4

Dr. Malak introduced Grant and Ted to Helen and Quinn. Helen recognized Grant Clinton upon seeing him. He and his wife had accosted her over Daria giving their son chewing gum, among other things that she couldn't recall very well. Luckily, he didn't seem to remember her.

"Ok, if I can get some blood samples...."

While Dr. Malak took samples, Grant asked Helen, "Um... we barely handled it well... how did YOU handle it?"

Helen blinked a moment. "Honestly, I thought it was the uranium. Just Quinn got hit really strong. I was amazed she remained alive at all."

Grant shook his head. "We... had some weird experiences. We--that is, Leslie and I--met at a commune run by a group calling themselves the Aquarians. It was... pretty weird there. We were supposed to undo capitalism and war and things like that. Our guide, Starcaster, could do some weird stuff. Maybe it's like the LSD warping our memories, but it was like sorcery. And we had some bad trips, kept being in a locked room that was almost completely black, while these aliens, supposedly from the Pleiades, kept sticking us with things. Even doing... well, to avoid graphic detail, messing with our genetic material."

Helen frowned and looked down. "I had an experience like that, too. But I was told that it's a common LSD trip. There was an experiment where people were hypnotized and asked to describe being taken aboard a flying saucer. They often described what many abductees did."

"Maybe we're all being abducted, and only a few ever find out."

Helen shuddered. "The UFO abductee phenomenon has many parallels with those taken by Satanists or even weirder things."

"Maybe we're all being abducted by something."

"I don't think so," said Helen testily. "It's just the paranoia of a bad trip."

"You had a trip. So did Leslie and I. Look at our children."

"Only Quinn!" I hope.

"Others among the Aquarians had children like Ted. Some gave their kids up for adoption. Others killed them. Some parents were found killed, their kids missing, though nobody suspects a toddler of having done it."

Helen looked at him wide-eyed. "They're just children," she whispered harshly, "it's not their fault!"

"But why the tests? And who's conducting them?"

"I'm sure that there are no tests! It's a bad trip, that is all it is."

"Some of these abductees tested as pregnant and then the baby was just completely GONE in later tests."

"Miscarriages are very common, I'm sure..."

"The tests showed that they had never been pregnant in the first place. These are tests conducted by the same doctors who confirmed pregnancy before."

Helen took a breath and chose to drop the subject. Things were scary enough without pausing to consider if she had touched something REAL in those paranoid moments... and been violated by that nightmare in turn.

Quinn and Ted seemed to get along a lot better. Ted had allowed his entire range of mutations to stand out. He looked a lot like Quinn, only he didn't have any feelers along his spine, nor did he have a tail. He did have two antenna on his head that looked like a caricature of some Martian, and eyes that had multiple facets to them. Quinn found it like looking into ridged lenses. He also had fledgling wings, though they didn't look as if they could support his weight in the air.

When Quinn saw him, she felt her own mutations come out, and she let them. For some reason, she wanted him to see her. She thought his mutations looked wickedly cool on him, rather than freakish, and she didn't want to appear boringly mundane next to him. She also found him a lot more attractive than any of the boys she had dated before. "So when did you start taking the pills?"

Ted glanced at her. "About a year ago. Just before I came here to get away from certain crackpots that thought I was evil incarnate."

"Me, too," she responded lightly. "Did the Institute help you?"

"Not until much later." He shrugged. "My parents thought all that hippie stuff dabbled in demonic forces or something and tried to keep me separate from that and the world at large. They hoped this separation would help make me 'normal' or something."

"Um..." Quinn wasn't sure how to ask this next question. "Have you had any weird... dreams lately?"

Ted looked at her more intently now. "Yes," he said, after a pause. "Showing me images even more intense than a Goya painting...."

"Goya painting, what's that?"

"He painted scenes of blood and destruction."

"Oh, yeah," said Quinn softly.

"They said there was another here. I admit, I'm surprised it's you. I was thinking it would be like Andrea."

"Do you wish it was?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm just amazed that there are others. I guess that means the others in our dreams are real, too."

Quinn frowned, suddenly afraid. "Yes, I guess it does."

"And they're coming here." He spoke even more softly, adding, "I don't think they'll like our families."

Quinn looked over at Helen and Grant, who apparently had just stopped speaking to each other. She looked back to Ted and shook her head slightly in agreement. "Not sure what to do about that, either."

"Maybe we should find out what they want before they meet our families."

"What's that?" asked Dr. Malak, back.

"We're just wondering what you'll find is all," said Ted.

Dr. Malak frowned, but didn't press the issue. Then his cell phone rang. "Excuse me," he said, going out the door.

"Now where did he go?" asked Helen, "this is too important to be working with other jobs!"

Grant shook his head. Frankly, he didn't trust the Institute, though he was grateful for what help they had provided so far.

"Did your parents have a hard time with you?" asked Ted softly to Quinn.

"Yeah," said Quinn. To Helen and Grant, they both seemed to be whispering nonsense syllables, but they heard each other clearly.

"There were others like us, abused. I guess they'd appreciate what's coming. What about you?"

Quinn looked at him. "I don't know. You?"

"I don't know, either. I feel like I'm trapped between two worlds, and I don't know which one is mine. Maybe neither one is."

"Yeah," agreed Quinn. "Did you see the other worlds, the ones in our solar system?"

"Yes. What does it mean?"

"I don't know," said Quinn, "but I don't like that they'd all be destroyed, sparing none."

"Have you pulled anything out of your dream yet?"

"What?" asked Quinn a little more sharply in surprise, "No! Have you?"

Ted nodded once, but didn't say anything, before being interrupted by his dad.

"What are you two talking about?"

"Just about what it's like to be a freak," replied Ted, a little sullenly.

The door came open, Dr. Malak came back in, and Ted and Quinn both frowned. His light was discordant. "What's wrong?" they both asked at the same time.

"Nothing," he said, and they both knew he was lying. "Um, Mrs. Morgendorffer, have you contacted anyone else about Quinn's special needs?"

Helen shook her head, her eyes asking why he was asking.

"Seems some people with a lot of clout are asking my boss questions about your daughter."

Grant's voice rose, sounding a little angry. "Will they be able to find out about Ted?"

Dr. Malak considered for a moment. "My records are encrypted, including with my own special shorthand. They can be broken, but it will take some time. If these people are allowed access to all my work, and it sounded as though they will be, then they'll likely know about him in the next few hours. Assuming they start immediately at decryption using a human, since I don't think any computer has the ability to decipher my shorthand."

Grant hissed. "Thank you, Mrs. Morgendorffer!"

"I haven't talked to anyone!" said Helen. "Have you, Quinn?"

Quinn shook her head. "No, I've been hiding!"

"I don't get it," said Dr. Malak darkly. "But Mr. Nakami has found these people most disturbing. He told me to expect company soon." He looked at all of them. "Do we proceed with the tests, or not?"

Grant and Helen looked to each other and then Helen looked back, "Proceed."

"Wait," said Grant. He made a call to Leslie, and then he said, "I'm sorry, Ted is going to have to come with me now."

"No, Dad, I want to know what's going on. We need to know this."

"Your mother doesn't like it. She doesn't want you involved in this."

"I already am involved."

"We're going home. Now." Against Ted's continued protestations, the father and son left Dr. Malak with Helen and Quinn.

Helen then made some calls from her cell phone to Jake and a few others, in the case any violations of their civil rights should occur. Meanwhile, Quinn was taken for some x-rays. She closed her normal eyelids against the harsh light of the X-ray machine at work.

Then Quinn felt SOMETHING. She wasn't sure what, but she knew it was important. "Can we take a break?" she asked. "I feel... like we should take a break."

Dr. Malak blinked. "Okay, if that's what you want. Would you like a soda?"

"Yes, please," replied Quinn.

Helen and Quinn were out in the hallway of the rented medical office building while Dr. Malak went to get a soda for her.

"What's going on, Quinn? You know something, don't you?"

Before Quinn could reply, they both heard a crash. It sounded as if Dr. Malak fell onto something heavy without crying out.

Quinn and Helen barely had time to process this when three men, all dressed in black and wearing shades, came around the corner, marching side by side. Quinn saw that unlike everyone else, none of these men displayed any light of Essence. She felt an instinctual terror and knew she had to run. "Mom," she said weakly, before Helen fell unconscious. All three men reached into a side pocket and pulled what looked to be flashlights out. Quinn's terror overcame her then and she ran, faster than she believed possible.

It was much like her nightmare in the hospital, only she found a stairwell very quickly, and there was only one way to go: up. She couldn't get to the door outside unless she ran past them. She ran up the three stories and burst out the door just as she heard them enter the stairwell. On the sunny roof, she felt trapped. Her mutations were exposed for all the world to see, and she didn't even see a fire escape. Deep inside herself, she felt Them approaching and knew she had to escape.

Remembering how she had pulled her mutations in, she tried something else: To grow wings similar to what Ted had on his back, only bigger. To her surprise, she felt her back give way, and as much as she hated doing it, she took her shirt off to accommodate the wings.

Just as she heard the doorknob turn, she leaped off the building, and released a high-pitched keening as she fell, and then a keen of elation as she began gliding. She nearly bumped into four shocked people that looked to be technicians of some kind but managed to get enough elevation to go over their ducking heads. She felt her tail slap the glasses off of one of the men who looked to still be in college.

"Out of the way, geek!" she shouted as she glided several more meters and landed by an alley. She took off into the alley, calling her wings back in so she could put her shirt on at least. She thought that those men she'd nearly crashed into were the only ones to get a good close-up look at her topless and she wanted to keep it that way. She hoped they would think she was like Mothman from that horror movie based on a true story or something and not recognize her as Vice President of the Fashion Club. Maybe she was pursued by monsters of some kind, maybe she was a monster herself, and maybe she'd just flown with her own wings for the first time in her life, but part of her still cared about such things.

She didn't see the emotionless faces of the lightless three men staring down from the rooftop at her sudden departure. Nor did she know that the men on the ground who had ducked out from under her were from Blue Section and she didn't see them get back up and run into the clinic.

Inside, they found only an unconscious Helen Morgendorffer and Dr. Malak. They had not seen the three men in black that had pursued Quinn, they did not find anyone else in the building, and they didn't know what had happened to Dr. Malak and Helen Morgendoffer. One called in a request for more support, and to report that Quinn Morgendoffer was confirmed as Tainted.