Eventually, I became aware again. I could not see, or move, or feel anything; I might as well have been floating in a void, except that I could hear.

"This is interesting." said a familiar voice, male. "Her mitochondrial DNA shows that her mother-line is Celtic, when it should be Eastern European."

"Maybe it's interesting to somebody who knows what the hell you're talking about." said another man, a stranger.

I knew. 90 to 95 percent of all living persons of European blood descend from just seven different women, spread out over Europe, who lived many thousands of years ago—mother to daughters to granddaughters, thousands of times over. I was Scots-Irish on my mother's side, not Latverian, and my genes showed it. Somebody was going over my gene pattern, and reading it.

"She isn't a mutant, nor has she the adaptation gene, which causes powers to develop later in life as a reaction to some stimulus—like the cosmic storm which created the Fantastic Four. For the most part, she's thoroughly normal. Hmm. She has a good natural resistance to most cancers, with the exception of skin cancer—but that's only to be expected with a complexion that fair. Not enough melanin…She has the genes for exceptionally high intelligence—and in several different areas. Logical, intuitive, mathematical, linguistic, emotional, spatial…"

"Maybe that's why he wanted to marry her. He wants to make genius babies." That was my voice. Malice had spoken. She was still in my head. I could feel her squatting there.

The geneticist ignored her. "She's also highly sexed."

That was something else I already knew.

"Really?" said the second man.

"Proves my point." Malice said. "I still think the whole thing's a hoot."

I tried to stretch outward. I had lived in my head all my life. I knew where all the controls and switches were, so to speak. Surely I could fight off this intruder—.

"I think she's woken up." said Malice, startled. "Somewhere in the back of her mind."

"Has that ever happened before?" asked the geneticist. I was trying to place his voice. I knew it. I had spoken with him before…

"Not like this—It's really different inside her head. There are so many connections—and everything happens so fast. I can't get access to her memories. It's like when you break a thermometer, and try to pick up the mercury with your fingers." Malice answered. "That's her image, not mine."

"Could that be on account of her intelligence?"

"I guess."

The controls for my eyes had to be around here somewhere. I used them all the time. I remembered exactly how it felt to use them…

For a moment I had my eyes back. I cast a swift look around. A tall, silver-haired man was bent over a computer with a lot of print on the screen.

"Hey!" Malice protested.

"What is it?" asked the second man.

"She's fighting me."

"Well, control her!" snapped the geneticist. I recognized him now. It was Magneto.

"Why don't we just kill her and get it over with?" asked the second man.

"Because I don't know why she's important yet. I want to get some genetic material from her, as well. That particular gene complex she has for intelligence is highly unusual. I might be able to find a use for it. I also want to run some tests. Then you can dispose of her."

I didn't like the sound of that.

In the world of costumed adventuring—I avoid saying superhero and supervillain these days; that way I make no value judgments—there are opposing forces. Spiderman—the Green Goblin. Captain America—the Red Skull. For that matter, before he took up a radically different approach, Doctor Doom—the Fantastic Four. And of course, X-Men—Magneto. These are not hard and fast rules, and the conflicts rage around the globe. I would venture to say that at some time or another, Doom has been in opposition to practically everybody who is anybody in the world of the costumed adventurer.

Magneto is a mutant, of course, and a speciesist, which is basically the same thing as a racist, except that he loathes all humans who are not mutants. I met him a few weeks before I approached Doom, and offered to tell him why Professor Xavier was doing the mutant cause more harm than good. That was when he sneered at me.

He comes in second to Doom in terms of power, renown, influence, following, and intelligence. He, too has a country—Genosha, off the coast of Africa near Madagascar. Formerly run by the Genegineer, who enslaved and oppressed mutants, Genosha was granted to mutants as a homeland by the United Nations, under the rule of Magneto. After he held the whole planet hostage with its own magnetic field, that is.

The result—has not been as good as it is in Latveria. He did rebuild the country as a haven for mutants of all nationalities, true, but he's having trouble. Most of the farms, plantations, industries and businesses were owned by the humans who were forced to evacuate—they were run by mutant slave labor, and the former slaves don't want to work there any more, for which I don't blame them one bit. But the new citizens of Genosha aren't farmers, or industrial workers either, and it's just a mess. One of these days, I expect to hear that Magneto is now enslaving humans.

I never thought that the rivalry between Magneto and Doom was so intense that Magneto would go out of his way to kidnap Doom's bride, however. But then, from what he had said—that he didn't know why I was important—it might not be an act of revenge against Doom. It was time to take stock of my situation

All right. I was in a strange place, possibly Genosha, possibly another of Magneto's bases. He had an island in the Bermuda Triangle and an asteroid in permanent orbit around the earth, and for all I knew, there were others as well. He planned to kill me after he discovered something about me—what, I did not know. I was surrounded by hostiles, inside and out. I did not know how long I had been unconscious, or where I was in relation to Latveria, or, more specifically, to Doom. I did not know what Malice had done with my body while I was not at home…

I didn't know if Doom was coming to my rescue, or how long it might take him to find me if he was.

As a professional minion, I adore the Worst Case Scenario handbooks. I practically live by them. In this situation, the worst case would be that Malice had assassinated Doom…That was too horrible a thought to dwell on.

Different worst: Doom didn't know where I was, or with whom, and therefore wasn't on the way. It was best if I assumed that was the case. Time to get to work on rescuing myself.

I was in an adventure story now, and a familiar one at that. The hero, male or female, alone and surrounded by enemies, in danger of their life…The stuff of James Bond, or Indiana Jones, or The Man from Uncle, or…even from a superhero comic book.

My first problem was Malice—a jailor of an unusual kind. All right, suppose I did kick her out of my head. What then? I would still be stuck where I was, and if I weren't under control, Magneto might decide he didn't need to satisfy his curiosity that badly, and kill me immediately.

But if I could gain the upper hand, if I could trap her inside my head and regain control of my body unbeknownst to anyone, well, then…

Even if I couldn't make it work, it wasn't as if I had anything else to do.

I had no idea how to engage in psychic warfare, either. What I did know was psychological warfare.

I began by thinking loudly at her, trying to make my thoughts into missiles, loading them with all the feeling and sincerity I could, 'You useless, worthless piece of trash! You lazy bitch!' Stinging darts, sharpened daggers. I struck for her heart, if she had one.

I know what causes emotional trauma, especially when it comes from inside the skull where you're living.

She gasped. "Stop that!" she cried.

"Stop what?" asked the male stranger. He was no one I knew; just some flunky of Magneto's. perhaps.

"Not you." she said. "Her. The bride. She just called me some nasty names." She laughed. It sounded half-hearted to me.

'You're nothing but a tick, a leech! What good are you? What have you ever accomplished? I'll tell you. I can see right through you. I know what you are. Nothing. And that's all you ever will achieve. You'll end up a bag lady on the streets!'

"Don't!" she whined.

"Her again?" Magneto asked.

"Yes."

I wasn't about to let up. If she could not access my memories, the same was not true of me. Hers were leaking into mine; I could remember the time she took over the body of a girl she didn't like, went to a bar in a rough section of town, got thoroughly drunk, picked up a man—and departed once their clothes were off, leaving the girl suddenly awake and aware… and that was only one of many such episodes.

I hammered at her psyche. 'You're stupid with it, too. You have no imagination.'

"Shut up!"

'Make me! That is, if you can, you silly little slut.'

"Right!" she snapped, and I could feel her consciousness shift, and approach me.

There's a reason why I've read Proust's Recherché Le Temps Perdu five times—he has very important things to say on the subject of memory. We only live once, but through memory, we can re-live many times. My memory comes equipped with digital remastering, full sensory input, a high resolution picture, and stereo surround sound—so to speak.

I lived through fifteen very unhappy years.

The first memory I slammed her with was from seventh grade, when Steve Moffat beat me up after school for scoring a 98 on an algebra exam and ruining the curved grade.

Wham! There she was, in my head, surrounded by jeering classmates as Steve's fist met my mouth, breaking my braces, causing the wires to cut into the soft inside of my cheek. As my mouth filled with blood, he hauled off and blacked my eye.

Another memory, a subtler form of torture. Fifth grade, and the guidance counselor says, "Well, can't you try to be like everybody else?" Even at age ten, I know that is not possible. I am too smart and too strange.

Then I am fifteen, and my beloved grandmother is dying. My mother has forbidden me to visit the hospital, because she says my grandmother ruined our mother-daughter relationship. I cut school several times to go to the hospital, and the fear, anxiety and guilt are so strong I wind up with what the doctor calls 'a pre-ulcerous condition'. I am not allowed to go to her funeral.

Malice feels now what I felt then, not spread out over the years as I lived them, but all at once. She wails, but not out loud. I have control over my voice again.

More memories. I am attending school in my mother's cast-offs, jeans which are four inches too short for me in the legs, and three sizes too big for me in the waist. The other girls point and snigger at me, but I have nothing else to wear.

More. It is the summer I am thirteen, and my mother's husband, my stepfather, has taken his daughter and his money and left us. My mother tells me it is my fault. I must take over the cooking now, and I'm not good at it. My dinners turn out lumpy and burned. She screams at me when the food is bad. It gets worse. One night, after an attack of indigestion, she calls the police and tells them I am trying to poison her. They take me into protective custody, and for three blessed weeks I am in foster care. However, since she never hit me, and I am not visibly being abused or neglected, I am soon sent back.

My mother, again. The night before an important AP history exam, she bursts into my room at 2 AM, waking me out of a sound sleep, screaming about how there is no clean clothing in the house, and insisting that I must get up and do the laundry.

And the final straw, the incident which caused me to take out the restraining order…But I didn't have to rip off that scab, because Malice broke, fleeing into the recesses of my mind.

I let her go for the moment. I was back in control. I reclaimed myself, blinked, and asked, "Instead of killing her—why not sell her back to Doom? He'd pay a ransom, wouldn't he?" I was trying to avert bloodshed—my own, and other people's.

"No doubt." replied Magneto. "The stakes are higher than that, however. Is she still giving you trouble?"

"No, she's just making noise. What is at stake, exactly? If it was just revenge against Doom, you'd have killed her and dumped her body by now." I asked, as nonchalantly as I could.

"That's none of your concern."

"Okay. Fine. Look, I'm bored. Do you know how long this is going to take?"

"No."

"Is there any chance Doom could find us here?"

"No. Once I removed and destroyed the transmitter implant from her mastoid bone, before we even left Romania, I eliminated that possibility."

That was important information. I just love expository dialog.

"There nothing to do in here." I complained.

Magneto waved a hand. "Go take a walk around the island. Go swimming. Do whatever you please, only don't go too far. I may want to start doing some tests—or to question her."

That answered the question of where I was. Unless he had more than one island, I was in the Bermuda Triangle. "Fine," I shrugged, and left.

Brilliant sunlight stabbed my eyes. I stuck my head back in the room, as much to escape the sun and give my eyes a chance to adjust, as to ask, "Look, where's the bathroom, again?"

"Down the street to the right, in the second building." replied the self-styled Master of Magnetism.

"Appreciate it." I said. What I wanted was privacy. I had an informant to question.

The original builders of the city on that island must have been Atlantisean—or perhaps even an older race. The architecture was different—real different, as if not everyone who used it was a biped who stood upright, and in terms of decoration and shape—it reminded me of Antonio Gaudi, if Gaudi had been in the habit of using hallucinogens or if he had an attack of delirium tremens while at the beach. There were a lot of octopi depicted in the statuary. It was a trip…

Most of the island seemed to have been made of some stone to which barnacles and corals could not attach; parts of it were thickly encrusted with the evidence of marine creatures at work, I noted, as I found the bathroom. This, at least, was not only designed for humans, but looked as though it had been installed within the last five years. Looking at myself in the mirror, I surveyed my face. I was wearing a wary expression, which was exactly how I felt. All of my movements were reflected in the glass, and nothing but my movements. Malice was not in evidence.

Or was she? I leaned closer. There was a ribbon choker around my neck, a red one, with a red jewel. I owned nothing like that. I could see a tiny image of me reflected in the fake gem…a face that looked both frightened and horrified. There was Malice!

I raised a hand to it—it wasn't smooth and hard, like glass, stone, or even plastic. It was firm but slightly soft, squishy. Like an organ. Was that all the physical existence Malice had? No, she didn't even have that, for when I tried to slip a finger under the ribbon, I couldn't—it was part of my own flesh. This was just disgusting!

I poked at her, mentally. 'Hey, you.'

Nothing.

'I know you can hear me. I can feel you scrabbling around in there, like a rat in the walls.'

Nothing.

'Look, I have worse memories than the ones you've already experienced. When I was twelve, an older boy felt me up behind a shed in the park. I was afraid he was going to rape me. You want to find yourself reliving that twenty minutes over and over again?'

She responded to that. 'What, just a little groping? I've done worse than that!'

'That doesn't matter. You'd be living it just like it was happening to you for the first time, only with my emotions attached--and I was very, very frightened. What about my death? You want to live through my death?'

'Your death!' she asked.

'Why do you think Doom trusts me? I proved my loyalty. He got my heart and lungs restarted, but I was gone for several minutes…You want to find out what pain it is to drown in icy water?'

Silence. Then, 'What do you want?'

'To talk. First, is this that island Magneto raised up from the ocean in the Bermuda triangle?'

'Yes.'

'How long has it been since you shanghaied me?'

'About seventeen hours.'

That was long enough that I'd be missed by now.

'Did you do anything to him? Did you do something to Doom, when he thought you were me?' He might have been out of armor—and something hit me.

'No! I avoided him. I don't know how to speak Latverian—and I might not have been able to fake being you.'

I was relieved to hear that, but the insight I had just had was into myself, and I didn't like it. I had been horrible that morning. Victor had gone out of his way to put together a truly wonderful evening, he had been more open with me than ever before, and the very next morning, he had wanted to give me a present, not imposing his taste on me, but making sure it would be something I liked and thought beautiful.

He had done everything he could to make me feel valued and appreciated, and I had felt slighted in the morning. Instead of talking to him about it, I had behaved as ungraciously as I could about the jewelry without actually slapping him in the face. My principles might be important, true, but so were his feelings.

Ow. Ow. Ow. How was I going to make it up to him?

This was not the time to be thinking about it. Right now I had to make sure I had the opportunity to make it up to him.

'What did you do to get me here?'

'I got your purse and went down to the garages. I said you were going to go shopping in Bucharest.'

Bucharest was over the border in Romania. A lot of Latverians did go shopping there. With the wedding so close, nobody would have questioned why I was going there.

'And then?'

'You were assigned a driver and two bodyguards. Once I met up with Magneto, they were…disposed of.' she replied.

'You mean killed. Don't mince words.'

'Yes.'

'Did you kill any of them? Did they die thinking I betrayed and murdered them?'

A long pause. '…Yes.'

'All right. That's it!'

I pulled up the memory of my death, and smothered her in it.

TBC….

A/N: Well, in the absence of an answer from ff, I'm going to sneak some shout-outs/answers in here and there...

Chantrea Savann: Malice is a minor villainess who used to work for Mister Sinister, created by Chris Claremont sometime in the late eighties/early nineties. She hasn't been heard of for a while. Asshe seemed to have the right powers for infiltrating Latveria, I used her, and as you can tell, Joviana refuses to be a victim!

Julietsdaughter: Well, I was wondering whether to make it a neat andtidy planned pregnancy a year after they're married, or an 'oops!' that happens sooner than planned. Joviana's life has been so turned upside down, that it's...concievable...(please don't hit me, I had to make that pun!) that she hasn't been remembering to take her Pills...

What do my readers think?