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On the Fence
Chapter 1: Peeking over the Fence
The young woman in her 20’s with raven black hair and light brown complexion made her way out from the mall, balancing bags in each hand as she struggled with her crutches. She stopped for a moment, exhausted and stretched out her aching arms. Renee had only been on the crutches for a day and knew that she wasn’t ready to handle a trip to the mall by herself but, she mumbled to herself, “Pride goeth before a fall.” Besides, she had needed to pick up something for her niece’s birthday party the next day. She focused her energy and continued out through the quiet parking garage toward her car, unaware that a man was watching her, silently slipping from car to car, just out of her sight.
When she arrived at her car, she started to put the bags in the trunk when the man slid around from the other side, with a knife in his hand. “Well, good afternoon.” He said with all of the charm of a snake slithering down a tree. “You look like someone who could use a little fun, and that’s just what we’re going to have – a little fun.” Renee looked at the violent lust in his eyes and turned as pale as her Native American ancestry would allow her. Normally, she could fight – quite well, in fact – but not right now. With the compound fractured leg in a cast that went over her knee and the pain medication that allowed her to remain upright, but dulled her senses to the point that she shouldn’t have been driving to begin with, she was practically defenseless.
Before she had a chance to respond, a pale, slender woman stepped out from behind a nearby car. “Is there a problem?” She asked, seeming to be very aware of the problem.
“No problem, mind your own business, bitch!” the man shouted back.
The woman looked away and Renee thought in terror that she was going to leave. Then she looked back at the man. The man looked down in horror as he saw the knife turn into a deadly rattlesnake and start winding its way up his arm. Suddenly Renee heard him yelled out in fear, while trying to shake the knife out of his own hand.
By the time he finally dropped the knife, the woman had closed the gap and hit him in the head with, noted Renee, a perfectly executed roundhouse kick. He stumbled back and regained his footing to charge the woman, just in time to receive a kick between the legs, followed by a knee to his face as he bent over in agony. As Renee watched him crumple to the ground unconscious, she realized that she had been holding her breath the entire time and took a large gasp.
The woman looked up and asked, “Hey, are you okay?”
Renee started to say that she was fine, but she was interrupted by the woman grabbing her by the arm and steadying her against the car as she nearly fainted. Holding her steady with one hand, the woman opened the back door and guided Renee to the seat. “Here, why don’t you just sit down for a minute? My name’s Emma.”
“R-Renee”, she finally convinced her tongue to reply.
“Well, Renee, I’m going to call 911 so they can put this slime ball into a nice little cage, where he belongs.” Emma smiled as she took out her cell phone and made the call and then placed her hand supportively on Renee’s arm. “Are you going to be okay dealing with the cops?” she asked.
“Yea, no problem, did you see where the knife went?” Renee answered.
“Yep, I kicked under you car. I’m sorry, I really should leave before they get here.” She said as the sirens could be heard coming down the street.
“I understand, I don’t know how to thank you.” Renee responded.
Emma thought that it was a little strange that this woman was being so understanding about her need to leave, but only said, “You can thank me by staying out of trouble, ya know, like asking a friend to drive you to the mall until you get the cast off?”
“Oh, you mean like using basic common sense?” Renee said, rolling her eyes. Emma just gave her a gentle smile and slipped back into whatever shadows she had emerged from.
As Renee watched the unconscious attacker and listened to the approaching sirens, she finally had a moment to think and said to herself, “Okay, my life was just saved by a member of Mutant X. Now there’s a detail that I won’t mention to my GSA buddies at work on Monday.” As the police car pulled up, Renee pulled some of her straight black hair forward over her shoulder, making sure that the small, black plastic disk on the back of her neck was well hidden.
***
Chapter 2: Walking the Fence
A couple months later, Renee was driving along the coast, enjoying an early Spring day that felt like mid Summer. Although the cast was off and her physical therapy was coming along, she still wasn’t up to the long walk on the beach walk that she really felt like taking. So, she traded a slow walk along a small section of beach for a fast drive along the coast. She had the special radio in her car tuned to pick up GSA reports and was listening to agents report sighting one of the Mutant X team at a small country store. They described how she had spotted them and taken off on her motorcycle and they were chasing her along the coastal highway.
“Mutant X”, Renee said to herself. Ever since she had been attacked in the garage, she had experienced mixed emotions about the group of people that she had been trained to hate. She tried to remind herself of the two solid weeks of 16-hour days that she and the other computer technicians had worked. With Mr. Eckhart glaring over their shoulders, they were repairing the damage that Adam had done when he used the new Proxy Blue program to fry the entire computer system. But her mind kept drifting back to the kindness of a woman who risked her life to protect a stranger.
When she heard the report that the woman had gotten far in front of them, she almost gave a sigh of relief. She told herself that she was only relieved because, if they didn’t have any of the Mutant X team at Genomex, then is was far less likely that Adam would be breaking in, leaving more evil little gifts in the computers that she would have to deal with.
Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes as she saw a motorcycle which had hit some gravel and gone off the inside of the road. As Renee approached the bike, she saw the barely conscious woman who had pulled herself behind a bush. She saw her eyes flash yellow at being discovered and could have sworn that she heard a low, guttural growl. She looked up as two black cars pulled up and a couple GS agents that she recognized jumped out.
Renee walked toward them, blocking their view of the bush where the Feral was hiding. “I heard it on the radio.” She said to the agents.
“Hey, Renee! Did you see where she went?” asked one of the men.
The injured Feral crouched behind the bush, trying to ignore the pain running through her body as she prepared to fight the men from the cars.
“As I pulled up, I saw someone running along the ridge, but I couldn’t make out who it was”, Renee answered, pointing to the ridge above the road, leading away from the accident.
“Great, Renee, thanks!” replied the man who then turned to the others. “Okay, you, come with me, we’ll track her from this end. You two, drive on ahead and watch for her to come down to the road, she may try to hitch a ride. The injured woman held her breath as the two men ran by her, with their eyes trained on the ridge above. Confusion added to her pain and overwhelmed her mind as she lost her fight to remain conscious.
Renee watched her friends run up the hill as the other car sped off. Then she ran back over to the injured woman and pulled her into the backseat of her car. As she drove down the road in the opposite direction, she noticed a scenic overlook that was closed for maintenance. She hopped out of her car, moved the wooden roadblocks and continued up to the lookout. She checked on her passenger and noticed that she was drifting in and out of consciousness and had a large gash on her forehead.
Renee took a few deep breaths to focus her mind and then reached down and laid her hand directly over the gash. In her mind, she could feel the broken veins and she visualized the broken walls mending. She felt deeper and could feel a small part of the brain that was bruised – nothing she could do about that. She ran her hands lightly over the woman’s arms and upper body and then down her legs. Mostly just minor scrapes and bruises, but she did find a lot of blood on her leg where it had been trapped under the bike. She focused on the area and felt the bleeding stop.
Renee sat for a minute thinking about what to do. All of her GSA training told her to drive to Genomex, turn the woman in and pray that the woman wouldn’t mention that she lied to the other agents. On the other hand, every fiber of her being told her that she owed Mutant X her life and this was a way that she could clear her debt to them.
As her mind was waging its internal battle, she looked up and saw a single black cloud drifting across the sky. The shape reminded her of a cat, curled up in ball sleeping. She looked down at the Feral Feline laying in her backseat. “Thank you, Grandmother,” she said respectfully, looking back up at the cloud. With the decision made, she reached down to hold the limp, almost delicate hand and activate the ring that, according to the latest security alerts, was a comlink.
“Adam?” she asked hesitantly into the ring.
A moment later, a strong male voice demanded, “Who is this?”
Renee closed her eyes for a moment and forced herself to stop shaking before she answered, “That’s not important. What is important is that your little blond kitty-cat needs a vet, big time.”
“Where is she?” the man asked. Renee was surprised, his voice sounded almost calm, although she could hear a flurry of activity through the comlink and the man sounded like he was running. Renee told him where they were, although she was sure that it was just a stalling technique because she had also been told that the rings could be tracked through GPS. She assured the man that she would stay with the injured woman until they got there and then deactivated the ring.
* * *
Adam’s mind was racing. Shalimar was injured and whoever had her knew how to activate the comlink and obviously knew who she was. Coupled with the reluctance to give a name, that spelled trouble. As Adam, Jesse and Brennan jumped into the Double Helix, Jesse laid in the course and the VTOL lifted out of its secret hangar. Adam sat at the computer controls, running a voice analysis on the playback of the conversation. “I’d really like to know who we’re dealing with before we get there!” he said out loud to nobody in particular.
A few minutes later he announced, “Got it! Her name is Renee DarkCloud, she’s a telekinetic, detail only, mostly manipulates machinery and some biological organisms, but requires physical contact. She’s been at Genomex for 5 years. From her records, it looks like she mostly gets her work done and tries to stay well below Eckhart’s radar, he probably doesn’t even know she exists.”
“Sounds like a smart way to stay out of the stasis pods!” Jesse responded with a slightly cynical laugh.
As the team approached the deserted lookout, Adam had Jesse activate the Stealth mode and fly over to scan the area. He reported, “Just one car and two people, nobody else in the vicinity.” The Double Helix then landed in the parking lot about 50 feet from the car.
* * *
Renee couldn’t see the craft, but it was easy to tell where it was landing as the dirt and debris were being blown out of its way. She was glad that they landed on the other side of the parking lot, which gave her a little time to assess the situation and decide if she needed to run. As if on cue, there was a twinge in her leg, which reminded her that running would have to be a last resort. She thought about her New Mutant abilities. She was a detail telekinetic, so she could manipulate small objects, but couldn’t affect anything large.
She tried to recall the security alerts about the rest of the team. There was a male Molecular who could both phase and mass – annoying, but not likely to be a problem in this environment. The other male was an Electrical Elemental. She shivered as a wave of dread passed over her. She’d been afraid of lightning ever since it hit the tree in her backyard when she was five. She really didn’t want to deal with someone who could shoot it out of his fingers directly at her. Maybe he didn’t come, maybe Emma would remember her and help keep things calm. “Damn,” she said as she saw the three men step out of now visible craft.
As the men approached, the older one reached his hand out to her with a calm, but cautious, “Hello, Renee. I’m Adam. This is Jesse,” he said, indicating the shorter of the two men, “and this is Brennan.” He added indicating the taller man. She recognized the name, that was the Elemental. Instead of shaking the offered hand, she jumped up, crouching on the hood of her car, still facing the three men. That gave her a slight height advantage, but she doubted that it would help if things got messy.
“Sh-she’s in th-there.” Renee said as she pointed to the back door. Damn, she though to herself, so much for appearing confident and controlled, she was stuttering like an idiot.
Adam opened the door and crawled in beside the woman and began to examine her. A moment later he climbed out and said, “I think she’ll be okay.” Renee noticed the look of relief on the other men’s faces. She’d never really thought of them as people with feelings and concerns, just like her teammates in the GSA. Adam continued, “she’s got a concussion, so I won’t know for sure until I can get a thorough scan. Brennan, can you get her to the Double Helix?”
“Not a problem,” responded the taller man as he reached into the car and scooped the woman up in his arms. He made it look as if she weighed practically nothing as Renee remembered how she had struggled to move the woman 10 feet and pull her up into the car. On the other hand, she felt relieved as the Elemental walked away. Hopefully, he would just stay with her in the craft.
“Thank you for calling us,” Adam said with the same tone of caution as before. Renee suddenly realized that he had greeted her by name, so he must know who she is and who she works for. She could see the wheels of that legendary brain of his spinning behind his deep brown eyes; trying to understand why she hadn’t called her own people.
“Sure, no problem,” Renee answered a little too quickly. “I’d better get going.” She hoped that they would just leave, she was starting to lose her nerve and felt torn between running, which would kill her leg, and crying, which would kill what was left of her ego.
“Relax,” Adam said with a voice that almost made her want to sit down and join him for a cup of tea. “I’m just worried about you, what if your ‘friends’ find out that you were aiding and abetting the enemy?”
“I, uh, wasn’t planning to mention it to them, were you?” she tossed back at him, stalling while she tried to sort out the tangle of emotions running through her head. On second thought, she was glad that Emma wasn’t here, the last thing that she needed was an empath reporting to Adam about just how confused she was.
“Definitely not! But we could get you someplace safe, where you wouldn’t have to worry about being thrown into a stasis pod for helping someone out…” Adam offered. Oh, thought Renee, so that’s it. He’s wondering if I helped them because I’m trying to get into the underground.
“No, that’s okay, just give someone a message for me, will you?” she asked. Adam responded by nodding and giving her his undivided attention so she continued, “Tell Emma, “Thanks for her help with the goon in the parking lot.”” Adam smiled and nodded as the pieces all fell into place. Emma had told them all about the incident in the mall’s garage.
Adam looked at her with a smile, “Well, now that you seem to be back in one piece, I’d hate for anything to happen.” His voice trailed off and his expression changed to one of deep concern, “Seriously, what would happen if someone found out about this?”
“I’d be up a creek!” Renee responded with a weak smile and a shrug, trying to sound casual. She didn’t want this ‘enemy’ to know just how accurately he had identified her fears. He looked at her for a moment, as if waiting for her to change her mind and then reached into his pocket and handed her a business card with a phone number and email address. She looked at it and then looked up at him, “What’s this?”
He looked into her eyes with an intensity that almost made her step back, but she stood her ground as he replied, “A spare paddle.” Renee tried to keep her hand from shaking as she took the card and got into her car. The two men turned and went back to their aircraft. Renee didn’t wait for it to take off, she just headed back for the road as fast as she felt she could without appearing to be running.
All of the way home, the voice kept echoing in her head, “I’m worried about you, I’m worried about you.” It was what her beloved grandmother always said when Renee had gotten into trouble yet again. But her grandmother was family, she had a right to be worried about her. Why would this man that she didn’t even know, this strange leader of a bunch of rebel outlaw mutants, care about her?
Chapter 3: Deciding which way to jump
It was only a couple weeks later that the email arrived. Brennan called out, “Hey, Adam, you’ve got a message from Renee DarkCloud!”
“I’ll be right there,” Adam called from the lab as he jogged up the stairs. “What’s it say?” he asked, walking over to the chair where Brennan was checking the secured email account.
“I’m not sure, she asked if you know a good place to get a couple paddles, in a hurry?!” he answered, sounding totally confused.
“As in, she’s up a creek without one,” explained Adam. “Give her directions to the warehouse by Safehouse 12, tell her to meet us there tonight at 9.” As Brennan entered the information, Adam turned to Jesse, “Start monitoring the warehouse, I want to be sure it isn’t a trap before I send you guys in to get her.”
“Adam?” Brennan called, “she says that she can’t get there until tomorrow morning, about 6, is that okay?”
Adam looked a little concerned, “Tell her that’s okay.” Turning to Jesse again he added, “monitor it both inside and out!” Jesse nodded and went down to use the main safehouse surveillance system on the main level.
* * *
Renee took a couple deep breaths. She had worked out the plan, now she had committed to it and she needed to put the fear aside and follow through. All of her efforts to stay quietly out of the picture at work had failed to protect her from being randomly selected for a routine psionic security scan. The telepath scanning her had detected that she was hiding something and had locked in on her niece.
She had lied when she joined Genomex, saying that her psionic chemical imbalance was the result of a miscarriage three month’s earlier. They had checked the hospital records that confirmed her story, brought her in, helped her get mentally back on her feet and given her training and a computer technician job.
As the telepath tore the information from her brain, they learned that it was actually her younger sister, Rita, who had the miscarriage, Renee had given birth a month and a half later to a healthy baby girl. When she started to suffer from postpartum depression, she and her sister had made arrangements to alter the hospital records (not difficult since they both still went by their maiden name and had been at the same hospital) and tell everyone that Allysha was Rita’s daughter.
Renee hadn’t felt that she had a choice about seeking help at Genomex, but she didn’t want them to know about her daughter. She had heard that they were especially interested in getting a hold of children who could then be ‘properly’ trained. Since Rita knew all about Renee’s New Mutancy, she was sure that Rita would be able to handle Allysha.
Hours later, she had been allowed to visit her daughter in one of the smaller research facility. She had been holding herself together fairly well until she hugged her and felt the subdermal governor on the back of her neck. Then she had broken down, crying hysterically and had been removed so as not to ‘upset’ Allysha.
With her emotions finally in check, Renee was being allowed to have dinner with her daughter and visit for a while at the facility. She used the seemingly casual visit to tell Allysha how to get out and where to meet her after everyone had gone to bed that night. She gave the five-year-old a watch as a gift and set the alarm for 2 am.
Shortly after 2, Renee saw Allysha slip out of the building, running from bush to bush until she reached the wall. Renee threw over the emergency fire escape ladder from her apartment and Allysha climbed over the wall. It was a long drive back to where the Mutant X team had arranged the meeting and Renee was envious of her daughter who curled up in a ball on the seat and fell asleep. She longed to be oblivious to the fear of being tracked by her governor and the uncertainty of leaving everything behind.
Once they got into the warehouse, Renee had Allysha hide inside one of the crates until she could make sure that everything was safe.
* * *
“Adam,” said Jesse, looking up from the monitors, “Renee just showed up, it looks like she has a little girl with her. You said she was on the fence and you were wondering what pushed her onto our side!”
Adam looked at the playback from the monitor of Renee carrying the sleepy little girl, “Yep, that would do it! Her profile didn’t say anything about a daughter, she must have been hiding her.”
“Uh oh,” exclaimed Shalimar looking at another screen. “They’ve got company and I don’t think that Renee invited them!”
“Get going!” Adam shouted as the team was already halfway out of the Double Helix that parked on the warehouse roof.
By the time they got down to the main room, several GSA agents had already gotten a hold of Renee and were beating her and demanding to know where Allysha was. Renee tried to pull deep within herself. Part of her brain was screaming to just tell them what they wanted to know so that the pain would stop, but the maternal instincts within her were stronger and she remained silent.
“We’re gonna find her anyway, why not save yourself the pain and us the trouble!” yelled one of the agents as he kneed Renee in the stomach and then grabbed her hair and backhanded her across the face repeatedly. The other two agents were already starting to search the building when an arch of lightning shot directly in front of Renee, striking the man who was beating her. She remained conscious just long enough for her mind to enjoy the irony of being saved by the lightning that she had always feared. Somehow she knew that, even if she died here, Allysha would be safe. It was the first time that she had felt a measure of peace since that night, seemingly so long ago, in the mall’s garage.
Shalimar and Jesse each took out one of the other agents, while Emma focused on finding the little girl they had seen. She closed her eyes and focused in on the fear coming from one of the crates. Approaching it, she sent a mental image of a child wrapped in a blanket in her mother’s arms. Allysha climbed out of the crate and Emma picked her up and headed back up to the roof. She was careful to keep her faced away from where Brennan was picking up the limp body of her mother.
As Emma entered the Double Helix, Adam introduced himself to the girl and asked her name. She looked back and pursed her lips together. Adam smiled, “Not supposed to talk to strangers?” Allysha nodded and pursed her lips even tighter. He then signaled Emma to take the girl to the upper deck and make sure she was asleep. Emma buckled her into one of the seats and brushed her hand across the tiny face in front of her. Allysha’s eyes closed and her breathing slowed. “Not much of a challenge, you’ve had a long night, little one,” she whispered.
On the lower deck, Shalimar and Jesse arrived, followed by Brennan carrying Renee’s limp form. Adam pressed a button on the wall and a padded shelf slid out. Brennan laid Renee on it and then stepped out of the way to let Adam look at her. “Jesse,” Adam said with urgency, “get us back to Sanctuary.”
* * *
The next day, Jesse motioned for the girl to follow him, “Allysha, come on, I want to show you something!”
Shalimar looked up at him as he went by, “You are such a big softy!”
“I am not!” Jesse responded, trying to sound insulted, “have you ever SEEN the collection of Lego’s that Adam has in the storeroom?”
“Really?” Shalimar asked as she put down her book and started to follow Jesse and Allysha to the room where Jesse had laid out thousands of Lego’s. They still hadn’t gotten the girl to say anything, but she was willing to smile and play and it hadn’t taken too much research to figure out who she was.
Adam stepped into the room and leaned against the wall, smiling. There was an extensive fairy castle, which was almost complete in the middle of the room. Jesse and Brennan were engaged in a friendly disagreement over how to make a drawbridge that would actually work, Shalimar was putting a flag on top of one of the towers and Emma was helping Allysha build the horse stables.
As he cleared his throat, his team looked up at him, each of them trying their hardest to wipe the silly grins off of their faces. “Allysha, someone would like to see you.” Before he finished the sentence, there was a streak of black hair that ran out the door and over to the lab. As Adam turned to follow, he made a mental note to bring some of the blocks up to the lounge area, a lot of the laws of physics could be taught with Lego’s.
Renee reached out for Allysha from the chair in the middle of the lab where Adam had spent over 30 straight hours repairing the damage inflicted by the GSA agent. She hugged her closely, noticing that the subdermal governor had been removed, and cried as Adam entered the lab.
Allysha looked at him, “Is my mom..” she stopped and covered her mouth, looking at Renee.
Renee reassured her, “Its okay, from now on, I’m going to be your mommy, but we’ll find a way for you to still visit your Aunt Rita.”
Looking back to Adam she continued, “Is my mommy going to be okay?”
Adam crouched down so that he could look the little girl in the eye and said, “Yes, Allysha, your mom’s going to be okay. We’re going to help you and your mom find a new place to live where you can be a family and you can both be safe.”
The girl looked back at him with eyes as black as night and a smile as bright as the noon sun, “And she won’t have to work for Mr. Slimy anymore?”
Adam clenched his teeth to keep from laughing, “No, she won’t have to work for ‘Mr. Slimy’ anymore. You and your mom have a special gift and your mom is going to start working with a friend of mine who is a doctor. He’s going to help your mom learn how to help people who have been injured and are brought to the hospital.”
“Thank you,” she said and then leaned over and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek and then returned to hugging Renee. Adam turned away so that nobody would see how touched he had been by the child’s simple act. Sometimes he wondered if it was all really worth it. This wasn’t one of those times.
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The Sun Never Sets on PureMX.net
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