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Battles Within
Chapter 1: Battle Plans
Kayla lay in the bed next to Gabriel, trying to be very still in spite of a cramp in her leg. He had fallen asleep shortly after they had sex and she didn’t want to wake him, partly because something in her mind drove her to want to please him in every way and partly because of fear. Gabriel was a god and, like the gods of the ancient Greeks, he would deal harshly with anyone who failed to please him.
She gritted her teeth against the painful cramp and used her telempathic gift to shield the pain from being picked up by her slumbering master. In spite of her fear, she felt honored that Gabriel chose her to share his bed after each successful mission. She didn’t really know if it was to reward her for her good service, or to re-assert his possession of her after she had sex with another New Mutant male who needed encouragement to join the Strand.
This was the eleventh time, and she still felt terror in the pit of her stomach when he looked her in the eye and motioned her to follow him to his room. She was intimidated by this god in human form, afraid that she wouldn’t be good enough for him. But each time, as he took her head in his hands and crushed his lips against hers with the force of a ravenous beast, she had melted into his embrace and felt the echoes of pleasure coursing through her veins for days afterwards. She would continue to serve him, as the memories of the pleasure started to fade, she would desperately to do anything to renew those feelings within her.
She saw the faint light of dawn through the curtains, after what felt like an eternity of trying to lay quietly, not daring to fall asleep. What if he woke up and she wasn’t ready for whatever he wanted to do? What if she started drooling on the pillow or tried to hog the sheets in her sleep? She had seen Gabriel show extreme compassion and acts of forgiveness, but only in public, to calm the ignorant masses. In private, she had seen an unquenchable fury that would have shocked the lesser Greek gods.
Gabriel stirred and pulled Kayla toward him. She was ready and gave herself over to whatever pleasure he should choose to take from her, she reminded herself that her body and mind belonged to the one she served, she was nothing without him.
After a while, Gabriel pulled back and looked into Kayla’s pale, Celtic eyes – with flecks of amber in the center, moving out to a steal gray around the outer ring – and stroked her rich brown hair. “You look tired, Kayla” he said in a voice smoother than any master’s sonnet. “I want you to rest, I will have another job that needs your special gifts in a few days.”
“Anything for the Strand, Gabriel, anything for you,” she responded, mesmerized by his beautiful, intense eyes. “What is it this time, Feral? Elemental? Molecular?…”
“Genius,” replied her master with a smile that sent shivers of ice down her spine.
Chapter 2: Just another day in the life…
Adam walked up to Jesse, who was reclining in the computer chair reading the email from their secured address. “Anything interesting?” he asked.
“Well, mostly the standard reports, but there is a disturbing message from Eric Collins.” Replied Jesse as he pulled up the message and Adam read it over his shoulder.
“What is it?” asked Shalimar as she sat on the sofa, half reading and half stretching her legs after her morning workout with Brennan.
Adam summarized, “He’s concerned about a neighbor. When we placed him, we told him that there weren’t any other New Mutants in the immediate area. He was pretty sure that his neighbor was some kind of Feral, but he didn’t say anything because he thought that he was just being paranoid. But, last night when they were talking, a gust of wind blew her hair and he spotted a subdermal governor.”
“That’s usually a pretty reliable indication,” Brennan chimed in from the table where he was finishing a bowl of cereal.
Adam laughed and continued, “Yeah, now he’s afraid that she might be an undercover GSA agent. He’s got a digital picture of her from a neighborhood party that he’s going to send us. Jesse, I want you to run that picture through a database scan as soon as it comes through.”
“Will do!” he responded cheerfully as Adam gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before he headed into the kitchen to find something to eat.
A while later, Jesse called out, “Got it! I had to expand the search. She’s looking pretty good for someone who died in a fiery car crash 2 years ago!”
By this time the entire team had gathered around as Jesse continued. “She’s a Reptilian Feral, Lizard to be exact, who was working for Genomex when she and a co-worker, Joanne – a telekinetic, were killed in a car crash out along the coast.”
“According to some insider information that I received,” added Adam, “it wasn’t an accident. The two women left a suicide note along with a computer virus that wiped out the entire Genomex system. At 9:00 a.m. on Monday morning, all of the computers flashed the message “Better to be free in death than a mutant slave of Genomex. See you all in Hell! – Deana and Joanne.” Then the computer system froze and shut down.”
Shalimar laughed, “Well, I definitely like her style!” but stopped laughing when she saw the serious look on Adam’s face. “What’s wrong, what is it?” she asked.
Adam replied, “I’ve also seen the autopsy reports. There were two women in that car, both of them with New Mutant DNA and, although the fire made it impossible to get an exact identity, one had a Feral sequence and one had a Psionic sequence in their DNA.”
Emma was the first to speak the question out loud, “So if she wasn’t in the car, who was? Do you think that she murdered someone to effect her escape?”
“I don’t know. Jesse, does it say what level of a fighter she is?” answered Adam.
“Not much of one, according to this. She was a technician involved with computer security, nothing out in the field.” Jesse responded.
Adam nodded, “Okay, Jesse, Emma, let’s go pay Deana a friendly visit and see if we can figure out what’s going on.” At that, Jesse lifted the arms of the computer chair and stood up as Shalimar slipped into the vacated seat. Then the three team members headed to the Double Helix.
Jesse found a good place to land the VTOL in a field behind Eric and Deana’s houses. Since it was a fairly rural area, it was easy for them to slip around to a location where they could survey the house. The woman was in her front yard, sitting in the sun while pulling weeds from her garden. Adam and Emma watched for a while through their binoculars.
Finally, Emma said, “She doesn’t seem like a New Mutant to me, are we sure this is the woman?” As if on cue, the woman’s eyes locked onto a fly, buzzing around her head. As they continued to watch her, her hand shot out quickly grabbing the fly and, in the same smooth move, she tossed it into her mouth.
Adam looked over at Emma who had lowered her binoculars and had a distinct greenish pallor to her face. “Convinced?” he chuckled.
“Yeah,” she answered, while focusing on calming her stomach.
Jesse started to ask what had happened, but the look that Emma flashed him stopped him before he got out the first word. Instead he simply said, “I’ll slip around the back, in case she tries to run around the house, the fences should block her from any other escape.
Once Jesse was in place, Adam and Emma approached Deana and heard her singing quietly to herself “I fought the weeds and the weeds won, I fought the weeds and the weeds one.”
“They usually do.” Said Adam, announcing their presence.
“Hah, but they don’t know who their up against!” Deana replied with an evil laugh as she looked up, expecting to see one of her neighbors. She looked at the man for a moment and then her smile faded and her face went pale as she recognized the man standing less than 5 feet from her on the other side of the picket fence. “Adam..” she said shakily as she stood up.
“Hello, Deana, we’d just like to talk to you for a few minutes, would you mind?” She answered by turning and running away from them, but as she reached the corner of the house a man stepped out and grabbed her. Before she had a chance to fight, her vision went blank and all she could see was a thick fog around her.
Jesse used Emma’s distraction to lock Deana into a solid hold and then tried to reassure her with a gently playful, “Ah, ah, ah, running bad, talking good!”
She shook her head and succeeded in clearing her vision, only to realize that the man had placed her in a very secure feeling hold. She looked down at the location of his hands and felt a wave of panic. “My Sensei showed me this hold.” She said, thinking out loud.
From inches behind her head, the man holding her calmly replied, “Did he or she tell you how to get out of it?”
“He told me never to let anyone get me into it in the first place. Damn!”
“Well, its not exactly your fault,” Jesse said consolingly, “we cheated!”
Deana looked up at Adam and tried to stop her legs from shaking in fear. She had tried so hard to avoid being discovered and here she was, helpless and under someone else’s control again. But he didn’t look angry, if anything he looked…she wasn’t sure, almost as if he was hurt by the fact that she had tried to run.
“Let’s go inside” Adam said almost a little too soothingly as he indicated the front door and Jesse moved her to it.
Once in the entry, Jesse noticed the rack of shoes by the door and asked, “Are you one of those people who doesn’t like shoes on their carpet?”
Deana looked at the pile of shoes and smiled, “Don’t mind ‘em on the carpet, don’t like ‘em on my feet! I wear them to work, to church, and shopping, but that’s about it.” Jesse looked down at the evenly tanned, heavily calloused feet that confirmed her words. At a nod from Adam, Jesse slowly released Deana from the hold and took off his brown leather jacket. He noted that Adam and Emma where removing their jackets as well in the steamy heat of the house.
Deana sat in her recliner and pulled her knees up under her chin. Adam sat on the couch directly across from her while Emma pulled the shades for privacy and then sat on the other end of the couch. Jesse stayed standing behind the recliner, incase Deana got cold feet again about talking to Adam.
Adam spoke first, “So, Jesse was right, you do look pretty good for someone who died in a car crash a couple years ago.” He tried to keep his tone light to get some conversation started.
Deana shrugged, “The trick is to keep moving so that rigor mortis can’t set in. I’m not very good at hiding, especially since I wanted to stay close to my brother and his family. So, I figured that I would have a better chance of hiding if nobody was looking for me.”
Adam nodded, “Well, that makes sense, what about Joanne?” he said cautiously trying to direct the conversation to what actually happened. With his peripheral vision, he could see Emma sitting as if she was quietly listening; he knew that she was listening with more than her ears.
“I don’t know,” replied Deana, “we split company about a week afterwards and I haven’t seen her since.” Adam sat quietly for a moment, mentally noting that Joanne was probably alive and that there were now two unexplained bodies in the car.
When Deana didn’t offer any further explanation, Adam decided to cut to the chase, “So if you and Joanne are still alive, who was in the car?”
Deana relaxed a little as she finally realized what he was trying to find out, “You want the whole story?” Adam raised his eyebrows and nodded his affirmation. “Okay, in the process of working with computer security, I found out that there was some stuff going on at Genomex that I didn’t really want to be a part of. I also found out what would happen if I tried to leave the normal way.
I knew that I couldn’t get out safely without someone else’s help, so I started casually scanning the other New Mutants who weren’t GSA agents and I ran across Joanne who was working in Pathology and was starting to be concerned about all of the bodies that she was seeing. I invited her to join me after work and we worked out a plan to get us both out.
First, we selected two women from the morgue, then we transferred the cryogenic chambers with the women into the spare bedroom in my apartment. Joanne reported that two of the chambers were defective and that the chambers and the decomposed bodies in them had been disposed of and then we waited a month so that nobody might make the connection. Meanwhile, I put together the computer virus and Joanne and I started hanging out together like we where friends.
I legally traded cars with my brother, taking his old beater to send over the cliff. Then one Friday evening, I turned off the cryogenic chambers so that they would thaw out by the next morning. The next morning, we loaded the chambers into Joanne’s truck and dumped them in the lake and loaded the bodies into my brother’s car, along with some extra gasoline and headed out to the coast before there was any traffic.
Joanne used her telekinesis to make sure that the car went off the edge at about 60 miles and hour and then I detonated a small explosive and…well, it was pretty spectacular. Then we got in her truck and headed down to Vegas where she used her gifts to set us up with some cash and I used my computer experience to give us new identity papers, work histories – basic background stuff. Then we just wished each other the best and went our separate ways.”
Adam listened intently, the occasional nod from Emma letting him know that he was being told the truth. He started to relax a bit as he realized that he wasn’t going to have to deal with a murder, “So, I still want to know who was in the car.”
“Oh,” sighed Deana, realizing the futility of trying to get Adam to forget the question, “Joanne chose Nadean Lane. I never knew her, but Jo worked with her and said that she was just an honest person trying to do her job. I chose Ellen Myers because she really helped me learn the ropes there and showed me how to do my job while staying safely under Mr. Eckhart’s radar. People like that deserve to go out in a blaze of glory, they don’t deserve to lay frozen in a box, waiting to be sliced up for some lab experiment!”
Noticing that Adam seemed satisfied with the explanation, Deana jumped at the opportunity to change the subject away from that distressing chapter of her life and asked, “So, I take it that Eric ratted me out?”
“Now, I wouldn’t say that he ‘ratted you out’,” Adam answered diplomatically, “I’d say that he expressed concern that you might be an undercover GSA agent when he noticed that you still have your subdermal governor.”
“Oh,” Deana whispered as she nervously pulled a lock of hair over the distinct black device on the back of her neck. “I thought about going to a local plastic surgeon to have it removed. I figured that I would tell him that I got drunk at this bar that was right next to a body piercing shop and, when I woke up the next morning…anyway, could he just remove it? But you never know who’s been told to contact the GSA if they ever see one.” She continued, trying to hide her nervousness behind humor.
Out of the corner of his eye, Adam noticed Emma shaking her head, confirming his suspicion that there was something that Deana was hiding. He decided to push the issue to see if he could get to the truth, “Hey, no problem, we can go back to the Double Helix where I’ve got some equipment and I’ll have it out in five minutes.”
“Uh, no, that’s okay, it really doesn’t bother me, no need to go to the t- trouble.” Deana tried to sound convincing, but the look in her eyes betrayed the fact that even she wouldn’t believe that line and she doubted that Adam would. Jesse moved from where he had been leaning casually against a wall to standing directly behind Deana’s chair.
Adam tried to sound logical and reassuring as he called her bluff, “Really, its no problem and you’re taking a big risk by leaving it. What if it had been someone other than Eric who had spotted it? You’ve gone to too much trouble to set up your new life to take a careless risk like that.” Jesse noticed the subtle change in Deana’s position and placed his hands on her shoulders from behind the chair, just as she was about to bolt for the door.
Adam sat on the edge of the seat to be closer as he looked intently into her eyes, “Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
Deana buried her face in her knees, hiding the tears that welled up in response to the conflict raging inside her. She suddenly felt that she could trust this man and should just tell him the truth, although she suspected that his silent female companion might have been responsible for that stray thought. Still, she couldn’t see any other way out of the situation. “I hate this thing and all that it stands for,” she said without looking up, “but I need it. I’m fine indoors where I can keep it nice and warm, but I can’t handle the cold. I have the control device for my governor, so I use it to block my New Mutancy when I’m anywhere that’s cooler than 85 degrees. Otherwise, I can’t move and I have a lot of trouble concentrating.”
Adam nodded, finally understanding, “It sounds like your New Mutant DNA has resulted in your being cold-blooded. It isn’t uncommon in Reptile Ferals and I can offer you a solution.” At this Deana looked up at him questioningly. He continued, “How about if you come with us to Sanctuary, I’ll remove the subdermal governor, run a quick DNA scan – just to make sure that everything is alright, and then I’ll set you up with small device that you strap around your waist, hidden under your clothes that will allow you to control your body temperature? It will only take an hour, an hour and a half, tops and you can be rid of that thing for good.”
Adam leaned on the railing of the upper deck, watching Brennan and Jesse spar in the dojo. When they stopped for a moment, Brennan looked up at him and said, “Hey, what’s with the grin? You sure look like you’re in a good mood.”
Shalimar stepped up next to him and answered Brennan, “That’s his ‘I was able to help a New Mutant to continue living a normal happy life’ look.” Adam looked down at his feet to hide the flush of embarrassment, but didn’t deny Shalimar’s interpretation.
Brennan looked at Jesse and then asked, “Hey, when Emma gets back from taking Deana home, we were all going to go out to the club, want to join us?” Adam usually didn’t join them, but then Brennan had never seen him in this good of mood before.
Adam smiled back at him, “I’d love to.”
Chapter 3: The Battle
Adam sat at a quiet table, or at least the quietest table, along the wall of the club, sipping a drink and enjoying the music as much as watching his team enjoy themselves dancing. It provided him an excellent opportunity to observe human interactions and, being 20 years older than most of the clientele, he had only had to decline a couple dance offers. Of course his own ‘friends’ had set him up by having the DJ play an ‘oldie’ which Shalimar had insisted that he join her for.
After a while, a woman in her 20’s walked up to the table, smiled and said, “Hi.”
“Good evening,” Adam replied politely, noting that she wasn’t an unattractive woman and could probably manage to get the attentions of someone closer to her age.
“So, are you a designated driver, or a fellow appreciator of the fine art of people watching?” she asked, trying to make a connection with this quiet enigma.
Adam thought for a moment. The woman didn’t sound drunk and she sounded reasonably intelligent and the music was starting to sound a little repetitious to him so he answered, “A little of both, have a seat, and you?”
“I’m staying at a hotel not far from here on business, so I thought it looked like a good place to catch up on the latest in non-verbal communication and humanoid mating rituals. My name’s Kayla.” She laughed lightly as she extended her hand in greeting.
“My name’s Adam,” he replied shaking her hand. “So, what’s your opinion on that little interaction over there?” He continued, nodding toward two men who where having a discussion that appeared far too serious for the current venue. As they continued discussing the various interactions around them in the club, Adam felt himself somehow drawn to this woman.
<Easy, now, take it slow, just engage him in intelligent conversation> Kayla heard Gabriel coach her from a corner of her mind. She realized that she would have to make everything feel like a natural progression or her prey would surely realize that something was wrong and alert his team. With four New Mutants in the area, including a telempath, she was going to have to plan every step very carefully.
It was definitely a challenge since it had been two weeks since she had been with Gabriel. A week ago, she had begged him to let her have sex with one of the other Strand members, but he had explained that he needed her to be sufficiently ‘hungry’ when she finally had the chance to be alone with Adam. Instead, he had looked into her eyes and provided her with enough of the emotional energy that she was craving to allow her to think straight.
Emma was the first to notice and got Brennan’s attention, nodding in Adam’s direction. Adam was laughing and appeared to be enjoying a young woman’s company. They caught Jesse and Shalimar’s attention and they also nodded approvingly at the sight.
Kayla sent Adam the message that he was getting a little warm and the music was giving him a slight headache, as he joked about one couple who were dancing although it was obvious that both of them wanted to run in opposite directions, but didn’t want to be rude. “Whew,” Kayla said while mentally forcing small beads of perspiration to form on her face, “with this many exercising bodies, they need to run a bit more fresh air through the circulation!”
Adam nodded his agreement and pointed toward the door, Kayla nodded her agreement and they made their way toward the door. Once outside, Kayla took a deep breath of the fresh air and leaned against the wall, drinking in the silence for a moment. “Okay, I think that I’ve exceeded my crowd tolerance for the evening!” She smiled inwardly at just how true the statement was.
She was nearly exhausted from trying to concentrate on sending Adam the correct signals while blocking out way to many emotions from the people that filled the club. Looking at her watch, she said, “Its later than I thought, I should probably get back to my hotel,” while sending a flash image of wolves glaring out from the alleys.
It worked and Adam suggested, “Hey, you said that your hotel wasn’t far, I’m sure that my friends won’t miss me if I make sure that you get there safe.”
“I’d appreciate that, never can be too careful in a strange city,” she replied as Adam put his arm protectively on her shoulder. <Finally> she thought,<that’s just what I needed, physical contact without the crowd interference>. Adam’s eyes seemed to take on a distant, distracted look as he followed Kayla up to her room at the classy, private hotel.
As Emma and Jesse shared a slow dance, she looked back at the table to check up on Adam, and noticed a strange couple sitting there kissing. She dismissed it, certain that, if Adam was going to be gone for more than a few minutes, he would have told someone in the team.
Responding to her telempathic suggestions, Adam finally started to surrender to the desires and passions that he usually explained away with logic. Before he had a chance to understand what was going on, they were both free from their clothing, embracing on the bed. Kayla rolled over so that she was straddling his thighs, looking down at him, trying to hide the intense hunger that was building up inside of her.
As she ran her hands up his stomach and chest, she was amazed at how good of condition he was in. She finally reached down to meet his lips and then attacked his mouth with her tongue. As they kissed, she ran her hands from his shoulders out to his hands. Distracting him with tilt of her pelvis that ground her wirey hairs into the sensitive sack between his legs, she removed the ring that Gabriel had warned her about while he let out a slightly surprised gasp.
He quickly regained a little control and looked at her questioningly. She arched up, leaning on his chest and put the ring on her right index finger, “Just for safe keeping, my boyfriend in college had a ring like this, and I have the scars to prove it.” Adam thought for a moment and then decided that it would be fine since he knew where it was and it had become inactive as soon as she removed it.
As she lay on top of him, she felt him swell and harden, but she also felt hesitancy. Looking into his mind, she saw the mind of a scientist, reviewing all of the possible sexually transmitted diseases. She almost laughed at a mind that could think about things like that in the heat of the moment, but she decided to deal with his
reservations openly.
She gazed into his eyes and asked, “Don’t like it to go out to play without its safety suit?”
“Well, it just that…you know… these days…” stammered Adam, while Kayla reached into the nightstand next to the bed. Sure enough, there were several little plastic packages sitting on top, ironically, of the Gideon Bible.
She pulled one out and said, “Fine, but I get to put it on.” As she slid off to one side, she reached her hand down and felt the heat radiating from his rock hard tool. Before rolling on the condom, she slid down and took his whole sack in her mouth, gently flicking the two orbs inside back and forth with her tongue. Adam gasped quietly, obviously trying to stay in control and Kayla noted that she had been wrong, his tool hadn’t been fully engorged yet.
She moved her mouth from the furry sack and started nibbling up the length of his shaft with her lips. Adam started to say something, but stopped when his voice broke in an almost adolescent sounding squeak. She finally placed the condom on the tip of his tool and then unrolled it down the length of his shaft with her lips and tongue as he let out a small groan.
Kayla started to move back up to where she could impale herself and draw the pleasure that she needed from him, when he gently and firmly pushed her to the side and onto her back, rolling on top of her. It was her turn to gasp as he took control of the situation; usually her victims just lay there in an ecstatic stupor while she did all of the work of draining the emotional energy from them.
Poised on top of her, Adam looked deeply into her eyes and asked, “Are you sure that this is what you want?”
“Yes…please…now!” she pleaded, unable to believe that she was the one who had been driven to the point of begging. She reached her legs around, placing her heels on his firm ass and tried to push him into her, growing steadily more desperate, but he simply tightened the strong muscles in his legs and held his position, as it to taunt her.
Finally, he appeared to reach his decision and reached down to meet her anxious lips as he allowed his hands to linger for a moment, teasing the nipples on her breasts before he slid his hands down to the bed and then up along the back of her shoulders. Using her shoulders for leverage, he entered her deeply in one smooth movement. She let out an uncontrollable gasp of pleasure and dug her fingernails into his solid shoulders as all images of a geeky scientist in a white lab coat were blasted into oblivion.
As he pulled almost all of the way out, he paused for an excruciating moment of torment that raised her level of desire to the point of crying out loud for him to continue before he again drove deeply into her. As he continued, the buildup was almost unbearable as he pushed her right to the edge of ecstasy and then backed off, preventing her from taking that final step off the edge and forcing her to stay at that point of shear desperation.
As Kayla gasped for breath, she looked up pleadingly into the face of the only one who could end her desperation in the waves of pleasure that lay just inches from her grasp. She could see the strain on his face as he battled his own mounting tension and then, at last, he drove into her repeatedly in a rhythm that finally sent both of them tumbling into an abyss of pleasure.
As the waves of her orgasm finally started to subside enough for her vision to clear, she looked up into the gently smiling face with beads of sweat matting down his dark curls. She tried to roll to her side, out from under him, but her muscles refused to obey, the more she tried to force them to move, the more they just shook pitifully.
A slight wave of panic washed over her as she realized that she was totally helpless, laying underneath the man that was supposed to have been her victim. She fearfully looked up at him and met a look of amused understanding. He reached down and took hold of her shoulder, rolling her onto her side and sliding down behind her. He used his leg to bend her top knee forward into a natural position and slid his bottom arm under her head, supporting her neck while he moved his top hand from her shoulder down to her hand.
As she felt herself being smoothly and gently moved into a comfortable position, she was overwhelmed by the strange feelings within her. She was completely in his control, trapped under his arm and leg, and yet there was none of the helpless feeling of being controlled that she felt with Gabriel. Adams touch wasn’t controlling, it was…protective. Her mind flashed back to being a child, snuggled in her father’s lap, protected by his strong arms as she drifted of to sleep.
A siren went by on the street below, stirring Kayla into consciousness. She glanced at the clock beside the bed and almost jumped when her eyes focused on the time, 6:30! She couldn’t believe it. Not only had she failed in her mission, but she had fallen asleep in the arms of her intended victim.
She gently removed his arm from her waist, sending thoughts of sleepiness toward him to ensure that he didn’t wake up as she slid into her clothes and stumbled out the door. What would happen when Gabriel found out, what would he do to her? What had happened? As she stumbled out through the lobby, she was glad that another guest was checking out, occupying the clerk. The battle between a thousand thoughts raged inside her skull as she made her way down the quiet morning streets toward the water. For as long as she could remember, she had always sought out the steady rhythm of the waves to calm the storms within.
Chapter 4: Aftermath
Jesse wandered up into the kitchen and was happy to see the half-full pot of coffee waiting for him. He pulled out a large mug from the cupboard and filled it with the miraculous brown liquid. Looking at the cream and sugar, he shook his head; this was definitely a ‘black coffee’ morning. Placing the cup under his nose, he took a deep breath, allowing the aroma to warn his body that caffeine would soon be coursing through his veins.
Stepping over to the edge of the upper deck, he could see Brennan and Shalimar engaged in their morning sparing routine and beyond, Emma was doing Yoga by the pond. Shalimar looked up at him while continuing to block Brennan’s attacks, “Good Morning, sleepyhead!”
“Morning, yes, but I’ll hold off on the judgment calls until this magic brown elixir of life raises my consciousness level a couple notches!” replied Jesse. “So, did Adam come home last night, or do we need to go hunt him down somewhere?”
Brennan answered, “I’m pretty sure that he didn’t come home, why don’t you check and see if his comlink is active? Oh, and try not to spill any coffee on the keyboard this time!” Brennan started to laugh, but was distracted by a foot that was rapidly approaching his face.
“Well, his comlink is inactive, which could just mean that he doesn’t want to be disturbed while he’s with his new ‘friend’. But last time we thought that, he was actually wandering around the city with amnesia. Emma, any chance that you can just peak and make sure that he’s okay?” Jesse suggested.
Emma gave a reluctant sigh and then focused her mind on Adam. In her mind she saw a fuzzy, warped looking hotel room and felt a sense of dazed confusion. “He’s definitely NOT alright! His mind feels like its been drugged, he’s in a hotel room somewhere.”
All of the team members looked at each other and then headed for the hangar. Brennan suggested, “Let’s start back at the club, she might be a regular.”
Arriving at the club, they found the door locked, but noticed that someone was inside cleaning up. Jesse knocked on the door and the young man came over and opened it. “What’d you lose, keys, wallet, jacket…?” He rambled off by memory.
Jesse gave a weak grin and said, “Our friend? He was with a woman with brown hair, who had a large amber pendant necklace.”
The man started to shake his head, “Sorry, I wasn’t here last night.” Emma looked to the side and then sent the man an image of the woman to go with Jesse’s description. He hesitated a moment and then said, “You know, that kind of sounds like Kayla, weird chick, she’s got this look that just makes a guy want to buy her a drink, or give her one for free in my case.”
“Any idea where she might go with a gentleman after that drink?” asked Brennan.
“I don’t know if it’s a regular spot or anything, but I heard her talking to a guy a couple weeks ago about meeting him at The Fremont down the street. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Steve since then, I was going to ask him about that hotel. I get a lot of requests for hotel recommendations.” the man continued half thinking out loud. He looked up, but the four people were gone, so he shrugged, re-locked the door and went back to cleaning.
The team stepped into the lobby of the small hotel and up to the desk. Brennan said to the clerk, “We’re looking for a friend of ours that may have come here last night.”
The clerk glared up at him, “We don’t discuss any of our guests!” Brennan was about to respond when he felt Shalimar touch his arm and he stepped aside.
Shalimar leaned across the desk as the clerk absentmindedly licked his lips and gazed into her eyes, “We know that you’re just respecting your guests’ privacy, but we’re really worried about him. His name is Adam, he’s in his early 50’s with dark curly hair, would have been with a woman named Kayla.”
At the mention of the name, the man straightened up a bit. “Is your friend some kind of troublemaker? Kayla’s an undercover cop. Every week or two she brings some guy in here, they’re up in the room for a couple hours and then she makes a phone call and several guys come and haul the guy away.
I don’t know what she does to them, but they usually look half dead when her buddies drag them out of here. Then she hops down the stairs, all perky and freshly showered and takes off. The first time it happened, they told me that it was some kind of sting operation and some guy named Gabriel always comes by and pays the bill in cash, so I just look the other way. I figure, if the guy is getting caught in some sting, he probably deserves what he gets.”
Mesmerized by Shalimar’s eyes, the clerk babbled on, “She came in with a guy that meets your description last night, only her buddies never showed up. About an hour ago, she staggered down the stairs, looking like hell and just wandered out the door. The guy’s probably still up in 201.”
“Thanks,” Shalimar replied with a smile as the team headed up the stairs. When they got to the room, Brennan gave the electronic keycard reader a little jolt and the door unlocked. Inside, Adam was sitting up on the bed, shaking his head to clear it.
“Adam, are you okay?” asked Emma. “We tried to reach you on your comlink, but it’s been deactivated.”
Adam shook the final cobwebs out of his mind and responded, “Yeah, I’m okay, just embarrassed at getting caught with my pants down…” He hesitated, realizing that the statement wasn’t as figurative as he had intended. “Damn, I should have known something was going on. She removed my ring and put it on one of her fingers saying something about not getting scratched by it – seemed to make sense at the time.”
“I think that we should get out of here,” noted Jesse, “the clerk said that the bills for the rooms are paid for by someone named ‘Gabriel’”. At that, Adam’s head jerked up and he became fully awake.
“Okay, if you guys could, um, wait in the hall…I’ll be out in a minute.” Adam said while blushing and looking at his pile of clothes on the chair, clear across the room.
“Yeah,” laughed Shalimar, “we’ll be, uh, out in the hall.”
Once back in the Double Helix, Jesse entered the name Kayla into the database, which provided the file in seconds. “ Yep, that’s her! Kayla Rennay, she’s a telempath and still at Genomex, which means that she’s part of the Strand.”
*******
Kayla sat on a log, overlooking the waves and tried to let the constant pounding wash over her mind. Why couldn’t she get him out of her mind? Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his gentle eyes staring back at her, igniting the guilt that threatened to consume her. She wondered if it was because of his ring that she was still wearing. Looking down at it, she was surprised to see some kind of symbols on it. She had thought that it had been smooth when she put it on, but she dismissed the thought, noting that she had been fully focused on controlling Adam at the time.
Deciding to remove the ring, she found that she couldn’t get it off - couldn’t even twist it around – and felt a small wave of panic. The panic was pushed back by an unfamiliar voice of logic telling her that her hands were probably just swollen and all she would need to do to remove the ring was to run her hands under cold water and then slick them up with some soap. It seemed strange to her, for months now she had noticed herself becoming more prone to anxiety and panic than to rational thinking.
*******
“What are you doing now?” asked Emma walking up behind Adam as he sat at a computer in the lab.
“Well, I’ve got a DNA sample from Kayla,” he started to respond. Emma looked up at the rest of the team as each of them averted their eyes. She smiled. It was unanimous – none of them were going to ask where he got the sample from. Adam continued, “I’ve used it to re-program my ring. If she’s still wearing it, we can use it to locate her.” As the indicator light on the monitor flashed that the ring was active, he added, “Gotcha! Now to activate a DNA fuse so that she can’t remove it…”
Jesse pointed at the screen, “Why’s it still processing?”
“Well,” Adam replied, tapping on the screen, “it appears that her DNA is fluctuating some, so the ring is having to constantly update the connection. Our friend Kayla isn’t exactly stable, which actually explains quite a bit. In the same way that Ashley needed to feed on electrical energy when she was mutating, it appears that Kayla needs to feed on emotional energy to stabilize her mutation. She’s down on the beach and, from the satellite scan, she’s alone, so let’s go get her.”
*******
The steady rhythm of the waves wasn’t helping. Kayla thought to herself, <Everything seems so much clearer…but it’s all still confused. Where is Gabriel?> For the last several months, he had been there, always present in a corner of her mind, watching her. Sometime, during sex with Adam, he had left her – stopped guiding her actions. Now that he was gone she felt somehow lonely, but that loneliness was mixed with the relief of having her thoughts and feelings to herself again.
The threat of accidentally thinking something wrong had been lifted like a bag of bricks off of her shoulders. In her mind she remembered a short- term mission that she went on to Guatemala. They were helping to build houses and were carting bundles of cinderblocks up a steep path in the thin mountain air. By the time she reached the top, she was sweating and breathing heavily as one of the other people in her group lifted the blocks off of her back. She remembered looking up to give him a smile of thanks, but it was Adam looking back at her. She shook the thought from her head.
Looking back out toward the water through her tear-blurred eyes, she was startled to notice a tall, strong, dark-haired man in a long brown leather jacket standing 3 meters in front of her and a bit to her right. She didn’t recognize him, but Gabriel was gathering more of the children into the Strand every day. The new voice of reason within her couldn’t overcome the wave of anxiety. What would Gabriel do to her? Would he take her back? Did she want him to? The time with Adam had been so different, with all of the emotional fulfillment, but without the fear or the constant overhanging threat.
She looked up to try to get an empathic reading from the man standing silently in front of her and noticed that a woman had joined him. Silently appearing in front of her and a bit to her left. She recognized this woman with long blond hair and her mind was instantly overwhelmed by a myriad of conflicting thoughts. This was Shalimar, the woman that Gabriel had captured. That meant that these weren’t people that Gabriel had sent to retrieve her.
These two people, no, four people she noted as her peripheral vision picked up the other two standing on each side of her, where the Mutant X team – sent by Adam. Then she felt him, standing directly behind her. Not ‘sent’ by Adam, she realized, ‘brought’ by Adam. She stood up on legs that were shaking visibly, but kept her gaze firmly out toward the water. She couldn’t look at him; couldn’t meet those deep, sensitive eyes; couldn’t bare the shame that burned in her heart.
She decided to distract herself by trying again to remove the ring, but it still wouldn’t budge. “Don’t worry about it,” came the soft, gentle voice behind her. “I’ll remove it when we get back to Sanctuary.” Kayla shuddered, she was surprised that she didn’t detect any anger in the voice, but there was no mistaking the confidence of his statement. There would be no argument, no chance of escape with the entire team surrounding her. She would be taken back to the Mutant X headquarters, to his turf, where he would be in control, where – she shuddered again – he had his lab.
The young woman to her right stepped forward and placed something on her right temple and her vision went blank. Kayla reached up to remove the object, but her arms were caught in an iron grip and brought down and back behind her. The man from her left spoke quietly into her ear, “Let’s just leave that where it is for now.”
Jesse moved one of her arms up behind her back in a controlling hold and allowed the other arm to rest at her side, but he maintained his grip on her wrist. As Adam nodded down the beach, the team headed back toward the Double Helix with Kayla offering little resistance. The ride back to Sanctuary was quiet except for Emma’s gentle assurance to Kayla that she would be okay and that they weren’t going to hurt her.
As they stepped into the main room of Sanctuary, Jesse reached up to remove the electronic blindfold, but Emma caught his arm, shaking her head. She pointed at the lab and then transmitted a wave of fear to the team. Adam nodded; understanding that Kayla was terrified of labs and it would be far less distressing if she didn’t see where she was being taken.
As Jesse gently forced her into the chair, Adam pressed a syringe into her arm. After a brief moment of panic, the sedative started to take effect as she relaxed back into the chair. Jesse removed the blindfold and Kayla could make out the clean room with all of its electronic equipment as her eyelids grew heavy and refused to stay open. She felt Adam’s hands firmly holding her wrists against the chair’s armrests, but didn’t even feel the restraints slide over her arms, locking her in place.
Slowly, sounds started to drift back into her mind, nudging her toward consciousness. Instinctively, she tried to reach her hands up to rub the sleep from her eyes, but couldn’t move them. Noticing the restraints across her arms, she felt a swell of panic as she opened her eyes and tried to force them to focus.
“Adam, she’s waking up!” reported Emma as she stepped toward Kayla. “Kayla, you’re okay, nobody is going to hurt you here, but you need to lay still for a few more minutes.” As Kayla’s eyes focused, she saw the laser lights dancing over her body from a large machine overhead – and then she wasn’t there.
Suddenly, she was back on the beach in Belize, with the fresh salt air and the gentle lapping of the surf. She walked along the beach, letting the waves wash over her feet until a voice in the back of her mind reminded her that she wasn’t in Belize, she was in a lab. She forced her mind to recall what she knew about Mutant X and remembered that one of the members was a fellow telempath. She forced her eyes to see the lab again, just as she heard Adam announce, “Finished”. The lights stopped and the machine slid along its track and disappeared into a cabinet.
Adam stepped up beside her, and Kayla looked away. “Kayla, I want you to understand what’s going on,” he started. “I’ve stabilized your molecular makeup so that you shouldn’t need to feed on emotional energy anymore. You probably won’t notice much of a change, but you shouldn’t experience as much anxiety. Do you understand?” Kayla nodded, continuing to look away. Adam glanced up at Emma and she nodded and left the room.
Once she had left the room, Adam continued in a quieter voice, “I’m sorry. I know that I should have stopped as soon as I was able to counteract your control.”
Kayla looked over at him, “You were able to counteract…I don’t understand, when?” Her face clearly reflected the confusion in her mind.
Adam forced himself not to look away, “When I hesitated, and asked you if it was really what you wanted. But I should have been able to tell that you weren’t really able to make a rational decision at that point.”
Kayla thought for a moment, trying to remember the timeline of events. Finally, she shook her head and responded, “No, by that time Gabriel was gone, that really was my decision. Something about being in contact with your mind, seeing who you really were…it broke Gabriel’s hold. That makes it worse, once he was gone, I could have chosen to stop using you, but I didn’t want to stop.” She looked away again, trying to hide the tear that escaped her eye.
Adam reached over and turned her head back toward him, wiping away the tear with his thumb. “Shall we call it even and write it off as an evening of pleasant, if not exactly appropriate, passions?” he offered.
“I think that I could live with that,” she responded, looking back at him with a sly smile. Again she could feel the bricks being lifted as her telempathy told her that it was an honest offer.
“Good,” Adam said with a shy laugh as he disengaged the restraints. “I want you to get up and move around a bit and after lunch, I’d like for you to work with Emma on some meditation techniques that will help you maintain your chemical balance in the future.”
After Emma provided Kayla a brief tour of the building, they met with the rest of the team upstairs for lunch. Kayla was surprised that the team was treating her like just another person. She expected some hostility, after all, she had tried to incapacitate their leader and turn him over to Gabriel for who-knows-what kind of revenge he had planned. But, if anything, they seemed slightly amused by it all. Without actually scanning any of them, she picked up little hints that they were pleased to have something to harass him with when he needed to be reminded that he, too, was human.
Once lunch was finished, Emma invited her back down to the area with the waterfall and the pond. “Have a seat and relax. I’m going to take you through some guided meditation exercises,” she smiled as she sat facing her, with her hands lightly on her knees.
Kayla sat down stiffly, crossed her legs and put her hands on her knees. She heard Emma snicker and say, “I would suggest that you try opening your hands, tightly clenched fists and relaxation just don’t go well together!” Kayla looked down at her hands and forced them to open. Then she cast Emma a look that clearly communicated that she didn’t think that this would work, turned back toward the waterfall and scrunched her eyes shut, her jaw clenched.
Emma smiled, maybe normal guided meditation wouldn’t work, but she fully intended to cheat! As she started calmly talking through relaxing the various muscle groups, she sent a small message to Kayla’s brain and was rewarded with watching her relax, bit by bit. As Emma continued, Kayla’s breathing slowed, her jaw unclenched and her shoulders dropped. Emma told her to picture herself sitting on a beach with the waves lapping on the shore in time with her breathing.
Moments later, Emma scanned her to confirm that she was visualizing sitting on the beach only to find that she was laying on a towel on the beach, face down, with the warm sun on her back – sound asleep. “Kayla?” she asked quietly. “Kayla?” she said a little louder.
Emma looked at her and noticed that she was perfectly balanced in the seated position, but knew the slightest tossing in her sleep could cause her to fall over. So she placed her hand gently on the back of Kayla’s neck and caused her mind to think that she was falling forward. Sure enough, her body’s natural righting mechanism caused her to compensate by leaning back and Emma carefully laid her down on the floor, unfolding her legs into a natural position and placing one of the pillows under her head. She noticed Adam looking down from the upper deck and gave him a smile and a shrug, and then sat down and continued with her own meditations.
Several hours later, Kayla awoke to the distant sounds of happy conversation coming from the upper deck. As she slowly sat up, she couldn’t believe that she had felt safe enough in this place to fall asleep in an open room, around people that she hardly knew. She climbed the stairs and peeked around the corner. “Good morning! or evening actually,” said Brennan with a kindhearted smile, “join us.”
Kayla could feel herself blush as she joined them. She finally looked up at Emma and asked, “So, do I get partial credit for getting the relaxation part down?”
Emma smiled, “Yep, and tomorrow, after you’ve had a full night’s sleep, we’ll work on combining relaxation with consciousness.” Something about the way Shalimar, Brennan and Jesse laughed told Kayla that she wasn’t the first one who had fallen asleep during one of Emma’s meditation lessons.
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The Sun Never Sets on PureMX.net
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