Jeez, this bed seemed to have gotten alot harder since the last time she had slept on it. Altessa grimaced. She had the most aweful headache she'd had in a while. Hangover, maybe? Trying to get more comfortable, she tried to roll over. Dang, she must be all tangled up in the sheets. Finally forcing herself to open her eyes, she blinked, trying the get the sandy feel to disappear. Finally her vision cleared, and a hopeless feeling struck her. Above her were florescent lights, stainless steel and something right above her eyes, making her blink in rapid succession. Convinced it wouldn't touch her eyes, she stared at it, an ache developing in the back of her eyes because it was so close. It looked like a lense that you would see on a CD or DVD player. There were metal bands holding her legs, hands, and head in place. One over her neck and one over her forehead. This was insane. What the fuck was going on? Judging by position, her gloves were gone, her collar was gone, and her feet were bare. Her makeup was probably all over her face. Her lip ring was missing also. She rolled her eyes to right and left and turned her head as far as her restraints would let her to check out her surroundings.
Slowly but surely her memories leaked back into her mind, startling her. The ops had taken her somewhere, but where? They had accused her making rain that day, though she hadn't. She'd been thinking about it, though. A wave somewhere around her brushed her senses, and a metallic click followed. A machine squeeked and beeped, then the door swung open. A woman walked in carrying a palm pilot, holding the pointer like a pencil.
"Hello!" She sounded different, like she was from Wales or Scotland or something like that. "I'm Susanne. Dunna look so afeared! I'm not gonna kill ya! Yet anyways." At this her eyes flashed, then they were blank again. "Con ya make lightnin', child?"
"No." Tess rasped, her voice like gravel.
"How old are ya?"
"No."
The woman's eyes turned again, staying that way this time. "Ya know what we do to people like you? When they dunna do summat for us, we turn on this little baby here-" she tapped the machine with the lenses over Tess's eyes "- and we zap a summat in your head. A memory, girl. Enow protestin', we got ourselves a deal from the garden to work with. What it does is sends a laser beam into you li'l brain and burns a nerve, one that has a memory path. Reckon ya'll listen?"
"Where am I?"
"You answer all my questions and I'll answer yours. Do we have a deal? Ok. Con you make lightning?"
"You know, I could talk a little better if I could breathe properly. Can I like get out of this contraption?"
The woman paused, considering. "You try to escape and I'll have your head, on that machine, understood?"
Tess nodded as far as she could, and the woman entered a code on her 'palm pilot'. Obviously it was more than a palm pilot, though, because it certainly acted more like a remote to all these crazy machines. Tess tuned her hearing so she could only hear what was going on in the air around her, and she pinpointed the vicinity of Susanne's hands. She could hear the slight hiss of air as the woman's fingers met the keys, pushing all the air out of that space touching the keyboard. She counted five. Five times the woman pushed the buttons, and five times was all it would take to gain her freedom back. Tuning out the sounds of air molecules rushing, she discovered Susanne was speaking to her again.
"- and you are going to play the most important part of all." She didn't even want to know in what. The machine she was laying on gave an internal click and her fetters pulled themselves off her and into their hiding places inside the table, the machine over her eyes swinging back into a recess of the wall. She hopped of the table and it tilted so it was flat again, and now it looked just like a doctors examination table. Tess hopped up and sat, crosslegged, in the middle of the table and popped her neck, followed by her knuckles and then she stretched. After all was said and done she leaned on her elbows and looked to Susanne.
"Ya dinna think I was going to let ya roam, did ya? Get back there on that table!"
Tess's countenence fell and she obliged, moving in the same position as she had been, crosslegged, on the clear glass table in the corner. The walls surrounding it were stainless steel like her former table, and on one there was drawn a crude outline of a man's torso, arms outstretched.
"Line up with the man."
Tess leaned up against the wall as told, and again tuned into the command Susanne gave her palm pilot. Five again. Same word? Probably not. All of the codes were five most likely. Something in the wall clicked and wrist bands appeared out of covered slots in the wall, encircling Tess's wrists so she was stuck with her arms outstretched like the sketch behind her.
"Smart." Tess snapped.
"Ok. Answer to your first question. You are in a room."
"Harr harr! What room?"
"This one."
"No use asking any questions to me, Lady. You aint getting no answers from me unless you answer mine and not twist them."
"You have to ask the right questions, my dear."
"Ok. Who were the people that kidnapped me and why did they bring me here?"
"That, my dear, is the right question. They were just our helpers-" She stopped, staring into Altessa's eyes. "You have very interesting eyes. I suppose that is part of your mutation?"
"My mutation?"
"Why yes- you know, the reason you can make rain and such."
"You're saying I'm a mutant?"
"Of course! You didn't know?"
"Well obviously not. Look lady, this is no x-men movie." She rolled her eyes. "So what color are they? My eyes?"
"They are- uh, black? No, purple. Dark purple."
"Oh." Tess grinned, thinking of her obvious secret. She was no mutant. She was a plain, normal girl who didn't like the color of her eyes so she wore contacts.
"Is it your real color?"
"Well...no. How'd you guess?"
"That grin on your face says something. Take off your contacts." Susanne released her hands and gave her a little container and a small handheld mirror. Tess obliged after a thunderous glare and took them off.
"Beautiful. Why do you cover them?"
"No one has purple eyes."
"Yes, I'm aware. But why?"
"That is the reason. No one has purple eyes."
Susanne's eyebrows scrunched. "Hmm. Well, in any case, put your arms back up."
She complied, again listening intently to Susanne's fingers on the keypad, hoping to catch a glimpse of what keys they were. She felt a cold finger on her chin, tilting her face up. There was a sudden flash in her face and Tess cried out, her eyes burning and stinging. They teared up and water fell like rivers, her eyes were all scrunched up. She shouted in an anguished voice, "What did you do to my eyes?"
"Simply took a photograph. We now have your iris map. Look at me now."
Tess opened her eyes a slit, her vision obscured by her tears and the huge black spots dancing, encircled in a yellowish glare this time. She could barely make out Susanne. She walked toward her and held a high tech camera in front of her eyes.
"No!" Tess shrieked, but before she could close them the camera flashed again. It didn't hurt as bad this time, just darkened the lightening black spots. Susanne turned and placed each individual cartridge in some machine, and it made a few loud clicks then displayed the first picture on a big white screen.
Tess blinked. And blinked again. "That's not me, is it?" The eyes in the picture were crystalline white/blue with no pupils, just a little white dot in the center. Susanne switched to the second picture, and there was astounding difference. Not only with the expression, but with the eye color. The eyes in the second photo were her normal safire blue, wide and almost blinking, tears streaking the little bit of skin you could see.
"Yes, that's you. I can't believe that you never knew you were a mutant."
"Well I knew I could do stuff, you know like make it rain and stuff, but I never knew my eyes changed. Probably no one noticed because I always wore contacts. So why am I here?"
"You refused to obey orders."
"America is a free country, you know. I don't have to listen to anyone if I don't want to."
"You accepted the contract!"
"I did! But, on that contract, there was no where it said that if I didn't obey I'd be taken by the dumb-ass ops."
"You signed your name!"
"Fuck you, bitch! It doesn't matter!" Tess spat in Susanne's face, which was only inches from her own. Tess watched in horror as Susanne's eyes flashed green, the pupil in the center narrowing out to a long vertical slit.
"Fuck yourself," Susanne hissed, her hospital-like attire changing itself to a lime-green vinyl like outfit, skintight pants and a belly jacket with a zipper up the front. Her arm flew back and flew forward, striking Tess in the temple. She saw nothing more.
Tess awoke to someone screaming for dear life, and it took her a moment to realize it was herself. She stopped, her voice hoarse. Her heart was pounding, for she clearly remember what had happened back in the 'room'. She looked around and saw that she was in a glass cubicle, no more than six feet long and five feet wide.Wow, now she knew was it was like to be in isolation in prison. She rose and paced, her heart rate ever climbing, panic ever so close, as she started to hyperventilate. She ran from one end of her cell to the other, pounding on the glass and screaming for someone to help, leaving smudges on the clean glass. She started from one end and high-kicked the wall on the other, only falling flat on her back for her efforts. She rose up to her knees, tears pouring down her cheeks and sobbing uncontrolably. Hands up, palms facing the ceiling, head bowed and eyes closed, Tess screamed. Her unkept tears fell black on her palms, mixing bittersweet with the makeup she used to hide her emotions.Floods ofit poured through her, floods she had kept dammed for most of her life, they poured through her with such intensity she almost passed out.
If she had been rational and thinking logically at the time, Tess would have noticed that she could see the sky through her glass ceiling, and she would have noticed the black storm clouds gathering over the institution. White lightning exploded in the thunderhead, giving an slight impression of a strobe light at a night party. She didn't notice anything, until the lightning struck.