I felt like I could sense something coming. I mean, all of us knew something significant was about to happen. But I felt like I was about to fall off a cliff into darkness. It was like I was on a roller coaster, high up and waiting to plunge down a steep drop. Only there was no end to this fall.
I wondered, “Were we really destined for whatever happens? Was this something like the feelings Donna got?”
Probably not, I figured. It was pretty quiet after the storytelling in the car. Not an awkward quiet. Just a comfortable quiet. Everyone was tired. It worked to my favor I suppose. There was a lot on my mind that I had to deal with. And by a lot I mean one thing. I knew that there was the chance my feral side would come out because there was a fair chance my feral side would be needed. I could feel the feral in me waiting in the darkness. Whatever was ahead of us, she was ready to pounce. This is what she was made for. We both knew it. This meant there was a real chance I could be locked away inside of my monster forever because I was essentially immortal. I’d be alone again with no one to bring me back. Trapped within a living nightmare forever. I felt selfish for focusing on my potential fate. Then I wondered if any of us would survive whatever was waiting for us.
Donna took over the driving early in the morning. She assured us that she could get us to Leah unharmed and unnoticed by authorities at a high rate of speed and suggested that we all try and get some sleep. I tried again. And again I wasn’t very successful. Brenda and Jess knocked out leaning on each other. I don’t know how they could find rest so easily. They knew the danger as well as I did. But then again, they didn’t have the burden of questioning themselves as much as I did. I think I found sleep here and there. Mostly, I was in that weird state between being asleep and awake that leaves you feeling groggy and tired. Yeah, I know. I said that I don’t need to sleep. But I was forcing myself to try and sleep to avoid my thoughts. It just made me feel more uneasy. When I did fall asleep, it didn’t feel like I slept at all. My eyes closed and then the next thing I knew, Donna woke us up. We were close now. She had driven through the dark morning and drove faster as the sun came up.
“I need everyone to listen carefully,” she said. “I can’t see what will happen once we get into the building. I’m still being blocked but the future is also in flux. I can feel new timelines blinking in and out ahead of us. I can’t see them but I know they’re there. All I know for sure is that we have to be there. That being said, if anyone feels the need to back out, now is the time. No questions asked.”
Then she turned and looked right at me.
“I do mean anyone,” Donna told me.
For a second, I saw the fear in her eyes but then it vanished. She was in mission mode now. She was scared of losing us all. But Donna knew how to focus past the fear and concentrate on what she needed to do. I knew I had to trust her. And I knew she needed me as much as I needed her.
“I’m not leaving you,” I told her.
She smiled a sad smile and reached out to squeeze my hand. She knew more than she was telling us. I could tell she knew that I knew. Both of us knew I trusted her and would not question her decisions. Brenda and Jess leaned into each other and traded whispers. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I didn’t know if they had any doubts. Then they sat back up.
“We’re in,” said Brenda.
“Yeah, we got this funny feeling that we’re supposed to be here,” said Jess.
Neither of them seemed to have any apprehension about the rescue.
“Okay then,” said Donna.
She got off the main roads and onto a dirt trail leading into the desert. After an hour we stopped at the foot of a mountain. Then we started walking and she laid out the plan. Donna was the scout, Jess was transportation, I was there to get Leah, and Brenda was there for scorched earth when Leah was safe. She would erase everything that was there. Buildings and all. So, there we were. Four people set on storming a secret Death Valley-adjacent research facility in broad daylight. The whole area was just a vast desert of mountains, dry lakes, and dry shrub. Perfect for keeping a place like this isolated.
When we first saw it, it didn’t look impressive. There was just a large warehouse with a couple of smaller buildings scattered around it, sitting in the middle of a dry lake bed. I don’t know what its intended purpose was when it was built, but Morden had modifications and additions made to its underground spaces. Staff was bused in and stayed in underground dorms. On the outside it looked unimportant and forgotten. There were no fences or signs of security. But no one could approach without being seen.
We had to work unseen as much as possible. Jess was key. They could get us in and out, and far away fast enough that Daytona’s speed would not be a factor. Well, not as much of a factor. Jess was familiar with Daytona. Not too long after our first meeting, they jumped us out of the club in Moscow before Daytona could get on scene. Donna got a “feeling” and sent a panicked text. Jess said the rescue was on the house. They didn’t want to lose a reliable source of income.
Donna got a rifle and a holstered pistol out of the trunk. She went through checks of both and strapped the holster to her belt and thigh. I tried to breathe and center myself. Brenda, believe it or not, was kneeling on the ground, praying. Jess even seemed more focused and engaged than usual. They looked like they were whispering to themselves. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but it ended at the same time as Brenda’s praying.
“At least it’s a dry heat,” they said in unison.
“Jinx,” they then said together.
Donna rolled her eyes.
“A little focus, please,” she said.
Then she closed her eyes. She tried one last time to feel what she could about our immediate future. Donna couldn’t tell if Daytona was there. She tried feeling for displacement that would match Daytona, the same way she learned to sense me, but the holes in her time sense were persisting in and around this place. What she could sense was that this was the window of time we needed to arrive in. The longer we waited, the worse the situation would get. Brenda reached out with her feelings and found several maintenance tunnels below ground. She couldn’t feel anyone in them.175Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEiPMYwdxe7
The time had arrived. We began. There was no sound or anything to announce our infiltration. Jess and Donna just suddenly materialized in a maintenance tunnel under a wing of the facility that was being renovated. Donna had her rifle at the ready. She closed her eyes and concentrated to feel the probabilities around and through the building while Jess visually scanned the vacant room. Donna tapped Jess twice on their shoulder to give the all clear and Jess jumped out. Jess grabbed Brenda and I and then teleported us back to Donna’s side. We arrived later than we should have. Something slowed Jess’s teleport. It felt really bizarre. It was almost like being paralyzed and having that weird pins and needles feeling when your hand falls asleep, but all over your body. In the seconds we were supposed to have been there, Daytona appeared in front of Donna.
“Aw, you guys thought you were being all secret and stuff,” said the blonde, tilting her head and making an exaggerated sad face.
Donna tried to swing the rifle towards Daytona. The move was futile but instinct and training were kicking in. It would have worked with anyone else. Daytona removed the magazine from the rifle, ejected the chambered round, and put a syringe to Donna’s neck before Donna’s thumb even finished moving the safety switch to semi-automatic. Donna stumbled back and began to feel herself getting dizzy.
“Yeah, a certain mistress of time called an audible on your play,” said Daytona as Donna collapsed to the floor.
She crouched over Donna and smiled.
“It sucks that I only get to kill one of you,” she said.
Daytona stood and blasted the area we were going to appear with an aerosol can, saturating the air we would materialize in with a mist.
“Watch this,” she said.
Donna was conscious enough to see Daytona pull a quarter out of a pocket, and flip it in the air. It was at that moment that Jess, Brenda, and I finally arrived. Jess’s head materialized right where the quarter was flipping. Jess looked like they were going to reach for their head, but their arms just dropped and their eyes rolled back in their head. Then their body just went limp and they dropped to the ground. Brenda grabbed her own head like something stabbed her in the brain before passing out. Weirdly, Daytona looked dazed for a second and took a step back. She must have accidentally inhaled some of the aerosol. I would normally be immune to any chemical but phasing right into the cloud was something my body was clearly not prepared for. It took a few seconds longer to hit me, but it still took me out. I tried to take a step but I hit the ground. I could see Daytona smiling and waving at me before everything went dark. Daytona nudged Jessica’s body with her foot then bent down to whisper loudly to Donna.
“You can’t be too careful around this one since they teleport,” said the blonde.
She straightened up and kicked Jess’s body to make sure they were down for good.
“Been trying to kill the Jinx for a while now. The squirrelly little bastard is hard to catch. Well, was hard to catch,” said Daytona.
Then she sighed.
“Honestly though, this kill was a little more interesting in my head. It turned out kinda anticlimactic. Oh well,” she said, looking disappointed.
Daytona walked out of the room with a swagger.
She called out, “Kill ya later, bitches.”
A disposal team came in and collected Jess’s body. Just like that, and only one day after I accepted them as family, they were gone. Donna’s last memory before she passed out was reaching for Jess. Then a team of people in scrubs came in to retrieve us.
Donna and Brenda were carted into the observation room where Leah was plugged in. Her eyes were now closed and moving rapidly behind her eyelids. Brenda was still out cold, but Donna began to come to as she was brought into the room. She must have been hit with a different sedative than what Daytona used on the rest of us. Both women were placed in the bed stations that the twins once occupied. Donna could see Leah strapped to the bed and tried to reach out to her before she was also strapped down. She tried to struggle but the drug in her system kept her weak. A bite guard was inserted into her mouth and her jaw got strapped shut. The same was done to the unconscious Brenda. Morden walked up to Donna and lightly stroked her hair.
“It’s a shame it’s come to this,” he said.
She couldn’t speak, but Donna’s eyes flared with anger. The adrenaline surging inside her made the effects of the sedative wear off. She tried to scream out at her old partner, but all she could make were muffled sounds. Morden chuckled to himself.
“I’ve always stood outside of what you could see. Now I’m going to make sure you get to see everything,” he told her.
Unlike with Leah, no devices were attached to Donna or Brenda’s heads. In fact, nothing was done to either of them. They were brought in as is. Surgical procedures were no longer needed. The cables used to plug into the brains of the twins began moving on their own. Morden smiled to himself.
“Amazing, isn’t it? She hasn’t just taken our system’s processing to levels beyond imagination, she has taken physical control of the hardware itself. Just like we’d hoped,” said Morden.
The cables snaked along the floor and crawled up the beds, working their ways behind the heads of the women. Even though Donna was cool under fire, this scared her more than anything before. She could not see what the cable was about to do, but she could hear it moving and she could feel her future fracturing in front of her. Donna tried hard to struggle against the restraints but she was not going anywhere.
“This will hurt a lot,” said Morden, putting on a fake sympathetic face.
Donna felt something crawling against the back of her skull. Then there was a sharp stabbing pain of multiple wires forcing their way into the back of her head. The wires twisted themselves back and forth, drilling through bone. Her scream was muffled but it was still loud. When the wires finished forcing their way through, they branched out along the inside of her skull, and wormed their way throughout her brain. Her head felt like it was splitting open. And then she felt nothing. Donna’s conscious mind began to melt away as her brain was taken over by the processes that Leah was running. Donna’s eyes began to scan from side to side as her eyelids closed. Her body relaxed as her lips began to move as if she were whispering something, but there was no sound. Brenda was spared the pain since she was still unconscious. But her mind was also taken by Leah just as easily. Here closed eyes began scanning.
“This will be interesting,” said Morden.
He looked on for a few more minutes before he turned and walked out of the room. Technicians walked in with tattoo machines and gave Donna and Brenda received their brands. Their Object Classifications numbers were tattooed on their right cheeks. Donna was R05. Brenda was marked with A020 and the same red A that Coil had on her cheek.
At Cape Canaveral, Florida, at about the same time, the next part of a bigger plan was being carried out. An unmarked semi-truck arrived at the front gate. The guards checked the manifest and the credentials of the driver. This delivery was on schedule. The truck was allowed to pass, carrying the SC drone. Soon it would be aboard the Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle which was being prepped for launch. I wish I could tell you what this was about. I don’t know why this memory is attached to the one of us entering the facility. I feel like it’s important but I can’t access any more information about it.175Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡejiIjpsvi1
