by Dawn Jansen
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Just as I’m starting to wonder if Mazzy will ever come—it’s nearly midnight now—I hear a soft knock on my door.
I remember the last time Mazzy came to my room. I spent about twenty minutes getting my hair just right to make it seem as though I’d just gotten out of the shower, and another ten trying to figure out how far down my robe should go for maximum sex appeal, but things have changed a lot since then. Though it’s totally weird to admit it, I can’t deny that I care a lot about Mazzy. I know it’s just a side effect from binding with her the last time we explored her memories together, but the fact is I’ve never met anybody like her. So I don’t really put up any front around her anymore. Besides, she’s the kind of girl that can see right through that crap anyway.
“Hey,” she says quietly. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days. Her hair is all frizzy and she’s got dark rings under her eyes, but I’d be lying if I said she still wasn’t as sexy as ever.
“Come in,” I say, letting her in and closing the door behind us.
She immediately walks over to my desk and, with a light metallic jingle, places something down on it. Then she turns around to face me.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“It was just a flesh wound,” I say, lifting up my shirt to show her the gnarly scar running diagonally across my chest.
She winces. “Shit. That’s twice now you’ve gotten scarred because of me.”
“You’re right,” I say with a chuckle. “Maybe I should keep my distance from you.”
“No,” she says immediately. “I mean, I don’t want that. I need you. I need your help again, Damion.”
She turns back quickly and scoops up the thing she placed on my desk—it’s the pendant.
“The infamous necklace,” I say. “Are you finally gonna tell me what’s so special about that thing?”
“That’s just it,” she says, tousling her hair with one hand. “I don’t know why it’s so important, but it is... And I think you can help me figure out why.”
She steps closer and hands me the pendant. It’s gold, about the size of a nickel, and is carved into the shape of a wolf’s head with its jaws about to close down on a globe.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “I’ve never seen this thing before in my life.”
“But I have,” Mazzy says, looking into my eyes solemnly. “I don’t know where or when, but I’m certain this is a key that will tell me more about my past.”
“You want me to go back with you again...” I say, now realizing why she came here. “So that’s all I’m good for, huh? You get to frolic around campus with Paul and Tristan, and only come to me when you need to figure out your past, is that it?”
Right after the words leave my mouth, Mazzy’s palm connects on my right cheek with a stinging slap that echoes throughout my quiet room.
“How dare you,” she says. “You mean a lot to me. I was worried sick about you while you were recovering, and all you can think about is what I’m doing with other guys?”
“You were worried about me?” I say, my cheek still numb from the righteous slap she just gave me. “Then why didn’t you come see me while I was in medical?”
“Because of this,” she says, pointing to the pendant in my hand. “You think it’s some kind of coincidence that that woman was trying to kill me and she just happened to be wearing this necklace? Ever since I saw this symbol, I haven’t been the same. It’s been popping up in my dreams and even when I close my eyes.”
She lets out a big sigh. She seems to be holding back tears maybe. “I’m sorry you got hurt because of me,” she continues, “and what you did was the most selfless thing anybody’s ever done for me, but if I don’t get my past figured out, I’ll never be able to have a normal relationship... not with you or anybody else.”
I’m not quite sure what she means by having a ‘normal relationship,’ since I assumed she was in a relationship with Paul and Tristan, but I can feel the sincerity in her words.
“You mean a lot to me too,” I say, being careful to keep my distance from her. Sometimes when I make contact with somebody, I use my powers automatically without even meaning to, subtly influencing the other person’s behavior, but I don’t want to do that now. I want everything between Mazzy and me to be real. “You really think this is it?” I ask, holding up the pendant.
Mazzy nods sincerely, the glow of my desk lamp flickering in her limpid eyes.
“Well then, let’s give it a shot,” I say. “But you should know it’s gonna be a lot more intense than last time.” As I say that I seem to feel the scar on my face throbbing. “I got pushed out last time, but if you think this pendant can help us go deeper, we might expose ourselves to some pretty nasty things in your memory.”
Mazzy brings her hand up slowly and strokes the scar on my face. Her touch is electric and almost makes me gasp. “You’re brave, Damion,” she says. “That’s why I want to face this with you. Together.”
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It’s always a little disorienting when I first bond with somebody. It’s like our bodies fuse into one and neither of them wants to cooperate. I’ve been doing this for years though, so it doesn’t take long for me to gain control once Mazzy and I touch.
We’re on my bed again, starting off the same way as last time, with me just stroking Mazzy’s hands and forearms. The more erogenous or emotionally charged area I touch, the greater my connection to them will be, but I usually like to start off like this, as it lets me ease into the whole process.
Mazzy is already gasping with pleasure as I roam the skin of her arms with my hands, and I let her moans give me power so that I can go deeper. The pendant is between us on the bed, and if what Mazzy says is true, it’s presence there will allow us to go beyond what we did last time.
What strikes me immediately when Mazzy and I, now as one awareness, begin roaming through her memories, is Gate’s tragic death. It sticks out in Mazzy’s memory, impossible to avoid because of the incredible anguish Mazzy associates with that unfortunate incident. That’s the downside of my power—I have to feel everything, the good and the bad. And in the case of an EMP as strong as Mazzy, her emotions are unimaginably powerful as well, and so as we relive the accidental killing of Gate, I feel everything—the remorse, the self-reproach, the fear... It all hits me like a ton of bricks, and the scar on my face tingles painfully. I tell myself this is just a prelude for what’s to come, so I brace myself and go deeper.
Soon we’re back in the cold metal room from when Mazzy was a little girl, only this time everything is clearer. Last time, this memory was hazy, and everything I saw and felt had this hazy, dreamlike quality to it, but now everything is sharp and well-defined, and I know now that the pendant really has had an effect on Mazzy’s psyche.
The visual fidelity isn’t the only thing that’s been enhanced though—so has the emotional impact of the memory. I feel what I can only describe as a sense of deadness, an abyss inside Mazzy’s heart that seems black and infinite because of what she’s experienced in the lab.
This time, a man’s voice comes in over a loudspeaker. It’s in Russian, but since Mazzy can understand it—or rather, since she was able to understand it back then—so can I.
“Use the rope, Annika,” the voice commands.
That’s when I notice another detail that hadn’t been there before: there’s a single piece of rope next to the whimpering prisoner kneeling about ten feet in front of Mazzy. Mazzy’s heart constricts as she knows what she must do—what she has done countless times before in this same room. They’ve brought in scores of prisoners for her to execute over the months so they can track and measure the evolution of Mazzy’s powers.
But she knows what will happen if she doesn’t comply: the beatings, the starvations, the deprivation.
It’s a brutal scene, but Mazzy and I watch it, experience it, in its entirety—the rope coiling around the man like s
ome sort of python before squeezing the life out of him, all the while tears stream from Mazzy’s big blue eyes.
“Very good, Annika,” the voice says in a sadistically pleased tone.
Mazzy looks up. Above the observation window where the scientists are, she sees that emblem: a wolf with its jaws open, about to devour the world.
Recognizing this emblem here sends us back further into the past. Mazzy is younger now, perhaps five or six years old, and now I start to wonder if she had known any reality other than the cold steel walls of this Russian testing facility while she was growing up.
She’s in a different room, but it seems to be a part of the same facility. As before, there are no windows or natural light, just the harsh glare of fluorescent lights from overhead. There are small, children-sized cots, assorted wooden toys, and children’s books in Russian scattered around the room. There’s another child around the same age in here as well, a boy with a shaved head who’s just as skinny and malnourished as Mazzy. They aren’t friends. They were once, along with all of the other children who lived in this room, but that was before the eliminations began.
There were originally a dozen of them who lived together in these facilities, and they trained their powers together, guided by the scientists who all had the same wolf symbol on their lab coats. After a while though, the children were forced to fight each other so the scientists would end up with the most powerful child from this batch. Presently, Mazzy and the little boy are called out of the room to partake in the last fight to decide who the final survivor will be.
As we go back further, it becomes clear that the walls of this facility are the only world child Mazzy has ever known. Mazzy’s earliest memories all take place here. The Russian scientists act as her parents, her teachers, and her taskmasters, taking care of only the barest of necessities and focusing everything else on the brutal training and brainwashing.
As Mazzy and I take this journey into the depths of her memories together, I am overcome by extremes of sadness and pain that I never imagined were possible. The scar on my face has been burning intensely this whole time, almost unbearably, but when we finally finish revisiting all of the memories from that time, the pain from my scar disappears, letting me know that we’ve seen all there was to see.
I open my eyes just in time to see Mazzy open hers. We’re lying side by side on my bed, which is in disarray like last time. Mazzy’s eyes are red and her cheeks are stained with tears, and when I blink I notice that my eyelashes are wet with tears too. We’re both breathing heavily and don’t say anything for a long while—we just lie there, looking into each other’s eyes, connecting with one another. Her and I are inseparably linked now. Not only do I know everything about her past, I’ve experienced it myself, and she can feel that connection when she looks at me now.
After what seems like a few minutes, Mazzy is the first to speak. “Your scar,” she says in a voice that is soft, but somehow simultaneously full of newly discovered power.
I feel for the scar on my face, and she’s right—it’s completely gone. I’d gotten so used to it, it feels weird to reach up and feel nothing but smooth skin there now.
“You healed me,” I say. “Because you’re whole now.”
“I’ll never forgive them for what they did to me,” Mazzy says. “For what they did to all of us.”
When she says that, the faces of the other children, many of whom Mazzy was forced to eliminate herself, flash through my mind.
“We will avenge them,” I say, and then, as though the two of us share some kind of psychic bond, we both reach out at the same time and clasp our hands together.
As I sense her power through our contact, Mazzy’s energy feels different now—more powerful and more commanding.
“You’re different, Mazzy,” I say, unable to hold back my smile despite everything we just went through.
“It’s gone,” she says, an obvious sense of relief in here voice. “That darkness inside of me is gone.”
I’ve done this countless times in the past—bond with somebody and learn everything about them—but it’s never had this effect on me. I was always just selfishly trying to get something out of it before, but through Mazzy’s transformation, I feel that I too have changed. I realize now that Mazzy is the most important person in my life right now, in more ways than one.
“Stay here tonight,” I tell Mazzy.
I feel like I’ve just run a marathon, so I can only imagine how exhausted Mazzy is. She just smiles and slides over into my arms, and very shortly the two of us are drifting off to sleep in my bed.
Chapter 20
Mazzy
In my dreams that night I saw everything again, but this time there was no hurt involved. I viewed everything as a spectator and saw the truth of my upbringing—how I wasn’t responsible for anything that happened, and how I was an unwilling victim myself, just like the other children and all of the prisoners they had me test my powers on.
It’s shocking to suddenly have eight years of my life back that were previously just not there. And although it’s hard to look at, I vow to never forget any of it. Not only is it a testament to what I can survive, it’s also a reminder to one day get back at those Soviet bastards who did that to me. They set me loose in the US, hoping to one day use me as a sleeper agent—just as they’d been using me all along—but things apparently didn’t go their way. Either that or they changed their plans. But either way, that assassin was sent by them, which tells me that organization is still out there, torturing little children just like they did me.
Now that everything is clear to me, I suddenly have a newfound sense of belonging to the Academy. They might have some weird ways of doing stuff here—like tracking our relationships—but it’s a far cry from the brutality and inhumanity of the Soviet program. A new goal is starting to form in my head: kick ass at the Academy, pass the Test, and then use whatever resources are available to me to find the people who did this to me and make them pay.
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Warm morning light shines in through the window in Damion’s dorm room, gently rousing me from my sleep. As soon as I open my eyes, there is a sense of being reborn, that last night marked a turning point in my life that I’ll forever look back on as the night everything changed—the night I found out the truth about my past; the night I became fully one with my powers; and the night I connected with an incredible man.
I look over at Damion, whose arm my head is resting on. He’s still sleeping peacefully, and the morning sunlight is just now cresting onto his cheek where he once bore the scar I gave him. It’s a Thursday, and both of us have class in a bit, but I can’t bear to separate from Damion yet. I’m almost shocked by how urgent the need to be with him now is, but in many ways it makes sense. Not only is he the hottest guy I’ve met in years, but he’s put his life in danger for me on more than one occasion too.
I want to show him how much he means to me, and at the same time the power inside me is feeling restless now that it’s free from the darkness that was infecting it. Now that I know about my past and that I am a survivor more than anything else, that dark part of me has been integrated into the whole, opening up a whole new reserve of power that I’d been cut off from before. Maybe it’s time to share some of that power with somebody else.
Damion and I are both half-dressed from the night before, and right now he’s only wearing his boxers and a white undershirt that’s pulled up, revealing his well-defined, tattoo-covered torso. Taking advantage of the fact that he’s still sleeping, I bring my mouth close to his torso and start kissing it lightly, traversing the landscape of his body with my lips. I realize that after Paul, this is the second guy who I’ve taken the initiative with at the Academy, but thinking about everything Damion has done for me strengthens my resolve to share my love with him now.
At just about the same time I notice something stirring in Damion’s boxers, I hear him stirring awake too. I nuzzle up to his neck and whisper
into his ear, “Good morning.”
He responds by taking me into his arms and pressing me close to his body; I guess he’s been waiting for this for a long time too. I kiss at his neck and reach down into his boxers, where my hand is met by a very stiff cock with thick veins running along it. It’s hot to the touch, and as Damion moans I feel something similar to what happens each time he’s used his powers; that electric warmth that lights up every nerve ending in my body with pleasure.
I gasp, and as our bodies twist together in a tangle of intertwined limbs and lips, so too do our powers come out to caress and meld with one another. Damion’s ability to connect with people is making every sensation feel ten times more pleasurable than it normally would be, and for some reason it only now dawns on me that I don’t have to worry about unleashing my full intimacy anymore.
Emboldened by this knowledge, I yank Damion’s boxers down. They get caught on his fully aroused manhood, but once I tug them free and his shaft springs up, hitting his stomach, the wetness between my legs is now demanding to be dealt with.
Feeling like I’ll explode if I don’t have Damion inside me, I take hold of his cock and straddle him, aiming the tip of his prick at my entrance and letting him feel my wetness first, slicking the head of his dick with my pussy juice.
Looking straight into my eyes, Damion groans deeply and grabs hold of my hips. He tries to lower me onto his expecting cock, but I resist. Even though I want it too, possibly even more badly than he does, I want to tease him a bit, so that when he finally does enter me it feels that much better.
“Please, Mazzy,” he whispers in a tone dripping with both sleepy ecstasy and newly awakened desire, still looking directly into my eyes.
“You promise to fuck me good?” I ask him, still rubbing his head against my lips. Now that the dark part of my power is gone and there’s no resistance, I’m feeling wild.
