Prologue Part 2/Chapter 2
A/N: I posted the complete prologue in one day, hopefully that gives off a good first impression ;D
Disclaimer: I don't claim ownership to the property of X-Men, nor anything related to Marvel Comics/Studios.
"So, are you trying to tell me that a five-year-old girl was found in an alley-way—with no clothes on, then was brought to a hospital, and when she awoke: killed one of the nurses with a—a piece of glass?!"
"Yes, Detective, that's what the witness said."
"And this witness is who, again?"
"A doctor, sir, a female doctor."
"A female doctor…" Detective Morrison chuckled to himself and turned to face the one-way mirror that divided the interrogation room from the observation room.
This was turning out to be a very bad day for him. This morning he'd returned from getting his drunker-than-a-skunk friend home to find his wife in bed with another man. At lunch he had spilled coffee on his favourite tie, which was actually a gift from his cheating—soon to be ex—wife. And just four hours ago he had ran (literally) into a woman and her dog, tripped over the dog (it was rather large), and sprained his wrist on the concrete sidewalk.
And to top it off, he had gotten called in (at 11:00 pm, no less) to one of the strangest, most pointless cases of his life! Oh yes, this was turning out to be a very. Horrible. Day.
This time, Nora woke to a dim yellow light instead of the bright hospital glow. The first thing she noticed was that her wrist was handcuffed to the centre of a metal table. The second thing was that she was in a rather small room with a security camera in one corner and a large, black mirror taking up the opposite wall.
This is an interrogation room.
Wait, what? How do I know all of this? She knew what a camera was, that it ran on something called electricity, and that it was recording her every move. She knew who filled every rank on the Brooklyn Police Force, and that her wife had cheated on her. She was getting a divorce as soon as she could.
Wait… no. It wasn't Nora's wife who had slept with someone else, it had been Detective Morrison's.
She remembered everything he had seen, felt his heartbreak, his sadness, his anger.
Nora was confused, and frightened; she was scared out of her wits as to what was going on… What was going on? She was so very, very confused; one second she'd been back home, with Danielle… Then… that happened… and now, she was here. But where was here?
She was hit with another wave of knowledge. I am currently located in the Brooklyn Police Force Headquarters. Brooklyn is one of the districts in New York, New York… Nora giggled, New York, New York? Why would anyone name a city after the state it was in? The thoughts kept hitting her like that, the date (October sixth), the year (1961). Over and over; they glommed onto her brain.
The door opened. A man walked in; immediately, Nora knew him. She knew his name before he even spoke it. She realized: I must have somehow touched his bare skin… probably when I was unconscious… like the same thing that had happened with the Nurse.
The Nurse. Nora remembered what she had done to her; remembered the glass, and the blood, and the screams… not of the Nurse but of the Doctor.
They must have been close.
Why did I do that?! Nora screamed internally, how did I kill her? Why did I kill her!?
She returned to the present; tried to calm her laboured breath. Detective James Morrison. He was thirty-five years old; married for two years. But Nora assumed that marriage was over due to the fact that James now knew about his wife's affair.
"Hello," he said, breaking Nora from her troubled thoughts. "My name is James Morrison." He sat down on the other side of the table and pulled out a file. "This," he began. "Is the smallest, most pointless, open-and-shut murder case, of my career."
He opened the file. "So I have one question for you, little girl," he pulled out a small plastic bag. "Why and how would someone so small as you kill an innocent woman with this piece of glass?"
And there it was, inside the bag. That now-slightly-bloodstained-shard of glass.
"Come on girl," he said. 'We don't know why you did it, but we know you did. So why don't you just tell us why?"
Nora didn't bother pointing out that he had asked her two questions, not one. She said nothing, innocently staring up at the fuming detective.
Furious, Morrison stormed out of the interrogation room, leaving the evidence behind on the table. He returned a moment later with a plate of fresh chocolate chip cookies. They smelled delicious. Nora's stomach let out an uncontrollable grumble.
He smirked, "Smells good, doesn't it?" She reached for the plate, but he pulled it away.
"Ah, ah, ah! First you talk, then you get food."
Nora's shrunken stomach made another little growl. The Detective let out another series of annoyed grumbles. "I'll leave you to your thoughts, kid. If you want to confess, just give us a shout." And with that he left Nora alone, trapped in the confines of her own mind, unable to move due to the shock that had taken over her body.
"I don't get why we even need a confession! There are multiple witnesses—and a video tape to boot!"
"There was really only the one witness, and there's also the fact that she's just a child!" Robinson couldn't also help thinking of the glitch in the security tape.
"Oh shut up!"
Detective Morrison's partner, Officer Robinson, was trying to knit a scarf for his daughter's sixth birthday. Don't bother questioning it, he just was. Out of the duo, he was obviously much more calmer that his counterpart.
"Listen James, we can't just send a five-year-old to prison!"
"Well isn't that what all the juvenile detention centres are for?!"
"Really Jim… I know you want this all to be over and done with, but you need to think it all through!"
"I am thinking it through! I think everything through!" Morrison suddenly got very quiet. Robinson looked up, a concerned expression on his face, as he began to speak. "You know," he said. "I've heard rumours… whispers of strange people, with even stranger abilities. Maybe… maybe she's one of these people!"
Robinson was officially starting to get a little worried… James was taking his wife's (soon to be ex's) affair very hard, and all the stress seemed to be making him more, and more unstable. He decided to take the easy way out.
"All right my friend, how about you go to your office and rest. I'll take the rest of this shift on my own."
Morrison tried to protest, but was eventually tided over. He left the observation room muttering about some lumberjack named George, and Robinson returned to his knitting. It was going to be his little Rosie's birthday in three weeks, and since money was tight, he had listened to his mother's advice and taken up knitting. And now he was stuck with making this damned scarf.
Do you loop the yarn around the needle before or after you do the stitch-thing? "Arrgh!" He threw his pet project down in frustration and sulked in his chair.
It wasn't long before he heard a voice call out. "Hello? Is anyone there?"
The girl. He couldn't really believe that a child could have killed that nurse, but he'd seen all the evidence… He exited the observation area and walked into the interrogation room.
She was a scrawny little thing, with curly brown hair and dark doe-eyes. He'd seen a lot of weird shit on the force; it confounded him how this little child could be guilty of murder.
There was something about her eyes: those big, brown, eyes. They seemed too knowledgeable for someone her age.
They were starting to creep him out now; it was like they were staring through
Across the room, Nora devised a plan. She stared up at the kind-looking police officer. Police officer: another part of James Morrison's rather colourful vocabulary. She glanced down at his key ring. There they were; all she needed was to get him to come a little closer.
Nora let out a small sniffle. "Please," she sobbed. "Please don't hurt me." The man took a step forward, shock written all over his face.
"No, no, no," he said. "Of course not, I would never hurt a child." Another step forward. He crouched down next to Nora and moved to hand her a cookie. "There you go, you must be very hungry."
There. Now he was close enough for her to reach what she needed.
Nora knew what she had to do. She always had—but she wasn't going to kill him. No. She would never harm anyone ever again - for Danielle's sake.
She didn't even know why she'd killed the Nurse in the first place.
She snapped her fingers.
Nora had never done it before—snap her fingers, that is—but it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do.
It happened the instant the noise was made. The sound seemed to echo around the room, and time stopped.
Everything stopped moving: the clocked ceased ticking; the ant on the floor discontinued its quest towards her bare foot; and the officer's hand paused in mid-reach, cookie in his grasp, lips slightly parted. And just below his hand; attached to his belt, was the key ring.
Nora's tiny fingers reached out and grabbed it.
Easy as pie.
Hm, she thought, that's a peculiar phrase.
She worked through each of the keys, trying to find a match. When she did, the handcuffs unlocked with a resounding click. Nora quickly rubbed her sore wrists. She got up—straightening her day-old hospital gown as she did so—and took the cookie from the officer's outstretched hand.
She turned to leave; but something was holding her back.
The glass.
She felt the strongest urge to take it. So, she did.
Another thing Nora had picked up from Detective Morrison's memories was that it was very cold outside today. Today in 1961. Six hundred years from home. Six hundred years in the future. Things changed.
The weather was different in America too. Colder, perhaps, but less rainy. So when she saw the half-finished knit scarf, Nora took it as well.
She wrapped its golden fluffiness around her neck and grasped the needles and ball of yarn in her pale hands. Clad in nothing but her blood-stained hospital gown and the golden scarf, she set out into the rainy streets of frozen-in-time New York.
One month later: November 6th, 1961, Westchester, New York.
It hadn't been difficult to get the right papers. Nora had obtained the skill from an office secretary a couple days ago. It was more the fact of adjusting to the different century that made her nervous.
As she shook the rain droplets out of her hair, Nora realized; today was her birthday. Today she was six years old.
Among her time-stopping and information-gathering abilities; Nora seemed to have a knack for everything, well… everything academic.
So at the age of six she knew that she knew far more than your average six-year-old should.
As she was walking to the school's main office, Nora bumped into a table full of books. Besides knitting, reading was one of her favourite pastimes. As of today; she was barreling through Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
The sign on the table said' free', so she picked one up.
"A Wrinkle in Time," she read. "Oh, the irony…" She chuckled quietly to herself and put the book in her newly bought (stolen), messenger bag.
"Everything seems to be in order, Nora," the secretary looked up through her large glasses. "I'll just take these papers off your hands."
The six-year-old faked a smile while she handed over the papers containing her new identity.
Nora Greyson. That was her name now.
