A/N: Seems like my chapters are getting longer and longer ;D!

Chapter 8: The Folding Cards

Sky's POV

"Well f*ck us I guess" Sky said emotionlessly, Z turned to look at him, surprised at his bluntness, "we WERE fed false info."

"But not by Syd" she says, and I ignore an urge to roll my eyes, she's still sticking up for Syd. And I just realized what I thought. And now I'm suppressing an urge to punch myself in the head. WHY IS MY BRAIN SO FIXATED THAT SYDNEY DREW IS THE CULPRIT?

SHUT UP!

"maybe Sydney was fed false info… you know maybe she was set up?" I suggest, it's the only way to not incriminate Syd. There are two things possible… one: Syd was lying, to push us off track. Two: Syd didn't know she was lying, she was fed false info, and she just conveyed it to us, in which case, we need to know where she got that info from, to get to that traitor…

OR WAIT! There's a third possibility! Just like Kat was here in the lab, maybe Sydney was also somewhere else, and the person in the video wasn't Sydney!

"Sky?" I realize Z has been calling my name. I was quite absorbed in my theories to listen to her, she had been pitching her own.

"huh? Z? Wut? Did you say something?"

"what do we do now?" she asks.

"let's ask Cerberus" he said, shrugging, "Cerberus?" Z asked, not knowing the Greek legend.

"a nickname for RIC I just came up with" I say, knowing no point in explaining the legend. She nodded, apparently not in the mood for it either.

We looked over at RIC, and asked, "so you know anything else boy? Anyone else's records we should search? We know your camera isn't working, so you can't just show us, but you know something important for sure," Z said, patting him.

"WOOF!"

He darted out of the room, leaving a RIC shaped hole in Dr. Manx's room's door. I think if we get it fixed, it'd be the fifteenth or sixteenth time for this door. I smile shaking my head, and she grins looking at me, and then we dart out, after him, and follow him to a room, where he barked madly, it was labeled Dr. Anastasia Gaul.

If you ask my personal opinion, I don't like her. She is an absolutely selfish, over-ambitious, lust-for-power-fuelled bitch. But me, Z, Syd, Bridge, Jack and Sam owe her a lot. To be specific, our civilian POWERS.

Dr. Gaul was, and still is, one of the leading SPD scientists, who is in charge of the research on Mutations. Back in 2001, our parents and Dr. Manx, a junior at the time, worked under her, experimenting on drugs and genomes, and stuff I don't really understand, because science. What happened was a freak accident, and our parents landed up with civilian powers, which could be transferred to us, their children. Yes, it was a one of a kind incident, and that never occurred again and nobody else could get a mutation like that. Dr. Gaul made it her life goal to recreate that freak accident doing anything she could, to artificially create the powers. She was also filthy rich, so no harm done there, kinda like Andrew Hartford and his experiments on civilian powers. I don't know if she succeeded or not, but she was crazy obsessed with it, and the power that she could create; almost roped me in her obsession as well!

I think Z is also placing the same pieces in her mind, as she opens the door, and gasps, I take a look at what she saw, and I see it; Dr. Gaul's room has been searched.

And not searched by us.

We both enter the room in a daze, and see that all her files are strewn on the floor, along with it, are records, test reports, DNA files, whatnot, her own belongings, photo frames, albums, keepsakes, trashed, thrown to the floor without any regard. RIC knew that whatever they had wanted, it was in this room, and probably still was.

"God!" we looked around the room, Z looked at me, "we didn't make such a mess when we searched did we?" she asked, I shook my head, "we cleaned everything up once we were done, and nobody would even realize what we did" she nods, agreeing; we mustn't disturb their belongings, and if we do, we must put them back; ethics.

"should we… search?" I ask, not knowing what to do.

But Z had a theory, "whoever they were, they came here with a purpose, maybe there was something incriminating about them, or their operation in this room. if they carried everything out so well, with such…" she looked for an appropriate word. "finesse," she said, after thinking, "I think whatever they were looking for, they found it, so no point in searching, just like that"

"so what DO WE DO?" I know I'm frustrated, I know I haven't slept, I know that I haven't eaten much, and I know she hasn't either, I mean a sleep with nightmares, and a bottle of booze don't count.

"we see what all reports are here, and we hope to find some, if any soft copies, soft records, you know? Like computer files, or pen drives, and then compare them to the hard copies we have. Will show what's missing"

"Z that might takes days! Look at it, there's so much stuff!"

"and look here" a voice came from behind me, and I turned around to find Z standing there, and then I turned again, another way, to find another Z, and then another, and another! So there were four Z's plus the real one, and me. Nice!

"remind me why we didn't do that earlier?" I ask,

"because five of me searching five rooms takes more energy out of me than five of me searching one room does. It's a thing," she said, shaking her head, as if she didn't know why.

"it's like how making a wall of force field is easier than a dome of a force field for you" she explained, finally, and I nod, it's true. Making a complete dome, to protect from explosions and falling debris, burns through my veins, it's like it's sucking the life out of me… or Energy, as she phrases it. "Yeah, okay. I get it."

So we search, we put things back in order, we yawn, we wipe tears of sleep off our eyes, we try to contain our stomachs from grumbling. The time's almost six in the morning by the time we are done. We are both tired, but we have managed to arrange everything neatly, thought maybe not in their correct positions, but yeah, it looks better. Now is the time for the most important thing.

We need a soft copy. We haven't found anything yet. Either Dr. Gaul knew something was up, and hid everything too well, or they took the soft copies as well, in which case there's no way we can find anything at all.

"Alright. Lets ask RIC?" I said.

"RIC?" *they look towards him*, but it looks like he's also stumped. He just knew that this room was a mess, and held something important. Anyway, he had no clue, so Z and I looked around, checking every nook and cranny, and not leaving a single stone unturned. We started joking around, and jumping around, in a way of keeping each other awake with crazy antics.

But then Z jumped down from the bed, a little playfully, after searching one of the airvents, and landed on the floor, with incredible agility, but what our caught attention, was the fact that her left foot made a strange sound against the floor. she also realized it, and brought her back foot up, and with more force, struck the floor again. The same sound echoed again.

Then she took the other foot, and repeated the procedure on a different part of the floor, and there was no such sound. Using her right foot, she hit that spot on the floor again, and was met by the same sound.

I caught on, and did the same with my foot, and then at the spot where she had landed. Yep, it was certain enough, that place in the floor, that particular floorboard, was HOLLOW.

That was the sound it was making. Like banging on a hollow metal sheet, as for the other spots, they felt like a solid concrete, or whatever alloy they are made of. But that spot was different…

Z and I, both kneel down, and try prying it open, but it's bolted, so I take the elevator to Z's room to get that handy many took kit she had, and using a wrench and a few tools I don't know what to call, we are able to screw it loose, and with one pull, we yank it off. It's a small cavity, lying in which, is a hard drive.

"YES!" She exclaims, and we hug, and I pull her in for a short kiss as well, because why not?

Then we take it, and plug it into Dr. Manx's computer, feeding RIC on some robot treats, that make his system 'fly' as Bridge calls it, that we found in her drawer.

She takes a seat in front of the computer I lean on the chair, reading form behind.

X-X-X

Z's POV

The drive's inserted, loaded, and ready to go… all I have to do is press enter, and God knows what horrifying secrets we might uncover, that Dr. Gaul took the trouble of hiding it under a hollow floorboard.

So here goes nothing… I press enter.

It's a bunch of records. Well, folders, five of them. Arranged in order from A to E. that is all that is in the hard drive. Strange. I look at Sky, and he urges me to open the folders separately, I don't know what's in there, but one look at Sky's face tells me he has an idea at the least.

Well then, lets see what Dr. Gaul has to hide. I click on the folder labeled 'A' and inside it, to my surprise, are about another hundred or so folders, oh no wait, there are 67 to be precise, my brain was exaggerating, Dr. Gaul has literally labeled them all as 1, 2, 3 and so on, until 67. Neat

I open another folder, inside, randomly clicking on No. 27, which happens to be my favorite number, and see that it is a consolidation of two word documents, an MS-Excel sheet, a Power Point presentation, a video, and five pictures in jpeg format. Then there is also a pdf lingering somewhere in the background, and an audio file, mp.3. This woman is crazy organized. I open the first word document, and it shows the heading 'Test Subject A-27'. So that's what the letters and numbers imply. A, as in A, B, C, D or E, and the number as in one among the 67 of A there are. Feels like I'm studying probability.

I read through, it is a full-fledged info file on a person's life, from their date of birth, birthplace, parents, etc to their schooling, college, university, job, and date of death. Like someone had done way too much research on them, tailing them and whatnot. There were no pictures in the word document though.

The second document was an experiment report. Apparently, A-27 was a 17 year old at the time of 'signing up' as the report stated. This was back in 2013, about fourteen years back. We must've been what? Nine or ten at the time. Anyway, so this A-27, a boy called Taro Nagasumi, Japanese in origin, and moved to New Tech in 2009. He was placed in this programmed, 'Willingly' and a signed photocopy pdf of the original consent form is also there (yes, the pdf). I read about his report, there is a report of the chemicals, and drugs he was given, along with the standard and a few non-standard procedures. And yes, non-standard includes electro shock therapy. And then it documents his changes in physical and mental forms over the weeks of experiment. A fully documented report of the 56-week procedure, the statistical report being in the Excel sheet, at the end of which, he died. Or rather, committed suicide. I am horrified. And quite coldly, there is a short power point presentation, which simply documents what results were obtained, and to put it in short, 'these drugs work, these make him crazy.'

Monster.

I am absolutely disgusted. I don't know what to do, I see the expression on Sky's face, and he is very carefully keeping it blank, like he doesn't want me to know what he's thinking, or what his involvement with the projects is, because I'm dead sure he knows a lot… or at least more than what he shows.

He tells me to skip over the excess stuff, just figure out what all it is, and in a nutshell, basically, the whole hard drive contains records of patients, Test Subjects, who were basically experimented on. The numbers are the order they were documented chronologically, but the alphabets signify more important things.

All the Test Subjects in group 'A' are dead, suicide, chemo/electro therapies gone wrong, and sometimes even euthanasia. It is horrible, and after a point I don't want to see any more about this Test Group A. I'm sick of it, and so I switch to folder 'B'.

"I think this will be worse," Sky suggests, and he sits back, maybe not able to read anymore, or maybe something else. I don't know why my suspicions are rising again. What can be worse than death? I keep the question to myself, though when we open it, I get my answer. The common characteristic of people in this group is the simple fact that everyone here, due to treatment, and whatever they did, went cuckoo, yes, I mean every single person in this folder ended up in the Mental Asylum, and instead of their 'death dates' as were in folder A, there are their addresses in the Mental Asylums all across the planets. So bad that some are even sent to Arkham, the Asylum for the worst cases those people who have no hope of ever recovering. And there are consent form pdfs from every single one of those people! It's sickening! Why and how on earth could someone sign up for something so terrible?

I am terrified to think of what happened to those in folders 'C' 'D' and 'E'. I don't think I have the strength to read further. I turn to Sky, look at him, decide to confront him.

"What do you have to say Sky?" his face is ashen white, he looks scared. Is it because of my question? What did I ask?

"I could've been one of them" he whispers, his voice raspy.

My eyes widen, I turn around 360° and face him, "what?" I ask, and he looks at me, I see pain in his eyes, "I almost signed up for this program, with Dr. Gaul, she asked me if I wanted to know where my powers came from, and I agreed readily, I was almost on the way to the lab, when I got into conversation with Dr. Gaul. She looked at me and said, "you know, you're a fine specimen." I heard her, and I was shocked, she just called me a specimen. I know there's nothing wrong with the sentence, but it was the tone in which she said, like she was fascinated with me, or something, and that was when I knew that I was doing a very big mistake. I ran, and I ran as far away from that damned place as I could, as fast I could. Never went back." He said, his voice shaking by the end, and I realize that he's just realizing where he could've landed up. It was a pretty big realization for him, and I went by and sat on the bed with him, "Sky, you didn't fall for it did you?" I say, and he shakes his head, "you were smart, and you are safe" he hugged me tightly, and didn't say anything, just silently held on to me, maybe having an emotional meltdown, but he was trying to hold it back for whatever reasons, and I just hold him with me; sometimes silence is a better comfort than words. After a few minutes, we are both recovered and we get to the task of going through the drive again.

"you ok?" I ask, and he nods and then smiles at me, his way of saying 'thank you', then he clicked on the folder labeled 'C'. The people on this were met with permanent physical deformities, and mutations that didn't leave them all that… able.

"how could Cruger permit something like this?" I ask, so totally in shock, seeing the pictures of people where their organs, are replaced by paws, or gills, or scales, or other stuff, which grosses me out so much, that I can't even think straight.

I try to keep the bile inside my body, though I don't seem to be doing a very good job at it, and we move to folder 'D' and I wonder what we have in store there…

Turns out, nothing much. Nothing as bad as it was in the previous ones.

The D folder recorded people who made it through, alive, without losing any part of their brain or body, it actually had just twelve people. So they decided to go through all twelve files. There were people who developed minor genetic powers, which though useful in some ways, had their own glitches. Sky and I realized that our own powers fitted into this category.

We read the names of the people and stopped dead short when we saw a very, very familiar face…

"Brian!" I said,

"Collins!" Sky echoed at the very moment, and they looked at each other, shocked.

Are we idiots or what?

We spent a whole f***ing day trying to search incriminating evidence from rooms of people we know, without even knowing what we were looking for… just incriminating evidence. I mean finding stuff that's not supposed to be there, but what if the incriminating evidence was nothing BUT the stuff that was supposed to be there? That picture of Sydney with Brian. It was way too much of a co-incidence to see Brian here, and in Syd's photos. Maybe if we looked further, we'd find him showing up in other people's pictures and records as well!

"So Brian?" I asked.

"maybe" he sat back on the bed, "he had always been a little jealous that I had powers, he didn't. But he never cared to show it much. Then I left, and there was no further talks with me and him"

Of course that piece of history is of no interest for me.

Anyway, I go through the list of people in 'E' category, just four of them, all developed radical powers, more strong, and with lesser glitches than any other, powers like Telekinesis, Energy Manipulation, Invulnerability and Super Agility, to people whose full names were not mentioned, only stuff like J. Payton, S. Nixon, C. X. Snow and L. Schmidt, no way to trace them. But it looked like Dr. Gaul had succeeded.

The only thing, which a last report, in Dr. Gaul's hard drive said, was the simple fact that none of the powers artificially developed were passable genetically.

"you know something Z?" I hadn't even realized when Sky had slipped away from behind me, and started going through Dr. Gaul's papers.

"what?" I turn around, and I see him with the files, as expected, and he syas, "only groups A, B and C have the files here. There is not a single D or E person in here" he said, and well, that was it, "it's them, they are involved, or at least a few of them are"

I can't help but smile, "never thought Brian'd be involved in Syd's death"

X-X-X

"what?" Sky's attention flipped over to her, "what are you saying Z?"

"its just a theory" she began, as a hundred strings attached themselves in her mind, "look at Brian's powers, it's duplication. If he sees a person face to face, he can duplicate. Though he can't do that from memory, that's his glitch, like our energy drainage. So he may have befriended Syd, come to SPD, met with Dr. Manx, then duplicated her, when no one was looking, and carried out the operation. I mean anyone who can look like anyone they have ever seen can make infiltration so much… easier."

"but he didn't kill her right?"

"maybe… maybe not, who knows?"

"Z you are talking nonsense like me" Sky said, frustrated, "like when I kept suggesting that Syd fed us false info!"

"well, didn't she?" Z asked, "maybe she didn't know" he suggested, "you only said that. don't you think it's possible that Brian put it in her head, that it was a 'he' involved with the accident?"

"or maybe it wasn't Syd at all… maybe Sydney was already dead, and what we saw was Brian posing as Syd! He could take her form as well you know?"

"what do you mean?" he snapped.

"just picturize Sky, suppose Brian got into SPD, posing as Syd's friend, we saw the picture, he might've been like, 'oh Syd, you are so amazing doing such a service to the community! Do you mind if, for an interview I come to your workplace?' and then he saw Dr. Manx, got into her form himself, you know? With the mutation powers, and then got someone else inside SPD without anyone else realizing. Then if that other person released the toxic gases. Brian pretended to collapse, and was taken away by his own accomplices. Then once the Power Rangers were defeated, they staged the whole video scene to throw suspicion off of anybody involved. Then came here, took away all their own files, so we couldn't place them, knowing that in the small deadline they gave us, we won't search the girls rooms, and Dr. Gaul is a girl you know? What if it was all a game since the beginning?"

she panted after ranting the whole theory, and he sat to consider,

"alright, but what if it wasn't Brian involved?"

"then why would his file be taken?"

"okay, maybe he is part of the program, but why necessarily him to infiltrate and stuff?"

"did you read everyone's powers? Shooting light out of hands, and bring able to defy gravity in a ten metre radius aren't the powers an infiltrator would use!" that was all she had to say, as Sky completed the rest, "and Brian was the only one in the list who could. Rest had destructive powers, except that one empathy there, on number 7"

"and what about XYZ?"

"what?"

"you know? that mysterious hooded figure? Who just toyed with us?"

"right, XYZ… I am dead sure that they are one of the four 'E' ones, the only ones who have some authority," Sky remarked.

"AND immense power" she added,

"but why would they want to ruin SPD and what 'demands' might they have?"

"they're all mutants, maybe revenge on SPD for their fallen comrades, the A, B and C people?" she suggested, but Sky shook his head,

"no"

"why not? It WAS an SPD program. Though I can't even imagine Commander Cruger giving permission for something like that! I thought he was better than that!"

"what are you saying Z?" a condescending amused grin spread over Sky's face, "Cruger never gave her permission for any of this, she's just a rich bitch, who carries out her experiments on her own free time. Her only affiliation with SPD is that she is one of the gene experts, and a scientist here. The last gene program that SPD conducted was the one where our parents were involved in a freak accident, and they, as well as their progeny, (us) got mutated. Cruger put a ban on any such health hazardous experiments after that!"

"so when you said you ran from Gaul, you meant?"

"of course I meant I ran from her lab. You didn't listen carefully. I said I never returned to the place again. now I wouldn't be standing here if this were the place no?" he asked, and she nodded in agreement.

"alright… I get it, these might all be false theories, I mean it's also possible that they just took random files to throw suspicion off of them, and onto Dr. Gaul and her experimental subjects"

"Z we are looking too deeply into this. We don't know much, hell we know practically next to nothing! I suggest we keep looking"

"for what Sky?" totally frustrated, she snapped, and got up, but then realized how rudely she had behaved, "sorry" she mouthed. He nodded, "it's okay, we are both going through a tough phase"

"I think we should take a break" he suggests after a few moments of eerie silence, and she agreed, "we need to eat and sleep"

"but what about the vomiting?" anything they ate came right back up no?

"we'll get through it together" she said, quietly.

"and what about the nightmares" he asked, "we'll get through those together too" her reply echoed.

He got up, she had been standing, and he placed his hands on her cheeks, taking her in, and slowly pressed his lips against hers. They stood there, rooted to the spot, for a few minutes, kissing, and then broke apart, and looked into each others eyes, but were snapped out of the trace by RIC's barking.

"what?" Sky asked, sad that his moment with Z was interrupted, and RIC just shook his head as if to say, 'nothing just wanted to snap you back into reality' At that, both of then burst into a small smile.

"don't you think we kiss wayy too often?" she asked,

"I like it. And I think it is a good stress buster" he replied and she was amazed at hoe right he was. the kissing, the little, little moments here and there just kept her sane! Maybe him too! That was why any stressful discovery or info, was followed by a soft kiss… or a complete make out session on some random person's bed!

She grinned, "let's go eat. I think I'm getting hungry!" she looked at her watch, it showed 9 AM.

"oh and also a mid day nap!" he chimed in, as he followed her out RIC in hot pursuit.

They reached the common room, and for once, in three days, ordered a decent meal from the molecular synthesizer. As they sat down to eat, (no, I'm not telling you what they are eating!) both of their stomachs growled loud enough for the other to hear, and they laughed so hard it hurt their cheeks, "guess some mice had a nice playground for two days no?" she commented, "mice? I thought it was a butterfly garden!" he replied, innocently, they even got a bunch of doggy treats for RIC, and whatever it was that RIC used to eat, and fed him well as well. Of course, RIC wasn't human, so he wasn't starving, nor did he really 'need' all the food, he just 'liked' it.

After a nice meal, and a few good jokes, and casual talks, they decided the food needed to be digested and for that to happen, they needed a break from horrifying discoveries and bad memories.

They decided, that for that, they needed a nice good book, without any violence, and with a lot of nice scenes. And preferable a book both of them had read, so they could skip over the dramatic parts. They settled for the sweetest romantic novel they could find, a book called "Smile For Me" a very heart touching love story, where the leads met accidentally, at a hiking tour, but ended up falling in love, and through all odds, they worked it out! The real question was why Disney hadn't made a movie out of it.

They settled down, on the common room couch, with an old copy of it they had found in the SPD library, and with a blanket, in case they felt sleepy. He wrapped his arms around her, and she rested herself over his chest, quite comfortably, and they read as many as three pages, before they peacefully drifted off to sleep, wrapped into each other's arms, safe and sound. Nobody could hurt them at that moment. RIC watched, and then decided to curl up on Z's lap as well, and all three of them slept undisturbed, finally peaceful.

A/N: I know I know, wayy too cheesy! This chapter originally wasn't even meant to be! I had something else in mind, preferably with S.O.P.H.I.E. and Dr. Gaul was not meant to be more than a name! but then someone suggested something, and someone else suggested something else, and before I knew it, I landed up with this jewel! Hope you enjoyed it!
PS: Oh n yes, "Smile For Me" isn't a real novel, just something I made up