Chapter 8

The door to the storage compartment where Mutant X had been imprisoned opened and the light blinded them. A large man grabbed Brennan and Jesse by the chains connecting their wrists to their ankles and carried them from the plane. A woman nearly as large picked up Adam and Shalimar in the same manner. No one could tell if Emma followed. They were taken through a large hangar where three stealth planes were housed and brought through a series of corridors to finally be deposited on the hard-rubberized floor of a room with three concrete walls and one made of mirrored glass. A key was thrown into the cell as the two strong Fasergen agents left. Emma had not been left with them.

Shalimar managed to wriggle over to the key and use it to unlock Brennan who in turn released the other three. There was not much to inspect of their surroundings once their fetters were loose. The floor of the square room was perhaps twelve feet on a side and the ceiling appeared to be about twenty feet high and made of a metal grating that some dim light passed through. The room's only other features were a bathroom stall and sink in one corner.

Suddenly the mirrored glass became transparent and their captor appeared, smiling at them. "Charles Marlowe," Adam said returning the smile. "You look good, all things considered." He looked exactly the same as two years ago when he died.

"I wish I could say the same, but you and your team are a bit dirty and banged up." He seemed pleased by this.

"Where's Emma?" Shalimar demanded, stepping to Adam's side.

"She apparently has decided to make things a little more difficult for us, but it doesn't matter much. We have plenty of time. Of course, if you would just let me know where your little hideout is, things will go much easier for Miss De Lauro." Marlowe laughed. "But then, you can't tell me anymore, can you? I'm afraid I'm going to have to break your little redhead." Shalimar surged forward at the glass, pounding it so hard she bruised her arms, but Marlowe just laughed and disappeared as the wall returned to its mirrored state.

When the rest of Mutant X was removed from the storage compartment on the plane, Emma assumed she would be joining them, but instead she was brought down several levels into a concrete hallway where a man in a white lab coat was waiting. He was holding a high voltage stun stick and when he touched the purple electric glow to her temple, she immediately lost consciousness again.

Only dimly aware of her surroundings, Emma awoke, unsure of how much time had passed. She felt like she was horizontal, lying on her face, but was not even certain of that. Slowly, her systems began coming back online, but she was sluggish as if drugged. There was an acute ache at the base of her skull that ran down her spine and through her whole body. The pain also filled her skull like a terrible migraine. She couldn't concentrate or come to terms with who she was or how she had gotten there. Apart from pain and confusion, her brain sensed nothing. She tried to reach out with her mind, forgetting the subdermal governor, and the pain that greeted her was so intense, that it felt like skull was filled with fire. On the back of her neck, she found what she should have remembered was already there—a cylindrical metal stud. She couldn't figure out what was wrong. Her arms and legs were leaden. She opened her eyes and tried to watch her hand and arm move in front of her face, but there was only blackness. Her arm felt like a waterlogged piece of wood. Although she knew it moved and touched her face to prove it, she was disconnected from the limb and had trouble getting her fingers to obey her brain. She shifted her position, trying to sit up, but her entire body was numb on the surface with an unrelenting pain at its core. With difficulty, she managed to maneuver herself into an upright position, leaning against the hard cold wall. Apparently Fasergen didn't use a standard Taser. She would have to be sure to avoid their stun sticks in the future.

After several hours passed, Emma started feeling sensation again, though the pain remained inside her. It felt as though red-hot coals were burning away the gray matter of her brain. Her eyes ached whether they were opened or closed and she had become aware of a ringing in her ears. Her tongue felt like it was covered in lint and she could only smell a metallic, somewhat aluminum, scent. When feeling completely returned to her, she began feeling her body from head to toe, trying to find out how badly hurt she was. Her legs were sensitive in some places, probably bruised, but intact, as was her torso. She didn't seem to have damaged her arms, hands or fingers, though there were bruises everywhere, mainly from her being thrown. The mud had cushioned her fall, but it hadn't exactly been soft. Touching the left side of her head made her wince instantly. She remembered the punch delivered to her face in the parking lot as she felt her jaw line. The stealth mutant must have hit her just right, because the whole side of her face was swollen. At her temple, she could feel a blister from the burn of the purple electric arc when she was zapped.

Emma finally felt confident enough in her recovery to attempt to get up. She stood and, before reaching her full height, smacked her head on the ceiling. She fell hard down to the ground again in pain. When she recovered, she stood again, but slowly this time. The ceiling was only about five feet high. She felt around and soon found that the room she was in was simply a five-foot cube, small and featureless, except for a metal toilet and a small metal sink like you would find in a prison. There was nothing for her to do, nothing she could do, but sit there in the dark. She believed she was still dressed in the same clothing she had been wearing and could feel the caked mud that remained in some of the folds of her outfit. At some point she had lost her shoes and her stocking socks had torn, leaving her barefoot with two nylon bands around her ankles.

As the hours passed by, her senses returned completely to normal. It was strange spending so many hours without feeling any emotions apart from her own. She had never worn a subdermal governor so long. Time passed and she inspected her cell again. She located a tiny jet of air on one side and a tiny suction on the other. At least they didn't mean for her to suffocate. She occupied herself by trying as best she could to wash some of the dirt and grime from her body and clothes. Whenever she was thirsty, she drank from the sink, but she was becoming hungrier and hungrier by the hour. She wished she had eaten breakfast, but she was always too nervous to eat before a mission and hadn't had anything since the night before. Hopefully, someone would be by to feed her soon.

It seemed like three days passed. Perhaps it was more. Emma wasn't sure and didn't know how long she had lain there unconscious before she initially awoke. No one had fed her or in any way communicated with her. Her stomach growled with hunger. She tried to get someone's attention—anyone's.

"Hello?" she cried out, hearing her voice loud as the space was too small to truly echo and the sound all stayed in the cell, bouncing back at her. "Is anyone there?" She had never felt so alone. Her telempathy was gone. She tried again to force her mind to reach out, but was answered only by pain. She doubled over on the floor, tearing at her hair as her brain felt ready to explode. She screamed herself hoarse and lay panting and crying for hours, unable to move.

Two weeks passed and Emma was starving. She was a slim woman already, but she could feel her legs and arms getting dangerously thin. Water alone would not be enough to sustain her much longer. Her body had gone into starvation mode and she knew she should be able to hang on physically for three or four more weeks, but that seemed an impossibility based on how far her condition had already declined. The unaccustomed mental isolation was making her feel that her mind was slipping from her. She was completely drained of energy and couldn't distract herself from constantly dwelling on the hopelessness of her situation. She began to wonder if she had simply been forgotten.

With difficulty, Emma managed to get to the sink and drink some water. The effort left her fatigued and she lay in the fetal position on the floor. For days she had been hallucinating. Adam appeared to her.

"Emma, everything is going to be alright. It's just a bad dream. You'll wake up and this will all go away," he said.

"But it's not a dream, I can't wake up!" She wasn't sure if she said it aloud or to herself or maybe she was dreaming. Reality was slipping away from her. She was used to the mental energy of her team surrounding her and feeling the people beyond Sanctuary. She could sense them too, from boats on the water, in passing aircraft and the constant emotions emanating from the city. There was magic to the life force she had always felt around her and being stripped of it was worse than the other deprivations of her cell. Even during the brief times she had been subjected to a subdermal governor in the past, she had at least been around people. Whether they supported her or were against her, she was comforted by the presence of other living things, especially other intelligences. Here, there were none. She wondered if she could maintain her sanity long enough to finally die of starvation, or would she eventually spend her last few days insane.