Disclaimer: I do not Skyland, etc, etc.
Author's note: And I have once again returned from another long break between chapters. I am hoping to be able to get along with this story more quickly now that I am done my exams. We can only hope. Please, pretty please leave me a review to tell me that you're still hanging in there with this thing! Reviews are love…
Chapter 10
The Future.
Location: Lighthouse Block-piece.
Oslo regarded the run-down old Lighthouse with a derogatory snort. This was where the most powerful seijinn in Skyland, where The Phoenix had been living? He could understand Lena's sentimentality but he'd always thought that the Phoenix might have possessed more pride even if it lacked the teenager's sense. He did have to admit that it was a clever hiding place, though. Perhaps the youth was gaining some control over her powers. Hmm. That could be interesting…or potentially very awkward. To be certain of his capture he ordered that his soldiers carry and load their high-powered tranquilizer guns in addition to their Xelerium blasters and cuffs. He had underestimated the girl before; it was not going to happen again.
"Prepare the docking mechanisms," He ordered almost absentmindedly. Said docking process was very brief. Oslo was greeted by the two guardians who had pursued the girl stood waiting for them, both looking a little worse for wear; both were starting to develop considerable bruising and Poe was struggling not to clutch at his broken ribs. His apprentice looked as though she were favouring one side. Oslo didn't particularly care about their discomfort, though it was certainly interesting to note the effects of lesser Seijinns combating the Phoenix. Their masked soldiers didn't look any better, though their programming required their body to ignore physical pain and continue following their orders until physically incapable of doing so.
"Commander Oslo!" The Guardian called Poe stuttered, stumbling into a sort of salute that made his apprentice grimace with embarrassment "The Rebel hideout is secure. We await your orders,"
"Where is the girl?" he demanded. Poe swallowed and fidgeted nervously, his apprentice flushing with humiliation.
"She…um…she got away."
"How? You reported that you had recovered the speeder which was stolen and that none of your patrol ships are missing. What did she use to escape?"
"We…er…we don't actually…know." Poe stammered sheepishly. His apprentice stepped forward, eager to do some damage control if it were possible.
"Commander she attacked us and knocked us out. When we regained consciousness she and the old man were gone. We have found no trace of them in this lighthouse."
Oslo frowned.
"None at all?" he enquired. Surely these idiots possessed at least some sensory ability.
"No sir. We sense no seijinn activity and the soldiers have not recovered—"
"Worthless fools!" Oslo raged, sweeping an arm powerfully. The already somewhat-battered guardians were thrown into the light house door. The head guardian strode into the building, stepping over them with contempt. The pair trembled with well-deserved fear. They had failed spectacularly and failure came with a very high price among guardians these days; gone were the days where the likes of Jeloah, Artemis and (following the arrival of Lena and Mahad) Di Wan could repeatedly fail with little more than reprimands and loss of privileges. The Dictator peered around the lighthouse, his superior seijinn senses telling him that there was indeed still one unaccounted for person in the area. Not a seijinn, unfortunately, but he was there. Oslo walked up the winding staircase with two of the masked soldiers behind him and the two disgraced guardians following meekly.
The head guardian stopped and looked up at the ceiling, his hard, grey eyes narrowing slightly. He reached up a pale hand which started to glow and pressed the thumb and forefinger together and pulled down. A floorboard released and a string fell down. It immediately started to glow and continued moving towards the floor, pulling down a folding staircase with it. Oslo smirked at this and rose into the air with the assistance of his powers, levitating up through the hole in the ceiling into the hidden room and allowing his minions to climb the stairs.
Through the hole he found a little room, quite ingeniously designed, he had to admit, for it provided both space and efficiency in addition to its secrecy. His attention snapped to the old man and the device in the corner and shot out a hand blazing with blue fire, yanking him off his feet and into the air. The seijinn chuckled deep in his throat as the elderly man struggled in the air, clutching at his throat and babbling nonsensically with pleas of mercy and innocence.
"Well, well, well," Oslo purred "Look what we have here,"
"Please!" The old man gasped "I am a humble scientist! If I'm behind on my water payments—"
"Spare me your pathetic charade old man!" Oslo interrupted snidely. He lowered his arm as the Masked Soldiers followed him up, his prey lowering back to the ground along with him. The old man the rebels called 'the Vector' wheezed and coughed pathetically. "Now, where is Lena?"
The Vector looked up at him slowly, a scowl further deepening the wrinkles on his forehead as he glared up at his attacker with as much venom as he could muster.
"I'll never tell you! You…you hard-hearted monster—ohh! aarrhh!" The rebel was cut off mid-insult by a small blast of seijinn energy that pushed him across the floor and into the legs of a table of equipment, some of the gadgets falling down onto him. He moaned pitifully and struggled to turn over, his whole body aching. It had not been a powerful blast, but his body was old and not in the best of shape. He opened his eyes and squinted up to see the Dictator towering over him, now flanked by several of the masked soldiers.
"I will not ask again, old man," Oslo stated "Where is the girl?"
The Vector didn't answer. The seijinn's scowl deepened.
"Fine!" he snapped, his burning hands coming up towards his head, his index and middle fingers touching either side of his temple as he started to concentrate on the old man's mind, "Then we'll do it the hard way,"
Year 2252
Location: Oxford Block
"You, young lady, are very lucky that you're a seijinn." Darius commented as he gently dabbed a pad of gauze onto the young girl's forehead. She winced and breathed sharply as the poultice on the white square stung a little when it came into contact with her rapidly healing flesh. Her brother, kneeling next to where she was sitting against the wall she had been thrown against, patted her shoulder comfortingly and Dahlia smiled at her reassuringly.
"Ouch!" she exclaimed when Darius dabbed at another, more sensitive point along the side of her face with the cloth "That stings! You don't even need to do this; it'll be all better tomorrow, two days at most."
"No, it will have closed up in that time. We should still clean it and keep it clean to make sure it doesn't get infected." Darius corrected her.
"Yeah, Squirt, you may be a seijinn but you're still not invincible. Not yet anyway." Mahad said jokingly. His sister heaved an irritated sigh as a new pad of gauze was pressed to the wound and held there whilst her attendant took out some surgical tape to hold it in place. The pilot automatically added his fingers over the pad so that the man helping his sister could conduct his task more easily.
"I never get sick." Lena grumbled.
"And that has absolutely nothing to do with being a seijinn. You're just as prone to infection as others. As a matter of fact…" Darius trailed off with a slight frown as he put the back of his hand to her neck lightly "You're a little warm now."
"I always run on a higher temperature." Lena told him, "That's what the Vector said."
"Seijinns do have a slightly higher average for their body temperature, that's true." Darius conceded "But it's only about 0.3 degrees Celsius higher on average. I suppose it could be a result of the fact that you were just fighting. We'll check it again later. In the meantime, young lady, you are to take it easy."
"Thanks Darius. I'll make sure she doesn't go blowing things up." Mahad said with a slight laugh, though there was no disguising the worry in his eyes. He turned to his sister "You know you're so gonna get it when mom hears about this…"
The two blondes smiled slightly and started to walk away in order to give them a little privacy, though Dahlia didn't mirror the slight, worried smile the two men held. Her gaze was harder, her lips pursed into a thin line even if she was visibly relieved. Lena watched as Dahlia and Darius walked away. When they were just about out of earshot she looked to her brother.
"It's not just mom who's gonna be mad at me though, is it?" the girl asked. Mahad closed his mouth, his expression sobering.
"No," he said simply. Lena searched his face, hers shifting into a sad and slightly desperate expression
"You're mad at me!" she said
"Lena, you just had your head cracked open. We'll talk about this later, after you've healed a little. If we don't, mom will be after my butt."
The rebel and fugitive, in the meantime, paused to glance back at the Farrell siblings to see that they still seemed fine before turning the corner.
"Thank you Darius, for all your help." Dahlia said once they'd rounded said corner. "We really appreciate it."
"Not at all," Darius said with a slight smile as he held out a hand to shake. The blonde stared at it and then at his face but made no move to take the offered hand. She had nothing against him, but being within Oslo's clutches again with that creepy laugh had brought up a few more unpleasant memories and the man in front of her still bore an unfortunate resemblance. He seemed to sense her internal struggle and lowered his hand, offering her another smile to try and show that he understood, even if he was a little hurt.
"Actually, there are a couple of people who would like a word with you before you leave. For one, Jane is awake. She'd like to thank you." He said carefully. Dahlia blinked and frowned slightly in confusion.
"Jane? Who's—oh. Right." She said shortly. She cleared her throat "Who else wanted to talk to me?"
"I did." Victoria said as she walked over to them. She had sustained her fair share of wounds from this fight too; there was a large rip on one sleeve that bared her shoulder, which in turn bore a large, rough scrape. Her face was bruised and she was limping slightly.
Noticing Dahlia's gaze flitting discreetly across her injuries the woman shrugged self-deprecatingly
"I'm no hardened warrior, just a mule-headed academic. My chief discipline is archeology, which gave no few in the film history department a laugh, I don't mind telling you! People started to call me Professor Jones!"
At the blank look on Dahlia's face Victoria's expression fell slightly and became more serious again. She waved it off.
"Never mind, you'd have to take the course to get it, I suppose. Point is, I occasionally teach courses on strategy and I happen to be a good shot, but other than that I'm not trained in physical fighting. I just give it my all."
"Sometimes that's all you need." The blonde told her carefully. The older woman laughed out loud at that, puzzling the rebel who hadn't thought the remark worthy of more than a smirk.
"I'm sorry," Victoria said at seeing the expression on her face "You just reminded me so much of Dianne there…of your mother. She and I were very good friends—"
"I know." Dahlia said "I remember some stuff from…here."
"Not much good, I'll wager."
"A little of it is good." The blonde said reluctantly. "Stuff from—you know, before—with mum and Wanda an-and you. Of course." Victoria smiled sadly.
"It's alright. You don't need to lie. I know you don't remember me very well, if at all. And that's…that's fine. It's partially my fault that we're strangers." She said, turning slightly in discomfort. She searched the younger woman's face and the corner of her mouth twitched and her voice taking on a distant tone "You look so much like your mother. And your sister."
"I looked for her." Dahlia said, both women taking a seat on the sidewalk. "For years."
"I know." Victoria told her.
"You had…connections to the Sphere: students, leverage, stuff that you built after what happened." The younger woman said, talking a little with her hands as she tried to figure out how to phrase what she wanted to say, the burning question she wanted to ask. "Did you ever find out what happened to her? To Wanda?"
The Professor didn't look away at the question, though she did clearly have difficulty in answering it. She opened and closed her mouth several times, grimacing in an attempt at a smile.
"We might have." She finally answered. Dahlia frowned slightly, her eyes narrowing in confusion.
"What do you mean 'might'?"
88888888
"I see ye don't exactly have a problem with heights." Cortez commented as he climbed up the ladder to the old bell tower and balanced across the rafters. The teenager was perching on the edge overlooking the block with her knees drawn up to her chest, her toes over the edge and her coat tucked close to her body, her hands clamped over her ears and her eyes clamped shut. Her face twitched every once in a while and she was rocking slightly. The captain frowned slightly at this and approached very carefully. She was muttering something that he couldn't quite make out.
Her head moved to the side slightly in profile as she glanced over her shoulder but didn't look around at him fully, her dark hair now quite shaggy as it remained half-in-half-out of the braid it had been confined to earlier with uneven sections framing her face and catching in the breeze. She shrugged her shoulders higher up towards her neck and tightened her arms around her knees in response, looking resolutely out at the block rather than at him.
The bright, generator-like glow on her skin still remained in spite of the fact that she had ended her fight over an hour ago, though the movement of the light had slowed somewhat. The veins and muscles were still raised slightly and glowing as well. On closer look the captain noticed other things as well. He could see the shadows etched under the eyes, the not-quite sunken cheeks and the painful way joins seemed to stick out where there wasn't muscle to go over the bone. The girl had the tortured body of a dancer; wiry muscle tone over bone and not an ounce of fat between the skin and muscle.
"It's okay if it gives you the creeps." She said, startling Cortez out of his thoughts. He looked up from her pulsating arms to where one eye was staring at him from behind her dark hair. "People aren't supposed to look like this. I'm aware of that and so is everyone else on this block—I wish they'd shut up about it!"
Cortez slowly sat down to join her, if nothing else than to show the girl that he wasn't "creeped out" and that she had no reason to fear him, though something told him that he wasn't high on her list of worries right now; he could now guess what she had been muttering. She made a slight grunting noise and tensed further for a moment before relaxing somewhat. Her eyes opened and she looked at him directly and wrapped her arms around her knees.
Cortez had noticed and did notice that she seemed to have traded in the splint that had been used to set her broken arm for the slightly repulsive illuminated pulsating veins.
"Ye're a fast healer." He commented. She shrugged.
"It's handy." She said
"Does it hurt you when it's healing?" the captain enquired. She scoffed in a way that didn't require a verbal confirmation, though she gave one anyway.
"Hmph. You have no idea."
There were several long moments of awkward silence.
"What happened?" Cortez finally asked her. She looked at him questioningly and then out at the landscape again. She said nothing. Cortez switched tactics and decided to get right to the point, stating "Ye knew Oslo was alive."
"Didn't realize you didn't." she said. He frowned slightly at this, not sure whether or not he believed her, but filed that away for later when she looked around at him and continued fervently "I know a lot of things. I can be useful and I want to help. I want to stop him! You've barely scratched the surface of this. Those people on your ship weren't just randomly there!"
"And you know what they were after?" Cortez hinted
"Isn't it obvious?" Dianne demanded. The Captain returned her gaze steadily, waiting for her to elaborate. "Shinsiki and Darius!" she said finally.
"That's impossible, how could they know they were here?" he began
"No, no, no, no!" the teenager exclaimed in annoyance, irritated that he wasn't getting it "They wanted the information you had on them in your records, on the light chamber stuff! Oslo used to need Darius to recharge him because they shared DNA, but Shinsiki was able to drain people completely unrelated to her. You saw him, he's clearly gotten hold of someone else, but they survived more than one session. He needs to know how to refine the process so that he can continue his experiments." She spat out the last word with such venom that the captain was surprised that nothing started to float in the air or explode. Her previous display of power had been impressive, but hadn't given him much confidence in her control of said powers. What she had said earlier whilst fighting Oslo also replayed themselves in his mind…
What's the matter, Leach? Can't you win without your experiments? Without draining? Who are you planning to tamper with next? Is it one these idiots working for you? Well, IS IT?
"Were you one of those experiments?" he asked her carefully. It was the only explanation that he could think of to explain it. She looked around at him sharply and blinked several times, apparently unprepared for such a question. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before looking away awkwardly.
"Yes," she said quietly, an afterthought.
Cortez frowned. Even though it had been his deductive guess, he wasn't entirely sure he believed her answer. He didn't have time to dwell on that, however, and simply nodded. Just then his radio went off.
"Cortez! Cortez!" Cheng's frightened voice exclaimed. The captain picked up his personal radio and brought it to his mouth immediately
"Cheng, what is it? Are ye alright?" he asked.
"I'm okay," Cheng reassured him before panic returned to his tone "But we have a big problem!"
88888888888
"That better?" Darius asked the young woman he had been calling 'Jane' as he replaced a bandage around her wrist.
"Yes, thank you Darius." The woman that the rebels had always known as Di Wan said, massaging her wrist a little and flexing her fingers experimentally.
"You should try and get outside. Sunlight will help you heal faster. You'll probably only need that for a day or two more."
"I appreciate it," She replied coolly. The man patted her shoulder and turned to leave, prompting her to beckon him back "Darius, wait. That woman—the one who gave me her blood—is she still here?"
"Oh, I'm here!" Dahlia growled as she charged up the hallway trailed slightly by Wayan who seemed to be trying to calm her down. He reached out and grabbed her arm to slow her. She shot him a look that promised bad things to happen if he didn't cease and desist while shrugging him off. The other rebel held back a few paces as Dahlia continued up to the former guardian furiously , her finger jabbing threateningly at the other woman.
"I don't know what kind of sick game you're think you're playing but it ends here!" she snarled at Di Wan. The former guardian stared at her, her brown eyes widening.
"You!" She half-breathed, half-exclaimed. "You're Dahlia?"
"Cut the act Di Wan!" Dahlia snarled at her, leaning forward and gripping the rail at the foot of the bed with white knuckles "This is us you're talking too now, we know you—"
"You really think so?" Di Wan retorted, cocking an eyebrow at her. Dahlia froze mid-word at the interruption, her expression shifting into one of border-line fury.
"We know your tricks! We're not like the sheltered academics here, your little game of pretend isn't going to work on us—leave me alone Wayan!" she growled at her friend as he reached a hand to her shoulder to start pulling her away with a muttered piece of advice that she didn't listen to or hear.
"Dahlia!" Victoria exclaimed as she jogged over to them "Darling, please, I didn't tell you to upset you!"
"She's lying to you Victoria, she's a Guardian! Manipulation is what she's good at!" the blonde rebel informed the professor, her voice quiet but her expression thunderous.
"Dahlia—"
"She is not my sister!" the blonde snapped at them sharply "She just wants you to think that she's some-some prodigal daughter so that you'll trust her! She probably helped organize the raid with her buddy Oslo!" the blonde's furious gaze snapped back to "Jane" at the final two words.
"I have no loyalty to Oslo," Di Wan said coldly, meeting the other blonde's gaze with level calm, adding, "Not anymore,".
Dahlia's face held anger and vicious satisfaction tinged with completed and utter suspicion as she crossed her arms over her chest. Victoria's jaw dropped.
"You've remembered!" the academic exclaimed.
"I knew it," Dahlia sneered. Di Wan turned her attention to Victoria and her manner softened somewhat.
"Its been coming back a while. I didn't know how or what to tell you. It seems that was wise," Di Wan said to Victoria apologetically before looking back at Dahlia. She raised a questioning eyebrow even as she narrowed her eyes and raised her chin a fraction, taking a half step towards the rebel. "You were born here? Here on Oxford?"
"What's going on here?" Cortez demanded as he strode into the room. Di Wan stiffened and retreated her step, automatically tensing as though in preparation for a fight.
"Di Wan's learned some new tricks." Dahlia informed her captain tersely as she started to stalk off, bumping him slightly as she did so, "I'm going back to the ship, see what I can do there,"
"Aye, that might be an idea, ye can help Kale rig the cell again," Cortez said, halting the blonde rebel. She turned slowly and blinked
"...What?" she asked.
"The St. Nazaire was boarded,"
"What?!" Dahlia, Wayan and Victoria exclaimed in unison.
"Is Cheng—" Dahlia started
"He and Kale are fine." Cortez told them "They managed to fight them off. Unfortunately, Shinsiki got away at some point during the chaos. They don't know when,"
"Great Skyland…" Dahlia trailed off with a weary sigh.
"What are we going to do?" Wayan asked.
"There's not much we can do about Shinsiki. On the other hand," Cortez looked at Victoria and Darius staring at them along with Di Wan. He glared at Di Wan and then turned his attention to Darius. The man held up a hand and nodded
"I know." He said "Baldur and I cannot stay here."
"We can give them a ride to their new hiding place," Victoria offered. "That was the plan when he came to visit anyway. No one will suspect one of our maintenance ships, and I promise you it will be the highest security. I'll drive and no one will know but me."
"Thank ye," Cortez said with a nod of gratitude before turning another glare on the woman in the bed. Di Wan looked from him to Dahlia and then back again with a somewhat frightened expression.
"We can't leave her here. She's already done enough damage." Dahlia said coldly.
"She's been no trouble—" Victoria began
"She's a Guardian!"
"She's your sister,"
"No, she isn't! She's a telepath who's using what you want to hear against you!"
"I have done no such thing!" Di Wan exclaimed indignantly. They ignored her.
"Well, we can't take her…home," Dahlia said to Cortez, carefully avoiding the name of the block.
"If she is telling the truth though—" Wayan started
"Oh please!" Dahlia snapped
"If," Wayan repeated "She's telling the truth, and she's really given the Sphere and Oslo over, then she could be in as much danger from the Sphere as we are, especially if she really did help these people when they were attacked,"
"Which she did," Victoria added quickly.
"Captain, after this much time she's a deserter. The Sphere doesn't tend to be very understanding about that. Doesn't matter if you have a good reason," Wayan added before turning his attention to Di Wan as she watched them with closed lips and clenched teeth. His eyes darted up and down in a quick, appraising glance before remarking "You wouldn't be in very good shape even if you did rat us out to go back to them,"
Di Wan cocked an eyebrow at him.
"You don't say?" she retorted dryly. It was a sort of challenge, the way she said it, and that challenge was aimed directly at the rebel Captain. She quite clearly remembered a number of their radio exchanges through the years. They had dropped in number after Mahad and Lena had emerged. The fun had been lost for her. She had too often been on the losing side following those brats' arrival.
Cortez remembered those conversations too and crossed his arms over his chest. He was caught between two sides with Victoria and Wayan on one hand and an adamant Dahlia on the other. He himself felt inclined to agree with Dahlia but could see the problem that she presented if she remained in an already-compromised block. She could also be a valuable source of information. The joys of leadership.
"Very well. She can't stay here either way. We'll take her and figure out what to do with her. We'll blind fold and sedate her if we have to," he said
"Captain, you can't be serious!" Dahlia exclaimed to his retreating back. "Captain!"
"We're leaving in an hour. I expect everyone to be ready," he barked, ending the discussion definitively as he strode away. Dahlia seemed to deflate slightly in disbelief but then set her mouth in a grim line and pushed away from the rails at the foot of Di Wan's bed, stalking off herself. Victoria seemed torn. She patted Di Wan's shoulder comfortingly and then followed Cortez, jogging to catch up with him.
"Aran, wait a moment," She beckoned. Somewhat to her surprise he obliged her and slowed his pace.
"If she really is what you say she is, then—but Cortez, please. She's a sweet girl. You haven't seen her these past few months. She was a child here. You didn't know that child," The Professor pleaded.
"Aye, but I knew the adult," Cortez growled. He scowled a nondescript point on the wall and put his hands on his hips as he considered the information at hand before finally looking back at Victoria.
"Can ye have those DNA tests done before we leave?"
"They've already been running for a couple of days. I wanted to see if she actually was Dianne's daughter and there was already some similarities recognized with Dahlia's blood for the transfusion. I can get it hurried through,"
"Aye, do that," Cortez said. "It'll make things a little…well we'll know better where we stand,"
The Professor nodded. The captain softened slightly at the guarded, but undeniably solemn expression on her face.
"We're not the Sphere. We won't do to her what they'd do to us," he assured her. Victoria forced a small smile onto her face.
"I know," she said. Just as he started to turn again she added "You're a good Captain, Aran,"
"Thank you," Cortez said with a curt nod of acknowledgement and respect.
"I mean it. Don't let anyone tell you differently,"
"I know everyone would much prefer Marcus," Cortez said, trying to communicate to her that she didn't have to go out of her way to make him feel better. Victoria shook her head
"Marcus could never have done what you have. He ignited the flames and fed them recklessly but I don't think he could have labored over simmering coals. You might not have his charisma, but you were the one that kept the rebellion alive and picked up the pieces and kept going. That's an incredible feat. Don't let anyone tell you anything different," she stated. As she finished her little speech she held out her hand. The Captain grasped it and they shook twice before yanking together for a brief, comradely hug complete with a slap on the back.
"Aye, it was good to see you," Cortez admitted.
"So I have to stroke your ego before you'll admit it?" Victoria teased "It's alright. If I don't see you again before you go; safe trip. And take care of those girls for me,"
"Ye could always come with us," he pointed out
"What? Leave Oxford? I'm surprised at you, Aran! You know that I'm happily married to my work. I'm not about to file for separation." She told him with a wink before sobering. "Dahlia is your girl through and through now and your friend is right. Wanda will just be in danger here. So…if I don't see you before you go, safe travels, Old Friend. Our doors are always open."
"Aye," Cortez said with a nod, "Thank Ye,"
With that the two headed in opposite directions, parting ways once again. Neither looked around but both were thinking about their friend; some of the more "illustrious" and "connected" students at Oxford were bound to cause trouble somehow in Cortez's opinion.
As for him and his crew…Skyland only knew the trouble they were hurtling towards.
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