Morden turned and walked away, leaving me kneeling on the floor, stunned. Twice now, an enemy did something to help me.
“What is going on?” I asked the universe.
I stood up and cautiously approached the door.
Before I could walk out of the room, I heard Morden call out, “And don’t worry about being mind controlled, I couldn’t do it to you no matter how much I wanted.”178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtHr0CkmcZT
This was strange. But it was no stranger than anything else so far. So, I followed.
When I caught up, he said “You know I’m not the villain, right? I mean, I certainly am a villain.”
Then he lost his balance and held himself up against the wall with his hand.
“But I’m not the villain. I’m really just another piece on the board,” he said.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡH05h0xzVax
This was getting even more confusing. This was the enemy I expected to face?
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I’m sure the lovely Elizabeth has visited you already,” said Morden.
“She has,” I replied.
Morden nodded.
“She tapped me a while ago. Before I double crossed Ms. Tate in Syria, obviously. You know, I thought I was getting in on the ground floor of something good.” He smiled to himself and seemed to be thinking of what he had been promised. “Serves me right for having so much ambition.”
He reestablished his balance, straightened his tie, and continued to walk. I got the feeling that this was not part of some plot against me so I continued to follow him. But I still didn’t trust him so I stayed a step behind.
“Do you know about the Retrace operations?” he asked.
“Donna told us some of it,” I replied.
“Oh, good. Saves me a bit of exposition. A week or so before that project started, Lizzy came to me and stuck her ethereal hand into my skull. Not pleasant as you probably know,” he said.
I nodded.
“Was she responsible for the Tracer program?” I asked.
“Bright girl,” said Morden.
Weirdly, he seemed to show some pride in his adversary.
“It’s a little confusing since she can travel through time and all. I don’t know if I understand the complexities involved, but Liz did something to create her own powers and trigger the abilities of her little group. I’m fairly certain she also has something to do with the viral mutations that gave everyone else powers but she’s never mentioned anything about it. At least not to me. Personally I feel like there is something more going on. But I’ve no clue what it is. Anyway, when she found me she rummaged around in my head and essentially did to me what I do to everyone here. Well, sort of,” he said.
“You’re being mind-controlled?” I asked skeptically.
“Not completely, but she does steer me. The broad strokes of all this are hers,” he said, waving his hands around. “But I did the detailed work to make it happen. She gave me the autonomy necessary to pull this off.”
Then I realized something and it stopped me dead in my tracks. One of the reasons we did not move on Morden earlier, other than Donna’s interpretation of the timelines, was the possibility he could control us. Then something else struck me.
“Hold on. You don’t have powers, do you?” I asked.
My heart sank as I said the words. Setting the threat of Daytona aside, we could have moved on Morden a long time ago and avoided all or most of the death and pain. Did Donna know?
“Sweetie, you are seriously lagging behind,” he said with some condescension.
The pride was gone now.
“I can control minds because Lizzie links them to my mind. And she’s continued to make adjustments to those individuals I needed more control over. But just so you know, any mind I could ever have read or controlled was linked to me years ago,” he said.
Then he sighed.
“She has also periodically made adjustments to my mental capacities as well. The downside of which is that she leaves bits of herself behind. For example, now I say things like sweetie and gold stars,” Morden said looking a little disgusted with himself
“You’re just a puppet,” I said, shocked.
I decided not to voice the bigger question. What was Elizabeth doing? She didn’t link our minds to Morden. She could have done so easily. Instead she was playing us against him.
“Oh, most certainly,” he replied.
He paused to steady himself again.
“You have to forgive me. Our latest acquisition is upgrading the system and it is taking everything I can to keep her out,” said Morden.
“Her who?” I asked.
“Leah. That’s why you all were here. To kill Leah,” he said.
I took a step back in confusion. He was surprised that I didn’t know.
“Kill. We came to rescue her. What are you talking about?” I asked.
“She is a Trojan horse,” he replied.
He kept walking, shaking his head.
“Dear Lizzie has been visiting that girl for years. Filling her head with fear and then bottling it up in the poor little things brain somewhere. I don’t think little Leah knew she had that much fear and rage in her. Although I have a feeling Leah, or something inside her has been toying with Liz as well. As much as all this is because of Liz, I think Leah has been playing a hand, too,” said Morden.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The more I learned the more out of step I was feeling. I also began to question if my faith in Donna had been misplaced.
“Liz changes, little by little, every time she visits the girl. It’s hard to notice, but I’m trained to read people and I’ve been able to observe her for years. I mean, I wasn’t there to see it, but she’s spoken about altering the girl and I’ve been able to reconstruct the timeline of her visits with all the times she has changed. It’s like there is less and less of her there. And what is left is an increasingly unstable caricature of who Elizabeth used to be. Anyway, you never had a chance with Leah. And now she is plugged in,” he said.
“What the hell do you mean plugged in?” I asked in another moment of shock.
The thought of Leah being plugged into something was frightening. I did not know what it meant yet, but got a very dark feeling when he said it. Morden looked lost in thought for a moment. So I slapped him. Just enough to snap him back.
“Thank you,” he said, regaining some composure. “Seriously, thank you. I need to show you something.”
He stumbled to the other side of the hall where there was a window. He punched a code into a keypad and the curtains on the other side of the window opened. The lights in the room on the other side of the glass turned on. There was a girl in a hospital bed. It would be more accurate to say there was a girl in her own personal burn unit. She was completely covered in gauze and bandages. You could only tell she was a girl because the status board in her room listed her as…
Name: Millie Sayers178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRn5eyb3Qnm
Age: 17178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYzRyopjxX5
Gender: Female178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡl2iWzvjQjD
Object Classification: Prototype178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqvQiqm54kW
Number: P001178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPYbfYXg4Qf
Code name: Nitro
“Who is this?” I asked, stepping back.
“This is Millie,” Morden said with pride. “We found her years ago. Sweet girl by all accounts. She occasionally suffered from panic attacks, but there were no other health concerns, mental or otherwise. There was a brief month or so when she was nine where she became a little fascinated with matches. No one knew about it. She almost set a garage on fire, but she was able to hide the burnt rags and there was no other damage to anything. That put an end to the playing with matches thing.”
Morden just recited all this information like he was telling me about some girl who was still alive in the world.
“As she got older, she tended to fade into the background. She was pretty in an ordinary sort of way, I suppose, and she didn’t go out of her way to be noticed. Mostly because she was a little awkward around people. She still suffered panic attacks. Her heart would race and she felt like she was short of breath. She’s had a few severe ones, too. Panic would flood her mind and Millie said it felt like her heart was going to explode.”
I aggressively stepped right in his face.
“What does this have to do with anything? Why is she here?” I asked, pointing to Millie.
“Millie was the first test subject outside the original research program. Lizzie experimented on her own and helped progress the Alpha-Wolfe project by leaps and bounds. Every person in her first test group is dead except for poor Millie here. And she made a real mess with the girl. Lizzie abandoned her when she no longer found her of any use. She probably could have put Millie back together if she wanted or at least made it so the girl would be functional. But no. Anyway, I was able to find some use for her and we take care of her now,” said Morden.
The more I learned about Elizabeth, the colder I felt. This person was a monster and I didn’t even know where to begin addressing her threat. I didn’t even know if we could have. My mind was blank for a few seconds. Then this new information created a new question.
“I thought I was the first to get powers outside Retrace. Wasn’t I?”
“You were the first anomaly,” he corrected. “The first unplanned. Those like you should have never happened. At least not that I know of.”
I stepped back again. While the gravity of everything Elizabeth had been doing was dawning, Morden continued to enlighten me.
“Millie is part of the Prototype group. Charlene is a Prototype too, FYI. We were able to give her powers only because of our continued research into Lizzie’s experiments with the virus and its mutations. It’s really quite fascinating. Daytona experienced a more controlled viral mutation. We also cut into her brain to push her psychologically just a little closer to what we needed. Then Lizzie linked her mind to mine so we could keep her on a leash,” he said.
“Wait, what? Are you saying that you turned Daytona into a killer?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he said and chuckled to himself. “She was already down a psychotic path when we found her. At least that’ what Liz told me. We just made her psychosis more useful. Anyway, I’m losing my train of thought. So Millie came before you. Obviously for Millie it didn’t go so well. The experiment was explosive, you could say.”
I remembered Brenda’s assessment of the explosives used when Leah was kidnapped.
“The hotel,” I said.
“Exactly. Her blood is like nitroglycerin. Highly explosive and unstable. It also has extremely thermal properties that surpass real nitro. That is why she is kept in a comatose state. Well, that and her burns. And I’m afraid that poor Millie is mostly a vegetable now,” Morden said.
Weirdly, he looked at Millie sympathetically. He was actually sorry that she was in that state.
“When I’m this close, I can hear a lullaby. It’s all that plays through her mind now. I think it’s just a memory of her mother singing, but I can’t be sure,” he said.
I couldn’t help but feel for Millie. But I needed to focus on solving this insane riddle I was stuck in. In front of me was another clue that confirmed my suspicions. If she was a result of Elizabeth’s first experimentation then her burns were because she had no secondary traits to protect her. Which could mean that when the virus got to me it may have been in its final form. But this information still didn’t help me right now.
“Again. What does this have to do with anything?” I asked.
“One teaspoon of this remarkable girl’s blood blew away the hotel. Our research shows that it loses no potency when removed from her body and, amazingly, her cells seem to stay alive indefinitely. Basically, she is immortal. And her explosive power increases exponentially the more blood is used. This girl is practically a tactical nuke,” said Morden.
“I mean what are we talking about her for?” I asked, feeling more confused.
He held up his hand.
“Look, there isn’t a lot of time. I know you have this thing about killing. But the only way you are going to head this off is by destroying this whole complex. And I mean destroyed down to the atoms,” he replied.
He brought his hands to his head and collapsed to his knees, groaning. I moved to grab him but he waved me off.
“I don’t know what Elizabeth is planning. But your immediate concern is Leah is taking over the system. She can control anyone linked to it. Like me,” said Morden.
He pulled down the collar of his shirt and showed me a puncture mark on his neck. The gray lines stretched out along the veins and capillaries in his skin, almost like fractured glass. He let go of his collar and dropped his head. Morden looked up at me and I noticed more gray patches growing on his neck.
“What is happening to you?” I asked.
“Leah’s abilities have produced some unexpected occurrences,” he said.
He was beginning to breathe very shallowly.
“Would you just get to the point?” I asked.
“She’s become techno-organic. A biological machine that can take over and convert other organisms and technology.”
He groaned louder and slumped to the floor.
“She is converting us into drones,” said Morden with a pain-strained voice.
Then he composed himself, got back on his knees, and straightened his tie.
“We are the first because we were here. Everyone in the world will follow,” he said.
“But why?” I asked, shocked.
He smiled.
“Her little way of making us not fight each other anymore. It’s a method I suppose. She is a scared little girl that Liz and I turned into a living computer. But you may still have time,” he said calmly.
“Time for what?” I asked.
“Time to save your friends. If you unplug them, they’ll be fine. They should be fine. There may even be time to stop Leah, too,” said Morden.
He got on his feet and began to shamble towards me with his arms outstretched.
“This isn’t good,” he said.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Yeah, new complication, it seems. This isn’t me,” said Morden as he continued moving towards me. “I think I’m going to try to choke you.”
I swiped his arms away and took a step back.
“No you are not,” I said.
“Emphasis on try,” he said looking at his outstretched arms.
Then he looked up.
“And there is someone behind you. Hi, Rudy,” said Morden.
An arm wrapped around my neck before I could turn around. The grip was powerful but not enough to work against me. I turned my head enough to see it was the guy who tried to jump me earlier when I broke out of containment. The whites of his eyes had turned to a light shade of gray. And his skin looked pale.
“Let go of me!” I said as I pried his arm off and pushed him away.
I then had to push back Morden.
“No need to be gentle. He’s dead. Or braindead, more accurately. I should be, too. I can talk but my body is out of my control,” said Morden.
I took him at his word. When Rudy got up I grabbed him and flung him down the hall. It was a long hall. At the end of it was a concrete wall that he smashed into, head first. I turned and grabbed Morden by his neck. He still tried to grab mine.
“Solid throw. I bet he wishes I never recruited him and his little crew,” he said.
“So how are you not braindead?” I asked.
“I think all of Lizzie's poking around in my brain is making me somewhat resistant. Probably won’t last, though,” said Morden.
I turned my wrist slightly and quickly, snapping his neck. His body went limp.
“That works,” he said.
I slung his body over my shoulder.
“Whoa,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“I can feel Leah connecting to my mind. I can sense some of her feelings and thoughts. It’s hard to make sense of it. You need to hurry,” he said.
I began running.
“Keep talking,” I told him.
“Down the hall, take a left at the next intersection, down that hall, second double door on the right. And hurry, I don’t think Liz knows everything this girl is up to,” he said.
I picked up my pace.178Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡICxk3MfgmU
