I'm sorry its been a while since my last update. I'm not a very academic person so the whole school thing doesn't really phase me but if I don't pass my A-levels my father might actually kneecap me. Anyway, here is the latest chapter. Please try to review, especially if you have any questions because the storyline just got complicated and I wouldn't want any of you to be confused (was that really condescending or is it just me?). And Steph I promise to email you a review about your stand alone story. I have read it and I thought it was unbelievably cute so I'll review it sometime soon. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter.
***
'What the hell...'
Lights blinked on and off, their steady rhythm usually so settling to her. But now they were just another reminder to her of where she was. The Helix, the ship that had crashed a few hours before the nightmare had begun. And she had no idea how that was possible.
She heard clothes rustle next to her, their noise breaking the bewildered silence. She looked across at Brennan who sat next to her. He stood up and walked along the length of the Helix before turning back.
'How did we get here?' he asked.
'I don't know,' she replied, uncertainty and suprise evident in her tone. The cockpit of the ship looked exactly the same as it had when they had been flying before, minus the warnings that they were descending to the ground at an unsafe speed.
Lexa looked out of the window in front of her. They were on top of a building, the sky was blue with the occasional cluster of clouds making their calm way across it. The sun was shining from behind them and it lit up the buildings in front, the windows blinding her momentarily, shadows cast by constructions behind. The whole scene would have been beautiful to her if she hadn't been so confused.
'Last time I checked we were in a building, a Dominion facility,' she started, wondering if she was right. She turned to Brennan and saw recognition in his face. The fact that he knew what she was talking about was reassuring and she continued.
'We found a door.'
'There was a fence and some fields beyond it,' Brennan said. He had no idea why he was in the Helix or how he had gotten there but it seemed like a good idea to retrace their steps so they could try and work out some stuff.
'And you opened the door,' Lexa said. 'And then there was this flash of light and...' she trailed off as she realised that she had no idea what had happened after that.
'And then we were sitting in the Helix, on top of the building which contains a safehouse, the same safehouse we visited earlier,' Brennan finished. It wasn't an explanation but saying out loud what they both knew to be true made everything seem clearer.
'So what happened between the Dominion facility and the Helix?' Lexa said. Their eyes met but no answers were there to be found. Lexa leant against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. She felt tranquillity wash over her as she allowed her muscles to relax and stopped her brain from thinking too much for just a second. She breathed deeply, pacing her breaths to try and calm herself further. Brennan's footsteps as he wandered back to his seat broke her from her reverie and she turned to look at him. He was pale and she could tell exactly what he was thinking about. Maybe it was women's intuition or maybe he just wasn't very good at hiding his emotions but she saw that Shalimar was on his mind.
'So...' she started before realising she had no idea what she was going to say to make everything make sense.
'What do we do now?'
***
Shalimar pushed the power button with her index finger and heard the buzz as the computer came to life. It made the occasional vibration and the screen eventually became white. She rolled a chair over the floor towards the terminal and she sat down in it, taking a gulp of her orange juice as she did. She heard Jesse's feet padding across the floor outside the room in the direction of his own. She knew he was beyond tired, he needed a break, they all did. She was still having nightmares about Lucy's death. She couldn't shake them off and she found she could only face sleep when Brennan was with her. If he was holding her in his arms she drifted off and though she still had the strangest of dreams they weren't nearly as scary as the ones she had when he wasn't embracing her. If he wasn't there she gave the feral in her free rein to do whatever she wanted. And that usually involved taking the tour of the area surrounding Sanctuary. She would walk and run and climb for hours, anything to distract herself from what had happened recently in her life.
She sometimes wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't have joined Adam and formed the beginnings of Mutant X. At times like those she would tell herself that she would have ended up on the streets permanently, without even a cheap motel roof over her head and she would have been hungry and cold and unloved. Or she would have been dead, or trapped in Genomex, in a pod, living without actually living. But there was always a thought in the back of her mind. This thought told her that she would have survived, she would have worked things out, she would have gotten herself a job and a home and she would have had friends. She liked to dream about what her world would have been like if that had have happened and she realised that she would have been happy. She would have lived a double life trying to hide her feral abilities from he people around her but she did that with society anyway. She wouldn't have had a family like the one she had found in Mutant X, but at the present moment her family consisted of a dead father, a missing sister and another dad missing in action. These dreams would bring tears to her eyes and she would allow herself a release. She would let herself go and she would sob for the life that could have been, for the happiness that was waiting around the corner for her, she wept because she knew that no matter how bad her life might get with Mutant X she would never leave, she would be the one who went down with the ship.
It was bizarre how her aspirations in life were so simple. She didn't want anything too big, she didn't want to have it all, she didn't want a great romance or fame and fortune. Maybe it was because her life right now was so beyond complicated that all she wanted was the chance to breathe.
The screen finished loading itself up and Shalimar began searching through documents looking for ones which dealt with the Dominion. There were a number of files which had various pieces of information on them but there was one particular file which held everything the team had collected over the past couple of days. It was pretty full. Jesse had been working hard.
Suddenly it was like a huge jolt hit Shalimar and her vision seemed to snap completely into focus. She frowned and looked around her, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. She looked at the screen in front of her and saw it in a different light. It was like a veil had been lifted from her eyes and now she could see clearly, she had been living with a dim bulb and now the bulb had been changed and was shining at full power. She screwed up her eyes and then opened them again but the view was still the same. Everything was still that bit brighter, noticeably so.
She looked at the monitor in front of her. It had a number of Dominion related files open and she frowned. She had a feeling that she had meant to do something with them but for the life of her she couldn't remember what. She closed the files and started to shut the computer down. She figured that she and Jesse deserved a break, atleast for a couple of hours. Jesse was probably sleeping and Shalimar had some things that she wanted to catch up on but hadn't had the opportunity to. She stepped down from her seat and began to walk out of the room but there was another flash. She slammed into the door frame and felt the dull pain flow through her arm. She groaned and leant back against the wall. Her hand raised and rubbed the injured arm vigorously and she walked back into the room to sit down on the chair. She laughed to herself as she though back on how much of an idiot she must have looked. She could just imagine what Brennan's reaction would have been. They may have become closer over the past couple of weeks but he would still have been unable to control his laughter.
And now everything was back to normal. The lights weren't as blindingly bright as they had been and everything wasn't so focused. She turned the computer back on and waited for it to start up again. She could remember exactly what she had been planning on doing.
***
'I don't see how it couldn't be real,' Lexa said. 'I remember hearing Charles Handon's voice so clearly.'
Brennan looked across at the brunette. She seemed so sure that Handon, whoever he was had been holding them both but how it could be true was the part Brennan couldn't figure out.
'Think about it Lexa. We weren't physically hurt other than major headaches from the crash of the Helix. If that had happened chances are we would have been dead. And you're not physically hurt from all the beatings you took when we were trapped.' His voice was full of cynicism. He had learnt to be sceptical about everything he saw after he had joined Mutant X. Nothing was as it seemed and as X-Files as that sounded it was true to an extent. Even Adam had lied to the team, he had deceived them and Brennan had gotten that nobody was who they seemed. Everyone was playing a part, better than most actors in Hollywood.
'And now we're sitting here when we thought we were walking out of a door,' Lexa finished. She nodded her head slightly as she realised how ludicrous all of her assumptions over the past couple of hours had been. She didn't even know if it had been hours or days or weeks. She raised her arm and looked at the watch with the black leather strap which adorned it. It had only been one night and the morning was still early.
'Handon knows people,' she said, as she turned to face Brennan. 'He subcontracts work to other people and they provide him with facilities and people he can use to do whatever he wants with, or atleast he did when I knew him.'
'So he could have called in the help of an illusionist?' Brennan asked, everything beginning to make sense.
'But why would he terrorise us?' Lexa wondered aloud.
'What do you mean?'
'We didn't give him any information, we didn't tell him anything. If the person in our heads was just an illusionist they wouldn't have been able to extract information unless we said something. So why do it?'
They looked at each other, fear growing behind their eyes as realisation hit them.
***
'What the hell...'
Lights blinked on and off, their steady rhythm usually so settling to her. But now they were just another reminder to her of where she was. The Helix, the ship that had crashed a few hours before the nightmare had begun. And she had no idea how that was possible.
She heard clothes rustle next to her, their noise breaking the bewildered silence. She looked across at Brennan who sat next to her. He stood up and walked along the length of the Helix before turning back.
'How did we get here?' he asked.
'I don't know,' she replied, uncertainty and suprise evident in her tone. The cockpit of the ship looked exactly the same as it had when they had been flying before, minus the warnings that they were descending to the ground at an unsafe speed.
Lexa looked out of the window in front of her. They were on top of a building, the sky was blue with the occasional cluster of clouds making their calm way across it. The sun was shining from behind them and it lit up the buildings in front, the windows blinding her momentarily, shadows cast by constructions behind. The whole scene would have been beautiful to her if she hadn't been so confused.
'Last time I checked we were in a building, a Dominion facility,' she started, wondering if she was right. She turned to Brennan and saw recognition in his face. The fact that he knew what she was talking about was reassuring and she continued.
'We found a door.'
'There was a fence and some fields beyond it,' Brennan said. He had no idea why he was in the Helix or how he had gotten there but it seemed like a good idea to retrace their steps so they could try and work out some stuff.
'And you opened the door,' Lexa said. 'And then there was this flash of light and...' she trailed off as she realised that she had no idea what had happened after that.
'And then we were sitting in the Helix, on top of the building which contains a safehouse, the same safehouse we visited earlier,' Brennan finished. It wasn't an explanation but saying out loud what they both knew to be true made everything seem clearer.
'So what happened between the Dominion facility and the Helix?' Lexa said. Their eyes met but no answers were there to be found. Lexa leant against the back of her chair and closed her eyes. She felt tranquillity wash over her as she allowed her muscles to relax and stopped her brain from thinking too much for just a second. She breathed deeply, pacing her breaths to try and calm herself further. Brennan's footsteps as he wandered back to his seat broke her from her reverie and she turned to look at him. He was pale and she could tell exactly what he was thinking about. Maybe it was women's intuition or maybe he just wasn't very good at hiding his emotions but she saw that Shalimar was on his mind.
'So...' she started before realising she had no idea what she was going to say to make everything make sense.
'What do we do now?'
***
Shalimar pushed the power button with her index finger and heard the buzz as the computer came to life. It made the occasional vibration and the screen eventually became white. She rolled a chair over the floor towards the terminal and she sat down in it, taking a gulp of her orange juice as she did. She heard Jesse's feet padding across the floor outside the room in the direction of his own. She knew he was beyond tired, he needed a break, they all did. She was still having nightmares about Lucy's death. She couldn't shake them off and she found she could only face sleep when Brennan was with her. If he was holding her in his arms she drifted off and though she still had the strangest of dreams they weren't nearly as scary as the ones she had when he wasn't embracing her. If he wasn't there she gave the feral in her free rein to do whatever she wanted. And that usually involved taking the tour of the area surrounding Sanctuary. She would walk and run and climb for hours, anything to distract herself from what had happened recently in her life.
She sometimes wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn't have joined Adam and formed the beginnings of Mutant X. At times like those she would tell herself that she would have ended up on the streets permanently, without even a cheap motel roof over her head and she would have been hungry and cold and unloved. Or she would have been dead, or trapped in Genomex, in a pod, living without actually living. But there was always a thought in the back of her mind. This thought told her that she would have survived, she would have worked things out, she would have gotten herself a job and a home and she would have had friends. She liked to dream about what her world would have been like if that had have happened and she realised that she would have been happy. She would have lived a double life trying to hide her feral abilities from he people around her but she did that with society anyway. She wouldn't have had a family like the one she had found in Mutant X, but at the present moment her family consisted of a dead father, a missing sister and another dad missing in action. These dreams would bring tears to her eyes and she would allow herself a release. She would let herself go and she would sob for the life that could have been, for the happiness that was waiting around the corner for her, she wept because she knew that no matter how bad her life might get with Mutant X she would never leave, she would be the one who went down with the ship.
It was bizarre how her aspirations in life were so simple. She didn't want anything too big, she didn't want to have it all, she didn't want a great romance or fame and fortune. Maybe it was because her life right now was so beyond complicated that all she wanted was the chance to breathe.
The screen finished loading itself up and Shalimar began searching through documents looking for ones which dealt with the Dominion. There were a number of files which had various pieces of information on them but there was one particular file which held everything the team had collected over the past couple of days. It was pretty full. Jesse had been working hard.
Suddenly it was like a huge jolt hit Shalimar and her vision seemed to snap completely into focus. She frowned and looked around her, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. She looked at the screen in front of her and saw it in a different light. It was like a veil had been lifted from her eyes and now she could see clearly, she had been living with a dim bulb and now the bulb had been changed and was shining at full power. She screwed up her eyes and then opened them again but the view was still the same. Everything was still that bit brighter, noticeably so.
She looked at the monitor in front of her. It had a number of Dominion related files open and she frowned. She had a feeling that she had meant to do something with them but for the life of her she couldn't remember what. She closed the files and started to shut the computer down. She figured that she and Jesse deserved a break, atleast for a couple of hours. Jesse was probably sleeping and Shalimar had some things that she wanted to catch up on but hadn't had the opportunity to. She stepped down from her seat and began to walk out of the room but there was another flash. She slammed into the door frame and felt the dull pain flow through her arm. She groaned and leant back against the wall. Her hand raised and rubbed the injured arm vigorously and she walked back into the room to sit down on the chair. She laughed to herself as she though back on how much of an idiot she must have looked. She could just imagine what Brennan's reaction would have been. They may have become closer over the past couple of weeks but he would still have been unable to control his laughter.
And now everything was back to normal. The lights weren't as blindingly bright as they had been and everything wasn't so focused. She turned the computer back on and waited for it to start up again. She could remember exactly what she had been planning on doing.
***
'I don't see how it couldn't be real,' Lexa said. 'I remember hearing Charles Handon's voice so clearly.'
Brennan looked across at the brunette. She seemed so sure that Handon, whoever he was had been holding them both but how it could be true was the part Brennan couldn't figure out.
'Think about it Lexa. We weren't physically hurt other than major headaches from the crash of the Helix. If that had happened chances are we would have been dead. And you're not physically hurt from all the beatings you took when we were trapped.' His voice was full of cynicism. He had learnt to be sceptical about everything he saw after he had joined Mutant X. Nothing was as it seemed and as X-Files as that sounded it was true to an extent. Even Adam had lied to the team, he had deceived them and Brennan had gotten that nobody was who they seemed. Everyone was playing a part, better than most actors in Hollywood.
'And now we're sitting here when we thought we were walking out of a door,' Lexa finished. She nodded her head slightly as she realised how ludicrous all of her assumptions over the past couple of hours had been. She didn't even know if it had been hours or days or weeks. She raised her arm and looked at the watch with the black leather strap which adorned it. It had only been one night and the morning was still early.
'Handon knows people,' she said, as she turned to face Brennan. 'He subcontracts work to other people and they provide him with facilities and people he can use to do whatever he wants with, or atleast he did when I knew him.'
'So he could have called in the help of an illusionist?' Brennan asked, everything beginning to make sense.
'But why would he terrorise us?' Lexa wondered aloud.
'What do you mean?'
'We didn't give him any information, we didn't tell him anything. If the person in our heads was just an illusionist they wouldn't have been able to extract information unless we said something. So why do it?'
They looked at each other, fear growing behind their eyes as realisation hit them.