CHAPTER THREE: SMOKE AND MIRRORS

She had been different all her life, she knew it, clearly. She was conscious of this as someone could remember a dark secret, an unsettling emotion that comes forward unexpectedly, like a recurring vivid dream. She didn't understand as a child how she had managed to get away from the snarling dog in the alley behind her house as she was playing with her friends. She remembered the nausea and the strange jerking sensation one could feel if accelerated and stopped suddenly, like jumping, only to regain her balance blocks away from where she was.

She remembered her mother telling to never use the gifts that were given to her. If she ever did, the whole family would suffer. It was a dark time for Supers, her mother told her that day. It was the only time in her life she would hear her mother use that word. She remembered hiding in the attic of the family home trying to develop her skill, but she never managed it but only under the grip of the deepest, most primitive fear. The transmutational process was very unsettling for her.

The fact that she couldn't control her power or that the only time it manifested itself being under extreme terror, made her begin to be afraid of fear itself. Mirage learned to hold back every emotion she felt was too strong, measuring everything, pondering. Her power was simply too traumatizing for her to try to control.

Even though Transmutation terrified her, Mirage wasn't afraid of much else though, certainly not of the dark. As the lights closed in her bedroom, the shapes in the surrounding darkness began to glow with familiar warmth, the whole room illuminated from within, everything like broad daylight. She took pleasure in shutting out this inner light in the blink of an eye if she wanted to. After all, sleep was necessary.

She trained hard to blend into the background, as she was taught that being different would always be a mortal sin. To survive meant disappearing. She could never afford to be exposed. Supers, as communists could have been in another era, had been branded a threat to the common good. She never had any other option.

As she tried to lead a normal life, she followed the beaten path. She majored in computer science and had started a master in business relations. Mirage was nineteen, when approached one day by someone claiming to be part of the Supers Relocation Program, a government incentive designed to protect at first glance the public who had grown disenchanted with the Supers.

How they knew about her abilities was a mystery. She didn't know how they had tracked her down, but the fact that they did had made it clear they would not let her be, her precious gifts too important.

They told her she would never have a normal life, but if she did what she was told, some form of freedom would be there for her. The program had been using Supers for their own hidden agenda, Black Ops, never to be revealed to the public. Mirage had been selected for her facility to be involved in certain types of deep undercover operations. Her powers matched her charms, and with those weapons, she was able to fool anyone in letting their guard down.

They told her the missions would be dangerous, that they wouldn't ever acknowledge her existence or their participation if she got caught. They didn't tell her that she would have to come close, closer that she'd normally ever be, to some of the most repulsive criminals. She would be scarred for life for doing so. Sometimes when alone, she cried, cursing the gift and the existence that was hers, like someone would curse cancer. She'd always pick herself up though... She'd always follow through.

Saunders thought he had a hallucination as he fired the gun. He had seen Mirage standing at the lava door staring at him like a deer startled by headlights. He had been sure he aimed properly as he fired the shot, but then logic did not seem to work anymore.

Standing a few feet apart, he saw that there were two Mirages, both staring at him, both waiting for the lava door to open. He clearly saw the shot reaching its intended target, but wasn't sure if he did see it go through her, for she stood there unflinching, to then dissolve slowly in a fine mist. As the doors finally opened, he aimed his weapon at the other one. He saw her tense up, fear in her eyes, and then disappear, her body evaporating like a cloud stretched by the wind.

Saunders ran to the pod platform. He saw it carrying her towards the aircraft hangar. How she could have moved this fast, Saunders couldn't understand. He had to stop her though, the disk she had taken with her probably very valuable. He rushed to the intercom near the door.

"Attention, this is the Captain. We have a security breach, code twelve, heading for hangar A. Secure area, arrest culprit, and take her to containment unit two."

As she was speeding towards the landing strip, Mirage heard everything over the pod's speaker. She looked onward to see a group a guards taking position on the arrival platform, machine guns drawn.

"Pod, stop!" she yelled. The transport halted, fifty meters away from the platform. As she looked back, she saw Saunders speeding towards her in another pod. A shot blasted through the roof, violently shaking the transport. The guards had reached the end of the platform. Mirage looked at the ground below, a few meters away through the trees, but still a neck breaking fall.

She jumped.

She closed her eyes while falling through the brush, grabbing at what she could to stop her fall, bouncing about like a pinball on bumpers. She caught a large branch as she came through the underbrush, which bent before snapping suddenly to drop her unceremoniously to ground, flat on her back, pushing the air out of her lungs. She didn't know if she had passed out as all went black. But how long didn't matter. She got up, decided the soft soil wasn't appropriate for high heels so swiftly discarded them.

The darkness of the jungle disappeared quickly as she got used to her surroundings. Getting her bearings, she could see a hundred meters away the opening leading to the runway. The manta-plane was there, ready for takeoff. She started running.

As she reached the concrete runway, she saw that some of the guards still hadn't moved from their position on the platform, guiding another group underneath the trees, the hounds tugging on their leashes. She had about a minute to reach the plane.

It felt like an eternity had passed as she dashed across the tarmac, totally in the open. She ran around the airplane to the cockpit door and pulled on the unlocking mechanism.

The door was locked.

Mirage's head started to spin... She looked behind the plane to see that the entire security force was converging towards her. A familiar nausea, like a fearful twisting of her stomach overtook her. A shiver went through her body and silently a few meters away, a faint haze formed. It solidified to become a perfect image of her. Instantaneously, she realized she had become the image while the illusion had taken her place besides the plane. She turned around, concentrating her thoughts. She then started leaping through herself, hopping quickly towards the end of the open hangar. In a few jumps she had reached the end of the runway, looking down from the edge. Through the trees, a waterfall pooled somewhere below.

She heard the guards cocking their weapons behind her. They would be upon her any second now. Turning to face them, she took a deep breath, stood on the edge and let herself fall backward through the trees.

The guards reached the edge. They looked to see a body floating face down, slowly sinking, dissolving into the darkness of the water. One of them flipped open his wrist radio.

"Captain, this is team One. Target has jumped the edge into the jungle, and seems terminated. We're sending a team to retrieve the body."

He paused, looking at the other team members. They stared back, silently.

"Sir, we have to report it appears she was a Super..."