Chapter 14

"What are you doing here?" Brynn asked again.

The mutant at the door covered her mouth with his hand. "Shhst! Be silent!" he said. He took her further into the house. "Pack a one-night bag, quick!" he ordered.

"Pack a one-night bag? What for?" she asked.

"We don't have time, move!!" he barked.

Brynn did as she was told. She ran into her bedroom and picked up the things she might need, some clothes, clean underwear and her toothbrush. She ran back to the living room, and found the mutant was accompanied by one of her shopping friends.

"Nadira?" she asked surprised. Nadira nodded.

"Daddy will take you to a safe place; we think The Mistress might." Nadira was interrupted by a blast.

Bits of the door blew in. There was a cloud of dust and the lights went out. "Brynn!" Ransik called. He was hit across the jaw and sent skidding against a wall.

"Daddy!" Nadira called out.

Through the smoke, a tall figure could be seen. It was bigger than a human man, had lots of muscles and stomped around, destroying everything he could. "Here she is, Catgat," he said, he had a deep voice, almost like a growl when he was standing in front of Brynn. He seemed to know who he was talking to, but there was no one else to be seen.

Nadira grabbed Brynn's hand and tried to pull her away from the danger, but the huge monster grabbed their wrists and broke their hold. They both yelled in pain when their wrists broke.

"Nadira!" Ransik called out, firing an energy ball to the monster. He turned around, letting Nadira fall to the floor but still holding Brynn by the broken wrist. She hung from his grasp like a rag doll.

"Stay out of this!" the Monster said and shot Ransik.

"Daddy!" Nadira called. There was no answer.

The monster took Brynn with him to the kitchen and laid her on the table. "Do it quickly!" he ordered, apparently to no one again. Nadira crawled to the kitchen door frame and watched.

"Move away," said a small, cowardly voice that came from thin air. The big guy did as he was told. Suddenly, Brynn started to writhe. She twisted, arched her back and then started screaming at the top of her lungs. She screamed loud, bending her back so much Nadira thought it was going to break. She seemed to be in a lot of pain, and Nadira was sure she was.

Everyone was in great pain when their minds were being scrambled.

*******

Jen was breathing heavily. She moved around on the bed for a little while. Finally, she woke up with a start and sat up.

Alex was asleep on the chair.

She breathed heavily again. She had been dreaming about being in her Time Force office, checking on some files. Those files had been thoughts she had received from other people, information she had kept locked up.

Not all the thoughts she had received she was aware of, and some of them she had even classified as imagination; most of these were thoughts she had received before she knew about her powers, when these were latent.

She had found an incident she had almost forgotten. It had happened during the debriefing of the Ransik mission, Mrs. Drake had looked at her with hate, but there had been also a gleam of triumph in her eyes.

Mister Drake, Alex's father, worked in the Time Force headquarters because as owner of the company, he was the highest ranking officer in it; and Mrs. Drake visited a lot. Usually Jen avoided her, but sometimes it was impossible, like in the Ransik mission debriefing, and in his trial.

Mrs. Drake had sat next to her husband, and Jen had felt her disapproving look on her all along. She had received the woman's thoughts back then, but she had discarded them as products of her imagination.

Alex's mother had been thinking such things about her that Jen didn't dare to repeat them, not even in her mind. That woman hated her, and wanted to destroy her. Still, that hate wasn't what hurt her the most. It had been those thoughts of triumph she had had about them. They were no longer together, and Alex's mother thought of that as a triumph, as something to be happy about, despite her son's misery. That happiness at getting rid of her was what hurt Jen the most.

Tears ran down her cheeks. She didn't have a mother, her mother had died of a disease when she was younger; and she had always thought of her husband's mother as a substitute for her own, she always imagined the moment when she was going to meet Alex's mother, and when that moment came she was excited and nervous. But the lady hadn't even given her a chance. She had despised her, and looked down at her from the very first moment, making fun about her family traditions, and calling her 'Farm girl'.

The woman she had expected to substitute as her loving, caring mother had thrown wine on her dress and made fun of her and made disapproving remarks about her every chance she could.

Jen knew that if she and Alex were going to get married she couldn't count on that woman's support or blessing, and that hurt her more than anyone else knew. Not even Alex knew how much his mother's disapproval hurt her.

She looked at Alex with a single tear running down her cheek; he was so peaceful and calm. His face got a creepy look every time it got hit by the lights of the ambulance signal. The alarm volume increased, and suddenly, like a tidal wave, the bunch of thoughts hit her, so hard she started wailing, as if a migraine had hit her. Her head felt as if she had been hit by a baseball bat, and she was feeling so many things at once, she decided to keep the physical pain until she could control the rest of the thoughts that went through her head.

Her eyes were closed as she grasped her head with both hands, and wailed. She felt a hand on her shoulder, she had woken Alex up.

"Jen are you all right?" he asked. She just wailed. "JEN!" he called out.

"It's an emergency, they were attacked! So many thoughts, so many feelings, so much pain!!" she said through her wails. He laid her back against the pillow and caressed her forehead and hair, finally leaning to kiss her forehead softly. "Thank you," she whispered.

"Who's been attacked?" he asked softly.

"I don't know yet, the people they brought in, their minds are fuzzy, I-I don't know yet."

"It's ok. We'll wait a few minutes." And so they did.

After a few minutes, when Jen's pain had gone away and she managed to make sense out of everything that had gone through her, he kissed her lips softly. "Are you feeling better now?"

She nodded. "Alex, the others were too late," she said.

Alex swallowed hard. They had sent Lucas, Katie and Trip for Brynn, and they hadn't gotten back yet. "Are you sure?" he asked. She nodded.

"Downstairs, it's Brynn. She's here with two other people--" she closed her eyes, trying to focus on the thoughts; she sucked in a sharp breath a moment later. "It's Ransik and Nadira, Alex!! It's them, down there with Brynn; they tried to save her."

"Is Brynn dead?" Alex asked.

"No, she's even worse," Jen said.

*******

"Damn it!" Lucas yelled, hitting a wall with his fist. Katie grabbed him and pulled him away, before he continued to hurt himself. "We were too late!" he yelled.

"And how is hurting ourselves and yelling at everybody going to make things better?" Katie asked.

"And Ransik and Nadira are hurt too! It's not just Brynn!!"

"Look, let's go upstairs and talk to Jen, maybe she knows something," Trip suggested. The other two nodded.

As they headed for the stairs they walked in front of Ransik, Nadira and Brynn who where waiting to be attended. Ransik was unconscious, Nadira was crying softly, clutching her arm, and Brynn was lying there, her face covered in tears and blood that came out of her nose, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. The three Time Force rangers looked away from them and climbed the stairs to Jen's room.

As they were arriving, they saw Alex coming out. "She felt it," he informed them. "When they got here, she wanted me to go and check on Brynn. Do you have anything to tell her that might calm her down?"

"I have a question to ask her," Lucas said angrily. "What's the interest she has in Brynn?" Alex shook his head and walked past them, heading to the emergency room.

The other three entered Jen's room, she was sitting next to the window, the light of the ambulance still filling the room with its nasty red color, but now it was less creepy with the room's light on.

"Jen?" She turned around.

"Guys!" she exclaimed running to them. "I wondered if you were ok," she said.

"What did you feel?"

"Not much, just confusion and pain, from Brynn I barely got anything and nothing of what we need to know."

"And that is?"

"Everything she knows about The Mistress."

"The Mistress? What does Brynn have to do with The Mistress?"

"She works for her, she's been stealing files from Alex and she's been selling them to the mutants."

"To The Mistress's mutants?"

"I don't know," Jen said, looking away, out the window. "But I just picked something else, this is from Ransik." The others held their breath, literally. "He knows about The Mistress, not much, but he knows something. I have to ask him," she said, getting up and walking towards the door. Katie grabbed her arm.

"Who said you could walk around the hospital?" the black girl asked.

"Nobody will see me," Jen said simply.

"Now you can turn yourself invisible?" Lucas asked.

"No, but I can make them forget me."

Jen opened the door, and walked out of the room followed by her faithful team, who apparently would follow her if she jumped off a cliff with a fairly good reason. "Where to?" she asked.

"Straight to the front, you'll find the stairs."

"Thanks," she said.

They walked past the nurses' lobby, and the one in charge didn't look up. "Interesting soap," Jen commented.

"Since when can you control minds?" Trip asked.

"A couple of weeks ago. But I'm still having problems with it, so I prefer post-hypnotic suggestion," she answered matter-of-factly.

"So, instead of depriving people of their will, you just hypnotized them and.?" Katie asked, leaving the end hanging.

"Change their minds," Jen said, starting down the stairs.

"Have you done that with us?"

"Not intentionally, but I have the feeling that's the reason you all followed me to the year 2001 and made me the leader of the team." A shudder ran over the other three. "You know I would never make you guys do anything embarrassing or bad, I'm not that kind of people and you are my friends," she assured.

"Well." Lucas whispered.

"Now, would you hurry up?" the brunette urged.

The other followed, and, just as she had promised, nobody told her off for wandering around the hospital so late. She even asked a nurse where Ransik was, and the nurse pointed the direction without asking any questions.

"What did you tell her?" Katie asked when she saw the nurse's reaction.

"I told her the truth," Jen answered. "That I'm with Time Force and this is my case," the others nodded and followed her to Ransik's cubicle.

He was lying on a bed, looking human and still unconscious. Jen dared to think he even looked vulnerable. Nadira was sitting next to him, holding his hand, Jen smiled at the gesture of love.

"Nadira," Lucas said, caressing her hair, she had her arm plastered in pink that matched her hair color.

She looked up at him. "Is he going to be ok?" she asked.

"Yes, he will," Jen said encouragingly. She sat next to Ransik and took his hand. "I'm bringing him back," she announced.

"You are? Really?" Nadira asked happily.

"Yes, we need him to tell us everything he knows about The Mistress," Jen said.

"Don't bother," Nadira announced. They all looked at her. "The only thing he knows about The Mistress, is that she's my mother."

To be continued.