Resurrection: Phoenix Ascending, chapter 26: More Memories

A collaboration between OobluebubblesoO and Nitebreaker

I don't own, blah, blah, although some of these characters are of my own creation. So there. (Sticks tongue out)

Back at the hidden base that used to belong to Slade, Alpha was reviewing the progress of several projects when Delta signaled him, using Link. {{Alpha. Are you busy?}}

{{Am I ever not?}} He sighed a bit. {{What is it?}}

{{I think you might want to come hear this yourself.}}

{{What? What is it, Delta? I really am somewhat busy here…}}

{{It's…it's just something I'm not comfortable sharing with the hive as a whole just yet, not until we have more information. It—it really does need your personal attention. Theta's here, and she agrees with me.}}

Now what? Thought Alpha. He deduced it had to be something to do with the human girl the two had found. He really had more important things to do, but….besides, Delta had sounded upset. He knew Delta, and she didn't get upset easily.

So he caught a transit disk to the area of Slade's former lair they'd designated for the housing and care of the human foundling. On entering, he saw the two females, sitting in the ergonomically designed Osiran chairs. Delta was holding the human foundling in her lap, apparently comforting her, as the immature human was again making sounds of distress and leaking moisture from her eyes. Alpha frowned slightly at that. It seemed a waste of perfectly good fluids. Perhaps some way could be found to capture and recycle it….

{{Alright, I'm here. Now what's so important that it couldn't be sent to me over Link?}} He noticed all three of them were wearing oddly designed headbands, and remembered Theta talking about designing a communications / translator device that would enable them to communicate with the young human, and with other humans in general, if and when it came time for such. It would translate the child's thoughts into a form of communication intelligible to the Linked Thinkers.

{{Here,}} Delta handed him a headband. {{You need to hear this for yourself.}} Her mental "voice" caught his attention: she was more than just upset, she was disturbed. He knew Delta, and knew she didn't usually get disturbed by anything. What in the nine worlds could possibly have shaken her so?

Silently, he thought and summoned up a V-shaped Osiran chair, which extruded from the plastoid flooring beneath him, putting the headband on even as he sat. He was aware that this had to be important; these two wouldn't have pulled him away from his work needlessly. That fact disturbed him all by itself. He'd never seen them this, this, agitated.

Delta turned to the child, still in her arms. He could sense her communicating with the human, over Link. {{Maria? This is Alpha. He is our Leader here. Tell him what you just told Theta and me.}}

The girl sniffled and began crying more. But images began to form in Alpha's mind:

Everything was okay before the white powder.

Maria could remember a time when her mother would play with her, and they would laugh, and watch television together, or play a game, or something. But then, one day, Maria's mother came home with a package, a package she was careful to keep from Maria's curious fingers. For a long time, Maria didn't know what was in the package, but she would occasionally see her mother in the kitchen, trying to put some kind of white powder up in her nose. Maria couldn't understand why she was doing this. But when her mother got the powder up in her nose, she seemed….different. They'd do things, go places, have fun just like they had…but her mother seemed more agitated than before. Somehow more exited, but in a somewhat strange and scary way. And sometimes, she'd laugh at something that Maria couldn't see, or talk to someone who wasn't there, but only after she'd put the white powder up in her nose.

Then Maria's mother had lost her job. She started going out at night, and sometimes she was gone a very long time, almost to the point where Maria would be wondering if she was going to come home. But when she did come home, she seemed tired, and had no time for Maria, or the energy to do the things they used to do. Sometimes, she'd cry, sometimes she'd laugh, sometimes she'd do both at once. And she seemed very short tempered with Maria. She often got very upset over what seemed like little things. But Maria just figured it was something to do with grown-ups, whom she didn't really understand in the first place, except they were always telling her not to do stuff.

And then, Maria had noticed her mother mixing the white powder into a liquid and giving herself a shot of it, with a needle. Maria cringed at that; she hated having to go to the doctor and get shots, but her mother was doing this to herself, and Maria only supposed she must have a good reason. Maybe it didn't hurt grownups like it did her.

Then some strange men began to come around, and sometimes they would all go into the back room for a while. Sometimes there would be shouts, and screaming from her mother, and her mother would come out looking like she'd cried about something. Maria didn't trust these strange men, with their dark sunglasses that they never took off, even inside the house, and the strange way they looked at her. Sometimes, when they looked at her, they'd smile, but it was not a good smile. Not a friendly smile. It made Maria all the more afraid of them. There was something creepy about it, and about them. Her mother told her they were her "uncles," but Maria knew better, even at her age.

Then, one day, Maria's mother had cried all day long. Maria tried to talk to her, to see what the matter was, but her mother wouldn't talk to her. She just sat there in the kitchen and cried. Maria didn't see any more of the white powder, and she hoped there wasn't anymore, because whenever her mother took the powder, she wasn't herself, somehow. It was like she was a different person. And not one Maria really liked, either. A stranger.

Finally, Maria's mother stopped crying, and dried her eyes. Then she took Maria into the bathroom and gave her a bath, something she hadn't done for a long time now. And she'd fixed up Maria's hair so that it was so pretty, and put her best dress on her, and her best socks and shoes. Maria was cheered by this somewhat; maybe things were going to get better.

But then her mother had made a phone call, and begun crying again. And within a few minutes, Maria's "uncles" had showed up, and they once again began looking at Maria with that strange, scary smile of theirs. Maria's mother had told her to go with her "uncles," and do what they told her to do, and she'd be along after a while to pick her up.

So Maria had left with the two strange men. She was terrified. Young as she was, she knew they wanted to do something to her. She didn't know what, but she knew, instinctively, that it would be Bad, and that it would probably Hurt, and, even worse, they wouldn't Stop. Her fear was made all the worse by the simple fact that she didn't know what, exactly, they were going to do.

Just outside of town, they'd stopped at a gas station. Maria had told them she needed to go to the bathroom, and she went to the bathroom in the back, outside, while one of the two men put gas in the car, and the other one went into the store itself.

While in the bathroom, Maria quickly turned on the water, then looked outside. Her two "uncles" were around front, so Maria locked the door from the inside, pulled it shut, and ran off into the woods just outside the gas place.

Instinctively, she headed for the thickest areas, where the brush and thorns tore her hair and clothes, but would also hamper any larger person from chasing her. If she could only get back to her mother! Surely, her mother wouldn't send her off again. And they could go places, and do things the way they used to, and be a family again…and she would go to school every day and get such good grades so that her mother would be so proud of her, and would never ever send her off with any scary men, ever again.

She paused several times, listening for sounds of pursuit, hardly daring to breathe, certain that any minute one of the two scary men would burst out of the underbrush and grab her. But she kept moving. She didn't know how to get back to her mother's, but maybe if she could get far enough away from the two scary men, she'd find her way back. So she stuck close by the road, keeping to the thick brush as best she could.

Then, daring to run across the road get to a denser cover of bushes, she had tripped and hurt her ankle. Now she couldn't even run anymore. When the headlights of the vehicle loomed up, she'd been certain it was them, the scary men, they'd found her again, and this time they wouldn't let her go to the bathroom.

But out of the glare of the headlights had come, not the two scary men she feared so much, but two much shorter beings with pale white skin and large, bulbous heads…..

The train of imagery ended, and the four of them sat there for a moment. The only sound in the room was Maria's sobbing. None of the Thinkers "spoke;" they were all sitting in stunned silence, both mental and emotional.

{{Alpha? Did we interpret this correctly?}} Theta's mind-voice broke the silence. {{Did this child's mother give her away in exchange for what is obviously some form of chemical stimulant?}} There was no doubt about the images they'd received; it wasn't any form of verbal communication, subject to interpretation; rather it was the child's memories as she herself remembered them. There was simply no possibility of miscommunication.

{{Alpha?}} Delta was also in a state of shock. {{What sort of creatures are these humans? What sort of world have we fallen into?}}

Alpha jolted out of his own private nightmare. {{One that needs us.}}