Omega [REDUX]

Chapter 32

She felt light. Groggy, but weightlessly so. Almost feverish, but that was impossible, she'd cool herself down right away.

Or would she? She didn't know anymore.

Her dreamscape was a mess of colour, predominantly white, but flashes of memory lined the walls that she could never seem to touch, the surfaces of the images forever out of her reach. She took a step backward, tentatively, hearing the footstep reverberate off the walls of her confinement.

Her senses weren't working properly; she couldn't tell where she was, what the material that made up her cell was, and she couldn't put her finger on the images that she saw. Memories, yes, but distant, fading ones that eluded her mental grasp.

"Elsa."

The whisper echoed around her. She turned. There was no one behind her, just another expanse of white.

"Do you mind if I ask what's wrong?"

That voice… I know that voice…

"DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN?"

She whipped around. The voice was unmistakable now.

"For the record, you look pretty good yourself."

"Anna?" The word escaped her lips before she had control of herself. Her eyes scanned her surroundings desperately, looking for an answer to her question. The images around her came into focus; portraits of Anna's beautiful features, Anna flexing in front of her before they carried on with training, Anna in the gorgeous dress she wore to prom. Elsa almost smiled.

"I love you too, Elsa."

"I really need you to do… things to me."

"You need a distraction—"

A scream cut through the serenity. She felt her heart leap to her throat as she whipped around yet again, trying to identify the source. Around her, everything began to fester, the whiteness of her surroundings beginning to fade to a deathly grey.

"Elsa!"

More screaming, the ghastly sound no longer just reverberating off the walls, but also inside her head. The images were changing now; Anna's gorgeous features were replaced by other images of her. Images of her petrified. Images of her crying.

Images of her screaming.

Elsa's head darted left and right, desperately trying to look for the source of the screaming. She couldn't. Wherever she turned the only thing that greeted her was Anna's despair, and she was powerless to stop it. She couldn't take the ghastly screaming anymore. She slammed her hands over her ears, trying to cut it out, but the screams only seemed to intensify. She dropped to her knees, curling up upon the floor, gritting her teeth as the screams rang out.

Then abruptly, they stopped.

"Elsa?"

The single, unmistakable word reached her ears, and she froze. It had come from behind her, and unlike the rest of the sounds she'd been hearing, it'd come from directly behind her.

Slowly, cautiously, she turned around.

Anna.

It was her. Unmistakably so; her features were identical, the eyes, the ears, the freckles in exactly the same places. Clad in a shroud of black, wispy shadows, her face a mask of fear, eyes shimmering with a film of tears. Standing over her.

Then Elsa noticed the barrel of the gun pointing down at her, directly at her head, the handle wrapped by Anna's shadow-clad fingers, its silvery finish along its sides gleaming in the grey backlight. Her heart sank.

Anna squeezed the trigger.

A gunshot.

And abruptly, everything turned to black.

Elsa thrashed herself awake. Her hand struck a panel, and pain coursed through her nerves, forcing her eyes open.

What the hell was that?

She sat there, breathing heavily, nursing the pain with her other hand, her bodice covered in beads of sweat. She took stock of her surroundings. Military grade temporary bed, inside what appeared to be a tent, a small light on a table next to her.

The panel next to her had been a piece of medical equipment, a diagnosis machine, supposed to have been monitoring her vital signs. Elsa had put a dent into its side, and now its screen had shorted. She could still hear it humming, but it wasn't going to be working properly anytime soon.

She let her hands fall to her sides, sighing, contemplating her next move. She didn't feel as weak anymore, but she was still emotionally drained, and shaken up from her nightmare.

Anna.

She could still hear the ghastly screams in her head. She planted her hands and swung her legs off, feeling her strength return partially to her, and mustering it to trod outside, pulling back the tent flaps as she did. Light coursed into her pupils, and her irises quickly compensated.

She was in another hangar, but this one was more bustling, and less creepy than the one she'd just been evacuated from.

For a while she let the atmosphere permeate her, the announcements and yelling and engines firing up drowned out the nightmares in her head, the hustle and bustle taking her mind off for a brief moment. Then reality slapped her right back, and she felt the dull ache in her chest again. She had lost Anna. Anna was now somewhere deep in Empyrean territory, in the company of the now completely brainwashed Ascendants, and with her luck, Weselton as well.

She realized she'd condemned Anna to an uncertain, and most certainly unpleasant, fate.

And she hated herself so much for it.

"Elsa?"

The word was what she needed to hear, but the voice wasn't Anna's. She turned, almost reluctantly so.

Merida limped towards her. Her face had a few scratches on them, but she was otherwise unharmed. Next to her, Rapunzel pushed Belle in a wheelchair. Belle's legs were wrapped in casts, and she looked visibly pained. Rapunzel looked gaunt, a far cry from her normally radiant outward appearance.

"Hey." The syllable she uttered was monotone, devoid of any emotion, surprising herself.

"You see Anna around anywhere?"

She could hear the worry in Merida's voice, and a similar look upon Belle and Rapunzel's faces. Her lower lip trembled. How was she to answer them? That she'd basically gotten a headache and got pinned by an indoctrinated mutant from her past? That she'd failed to protect Anna despite being the closest and most available form of help?

"She was kidnapped."

She saw Merida's hand pull back abruptly through her enhanced eyes, albeit in slow motion, fully aware of what was coming. She didn't block it. She didn't dodge it. She didn't even close her eyes.

I deserve it, she thought, as the fist came lashing out to connect with her cheek. Her lower jaw took the brunt of the force as Merida's knuckles slammed into her, snapping her entire head to the right. She let the momentum carry her, but didn't flinch. "You BITCH!" Merida screamed, trying to lunge at her, only to be restrained by Rapunzel. "You were supposed to protect her!"

Burning pools of tears began to well up in her eyes.

"You were the most powerful, most competent person in that hall, and you LET HER GET TAKEN!"

"That's not fair, Merida," said Rapunzel, tightening her grip on Merida's upper arm, the grip so tight Elsa could see the creases on Merida's blouse. "You can't say that."

Elsa wasn't expecting anything less from Merida. Anna was like a sister to her. Damned if that hadn't been the expected reaction from her. Damned if she hadn't deserved the punch she'd got. Her heart bore the pain of a thousand wounds as she stood there, ready to face Merida's wrath, her just deserts, her reckoning.

But Rapunzel's words seemed to soothe Merida's frayed mental state with sound reasoning. "You're right," she said, sniffing but holding her ground. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have hit you, Elsa."

"It's okay," Elsa replied, her own eyes closing to let a tear roll down her cheek. "It was my fault. I should have saved her." She brushed the tear away with the back of her hand.

Merida was close to crying now. After another spate of apologizing she walked away, ashamed, with Rapunzel trailing behind, pushing Belle along. Elsa watched them go. It didn't seem quite so right without Anna walking alongside them, telling them a joke or bemusing them with her antics.

Nothing seemed right without her.

This isn't over yet. Her hands balled into fists, and she felt her power course through her veins. The tips of her vision tinged blue. Not by a long shot.

"Why did you come?"

Hans, the director of the academy, sat before him, left arm bandaged in a cast. Kristoff had heard he'd single handedly fought off a full squadron of fully armed, fully armoured Empyrean soldiers before he was knocked out in a melee, and academy staff gunned down the attackers. The man had a track record with more decorations than Kristoff's mission deployment count.

And now here they were, sitting in a war room, sipping coffee together.

"I had intel that you were under attack," he responded simply.

"From who?" Hans narrowed his eyebrows and leaned forward. "We were cut off from communications when the attack commenced because we all had to run, and were limited to short-wave transponder earpieces. How'd word get out?'

The war room, luckily, was sealed. Hans had asked Kristoff to come because he apparently had a mission for him, but wanted to ask a few questions anyway. Kristoff looked left and right regardless, just to be sure.

"You sure this room ain't bugged by some nosy scrub, sir?" he asked, keeping his voice down.

"Unless you consider UIF HQ a 'nosy scrub'," Hans said with a grin, "then no. I made sure of it."

Kristoff sighed. "Elsa, the Ascendant. She hacked a UIF helmet transponder and extended its effective range to reach our base, and contacted me using my personnel records that she somehow had access to."

Hans' eyes widened. "She made it? I thought I saw her go down."

"Very much so, sir. Checked on her myself about fifteen minutes ago. She was however, out cold. She expended a lot of energy getting us out of there."

"That's a relief." Hans chuckled. "Should've known. She's a clever girl. A strong, resilient one at that."

"We wouldn't have gotten so many out of there if not for her."

"Why did you come for us?"

Kristoff was confused. "I'm sorry sir, I thought I just answered your question."

"I meant, despite all that's happened between you two, and the fact that she contacted you through unsafe and questionable means, why did you decide to trust whatever she said?"

Kristoff cocked an eyebrow. "You know about the incident?"

Hans chuckled grimly. "I was the one who sanctioned your operation to retrieve her."

Kristoff's throat felt dry. "I watched your entire operation back from HQ, even from Flynn and Nemo's helmet perspectives," Hans said. "I don't feel any better about it than you do."

"After that I kept tabs on her, monitoring her progress ever since we began to rehabilitate her, even when we introduced her into the student population." Hans leaned back wistfully in his chair. "Given the circumstances, I'm surprised you followed her instructions." He took another sip of his coffee. "She blames herself for that incident every day."

"I got my teammates killed," Kristoff said, voice devoid of emotion. "Not her."

"You trusted her because she wasn't to blame?"

Kristoff sighed as he put his mug down, unsure of where to begin. "I went to the academy memorial to pay my respects a few months back, before all of this began. The exact day my teammates were killed."

"And?"

"She was there. Paying her respects too."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"From there I knew she was…" He struggled to find the word. "…human. That she had a conscience. That she wasn't ruthless or manipulative or cold. That she cared."

Hans leaned forward, taking a good look at him. "You still took a pretty big risk. Your actions give any prosecutor grounds to charge you for deserting your post, and it doesn't help that Elsa's transmission was encrypted and untraceable. Hell, they could argue that you couldn't be sure it was Elsa."

"I knew it was her."

"How?"

"I don't know," Kristoff admitted. "Just got a feeling."

Hans chuckled again. "Pray that sixth sense keeps working for you, soldier. It gets people killed, and it gets people out. Keep praying that it keeps working."

"Yes sir," he nodded grimly.

The officer turned away, retrieving a datapad from his briefcase. "In any case, before I brief you on your mission, there are a few people I need to call in. The first would be Elsa herself, now that I know she's alive—"

"With all due respect sir, I'm not sure she's in any condition to fight, not after what she's just been through."

Hans turned back to look at Kristoff, eyeing him curiously again. "You care about her."

"She saved me, my squad, and a whole bunch of civilians twice over sir," he responded. "I owe her."

"Don't worry, son," Hans said, a small smile forming on his face. "I know how fast she recovers, and have a decent idea of what she's capable of. She's probably back on her feet right now."

"And the other person, sir?"

"You've met him before."

"I have?"

"Sure you have. His name is Charles."

Elsa found herself walking down the inner walkways of the hangar. She'd dissipated her ice dress to form a tighter, sleeker outfit around her, but that didn't stop her from receiving a few glances from the people she passed by. It didn't bother her; she hurt too much inside to care.

She didn't know what Hans wanted now. Frankly, she couldn't care; she needed a way to get Anna back, not some debriefing for whatever had happened back in the academy. And if she knew Hans well enough, that was exactly what he was going to do.

She found herself at the room she'd been told to come to. Wordlessly she pushed open the door. Inside, she found Hans and Kristoff sitting at a table, along with another figure in a wheelchair.

Charles.

The other soldier she had incapacitated when she was rescued.

She watched his eyes widen as she entered. Before the door could swing shut behind her Charles had drawn a sidearm from his wheelchair and pulled the trigger. The bullet clattered harmlessly off the icy ward that instantly materialized before her. Kristoff quickly reached over pushed the pistol down toward the table.

"Relax, Charles," Hans said, completely unfazed, in stark contrast to Kristoff as Charles turned to glare at them in shock. "She's with us."

"She murdered two of our teammates!" Charles voice had begun to waver as he spoke directly to Kristoff. "How—?"

"It's okay." Kristoff put a hand on his shoulder. "The person who murdered Flynn and Nemo isn't the person standing before you right now."

"Elsa," Hans addressed her. "Allow me to introduce you to—"

"I know who he is," Elsa cut him off, moving forward and pulling up a chair. "I never forget a face. And I already know he's coordinating anti-Ascendant operations for the UIF." She turned the chair backwards and sat down, resting her hands on the backrest. "Why'd you call me here?" The venom in her voice surprised herself.

"I called you here to place you on an operation to rescue Anna."

Her eyes narrowed. "What?"

"We have intel to coordinate that operation right now," Kristoff said. "And we kind of have to; anyone in Empyrean's hands could be used as a hostage, so it's in everyone's interests to get her back. Especially since every offensive has been targeting you in one way or another."

"More importantly," Hans continued, "I wouldn't want to leave someone you care about to die."

Her eyes brimmed with tears.

"I still disagree with this operation in its entirety, despite what you've told me," Charles interrupted. "More importantly, why are we putting her on this operation? Is she even combat capable?"

Kristoff chuckled to himself.

"Do you want her to demonstrate?" asked Hans. "I think she'd be more than willing to."

Charles raised the gun again. "You might have seen her in action but I still don't think—"

Elsa simply raised her hand, the icy blast that lashed out from her palm knocking the pistol straight out of Charles' hand as it snapped back, leaving a thin layer of frost where it had impacted. Charles glanced at his fingers, and wordlessly brushed off the frost with his other hand. "I stand corrected."

"What have you got?" she managed, her voice quivering.

"There's a lot to this, so I need you to bear with me." Hans dropped a small device upon the table, and triggered it via a button on the side. A blue holographic display popped up, and a myriad of text and images began to revolve around the centerpoint.

"I did some digging after we got here while you were still out," Hans went on, swiping his hand amidst the blue light to bring out the information needed, "and the first thing I did was review the security footage from the academy data that'd been secured offsite." He brought up the video and increased its resolution with a flush of his fingers. "I believe you are familiar with this?"

Elsa watched the screen. She watched Ursula explode in a flash of bright light, tearing away bits of the wall to reveal the dropship hovering outside. She watched Elaine bound over and pin her to the floor with her blade-arm. She watched Anna being kidnapped, screaming away as she did.

Her chest felt a stab of agony.

"After that, I sent Ursula's face through recognition processes and scanned various CCTV cameras for her presence during the past few days." Hans swiped away the video footage and brought up more. "This footage seemed particularly relevant."

Elsa leaned forward as the computer identified the first figure as Ursula. She was in a side alley between twin skyscrapers, conversing with a hooded figure. She reached over and interfaced with the hologram; the video zoomed in and enhanced the image, enlarging the hooded figure's exposed arm.

Except it wasn't really an arm. It was obscured by chunks of black substance.

"Edmund."

"Who?" Kristoff said. "I'm sorry, is there something I'm missing here?"

"One of the other Ascendants," Hans filled in. "She can tell you more."

"There were five of us bred by Empyrean," Elsa spoke, bringing up the image of Anna's abduction and rewinding the footage. "This is Elaine," she said, pointing at the silvery figure, "manipulator of metal. The other guy you saw there was Edmund, manipulator of earth."

"Great," Charles muttered. "As if one Ascendant wasn't bad enough, we have two more."

"There are more. There's Edward, manipulator of fire, and Edison, manipulator of electricity. One of which we no longer have to worry about."

"You're just telling us this now?" Kristoff asked.

"You both didn't have security clearance to know this information prior to this meeting," said Hans, addressing the pair of battle-scarred soldiers. "And she didn't want to share this with anyone up till now."

"What's their presence got to do with Anna?" Elsa pressed.

"We traced the shuttle as it departed, thanks to you being able to secure the data. Academy sensors tracked the aircraft passing over the 5th Sector borders—"

"That doesn't sound right," Charles said. "That meant they passed our borders' anti-air defenses as they flew in. And they had to drop off Edmund or whatever his name is."

"That's because," Hans said as he brought up triangulated scanners and overlapped the data into a visual representation, "just past the borders their shuttle vanished. Gone. Not a trace of it."

"That's their ghost shuttle."

They all turned to Elsa. "What?"

"They forced me to cloak the shuttle using my ice powers. That shuttle can avoid thermal detection, radiowave detection, and about every other thing our sensors are supposed to detect. The only reason why they haven't replicated this "ghosting" technique for their other aircraft it is because they don't have me around anymore."

"It isn't immune from all forms of detection," Hans said. "I tracked it down not by tracing the shuttle, but by tracing the Ascendants inside."

Elsa's eyes narrowed. "How?"

Hans reached over and brought up another chart, this time what appeared to be a bodily scan. "When we recovered you from Empyrean hands, we discovered you were emitting trace energies. We dubbed it "kinesis" energy." He pointed at the head of the figure. "Mainly emitted from your brain."

"And you calibrated our sensors to look for similar traces of kinesis," Kristoff finished.

"Correct." Hans adjusted the triangulated scanning data, now factoring in his scans for the kinesis trails, marked in bright orange. "Then I followed our orange trail to wherever they were going. That allowed me to pinpoint their exact location… here."

The display placed a large warning sign next to the highlighted area. Elsa gripped the backrest a little tighter. The highlighted area was blanketed in wisps of orange.

Empyrean, the ghostly voice whispered in her ear. She quickly shook it off.

"You okay?" asked Kristoff.

"I know the place," she replied simply.

"You do?"

"It's where we grew up. That's why there's so much energy coalescing there."

"So Empyrean takes her friend," Charles began, "back to the place where all of the Ascendants are bred? That doesn't make sense."

"It does, since they're trying to target me," Elsa responded, standing up and pushing the chair away. "They want me to mount a rescue. They're definitely setting a trap."

Silence fell upon the four of them as they contemplated these facts.

"Well if that's the case," Charles said as he pushed his wheelchair back, "it's clear cut. We abandon this mission entirely."

"We can't do that," Hans replied.

"Why not?" Charles countered. "Rescuing this girl makes no difference in the grand scheme of things."

Elsa clenched her fist beneath the table.

"And besides," Charles went on, "since it's clearly a trap, we risk losing our greatest war asset to a plan that is clearly in front of us. There's absolutely no reason to—"

Elsa slammed her leg against the table with such force that the table flipped over Charles and crashed into the floor behind him. Petrified, he tried to back away, only for Elsa to blast out the wheelchair from under him with a cyan lance of energy. He slammed to the ground, half gasping for breath, half gasping in fear.

"I am not an asset," she snarled as she yanked Charles by the neck and pulled him up to her full height, dangling him in the air with her outstretched arm. He grappled at her hand and gasped for breath. "And trust me, saving her has a much bigger difference in the grand scheme of things."

With a heave she slammed him into the ground, with just enough force to cause him pain, but not enough force to break anything. He cried out as he hit the metal flooring, struggling to push himself up in spite of his crippled legs. Elsa knelt beside him, her right arm morphing into an icy blade, the edge emanating frost with every passing moment.

She pushed Charles' face to look at her. He quivered. It wasn't because of the cold. "This – this is a clear display of assault and insubor—"

"The person that took away your ability to walk is gone now," Elsa spat. "Don't make her come back."

He shut up on the spot.

"I don't give a shit about your reasons. I'm going to get her, and if you're not with me then you're against me. You want to talk about it, you can talk to the hand." She raised her blade-arm for emphasis, and his breathing quickened as he leaned back, away from the icy edge.

"I will not—"

Elsa's arm morphed back into a fist and lashed out, connecting with his forehead and snapping his neck back. He collapsed, out cold.

"What got into you?" Hans asked as she stood up.

"I got sick of his shit."

She turned on her heel, trod out the room and slammed the door behind her.

"I need access to the armoury."

"Sorry," the soldier guarding the door replied, "can't do that unless—"

"—you've got orders," she finished for him. "Order is direct from General Hans for a sanctioned hostage retrieval mission. I need access."

Begrudgingly the soldier stepped out of the way, evidently pretty uncomfortable with the turn of events. Elsa paid no attention to him and walked right on through.

She surveyed locker after locker of weaponry. She didn't know what she was going to need, now that she was actually thinking about it. A powered warsuit would probably enable her to carry sufficient ammunition for a standard-issue assault rifle and side arm. She'd have to customize her weaponry, she'd have to pack grenades and navigational aids, she'd also have to—

"You okay?"

Her train of thought was interrupted by footsteps and a voice behind her. She turned her head. "I guess I'm fine, of sorts," she replied.

"Tell that to Charles when he wakes up," Kristoff said, coming to a stop in front of her. "He's gonna think you got a screw loose or some shiz."

"Charles can go fuck himself."

Kristoff chuckled. "Give him time. He doesn't know you."

"And you do?"

"A little bit better, I'd expect."

Elsa, sighing, turned to face Kristoff fully. "I know I scarred both of you, perhaps scarred him in more ways than I did you. But right now, I have to go save Anna, regardless whether all of this is a trap. I just can't lose her."

"I know."

"So why are you here?"

She watched Kristoff hand her the datapad he'd been holding behind his back the whole time, and wordlessly brought up the contents. It was a series of documents, mostly approved, sanctioning the hostage retrieval operation, codenamed Blue Rose. Another set of documents detailed their logistics of deployment, alongside crucial mission details and intel.

"Grab what you need," Kristoff said as Elsa shut off the datapad. "We'll be waiting for you in the hangar."

"We?"

"Me and my team."

Her eyes softened. "You don't need to do this."

"I know."

"I don't know who or what we'll be facing. It might be a one way trip."

"As long as you're still up and running, I'd say we have a pretty good shot. And besides," he said, placing a hand on Elsa's shoulder, "I owe you. You've done more than enough for me, my team, and a whole lot of people. It's time I returned the favour."

He patted her shoulder again and turned on his heel, exiting the armour. Elsa watched him go, a warm soothing feeling in her heart.

Then she turned back to the weapon lockers with a steely determination, her vision tinging blue once more.