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Nice update!

Poor Sigmund, forced to read Playboy, subject to orders Idania :) . (I love them :D ).

You did a good job at describing the event of going into space.

Hmm...The dreams of blood on the walls and the "evil" girl are reminding me of the game FEAR. That game creeped me out :? .

Sorry that I did not critque that much. I have been getting alot of homework these days :( :x .

Part Four: Mephistopheles

Jackson realized how hard escape would be. When he wasn’t in his office, he was watched in person. When he was, he was now watched by cameras that the agents had set up. They had made those cameras as visible as possible, and also told him that any attempt to block their view would result in a punishment of their own choosing, a decree which had apparently come from the Chimera himself.

They covered the room from just about every possible angle, four of them rotating in such a way so that no part of the room was ever outside of their field of view.

If he left, they would know, and more than likely, he would be watched just as closely there, even if he didn’t notice it. His “guards” were large, true, but they didn’t seem to have a...presence. It was as if they were shadows. And their utter lack of noise! They should have made heavy, clearly audible sounds- how were they so quiet?

There was nothing quite like several things that utterly hated you strolling about freely in your own home, who for the hell of it could decide to sneak up behind you and break your kneecaps. But that was what he would have to live with, probably for the rest of his life- which wouldn’t be too long, more than likely. Jackson would have been surprised if the Chimera even believed his old accomplice to think himself saved. It seemed so out of character for him to make that kind of presumption. But, then again, why else would the guards be there?

Jackson filtered through his options. The blueprints to his house –all of them- had been given to the Chimera. All of his escape hatches were known now, as likely were most of his other methods.

There was one thing that none of the cameras could see from their high perch, though.

The largish revolver under Jackson’s desk. At any moment, the folding panel could slide and obscure the weapon from view. He wondered how he would fare simply gunning down those massive beasts. Their hides wouldn’t be able to take the shot, and their thin blood would do the rest of his work for him.

He also knew that he had absolutely no idea how many of these things there were. And that they were harassing his security force, presumably to disconcert them- a dozen had already left, leaving him with only six left, who he tempted by delegating the other dozen’s pay to the last stragglers. It showed Jackson that enough money could buy anything, even faithful friends.

An animal that feared for its life would, if caught in a corner, fight back. Jackson wondered if the Chimera anticipated him to resist. Initially, perhaps- but that was done for. Once Jackson resisted, even if he succeeded in driving out the Chimera’s forces, he would ultimately be destroyed- the blackmail would be released, and there was –as far as Jackson was concerned- more than enough to blacklist him from any company. And how could he keep the Chimera from finding him?

Then Jackson realized something. He owned Zaire Beta, made for Morph addicts. As far as Jackson knew, Morph addiction was psychological, not physical, so he wouldn’t get hooked to his own merchandise. Assuming he could reach his stash…

He would have to get his security force first. And more than likely, he wouldn’t have access to them unless he fought his way there.

It was ridiculously dangerous. The odds of his death would be likely. Jackson wondered if there would be a more opportune time. He would not gain the Chimera’s trust back, ever. Every second wasted was a second from his life now. His force could be hidden anywhere- he wasn’t allowed free roaming access anymore, all his food (which was never his own choice, and usually the least appetizing possible- the Chimera’s agents were the ones that chose it, after all.) was delivered to his door. His vault door was now used against him- he would have to knock before its use. If he took the revolver out, they would see him.

Jackson sighed and considered himself a dead man, cursed himself for trying to fight against the Chimera.

No…Wait…

It was never him that failed. It was his troops, for not seeing their own assailants. He couldn’t have known. It was just good business. He never would have cursed himself but a week ago, and even when he brooded in silence before the Chimera re-established connection, he never cursed his own decision. Always those of his underlings.

Maybe the Chimera was trying to work something on him. And Jackson realized he was falling for it, even if he was now realizing it. He wondered if that would make it stop…

Then the phone rang. He answered it without changing expression or the direction of his neck, only his eyes to face the video screen.

“Doctor Jackson. How are my little ones treating you?”

“Like one of their own,” Jackson said, with only the slightest hint of bitter sarcasm in his voice.

The Chimera chuckled. “Then it’s a wonder you’re still alive. By the way, just so you know…your stashes have been moved.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, your stashes have all been moved. Out of state. They’ll be out of country by tomorrow, to one of my own warehouses in Cairo. Rest assured, you’ll have no new face to own so you can simply stroll out from under my nose. And do not think that I can’t simply freeze all your assets. Or kill all your troops. Or-”

“I get the point,” Jackson said. “I’m a mouse running through your maze, and you can take the cheese away any time you like.”

“That would be an excellent metaphor, Doctor, yes. However, there is something else I would like you to know. From now on, your chief duty will be signing papers. You will sign them with a certain falsified signature. Are you any good at forging?”

“Not really,” Jackson lied.

“That’s too bad,” the Chimera said. “I’d think Richard Denton would have something to say about that. As well as Mark Jasper, Jason Todd, and Mansour Al-Akram. There’s quite a few others, if you’d like me to list them.”

A sinking feeling went down Jackson’s spine. Those were his four most used forged aliases. And he had listed them by use.

“So, Jackson, now I ask two things of you. Sign all the documents and contracts I give you under a certain name. You will not read them, nor will you look up the names. If we see you doing either, I will leave it up to my children to decide the punishment.” Jackson winced. “However, if you skim quickly and sign where you should with the names we give you, you’ll be just fine. Remember- read nothing. We’ll know if you do.”

Jackson finally couldn’t take it anymore. He lost his cool in the most precarious position he could have, in the most unwise place and form possible. He shouted, staring the screen in the eye-

“What makes you think I don’t know you’ll kill me?!”

The Chimera chuckled.

“Absolutely nothing. Because you know me. And don’t worry- when you’ve exhausted your uses, I will. But there’s the thing- someone like you, with your assets, you’ll continue to be useful for a long, long time. You might just die of plain old age before I get to you. And who knows? Give this a year or two, maybe ten to smooth things over, and we’ll be friends all over again.”

“Until I stop being useful,” Jackson said.

“Yes, but then it’ll be more business than personal. A reputation to keep, and all that. If I were to kill you now, doctor, it would be very personal. You wouldn’t like that, I think. Consider the ways you can die- a calm way, a gunshot to the back of your head, or maybe, if I feel especially generous, an inhaled poison in your sleep- or betray me now. I admit, I am not always the most creative when designing tortures, though I have a few ideas- your new friends will decide your manner of death should you betray me.”

Jackson’s hands were tied all over again. It was as if the Chimera had read his mind. Jackson knew it was impossible- he still had his cane. He still had his gun. That meant his office hadn’t been searched, right?

“One more thing. You wouldn’t make any particularly bloody plans, would you?”

Jackson shook his head slowly. “Of course not,” he said.

“Words are words, Jackson. You should look outside your window right about now.”

He did, and his jaw hung open. The last six of his guards were stripped of their weapons and armor, their backs to the wall. Weapons and armor together stood in a single pile.

“Destroy them, Captain,” Jackson heard the Chimera say.

The beasts did not take the approach Jackson expected- tearing his men to shreds in a bloody frenzy. They were creative, taking turns stabbing his knife into different nerve clusters to see how each one twitched, carefully, oh so carefully keeping them alive, like twisted surgeons. They castrated them, took the very top flesh off of their fingertips before spreading out each of their fingers and putting measures of bleach on each of the exposed nerves.

Jackson turned away, was glad that his windows blocked sound. He did not watch the sick beings play out their torture.

“You see, Jackson, I hold all the cards now. And, if you’re smart, you’ll realize I always will. So for your own sake…remain useful.”

The video screen shut off.

Doctor Jackson turned back an hour later, finding to his horror only one had died. They were burning the corpse.

And he felt, for the first time, fear. He realized, now, he had no faithful friends. He had only one “friend.” One that would kill him at the first sign that he was no longer a tool. So he wasn’t a friend. He was a craftsman- Jackson was a tool.

And as long as he remained a good tool, he would survive.

The decision was not so hard. Jackson feared the Chimera- but forever would he fear death more.

--

So now, finally, Jackson wasn’t just paralyzed. He was somewhere in between that and usable. It was a plan that the Chimera had feared to initiate, but he was surprised at Jackson’s fear of him. Good. He could use that.

The Order was not an impotent entity- but it was nowhere near as strong as Jackson believed. But all it took to impress Jackson, really, was to get past his security. After that, the man would think you could do anything. And, as it turned out, the Chimera no longer had need for Natasha, for he had found that her case was not solitary.

Others were being found. Not quite as perfected as Natasha, but they would work for his purpose. And he knew well that a dozen of them could topple cities simply by walking inside. Yes, they could take sections each, tear them to pieces without ever singling themselves out. Assuming such creatures would be controlled.

He wouldn’t start off with Jackson’s method- that had simply been used to make Natasha infuriated. No, he didn’t need infuriated juggernauts of power running amok. He needed controllable weapons. Weapons that could further his cause beyond any other achievement he himself could make.

He wondered if it was a wise move, destroying the security- normally, he would have never cared about being secure. He would have considered the fact that his agents were there to protect him nothing more than children wishing to go to work like their father. But now…he had reason to care that they were there at all.

It didn’t matter. Fairly soon, he would be in Columbia, examining the candidates. Animals given the ability of humans. Soon they would develop powers as Natasha did. And when they did, he wanted them utterly loyal to him. He would teach them nothing but what they needed to know. They would learn that at a quick rate- and then he would shut them from the outside world.

It would take months, maybe years, but his force would be ready. And they would carry out his will with vengeance. And finally, the Order had the ability to fund that kind of work by its own hands. They had made Zaire Beta- and then Jackson had taken control of it, made it the consistency of a drug, people altering their DNA every day, sometimes in a minor way- a slightest shade of skin tone, or perhaps give themselves the genes for a faster metabolism- and then some who wanted new identities. And some very few who took upon themselves a totem and joined the order. They were not many- the Order had a reputation where it was believed they even existed. But those that came were often faithful to the cause from first rite of initiation to their last. And what was more, Jackson’s modified Zaire Beta could be “cured-” and a little-known secret was that it could, with a little modification, be used to cure quite a few of the nastier evolved strains as well. That had been Jackson and the Chimera’s little secret. The modifications needed were not blatantly obvious, and it would take years of study of several cross-referenced modifications to realize it. Most doctors considered the modifications useful for nothing but Morph addicts- their mistake.

Currently, he took a plane instead of the skies. He had not been well. To all the passengers, he looked something like the person he probably would have been, had his DNA not been tampered with- An elderly, though fit, man with a full beard and keen hazel eyes. And it was only then that he realized something- his tampered DNA was causing him to age. He was barely in his fifties, maybe sixties, yet he looked easily reaching far into his seventies. He wondered if he would even be able to personally oversee his force, especially after that scuffle with Natasha.

He looked outside the clouds, then noticed a child, in an airplane for the first time, still standing in wonder at them. “We’re so high up!” He said.

The Chimera smirked. Perhaps, one day, that child would know the feeling of having the wind outside be upon his own wings.

They landed in Columbia around sunset. He was to meet at midnight. He waited at the docks, inconspicuously and patiently. He told his business suitors what he would look like at this time. He expected foul play- they were, after all, a gang specializing in the trade of human beings. They would misinterpret the situation, which was why, this time, the Chimera had brought two of his elite guard, the same type that were currently guarding Jackson. They laid low, and had come by boat. When night fell, they came to him, and all three approached the situation.

When the gang members, each at least six feet tall and armed, first laid eyes upon the Chimera’s guard, their heart sank. Each of the guard wore an AK-47 strapped to their leg. It was a psychological effect more than anything. The feeling that these massive creatures could simply pull out that rifle like a Wild West desperado and gun down all of those powerfully built men shooting one-handed from the hip, whilst the dealer’s own bullets would bounce harmlessly off of their hides.

The Chimera let that display of power go before him, and then he approached. The men, young, tattooed, their muscles bulging like iron girders, did their best not to give a sense of fear.

“I see that you’ve come with protection,” said one in fairly good Spanish. He wore a specific, red-brown bandana that denoted him as the leader, and he had a charismatic, Che Guevara look to him. “Did you think we would cut back on our deal?”

It was a weak attempt to put the pressure on the client, which the Chimera realized instantly. He had done business with religious fanatics, communists, and some of the most powerful men in the world. He had convinced them, personally, of his power, and then simply bragged about the rest. Ironic that the Order, in any straight on fight, would lose to a few well-trained soldiers. But only the Order knew that, and they did not relinquish secrets.

“You seem to have brought your own protection as well,” the Chimera observed. “And quite a bit of it. What did you expect from me?”

“Nothing,” the leader admitted.

“Same on this end,” The Chimera said. “Now, where are my subjects?”

They looked to one another uneasily. “We need to see advance payment,” the charismatic leader said, seemingly undisturbed by the Chimera’s massive bodyguards.

The Chimera sighed. “Fine,” he said. He quickly wrote down an address and handed it to them. There were some expendable assets here, anyway- he liked doing business in Cartagena. The local rebels were fairly desperate, and would buy at exceedingly high prices, sometimes even use their treasured drugs as payment- something the Chimera had no problem trafficking where such escapes from reality would be welcome. “There’s the location, on this very dock, of 1200 AK-47 rifles, with 120 plasma-enhanced 7.62mm bullets for each, uranium core. Each rifle comes with a week’s worth of radiation medicine, though it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” It was expensive, but the Chimera felt like now was the time to start making serious moves. He and the Order had sat and waited for something interesting to happen long enough. They, themselves, had to go to proxies to learn how to manipulate Zaire Beta. They were revolutionists, businessmen- not virologists. They had no time to learn how to manipulate this gene and that. The Chimera alone possessed any knowledge of how Zaire Beta worked- he had invented it, of course. But others had long since surpassed him- Doctor Jackson with his own “private” research, which he would sell to the highest bidder on white or black market- Charson Incorporated, the pharmaceutical company that had most of the leading Zaire Beta virologists on their team- the labs in Seattle- they were all past anything the Chimera would have been capable of. Except, of course, for Zaire Gamma, the Chimera’s ultimate trump card. There was nothing like being able to turn from a raging source of power into a quiet, stalking panther.

“We may head there first, if you like,” The Chimera offered. The rebel leader agreed, wishing to check his shipment.

The Chimera was good for it. The leader checked the rifles himself, leaving his least armed and least intimidating man to strip the bullet and check the cores. Bullets like that technically had a lead core with a microscopic amount of uranium in it- each one, when it was hit front-side with a certain number of kilojoules, would make an extremely small nuclear explosion. It was something of the equivalent to shooting a stick of armor-piercing dynamite into your target.

They then turned to the warehouse where the Chimera’s new pets would be kept.

No, The Chimera thought. Not new pets.

New children

He wasn’t surprised when their dimensions weren’t quite like Natasha’s. Zaire Beta of any type mutated quickly- so already, these variants were further from whatever source Natasha herself had. But these would still do, better than Natasha, because there were more of them and they would be easier, hopefully, to control. They had not yet been tampered with. He even wondered if he could use Jackson’s private labs to manufacture more of these creatures…

The word “manufacture” brought a thought to his head. These weren’t all perfectly symmetrical or shaped- but they were fairly well off, for any type of Morph. No limps that seemed to be part of a natural defect. (one had a limp that came from a leg with a bloody bandage over it- “That one wasn’t easy,” the rebel admitted, but that was all he would say on the matter) Most of the artificially edited Morph viruses seemed to bring about more workable hybrids. Perhaps…?

But he would not have time. These ones would take all his time now, perhaps all of his life.

“Do we have an agreement?” The Chimera asked.

“Now hold on,” the leader started, “You gave part of the advance payment we agreed on, not all-”

“You will get the rest,” the Chimera said, almost nonchalantly.

“I don’t have a guarantee for that.”

“I may not always be honest- but you may ask any of my benefactors, if I am honest in anything, it is in transactions. We have given you forward pay in rifles. What else do you need? Surely, you’re not asking for collateral?”

“We keep half of these freaks,” he said. The Chimera winced at that use of words, even though the creatures did bang upon their bars like frightened chimpanzees, “until we get the other half of our pay.”

“That would not be a wise decision. You will not find anyone who wants these creatures more than I do, nor will you find anyone who will pay, in full, even a small fraction of my forward pay.”

“We’re not afraid of your muscle. We’ve fought those fascist’s tanks on foot, we can take a couple-”

There was a sudden flash of movement, and four rifle shots.

And all four of the rebel leader’s escorts dropped dead, bullet wounds trough their chest and into their hearts. Both the rifles were trained on him before he ever reached the proud-looking Desert Eagle resting on his hip.

“I believe you misunderstand the situation,” said the Chimera. Normally he could have talked his way out, but soon he would have no need for that. He realized he may have picked a more prudent time to enjoy public power, especially when he may die of old age during the preparation, but it was no longer the time for arguing semantics. “For your threats, you have lost yourself four dear companions. I would hate for either of us to lose more. Shall we conclude our business?”

His rebel flair was set aside- there was no glory in dying without cause. He would have thought of a suitable lie for his last compatriot by the time he reached the warehouse which was now his own.

“My men will take these and export them by boat. It was also your part of the deal to provide transportation. You will be given two more warehouse names, each of which contain the same goods as the first. I suspect your men will be well-armed by the time our deal is concluded.

Granted, that was a good amount of money out of the Order’s pocket, even percentage-wise. Normally he would have bargained until he paid a third of what he had now, but the sense of urgency seemed to grip him, as if every second counted. Normally, he had time. All the time in the world. Now he was losing time, he realized. Mortality was gaining on him, whether he liked it or not.

And, despite his order’s faith in him, he trusted none of them to complete the task.

To be true, though, he had only told half-truths. Each of the warehouses would be empty, but the rebel leader wouldn’t find that out until he returned- he would be taken with them on the boat. When he inquired exactly why, the Chimera only answered with one word- “Collateral.”

Well, I hope the Chimera dies in the most painful way possible.
Seems to me like he's burning quite a few of his bridges.
Nice chapter, the language was a little stilted. For example:

A little redundant, methinks. Otherwise, cool.

Nice update!

So there are other "Natasha"s ?! DUN DUN DUUNNNN!! Sorry I had to do that.

Keep it up!

Part Five: Sister of an Echo

We returned. Natasha’s insides were finally satisfied. No more tests to be done today- the sun, by the time we had arrived at the building, was already set deep in the Western sky. Natasha and I were soon returned to our room, where I could sit back and contemplate a bit.

I realized I had changed. I was no longer a hack who breezed through on a job most people had to dedicate their life to. It was, perhaps, a sign of genius that I could have done that at all, but not a sign of many other good traits. I took a profession made for caring and used it for profit. Not an uncommon sin, but one all the same. I was lazy- I wondered if this was so easy for me and so hard for so many others, than what could I have done if I had really dedicated myself? Make people live longer? Stop the Morph Virus? Save Africa from the normal Ebola, infinitely more deadly and horrible (though perhaps not as frightening)?

But if I did that, how would Natasha come to be? She wouldn’t. She would, but she wouldn’t be the person I saw before me- the person who had a very real personality and very real feelings, not like the occasional quirks between what this chimp does and what that chimp does if you present a dilemma. Natasha laughed, cried, smiled, frowned.

Natasha smiles. Natasha frowns. I realized it had only been two months ago that she had spoken in such broken terms, incapable of communicating intelligently. In two months she went from that to being able to read on a fifth, maybe sixth grade scale, and speaking just as well.

She was no longer buried in books, though, no longer going through the mysterious, self-imposed curriculum that she had experienced at my own home. She played and romped innocently across the apartment, and instead of falling asleep from exhaustion at eight PM, it was a chore to get her to stay quiet and still enough to let me sleep at nine-thirty. It made her more annoying in some respects, but more enjoyable in others- I had feared for her at my own home, because she wouldn’t tell me why she had to constantly learn so much. Had it been some kind of brainwashing by Jackson? But that wouldn’t have made any sense. From what I had gathered, Jackson had beat her into madness so she would remain a subhuman creature forever- educating her wouldn’t help that. What I did notice there was a good bit of reading material for Natasha in our dorm room- there were books all the way from primer level to some books I recalled reading in middle school, which I would occasionally flip through for amusement as the time passed.

All the other time, however, was spent with Natasha, bonding with her and talking with her, though we did as much secret conversation as spoken. Every day she would tell me what they would test her for. Sometimes it would be something mundane, like this physical attribute or the other. Other times they would ask her to tell cards, four or five at a time, facing away from her. I remembered seeing the strained looks on likely fraudulent psychic’s faces when they would show up on television to guess a card. Here was Natasha, guessing five at a time with the same ease as if she was reading off the cards themselves, perhaps even more.

The reasons behind her learning speed were now a little clearer. She was learning from other people’s thoughts and experiences- granted, she was smart besides, and could figure out a lot more than an average human ten years older than her- but there were limits. I wondered if she would be learning faster or slower now, surrounded by more people but less entranced at the same.

I would ask her why she studied so hard then, not so hard now. She only occasionally creeked open one of the sixth-grade level works, and even then only with passing interest. In the afternoons, after she returned, she usually got a two-hour nap, then proceeded to blow the rest of the day off enjoying herself with whatever distractions she could find. And if she couldn’t find one, she would make one.

This wasn’t exactly the two-year-old I had imagined. I had figured when I did have a child of my own, it would be due to a decision to get married, look like me and all that. This girl was two years old- she acted like she was already ten and knew just as much- she had lived most of those two years not knowing a thing about how to communicate with any kind of language other than body language, and even then, only in very unsubtle ways.

In two months, she had progressed, mentally, ten years. What would she know within a few years? Or maybe she would slow down at a certain age and just be exceptionally smart, and psychic, and telekinetic, and Morphed completely without defect, but otherwise normal.

And then a second truth hit me. I could adopt Natasha, but there would be no place she would really fit in. I didn’t know her birthday- it would be likely she would need a fake ID. Two years old an in school? Physically, she looked like a seven-year old. A fully sexually mature seven-year-old, who already had some muscle tone in her limbs. I could probably explain it off as a hormone problem caused by Zaire Beta, but how was I supposed to tell Natasha, when she came from a place where getting laid was right next to eat and don’t get eaten, about human love and emotions? I suppose she could simply pluck the concept out of my head, but there was no guaranteeing she would ever understand it. Maybe in five years, but that would be a long time for her. Two and a half times the life she had lived already. And thirty times longer than she had lived in her new world and form. You weren’t supposed to have those talks when they were learning to read a month ago! You were supposed to have them when they were reaching twelve and their voice was cracking and they were awkward and needed help-

But that was the thing. Natasha was awkward. She was physically fit in every way imaginable- she was beautiful and graceful- she was ingenious by any standard anywhere in the world. But she was awkward. She didn’t belong. She wasn’t like the deformed Morphs who were mostly still considered human, just with a few screws loose in the body or the brain. That was a fairly minimalistic way of describing a plague that had physically and mentally crippled 20% of the world population, but compared to her situation, it seemed minor. She was an animal before this time. Someone could’ve shot her and no one would much care. I remembered that, when our family had to move to the South, our neighbors would offer to shoot raccoons that got in our trash. We gladly accepted. But now, that couldn’t be done. Someone couldn’t just shoot her. It was murder now, child murder, no matter how the law would interpret it- so far removed from the act of killing a pest in your trash that the two were almost paradoxical in nature. She had been given humanness. I could have written a whole second book on what exactly that was, and believe me, Natasha made me give it a bit of thought. For thousands of years, it was something you were just born with or without. Now it was something that could be bestowed. And, since the Morph plague began, people had debated whether it could be taken away.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. I had to wonder why the passage came to me now. If someone asked me my religion at that point of my life, I would have said Christian- with a shrug. It was how I was raised (albeit half-heartedly), but not how I lived- not for years, decades perhaps. I hadn’t looked at a Bible for more than a trifle of a moment, or given it much thought, for as long as I could remember. I hadn’t made an outright rebellion- most of the church had never given me any reason to- I had simply become detached. And so the chances of any type of Scripture coming to me then seemed totally confusing.

But there it was, revolving in my head. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. And it was perhaps the most fitting statement to make at that point. Fate had given her a gift, and had seen fit to let there be a curse with it- wherever she went, she would be different. Idania Libiakova would likely be the only other Morph in the world –give or take maybe one or two other possible rarities- that would be anywhere close to Natasha’s overall physical and mental fitness. Except eventually, Natasha would make even powerful Idania seem like a blubbering fool- as she would make every other genius in the universe seem like a blubbering fool.

She napped now. I sat on a chair opposite her as she rested, still in her sweat-soaked, baggy jumpsuit that I had become very used to seeing her and myself in. I wondered when we could wear normal clothes again.

--

Natasha was in the bloody hall again, the thick smell of death around her.

“Help me.”

Natasha’s animal instinct flared inside her and told her to take whatever path she could to run. But something else tugged…this person needed help. She asked for it. Natasha needed to give it.

“Where are you?” She spoke silently, using her voice and mind. “Who are you?”

If the voice heard her, it didn’t register. “Help me,” it repeated. “Why won’t anyone help me?”

It was then the caked blood upon the walls seemed to freshen in both smell and viscosity, beginning to pour again, edging to the ground.

A white light that came from nowhere enveloped all. And Natasha was returned to the land of the awakened. It was her turn to wake up in a cold sweat.

It was a lightning strike that had awakened her. Rain beat upon the window valiantly but to no avail, each drop fearlessly splattering itself across its unbending, unforgiving edge.

Strange that glass is technically a liquid, she thought. She closed her eyes again, then opened them in shock- she didn’t know that. After reviewing the thought again, she realized it was Jack’s, which meant he was awake. Still, that was strange. She had never mistaken someone else’s thoughts for her own. Was she becoming that sensitive to thoughts? Is that what happened to the other girl? Did she cease to be able to tell someone else’s thoughts from her own?

Natasha filed that away for later. She wondered if the other girl thought it was important. She went to Jack’s room and turned on the lights.

--

I saw her then, and asked her why she was still up. She answered the same reason I had expected- nightmares.

It was the same one. It had come quite often, even when we only took naps. It had not changed for either of us, and we had, to the best of my knowledge, none similar.

I was almost afraid to sleep. The nightmare itself scarcely changed in theme, but something would always happen to make it different. There were skulls this time, human skulls littering the floor of the hallway, fragile and practically vaporizing under my feet as I tried to take a step in any direction. I would feel breath on the back of my neck- hot breath.

And a single cry, scarcely reiterated. “Help me.” It sounded so much like Natasha, but lower and with less of the cracking sound her voice would tend to have if she was stressed or scared. It would be one thing if I could just pass it off as being worried for Natasha. Maybe Natasha was sharing my nightmares, being psychic and all that.

She described it to me- it was different than mine. Maybe they weren’t perfect. But they had been before.

It didn’t make any sense.

A couple weeks passed. The nightmares remained, sometimes changing in theme. Sometimes I would manage to sleep a whole night, though poorly. Natasha continued to come from her tests, sometimes invigorated and sometimes exhausted.

She told me what they were doing. They never, to my knowledge, gave her any type of injection or tried to operate on her. But they worked her to death. Whatever they were doing, it took every bit of energy from her.

There wasn’t much to do until Natasha got back. I ate breakfast and watched the news.

“Rebels in Santa Marta have recently taken the upper hand from the UPSA. Reports suggest that the entire city is currently under Columbian rebel control…”

--

Idania walked and talked with Sigmund.

“No psychotic breakdowns yet. Even in the nightmare floor,” she said.

“You’d think they’d have asked by now for another room or something.”

“They probably assumed one wasn’t available. We’ve treated them kindly otherwise.”

“Look, Idania.” Sigmund stepped ahead of her and stopped. She stopped as well.

“The girl is sweet. I admit that. So was the first. I don’t want to have to repeat that. Why don’t we get some surgeons to cut out the psychic portion of her brain, the one in her frontal lobe. No psychic powers, so in the event of a…repeat of our last incident, at least she won’t have any more fatalities than an average murderous psychotic.”

“You know as well as I do that if we cut out her frontal lobe, her IQ will drop to mid double-digits. Her brain is connected differently- Zaire Delta made sure of that. The centers of her brain have radically changed, are more interconnected. It’s not the fact that her brain is any more powerful an organ- she just uses more of it than we do. That’s why she’ll be able to participate in high school by the end of the year, college the end of the next- she could, if she wanted to, be a doctor by age seven.”

“There’s some things that IQ isn’t enough for, Idania. And how do we know her brain can’t repair itself? Doesn’t all that TK make that a necessity?”

“It does, but only on a very microscopic degree. It’s like comparing healing a papercut to healing ten pounds of flayed skin. Let’s keep walking. I need to get down to labs.”

Sigmund obliged. “So what’s the verdict on letting her go?”

“Doctors say there have been no behavioral abnormalities, except for the fact that she’s incredibly cheerful, helpful, she’s obedient, hasn’t lied as far as they know…sounds a lot like that chivalric code you keep on saying isn’t dead.”

Sigmund rolled his eyes. “Alright, so she’s Mother Teresa. What do you want, a victory dance?”

“She could just be a good actor,” Idania said, shrugging.

“You’re never content just to let me lose an argument, you’ve got to argue for me.”

Idania smirked. “Arthur, you’ll never change.”

It was one of the rare times she called him by his first name. It brought back mixed memories. Idania saw them on Sigmund’s face, and tried to dispel the less savory ones with dialogue.

“Look, if her behavior continues, she leaves in two weeks. With Theremin.”

“There is one abnormality. That safety feature. It hasn’t been working. We haven’t asked Theremin yet if it was ever active at the mansion. If it was, it may mean that the headband is disallowing it.”

“You mean the Occupation System? The last subject-”

“Managed to deactivate it with some weird form of auto-hypnosis, I know. We would turn on our little transmitter and whoever could pick it up would suddenly need to know everything about everything or else they’d start hearing a frequency that would drive them batty. Ever wonder if that was what made her go nuts? She read all the books she could find and just snapped when there weren’t anymore?

“You know as well as I do that wasn’t the case.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t. It could be with this one. Think we should turn that thing off?”

“It’s only a matter of time before Jackson or, even worse, the Order finds out about Zaire Delta. And when they do, they’ll start getting every single one of the infects. They may learn how to breed them from other animals, in time. We know the Order has that nanotech stuff. If we could just find them, we’d have the cure for half the Zaire Beta mutations…”

“The Order’s almost impossible to find, you know that. They cover their tracks almost before they make them.”

“Yes, and they’d never relinquish their secrets to us either, I know! I’m just saying if we could get one Agent-”

Sigmund stared hard at Idania now.

“Don’t ever wish for an Agent of the Order to ever come to your door, Idania. Or anyone’s, for that matter. You should remember the last time we had one of those [censored] in our own building.”

“I do remember,” Idania said. One order Agent had gunned down two Champions trying to get through to the company data vaults. Sigmund had stopped the Agent himself, but had suffered through the process. And he had never forgiven the Chimera for killing two of his own men.

“It will only be a matter of time before they start asking about the nightmares,” Idania said, changing the subject quickly. “What should we tell them?”

“In all honesty,” Sigmund said, “If Theremin’s no threat, and neither is Natasha, they deserve to know the truth about what happened to our first subject.”

“I wish you would call her by name,” Idania said.

“No,” Sigmund said, and for the first time the stern old fighter was put on an emotional defensive. His face flushed. “I…you need to get to labs.” He took off the next hallway and left Idania to stare after.

But only for a second. Duty called.

--

The time came that I did inquire to the nightmares, why they were similar, and, most importantly, if they would affect Natasha. I spoke with the psychologist- he was only one step from a grief counselor, not trying to look into why I was having the nightmares, but rather how they were affecting me and Natasha. I already knew how they were affecting us. I wanted to know where the hell they came from. When I asked that, he said that wasn’t his field of psychology. A bit disgusted at the fact that he was here because people had a lot of nightmares, I left then, not even going to argue the point.

It was a day later that there was a knock on my door. It was between lunch and recreation, so Natasha was taking a nap on the coach- the knock didn’t wake her.

I answered it- the person on the other end was Idania.

“Sigmund was telling me about this, and you deserve to know the truth.”

“What, about your American accent?”

“I’m the first woman to be born on the Russian side of my family for over a hundred years. My father demanded a Russian name for me, so it stuck.”

“Then problem solved,” I said. She didn’t laugh, or even smirk.

“I mean the nightmares you’ve been having, Doctor Theremin. They’re nothing to do with you or Natasha-”

“First, how did you know that? And second, yes, I know, Sigmund told me people on this floor tend to have nightmares. Why is that? And let’s talk about this outside, Natasha is sleeping.”

She nodded and sidestepped, allowing me to walk into the hallway and close the door behind me.

“Continue.”

“First, Doctor Theremin, if it happens in my building, I know about it. Second…” She sighed for a second.
“We kept the first subject on this floor when she recovered her. Her name is under classification- her file name was Moira. We’ll use that for reference.

“When she got here, we put that band over her head.Of course, she figured a way around it, broke the thing. It took Sigmund and his squad to keep her from destroying the floor and killing everyone. In any case, she died here.

“You may have heard of ghost stories, Doctor Theremin. If I have a theory about them, it’s that people live a mental imprint. It’s not exactly them that’s in that place- it’s a psychic indentation, if you will.”

“You’re saying the ghost of a psychic has been giving me nightmares.”

“Most people refuse to go into the room where she died. And most people have tried moving to other floors to get away from the nightmares. A lot of the neighboring floors have the same problem as well.”

“This is a little much.” It was, without a doubt. The CEO of the company had come down to tell me that a ghost was giving me nightmares. Why not send one of her lackeys?

“You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just send one of my employees to tell you this,” That freaked me out a bit, and I wondered if Idania was a bit psychic herself. “If you want an answer, it’s that I feel personally responsible for the girl. Which is why I wanted to make sure that wouldn’t ever happen to Natasha. To be sure of that, I had to have some form of trauma. I didn’t want to commit any serious atrocities, so I figured some night time scares would be relatively-”

“humane,” I finished. She nodded.

There was a silence. I stared hard at her, not sure what to think, but angry anyway, feeling that she didn’t have a right to do that Natasha. Or me! Or tell me why I couldn’t just leave! I figured these floors were the only dormitories in the building, and maybe some weird radiation or chemical caused them, not an angry ghost or something like one, or whatever else it may have been.

“I want you to know I’m very impressed at Natasha’s progress. I also want you to know that it’ll only be a couple more weeks here and you’ll be gone. Until then, however, you’ll need to stay on this floor. Will that be a problem?”

“No,” I said. “Even though I won’t get a good night’s sleep until then, no, it won’t be.”

“Also, on the subject of your home…”

“What?”

“I would like to say that if there have been any damages while we’ve…relocated you, Charson will pay you by check for all of them. Off the record. And if there’s anything we can do to secure a home for Natasha…”

I nodded my thanks and felt a little better about her.

“Natasha’s a good girl all around, from what I’ve both seen for myself and heard from the doctors who work with her. She’ll grow up to be a good young woman, God willing.”

“God willing,” I echoed, the phrase that had circled through my head that morning coming back to mind.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

“In any case, I have things to do. But there is one more thing I need to tell you.”

“What?”

“We know Natasha is speaking with you. Telepathically. We didn’t want you to think that we were hurting her. Those tests were classified to satisfy higher-ups, who didn’t know the previous…subject could send the same messages.”

It almost figured that we couldn’t do anything without someone knowing about it.

“Well…Goodbye, Doctor.”

“Goodbye, Miss Libiakova.”

“Call me Idania,” she said, smiling as she walked in a brisk, businesslike manner down the hallway.

I muttered the word under my breath. “Idania.” It seemed so against the way she walked, talked, and stood -the way that demanded respect from everyone or God help them- to let someone who was simply caught in the crossfire to call her by last name. I went back into my room, feeling more enlightened and at the same time carrying more questions with me.

Initially, I wanted to wake Natasha up, out of fear that she was having a nightmare again. But she slept with too much stillness for that to be possible, as far as I saw. I let her be. When she woke up, I’d see if it was recreation hour. I wanted to teach her how to play tennis.

~END OF CHAPTER THREE~

Great update, it answers alot of questions. Of course it also raises a few at the same time ARGH!!!!

I would not mind having that "Occupation System" in my head at times. It might come in handy when studying for exams.

Just one question.

"You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just send one of my employees to tell you this,” That freaked me out a bit, and I wondered if Idania was a bit psychic herself. “If you want an answer, it’s that I feel personally responsible for the girl. Which is why I wanted to make sure that wouldn’t ever happen to Natasha. To be sure of that, I had to have some form of trauma. I didn’t want to commit any serious atrocities, so I figured some night time scares would be relatively-”

I am a little confused here. You said earlier the Moria was causing the nightmares in the facitlity. This passage, however, makes it sound like Indania causing the nightmares, or wants them. Could you explain please.

She deliberately put them on that floor so they would have nightmares via Moira.

Uh-huh. Good use of tension and revelation. I was actually kind of expecting that some "ghost" of the previous subject had hung around and Idania confirmed what I was thinking. Good job.

Chapter Four: Blood and Fire
“If looks could kill,
They probably will,
In games without frontiers-
War without tears.”
-“War Without Tears,” by Peter Gabriel.

Deception, it seemed, had worked perfectly, or so Natasha thought.

It was evening. Jack was out discussing things with scientists. Natasha was alone with her thoughts, her quarters door locked. The TV was not on. There was nothing but the hum of the fluorescent lights, making the entire room only a step from silence.

She knew, now, that most of her learning was subconscious. That she learned less from textbooks and more from being around people. That there was a part that simply absorbed.

It took her time to realize it was systematic. Why she had to only take a glance into the mind for some things and had to peer deep for others, why some she could learn without even knowing. Most of what she learned without knowing was what they were thinking at the moment, and other things- things like the Command made her read. She wasn’t sure she understood it, or wanted to.

She had known that it was a virus that had made her as she was. A virus was something that made people sick, except it didn’t make her sick. It made her smart, and big, and something that didn’t fit in anywhere.

When the humans were stuck like this, they went from a life of such complexity that it boggled Natasha to a life of relative simplicity, except, perhaps, for Ms. Libiakova. But Natasha was thrown into the exact opposite, into a world where everyone wanted her for their own reasons, even Jack, though it wasn’t so bad that he did.

Jack. The name held meaning for her. She told him what happened during the tests- but even he had fallen prey to her own deception.

How could she have lied? She didn’t understand it. It was a…human thing. She did it without thinking, on survival instinct. She thought that was an animal thing. Staying hidden was one thing- she didn’t know of any animals that she had encountered that deliberately deceived. But some things seemed to be preserved (though perverted) from her animal life to human life- eating worked mostly the same, except she didn’t just use her mouth, she used her hands and sometimes even held things in them to eat. She still bathed- and though humans found ways to make rivers flow into their own rooms instead of simply going to rivers, and Natasha had to lather shampoo on herself, a strange bubbly substance that made her smell, from her experience, either like apples or like strawberries- that was mostly the same. And families-

Natasha paused her thoughts. She didn’t know about human families. All she knew was about her and Jack. Was that how a family worked? A male would come to a child and say “You can come with me?” But then how were they born? Did mates part ways shortly after intercourse and hope a child was born? But that wouldn’t make any sense. Why part with a good mate? Maybe intercourse was painful to them, and they hoped only to do it once? But then why do it at all? Maybe it was only painful to one gender, and after intercourse that one would escape.

She sighed. Her theories didn’t mean anything. She suspected none of her answers were close to right. She could scan someone’s mind for it later. Maybe. Some things were awful hard to get. And so was her mind today, except it kept on falling on one place-

Deception.

She learned the word from Jack. It meant lying. “Deception,” she said out loud. It had taken her several tries to say it right. And she had done lots of it.

Weeks had passed in Charson Incorporated’s donated living spaces. Her psychic abilities had matured immensely. And she knew it was because she was deceptive.

The nightmares had not improved. Jack tried to explain their source to her, but she didn’t understand. And what was more, she feared it was her voice that called out from the darkness, even though she knew the voice’s source- her departed sister.

She was new to ghost stories. Everyone on the earth, animal or human, had a fear of dying, and she knew that those coming back from the dead would be greatly feared. Or would they be respected? Why wouldn’t someone ask them how they got back? If they could just come back, death really wouldn’t matter, would it? You’d still be there, after all.

But her raccoon life taught her about death. The things she killed didn’t revive suddenly. When her mother died, frothing at the mouth, she did not return. Yet it seemed humans –as far as she knew- could at least leave behind things other then their bodies. She supposed that was what writing was for. She realized that a couple weeks ago, coming to that conclusion would have boggled her mind.

She knew that her bright eyed wonder was slowly replaced with something cooler, though. Instead of being amazed at something that caught her interest. She took it apart. And she didn’t know why.

Didn’t know why…The thought was like an echoing voice that began an avalanche of thoughts, sudden and blurring together.

I can make things move just thinking about it, and I don’t know why. I know everyone’s thoughts and I don’t know why. Sometimes they’re loud, like a waterfall, sometimes soft like a spring, and I don’t know why. I’m smart and I don’t know why. Everyone’s amazed at what I am, even though I can’t ever imagine being like them, big, strong, smart. They try to explain. Sometimes it makes me feel better. But there’s a part of me that still doesn’t know why in the end. I can reach into any mind I can see, and some I can’t. Why can’t I just go back to where I was is this really better am I better I don’t know why am I not just like them why am I only part-way why can’t I just go back why why why?

It was not the first time she had this type of deluge, but it was the worst. She couldn’t become cold, pick it apart in time. It all hit her and she didn’t know what to do with it.

She sobbed, quietly, curling into a ball on the coach. She wondered what to do with herself.

She decided to shower. Maybe it would wash away her mixed sadness and anger, at herself, at the humans who wanted to hurt her, at Jack and all the white-coated doctors who couldn’t tell her what was happening to her, the white-coated doctors who were always different, and the ones who were the same she never really spoke to, just came in and absorbed their lessons. It was only the mind-reading and telekinetic ones that were of any use. There were some strange tests, that were supposed to look into her mind, because humans couldn’t do it like she could. They had to hope that she was honest.

They hoped poorly. Natasha tried hard not to make eye contact with the person making the test, and the people knew how to keep her away. Once the test was given, she left the room, but Natasha kept a sort of…line on her, a strange line that passed through any matter, linking their minds. The woman went far away. The line stretched with her. It was difficult to keep, and Natasha feared it would snap.

And just before Natasha was sure she couldn’t hold it any longer, the woman left. In the meantime, Natasha had written her name crudely on the corner of the test, and filled in a few of the dots without actually reading the questions. She knew she was being watched.

Once the woman was away, Natasha ran her mind through the line, picking up everything she could, peering into the woman’s past thoughts. Memories were hard to get, but these were fresh. The woman had made the test herself, and though she didn’t remember all her answers herself, a part of her brain did. And it was hard to look into, and it took time to pull each answer out. Each and every one. She had a glimmering psychological profile. Add that to the fact that she had never thrown a tantrum, never failed to come into class with at least a dim smile, even when utterly exhausted from moving large weights with her mind and finding out what ten other people were thinking at the same time. She had held her deception so long and perfectly that it would have been beyond most adults.

But she couldn’t hide it anymore. A deluge of tears and emotions fell over her like the hot shower water, which darkened her fur and filled the room with steam. She took a look at herself now, no white jumpsuit to hide herself.

Her body, as far as her own standards went, didn’t fit anywhere. There was muscle development that had a sleek look to it. She had never had any children, and thus the only two mammaries that were pronounced at all were the normal ones for human beings. The other four were only barely visible, and could easily be mistaken for well-developed abdomen muscles in moderately tight clothing. Her fur looked pretty much the same, but was cleaner now that she took daily showers with shampoo. It was more comfortable. She wouldn’t be using shampoo in this shower though. She was self-examining, the water only helping to expel her thoughts. Though the water was hot, it brought back the cooler side of herself, let her examine her own situation.

She felt the still-canine teeth with her tone, noted with some lack of satisfaction the dull edge on each, though she knew she no longer needed very sharp teeth, for killing things before eating them. Natasha realized that she probably couldn’t make herself do that now, now that she knew everything lived and breathed and mated and had just as much meaning as she did. Maybe animals had less than humans, but did they have less than Natasha? She filed the thought away for later, moving through her own feelings like a machine, and not knowing how or why, having no real desire of her own to, as if something or someone was making her do it. The subconscious fear had begun within her though she didn’t realize it.

She flexed her thumbs and fingers. They were used often by humans, and she was surprised how such complex things came to her so quickly. She rolled her wrists. She had known how they worked months before, but she didn’t care. She systematically ran down every part of her body. Her mouth still curved upwards in the middle, but only slightly. She felt the curve delicately, tracing it with her finger. She also noticed she had no muzzle anymore, that her face curved, for the most part, like a human’s. The intensified sideburns on her neck were totally gone, had been for a while. Her rounded ears prodded a way out of her brown-black hair, that was a shade or so lighter than her fur, and many shades darker than her new, human skin.

Her human skin showed up in different parts of her body. Her hands, for instance, were no longer padded paws. There was raccoon fur over them and human skin under, except for the very middle of her palm, which had a thick black callus which tapered into the surrounding flesh’s color and consistency. The human skin was pinkish red around the bottom finger joints and a strange color that was something close to a pale orange around most of the others. She thumbed the callus, felt it turn from one thing to another, not instantly, but slowly.

She smiled. It was like herself. Human on one side, raccoon on the other, but the raccoon part kept bleeding back out, wanted her again.

She used the index and middle finger of her other hand, sitting Indian style in the shower, not minding the hot water turning into vapor all around her. Her tears, which she had run into the deluge of water to escape, had long subsided. But escaping those was no longer her purpose, and she saw no reason to leave a perfectly isolated area. No sound would penetrate into the bathroom except a good sized knock, not directly under the shower’s deluge.

She felt it and tried to draw a connection to that and how she felt about the recent months. At first, she was simply scared, fearing she’d never mate or eat again. Then she was captured, and beaten, and she was mad for a spell. Then Jack came. Jack, who rescued her from the belly of the beast. Jack, who took her into his home and let her partake in human food, and to sleep in beds that were comfortable and warm. Jack, who tried his best to answer whatever she asked even though she knew he was exasperated at the questions sometimes. But she knew better than to say nevermind, because that would only make it worse for him- he wanted to answer, but part of him wishes he didn’t want to, or have to.

That confused Natasha. He didn’t have to answer. She wouldn’t try and pry into his mind again. She knew it was wrong, worse than trying to see him naked. She knew that seeing someone else naked was really bad for humans. They wore clothes almost all the time. But curiosity had struck, and it wouldn’t leave her alone. Maybe she could just ask him. But would he be mad? She couldn’t decide whether to respect Jack or avoid a confrontation with him. But he would understand, wouldn’t he?

Did he understand? At all? Natasha knew he tried, he tried hard. But she knew that he was frustrated. Frustrated because he was confused. He was scared of Natasha sometimes. Natasha still remembered when she scared him.

Where did she fit in? Where did she want to fit in? Was there a place in-between for people like her? With broken humans? Maybe there were more like Ms. Libiakova, who were supposed to be broken but weren’t. Jack said she was rare though. Most of the people who were physically like here weren’t mentally like her. They would only look like her, except they’d be other things that weren’t human, animals, or so humans called them. They’d be bears and foxes, wolves, snakes, rats, dogs, and cats. They’d be birds and they’d be lizards. They’d be a little bit of everything. Maybe there’d even be a raccoon. But Natasha knew that, if the big ones were right, that soon she’d be far beyond that person’s thoughts. She knew that she would have to be like Jack for them, and their children too, if they had any. She also knew that humans were picky about those types of things. You couldn’t just smell eachother and find out everything you needed to know. Maybe Natasha could impress them, or flatter them. She could, with enough time, know what to say. And then what? How would she know how to raise children? How would she know what to do with her mate? What would she know at all? Would she treat her mate like a human and her children like raccoons? Or the other way around?

There was only one person who she thought wanted to mate with her. But he was a liar. Maybe he just wanted her so bad, he’d lie to get her to come with him. Maybe he could have taught her, like Jack. But there was something Jack did that he, no matter how often they mated, how much he taught her, and how many children they had, there was something he would never had done, that Jack did.

Natasha realized Jack loved her. Like her raccoon father did, but wondered if that father knew exactly what he was doing. They would never mate, she knew, and found no sadness in that. Jack, she knew, was many times older than her, raccoon years included, and an entirely different species besides. The relationship they had forged, in any case, did not have a place for that behavior.

But did Natasha love Jack? Did she know how? She felt safe around him- he sacrificed what he wanted for what she needed, all the time. Natasha knew her real father or mother would never have done that. In the world of the raccoon, it was a scarce time that one’s needs were secondary. Maybe Natasha’s mother would have fought, if Natasha was incapable of defending herself, but she knew that mother would run if Natasha had any chance of survival, even a slim one. Natasha felt no real bond except one of necessity to her mother anyway. There was a part of her that knew that one day, she would have left if she had not simply died first. Slowly wandering away into human territory. Natasha stalked behind, the bravest of her litter. She watched in helpless horror as a human saw her mother, who, foaming at the mouth, growled in response. Natasha realized, playing back through the memory, that it was a human child who shrieked then.

Mother tried to bite the child. The child ran. Mother tried to run after, but stumbled half the way, and the child gained ground quickly. It took only seconds before there was an unmistakable thunder, the sound of the sticks that shot fire and ended the lives of lesser beings in split seconds, before they even understood what happened.

It was when the survival instinct within Natasha pounded so forcefully that she finally dived away. She was simply fearful then. There were no tears. There was only necessity. She was the oldest and strongest. She would have to manage the litter now. No time for grieving, if Natasha even knew what that meant at all.

She stared at the water source, occasionally blinking away water that stuck in her eye, and gave herself into simply feeling, let all thought wash away under the hot water. It took her a half-hour to finally muster any will to move. She finally turned the water off, the steam of the room keeping the cold from coming in suddenly. She stepped on the bathroom mat, took a towel, and wrapped herself in it. She knew she wouldn’t be dry for some time regardless. She curled into a ball, let the towel fall over her, and stared, thought of nothing, on the mat.

The nothingness faded into unconsciousness. She dreamed again. The nightmare did not change, and terrified her more because it didn’t. She woke up a half hour later, the mat drenched and only half her body dry. She gave another resigned sigh. She peeked outside the door, called for Jack. No answer. She felt no need to clothe herself, then. No one would be here, no one to guard herself against. She didn’t care about the people behind the cameras- she doubted they respected her privacy in the bathroom anyway. She had come to distrust them, despite their generosity, they had taken them from their home by force. Why they had even let Jack stay with Natasha was totally beyond her. She didn’t fool herself- she knew that her secret messages weren’t secret. They may not know what she was saying, but they knew she was saying something. They were letting her and Jack speak, for whatever reason. They knew the secrecy of the tests was corrupted, that Jack knew everything, every fine detail, may as well have been there himself.

Realizing she was still wet, she laid down on the floor instead of the coach.

She checked the last statement. That was probably why- there was something that she would be missing during testing, if she was intent on taking them, and getting the right answers or doing the right thing- at least, whatever the instructors of the moment wanted her to do.

She knew she couldn’t afford to fail a test just for a theory, though. It would be something subtle, something that no one in the room knew about. Natasha hadn’t seen Ms. Libiakova since her shuttle ride, and didn’t know how to make an immaterial psychic tether like she did on the psychologist the last time she’d seen her. It was a new and difficult trick, one that had only half-way been taught to her, to see a person and then trace them from distances and distances, beyond where she could normally hear thoughts, hearing the thoughts of the target through something like a mind-to-mind telephone line. It took concentration, and all of it. If someone waved their hand in front of her eyes, she wouldn’t notice. And she still needed to physically see the person. She didn’t know how well she’d fare trying it if she only had a split second.

She only knew one thing- she wanted to go back to Jack’s house. He was the only one who cared, the only one who, though he still didn’t really know everything about her, really cared about her in a way no one else had before. She hoped it would stay that way, except that he would get to know her. And then someone could help her, care for her, nurture her, love her.

But all that hinged on her leaving with him, and that hinged on her doing all her tests perfectly. She realized she might have ruined the whole thing by crying in the camera-tapped room, laying back impassively naked and wet on the floor. It was strange behavior. So was falling asleep on the shower rug.

She got somewhat dried dressed as quickly as possible, and tried to act normal, flipping on the TV and curling on the coach.

--

Sigmund sighed at the camera recording and feared the worst. The girl who had, at first, been only afraid, then seemed to adjust, suddenly fell into for no reason anyone could realize, and then, after sitting in the shower for over two hours, came out and fell asleep with only a towel over her. She woke up in a sweat, she moved to the floor, and lay down spread-eagled for an hour. That was what caused the raised voices that made Sigmund walk into the room in that exact instant. The voices shot down instantly. But rather than being angry at the perverts, images of the last one began to roll through his head. They weren’t exactly the same symptoms, but a breakdown was a breakdown.

“Where’s Doctor Theremin?” Sigmund said, with a low rumble in his voice. He got his location, met him, and told him to meet in Ms. Libiakova’s office within the hour, that all his previous intents and plans were to be put on hold or otherwise forgotten completely.


--

Idania stared at the newspaper clipping on her desk with such intensity one might wonder if it would shirk away. It was two weeks old- she had tried to get investigators to the place- no good. His mansion was closed off everywhere, and her people were turned away by armed guards. She considered letting a few Champions take the task, but Sigmund scratched that idea. If the Chimera wanted to make the building less secure to take Natasha, that would be the perfect bait. Idania couldn’t say she disagreed.

But there had to be a way to figure out what was going on. This wasn’t like Jackson. He didn’t just close up shop like this, not ever. He was too greedy- too many of his clients would respond with violence, with blood. Jackson would never take that kind of risk, famed security force or not. He was more afraid of death than most men- that was saying something, considering most parts of human psychology, as far as Idania saw it, were probably based off of fear of death.

There was a knock at her door. Sigmund and Theremin walked through, Sigmund looking somewhat grave, Theremin looking utterly confused.

--

The Chimera smiled. His force had shown development. He had placed them in individual rooms, and had seen each of them personally, teaching them how to speak. They learned with alacrity, but not with as much as Natasha, at least, as far as he knew. He had braced himself for that. They would be inferior to the original. But how much? Would they have Natasha’s powers?

He amused the thought of giving the defects to one of his clients, the guerilla warriors that had taken over a quarter of Europe already, had torn the Middle East until the countries were too small to be seen on a world map. The entire area was divided into the northern, southern, eastern, and western middle eastern conglomerate. The internet had evolved- it was impossible to keep out propaganda. A few European countries, Italy included, started trying to ban personal computers. It didn’t turn out too well, and due to the people’s own ire, those nations fell the fastest. Venice was almost totally under control of Islamic activist forces akin to the Al-Qaeda, though perhaps a little more business capable and coolheaded. The police forces worked more like underground rebel militia now, being forced to make offensive strikes at first, and then having to move their bases to more secluded places, and taking steps to insure those bases were not found. Most of that victory was the Order’s doing, even though only a dozen of the Chimera’s own troops were there. They supplied arms and armor for prices far beyond the activist’s own spending abilities. All the activists had to do in return was give the Chimera propaganda rights. Full rights.

The Chimera smiled. This was how warfare would be waged from now on, how it was being waged. Instead of a country butting heads with another country, a small faction started by propaganda, already recruiting troops within the country itself, beginning a virus that would spread and spread. Convince one, and he convinces a couple of his friends, who convince a couple of theirs. Gone were the days of clear-cut bad guys. The government had failed, after all, to protect them from Zaire Beta. For the first time of many to come, the lie that anyone needed “protection” from the Morph Virus had benefited him. They passed this law and that bill, about taxes and homophilia and religion and politics. We wouldn’t side with these people all the time, just let them get rid of the current government. Italy, after all, had gone through almost a hundred governments since World War II. The Chimera smiled, and wondered how long a small band of activists could hold the country that produced so much that was famous. Not too long, but enough that he could establish a presence and then make that presence vanish. They would arrest, in fear, the ten-year-olds the Order would bribe with a fifty Euro bill to put a few posters up. The police could catch ten-year-olds, but the person they wanted would be someone else entirely before they even mounted a search.

He subdued them much the way he subdued the originally fiery Nathan Jackson. Intimidation, convincing of power rather than actual show. Show them a man who whips out a rifle and fires it, fully automatic, like a desperado’s pistol, and when it’s empty he charges head on, unimpeded by gunshot, into the enemy fray, slaughtering with his bare hands, knives and machetes and bayonets bouncing off his skin, and his blood thick enough to live through, (higher Order members were given blood thickening drugs, if they gave the sacrifice of keeping a static form. Otherwise, the thickeners would be useless, flushed out of the system each transformation. The Chimera himself wouldn’t sacrifice his ability to change for the world, wouldn’t give it to the Devil if the [censored] had his soul) and they would see things from your point of view regardless.

He sighed, though, and wondered if he’d give that to have all these new half-humans thinking like Natasha. He’d only ever had a glimpse of her, so young in her humanity, still new to her own body, and yet shone with intelligence, with understanding, with humanness.

But he had no time for wishes. He had to get to work. Natasha matured in an estimate of four weeks, and he couldn’t really use these for the guerillas- they wouldn’t even ask for help from his own Morphs. He would give these ones six weeks before they were euthanized.

Sacrifices, after all, had to be made.

“Nathan,” he said over the intercom, now sitting comfortably and unafraid in Nathan Jackson’s mansion, in his office, toying with the massive revolver that his men had discovered under the doctor’s desk. They had punished him severely for that, but he still lived and worked. A bit of chameleon DNA, after all, would make the loss of a few limbs survivable.

It did not take long before the Doctor, his head obediently down, his hair fallen out totally, his skin taking a greenish and scaly texture, his jaw and nose jutting slightly. His lizard eyes, yellow and wide, were invisible.

“I see they’ve given you a gift,” he said.

He did not respond.

“Answer me!” the Chimera shouted, in a fit of anger. Jackson fell into a bowing posture, on his hands and knees, utterly fearful.

So sudden. The slavemaster was now a slave. The Guardians must have done a number on him.

“T-th-th-th-thhhh,” Jackson said, his forked tongue unwieldy and unfamiliar in his mouth. “Thhhank yough,” he said, phlegm filling his voice.

“Pathetic,” he said. “You speak like a Neanderthal. Do you know why?”

Jackson’s eyes flicked halfway to the Chimera, all that was left of his fiery spirit, not even willing to make full eye contact.

“Stand up,” the Chimera said, “And look at me.”

Jackson obeyed, his whole body shivering.

“Do. You. Know. Why?”

“Meh mouthsss changed,” he said quietly, weakly.

The Chimera pulled back the gun’s hammer and pointed it at Jackson, who only flinched this time, his eyes transfixed by the gun, but not in horror.

Almost in wanting. The man wanted to die. The Chimera filed that away for later use. The only way to truly torture Jackson –or make him even more useful- would be to keep him alive. He placed the hammer back and put the gun on the table.

“No,” he said simply. “That is not the reason.”

Jackson was obediently silent.

“The reason is that you refuse the new identity we have given you. Your body accepts it, but every iota of your mind and soul reject it and hate it. It’s part of yourself. You hate yourself, and you’re too busy doing that to make intelligent conversation.”

Jackson’s eyes lifted up.

The Chimera put on a benign and benevolent smile, the vindictive being that sent for Jackson’s dismemberment a week ago gone, all that remained was a bizarrely kind being. Jackson didn’t know what to make of it, his originally sharp mind now shattered from simple pain, from DNA of some lesser being filling it with confused thoughts, muddling the genius mind into something less than human.

“Do not reject what we have given you. We have torn and broken your body, and from it we have torn all your sins.”

The being that was Jackson cocked his head slightly, nowhere near to completely understanding, but enraptured by the Chimera’s words.

“Your crimes are forgiven, now. You have paid for them. Your scars are upon you. But do not hate them. Embrace them. In my mercy, I have given you strength. Immeasurable strength. You are no longer a Static. No more will the pain of transformation bite so deeply into your body. But no longer will any recognize you, no longer will your signature be the same, nor your fingerprints, your DNA, your retina scan. Your old identity is gone, Jackson. Your sinful self is gone. You are purified.”

“P-purified?” Jackson asked.

“Purified,” the Chimera repeated back. “You have been welcomed with fire and blade into our community. How would you like to sit at my right hand, and bathe the world in this purification?”

“But…what if they don’t wa-ant it?”

“Then we let them have their sinful lives. But it’s not always that easy. They’ll try and stop us. There is only one way to rid evil from man. Christ knew it, Richard the Lion Hearted knew it, William the Conqueror knew it, Sherman knew it. Do you know how?”

“How?”

“Blood.” The statement hung in the air for a second before the Chimera continued. “Blood washes away evil like water washes away a stone after many years, like soap washes away the filth of the body. And so, if we can’t purge them by simply changing their blood, then there will be only one option left.”

The old Jackson would have known what was happening, but this one was no stronger in his reasoning than a child. “What?”

“To spill their blood,” the Chimera said. “To kill them.”

“Why not just…do what you did-”

“You were special. I knew you could change, but you needed some extra help. You were very sinful, Nathan, but you could change. You serve me now. You belong to me now. Maybe not by choice, but you see it is good now, right?”

The man who only minutes ago wanted death to rid him of all the Chimera’s men was now enraptured by his words. He nodded stupidly.

“Then help me cleanse the world, Nathan. Help me make us all free from our old evils, to live blissfully, without worrying about money or houses. I will take those worries from you, make them all mine.”

Jackson seemed totally befuddled.

“Do you want to know how?”

Jackson nodded again.

“Kneel before me. Pledge your life before me, and I will use it to make this world great, to bring a new world of bliss and riches. A new Babylon.”

There was no hesitation in the enraptured being. He did all that the Chimera said without question, and then Nathan Jackson was no more.

He was Agent #12954, now and forever. No longer did the elephant men break him- they had no need to. No longer did the world around him seem frightening and deadly- it was the world outside that was infinitely worse, full of evil men. He was already forgetting parts of his old life, and all that remained were the memories that only insured his position. He had been one of those evil men, that was without doubt. Now he had a chance to redeem himself.

Part One: Moira

Idania stood up, her question already said before she said it, said by her stance of mixed offense and surprise. “What’s going on here, Sigmund?”

“Not entirely sure,” Sigmund said. “Ask the doctor.” He threw a jewelcase at Idania’s desk. It fell squarely next to her laptop. She inserted it, and the video feed started.

I didn’t know what went through her mind. She had a concentration that I couldn’t fathom. It turned her gaze intense and her face a motionless and unreadable mask. That concentration was turned solely to the video.

Sigmund didn’t speak. Neither did I. I knew there would be no interruptions. I stalked over to get a good look at what was going on.

There was Natasha, lying spread-eagled and naked. For a second, I thought she was dead, her eyes glazed open, but the shock of that notion forced me to double-check the scene, to see the small fluctuation in her trunk that showed she was breathing. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Idania fast-forwarded and rewinded through whatever she wished, getting to important parts. Natasha had cried, for whatever reason, gone to the shower, sat in it and stared at the showerhead for an hour, fell asleep, woke up with a start, then, totally naked, laid down in the middle of the tiled room and stood up at the ceiling lights.

Idania’s concentration did not break for the next half-hour. And neither did mine, though I couldn’t match her intensity if I tried.

Then, suddenly, she slapped the laptop shut and looked at Sigmund.

“There could be a problem, and there may not be. Do remember, Sigmund, she is only two years old. This is more than a bit much for her.”

“She’s a two-year-old whose psychic abilities you’ve been developing!” Sigmund said, his voice raising.

“May I ask why the doctor is present in this conversation, Sigmund?” Idania responded, and then- “And you know that her abilities were developed on terms that we agreed on. Not that I actually have to agree on any terms with you.”

Something stung Sigmund, and it showed, even though he wasn’t a particularly emotive type. Still, he continued.

“First, the doctor is here because there’s a good chance there’s something he isn’t telling us. So far Natasha’s shown on all the boards to be perfectly stable physically and mentally. Everyone says she’s nice, bright, and ready to learn, and that sounds too good to be true for me. Second, I’ve experienced what Zaire Delta does when it goes wrong first hand. There’s two dozen childless mothers who think their children died in automobile accidents to prove my point.”

“Sigmund!” Idania shouted suddenly, raising up to her feet and slamming the table. There was a stunned silence. Sigmund had just released information that could be used against Charson Incorporated to someone who couldn’t be trusted- me.

“You’ve been steadily more belligerent, disrespectful, and downright stubborn every time this girl shows the slightest sign of-”

“Of what? Killing us all? Sorry then, next time we’re all in danger of being psychically flattened, I’ll try and keep an optimistic opinion! Now entertain this belligerent idiot for one more minute and ask our kind doctor if he knows what’s going on!”

Idania took a deep breath and sat back down, folding one hand into a fist and cupping it with the other, her elbows set on the table at thirty degree angles, her head bowed low, allowing the two hands to obscure her eyes. Finally-

“Is there anything you do know, Doctor Theremin? About the girl’s current behavior?”

So Sigmund, even though he was more than a few ranks below Idania, held power over her. Personal power. I kept that in mind if I had to force my way out of here.

“You would have to ask Natasha. Actually, I would have to ask Natasha, and even then, she doesn’t always give coherent answers. From what I can surmise, she’s probably under a lot of stress. She’s exhausted. Sigmund’s right- Physically and Mentally, she could be an adult by the end of the year, likely even sooner than that. Emotionally, though, she’s complicated. Emotionally she was an adult three months ago, for the world she needed to be in. Now she’s a child. And that adult and child are conflicting, and they may conflict for a good long while. She can’t decide which one she really is.”

“Adult or Child?”

“That’s part of it, but I’d say it’s something closer to human or animal. She’s been thrown from one world into another. She’s handled it remarkably well. Most Morphs can at least still function in human society. With Natasha, we tend to want to inject her into human society. The fact is-”

“She may just want to go back into animal society.”

“I…I suppose.”

I had no idea how I managed to know all that. As soon as I said it, I felt as if someone else had said it, and I was just now digesting it. What if Natasha did really want to go back to being a raccoon? What if the human life wasn’t for her?

“Thank you, Doctor. You can go now.”

Sigmund stepped to his side, opening the path to the door and glaring at me. I glanced at him, but didn’t stare back. I was too busy pondering whatever I had just said. How had I gotten all that from a video of her crying, showering, and laying down naked?

It didn’t make any sense.

Then again, neither did the fact that I wanted to adopt a raccoon with an experimental retrovirus holding her DNA together as my own daughter. Every time I thought about it, I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. I had never married. My romantic life was a craggy canyon of one-night stands and deflated crushes. I didn’t get along with children. I hated animals. But Natasha simply belonged with me. I couldn’t explain it if I took a hundred pages aside to do it, or a thousand, or ten thousand. There was no explaining- there was only experiencing. People have explained romance. They have explained their relationships with children, with pets, with patients, with friends. What was Natasha? If she kept on learning at the rate she was, she’d have no need to live with me in a matter of single-digit years.

I said my goodbyes to the researchers I was working with. It had taken us three hours to discuss a single anomaly in Natasha’s blood, just to find it was simply a harmless by-product of Zaire Delta’s mutation finally flushing itself out of her system. I went to the door, rang the doorbell. Natasha answered, the TV on in the background, the smiling mask on her as if what had happened on the video was something of the distant past, and not less than an hour ago.

“Hi Jack!” She said, with chipper I knew was false. And that knowledge hurt. I couldn’t even offer a weak smile. She peered at me, and I knew she was looking into my memories as her smile faded into an embarrassed frown. She didn’t make eye contact, just turned around and left the door open.

I shut it behind me. “Are you alright?” I asked telepathically.

“No!” She answered, sitting in the corner in fetal position. She was trying hard not to cry.

“They know what we’re doing, Natasha. Sit in front of the TV. Act normal.”

“I don’t want to.”

“We have to.”

“I don’t care!” the statement was telepathic and verbal. She was crying now, not in soft sobs but in choked moans. I quickly moved to her side, put my arm over her shoulders. She brushed it away.

I spoke to her verbally.

“What’s wrong?”

She wouldn’t reply.

“You can tell me,” I said. “Just say it quietly. I’m sorry, Natasha, but they’re watching us, and they can hurt us.”

“I just want to go home. Back to…how it used to be.”

The words hurt. She must’ve meant back to her old life, and who could blame her? She’d been thrown into a strange, threatening world, and there was only one person who even cared.

“It’s okay. You can go home if you want. I won’t stop you if you want to go back.”

It hurt to say that. It hurt to tell her that I wouldn’t be able to protect her if she didn’t let me. But she needed to make that decision for herself- to be protected or otherwise. That decision would make her human.

She looked at me again, peering, tears rimming her eyes, then shook her head violently. “That’s not home!” She said.

“It’s not?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then what is?”

She suddenly embraced me, without warning, and said the last part with her voice, a soft, pathetic voice that was beautiful in a way only a child’s voice could be.

“You are.”

The room and world around us was uncaring, moved on. But that moment wasn’t deterred by that. It flowed through everything there, through each of us and both of us at the same time. It was too sacred to possibly be broken.

--

Idania was exasperated, to say the least.

She and Sigmund had just experienced a shout-off. A loud and violent one, Idania standing behind her desk, not daring to leave the symbol of authority, Sigmund undeterred and constantly moving about the room to accentuate his points. Idania threatened to fire him more than once, but they were empty threats, and Sigmund knew it.

She sighed, and knew that it was a sad thing. Sigmund said euthanizing Natasha was the right thing to do- had said that since he knew of her existence. And now came the first good evidence to support his cause. Would there be more? She could only watch and wait. Would Sigmund take matters into his own hands? It was possible. He could lie to the Champions and say the orders came from Idania herself. By the time she could’ve done anything about it, it’d be too late. Natasha would be dead and gone. Firing him wouldn’t just make him go away, anyway. If it really came to that, she knew that the chances of him pursuing vigilante justice would only become higher.

Would Sigmund really do that? Before Moira, he’d never dream of it. Then again, before Moira, Sigmund was a different person. The Champions were made to fight Moira, after all. Their DNA re-modulated after each one had signed waivers. Each one strong enough to take an inch thick bar of iron in both hands and bend it into knots. Sigmund had undergone a transformation then. He had leadership skills- he had fighting skills- and that was the first time he had seriously planned to use either. Before then, he was someone else entirely.

Idania wondered if he still cared for her, like he did back then. Her mind drifted to a scene that had played over fifteen years ago. She had only recently gotten out of the hospital. She was a medical miracle, though no one quite knew it yet. The Morph Virus was a new thing, an unknown. It had been weeks since cropdusters mysteriously flew over her home, cropdusters filled with Zaire Beta. Some managed to evade it. Others were immune. Idania was neither. She was infected, and ten days of her life were dedicated to very concentrated pain. Her bones came close to cracking and breaking but never quite reached it, her skin took on new texture and had to be treated so she didn’t bleed out- her hair growth sapped nutrients from every part of her body. She was taken into intensive care, in a hospital that had no clue what was happening and could only react to the symptoms, no one having any experience with the virus itself.

She was released with a clean bill of health. The doctors were amazed. Idania’s body had changed drastically. Her vocal chords had made her voice high. She had shortened six inches. And every day after that, she was painfully reminded that she was a freak. Nervous glances from everyone around her. She dared not speak- her voice would be too pathetic, make her too much the victim.

Idania Libiakova refused to be a victim. She had left her home, her family, and her faith because she had been a victim. A victim of a world where she was constantly inferior to her older sister, who could do anything without trying.

She had moved to America when Russia began to tear itself apart, before the rumors of the returning Soviet Union had solidified into a rebellion, a rebellion which was still flaring in Russia. She had moved, not because of Russia, but because of life. To get away from family. With little more than the clothes on her back, she set out to make her life in genetics.

She couldn’t even imagine trying to do it again. The whole world was psyched about the possibilities of a DNC. This could cure cancer. That could cure AIDS. But look at this! It could cure anything! And it would go on. There were countless applicants. How she, with only a foreign college under her belt (and America had become only more nationalist now), had managed to get a role even as an intern escaped her now, but she knew that she had done it, and that Sigmund had helped her. They were just roommates then, Sigmund going back to college late for a major in history and using what free time he had to help the rent. He had been remarkably unpresumptuous when it turned out Idania couldn’t pay her share, and there where times when she couldn’t. But he understood, and kept on going.

But that world had almost fallen to pieces. There were rumors going around that Morphs couldn’t think right anymore. Idania’s mind hadn’t become any less sharp, as far as she could tell. But that didn’t stop people from talking. Didn’t stop people from telling her she couldn’t do her job anymore, telling her that she’d never work in genetics.

That was where the scene unfolded, on the October evening that she had been laid off her internship. That was when she was lying in her bed, crying. When Sigmund opened the door timidly and sat next to her for what must have been hours. She had broken down, the release paper in her hands, its text giving a polite apology and good wishes for the future, but secretly telling her she was a useless animal and always would be, bragging about it, telling her she’d never be away from the shadow of her sister, that is stretched all the way across the Ocean here to America. This was her punishment for even trying.

Sigmund had waited patiently until her cries had subsided into sniffles. The fur on her face hadn’t kept the tears off her pillow. It had saturated the hairs and fallen anyway.

“They let you go, huh?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. She finally gave a response.

“They said I was mentally impaired.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know it is,” she said, shouting and angry at the world. “But it doesn’t matter! I’ll always be like this, and I’ll never stop wishing I wasn’t!”

Everything mocked her, even the things she couldn’t see. The animal shampoo that stood in her shower, that she had to lather on every morning- the pills she had to take to control her metabolism- the lack of vegetables in the pantry. She had been a vegetarian before, and now she knew that, if she tried to eat anything green, her body would let her die of starvation before accepting it.

“I just wish- I just wish I was dead. That everything was just taken off my shoulders.”

Sigmund suddenly spoke with a voice of authority. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that!”

It almost snapped her to attention. For the first time since he walked in the door, she met his eyes.

“You’re more than this,” he said, rapping the piece of paper with his knuckles. “You’re beyond it. You’ll find another job where they appreciate you for what you can do, not just what people say you can. They’re out there, and if you can’t find one, I’ll help you. That’s a promise, Idania.”

Sigmund was not the type that made promises lightly. It was hard to believe someone split between work and school could ever help job search, especially for someone who would be turned down more often than not.

They locked eyes for a long time. Finally, Idania spoke.

“Sigmund, I’m sorry to ask you this, but this is a very cynical stage in my life. I can’t…”

A short silence

“What can’t you do, Idania?”

“I can’t just believe your word.” And it hurt to say it, and she was sorry she said it almost as she did. She broke eye contact.

“Hey,” he said. “eyes up.”

She looked up. Sigmund smiled, and, with very little forewarning, kissed her. It didn’t feel awkward on her muzzle- it felt like it was always meant to be placed there. She returned it. It was passionate, long, but conservative, and ended without much force, slowly and gradually.

“Can you believe that?” he asked.

She nodded.

And fifteen years later, here she was. Her voice no loner squeaked. She had lied to Theremin- her American accent was the cause of her own rehabilitation. She never regained her original Russian accent without heavy effort. A Ph.D. in genetics rested on her wall, even though she still went by “Ms. Libiakova” now. She liked the sound of it better. She wouldn’t be here without Sigmund.

Here she was, a different person entirely. She was no longer the fragile girl that burst into tears over the slightest mishap. She was as strong and unbending as an ingot of steel. She learned shrewdness, patience, and reason. She learned when to be firm and when to be soft. Some things she learned on her own- other things she learned from other people.

Here she was, seriously contemplating how to keep the man that had cared for her- the man had loved her- and the man that she still loved- from killing an innocent child.

“Moira,” she said, and the name had many meanings for her, none of them any good. “Moira, what are your crimes? Your crimes are naught- your crimes are mine, for you are my crime.” She spoke steadily, in monotone, and the words burned into her head. She had taken an innocent child and turned her into a destroyer, a tortured being that had almost torn the Charson building to pieces, that had slaughtered two dozen men before she lay down. It had taken a while to cover it up, and that had been Sigmund’s job. Idania hadn’t even paused, until now, to see it from his point of view. He had recommended the girl, had an optimistic attitude through the whole process, smiling brightly as her grades steadily grew from low C’s to A’s. And of all the people, he had been the last to see her sudden change in heart coming. But no one could blame him for putting rose colored lenses on Moira.

It was perfectly natural, after all, for a man to hope the best for his own daughter.

Part Two: Last Week

Frankly, he was confused.

The Chimera sat in Doctor Jackson’s office (and in his form), his work for the day completed, and pondered how America could have been so blind and yet so insightful. Maybe it was just a lucky nation. But that wouldn’t matter for long- no amount of luck would keep them safe now.

The Order had grown over the last fifteen years with incredible speed. It had tens of millions of members stretched across the world, each one with a strong trade, except in one country- America.

America was perhaps the most Morph phobic nation in the entire world. And fear, of course, is made to protect. Those without fear die early. The Chimera knew this, and thus didn’t see fear as something to be looked down upon. Some said fear was for the weak- when the truth of the matter was that we were all pathetically weak, and it was fearlessness that was for the stupid. And so America, in its wisdom, feared the Morphs, and feared Zaire Beta. Morphs were sent to their own hospitals for even minor colds. Doctors were afraid to operate on even minor fractures, since their anatomy was so radically and randomly different from humans. One Morph hospital took ten times the funding to produce. Morph doctors were among the richest men in the world (as Doctor Jackson’s own fortune noted- the Chimera had found tens of billions secreted away in accounts the clever Doctor had kept secret. It was impressive that he had managed this long, but no matter. His money was the Order’s now- his very life was the Order’s now. From his own pledge.

He had, after all, been given perfectly free choice. He had chosen to be occupied. He had chosen to cooperate with the Chimera from the start. Perhaps his decisions were encouraged somewhat, but that was hardly the point.

This wasn’t theft. It was accepting a gift. He turned on a videophone and made a call.

The person –or rather, being- who answered was something that could not be described as any one animal. He first and foremost reminded one of a bat, with folded wings around his body and largish protruding ears. But upon closer examination he wore dark scales as his skin, and his tongue was forked. Canid teeth lined his mouth, and his eyes were orbs of simple black that reflected a distant, dim lightsource. An equally dim lamp was behind the agent.

“Lord Chimera,” the Agent said, nodding a greeting. He was not as zealous as the one assigned to capture Natasha, the Chimera thought. But the Chimera had known this one for a long time- and Agents were perhaps the most respected beings in the Order. They were allowed their familiarities, even with the Chimera himself. And this Agent, in particular, was one of special importance to the Chimera. He controlled most of the workings of the Order in Asia.

“Do you have the shipments ready, Agent #11954?”

“I do. Two-hundred thousand crates of Zaire Gamma to be secreted in through various borders. It will take time to get them all to their required places, Lord Chimera.”

“Then that time must be shortened, One One Nine Five Four. See to it that all is done as quickly as possible.”

“We’re shipping them out by the hundreds, sir. A dozen ships leave every day, each one stocked with Zaire Gamma. Do remember that this will come at a high price to the Order.”

“I am aware. Agent, tell me- why is it you do not share the faith?”

The Agent perked an eyebrow. “Which faith do you speak of?”

“The ones in which some of the Order call me God.”

The Agent smiled, and chuckled lightly. “A man can bring about change, Lord Chimera. One needs not be a god to make the world brighter. And gods do not call by videophone, either.”

The Chimera laughed with the same cool half-chuckle that the Agent had used. “Bold words, One One Nine Five Four.”

The Agent nodded as if to say “thank you.” This one was always testing the limits of his power. The Chimera both loved it and loathed it. He may have to terminate this one, but he doubted that a day would come that he wouldn’t regret it, and he also doubted that the necessary time would come soon.

“How goes that team of yours?” The Agent said.

“Not something to speak of over videophone,” The Chimera said.

“You can be assured we are not tapped.” Of course he could- the Order owned a satellite solely for their own communications. But that wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to speak of it- he was embarrassed to. They lacked any of the potential Natasha alone would have had. They lacked uniqueness. They reacted almost exactly the same. They were thrown into courses just to learn how to act like humans, and constantly were tested with playing cards. Some were sensitive to a level- but they could have simply been lucky guesses at this point. The Chimera didn’t know how to check for ESP- not in any real manner. He had only one experience with a telekinetic- one he’d just as soon forget. They could only make up what they did as they went along.

The Agent seemed to get the hint. “But your will be done.”

“Thank you. And Agent?”

“Yes, Lord Chimera?”

“I do admire your flair. But do not forget your place.”

“Yes, Lord Chimera.” This response was monotone and serious.

“That is all. You have your orders. Ad mundo sine humano.”

“Ad mundo sine humano, my Lord,” he said, returning the phrase, which meant “To the world without Man.” It was a traditional greeting and farewell that had been forgotten within the first years, but it was used more often to higher-up members of the Order. Even using had become a sign of respect. With it, the Chimera had given the Agent some of his pride back. He didn’t want that flair to leave anytime soon.

The videophone switched off. The Chimera was again left to his own thoughts.

--

“What are you ladies doing? You call that sparring? It looks like you’re dancing on your first date! I want to see some action, people?”

The Champions were instantly scrambling into offensive positions as the sparring continued. The sound that occurred any time one of them hit the ground was like a moderately distant thunderclap, and they threw kicks that would shatter cinder blocks with ease, and recovered from the same.

They were infused –carefully and with consent- with a controlled Zaire Beta batch, and it had done wonders to them. There had been no lasting side effects, not even the trademarked thin blood. They were sick less than ever, their immune system, like every other part of their body, placed into overdrive. The oldest of them looked ten years younger than their own selves. Only Sigmund refused the treatment- as if he even needed it. He stood a full head shorter than any of his own men, but each were reluctant to spar with him. If only the use of Zaire Beta wasn’t so controlled, batch #419 could easily have made Charson millions.

The smell of sweat was notable ten paces away from the combat. They had been training vigorously for six hours. Each had run out of water five hours ago- today’s session had been totally unexpected. They were parched and exhausted, and each of them had come to the correct, private conclusion- something was bugging Sigmund, and he was taking it out on them.

Not that it mattered. If they weren’t in the shape for this, or if they didn’t enjoy it they wouldn’t be Champions anyway. But even they had their limits.

Sigmund was not a person to ponder the past- not anymore. Ironically, he used to be just that type of person. He had been in the Army for eight years, then left during peacetime to get his history major. He had taken the major solely for his own learning- he had never planned to be a historian. It had caused him hardships, but it had been worth it, or so he figured. But that had been his last academic pursuit.

It finally seemed that Sigmund was done. The analog clock on the wall read 2:36 AM.

Sigmund took out a small metal whistle, and let it send a loud shriek through the gym. The entire class filed in a six row, four column formation, each one exactly four feet from those (if any) on his forward, left, right, and back. Normally, gym protocol wasn’t kept that strict, but they were all far too afraid to show even the slightest mistake to Sigmund now.

He eyed each row, criticizing even the slightest angle. He spied several inevitable mishaps –they were only human- and almost wanted to keep them an extra hour just for that.

But then he realized he needed to get up in the morning as well.

“Get some water and go home,” Sigmund said. The rows, columns, and discipline disintegrated all at once, into a swarm of tired men mumbling to themselves about a hot shower and a soft bed, perhaps not even quite realizing yet that, by the time they had gone home, showered, and sat in their beds, they would have two and a half hours to sleep. But they were called Champions for a reason.

One by one they filtered out, until finally Sigmund was left alone. The gym was in total silence.

Sigmund was not one to lose sleep over anything, save an assignment. His sleep cycle was a perfectly regulated clock, that instantly returned to its original time. He had no need for an alarm clock- he would awake at 0530 whether or not he went to sleep at 0515. But nevertheless, Sigmund valued his sleep. It was a time of rest, something he usually lacked with the constantly moving Idania.

Sigmund smiled, and remembered old times with Idania. There was a large age gap between the two, but that had not stopped them- at least briefly- from being lovers, only a couple years after Sigmund’s divorce. Neither did what could have arguably been called a species gap, neither did the fact that Sigmund wasn’t sure who he could entrust with that kind of relationship. He definitely couldn’t trust his family- most of them viewed any relationship with animal-infused Morph victims as bestiality.

But bestiality implied a beast, and that, as far as Sigmund knew, was a thing of the soul, not of body.

Which brought his thoughts back to Natasha. He had realized that he really had no good issue with the girl- everything she had done thus far had been justifiable. Her fights had solely been in self-defense. Her stress was completely understandable. But he did not want to reconcile her humanness. To do that would be to negate Idania’s. If a change in Natasha’s body had made her more human, than the change in Idania’s would have to have made her more beastlike. And yet he saw Natasha, and then he saw Moira.

There was no questioning the resemblance. Natasha, after all, had Moira’s DNA running through her veins, Moira’s blood giving her the ability to walk, talk, think. And half of that blood was Sigmund’s. Some bizarre form of intercourse had been made between a virus, a girl, and a raccoon, and had consumed all three to make Natasha.

Rarely had Sigmund placed any real thought in philosophy, but he now realized that philosophy would decide what would happen at this point in his life. What was a human? Merely species homo sapiens? Or was it something more? Was it a soul? Or was the soul bound in DNA? He realized that the very concept was probably more complicated than he could understand, but he couldn’t help it.

He wondered how much of Moira was in Natasha. Natasha herself was of a completely different personality and complexion. Moira was quiet, and surprisingly unassuming, considering she was a psychic, most brilliant when not under pressure, and not at all athletic. Natasha was as agile as a cat and strong for her form, quick to make and state decisions and assumptions, and worked best when on time limits or given threats of penalty for failure. The two were completely different people, and yet Natasha would not exist without Moira.

Sigmund shook his head. He had done this thousands of times. He couldn’t decide. He couldn’t stop trying to decide either. All he wanted to do, at the bottom of his heart, was leave Natasha and Theremin be and win Idania Libiakova in marriage. He wished he could make this decision like a soldier, to stop thinking and just do, pretend it was an order by a senior officer of some sort.

The thoughts ran in a seemingly endless, nauseating circle. Sigmund was tired. The clock read 0300. Sigmund would have to wake up at 0530 and begin working at 0630, end at 1430, run with the squad from 1445 to 1645, go home at 1700, cook yet another underpaid dinner and fall asleep at exactly 2000 hours. That had been nearly every day in his life for over five years now.

He tried to shake the thoughts away and go home, but they stayed with him the whole long drive. The dichotomy refused to be forgotten. He got home, fell asleep, and woke up an hour later, downing a full gallon of coffee before he left his house and taking another for the trip to work. He would feel the jitters and the crash, but no one would see it. They would see the bags under his eyes, maybe but they wouldn’t see any other sign of wear. No slouching, no slowing of pace, no slurring of words. Sigmund was a machine, had been since Charson had been made Idania’s, the failing biotech corporation reborn into a supergiant. Since then he had only one pace- work pace.

Pace, it seemed, was all he had left. His daughter, his peace of mind, his love, they were all gone. But he still had pace.

--

The board had been assembled that afternoon to discuss the final decision on Natasha. This week (though neither Natasha nor the Doctor knew it yet) would be the one where they decided what to do with Natasha. The board was mostly unsympathetic to either Natasha or Theremin’s position- but it was widely recognized that Theremin had the unusual ability to subdue Natasha in her times of stress. This was something that no one could have done with Moira- not even her own father. Moira had been a time bomb, slowly slipping into insanity. Natasha’s mind was, logically, mostly constructed from Moira’s, and so her personality was expected to be the same- but it wasn’t. That was a fact which defied all things known about artificial Zaire constructs. However, Natasha didn’t seem to retain any of Moira’s memories. For someone in her position, Natasha’s positions seemed rational and normal, even well past the window in which Moira began having symptoms.

This would be the last week, and the most intense. If Natasha passed these tests, she would be returned to Theremin’s custody. It was mostly accepted that, if Jackson wanted her anymore, he wanted her badly. Theremin’s home had not been searched- not by anyone. Jackson, as well any other third party, had seemingly lost interest. And Jackson had closed up shop not long after the incident. It could only be surmised that he had plenty riding on Natasha, and whatever he had riding on that girl had finally caught up to him. It was safe to assume Jackson was no longer a threat, and that Theremin could go home unmolested. But with Natasha, however, they were not so ready to make assumptions.

This week would be strenuous, and contact between Theremin and Natasha would have to be cut off for the duration of the testing. There would be no more card guessing. This would be something different, and Idania wasn’t sure she entirely liked putting such a young girl through it all.

But nevertheless, it was for her own good. Otherwise, with or without Idania, Charson would never stop hunting her.

The board voted on the testing unanimously. This would be the home stretch.

--

“The home stretch, Doctor,” Idania said. I had been personally invited to her office. It was only now that I had a chance to admire it- at first, we had come under more pressing circumstances.

The city below teemed with life. The skyscrapers of Detroit seemed relatively small. The sight of the whole city, from this angle, made me feel strange- for the past four weeks, I had only ever seen it from my room window, twenty or so stories below.

Natasha and I would be separated, for one week, and after that, we would probably be left home, and Charson would see to giving Natasha a fake ID and letting her into my care. Natasha was technically her responsibility, and if needed they may bring that up in court, but they wouldn’t unless they absolutely had to- they wanted to forget about Zaire Delta, whether Natasha was a success or not. Moira’s specific DNA had not been preserved, and so even if that caused a synthesis in certain species that negated the “Delta madness,” they would never be able to replicate it. And, in all honesty, they didn’t want to arm the public –or even their own security force- with Natasha’s ability. Too risky. They couldn’t afford another Moira.

“What will happen in these tests?” I asked.

“Classified,” Idania said, then smiled at my obvious consternation. “But you needn’t worry. It’s all safe. We haven’t done anything to the girl yet that’d hurt her, we won’t start now. But it’s primarily important to the tests that she stay outside of your contact. They’re personality tests, is all.”

Idania may have been hospitable, but even after a month of living, breathing Charson, I was never sure of their motives, and wasn’t even sure Idania was either.

But I was in no position to argue. Not when home was so close. Not when life with Natasha- who I finally thought of as my daughter- was so close.

“I will warn you of something, Doctor,” Idania continued. Her eyes bore into my own. “If our tests prove faulty, and Natasha begins to show symptoms visible to Moira while in your care, she could kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, before she could be stopped. And that blood will be on your hands. Charson Incorporated has dealt with Moira, we will know how to subdue Natasha-”

“I know full well that if Natasha stayed in your official care after these tests, she’d be euthanized. But no one wants to do that because Natasha’s to close to human. You’d have to kill me, and then charges would be pressed.”

“No one blamed us for killing Moira.”

“That was more than likely self-defense.”

“Every single person in this building would lie for me.”

“Would they? Can your company really take a scandal, Idania? I know that someone knows I’m missing. People are looking for me. People are probably looking for Natasha, if not Jackson than someone else. Did you think no one would?”

She didn’t respond.

“I’m not scared of Charson, I’m sure as hell not scared of you. And I know that giving me Natasha only benefits you, that giving her a cover story is a better corporate move because killing her would be bad press.”

Her response was sudden, burning hot, her every tone full of anger. “Did it ever cross your mind that I don’t want someone else’s death on my hands?”

“Did it ever cross your mind that I didn’t want to be kidnapped from my goddamn home?”

Idania quieted down then, and there was a silence, and I hoped my victory had struck somewhere.

“As you can see, Doctor, we will be compensating for that. And besides, no one would believe you if you said that we kidnapped you. We have a clean legal and public record. No one knew about Moira. The issue was never in any magazine or paper. Zaire Delta was entirely covert until Natasha came along.”

“So it is about a scandal.”

“Partially, yes,” she said. “Natasha will have to be given a different name.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Fine, then,” Idania said, took a deep breath, then continued. “Yes, it is partially about avoiding a scandal. Why would we want one? But nevertheless, none of us have any desire to see Natasha dead.”

“Arthur seems to,” I said.

Silence. “Arthur is under my authority, and he recognizes that. He’s no vigilante.”

“Is that so?”

“It is,” she said. “Now, back to my last statement. Natasha’s already too well known by the press.”

“She answers to Natasha.”

“Then she’ll have to answer to something else. Make Natasha her middle name if you want. She could easily be recognized, and her original name would only make it easier to make the connection. In case you’ve been checking the news, people want to know where Natasha has gone. People suspect Jackson of fraud, unsurprisingly. Pretending she went missing while in fact he euthanized her and threw her in a river, that sort of thing. She’s a big icon. Give it a few more weeks and there’ll be conspiracy theories on websites, in tabloids, the works.

“She looks nothing like her old pictures anymore.”

“Maybe to you. You know that she’s been somewhat humanized. Her hair is straighter, her fur is cleaned, all the other things. And maybe that’s enough. But maybe it isn’t. I’m just looking out for you, doctor, as well as myself- I won’t deny either.”

I smiled. Finally, some honesty.

“Fine, then. I suppose I’ll talk to her about it later.”

Idania raised an eyebrow. “Suddenly so submissive.”

“I don’t see any reason to continue the argument. When does this testing begin?”

“It begins now,” Idania said. “Natasha will be moved to another quarter. You will remain in your current quarters. A week later, you’ll be reunited and released.”

“With any luck,” I finished.

“With any luck,” Idania responded, giving a somewhat resigned sigh to my pessimism.

I left, and now I realized that Idania may well have known parts of Natasha better than I. I had always thought of our stay in the Charson building as a trial which threatened Natasha- never, really, as honest tests. But kidnapping will do that to someone, I supposed.

I sensed it was time for me to leave. I walked out the door without a word. So now there was nothing I could do. It was solely on Natasha’s shoulders to pass these, on her own. That was what would prove her human.

But something spoke to me, something deeper than conscious thought. It asked, wasn’t I supposed to be doing that? Wasn’t that what I was at that summit for in the first place, when I first met her unkempt, dirty and afraid, incapable of intelligent communication beyond Natasha smiles, Natasha frowns?

I couldn’t make that decision, though. Not anymore.

Who says I couldn’t?

It was Natasha’s decision.

You can’t decide if you’re human or not. You either are or your not. You can, however, determine if something’s human.

I was determining by watching her make a human action.

Even a rat can run through a maze for cheese.

I shook whatever was tempting me from my mind. This was Natasha’s big day, like an inception into a private club, something you normally had to be born into. It was inheriting a kingdom without a drop of royal blood in your veins. And here I was, thinking I had power over that.

I’m a doctor. [censored]’ Ph.D. I decide if people are unfit for society all the time. I’ve done it to dozens- check that, hundreds of patients. And now suddenly I can’t decide for a two-year-old. Why? Because she can play parlor tricks?

Why was I so jealous? Part of me just wanted to let this be- part of me wanted to storm back in Idania’s office and demand my freedom and Natasha’s to boot, or so help me God the cops would be here in five minutes.

Cops. I remembered the Champions and almost shirked. How well trained were they? SWAT was in the field all the time- the Champions, well-trained as they may be, were still only security guards. I didn’t pretend that they’d be evenly matched- the Champions outweighed and outgunned any SWAT in the business- but it would cause trouble nevertheless. Charson would be ruined.

And then it fell into the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. As Charson fell, so would my chance of adopting Natasha. I couldn’t make fake ID’s, and didn’t know anyone who could. Even if Charson was lying about the whole thing, it was still too good of a chance to leave in the air.

I realized that these were fantasies of a sudden and unexplainable fit of quiet rage, and put them away.

I entered my room. Natasha was already gone. The quiet hum of the air conditioner, the lights, and the refrigerator were a chorus of bleak isolation. I lay down on my bed and prepared myself for the last week here.

We’re going to be leaving after this, I told myself.

After this, we go home, to a life together.

A life I’ve contemplated.

Then it finally hit me.

We’ve known each other for a grand total of approximately eight weeks.

None of it made any sense. And Natasha was little- she may have simply been going through a phase. She would stop being attached to me, eventually. Maybe someday she’d want to go back into a tree, go back to eating garbage out of people’s cans in the driveway. But right now, she wanted to live with me- I wanted to live with her- and if she wanted another life, she could get it. In those eight weeks I went from thinking of her as a science project to a cure to a daughter. And it hadn’t been a thinking thing- though I was fully capable of having a daughter. Things would need to be bought, but seeing as I was a doctor, I could manage for two. I could put her through school. That wasn’t the issue.

The issue was- could I keep her safe? And would I be safe from her? If the local labcoats were right, her psychic abilities would be strong enough to lift a skyscraper off its foundations someday. Throwing me off a cliff- out a balcony, through a window- or just plain squashing me- would be too simple for words.

But for now, Natasha was still young and needing education, lodging, and socialization. She would need someone to help with that. Call me father, guardian, or simply a tutor, I would supply all three to the best of my own ability. And I would simply have to trust Natasha not to overreact someday. I began to see what Idania meant- it could very well be better for Natasha that she stay here. But then again, it wasn’t better for Moira. And these people would work her too hard. I trusted Idania, somewhat, but not all of Charson. I knew there were jackals here, people who would bleed Natasha dry just for the sake of grant money. And Sigmund…he had been talking about euthanizing Natasha almost throughout the entire trip. And he had enough power over Idania that he may ultimately achieve that goal…

That settled it. Natasha went with me. And from that point on, I had no doubt of where she belonged.

Finally found the time to read all this. Great job! When Moria turned out to be Sigmund's daughter I was like "HOLY S%&#!"....well not really, more like that in my head (I was in a library, no talking). Anyway, great twist. I am also looking forward to seeing more of this Agent #11954.

Just one thing...

The Agent seemed to get the hint. “But your will be done.”

Is "But" supposed to be "By"? I do not know, what that phrase seems a little strange.

Part Three: Last Week

“Do you know what this is?” The Chimera asked.

Number Six cocked his ursine head slightly.

“Come on, we’ve been through this,” he said, with the ever present face of patient benevolence. At least, as far as Number Six had seen.

But he didn’t know what the image was. Or rather, he did- it was a creature he had seen before, roaming the top of lakes for a reason he himself could not imagine. Every time he came into the lake, his bulk made him fall to the bottom. Yet he had seen smaller creatures that fell into the water as well…what could the secret be?

The Chimera noticed the Morph’s distraction. “Number Six. Tell me what this is. Now, if you please.”

“Float,” Six said stupidly.

“Yes,” his teacher responded, with an exasperated sigh. “Yes, it floats. Now do tell me, what do we call it? What’s its name?”

“My name is Number Six!” the bear thing responded proudly, now that he remembered it.

“Yes,” The Chimera said, “Yes it is. You obviously have no clue what to call this thing, do you?”

Number Six was already drifting off into some other thought.

Just as the Chimera was about to lose his temper, a sharp rap at the door came.

“Come in,” The Chimera said, though normally he valued the privacy of these sessions. The more the Chimera talked to other people, the more his students became aware of a whole world around him, one not necessarily focused on their teacher (though, in reality, it was) or on their own education (which it was not.)

Through the door entered one of the Chimera’s Agents, one of the older members of the Order. He was Agent #12, originally Ben Aronstein of North Dakota. His old features had long since been lost, and his body could no longer take the constant transformation- he had not changed his form, which made him look like something out of an old Wolfman movie, for ten years.

“what is it, Agent Number Twelve?”

“His name sounds like mine,” Number Six said, with no intention behind the statement but simply to declare that fact.

Agent #12 ignored him. “We may not want to expose this in front of the…student.”

“Of course,” The Chimera said, lifting himself off the chair (which, he realized, took him some more effort than usual) and ambling out of the small, almost prison-like classroom.

He shut the door behind him, and Agent #12 began.

“We may have found why these new things you’ve found are less intelligent than Natasha,” he said. “In fact, skip the may. They’re infected with a whole different form of Zaire Beta.”

“What, a seminat?” the Chimera asked, meaning a semi-natural form of the original. “But that’d be impossible.”

“No, sir, a modified version, as was Natasha’s. The Doctor had her blood on file. We called Natasha’s Zaire Delta, the ones found in our current subjects Zaire Epsilon.”

“By God, who thinks they can go mucking around with our work?”

“Not too many. Zaire Beta has been left alone by even the most gutsy DNC users. Legends of the doomsday virus and all that. But apparently, not all are so inhibited.”

“Do we have any leads?”

“Any DNC owner in South America, but probably Columbia, where we got these in the first place. That rebel leader could have very well manufactured these things himself, for all we know.”

The Chimera huffed deeply. The chances of them showing any kind of psychic ability were next to none, then. There was no one who could have even a remote connection to the rebellion in Columbia at Natasha’s summit.

“So it comes back to Natasha after all.”

“You did request we only do a quiet search on Doctor Theremin’s home, sir. No upturning or such.”

“So I did. And so you did also. And you found?”

“Nothing. He kept everything in a secure work file, the type that’s kept on a private network. There were no paper documents about Natasha or anything likewise on his laptop.”

“We’re standing in what used to be one of the most secure buildings in the world. Why can’t we simply extricate it?”

“Not everything can be done by blackmail, sir. The only person who could get those files would be Doctor Theremin himself, and he and Natasha have simply dropped off the radar for nearly a month now.”

“We haven’t exactly been searching for them. Let’s start. Who would want Natasha, other than Jackson?”

“Perhaps anyone at the summit.”

“Who would have the resources to mount a kidnapping?”

“It wouldn’t be so hard, compared to keeping it quiet. Theremin’s well-loved by quite a few important people- there’s a federal investigation going on as we speak.”

“And they’ve found nothing?”

“No leads whatsoever.”

The Chimera sighed. Gone for a month- possibly they were both dead.

“You can’t simply find the password on Theremin’s laptop?”

“It’s not a typed password, sir, it’s an answer to a question that has to be given vocally. Beyond the ability of any cracker to do in any time short of being measured in centuries.”

“You can’t even get leads on the question?”

“The question asks for a combination, sir.”

“Check Theremin’s house for hair strands, skin. We can distill his DNA, perhaps enough for a vocal chord alteration for one of our agents.”

“We still don’t know—”

“I know we don’t know the password! But assuming Doctor Theremin ever comes
back on radar, we can apprehend him and get that from him, at least, if we can’t get Natasha. Nevertheless, let’s mount our own search for him.”

“Natasha was found in Michigan, near Detroit. It’s likely she was infected thereabouts as well.”

“Do you think she may have returned there?”

“Unlikely, if you mean returning to her home. She has been, or so I suppose, somewhat domesticated by Doctor Theremin. It could be safe to assume she has lost all biological familial connections. But perhaps they were apprehended by the instigator- the creator of Zaire Delta, whoever that may be.”

The Chimera almost slapped himself. It had been so obvious. He just hadn’t expected such a creature to run amok with a company that valued their secrets so much. There was only one entity in Detroit that could make such a perfect creature—for Zaire Beta mutations were scarcely enough for that kind of change in what was an otherwise (as far as anyone knew) normal animal—and that was Charson Incorporated.

He smiled. Even before he told Agent #12, he already had a plan in mind.

Jackson’s private armory would quite possibly come into use soon.

--

“This is your new room, Natasha. This is where you’ll rest at night. You’ll wake up here, shower, eat breakfast, pretty much like your last room, except your testing hours have lengthened from eight A.M. to two P.M.

“This is my last week?” the small girl asked in a strangely businesslike tone. Even as she asked the question, she was looking around the room—something only the more mature could normally do. Especially young children normally were wide-eyed with their questions, more attentive. Natasha seemed perfectly capable of doing several things at once.

Not even two years old, Natasha’s carefully selected nanny, Mrs. Wendy Delacroix, thought out loud. Then she quickly remembered she needed to be halfway distracted whenever she was around Natasha, so the little girl didn’t read her mind. She was an old lady, though, and reading yellowed copies of Adam and Eve was not enough to occupy her totally. She instead thought about her orange grove, against the will of her superiors, and that did just fine, or so she thought. Better than sex books, anyway, and would be easier to explain when she was before the White Throne and all.

“In the meantime, I’ll be cooking your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No more microwavables for you, m’lady.”

Wendy Delacroix, born in 1974 in Alabama, had lived a long and fruitful life, and didn’t intend on it ending anytime soon. Medicine was progressing, and Mrs. Delacroix saw no problem with working as a nanny until she was a hundred. And it wasn’t simply an old maid’s stubborn refusal of fate that pushed her—her body agreed as well. She stood straight, had yet to shrink an inch from age, and she wore what few wrinkles she had like jewelry. They complimented her features and gave her a sort of kindly look, and it was not hard to tell that she, indeed, had been beautiful in her youth, and judging from the golden band around her ring finger, someone thought she still was.

Natasha smiled, and knew that making any outward signs of telepathy would get her into trouble at this point. Glancing into the old woman’s mind revealed nothing but a vivid memory of orange groves, so vivid that she detected the scent, not as she would smell it, but as Mrs. Delacroix would.

Useless. But one couldn’t blame her for trying.

“Thank you, Mrs. Delacroix,” and, mind reading or not, she suspected this silvery-haired nanny was innocuous, just a hired hand. Charson had gotten to the point of hiring who they wanted, when, and where- Mrs. Delacroix was simply one of the insects caught in the crossfire, just like Jack, just like Natasha. Maybe the old woman was kidnapped out of her home, but paid.

Natasha had learned much of man. They were powerful, and did what any animal would naturally do with power.

Though Natasha had never quite realized it as an animal, Man had taken over the world. The gravel roads in which steel monsters rushed past at impossible paces and crushed unsuspecting creatures like garbage- that was man. She already knew that sometimes man would come and hunt in the woods- with weapons that bested tooth and claw, weapons of lightning and fire. She understood they were guns now, and how they functioned. She understood so much, and yet, now that she could see this woman’s point of view without simply tearing it from her mind, she felt she understood a little more.

“Now, I know those folk said they didn’t want any of your hocus-pocus, and I don’t expect to see any!” Mrs. Delacroix said, with a sudden sharpness. Her surface thoughts, which Natasha had no control over sensing any more than she had control over what she smelled- now turned to thoughts of a sister.

“What’s hocus-pocus?” Natasha asked honestly.

“That mind-searching of yours. That’s Mrs. Delacroix’s head that you’re gonna be next to, and she expects to keep it to herself!”

“I understand,” Natasha said, deciding it wasn’t wise to tell Mrs. Delacroix that she didn’t always have control over what thoughts she felt. “It’s bad, like looking at you naked.”

“That’s right!” Mrs. Delacroix said, in a swirling tone that reminded Natasha of a clown that was on TV. It made her laugh, and Mrs. Delacroix laughed with her.


“Now,” the nanny continued, “Mrs. Delacroix may be a mouthful for you, so you can call me Nana Wendy if you like.”

“That sounds great Mrs.—er, Nana Wendy.”

“It sounds good to me too. Now, they’ll start you soon, so let’s get you fed.”

Natasha didn’t quite realize how well the woman was taking such things as her telepathy in stride. For all she knew, there were a thousand like her somewhere, beyond the reach of Charson. She did not yet know the scope of the world. She could understand that long distances existed- but she did not quite comprehend them, not yet at least. She knew that some things were beyond walking distance (she had remembered that most of the other buildings were a good jog away from Jack’s house, even though she wasn’t really allowed out anyway- if anyone had asked her, she would have guessed that her home was a few days’ journey on foot.

Mrs. Delacroix, kind as she was, was still part of Charson. And, though she knew little as far as Zaire Delta went, she knew enough to watch out for Natasha, and to be prepared for any tricks the little raccoon might spring on her in desperation. She would not cease to be kind when the going went rough during testing- she would simply cease to be. She would fade until the tests were finally over or half-way through, and then it would be supper time or lunch time, and lo and behold, there would be Nana Wendy to listen closely, to pat on the head, to aid and help.

Natasha had no idea how well she could be deceived. Even Delacroix thought she was doing the right thing- thus finding the particular memory telling the nanny to stay away from Natasha during any time that would be considered testing would be difficult.

But that did not matter to her right now. She would be here for seven days. Twenty-one meals. And this was the first of them. She found that, since she had eaten three meals a day for nearly a month now, it was almost as easy to keep track of meals as days, if not easier. She decided to see how it worked, and told herself to measure this week in meals rather than days.

Down went the first. It was a simple breakfast of biscuits, sausage, and eggs, with condiments being honey for the biscuits, salt and pepper for the sausage and eggs. Nana Wendy ate the same meal opposite the girl.

They struck up small-talk conversation, and again, Delacroix was amazed. Natasha really was a grown-up on the inside, and partly on the outside too. It was difficult to believe the girl was two- she acted as mature as one in her teens at some points. She still needed work on her posture, but that would come in time. Delacroix served the double purpose of both keeping Natasha company and making her socially acceptable, finding notably bad habits and rooting them out. She was part of Theremin’s going away gift, you could say.

Time passed, and a knock at the door signaled it was time for Natasha to leave Nana Wendy’s presence. Natasha cocked her head a bit when she opened the door- the men escorting her were Champions.

And then the woman Delacroix passed out of her knowledge. Within minutes, the most trying time of Natasha’s thus far short life had begun.

They led her back up to her dormitory floor, and for a second, she thought that they were going to let her see Jack.

They didn’t. They turned the other direction, away from Hallway 340 and room 3406. Natasha looked back somewhat regretfully, though she had already known that she wouldn’t be allowed into close proximity with Jack.

She began to realize that there was a sinking feeling in her stomach. This was a hallway she hadn’t been down before- not exactly by choice, considering how constrained her life had been at Charson, but she realized that, given a choice, she would tend to avoid this hall without thinking about it. Aesthetically, it wasn’t any different- but it gave her gut feeling a desperate lurch, and she knew that it was something tied to that hallway that told her to leave.

That feeling only got stronger as they went down. This was hallway 341. The two soldiers flanking Natasha didn’t seem perturbed, but, hearing their surface thoughts as easily as if they spoke them aloud, Natasha knew that they hated the place as well. Natasha feared, they hated- but they were males, and usually hate was a substitute –or at least a mask- for fear, as far as males went.

Natasha frowns.

The phrase that seemed so idiotic and primitive to her came back like a lightning strike. She had used it in times of mixed fear and rage, a phrase she had used less than two months ago. And yet here, it seemed appropriate.

But she couldn’t even remember the voice that she had used to say it. It was a squealing voice of a frightened infant- now she spoke, though high-pitched, with clarity and enunciation. Her saying “Natasha frowns” would simply be…wrong.

But her thoughts sounded how they felt like sounding, and that pitiful voice returned. She felt scared, alone, and weak.

She needed Jack, she knew. Jack or Nana Wendy or Ms. Libiakova to save her. But Ms. Libiakova was doing this, Nana Wendy was being paid to stay out, and Jack was…
Was what?

But thoughts of Jack faded as that primal fear grew. And then, suddenly, she heard a whisper that had been too familiar to her during her stay in Charson.

Help me.

“Moira,” Natasha said aloud, and this caught the guard’s attention.

“She knows about it?” One of them asked, the tag on his uniform read “Larry Newman.”

“Shut up. What’s she going to do, kill the [censored] again? If she does, I’ll give her a medal. That freak killed my brother.” The one that said that was named Jim Crighton, and he was on Natasha’s right.

“People are thinking this one’ll be a freak too.”

“What’re we gonna do about it?”

Natasha knew where this was going. One of them saw no reason not to kill her, was either perfectly confident she would kill those around her for no reason, or simply didn’t want to risk that happening. The surface thoughts indicated that the other one, however, was not so keen on it.

Sure enough, Larry motioned to his handgun.

“She knows what you’re thinking, y’know,” Jim Crighton said.

“She better not,” Larry said, and suddenly whipped around and caught the little Natasha by the jaw. “Or she’ll be a dead little freak. Isn’t that right?”

Tears rimmed Natasha’s eyes. Moira cried for help in the back of her mind, and Natasha feared that soon she would join her. It wasn’t just death Natasha was afraid of- it was death here. Where Moira was. Because then she might stay there too, forever, wandering Moira’s bloody halls for eternity.

“Larry, let’s drop her off and go. She ain’t the only one that doesn’t like this place.”

“Just reminding her of the rules,” Larry said, trying to justify his position, to no avail. “C’mon, you runt,” he said, pushing Natasha roughly forward. She toppled over but regained her balance easily. Her coordination was too good to be knocked prone by a rough push, even by someone who was easily three times her weight.

Help me.

The voice was more frightened this time, more insistent. Why didn’t the guards hear it? Maybe they did, and that was why they were so mean, or at least one of them was. They had to channel that fear into something.

Natasha did not feel any more hatred of the man who wanted to kill her, suddenly. She felt empathy. It was very well that he was scared, scared and angry at Moira for killing someone he loved.

Natasha continued on in front of the guards, who trailed her only a couple paces behind. Two of Natasha’s small steps were equivalent to one of theirs, so she had to move quickly. And she felt like she was moving closer towards something horrible all the quicker. Then, suddenly, she felt like something struck her- as if some ethereal foreign object had found its way into her body. And then the scene changed.

There was gunfire, suddenly, a huge spray of it. Champions fired, seemingly, at Natasha, at least six of them, but it didn’t affect her. When she realized this, she slowly unwound from her original flinch, and realized that this was something like a dream. She saw Sigmund, much younger and seemingly stronger, at the head of the group.

A voice screamed from behind Natasha.

“STOP IT!”

She whipped around and saw a teenage girl, naked and in a fetal position, clutching her head like it was about to burst. The bullets hit some kind of invisible sphere around her, deflecting the bullets- but it seemed to be shrinking, as the iron hammers got closer and closer to their mark.

The girl suddenly let out a feral screech. The hallway’s walls bent like closing double doors, metal girders tearing like bubble gum with horrible moans.

The young girl, Natasha guessed, must have been Moira. Though she stood more than a full foot three inches higher than Natasha, and had no obvious signs of any blood but human, the facial and body resemblance was remarkable.

Natasha followed Moira, who was wringing her hands and muttering, whimpering, to herself.

“He was a jerk. Danny deserved it. He deserved to die. The way he just blew me off after I finally thought I cared about him. And the labcoats wanted to sedate me, put me in a straightjacket. That wasn’t going to happen. I just want to go home, and go back to school. I didn’t ask for this. Everyone…they deserved it, Didn’t they? Maybe Dad deserves it too…”

Suddenly, she collapsed into a corner and cried. Natasha saw that the hallway had been similarly cut off- as far as Moira or Natasha knew, there was no other way into this area of the building.

“Help me,” Moira said. “Somebody please help me.”

Natasha was scared. Moira was dangerous, would kill her if she did something wrong. But considering the fact that no one seemed to notice her, she wondered if Moira even knew she existed.

“I’ll help you, Moira.”

Moira looked up, met her eyes with Natasha’s, and suddenly seemed to flare in anger. The unbloodied parts of her cheeks turned red. She pushed her hair back, showing her face and eyes unshrouded. She stood her full height, which was, expectedly, much higher than Natasha’s own.

Suddenly the hallway changed. Blood smeared the walls, torn limbs littered the floor and bones, horrible white and jagged, shot from them.

“You can’t help me. Just go away.”

Natasha shook her head. “I can. I’m like you. I’m your—”

“GO AWAY!” and Moira set loose her own bubble. Natasha instinctively sent forth a shield. Her headband, for whatever reason, did not hold sway in this nightmare world. She was protected- but barely.

“You can…it doesn’t matter.”

Suddenly Natasha felt something stick inside her, and a sickly cold pain went through her trunk and limbs.

And that was when she awoke from her fainting spell, vomiting. The two guards had carried her some distance.

“What’s going on now?” Newman said, disgusted.

“Dunno,” Crighton responded. “She’s coming to, I guess.”

Natasha gave a small mix of both sigh and grunt.

“We’re almost there. Let’s drop her off and get the [censored] outta here.”

Natasha felt too weak to give any resistance. There was a strange numbness in her appendages that she couldn’t explain or identify. There was a swirling, throbbing, etherized sort of pain in her head, like a migraine would feel under the influence of a double dose of Lunesta.

They reached a double-barred steel door, that seemed slightly wider than normal door. Newman pulled out a single key from one of his uniform’s many pockets, and Crighton pulled an identical one out of his own.

Newman counted. “One…Two…Three.”

They both turned the keys at the same time. The two bars automatically pulled all the way back from the door, onto the wall. It swung open, and Natasha was unceremoniously thrown in.

“You’ll be given lunch at 1100 hours. You’ll be out of here at 1400.”

“Nana Wendy said I could eat lunch with her.”

They both laughed. And then the door was shut, and Natasha heard the dull thud of the bars. And it was now she realized every gut instinct in her body was telling her to get out of the room by any means possible. There was something threatening here, and she knew its name, even though she hadn’t seen it placed on the front of the massive door-

Its name was Moira Anatolia Sigmund.

uh oh....things are not looking to good for Natasha, and things might not be looking good for Charson Incorporated soon.

But then...
Just when the worst is about to happen...

NANA WENDY ARRIVES AND SAVES THE DAY!!!!! :P :P

Part Four: Morality

“Sigmund, I’ve had enough of this.”

“So have I.”

There was yet another stand-off, but this time Sigmund had called her in the open, not even let her retreat to her office. Idania was running out of patience with his attitude, friend and expert though Sigmund was.

“You knew about the test. You approved it.”

“I approved her going within a certain range. Not being locked in that room for hours! She’s two years old!”

“Oh, so now you’re defending her!”

Only a couple would even through momentary glances. When Idania’s temper flared, all knew the best thing to do would be to move on, curious though they would be.

“Defending her, yes,” Sigmund admitted.

“What happened to putting her down? What happened to euthanizing her, and pretending she doesn’t deserve a life of her own?”

“That’s a light weight compared to throwing her in with Moira. We’ve decided that she may not be psychotic, or even show remote signs of abnormal behavior. Do you want to remedy that fact? If she’s really psychically sensitive, Moira could drive her insane, or perhaps turn her into a vegetable, before the day’s over! We can’t even put a camera in there, there’s still so much RPA!”

“If she becomes violent, we will pull her out immediately. She’ll recover. It’s what children do.”

“Children aren’t the epitome of emotional invincibility, you know.”

“True, but they are the epitome of emotional fickleness.”

“Natasha hasn’t exactly been fickle with her emotions.”

“Unlike yourself.”

“Don’t change the subject. If you don’t pull her out of there, I’m taking a team in there to retrieve her.”

“ You do that, and you’ll be gone, Sigmund. You think I’m playing this time? You pull her out of there, and you’ll be gone. Clean out your office, don’t write back for Christmas, gone.”

Sigmund saw that he had finally reached Idania’s breaking point. He really would be gone this time. He almost smiled. Eventually even he got some form of retribution. Couldn’t avoid it forever, he thought.

But even then (which was, to a very small part of Sigmund, a disappointment) she began to slow down, take deep breaths, and forget about her own temper.

“If you want to be stupid, though, that’s really the only way I can stop you. So let me just ask, as a friend, to give her one day.”

“One day in there might kill her.”

“One day with you might too.”

“If she isn’t dead, she’ll probably ask someone to kill her anyway.”

“Who would?”

“More than likely a couple of the Champions. Some of the older ones haven’t forgotten about…”

“Understandable. She’ll be escorted only by new Champions from now on.”

“That doesn’t make the older ones go away.”

“Well, what do you want me to do, Sigmund? The Champions have been trusted for years!”

“I’m just saying. They probably won’t do anything, I’m just throwing out possibilities.”

“Anyone might hear us here, Sigmund. You want your men to think they don’t trust you?”

“No,” Sigmund admitted, and he then, finally, conceded to go into Idania’s office for the rest of the conversation. They didn’t speak a word between them until they finally reached it.

“Moving on,” Sigmund said as he closed the door firmly behind him, the echo of the halls behind suddenly muted. “You, of all people, should know that being cosmopolitan is still important, Natasha or otherwise, and should also know that you need mutual trust with the Champions more than anything. Jackson, or worse, may track us down anytime, anywhere.”

“Sigmund, the whole of the Federal government couldn’t find either of the two after their disappearance.”

“The Jackson we knew would be perfectly capable of it. The man has enough to do almost anything he wants. He’s cured everything from eight forms of cancer to the common cold, on top of being one of the largest drug producers in the world. Not just Zaire Beta- with his monopoly on DNCs-”

“I know how Jackson got his money, Sigmund,” Idania said, raising a hand. “Honestly, you over-explain things.”

“What I’m saying is, it may only be a matter of time. We need Natasha secure- very secure. And for that, we need Champions that know you would trust them with your life.”

Idania broke eye contact. Again, Sigmund was right, but nevertheless rebellious.

“And Natasha gets one day.”

This had to stop.

“Sigmund,” Idania said, just as the man reached for the knob.

“You’re to break yourself off from Natasha and Theremin.”

There was a silence.

“I’m sorry?”

“You will be doing field work until they have returned home safely. Make sure we haven’t been followed.”

“With all due respect, I know more about this from experience-”

“With all due respect, Sigmund, you’re biased. I’m sorry for Moira. I really am. But you’re seeing through darkened lenses with Natasha. Now that you’ve actually threatened to use force to take her from her testing cycle, you don’t leave me with much of a choice.”

There was an almost imperceptibly short inward battle, that Idania only caught from knowing Sigmund for a decade and a half. After that split second was finished, Sigmund shrugged, and Idania knew that this wasn’t the climactic battle she was looking for. Sigmund would take the order in stride. There was not much he could do anymore, and he was old enough, and wise enough, to accept that.

But stubborn enough to look sour through his briefing, which Idania gave herself.

“You’ll be leading an infiltration into Jackson’s manor. See if you can find any leads on what he knows of Natasha’s whereabouts. Disrupt those leads in any way possible. After that, I want you to make sure that any substantial research he has of Natasha is confiscated and destroyed. Minimize combat at all costs.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t want our hands dirty with murder.”

“I’m talking about a briefing. We don’t have points of entry or anything, not so much as a basic plan of procedure.”

Idania shrugged. Sigmund knew better than to press—the woman had no idea of military affairs.

“And as for killing the [censored], it’d sure as hell make the world a better place.”

“Hey, I’m not disagreeing. If you want, you can get some blackmail, get the man pinned the old fashioned way.”

“You know we’ve tried that. The man cleans up too good.”

“You never know,” Idania said, though she knew Sigmund was right. They had tried to pin Jackson many a time, but the matter never even reached court. Whoever Jackson’s clean-up crew were, they were good. Probably as good as the one that had covered Moira.

“When do we depart?”

“2000 hours.”

He checked his watch. It read 1130.

“I’ll tell the boys. Meanwhile, I’m going to need some satellite photography of our area and likely hotspots for evidence.”

Idania was already in the process of producing those. There had, all in all, been many intrusions into Jackson’s home. Charson (though Jackson still had no clue it was them in particular, as far as Idania could tell) had been most of the reason Jackson’s security was so high (though to the Champions, even his newest editions were comparable to confused children)


Sigmund rolled the various blueprints and, of course, the satellite map, which contained various blind spots between sentries (Sigmund guessed that two would be gone, maybe three). He knew some rooms would likely be changed- they always were, no matter how recent the prints. And there would likely be new posts, and there would likely be another fence across his property.

Sigmund smiled. He needed a bit of field action. He had been too cramped up, too worried about Natasha and Idania and all the bizarre philosophical conundrums that held them together and tore them apart. And he wasn’t about to even get started thinking about those.

He waved a goodbye on his brisk way out the door, a grin sneaking onto his face. He’d always enjoyed giving Jackson something new to worry about.

--

“Like giving candy to a child,” Idania thought as the door closed behind her.

And then she realized that maybe he had given up on the argument too easily, especially for Sigmund. The Sigmund she knew would have thundered on until Judgment day about Natasha.

Had he wanted to give up with it? Idania certainly had. But Sigmund didn’t quit fights. He finished them, and that was the end of it. Idania knew to either let him have the last word or hash it out until he got it. It was one of those flaws that had been constant through his life. He didn’t have to win with glamour. He didn’t even have to win. He just had to finish.

That made her worry, but then she realized who she was worrying about and laughed it off.

--

The lunch tray was slid unceremoniously down from the ground, the door quickly slammed beside it. Natasha only knew these things because she heard them.

That feeling hadn’t left her. Moira hadn’t taken her into another one of…whatever had happened, but Natasha was sure that was what would happen if she fell asleep. Moira wouldn’t just haunt her dreams- she would take them over.

Natasha sat in a corner, head facing the two meeting walls, and stared blankly, tears darkening the fur on her face and causing them to stick together in some weird form of adhesion. The room, all in all, was in poor repair, perhaps because few wished to venture back there. The door to this hallway had been locked since the incident occurred, and though the outside had been painted over, these fluorescent lights barely functioned. Eight lined the wall, but only two (each on a separate rack) were powerful enough to give any illumination, the others only giving an occasional flicker, light too dull to be of any use, or simply out completely.

Natasha’s first instinct was to stay in the light. Moira liked the dark, she would wait for Natasha there. But the light was in the middle of the room, leaving Natasha exposed in all directions. Though she didn’t completely understand Moira’s nature, or how she would even fight the girl (even in the dream world where Natasha could use her abilities again, Moira completely outclassed her.) should they meet again. But she knew that it was just good thinking to stay in the corner.

The human visit, perhaps, gave her enough reason to deduce that hiding her sight did not hide herself. Natasha turned around.

The lunch tray stood right in the center of the room, practically displayed by the two remaining lights, like some stage singer. There were still audible wisps of smoke. The herbs reminded her of Nana Wendy. In fact, from memory Natasha could tell that was Nana Wendy’s cooking, and was completely sure of that. The food, perhaps, would giver her mind some strength. (She had, anyway, thrown up all her breakfast on the way here. It was only now she realized how famished she was, she hadn’t been that hungry since before she met Jack)

She crawled into the light, slowly, moving on all fours, in a form of survival mode. In her mind, she was a raccoon again. She stalked around the light source, making a full circle of the food before jumping on it.

It was delicious, or would have been, had she given herself time to taste it. When she was finished, she realized she was gasping for air—she had eaten a meal of four chicken tenders, a full serving of French fries, and a double box of chocolate milk within a span of two, maybe three minutes. That was an impressive feat considering her size.

She gave herself time to think now that her hunger wasn’t oppressing her so badly.

Two more hours. I made it through four, I can do two more. Do I go here every day for a week?

That feeling had ceased, she realized, when she wasn’t concentrating on it. When she wasn’t looking for Moira, wasn’t waiting for her.

Maybe, if she did that, she would be free from the evil mistress’ power. Sure, she would just pretend that Jack was there and they were learning how to play tennis on the roof when the sun was out and she could hear nothing but the occasional wind that would breeze through her entire being in a way no human could ever conceive, complete rejuvenation flowing through her, especially when it brought the slightest bit of cool moisture. She pretended that, and pantomimed, she was throwing a ball into the air, ready to serve. It had taken her a few tries the first time around but finally she got good at it and—

Help me.

A single voice cried out, laced with frightened tears and shudders. It hadn’t been the first time Natasha had heard it in the dark room. No sir, it had been there, occasionally coming from almost any direction Moira could have standed. This time it was behind Natasha, and this time she didn’t want to look back. She could really sense Moira now. She didn’t earlier, distracted, trying to get the idea of Moira out of her mind, but she knew that when she turned around, Moira would be there, ready to bestow whatever grizzly fate she intended for this girl who had the gall to think she could help her.

But not wanting to look back didn’t mean she didn’t. She turned, slowly at first, then quickly whipped around.

Moira stood above her, completely imposing, larger than her but not large overall. Not only that, but as soon as Natasha had laid eyes on her, the room had changed from its state of disrepair back to the slightly more welcoming fully lighted room, with nothing but Moira’s bloody footprints marring its cleanliness. The wallpaper was no longer torn, and the disposed lunch tray was nowhere to be found. But this meant little to Natasha, who was staring into the face of death.

“Why do you keep on asking for help if you don’t want it?” Natasha screamed, backpedaling and falling over her own feet, covering her head.

She’s there, she’s there and she’s waiting for you.

“Why why why why WHY?” Natasha screeched.

“Why,” Moira echoed, and it only served to infuriate Natasha.

“Why won’t they just leave me alone?”

Moira then curled in a fetal position and sobbed, lightly, so that tears quietly made their way down her face “I’m sorry,” she whispered under her breath. It was familiar…terribly familiar. Familiar from something that had happened at a time that seemed like forever ago.

“I’M NOT LYING!”

A tornado of movement and tearing and destruction around her. A metal ashtray warped like a candy wrapper, wood splintered as if it had been nothing but toothpicks held together with gum hardened from age, the coach’s stuffing sucked hopelessly into the whirling horror that had been summoned up for no real reason Natasha understood. Suddenly she could see the thoughts running through Jack’s head as clearly as if he was saying them, and yet she realized that he wasn’t saying them because above all the noise she heard his emotions come from inside, as if they had been her own. Emotions of confusion, shock, horror.

And then it had stopped. The sound had ceased as if it had been in another room and someone closed a mile-thick door upon it.

She fell from her knees, her head throbbing, all strength gone from her body. Then the rest of her body curled up sideways on the floor, and all she could do was cry, and, weakly, manage an apology for nothing more than torn furniture.

And now, here Moira was, doing the same thing. Only Natasha knew that Moira had killed people. That was, Natasha knew, what Moira was apologizing for.

“It’s okay, Moira,” Natasha said.

“Your dad’s forgiven you.”

And it seemed that Moira had heard her. Again it looked towards her. In pride, Moira took the hair from in front of her face, striking it back quickly and standing up as tall and straight as she could muster. She was totally unaware that she was totally naked and badly hurt.

“I…” she started, her pallid face flushed with anger. “I don’t need his forgiveness!”

This time, Natasha erected that same tornado. It was easy to do, now, out of fear, though she knew she could only do it when Moira was around. (She had tried earlier- nothing had happened.)

The linoleum floor ripped and tore under Natasha.

Moira was again confused. “Only I…only I can do that! Stop it! STOP IT!”

She began her own whirlwind, which was twice the area of Natasha’s, and tore through the metal like paper with an awful sound. Natasha knew she had already lost this duel as Moira’s whirlwind began to tear into hers, sending bits of shrapnel too close for comfort, bending her cyclone closer, closer…Natasha tried to put her hand out, tried to make a field or something to stop it…

The cyclone consumed the given appendage gladly. It whipped out of existence, and Natasha’s whirlwind ended. Moira’s didn’t. She screamed, on her knees, crying and shrieking from pain she had never quite experienced. She saw into those eyes, before the whirlwind grew in size and consumed her fully, those green, hate-filled eyes, hate not exactly directed at Natasha. But there was something else

Sorrow? Pity? Remorse?

Impossible to tell. But there was something behind that wall of rage. Though she was fully convinced those were her last moments, Natasha tried to peer into Moira’s mind.

She found only one image-

Father.

She was suddenly caught in the whirlwind.

And then she awoke. She did not vomit this time. She found her still somewhat sharp teeth caught deep in her hand, causing it to bleed. It was the same one that Moira had taken off in the dream.

She gripped it fully, flexed it. It would heal, in time. But that nightmare wouldn’t depart from her. Not anytime soon, anyways.

She weakly crawled into the light, still grasping her injured hand. Already the image from the dream began to muddle and fade.

There was a pound on the door. “It’s time to go.”

Natasha sprang up, and put the place behind her, though she knew it wouldn’t be forever.

She had hoped that the nightmares would decrease when she was sent to a new floor. Instead, they would now only magnify. Even in bed, far away from Moira, she would still come to haunt her dreams, not from outside but from the scars the being had made from the inside.

She was first given a bandage from a first aid kit before being let off to Nana Wendy’s, to whom she was completely disillusioned. Nana Wendy would not come running for her if she called for help, would not save her from Moira.

But maybe…maybe Jack would.

She gave a single, psychic shout, as loud as she could, not caring if anyone else heard, screaming with all the psychic might her brain could muster.

“HELP JACK!” She plunged her memories for directions, pictures, and sent them all through into wherever they came.

Nana Wendy seemed not to notice, too busy with the show on television, one that Natasha did not recognize or care about.

She could only hope that got through, but there was no reply from Jack- none immediately, anyway. Maybe he couldn’t scream like she could, not quite as loud. She didn’t even know if she was loud enough for Jack to hear.

But she hoped. She did not speak a word to Nana Wendy unless prompted. The sitter tried a few weak attempts at conversation-

“How’d you do on your tests?” Wendy asked innocently.

“I don’t know,” Natasha said. “They haven’t told me.”

“Would you like some pancakes?”

“No ma’am.”

The TV continued to blare the show. Natasha watched with only the very weakest of interest. It was something to look at other than the image of Moira that was burned into her mind. It was some show of a family of humans –who all looked alike, naturally- and someone else had come to the table with the daughter, spouting strangeness. He dressed weird, and challenged the life work of the parents, which made them angry.

Natasha couldn’t have laughed at it if she wanted to. Even though most of her nightmare was forgotten, the fear of it wasn’t.

She knew she would visit Moira again tonight, and that keeping away from sleep would not be an option for the whole week. She also knew that her entire week would be just that- going to Moira’s room.

Please Jack please, she said, in a mental whisper, then in a real one, below Nana Wendy’s ability to hear.

She hoped, against all hopes, that together they would find a way out of this place. And she clung to that hope with all her strength.