Ahab -- The Fix

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Now that the physical damage has been undone, it's time to repair the mental conditioning. It's Jim who helps Jennie, but he has to find her first.



Step back. Take a drag. Assess.

The outer shields were undeniably breached. Even standing in the gaping hole of the chainlink fence that had once been the outer circle of Jennie's psychic defenses there should have been more in his way. Rubble, rebar, concrete, desert scrub -- it was all piled in a wall beyond the fence, a basic but effective deterrent. The secondary defenses. They stretched to either side of him as far as the mind could process.

All but here, where the warped chain opened into a brutal path of flat ground, as if ploughed flat by a bulldozer.

Smoke and fogged breath mingled as he exhaled, then he placed the cigarette back in his mouth. Here was the damage. Now, the job.

The fence opened into desert. Flat and dark, the sky fading from blue almost to white at the horizon. Cold. The wind rolled balls of stringy yellow plants across the landscape. He could see mountains in the distance, painted pink and orange by the sunrise, and Jim wondered at how clean the delineation was. The land below the sunline was still dark with shadows -- and other things.

Chains. White-frosted, crisscrossing the hard earth. These did not belong in Jennie's mind. Jim stooped to touch one, testing its solidarity. More sophisticated than the blind damage to Marie-Ange's mind, but less so than the foundations laid in the children in Mauritania -- and losing cohesion already. The chains were loosely anchored, weakening. Whatever psi had tampered with Jennie had not been able to do it on the sheer strength of mind alone; the hold seemed to be situated over biological channels. Physical augmentation. Those channels had since been repaired, but the chains themselves needed to be destroyed.

The telepath wrapped his fingers around the iron, ignoring the scrape of frost. The black began to lighten in patches, metal growing coarse and brown with oxidization as rust spread in corrosive flowers. This was a desert, and the elements were harsh.

The chain beneath his fingers crumbled, mimicked by the others. Jim wiped his hand on his jeans as the wind took the debris, scattering it into nonexistence. As he rose he noticed something shining by his feet.

Silver bracelets over a thin arm, soft chiming as they slide, up and down. Distant laughter, warm voice speaking in a musical language. Soft scent of lavender perfume. Silver bracelets, cool metal in her palms, up and down.

A memory. It was embedded in the soil of Jennie's mind like white glass. He moved his eyes to the next.

Her mother's lap, warm and soft. She is small enough to fit. She sits patiently, tiny plastic hair ties clutched in small fingers. The rhythmic stroking of a hairbrush and the boom of her mother's heart behind her back.

Childhood, interspersed through the mindscape like cobbles. Jim put one foot forward carefully, making sure he didn't accidentally step on any. As he lifted his foot he caught a reflection in the surface of another.

Hair tickles her nose, hands are clamped under her sweaty legs. The landscape bounces up and down, and the evening breeze is cool. She wraps her arms around Dan's neck and rests her chin on his shoulder. He pretends like she is choking him, and she giggles. The bag of shopping bounces against his hip and he adjusts her so she is resting comfortably on his back.

The glass glittered in the cold pre-dawn like a river. It was a path, he realized, leading to the only upstanding thing in the entire valley.

A tree. He knew immediately it lacked the weight to be the true core of her mind, but it was a substantial construction -- and untouched. As he arrived he took a moment to stand beneath it, breathing in the faint smell of rain and summer flowers. Ribbons threaded its branches, red and white. Skeins of glass of the same color hung from its branches, catching light from the unrisen sun as they chimed softly in the wind.

There was a mound close to the oak. A heap of red glass, each shard crazed like it had almost shattered. More dirt and scrub covered it, heaped as if it had been swept into a pile and forgotten. Memories. And, from long experience, Jim could suspect which ones.

Moving carefully so as not to disturb the anomaly's integrity, Jim prized out a piece.

Thin plastic cuts into raw flesh. Shooting pain that throbbed up her arm, making her see flashes of white when she closed her eyes. Making her stumble down a hallway with cold, dirty floors. She doesn't want to think about that was doing to her bare feet.

The room. Hard plastic bed. Medical equipment. Sterile smell. Doctors robed in surgical scrubs. Near mindless panic. The big man cut her bonds with a pair of metal snips. The instant she was free, fists lashed out, connected with something soft.

She was running. Hallways that all looked the same. Dim blue and dirty, smelling of mold and ancient chemicals. Footsteps behind her. She's not fast enough.

Slamming hard against the table. She thrashes, tries to connect with someone else. Make them hurt, make them pay every step of the way. A large hand clamps over her face, squeezes.

"Behave, or I will crush your skull like an egg." The voice is soft, breath hot against her ear. She stills. Arms are forced out, something in the injured one pops. She screams. Her hands are pushed into padded straps, and she can hear the velcro. Loud as a gunshot.

Eyes darting wildly around the room, the doctors are scurrying about prepping. A beeping starts, agitated. Her heartbeat. The hand moves from her face, but her head is held securely. She feels cold metal on her breastbone, hears the snipping of scissors and the tearing of cloth. They're cutting off her clothes. Gooseflesh rises on her naked chest and she shivers uncontrollably. There's a tapping on her arm and a sharp pinch. She starts to cry.

The room starts to spin, and then, mercifully, darkness.

He set down the shard as carefully as he'd pulled it out. This was psychic scar-tissue. It wasn't damage from the conditioning she'd suffered. This damage was organic, self-imposed. Jennie's mind had buried itself in pieces of its own trauma.

The glass chimes behind him tinkled gently. Jim turned up the edges of his sleeves, rolling them up past his elbows. Kneeling in the dirt, cigarette pressed between his lips, the telepath began to dig.

Pain. Dull aching pain. Everywhere, her face, her arms, her legs, her hands and feet. Strange muscles ripple along her back as she tries to move. Hands no longer outstretched, but tied at her sides. They're moving her, she watches the ceiling above her change, lights moving up and down. Makes her nauseous. She closes her eyes, turns her head. Opens them, sees a body walking next to her. Blue cloth, smelling male, older.

They've dressed her now, red pants that are almost tights, loose-fitting sleeveless tunic. Dull red, studded with silver metallic sensors. She can smell the tang of metal, the newness of the cloth. And she knows that's not right. She wants to run, but her muscles move in a way now that make her queasy; she wants to demand where the boys are, but can't make her mouth work around the unfamiliar teeth. She closes her eyes again.

They stop moving. Voices.

"Last one, can you manage? Of course ...I'm not doubting you. This one has some ...bite to her, let's keep that. Take the rest."

She opens her eyes. Looks up, one is Rory Campbell, the other...

It could be male or female, thin, bald, no smell. Long cold fingers that settle on either side of her face. She can't figure out what's wrong with the other until her eyes come into sharp focus.

It has no eyes or mouth. Just smooth skin where those orifices should be.

She whimpers, and then there's white hot pain, feels like her skull is splitting in half. She begins to scream, and scream, and scream.

Jim took the visceral reaction triggered by the girl's remembered screams and set it aside. He couldn't throw the fragment down anywhere. Even traumatic memories belonged in a certain place. He took the fragment a few steps to the side and stopped. There were spots of red and white in the ground, chips of mosaic. And this piece went just about . . . Here.

He returned to the mound. Something. There was something unyielding under the debris. He'd felt the surface of it with his fingertips. That was what he needed to get to. The telepath steeled himself and started levering at another piece.

Smells, old. Mold, rot, metallic tang. Thud of a heartbeat. Hers. Shifting, not too far away. Rubber, metal, the bunching of cloth. Nose twitches. A scent, burned into her memory. Sicksweet, old sweat and medicine.

"Look up."

Master.

Bright lights. His face. He smiles. He puts his fingers on her chin, tilts her head this way and that.

"Yes." He smiles more. "Yes, you will do. Stand." A command.

Augmented muscles ripple, shifting, dropping off the table. Balance. Floor is cold. Toes flex, claws click on tile. A movement draws her eye to the corner of the room. Three signatures. Mutants. Lips pull back over sharp teeth.

"No, no my dear. These ones are good." Hand on her head. Relax. Master is here. Calm. "I don't want you attack them. You see?" He points her head at them. Signatures and scent logged into memory. "Don't attack. Good."

It was a strain to set the memory down gently. Once removed it had to be set in place, precise and delicate. Anticipation of the natural structure was key. Part of him was seventeen again, bodiless, hopeless, digging through the twisted wreckage of David's mind. Every sift through the razor edges had left him torn and red-fingered. But Jemail had been young and clumsy then, struggling with a power he'd never had before. Jim was older, and he no longer allowed himself to bleed.

But, just like in David's mind, there was so much.

Jim slid his hands under another fragment, grunting. It was nearly as big as he was. Will was paramount here, not strength, but one misjudgment could send the rubble downwards and destroy the progress. This required patience, but he knew that for the person buried every heartbeat was an eternity. Jim took a breath and heaved--

And then almost fell over when suddenly the weight he'd been expecting proved to be nothing at all.

Jim blinked, the cigarette almost falling from his lips. There were three sets of hands with his on the shard. Three other people supporting him. His alters: Cyndi, Davey, and, standing at Jim's elbow, muscles straining under the smudged white t-shirt, Jack.

Cyndi gave Jim's gape a look of open exasperation. "Dude, this thing ain't getting any lighter."

Jim shook his head and heaved.

"She's a pretty bird, ain't she?"

"Yes, if you like them unresponsive. I at least like it when they make noise."

"Aw, I bet we could get her to make as much noise as we want, all we have to do is say. Ain't that right, girlie?"

Muscles tremble. Master's command keeps her still. Hand on her bare shoulder. Clammy and cold. Prey. She wants to sink her teeth into soft flesh. But Master's command she obeys.

A low growl. Not hers.

"Would you look at that? Looks like the dark one doesn't want you touching his property."

"It's okay, prettyboy. We won't touch your little girlfriend."

Laughter, they move away. A familiar signature moves next to her, crouches, alert. This one is the same, sight and scent comforting. One of hers. She puts her head on his shoulder, makes a low pleased sound. She can feel him relax next to her.

"Somebody's stepping on my feet," Davey complained as they shuffled over to set the piece down in an appropriate place. "Too many people. You and Jack do the big ones."

Cyndi made a face as she batted at the dust defiling her shirt. "Yeah, ditto. Heavy lifting's totally for big strong men. And, y'know, Jimmy. Play nice."

The pair wandered back over to the mound. Cyndi crouched in the dirt to inspect the more manageable shards, tongue working thoughtfully behind the piercing on her lip. Her hands dipped to retrieve a good-sized piece, which she passed to Davey; Davey, in turn, dutifully took the piece a few steps away and placed it carefully on the ground. Not at random, either. The placement was very specific. As he watched the boy turned back to Cyndi to repeat the process, his step brisk.

The oldest alter regarded him calmly, a dark silhouette against the horizon of predawn. "Think you were the only one who knows how to rebuild a mind?"

Jim shook himself away from the two to look at the older man. "You've never helped me before."

Jack turned away. He walked a few steps over to the half-excavated ditch, giving it a measuring look.

"That there." Jack's chin tilted to indicate a massive slab Cyndi was clearing without complaint. "Figure that should just about do it."

Jim hesitated. Then, mutely, nodded and moved to join the man. As he and Jack lifted the piece it caught the light and glowed like blood.

"Come forward. Stand." She stands. It's uncomfortable. Unfamiliar smell. New man. No signature. She remains relaxed. Master's hand brushes over her hair. He and the new man talk. Snippets of conversation, words that don't connect. The new man smells sharp, something is covering his scent.

--demo piece-- --success, splicing combination is what-- --not asking much, really--

Light glints off the new man's glasses. Pulls at a memory, quick as an eyeblink.

--Sleep through the whole thing-- liquid squirts out of a syringe; cold, mindless fear.

She snarls audibly. Master's hand tightens on the back of her neck.

--few kinks to work out, I'm sure--

The dirt was frozen and dark where the edge of the fragment set down. Jim stepped back, wiping his forehead of the simulated sweat, and realized he was alone again.

Or not. His lowered hand echoed images once again: man, girl, and boy. Everyone back where they were supposed to be, linked in a singular purpose.

No time for the speculation now. The area was still in disarray, but their efforts had unearthed something. It looked like a bomb shelter, the door old and pitted. A mind's last defense against reality -- and itself.

Jim took the cigarette from his mouth. He let it drop, ground it beneath his boot, and started forward. It was time for the hard part.


***


Jennie curled instinctively, her mental image of herself twisted beyond recognition, crouched over like an animal, clawed fingers and toes, and fangs. The silver studs of the bodysuit dug into her thighs as she crouched, hiding in a dark place. The light from Haller hurt her eyes, and they reflected green like a dog's. Unable to attach thought to words, she made a strangled, frightened noise. She shifted further away into the darkness.

There she was. He could see the movement in the darkness. The young man lowered the lighter and knelt at the base of the stairs, folding his lank body into something smaller and less threatening. The flame still flickered, under-lighting his face with orange shadows.

"Hey, Jennie," Jim said softly.

He was familiar in the maddening sense that you were absolutely certain who this person was, yet you didn't know their name nor where you knew them from. Jennie remained still, watching him intently. She was relaxed, but only a hairsbreadth away from tensing up and fleeing. Or attacking.

Moving slowly, Jim folded his legs and eased himself onto the stark concrete of the floor. The telepath looked around, though mostly for show. The lighter wasn't enough to reveal more than the eerie reflection of the girl's eyes.

"It's pretty dark down here," he observed. The small flame moved slightly, indicating the steps of the ladder. The open trapdoor above them lit it like a spotlight. "The way's clear now. If you want you can go back up."

She flinched away from his words as if she'd been struck. She was fighting desperately against the instincts that had twisted her, stolen away her words and her memories. Instincts that screamed at her to run, or tear him apart. She began to tremble with the effort of staying still.

She had to say something. At first all she could manage was a gasping whine, and she looked frightened at the sound of it. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and looked away, ashamed.

The noise brought no hint of revulsion from Jim. "It's okay," he said in that same, quiet tone. "Take your time."

No answer was forthcoming. The telepath settled back. "We found a doctor. The physical stuff is going to be with you for a few days, but you'll be back to normal." Mismatched eyes flickered briefly to her face. "Kyle and Marius, too."

Jennie looked up at him, at that, eyes flashing in the light. There was the barest shake of her head. No, not normal. Not-- Images flashed briefly, behind her. The Irishman's face, with her claws dug in. The feel of flesh peeling away under her fingertips, soft and warm and slick. The smell of blood, everywhere.

She rocked, back and forth, shaking. A word was coming, her lips trembled, trying to remember how to give it form.

"Muh.." she finally managed. She shut her eyes and tried harder. "Mon..." Her eyes opened again, looking straight at Haller. "Monster."

The memories were full sensory. He could smell the blood, see her tormentor's face -- feel skin peeling beneath claws. Jim shook his head. "No," he said, "You were fighting back against the one who hurt you. Or the person who represented him." He held her eyes with his own. "When you're hurt that badly, sometimes close enough feels good enough."

She shook her head violently, and made a noise that sounded like a "no." He didn't understand. More memories, this time of the pleasure she took. The deep satisfaction of feeling the man's digestive system crumble, watching him retch bloody froth. Other memories, faces that were familiar to Jim. Wanting to tear into them. It had felt so good to finally attack.

Jennie looked at him again. Her eyes were bright with tears even though they were as hard as glass. "Monster," she said, forcefully.

There was a strengthening of shadow behind him. Large, grim, grey-eyed. The silhouette faded in an instant. Jim's own gaze never wavered.

"Why?" he asked.

She looked away, curled in even more on herself. His answer was another memory.

"Here now, poppet." A callused hand ran over her hair, along the side of her chin. Tilting her head up. "Such a pretty little deadly thing."

Master's voice. "Release the hounds."

The telepath let the memory wash over him, eyes lidded as he processed, then opened again.

"Okay. But I need you to tell me, too, not just show." Jim smiled faintly. There was apology there, for what he knew he was asking, but also a faint underpinning of firmness around his mismatched eyes. "There's a lot of ways to fight. One of them is with words. Can you try?"

The girl made another frustrated, angry noise. She wanted to talk, it was screaming out of her eyes. But she couldn't remember how. Apologetic bastard. Jennie became furious. If there was one way to get her to do something, it was to piss her off.

Staring at a spot near the floor, Jennie forced the words to come. Syllable by syllable.

"Ca--....can't. H-h-he's.... muh-muh..." she shook her head vehemently. "Muh-- make. Monster. Make monster. Muh-- make me d-do ah...ah... again..."

Her effort was rewarded with another smile, and this one held less apology and more pride -- any words had to be excruciating for her. The expression held for a moment before Jim made his face slide back into neutrality.

"He can't do anything to you anymore." The telepath rested one hand flat on the concrete, visual reinforcement at the edge of Jennie's field of vision. "We got him, Jennie. And the people who worked for him. You're with us back at the school now."

Could that be? Jennie didn't look up at Jim, just at the hands that were clenched into fists on the cold concrete floor in front of her. She wanted to believe it, her last memories were of the people she had hoped to see. But also of attacking them.

A smaller of part of her whispered that it could be a trick, that the faceless telepath was messing with her head, making her hallucinate what she wanted most.

Jennie's mouth moved soundlessly for a moment, trying to make her voice work around the unfamiliar teeth and jaw muscles. "Puh...proo...prove it."

Jim shook his head slowly. "We're in your mind. What proof can I give you here? I can show you this--" behind Jim a scene appeared: Jennie's unconscious body, pale and small in the dim lighting of a Medlab room, seen through the window of the telepath's own eyes, "but that's all. I can't give you anything tangible."

The dimmed room faded, leaving only Jim and the darkness, lit by the flame of the lighter.

"I wasn't one of the people who brought you home," he explained, softer now, "but Ms. Munroe, Mr. Dayspring, Mr. Sefton, Ms. D'ancato, Shiro, Terry -- they were there. You can go see them, whoever you want, ask them what happened, and get the answer with your own ears." Three shadows moved behind him, disturbance in the darkness. "The hard way. But the real one."

Jennie stared at Jim for long moments, the brightness in her eyes spilling into tears that traced thin lines into her dirty face. All the pain and rage and fear and hopelessness of the last week being banished with the single unbroken word Jennie spoke:

"Home?"

"Home," the telepath nodded.

He rose. Slow steps, careful and purposeful, and came to stand before the filthy girl. Twisted, changed . . . but Jennie. Still Jennie, the girl who had sat in his office wringing at a soda bottle as he'd had to tell her there'd never be any closure with her mother but the finality of a funeral service.

Jim half-knelt, flame wavering in his hand. Blue and brown eyes met her red-rimmed yellow, and one hand stretched out, palm-up.

"Let's go, Jennie," he murmured. "You don't belong down here."

She raised one shaking hand, claws still stained with the blood of the man she had torn to pieces. For the briefest flicker of an instant, she had the urge to swipe at Jim's mismatched eyes, her preprogrammed instincts demanding that she tear into him. But she shut her own eyes and forced the feeling away.

Her thin hand gripped Jim's tightly. And, after a moment's hesitation, she leaned her head into his shoulder with a sigh.

She still had one hand wrapped around his, the cellar went dark as Jim let the lighter disappear. He rubbed Jennie's back for a moment, the press of his hand firm and solid. Just enough to let her know that she wasn't alone.

"Okay." Jim gave the girl's back one final rub before pulling back. He nodded his head at the swatch of light from the open trapdoor, the faint smile twitching his lips again. "I'd carry you, but that'll get sad once we hit the ladder."

The girl snorted softly. She followed Jim to the ladder, walking painfully upright, and shielding her eyes from the light. She held back, letting Jim climb first. She looked at her hands, uncertain that they would be strong enough to grip, and then began to slowly make her way out of the darkened bunker.

Outside of the bunker, the sun finally rose.

There was no longer frost on the dirt. Jim levered himself onto solid ground and turned to help Jennie out.

A hand gripped his. It had no claws. The hair that crested the threshold was no longer long and stringy with grime, but short and clean. And the figure that followed it wasn't red-clad. Instead the girl who emerged from the shelter wore a white dress, loose, bright, and as she climbed over the edge the light material tugged around her knees in the breeze.

Jennie turned about herself, staring at the barren landscape in her mind. It was no longer the dead of winter, but now early morning on what was promising to be a hot summer day. The breeze ruffled her hair, which hadn't been that short in over a year and a half. She took a careful step forward, as she was barefoot.

"So," she said, all traces of the halting speech gone. "Now what?"

Jim turned his attention from the debris back to Jennie to find her dress had inverted. Black-on-white had gone to white-on-black. Her face was rounder, too. It didn't faze him. The details differed, but the essence was the same. Faint afterimages of different hands followed his gesture to the half-assembled patterns that littered the ground around the shelter.

"The worst part." He picked up a shard from the wreckage. Blood-red, crazed, and larger than his hand -- one of the smaller pieces. He held it up to his brown eye, staring through the memory. "The brain has a structure. These represent the memories of what you went through. For everything to start healing you need to process the experience." Eyes flicked back to her. "I can help. But I'll need yours."

Almost instinctively Jennie reached out to touch the glass, only to snatch her hand away as if it had been burned. She looked down, staring intently as the shards around her feet. She wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to do anything other than touch the shards. The thought of touching them, being forced to re-live everything made her physically ill.

But running away meant returning to the bunker in her mind, and there was no way in hell she would ever go back there. Because it meant that the man who had twisted her body and her mind would win. With a determination the belied the youthfulness of her face, she reached out and gripped the shard in Jim's hand, hissing as it cut into her palm.

"Hit her."

She stood motionless in front of him, waiting for the strike. Her legs quivered with the effort of standing upright, and from the anticipation of the blow. The boy who in another life had been her best friend stared at her for long moments, hand raised. It trembled slightly, and he looked afraid. Then he lowered it to his side.

The man she thought of as Master struck the boy with his cane. "You will not disobey me," he spat. "Worthless, simply worthless..."

Jennie stared at the shard in her hand as the memory released her. Without even really thinking about it, she moved to a pile of red shards off to the left, setting the one in her hand in the corner. She wiped her hands on the dress that was white again, and sat back, staring at it.

Jim nodded. "Yeah. Just like that."

He moved to settle in with her and then caught her eyes, distant and haunted. He dipped his head until he met them. "And hey," he said quietly, "You can do this."

Remembering standing with Charles and Jemail in the ruins of his mind as David sifted through the ruins, the smile crooked his face again. I did.

The cigarette was in his mouth again, unbidden. Jim's hand moved to hover over a larger piece. He looked to the girl. "Ready?"

Jennie looked up, towards the tree that was the hub of her powers. The mobiles chimed softly and moved with the breeze. In her mind's eye she could see how everything wanted to be, the blue of the doublewide she'd grown up in, and the imaginary garden she'd created as a child surrounding it. A riot of color, from the tall stalks of the sunflowers to the creeping blue of the morning glories and the rich earthy yellow of the marigolds, and above it all the crisp scent of incoming rain. It resolved into the desert morning again, but the more pieces she put together, the stronger it would come back until she was whole.

She looked back down at the shard in front of her, mouth set into a determined line. "Ready," she said, and placed her palm on top of it.