Dark Past

Chapter Seven

The week after the 'revelation' they had found on the tapes went by as if it were a dream. Goten had gone home the next day, but made them promise to keep him updated if anything new showed up. She and Trunks had assured him they would.

The tension between Bulma and Katrina steadily grew. Katrina was angry because of what Bulma had so conveniently forgotten to mention. Bulma wasn't stupid; she knew when something was going on. She knew Katrina was angry with her, over what she couldn't have guessed, but deep down her mind was alerted to the fact that maybe she had found out her little secret.

Trunks and Katrina were spending more time together. He was still training her, but not as hard. She was learning quickly. She had but a few more techniques to teach her, and then all they had to focus on was her strength. She was getting up there in terms of strength. Already she was more powerful than any human was.

The awkward moments between them continued, but always seemed to be interrupted.

Katrina was on a shopping trip with Bulma one mildly tempered afternoon. It took some persuading by both Bulma and Trunks, but she had finally decided to go. They went up and down looking at clothes and the new computer gadgets that were displayed outside the stores. Katrina wasn't really looking at the displays; instead, she was thinking about what she had learned the previous week that seemed so long ago in her mind.

"Okay, what's wrong?"

Katrina felt like someone had slapped her. She was completely thrown off her train of thought by the statement. Even more so by the fact that Bulma had altogether stopped. She sat there searching Katrina's face for some sort of answer, a sign, anything.

"What?" Katrina tried to replay the question in her mind, but wasn't entirely sure she heard correctly.

"What's wrong with you lately? You've been acting weird towards me ever since that night that Goten came to spend the night. What's up?"

Katrina had heard right. She had asked her what she was so afraid to tell her. She didn't want to bite the hand that fed her. For some reason, the fact that Bulma could be caught up in a type of operation just didn't seem plausible. Nevertheless, Bulma had brought it up; it was like a get out of jail free card. She didn't have to worry about how to bring it up anymore. She took in a deep breath and got her thoughts in order.

"Well.why did you take an interest in me when I was at the hospital? I know you're not a doctor, so I was wondering."

"Wondering why-"

"And," Katrina hesitated a moment, but could no longer keep it in, it had been tearing up her head for the whole week. "I found something."

Bulma tensed a little, she knew what was coming.

"Go on."

"It was a book. Navy blue. I wasn't snooping or anything, but I had only gone to get my hair tie."

Katrina spilled everything. About the flashback she had when the needle pricked her, to the conversation she was having when the glass shattered, to when she had first seen Trunks' expression as he read the book. She went on about her sneaking out to find the book, but didn't mention anything about Goten and Trunks' involvement from then on. She didn't know why, it just wasn't something she thought she should say. She then told about what she had found out about from the decoded papers. She ended with the videotape and diskette.

"Why do you have all that?" she asked Bulma. She was so unnerved from telling her all those things that she was shaking all over from it. The butterflies in her stomach were beating their wings wildly. Her head was going a mile a minute and she wondered for a brief moment if Bulma could hear the thoughts that were swimming in her head. Though she was standing there silent, inside she was screaming.

Bulma just looked at her like she had the first day they met. It was a combination of pity and concern. She sighed and dropped her arms down to her side.

"I should have told you," she said more to herself than Katrina, "I should have but I didn't. You would have remembered it anyway, but I was hoping to protect you. if only for a little while."

Katrina went to bed that night feeling a lot better, but still concerned. At least now she knew that Bulma hadn't had anything to do with the project, nothing intentional at least. Her mind slowly relaxed itself into that end of the day mode. She recalled what Bulma had told her at the mall with a look of mixed relief and sadness.

She hadn't really known anything about the details of the project for a long time after the military had asked her that favor. She had no idea who they had gotten or even the fact that they had actually went through with the horrific project.

After a while she had noticed that the military was ordering an awful lot of special part s from her company. She compared the ordering lists and it didn't take her long to fit the pieces together. She hadn't said anything to anybody though, because she understood that it must be priority one to keep this project a secret from everybody.

A couple months later, she saw on the news that the police were looking for a criminal who was suspected in a series of gruesome murders and she recognized the picture to be Dr. Geode. Not long after that, she had gone down to the place where she suspected his lab was. It took her a week of searching to find it, but she finally did it. She had found Dr. Geode's lab.

As she searched through the rubble trying to figure out what had happened, she had found the diskette of the warrior's battle data on it. She hadn't even thought about the possibility that they could be using human test subjects, not at least until the woman had come up to her.

The woman.

That was the person who stood out most in Katrina's mind. Who was she? She had asked Bulma that very question, but she had just shook her head...

"She was very obscured whenever I saw her. She always wore this cloak. but anyway.She came to me the first time and gave me the book. The second time, she had given me the videotape, and some other diskettes. She said she couldn't let me have those other diskettes because she needed them, she wouldn't tell me why. So The third and final time I met her she told me to give a few things back, and to not allow anyone to see what she had given me. Said it would endanger my life as well as hers."

"That final time was also when she warned my about you. She said that someone would find a girl on the street. She told me exactly what you looked like; it was creepy the first time I saw you. She had it down to every last hair on your head. She told me to take care of you, because you were safest with me."

"So why did you take those blood samples from me?"

"Because she told me to. She didn't tell me exactly what to look for, but said that I should just look out for anything abnormal."

"Did she tell you what to do if you did find anything out of the ordinary?"

"Nope. She said if I found anything strange that she would contact me. I wasn't entirely sure I could trust what this woman was saying until you showed up one day in one of our hospitals."

"And that's why you took an interest in me, that's why you took me home."

"Yes."

She sat there and looked at Bulma for a little before she asked her next question. This one had been on her mind ever since she had mentioned the woman. But she was almost afraid of asking it. She wasn't sure she would like the answer she got if she did. She took in a slow breath and asked anyway,

"Did she say anything about my mother?" And before she could stop herself, "Was she my mother?"

"Yes, she did say something about your mother. She said you were with her, but not for long, and that something would tear you two apart. I asked her what she meant by that but she didn't reply. She said that whatever is was that was going to tear you apart was probably going to-"

She stopped abruptly and her hand immediately went over her mouth. She had said too much, but Katrina had already caught on.

"To kill my mother," she said absent-mindedly. Bulma just nodded her head.

"I'm sorry sweetie. As for the fact of whether or not she was your mother. I had thought so at first. This lady had brown hair, and I think you mom's was red. Her eyes were blue too, your mom's were green. I remember that on the videotape. When your mom turned to the camera, I couldn't see anything in them. At the time it had given me chills down my spine."

"Me too."

"But I do remember checking, and it didn't match up. I should have told you all this sooner, but I couldn't. How could I possibly? 'Oh hey how are you? I gotta tell you something, You're a government experiment and your mom is probably dead and god knows what else, but nice whether we're having huh?' It just didn't seem right to me, but I know that doesn't justify what I did."

She had looked up at Katrina then, and the lines in her face had been more defined when she did. She looked older somehow, like the worry and fuss had somehow taken some of the life out of her...

As Katrina lay in her bed that night, she thought about what she had discovered in only a few short months. She had gone from an anonymous girl walking down the street to a military project in a small span of time. But it didn't feel like just a few weeks to her. The distance between that fateful day and where she was now were years apart.

A gentle breeze flew in from her open window and sighed as it tickled her cheek. She was drifting into a nice sleep. A dreamless one she hoped. The nightmare she had had a short while ago still hung fresh in her mind. Fortunately someone was listening to her and since that night she didn't have any, or at least none she could remember. Katrina woke with a start in the middle of the night. All the muscles in her body had tensed for no apparent reason. The curtains on her window swayed gently as they had when she went to sleep a few hours earlier. She sat up in her bed and for a time, was afraid to move.

'This is stupid,' she thought, 'you're not three anymore. There is no boogie-man under your bed. And even if there were, you could probably kick its ass.' That didn't change the fact that she couldn't move. She sat there feeling stupid, but it seemed to her that the position she had taken was the right one.
What was that? She thought she had heard something outside. She slowly and carefully made her way over to the window to peer out. She didn't see anything, so why was she- What was that? She strained her eyes to see in the dark. She thought there was a shadow that shouldn't be there. 'That's ridiculous. There isn't anything out there. It's all part of your imagination.'

'But,' said another voice; 'you said the same thing when you thought that you were an experiment;'. The trees rustled in the wind and Katrina jumped. She sighed and turned on her bedroom light.

"Stop being a baby," she said, and surprised herself with the firmness in her voice. She closed her window and then turned off her light. She fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next day she told Trunks about her discussion with Bulma.

"Ah, so that's it." Trunks had a look of relief on his face. He had hoped that his mom wasn't some weirdo science maniac, and this new information had eased his mind greatly. He was glad that at least some of this was cleared up.

But the secrets of Katrina's past were not yet fully revealed. Questions still remained unanswered. Where was her mom, if she was still alive? What happened to her father and sister? Had she just imagined them? What was the extent of her powers that the doctor had so eagerly mentioned? Could she, after the length of time, still tap onto that power that she had? But from the new information Katrina found herself wondering a new question, who was the woman anyway?

Katrina decided that these answers would come in time, and decided to sort through the answers she did have before going and digging up any more. She figured she had found out quite a bit, but didn't exactly know how to deal with it. How would you feel if you found out you were some weirdo science experiment gone wrong?

For three days strait after her and Bulma had talked, Katrina was lodged in her room. She only came out to eat, but the rest of the time she sat in her room on her bed, looking out of the window and contemplating what had happened to her.

Trunks had stepped in a few times to see if she okay or if she needed something. These visits usually consisted of him asking her if she was all right. Katrina would give him a reassuring look that said 'I'm not really all right but I will be.hopefully'. He would sigh and they would sit in an awkward silence for a few minutes, and then Trunks would get up and leave the room. Katrina would sit on her bed, alone once again, and almost cry.

"My mother, my father, my sister," she whispered in her pillow after one of his visits.

"Where are you guys? I love you so much...wherever you are, I hope you know that."