Maximum velocity
Alley didn't move as the avatar stared at her. Then she sighed and slithered a bit forward to stare at Maya's tube. What she saw made her blood freeze and then start to boil. She could sense microscopic machines in the tube with Maya and if they were anything like Jane had described? They would break the girl's body down into its DNA. There was no way for a human to survive that. That was how the Elders had manufactured the Avatars, using harvested human DNA from selected victims. Alley looked at the tube and then at the brain. When she spoke again, it was calm. But not.
"You want me alive. I am under no such compunction." The Viper said as she laid a hand against the tube and shifted the chemicals a bit, stymied the nanobots of a time. It wouldn't last, but Maya would live for a few minutes. "You will stop what you are doing to Maya. Now."
That was a command. The Avatar just looked at her.
"You are in no position to give orders." The voice from the armored alien was angry, but also wary. As well it should be. Angry Vipers were no joke. Alley angry was an order of magnitude worse. There were very few things that she could not do when she had time to peruse the bonds that held molecules together. Especially since she had recently been studying how to do it on the atomic level instead of molecular. It was just a matter of scale and being able to perceive what she wanted to do. She could use psionics to manipulate the atoms as she desired and that made for 'interesting' times. Terrifying times.
"Neither are you." Alley replied, almost off hand as she moved to the bed and laid a hand on the human lying there. What she found when she scanned his body made her even angrier. His body was at war with his mind, both of them in a state of flux generated by psionic power that she recognized from the armored form that blocked the door. "I know what you are thinking. Here, I am, I am all alone and unarmed. I am sure you have troops in this base. I am sure they are converging on this room as we speak." When she turned back to the Avatar, her smile was cold, deadly thing. "But my powers have been enhanced through study recently. The air in here is Earth normal. Oxygen, nitrogen, argon and other trace elements. The fluid in Maya's tank is a mix of chemicals and water." She clenched fist and a 'crack' sounded! Maya's tank had sprung a leak! Fluid sprayed across the floor. Alley shook her head. "Water is so much fun. Hydrogen and oxygen. Which I just split some of." The voice from the brain gasped as a loud hiss sounded that had nothing to do with snakes! Alley nodded, but did not take her eyes from the Avatar. "Tell me, monster. Do you know what happens when hydrogen is fused at the atomic level?"
At that, everything seemed to stop. As well it should. That reaction was one of the things that happened in the Sun that gave Earth its life giving light and heat! The word 'bang' would pretty much apply if such happened in this place. Not a small bang either. Especially since Alley's splitting had released clouds of oxygen which was extremely flammable in high concentrations like she had concentrate din parts of this room. The words 'fuel air explosive' and 'firestorm' had been coined for just such situations.
"You wouldn't." The Avatar said very slowly.
"Try me." Alley smirked at him. "I know how many hydrogen atoms it takes to make critical mass and you have more than enough in here to do just that. It would be a very small nuclear detonation, but it would be more than enough to turn this entire base and everyone in it into slag." She stood there as the Avatar stared at her. "Maybe you can stop such a thing, maybe you can't. But given that that a nuclear explosion in here will leave nothing but a faint atomic residue, you have to ask yourself. 'Am I feeling lucky?'" At that, Jenni laughed, pure delight sounding. "Well, are you? Go ahead, punk. Make my day!"
"The words 'small' and 'nuclear' do not generally go together." Jenni's voice was amused. "Quoting Eastwood? You are crazy, Alley. I like you." Her amusement faded. "Please? Kill me. That is the best way to stop this!"
"You are mine!" The Avatar said sharply. "You are all mine!"
"Get. Out." Alley snapped at the Avatar as she turned back to the vat. Her power was rebuffed somehow. She had no idea how.
"You cannot hold such power forever." The Avatar said slowly. "You will fall unconscious."
"Yeah, then you can do whatever you want." Alley shrugged. "But you don't have that kind of time, I don't think. You wanted Jane? I hear she is on her way with a few friends." A gasp came from Jenni and Alley continued. "You won't like what happens when she gets here."
"Lizbeth can and will stop you." The Avatar snapped.
"Good luck waking her up." Alley retorted. "You are going to need it." Considering that Alley had hit the woman with a dose of a sedative that might have dropped a Muton? Oh yeah. She wasn't going to wake up until Alley neutralized it. Psionics were good for a lot of things, but Lizbeth wasn't a psionic and Alley had taken her by surprise. "Get out."
The snake moved to Maya's tube and laid a hand against it. The super hard transparent plastic melted under her molecular power and the fluid inside vanished as well. Alley reached in and pulled Maya out, checking her automatically. The girl seemed none the worse for wear, minus a few cellular injuries caused by the nanobots that Alley set her power to healing. Whoever had put Maya in the tube had clothed her for modesty purposes at least, so Alley was not distressed but so much as she laid Maya on the bed beside the pilot. She glared at the Avatar who seemed frozen and then ignored it to focus on the pilot. A quick flip shut the helmet thing down and Alley checked him for other injuries. He was uninjured, but very stressed. He wasn't awake, so Alley focused on Maya again.
"How is she?" Jenni's voice was sharp with fear. "I am no medic. I do not understand all of what the sensors told me."
"She is alive." Alley reassured the other. "This is odd, however. I cannot read her mind." Jenni gasped and Alley was quick to reassure. "She is okay, I just cannot read her mind. It is like her mind is somewhere else."
"It is." The voice of the pilot had Alley backing off a bit as his eyes flew open. He stared around wildly and then focused on Alley. "Ah, Slither?" The pain in his tone was heartbreaking. "No… No, she died..." He said weakly. "I… I can't… It's not me! I am not- NO!"
Alley jerked back as power flared around him, purplish power. She spun to glare at the Avatar who stood just inside the door. The Avatar did not react as the pilot slumped to the bed, his eyes shutting.
"Not him." Alley said as power flared anew around the pilot and he was suddenly encased in a shimmering veil of purple energy. "I see." She looked at the Avatar and then at the brain in the vat. "And where in X-Com's charter does it say 'kidnap people to enslave them', Jenni?" She shook her head. "If you really are Jenni."
"I am not. I am a copy. There are things that should never be done." The voice of the other was resigned now. "Jenni Parker broke a lot of rules. It was a war for survival, so she had no regrets but she didn't know about this. No one did. Not until she was harvested to make me and even then? She didn't remember it."
"This was all X-Com, wasn't it?" Alley asked softly.
"Yes. I had to clean up the mess she made and try to find my girls." Jenni replied. "Then he came and it hurt and I cannot... Stop me, Alley! Please stop me! I cannot stop myself!" Purple energy flared and a scream came from the speaker. Alley turned to see the Avatar's hand raised, limned with psionic power.
"Know your place, slave." Came from the Avatar. The purple faceplate turned to Alley and then paused as Alley shook her head. "What?" The Avatar demanded.
"Goodbye." Alley turned away as her power snapped out to touch the avatar whose psionic power faded. A gasp came from Jenni as the Avatar started to melt! A gurgling scream came from the Avatar but Alley focused on the two human forms in the bed. Power snapped out, but Alley ignored it even as it lashed her, hurt her. She healed the damage with a thought as the power assailing her faltered. Then the scream faded in a wave of bubbles and still, Alley did not look.
"What did you do?" Terror sang in Jenni's voice.
"Molecular bonds are molecular bonds." Alley replied, her focus on Maya. "Be it water or Elder manufactured psionically charged armor, the result is the same if something dissolves said bonds."
"You..." The voice gulped. "You turned the Avatar into a puddle of goo."
"It may be able to reconstitute even from that." Alley warned as she laid a hand on Maya's still forehead. She felt nothing from the girl. "If so? It will take a while."
"That had to hurt." Jenni said and then snarled. "Good. Please? Please kill me! I don't want to hurt my little girl!"
"I can't kill you, Jenni." Alley said quietly. "When you asked first, I tried to dissolve the vat and I can't." Jenni heaved a sob and Alley bowed her head. "It must be protected even from my powers."
"They tried to be thorough. No weapons or psionics will work on it." Jenni's voice held hate now. "My superiors promised me that I would be safe here while I looked for my girls. While I tried to seal the breach I had made."
"'Breach'?" Alley inquired as she turned to the vat.
"There was a massive temporal anomaly that threatened all life, human and Elder servant alike." The voice of the slain warrior said quietly. "That was the first and as far as I know, the only time that X-Com worked with the Elder's forces. A hybrid named Hiloria Mox stopped the temporal anomaly, but it cost her life."
"Doctor Cooper said that name." Alley said slowly. "Called her a friend."
"So did Jenni." The voice from the vat was sad now. So sad. "She, I, was incredibly powerful, but I wasn't trained! I had no idea what I was doing much of the time! I was operating on instinct for much of it and I hurt so many people. If not for Jane, I would have lost it completely. I was the only one who could do it, stop the enemy in case Hiloria failed. Hiloria asked me to shift the area she fought in out of space and time. I did and I made a hell of a mess." Shame warred with regret. "I was so angry, so lost..."
"What happened to your girls?" Alley asked as she coiled up beside the bed, her hand on Maya's head still. "And… Their dad?"
"Their dad just vanished one day." Jenni said very quietly. "He went out scavenging and didn't come back. We waited for a week, but we had laid plans in such a case and we did what we had planned. The girls and I bounced from camp to camp, trying to stay ahead of Advent sweeps and one day? We were too slow."
"I am sorry." Alley said that and meant it.
"The place they took us was a holding facility. Some kind of research base." Jenni's voice was soft with remembered fear and pain. "They were not rough, but we couldn't leave. They treated us fairly well, but we were prisoners. They kept us together and their docs did bunch of tests. On me and the girls. Even when I fought, they just drugged me and did them anyway. Then one day when I woke up? The girls were gone."
"Oh, Jenni." Alley sighed as Jenni started to cry. "I want to hold you and I can't. All I can say is I am sorry."
"If not for Jane, I would have gone completely nuts." Jenni said weakly. "She came! She was so brave! So strong and I loved her from the moment I saw her. She was a true Valkyrie and I thought she had come to take me to Valhalla at first, but she was so kind."
"When she can be, yes." Alley agreed, a soft, sad smile creasing her own face as she thought of her partner. "What is the facility doing to this poor boy?"
It cannot pull people across the barriers between realities." Jenni said quietly and Alley felt her guts clench at that. "It can pull things and it did. It pulled a fighter ship from a reality very different from our own, but similar enough that X-Com recognized it and stored it here. When the Warlock took the place, he started subverting it, trying to turn it into a base for his planned conquest. X-Com's security systems defined the word paranoid and it took a long time for his worms to make their way in, but eventually, even the robust systems here were broken. The ship needed a pilot and the systems selected the best one they could find, making a copy of his mind and altering it to fit the ship. The Warlock just added some finesse to X-Com's brutality, making it easier to steal a slave."
"He is dead, Jenni." Alley protested. "You were there!"
"I know!" Jenni all but screamed that. "But when I was sent here, when this… this parody of me was sent here, his infiltration had been ongoing for some time and no one knew! I woke up under control of his worms! Everything here was all automated! So was his assault! He had it all set up to wait for a time, until suspicion had faded, then strike. Advent would fall to his coup, then the humans would fall. X-Com has no chance against someone with all of their secrets and I cannot stop myself!" Now Jenni was sobbing. "The program just sent the pilot to hurt my little girls! Please Alley! Kill me!"
"I can't Jenni." Alley said softly. "Even if I could? What right have I to harm one who has done no harm to me by her own will?"
"Alley! He is starting his pre-flight! He is five minutes from launch! His target is the Avenger and the base where Mina is!" A rumble sounded and Alley shook her head. "Please! Do something!"
"I will." Alley said very quietly. "But if I cannot fix this and you cannot fix this… I think I know someone who can."
Two and a half minutes later
"YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!" Jenni's voice was a full on scream as Alley carried Lizbeth into the room where Maya and the pilot lay on the bed.
"He broke her too." Alley said quietly as she shifted a bit, easing the unconscious woman in her grip. "Is there another bed?"
"She is a monster!" Jenni shouted and Alley shook her head.
"You don't need to be so loud. I am a monster too." Alley's retort had the slain woman's ghost suddenly choke off. "I wish Aroa was here. She is our psychologist. She would be able to understand what has been done and why, but I can probably muddle through." A panel slid out for one wall, a hard bunk. Alley laid Lizbeth down on it and shook her head. "I cannot undo what was done, but I can feel her needs. She is an addict, probably one way he broke her. I can't fix that, but I know someone who can."
She focused her mind as she had very few times and cast out with it. An incredulous touch came back to her and she smiled as a yellow holographic form appeared in front of her. Before the Lady could speak, Alley did.
"Beware, Lady! This was the Warlock's base! He has to have laid traps for your kind!" The yellow Ethereal stared at Alley and then at the scene. The vat with its brain. The melted tank. The human pilot in his energy shell. Lizbeth and Maya sleeping. When she spoke, the Lady was darkly amused.
"Always the hard way, huh, Alley?" The lady was wary. As well she should be.
"I destroyed the Avatar that the Warlock apparently had stored here as a failsafe. Maybe permanently, maybe not." Alley said quickly. "I think I know what is happening and why, but we need to accelerate. I may be able to fix this, but I need to consult and we have, at best a minute and half real time before the fighter launches again and this time, he will kill everything he can range on."
Instead of answering, the room turned yellow and the Ethereal seemed to wilt in mid-air.
"Talk fast, Alley." The Lady said weakly. "Even I cannot hold this but so long." Instead of answering with speech, Alley sent a stream of her recent memories to the hovering yellow form in a gentle wave. Much faster than limited human vocal tones. The Ethereal chuckled. "You have been studying, haven't… you..." She trailed off with a horrified gasp. "Jenni?"
She had known Jenni. The Lady had met Jenni and from what Alley had heard from Jane and others? Liked the psi if not trusted her.
"Lady, I am sorry!" The voice from the vat was sad. So sad. "I made such a mess!"
"Not just you, it seems." The Ethereal said softly. "Alley… Are you sure? Lizbeth may have been broken into this role, but now she is a willing participant in what has and is happening."
"I know." Alley replied. "Which is why I am not going to free her." At that, both other females gasped. "I am going to take her myself."
"ALLEY!" The Lady inhaled in shock. "You are not that kind of being!"
"It is the only way." Alley said sadly. "If she is what I believe, then even killing her won't help, will it?"
"From what I sense? No, just like Elizabeth, she is a true immortal. Kill her and she will likely come back, maybe even crazier as hard as that is to imagine." The Lady said weakly. "Alley… If you do that… That is a very slippery slope."
"I know." Alley said sadly. "But if we cannot stop that attack ship, he will find you eventually. At the very least, he is going to attack the Avenger and the base where the kids are. No. They have suffered enough." She shook her head. "I will not allow it. I will need help. I will need guidance and to consult while I act. She is addicted to several drugs of Elder manufacture and from what I can tell? Dependent to psi power as well. I can do this and I will. Maybe… maybe with time, I can help her? Maybe. Right now, we do not have time."
"I will help you." The Lady said heavily. "I will hate myself, but I will help you. We will help you."
"No more than I will hate myself." Alley said as she focused her will and threw herself into the slumbering woman's mind.
Not to free her.
To enslave her.