Chapter 19
Jen healed herself, the moment she discovered she was trapped in an illusion inside her mind, or inside some sick mutant's mind. She kicked the fake Alex in the ribs and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
"Where are you going Jen? Don't you know you can't run from me?" she heard the fake Alex ask. "Let me destroy you, that way my mistress will be pleased. She has wanted to destroy you for a long time!"
"Why me?" she asked, frightened. She stopped running, she was lost and, for the first time since she had found her new control on her subconscious mind, she was truly terrified.
"Because you are a stone in her shoe," he said. "It's got nothing to do with work, what she holds against you is a bit more personal."
"Personal?" Jen asked. She looked at Alex's face, her lips trembling. "So what Ransik told us is true! He really knows who The Mistress is!!"
****************
Alex and Nadira were both locked in a cell. It was dark, cold and subterranean, Alex had a hunch it was the cell where all the stolen children had been locked, before they died.
"Alex?" Nadira called him.
"Yes?"
"What's going to happen to us?"
"I don't know," he lied. He knew. He was going to die, and probably so would Nadira. His mother had been working with The Mistress, whoever she was, and Ransik had betrayed her; and Ransik had said it himself, 'The Mistress always knows, she knows everything'.
"Are you afraid?" she asked him, not sure if he was going to answer.
He looked at her and gave her a sympathetic smile; after all, she was just a girl. "Very much, are you?"
"Yes, very much as well."
Alex looked at her for a few moments, thinking of a way to soothe her. He had an idea. "Do you have a god? The mutants, I mean."
"We don't," she admitted. "Religion and violence don't mix very well, I guess."
"They do," Alex corrected. "The result is called a Holy War."
"Really?"
"Yes," he said. "Nadira, when you belong to a group, specially a group so perturbed and driven to violence like the mutants, a god is the best you can have, a god that gives you hope for better times to come."
She smiled. "So, do you have a god?"
"We have many gods, around the world there are many religions and many gods, but in the end it's all the same, it's just hope, hope for a better time, hope that there's someone more powerful than we are that can pull us out of the holes we put ourselves into."
"What do you do when you have a god?"
"You pray," he said. "Here, I'll teach you how to do it" He moved closer to her.
**********
Jen hid inside of a warehouse. She hid behind some boxes and stayed there, thinking. Should she go back to her own mind? Or should she try to get more out of this mutant? She chose the latter, if what Ransik had told her was the truth, then all she needed to find was the lab, and destroy it. She didn't want anybody to know the true identity of The Mistress; it wasn't worth the pain it would cause.
She heard the mutant's illusory footsteps near her and she jumped out of her hiding place, kicking him hard on the back before landing perfectly on the other side of the small corridor created between the boxes.
The mutant stumbled and fell face first, hitting himself hard against the floor. He turned around, and saw Jen over him, her Chrono saber pressed against his throat. She used her mental control power, which now was strong and perfect, on it.
You are going to tell me the truth from now on, only the truth, everything you know, even what you don't know you know, she ordered him.
"Where is the lab where you were created?" she asked. The mutant looked away. She kicked him in the ribs; it hurt her, because he still looked like Alex. "Where is it?!"
"We are there," the mutants said smiling. "This is the lab."
"How can this be the lab? This is a warehouse."
"Not if you know which box to move," he said.
"Which box should I move?" Jen asked. The mutant was about to answer, when Jen felt the familiar pulling, and the vertigo of falling into nothingness.
She woke up, before she could discover the truth.
**************************
Jen stirred, slowly opening her eyes. Katie held her hand anxiously. The doctors must have used a drug to wake her up, because she felt pretty bad.
"Jen!" she heard someone say. It was Katie. "Are you okay?"
"No," she said. "I was about to get somewhere important."
"Were you attacked inside your mind again?"
"Yes," she said. "But it wasn't Catgat, it was someone else, stronger, but not strong enough."
"What was it about to tell you?"
"The location of The Mistress's lab," she said angrily. She looked around. "Where's Alex?" Katie looked away from her, and Jen grasped her hand. "Where's Alex?"
"He was taken, along with Nadira," Katie admitted. Jen looked past her, her eyes filled with tears.
"She took him from me in my dreams," she whispered. "And now she's taking him from me again, in reality." A sudden fire lit up her eyes. "NOBODY takes the same thing twice from me! NOBODY!!" she yelled, getting up from the bed and storming out of the room, leaving a mess of tables and chairs that flew towards the walls, and a shower of glass bits, from the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling that exploded, as she passed by them.
"Now what?" Lucas asked Katie, after he walked out to the corridor with her. "I think she knows where she's going, and we better follow her, before she does something stupid," she answered.
"How do we follow her?" Trip asked, putting on his Time Force jacket.
"It won't be too hard; we'll just have to follow the trail of destruction she's leaving."
"Hell hath no fury," Lucas started.
"Like Jen when you've taken what's hers," Katie completed, more accurately.
*************
Alex and Nadira heard footsteps above them. They looked up and saw a muscular mutant standing next to a woman in a mask. "Bring them up," the woman said.
The mutant lowered a staircase inside the cell and pointed at them both with his laser. "Come up!" he ordered.
They did as they were told, and when they got out, they were brought to the middle of a large, dimly lit room, their hands and feet were tied down to a pair of chairs. They looked around silently, trying to figure out where they were. It was a warehouse.
"Where are we?" Alex asked.
"Welcome to my accommodations, General Drake," he heard the woman in the mask say. Her voice was oddly familiar. "I think you won't find this very comfortable, but it shouldn't take too long before it's time to leave."
"Why do you want me? What did my mother do to you?"
"Your mother has a huge bill to pay, but not to me," she answered. "On the other hand, you and your beautiful trainee, Jennifer Scotts, have gotten in my way too many times."
"Gotten in your way? We didn't even know you existed!" Alex said.
"And that's how it should have stayed forever!" she answered. "But I can't risk having Jen around, with her psychic powers, now that she knows I exist. She might discover who I am, I heard her powers are stronger than I expected."
"They are stronger than any human's."
"You seem proud of it."
"I am," he said. "Because not only did she learn how to control them, she escaped the horrible destiny most psychic humans suffer from, she decided to stay awake and fight, instead of going to sleep mad," he told her.
The woman in the mask, who obviously was the world famous Mistress stood tall, as if indignant at his pride. Nadira started sniffling next to him; the woman looked so dangerous.
"She's going to kill us," she whispered. The woman on the mask turned to Nadira and ran to her, drying her tears.
"No, no, no dear, don't cry!" she soothed her, drying Nadira's tears with her hand. She ran her fingers through the pink hair. "It's okay, my dear baby, it's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," she promised. "How can hurt my most beautiful creation, the most perfect thing I have ever made. You are the most human-looking mutant ever engineered in a lab, and to think I had to give you away, because they were after you, to destroy you."
"Who was after her? Who wanted to destroy her?" Alex asked.
The Mistress turned to him. "You are very good work yourself, not as important as Nadira, but good enough," she told him, caressing his hair as well. Then she walked towards a box, and returned to them, holding something in her hands. "They," she told Alex showing him a printed picture of the group of scientists that had worked on that project; the grandparents of the dead children. "They were the ones who were after Nadira; they wanted to destroy her, because she was too perfect for them."
"Why did you take their grandchildren?"
"Because their children were too big!" she yelled. "It took me years to recover from the blow they gave me, and when I was finally ready to have my revenge, their children were too old, my mutants can't digest adult flesh, it's too heavy!" She explained it as if it was a very normal thing; as if she was nothing but a mother explaining why she fed her children with vegetables instead of meat.
"Then why take us?" Alex asked. "If your mutants can't digest us, then--"
"You are not here to be eaten!" she said at last. "You are bait! I want to attract two more people with you, and I have ways to make it work!"
"You want my mother to come here?" Alex asked.
The answer was a sigh of annoyance. "Would you forget about your mother? This isn't about your mother anymore, this is about your girlfriend," The Mistress explained, with anger and annoyance in equal amounts. "This is about her father," she said, pointing at Nadira, "and your girlfriend! If she had stayed away from you like I told her to -- that farm girl! She wouldn't be in this predicament."
Those words crashed against Alex's ears like juggernauts. That farm girl. There was only one person he knew that had ever called Jen a "farm girl". He slowly raised his eyes to the woman in the mask, the back of his eyes stinging with tears of disappointment.
He looked at her, his mouth slightly open in surprise, his lower lip trembling. It couldn't be; it had to be a coincidence, it had to be a lie. He refused to believe the woman. No! It couldn't be; it just couldn't be. He had to be sure, a hundred percent sure that it wasn't true. It was just impossible, more than that, it was unconceivable.
He swallowed hard and whispered, almost scared, "Mom?"
To be continued.
Jen healed herself, the moment she discovered she was trapped in an illusion inside her mind, or inside some sick mutant's mind. She kicked the fake Alex in the ribs and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
"Where are you going Jen? Don't you know you can't run from me?" she heard the fake Alex ask. "Let me destroy you, that way my mistress will be pleased. She has wanted to destroy you for a long time!"
"Why me?" she asked, frightened. She stopped running, she was lost and, for the first time since she had found her new control on her subconscious mind, she was truly terrified.
"Because you are a stone in her shoe," he said. "It's got nothing to do with work, what she holds against you is a bit more personal."
"Personal?" Jen asked. She looked at Alex's face, her lips trembling. "So what Ransik told us is true! He really knows who The Mistress is!!"
****************
Alex and Nadira were both locked in a cell. It was dark, cold and subterranean, Alex had a hunch it was the cell where all the stolen children had been locked, before they died.
"Alex?" Nadira called him.
"Yes?"
"What's going to happen to us?"
"I don't know," he lied. He knew. He was going to die, and probably so would Nadira. His mother had been working with The Mistress, whoever she was, and Ransik had betrayed her; and Ransik had said it himself, 'The Mistress always knows, she knows everything'.
"Are you afraid?" she asked him, not sure if he was going to answer.
He looked at her and gave her a sympathetic smile; after all, she was just a girl. "Very much, are you?"
"Yes, very much as well."
Alex looked at her for a few moments, thinking of a way to soothe her. He had an idea. "Do you have a god? The mutants, I mean."
"We don't," she admitted. "Religion and violence don't mix very well, I guess."
"They do," Alex corrected. "The result is called a Holy War."
"Really?"
"Yes," he said. "Nadira, when you belong to a group, specially a group so perturbed and driven to violence like the mutants, a god is the best you can have, a god that gives you hope for better times to come."
She smiled. "So, do you have a god?"
"We have many gods, around the world there are many religions and many gods, but in the end it's all the same, it's just hope, hope for a better time, hope that there's someone more powerful than we are that can pull us out of the holes we put ourselves into."
"What do you do when you have a god?"
"You pray," he said. "Here, I'll teach you how to do it" He moved closer to her.
**********
Jen hid inside of a warehouse. She hid behind some boxes and stayed there, thinking. Should she go back to her own mind? Or should she try to get more out of this mutant? She chose the latter, if what Ransik had told her was the truth, then all she needed to find was the lab, and destroy it. She didn't want anybody to know the true identity of The Mistress; it wasn't worth the pain it would cause.
She heard the mutant's illusory footsteps near her and she jumped out of her hiding place, kicking him hard on the back before landing perfectly on the other side of the small corridor created between the boxes.
The mutant stumbled and fell face first, hitting himself hard against the floor. He turned around, and saw Jen over him, her Chrono saber pressed against his throat. She used her mental control power, which now was strong and perfect, on it.
You are going to tell me the truth from now on, only the truth, everything you know, even what you don't know you know, she ordered him.
"Where is the lab where you were created?" she asked. The mutant looked away. She kicked him in the ribs; it hurt her, because he still looked like Alex. "Where is it?!"
"We are there," the mutants said smiling. "This is the lab."
"How can this be the lab? This is a warehouse."
"Not if you know which box to move," he said.
"Which box should I move?" Jen asked. The mutant was about to answer, when Jen felt the familiar pulling, and the vertigo of falling into nothingness.
She woke up, before she could discover the truth.
**************************
Jen stirred, slowly opening her eyes. Katie held her hand anxiously. The doctors must have used a drug to wake her up, because she felt pretty bad.
"Jen!" she heard someone say. It was Katie. "Are you okay?"
"No," she said. "I was about to get somewhere important."
"Were you attacked inside your mind again?"
"Yes," she said. "But it wasn't Catgat, it was someone else, stronger, but not strong enough."
"What was it about to tell you?"
"The location of The Mistress's lab," she said angrily. She looked around. "Where's Alex?" Katie looked away from her, and Jen grasped her hand. "Where's Alex?"
"He was taken, along with Nadira," Katie admitted. Jen looked past her, her eyes filled with tears.
"She took him from me in my dreams," she whispered. "And now she's taking him from me again, in reality." A sudden fire lit up her eyes. "NOBODY takes the same thing twice from me! NOBODY!!" she yelled, getting up from the bed and storming out of the room, leaving a mess of tables and chairs that flew towards the walls, and a shower of glass bits, from the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling that exploded, as she passed by them.
"Now what?" Lucas asked Katie, after he walked out to the corridor with her. "I think she knows where she's going, and we better follow her, before she does something stupid," she answered.
"How do we follow her?" Trip asked, putting on his Time Force jacket.
"It won't be too hard; we'll just have to follow the trail of destruction she's leaving."
"Hell hath no fury," Lucas started.
"Like Jen when you've taken what's hers," Katie completed, more accurately.
*************
Alex and Nadira heard footsteps above them. They looked up and saw a muscular mutant standing next to a woman in a mask. "Bring them up," the woman said.
The mutant lowered a staircase inside the cell and pointed at them both with his laser. "Come up!" he ordered.
They did as they were told, and when they got out, they were brought to the middle of a large, dimly lit room, their hands and feet were tied down to a pair of chairs. They looked around silently, trying to figure out where they were. It was a warehouse.
"Where are we?" Alex asked.
"Welcome to my accommodations, General Drake," he heard the woman in the mask say. Her voice was oddly familiar. "I think you won't find this very comfortable, but it shouldn't take too long before it's time to leave."
"Why do you want me? What did my mother do to you?"
"Your mother has a huge bill to pay, but not to me," she answered. "On the other hand, you and your beautiful trainee, Jennifer Scotts, have gotten in my way too many times."
"Gotten in your way? We didn't even know you existed!" Alex said.
"And that's how it should have stayed forever!" she answered. "But I can't risk having Jen around, with her psychic powers, now that she knows I exist. She might discover who I am, I heard her powers are stronger than I expected."
"They are stronger than any human's."
"You seem proud of it."
"I am," he said. "Because not only did she learn how to control them, she escaped the horrible destiny most psychic humans suffer from, she decided to stay awake and fight, instead of going to sleep mad," he told her.
The woman in the mask, who obviously was the world famous Mistress stood tall, as if indignant at his pride. Nadira started sniffling next to him; the woman looked so dangerous.
"She's going to kill us," she whispered. The woman on the mask turned to Nadira and ran to her, drying her tears.
"No, no, no dear, don't cry!" she soothed her, drying Nadira's tears with her hand. She ran her fingers through the pink hair. "It's okay, my dear baby, it's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," she promised. "How can hurt my most beautiful creation, the most perfect thing I have ever made. You are the most human-looking mutant ever engineered in a lab, and to think I had to give you away, because they were after you, to destroy you."
"Who was after her? Who wanted to destroy her?" Alex asked.
The Mistress turned to him. "You are very good work yourself, not as important as Nadira, but good enough," she told him, caressing his hair as well. Then she walked towards a box, and returned to them, holding something in her hands. "They," she told Alex showing him a printed picture of the group of scientists that had worked on that project; the grandparents of the dead children. "They were the ones who were after Nadira; they wanted to destroy her, because she was too perfect for them."
"Why did you take their grandchildren?"
"Because their children were too big!" she yelled. "It took me years to recover from the blow they gave me, and when I was finally ready to have my revenge, their children were too old, my mutants can't digest adult flesh, it's too heavy!" She explained it as if it was a very normal thing; as if she was nothing but a mother explaining why she fed her children with vegetables instead of meat.
"Then why take us?" Alex asked. "If your mutants can't digest us, then--"
"You are not here to be eaten!" she said at last. "You are bait! I want to attract two more people with you, and I have ways to make it work!"
"You want my mother to come here?" Alex asked.
The answer was a sigh of annoyance. "Would you forget about your mother? This isn't about your mother anymore, this is about your girlfriend," The Mistress explained, with anger and annoyance in equal amounts. "This is about her father," she said, pointing at Nadira, "and your girlfriend! If she had stayed away from you like I told her to -- that farm girl! She wouldn't be in this predicament."
Those words crashed against Alex's ears like juggernauts. That farm girl. There was only one person he knew that had ever called Jen a "farm girl". He slowly raised his eyes to the woman in the mask, the back of his eyes stinging with tears of disappointment.
He looked at her, his mouth slightly open in surprise, his lower lip trembling. It couldn't be; it had to be a coincidence, it had to be a lie. He refused to believe the woman. No! It couldn't be; it just couldn't be. He had to be sure, a hundred percent sure that it wasn't true. It was just impossible, more than that, it was unconceivable.
He swallowed hard and whispered, almost scared, "Mom?"
To be continued.
