Made it to Chapter 13! There's 3-4 chapters left after this one, including an epilogue. When I first started Red Mirror, I envisioned it as a trilogy, but things have changed so much since then that this really feels like a much less contrived place to end things that will leave you, the readers, much more satisfied. We've got a lot of plot to wrap up and a couple chapters to get through before the end though, I just wanted to thank you all for joining me on this ride!
Let me know what you think of this chapter! It's a doozy! ;)
-Two Hours before Kat's arrival-The Light Headquarters-
Lian came to with a pounding headache.
An instant later she realized she was bound to a cold metal table, her ankles and wrists strapped down with individual cuffs, and a leather band rested against her sternum and across her shoulders, effectively immobilizing her. Instinct left her jerking in the binds, trying desperately to slip her hands out, but she couldn't dislocate her thumbs right with the cuffs being leather instead of metal so all the training her grandmother had given her was useless.
"Don't struggle, Mrs Allen. The paralytic is just only wearing off." A deep gravelly voice whispered in her ear.
Her eyes flicked open and a gasp escaped her at the sight of the hideous man above her. Physically most wouldn't think him ugly, but she could feel his very soul, and it was darker than any she'd ever felt before. She muttered out the first thing that came to mind, "Who are you?"
She knew who he was though, from League files, even before he said with a smile, "Vandal Savage."
"Let me go." Lian gritted out, pushing a wave of emotions at him that she hoped resembled compliance.
He shook his head, "No, little Kit, I'm not going to let you go. And you'll only tire yourself trying to emotionally manipulate me. You don't have the finesse to make anyone do anything they don't want to do. Wether you spread your legs for that obnoxious speedster or not, you're just a little girl."
"Fuck you." She hissed. "He's my husband."
"Relax, Kit. You're upsetting my physician with your heart rate." He told her, patting her shoulder, "Besides, my men said they left your husband on the island alive. You're lucky I told them to get you here as soon as possible. He's lucky you had sense enough to incapacitate his foolish ass and stash him somewhere. You kept him from throwing his life away. I appreciate that in a woman."
Lian shrugged away from his touch, and glared up at him, "I thought I was a little girl."
"Compared to me, Kit, you haven't even been born." He said indulgently. "Now hold still."
A woman appeared in her peripheral vision with a phlebotomy kit. "No chance in hell." Lian spat at the woman, jerking her arms to her sides as tightly as she could given the restraints holding her onto the metal table she was laying on.
"Please don't move. I've already taken two vials, I just need another pair." The woman said lifelessly.
"Why do you need more blood, Dr. Tate?" Vandal asked curiously.
"Just further blood work and a sample to compare after the test results." She answered blandly, gesturing for a lab assistant to hold Lian's arm still.
Savage hummed, "I'm so glad I brought you onto this project. You're very capable, Dr. Tate."
"Capable of testing someone without their consent you mean." Lian said, glaring at the woman as she slid a needle into Lian's arm.
The supposed Dr. Tate looked at Savage, "Might I suggest gagging the subject? It's distracting my associates."
"IT? Did you just call me an 'it'? I'm a real person who's been kidnapped and is being held against..." Lian was cut off by a wad of fabric being shoved in her mouth so firmly that she almost choked on it. She settled for glaring at them all with her sharp blue eyes.
The scientist barely blinked at Savage's rough treatment, and completely ignored Lian's glare, glancing down at a clipboard in her hands, "Human Chorionic Gonadotropin levels are less than five, by the way, so Phase 2 will have to proceed as scheduled if Phase 1 goes as planned. We've already flushed the remaining drugs from the body, regular ovulation should resume shortly."
Lian felt sick. Whatever he wanted her for, it involved reproduction. She looked helplessly at the people in the room, trying to get just one of them to feel enough of her fear and desperation that they would let her go. She couldn't just lay down and let them use her like a lab rat. Gagged or not, she was going to fight with everything she had left.
- -Two Hours Later- -
Kat felt cold moving among the hallways that had once been a safe feeling place. Fortunately, it was late, and none of the scientists wandering the halls appeared to have any idea the righteous fury that was about to rain down on them. She wasn't going to be the dealer of that, however. She was after Savage and her daughter. If he'd harmed Lian, he would die.
A woman she recognized as one of the legitimate business shareholders met her in the hall, "Mina, Mr Savage just sent us out to find you. He has something he'd like to discuss with you."
"Take me to him, then." She said gruffly, pretending to be bored.
The woman smiled, oblivious to how close she was to a killer on the hunt for blood. The Light liked their underlings like that though, ignorant and good looking. No ugly henchmen for the Light. Perhaps she should have tried slicing her own pretty face to ribbons instead of trying to kill herself. The other woman was unaware of her dark inner monologue, that smile still on her face as she said, "Of course, follow me."
The woman attempted smalltalk, but Kat wasn't listening, at least until she stopped in front of a private elevator, "He's in the lab downstairs. I'll be interested to know what's inside. He's been very secretive."
"I'll report back to you." Kat said in Mina's voice.
"Thank you." The woman smiled, not noticing the red sticker Kat smoothed on to the wall behind her, activating a homing beacon that would let those outside know where she'd gone.
The elevator ride was quick, but she could tell that the lab was built underground. Never a good sign. Underground facilities were just as good for secrecy as they were for burying secrets if things went wrong. A few well placed explosives and it would be like it had never existed at all. The room she entered was large and white, set up like a surgery theater with a metal table in the center and equipment lining the walls.
Lian was laying on the table, gagged, alert and exuding a sickening mix of anger and fear. She seemed unharmed though, just getting angrier when a man in a lab coat rearranged her shirt to place a heart monitor on her chest. Again, not a good sign.
"I see you acquired your target successfully. Was she as difficult to get as you'd feared?" She asked, keeping her tone carefully even as she drug her eyes to where Savage was leaning against one of the white walls.
He shrugged one large muscled shoulder, "There's only so much you can expect from hired help. They didn't kill her husband like I'd asked, but I'm appreciative that they brought her to me undamaged."
She tipped her head up haughtily, "I'd have killed him for you, if you'd sent me there instead of giving me a night off."
Lian whined through the gag, looking agonized and positively crushed. Kat was distracted from Savage for a split second, wishing she could comfort her daughter. But a whole room and armed guards stood between them.
Vandal chuckled darkly, drawing her attention away from Lian, "Ah, why don't we stop with pretenses, Katherine."
She froze for an instant, ignoring the hope that flared to life in Lian's blue eyes in favor of saying firmly, "My name is Mina."
Another chuckle that chilled her to the bone, "We both know it's not, Mrs Harper. Mina Crane would not be so interested in my little captive."
"My curiosity is bred from boredom. That, and I stabbed her less than a month ago." She said evenly, trying so hard to skate under the radar she knew she'd already tripped.
"Yes, you did. You didn't kill her though. I was hoping you would. That gives me a chance to let you in on a little secret though." Savage said, grinning maniacally and ripped the gag from between Lian's teeth. "This little one could be just like her mother."
"What?" Kat and Lian said together.
"Cat's have nine lives. Lian's used one already, her first test. The odds of a child surviving birth four months premature are extraordinary. Most would say impossible, especially when her mother was injected with massive amounts of pitocin and saline. Yet she was born whole and healthy a few hours later. A miracle. The hospital would have been swarmed with news had our people not been staffing the hospital that night." Vandal explained further, "You see her father is the genetic copy of a man descended from my very own blood line, Roy Harper, in perfect health his whole life. You on the other hand had a serious heart condition that would have killed you before you so much as reached fifteen pounds in weight."
"Don't touch me." Lian growled, biting at his hand when he tried to trail it down her cheek.
He simply smiled, continuing his deranged dissertation, "Using my own mutated DNA, I developed a serum to cheat death. It's effective, but each time, it is harder for the decedent to come back, hence your unfortunate coffin incident. I sent Red Claw after you all those years ago with a dart laced with a belladonna derived toxin, yet you emerged from the water alive. A very successful test. The next step was to let you and the clone reconnect after that first chance encounter with the real Roy. That worked out better than planned, and then came Lian, the fruit of all those awful years of labor."
"What do you want with her?" Kat finally asked, looking for a way, any way, to free her daughter without him noticing and interfering, but kept coming up empty.
"I live off the flesh of my descendants. Your Lian is one of those descendants of mine, through her father. Through you, she's near immortal. The perfect creation to help keep me alive. Eight lives left, but I intend for her to pass her genetics along to her children so I can use them as well. Longer life spans, multiple uses, easily located, perfect." Vandal whispered the last part, stroking a hand through Lian's red curls. "Don't worry, Kit. I'll show you the world before your last life is up. You'll have almost ten years of living as any girl your age could dream."
"Except for the part where you plan to kill and eat me every few years, and force me to have kids you'll do the same thing to." Lian hissed, jerking in her bindings again.
"True." He admitted, nonplussed. Horror spread through Kat. Yes she'd been manipulated since the day she was born, but having Lian had been her choice. She remembered that much. What Savage had just confessed to was almost worse than anything they'd done to her. They'd stolen her mind and most of her body, but they'd never gone that far.
"Why not just keep cloning us? Why go through all the effort of medically engineering me?" Lian asked, sagging against the table and breaking her mother's trial of spiraling thoughts.
"After a few clonings the tissue becomes unusable for my particular needs. Degradation of the original genetic code and all. Useless." He said blithely, like he wasn't talking about lives. Even artificially created lives. And both women knew that that didn't really matter. They both loved Red, and he was one of those clones. Savage continued, "That's what led to Lian, organic reproduction merged with genetic engineering. Revolutionary. Of course, we have one last test, to ensure our theories are correct and it wasn't just mother healing child."
"What?" Kat asked, confused, at least until she saw the scalpel in his hand, "No!"
Savage drug the blade across the pale skin of Lian's throat, pressing down, smiling when she screamed shrilly once and blood stained her skin, first slowly, and then in pulsing bursts. Lian's body went lax on the table.
"Lian!" Kat screamed, closing the distance between them and knocking Vandal aside.
Lian gurgled weakly, and her blue eyes could hardly follow Kat's movements as the older woman pressed her hands on either side of Lian's neck to try and stop the torrent of blood from leaving her daughter. Lian whispered out something that might have been 'mom', but he'd damaged her vocal chords too badly, she mostly just swallowed blood. Lian's eyes were visibly losing more and more focus with every pump of her dying heart.
Kat felt tears on her face, and nodded, "I'm right here. I'm so sorry." Lian blinked once before falling deathly still, a tiny smile on her face, and expelled one last breath, blood staining her lips, a terrible and shrill sound filing the air. A second later, and the emotional presence in Kat's head flickered and went out, like it had never been there at all. She hadn't noticed it until it was gone. Lian had been with her the whole time. "No!" Kat howled, and sobbed as she took one last look at her dead daughter before seeking immediate and swift justice. "You just killed my daughter."
Vandal shrugged, "Technically she's my granddaughter, a couple dozen generations removed, of course. In the name of science, sometimes sacrifices must be made."
"You're heartless." She said softly in realization as a plan formed in her head. She took a deep breath, stilling her trembling bloody hands as she drifted to lock the only door, "Let's make the inside match the outside."
The two guards were easy to dispatch, and it took just a few seconds to disable their weapons. The scientists screamed, rushing the door that Kat had already rendered useless from the inside.
It might not be the justice that the League approved of, but for once being Mina helped her be more than the Kat she had been before. The thirst for blood mingled with her rage, and she lost herself in the carnage. She didn't care. Nothing mattered but destroying every living creature in the locked down lab. Her daughter was dead, and those responsible would pay with their lives, Vandal Savage most of all.
She'd then taken to removing all the alleged scientists who had cavorted with him from the equation. They were easy enough, none warriors, and all helpless as newborn kittens under the strength of her wrath. Savage seemed genuinely surprised when she came for him, and laughed.
He had actually laughed when she came for him, so sure she would never be able to do it. But she was younger, smaller, faster than the man who had lived so long and so terribly. Most of all, she had nothing left to lose. Her mind was fractured and her daughter dead. Red's love was a far flung hope that had disintegrated when their daughter had died. She fought Vandal Savage with every once of strength she had, with no thought to her own safety. His pride led to his downfall, and she made sure he would never live again.
His heart fell from her hand as the rage fled as quickly as it had come.
Covered in blood, Kat staggered back to Lian, releasing her from the leather binds that had held her down, ripped off the electrodes that were still making the heart monitor ring that god-awful high pitched squealing that was making her head spin, and lifted Lian's body off the cold metal table.
Savage had jammed a scalpel into the muscles of her good thigh before she'd killed him. The injury wasn't life threatening, but she'd been beaten all over and the combination of injuries was almost more than she could handle. Kat couldn't support her weight and Lian's on it for any longer than it took to stagger two yards away.
She laid Lian out gently on the floor, "Just a minute, baby. Momma'll be right back."
Kat stumbled from the linen cabinet to a sink, and returned to Lian's side, trying in vain to wipe the blood off Lian's face. There was too much of it though, and Kat couldn't stay strong anymore. She pulled Lian close, and kissed her cheek. "I'm so sorry."
Cradling her daughter's corpse in her arms, and trying desperately to hold herself together, Kat began to count.
How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core where I've become so numb
Without a soul my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become
Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life
Bring Me To Life
By: Evanescence
