Gene had called it a 'bug bomb' really it would obliterate most viable organic matter from within the blast area. Ben removed his suppresser and checked the vicinity for survivors. Then he set the range on the charge to take out the entire hospital. He hoped it would be sufficient. As insurance, Ben ran a scanner over the room and sampled the vial it indicated. That way Gene could produce a vaccine, just in case. Ben set the timer for three seconds and teleported back to the quarantine zone.
Ben expected Miranda to be there. She wasn't. Deprived of her calming presence, Ben felt his hostility grow. He could smell Nick, and feel his presence.
"How did it go?" Nick asked exiting the store.
Ben could barely keep from growling. There hadn't been a problem with Miranda around. "Fine."
Nick's mouth opened, but no words came out. Nick just stared at Ben, which knotted Ben's gut as much as if Nick had kicked him. Finally Nick spoke, "I understand what you're going through. Honest. But you need to get a grip on yourself man. You don't really want to rip me to shreds. It will pass."
"It will pass?" Ben thought or said or thought he said. He felt rage bubbling through him. The color spectrum he saw shifted abruptly to the infrared side. He couldn't describe it as such. He just suddenly saw Nick as a glowing heat source against a backdrop distorted nearly beyond recognition; a heat source, that Ben didn't like. Ben took two steps towards Nick. Ben was almost near enough to strike. His palms oozed sweat that smelled wrong, foul, poisonous. His right hand rose to strike when another heat source appeared, followed by the faint and calming scent of a woman.
Ben's eyes returned to normal and he turned, drawn to her. He was kneeling in front of her before he could stop himself to recognize that she wasn't Miranda. His arms wrapped themselves around her legs, and he breathed her scent deeply into his lungs.
She kicked him away, "Don't touch me you filthy Human!" Ellen screeched and kicked him some more. She kicked Ben in the side, in the ribs in the head. He felt his mind clear with each kick, and was thankful for it. Later he would be more thankful that he had been the target of her feet, and not the particle beam gun in her left hand. "Half-bred human trash!" She howled as she shot Nick in the foot.
Ben noticed, this time, the color of the beam. It was violet, not the dreaded purple, but not the relatively safe blue either. Ben feasted on the spectrum of color he could now see in what would have once been simply violet. Part of Ben's brain began eating at him with worry for Nick, especially once the beam ceased, Ellen disappeared, and Nick collapsed. Adrenaline and assorted associated stress hormones were a rapid antidote to the ones driving Ben to find a mate. Three heart beats were all that passed before Ben managed to teleport himself and Nick to Gene.
Gene took their arrival surprisingly well, despite the cramped quarters of his office. Nick arrived on Gene's desk with his foot right in front of Gene's face. Ben stood so close against a wall, he felt a shiver of fear that he could have ended up in it.
From the way blood drained from Gene's face, Ben knew the doctor recognized the wound. "Ben, teleport us to room 52 now!" Gene ordered.
Ben responded by doing and went one step further. He teleported the device he'd seen Gene use to treat Daniel right into Gene's hand. Gene applied it quickly and went for a more complex apparatus. He worked feverishly for several minutes, with device after device. Only after Nick was bandaged and resting comfortably in an observation room did Gene turn to Ben and ask, "What color?"
Ben had held his tongue and his sense of vicarious guilt over the injury the entire time Gene worked, "Violet."
Gene's expression darkened further, "You did the right thing getting him here as fast as you must've. It was clearly very close to perfectly tuned."
Ben looked away from Nick, and shook away the memory of blood thirsty rage. “It actually saved him. I was nearly ready to rip him limb from limb.”
Gene looked at Ben with an unsurprised expression, “Pairbonding hormones are strong, but you wouldn't have really harmed him. Not like that beam could've.”
Ben relived the surge of uncontrolled rage, "What makes that more dangerous."
“Briaunti are for the most part defended against dangerous radiation. It requires a specific spectrum of radiation to do any lasting harm. Thankfully it is not a naturally occurring spectrum, because even a minute exposure transforms the area exposed into a rapid and malignant flesh-eating type of cancer. It makes it possible to build a laser weapon that does little damage to most other species but can kill Briaunti. When you use that laser to direct and power a particle beam it becomes an almost universally lethal weapon,” Gene frowned.
"What is an almost universally lethal weapon," Angela grunted entering the room. It didn't take telepathy for Ben to know she was in a foul mood.
"Nick was hit in the foot by a violet beam," Gene answered.
"What exactly was he doing where he could be hit by one?" Angela asked moderating her tone.
"I went to help Miranda." Nick answered. Ben knew Angela's arrival had awakened him.
"Neither Gene nor I gave you the go ahead to set out on that damnable mission! You were risking your life! What in the heck were you thinking!"
Nick flinched back into his pillow. Ben felt a sympathetic surge of frustration, and found himself defending a man he had been so ready to maim, "Mission? He isn't exactly a factor. That means he isn't exactly under your orders. Actually he was very helpful. He distributed the serum to the survivors while Miranda and I went after the source."
Angela turned her sour expression on Ben, sweetening it on route. She was almost satisfied when she spoke, "You located the source of the plague?"
Ben nodded and opened his mouth, he closed it impotently. They hadn't even told Nick and he was on that world with them. Miranda had refused. Ben knew she didn't want to accept her conclusions as more than unfounded suppositions. Now Ben didn't know how to tell Angela that her own mother was responsible.
"Out with it! Who did it?" Angela returned to her sour mood, clearly irritated by his hesitancy.
"Ellen caused it," Ben blurted without control over his own mouth. He noticed Angela's all too feminine smell and realized why.
"Mother? Why would she do that?"
"I guess she might have been a little frustrated with humanity for creating the other one to rid them of the Briaunti," Nick suggested from the bed. He fell silent when all eyes turned unfavorably on him. Ben was relieved that his hostility was lessened by Angela's presence.
"Enough to commit genocide?" Angela asked the air, disregarding Nick, Ben and the idea her mother was a genocidal monster.
"Trust me at this point she is about a quart low on the sanity fluid," Ben retorted, gesturing at Nick's foot.
"That was her too?" Gene, Angela, and Nick all asked at once.
Their simultaneous pressing interest in his answer telepathically overwhelmed Ben momentarily. He even thought he could feel Gene's curiosity for a brushing second. He opened his mouth, and felt it desiccated in seconds. So he answered with a meek girlish nod. Silence fell like an anvil, the room clearly caught in thought.
Suddenly Gene grimaced, "Where in all of this is Miranda?"
That's when Ben began to worry. He didn't have long to worry before all hell broke loose. At least from massive alarms in the hall, and the sound of Gene's suddenly frantic pop-pad, that is what it sounded like. Gene quickly fished out his pad and tapped the corner, silencing the fury.
"What?" Gene asked the screen with a tone which seemed remarkably calm considering the uproar, the echoes of which still rang in Ben's newly sensitized ears. "How many?" Gene paused to listen, "How urgent?" another pause, "On my way." Gene tapped off the pad and turned to Angela's scowling face.
"Good or Bad?" She questioned.
"Both, Erica just arrived..." Ben's ear's pricked up at the mention of her name, he still felt responsible for her safety, and he listened intently to Gene's next few words, " and she brought you a present, apparently, your 'gir
l 22' is an Agurian."
Angela inclined her head, "She's here? Where's the bad news?"
"Tina is in room 52 with them right now, and somehow the woman is in the final stages of the plague," Gene paused, “and about to have a baby." Gene spun and left the room on those words, darting swiftly down the hall to the nearest transport pod.
Angela collapsed backwards into the bedside chair with an expression that looked, to Ben, like she'd run into, or off of, a cliff at eighty miles an hour. "That's not possible."
The word 'plague' hit Ben fairly hard too, but mainly from the point of view of his recent experiences as opposed to having a clue just what it meant. "Is it contagious?"
"I have no idea," Angela looked him in the eye, for the first time totally vulnerable, "As far as I knew it was extinct, as extinct as the shape shifting abilities of the Agurian race."
Ben's sudden desire to comfort and protect Angela, warred with past bad feelings and present concerns, "Does that mean it's dangerous or not?"
Angela answered almost mechanically, "Really I don't know- won’t know until Gene figures out how it is even present."
"How did it get through the filters?" Ben sat on the foot of Nick's bed, acknowledging the other man with a glance. Nick flashed a brief smile and stayed verbally out of the way, most likely in a hope not to drag the hostility back out of Ben's hormones.
"It was extinct. We didn't set the filters for it, how could we know?" Angela lowered her head into her hands.
Ben could feel her withdrawing into herself. Some new instinct told him that was dangerous. "How did Erica find the girl? I thought you sent her somewhere safe?"
"I did, I sent her to watch and listen in on a puzzle. Those files you and Miranda got mentioned the world more than any other, but none of our people could find any influence." Angela retreated further from the implied accusation.
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