Interlude 11

 

(Betsy Braddock)

 

Egypt base
February 24th, 1997
14:02 (Egypt time)

 

Betsy was surprised by what she was seeing in that new fangled hospital. People in blue scrub kept moving machines to people that they pried from their armors in for regenerating their bodies or limbs in some sort of tank monitored by big banks of computers. The young woman had just woken up after the doctors had flushed out the drugs keeping her body under, and now she was having a tour of the facilities via astral travel.

Her body was recuperating at the moment on her hospital bed. Meanwhile, Betsy was people watching with her astral form; the people were busying themselves and this made her feel bad, she was stuck in bed. That made the telepathic young woman travel beyond the hospital.

What welcomed her was… paradise. The hospital was located in a town surrounded by a lush forest bordering a river with water so clear that she could see the aquatic life. Betsy sensed that people in town felt happy and driven, this was strange for her; usually people felt more selfish and in a hurry, like in London and her own city.

Slowly, Betsy flew over a park where she saw five dozen kids having fun in the numerous playgrounds. It was strange to her that this verdant valley was in the middle of desert and more secure than anything she'd seen before; everything looked new and quite futuristic…

If she didn't know that they were still on Earth she would believe that she's been transported to another planet completely. Betsy flew toward one of the mountains where she saw a vastly more heavy security. She flew toward it to see what was happening there but was stopped cold by some kind of barrier.

<That shouldn’t be possible! To stop my astral form like this! What’s out there?!> Betsy flew around trying to find a hole or a weakness in the barrier.

For naught obviously and in a way this scared her, it was obvious in hindsight that people who were telepathic themselves would have defenses against other telepaths. After a bit of introspection, Betsy decided that it could be a good thing, if people like the Ascendency could stop telepathy, it gave her hope that she could be stopped if she ever goes too far. 

It also means that this mountain she could not access was terribly important, that the barrier kept things in as well. Betsy also realized that she didn't want to know what's there. Betsy turned her back to the mountain and flew back toward the hospital in the bustling little town. She closed her eyes and followed the link between her body and astral form.

When she opened her eyes again, Betsy was back in her body and into her hospital room. The white walls, the flat TV screen, the bathroom’s door and the lone plant and the bed she was laying in.

"Ah, you're here! Good." A woman’s voice interrupted Betsy’s musing.

She was a middle aged blonde woman, wearing a sky blue bodysuit under a white lab coat.

"Aaah!" Betsy literally jumped out of her bed. She looked at the peppy looking blonde and realized that she couldn’t feel her thoughts or her mind. "You surprised me!"

The woman smiled wryly and then put on a serious expression as she addressed Betsy. "Miss Braddock, I would warn you to not wander too far from the hospital in astral form; there are protections in place in the valley against that."

Betsy put on a guilty face and looked down at her feet. "I… noticed."

Putting her fist on her hips, the woman reprimanded Betsy. “The big boss has fortunately added your psionic signature to our database, that is why security didn’t attack you and brought you back into your body forcefully; you might have woken up in a cell, Miss braddock.”

The purple haired girl flinched, stepped back from the bed but her anger flared at being patronized by the woman. Betsy was an adult, not a kid who put her hand in the kiddy jar. Her nostril flared and she glared at the woman. “Who are you and why is security this draconian here?”

Despite herself, Betsy tried to project her psionic tendril at the woman. However, the probe she sent didn't hook into the blonde's mind, but simply bounced off some kind of barrier surrounding her. The woman chuckled at the cute attempt from Betsy and said, "I am Dr. Adela Wright, generalist and geneticist extraordinaire; and I thought that it would be obvious why security is taken seriously here, young lady. Powered humans like you can be a danger, even more so when this valley is kept secret from the world.”

This cooled Betsy’s anger right away; she couldn’t begrudge those people their anonymity and the measures they took to protect themselves. “I… you've got a point. Actually, I’m happy that you developed means to regulate mutants.”

The woman raised a finger and tutted. “Oh my dear, we don’t use that word here, we call people like you Metahumans. Mutants make you sound like monsters, and you aren’t monstrous in any way.”

With a finger under her chin, Betsy thought about the name, Meta comes from the Greek prefix and preposition meta, which means “after” or “beyond” and there was the word human, her species, her race. Metahuman said that they were still of humanity but that they were changed in some way. It was a more palatable name for her race than mutant.

Betsy’s eyes found Doctor Wright’s. “I like this name better… Thank you for telling me about it.”

“You’re welcome.” The Doctor answered with a little salute.

There was silence for ten seconds, it really weirded out Betsy that the woman projected no thought. Her thought stream was occluded to her and couldn’t access it. Asking questions was a novel to Betsy, normally she waited for someone to project their thoughts at her. Betsy asked in a curious tone, “Can I ask what this place is? This entire Valley I mean.”

Doctor Wright looked at her side, saw a folding chair against the white wall next to Betsy’s hospital bed and took it, unfolded it and sat. When she looked up back at Betsy she answered, “We’re in the main base of the Ascendency, I can’t tell you where.”

Prompted by the fact Doctor Wright was answering questions, Betsy continued to interrogate her. “Is there a reason I can’t read your mind? It’s disconcerting to me.”

Betsy sat back on her hospital bed, looking at the woman, who smiled at her and poured herself a glass of water from the water dispensary next to the nightstand in a plastic cup. “Oh I can tell you that, we invented ways to circumvent telepathy, you must have the feeling that I’m not real, that I’m a puppet talking to you?”

Betsy nodded, it felt exactly like that; as if the Doctor was an automaton. This was the first time Betsy was confronted with such reality. “Yes…”

The woman sipped on her plastic mug and drank, once done she absently said, “This is normal for telepaths to feel this way as they use telepathy just like another sense to feel people, it’s completely normal.”

Betsy’s eyes fell on the little black box hanging at Doctor Wright’s utility belt. Looking at it gave her a headache and some unpleasant sensation in her head, she averted her eyes from it; now she knew what the box did, it’s what was blocking her telepathy. The purplette began to pass her fingers on the bedsheets of her bed, they were uncommonly soft; she didn’t recognize the fabric, it wasn’t cotton.

"What are the goals of this Ascendency you’re talking about? The name is rather arrogant…" Betsy commented.

She knew about Xavier and his X-Men, Magneto and his Brotherhood and Acolytes; but this was the first time she heard about a new group. Those two old men promotes mutant right but were in fact the sides of the same coin; Xavier was a manipulator of the worst sort, Magneto was a terrorist with delusions of grandeur but at least you knew the score with him, you either join him or he eliminate you.

But what about this… Ascendency? Contrarily to Magneto and Xavier, they seemed to have a standing army and technology beyond what is available in most developed nations.

"Ah, another easy question, the Ascendency's goals are the coexistence between humanity and all its subspecies." Simply stated the doctor.

"Oh, I see…" But could Betsy trust what the woman was saying?

The telepathic blocker Doctor Wright was wearing was making her more paranoid than usual; not being able to feel if the woman was being truthful was killing her. But then she suddenly opened her eyes wide as she recalled what the woman said about multiple species on earth. "Wait, are  you implying that there's more races on the planet than mut-metahumans and humans?"

The doctor’s eyes twinkled with mischief, with a knowing smile she said, "Why yes, of course."

 

# # #

(Elektra Nachios)

 

Birdcage
Hospital Block
20:04 (Egypt Time)

 

Jean was reaping the whirlwind after making the mistake of having confronted the Hand, it was a personal cost; Elektra feared for the emotional wellbeing of her students, in particular by how she would be received by the young woman she had opened her heart to after she got kidnapped by what Elektra imagined to be North Korean military.

The control chip and the brainwashing found in the facilities in the Castle they’d taken showed that time was of the essence. Cindy might not be the girl Jean was in love with anymore; it had been almost a week. Elektra still elected not to go storm North Korea, she found that her skills didn’t allow for the situation. The Dragoons, the Anzu and the Black Hawk should be enough to take the small nation; something told Elektra that when Jean would take it, she wouldn’t let go of it.

Still there was something that she could do; that was why she began walking into the Bird Cage with Matt at her side, she glance at him from the side; her paramour doesn’t wear his special glasses anymore, he could see after the Ascendency’s scientist have cloned him new eyes and dumped him in the regeneration tank to heal from the accident that had robbed him of his vision.

Matthew was no longer dependent on his cane and had calmed generally; he was calmer than he has ever been since meeting him. He had cried when he saw her the first time and they hadn’t left their apartment in three days, it was only after Jean’s assault on the Hand’s main HQ they’d decided to show the flag. Whether they wanted it or not, Elektra and Matt were now part of the Ascendency due to their affiliation with Jean Grey, at least because of relation with the young woman she had a place at the decision’s table.

Jean had done things for them that none of the two could ever repay; Matt was now being prompted to make his own lawyer firm with funding from the financial arm of the Ascendency, now he could afford to do pro bono case as much as he wanted; but what he didn’t know was that now, the people he helped were now working for the Ascendency and fiercely loyal to the organization.

At each success of his, Matt spread Jean’s influence, Elektra chuckled; Jean was acting like a villain… but for good reasons. Somehow everything she did somehow had almost no consequences, just big benefits. How long will it stay that she didn’t know…

Elektra and Matt stopped before the door of a certain patient’s room. Taking the door handle in hand she opened the room’s door and there she saw an asian woman laying on a bed and with a lot of medical machines attached to her, there were restraints at her hands and feet. Elektra noticed the silver sheen of Adamantium on the restraint, it seemed that the leadership was taking proper… precautions.

Matt patted her shoulder, she turned to him and he made her sign that the woman was pretending to be asleep. Elektra nodded and walked up to the woman, who opened her eyes as she stopped next to her bed.

“Do you remember me?” 

Elektra remembered perfectly who this woman was, Kannon had been one of the best Hand assassins who was raised from birth to be a killer. However, she had ultimately abandoned the Hand and became the personal operative of a crime boss in Japan. The only reason Nyoirin Henecha wasn’t killed by Elektra’s hands was that Kannon was as good as her in martial arts.

The woman had been relentless, a veritable machine of precision and speed; she had given Elektra the best and hardest fight of her life. Still there was no familiarity in Kannon’s eyes as she gazed at the Perfect Death.

“Who are you?” Kannon asked as she pulled on her restraint; her body automatically tensing, showing that she was on the defensive.

Still Kannon’s body seemed to remember; Elektra smiled reassuringly at the woman. “Ah, we’re here to tell you about yourself, Kannon.”

“Is… this my name?” The asian woman’s voice turned wistful and she looked rather lost.

“I see that we need to give you better care…” Just putting the assassin in prison wasn’t sufficient, she needed better treatment.

“Yes, it is.” That is why Elektra made the decision to… “You’ll be coming with me, Kannon.”

 

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A/N: This is going to be a fun! Interlude 12 is coming on Patreon. (I kinda forgot that I had released 11 and as a result forgot to give this to you non-patreon).

If you are looking to get early chapters and read all the good stuff I haven't posted to the public yet, support with the link below:

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