Angels and Warriors

This was the soldier version of herself Setar had wanted. Hmmm... the figure was outlined in a faint red glow. Sarah smirked and raised her pistol, and whispered to herself "like the saying goes: if you can see it, you can hit it, and if you can hit it you can kill it." She fired a full 8 rounds from the energy pistol and then dove behind a tree to let the internal fusion cells recharge the firing chambers.

***

Surei watched the figure, who was suffused with a faint blue-white glow, and was about to dive at her and stun her, when she heard a whisper and saw the person raise what was undoubtedly a pistol... and dove to the left, hiding behind a rock. Eight ovals of light zipped thru where she had been moments before.

* * *

Sarah unslung her LAWS launcher from her shoulder, and aimed at the rock. She waited for one second, to make sure the rocket was steady. Then pulled the priming pin and pulled the trigger. The rocket flew forwards, crossing the 200-foot distance with ease, and blasted the rock into dust. But the person behind it was gone.

***

Surei had tapped into her latent esper abilities, and had teleported herself back to the lab, but was drained and tired, falling asleep in the corridor where she ended up.

***

Sarah simply wanted sleep, and was in sore and desperate need of it, and staggered back to her tent, curled up next to Morgan, gave her a small hug, and was out cold before she could even mumble "Good night."

***

Morgan’s dreams were rattled by gunshots that night, and she stirred, near waking, until Sarah returned. Calmed, even in her sleep, by the warmth of another person, able to sense that her friend was there, Morgan drifted back into deeper realms of rest, letting her dreams carry her across the land.

***

“So close,” whispered one voice.

“Just jump,” added another.

“So very close,” chimed in a third.

The voices were ethereal, melodious, wafting through the air as Morgan froze in her dream, wide-eyed. She stood on a plain of fog, white sand beneath her feet, tendrils of fog curling about her bare ankles and twisting across the endless ground.

“So close,” repeated the first voice, and Sarah was suddenly before her, standing, head bowed.

“Just jump,” intoned the second, and Sarah seemed to drop in the air, falling, falling, the ground disappearing beneath her.

“So very close,” encouraged the last, yet again, and her toes were only inches from the rift in the ground where Sarah fell.

“Jump,” she whispered to herself in the dream, hair floating in a cloud around her head, wearing a pale silk shift and nothing more. “Jump.” All it took was a step, and she fell, reaching for the one who had fallen before her.

*****

She awoke with a start, face paling, shaking slightly. With a light touch she reassured herself that the instrument that blocked her dreams remained in place, sighing softly. Her gaze flickered about the tent; she’d fallen asleep soon after Sarah’s spilling of stories. Sarah slept beside her, looking the picture of exhaustion, and Morgan’s face went from still fearful to gentle, smiling. The dream disappeared like a raindrop in the sun, forgotten quickly, and weariness swept over Morgan again. Relaxing, she let her eyes fall shut, again surrendering to her dreams.

******

“Morgan, try again. You aren’t trying,” said a feminine voice to her left. “If you don’t straighten out, you will not get lunch or dinner tonight! Now pay attention. What is that man thinking about.”

A scared young girl, no more than six years old stood there, gazing at a chair with a tall man sitting in it. She concentrated and then her eyes flashed open.

“He is thinking bad things. He wants to hurt me!” she said, practically shrieking and hiding behind the woman in the lab coat, “Don’t let him hurt me!”

The woman nodded and the man in the chair got up and started to leave. In one swift motion he had grabbed her by the arm and Morgan was screaming. The man shook her violently and glared into her eyes. He hated what she was and she could feel his hatred envelop her. She scratched at his face and he only held her tighter, almost to the point of breaking her arm.

“That is enough Mr. Stewart,” said the woman in the lab coat, very nonchalantly. The man threw her to the floor where she lay sobbing and the woman left the room. Little Morgan curled up in the corner in a tight ball, trembling.

******

When Morgan woke up from her dream, she was curled up in the corner of the tent, trembling. Sarah was still asleep and she was thankful for that. Tears began rolling down her face and she huddled as closely as possible to Sarah, draping the older woman’s arm over her own body, crying herself to sleep.

***

Sarah's dreams were strange. She stood in a room of white walls and bright lights, like the test chamber she used to live in. except... there was two of herself there. She could look down, and see herself, but there was another her, standing nearby, watching her. An exact mirror image of herself. But the other her had a sort of blue glow about herself, and a calm, content smile. "You are not what you think. Take heart, and know that soon you shall be as you truly should be." the world around her seemed to twist, warp, and fade. The next thing she knew, she was awake.

She looked at her watch.

2:00PM?!

'I slept from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. Yeesh.' She stretched and got up, muttering sleepily to herself, and grabbed the pile of clothing from outside the tent, and got dressed. Morgan was not in the tent, and Sarah assumed Morgan was outside. She pulled on her bra, winced and gritted her teeth as she grasped the closure cords the would shrink the bra to make her body a bit more manageable, and gasped, reeling, as a wave of pain hit her.

In a flash, the tiny voice in her head that had been urging her to find companionship was back. The tiny voice had brought friends, a microphone, and four sets of concert hall speakers, complete with overdrive amplifier and subwoofers. the tiny mental voice, now armed with colleagues and hardware, proceeded to berate Sarah about her lack of companionship, of friends, of friends closer than friends. A wave of pain and agony swept thru her, and she collapsed to the floor of the tent, sobbing, her headache pulsing in time with her heartbeat, oblivious to the world around her.

Her headache pounded the concept and training she had been forced to endure into her head again and again and again. it was like a craving. like a pothead yearning for another smoke to ease his addiction, so did she need sex, though her mind was repulsed and horrified by what her body wanted, knowing it was not natural. She fell over, unconscious and in pain, and knew no more.

***

Morgan, on the other hand, had woken up at nine or so in the morning, and had crawled out of the tent. Or had started to. The moment her head was out of the tent flap, there was a rustle behind her, something damp was held over her mouth, and the fumes from the knockout gas pulled her into unconsciousness.

***

Sarah awoke feeling like she had fought a threshing machine and lost. her head ached, her back hurt, her arm and leg muscles twinged and shot pain thru her overtaxed nervous system, and she felt cold air all over herself. cold air? She looked down and saw a shelf of pink skin, and realized she was nude. and in a glass chamber. She shrieked. She could see scientists, and two caught her eye. One was a tall, slender, kindly-looking grandfatherly type, he looked at her and at something else in the room, something off to one side of Sarah with sad eyes. He would twitch nervously every once in a while.

The other man was Setar.

Rage boiled up inside of Sarah. A scream of rage, anger, fear, hatred, loathing fed and fed and fed upon itself deep in her body. She threw back her head and that scream burst forth from her lips and the entire room seemed to freeze. The next few seconds happened in slow motion. The glass around her shattered. The scientists all fall to their knees, holding their heads. Setar turned towards her, holding his head but remaining standing.

She spun in a circle and the wires and sensor electrodes were torn from her body in one motion. She stopped. She looked off to one side, the direction the kindly looking scientist had looked in. slumped over on a metal pedestal, with wires and other things all over her body, was Morgan, lying curled in a ball, nude, out cold. With a snarl of rage the likes of which she had never felt, Sarah leapt from the remains of her metal & glass tube and dealt Setar a one-two punch that sent him reeling. An uppercut sent him flying across the room, where his head hit the wall, and he slumped over. The kindly man spoke.

"I had hoped to meet you, but your timing was rather inconvenient. You and Morgan need to leave, before they sedate you again."

"Who are you?"

"I am Simon Temeras. Morgan knows me. I studied the reports I was given about you, and I have to say- you will not live long, not as you are. I cannot explain now. My men will give you assistance after you have fled this area. Take Morgan and go."

Sarah needed no second bidding. She ripped a lab coat off of one of the scientists and bundled the small girl into it, then ran off down a corridor, shouting a hoarse "thank you!" to Temeras before she dove into a side closet to avoid a coming patrol. She looked around. It was a security closet.

She grabbed a pair of pants and a shirt, then began to run thru the facility, and, by pure luck found the garage. Off to one side, in a closed off section was the jeep. She recognized it, seeing the tents, medkits, and her weapons-including her beloved LAWS rocket launcher-still in it. She didn’t hesitate or question fate, she simply remembered the seething, burning, boiling anger she had felt, stared at the metal wall, and let loose another scream like her previous one.

The wall shattered.

Her vocal cords feeling like they had been rubbed raw by sand paper, then dipped in acid, she ran to the jeep, Morgan still cradled protectively in her arms. She grabbed her rocket launcher and fired one rocket at the door leading to-she hoped-the outside world, then, before the rocket could impact, she reached under the steering column, hot-wired the jeep, smoked a patch of rubber on the cement floor and fairly flew the jeep thru the hole she had made. One more rocket was used to make a hole in the concrete walls around the base, and they were free. The noise, jostling, and wind from the fast moving jeep helped to wake Morgan.

"mmmmoorrpphhgghhh... I don’t wanna get up..."

Sarah, for now, still had almost no voice, her vocal cords almost useless after.... whatever it was she had done to free herself. Still, she tapped Morgan, keeping a firm grip on the wheel of the jeep as she blasted along at the jeeps top speed, 140mph, across the desert sands.

"What..? Sarah? What happened?” Sarah jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the slowly receding form of the military base, and at the still smoking hole Sarah had blasted in the outer walls. Morgan, crawled into the back of the jeep, dug through the pile of clothing and supplies, and blushed as she came across Sarah’s huge bra, then kept digging, finding her own clothes and getting dressed.

Sarah, still in the too tight security guard's outfit from the facility they were just at, looked uncomfortable, especially since the guards outfit she was wearing was tailored for a man, and not a woman. Sarah found a large stand of trees, near the edge of a nearby town, and parked the jeep, slumping over the steering wheel, fighting weariness, lethargy, pain, and the voices in her head that had risen to a deafening pitch, insisting that she go and find someone to have "private time" with, even if it meant buying said time.

Fighting all of this was too much, and she slid into unconsciousness, falling sideways out of the jeep onto the ground in a heap, her face contorted in pain, worry, angst, and tiredness.

***

"Signs show she will break from the strain soon. She needs a partner. The wait and strain will kill her, or reduce her mind to insanity. Either way, it will not be hard to track them." Setar smiled. "She is resourceful, but is teetering on the brink of exhaustion. The jeep has a GPS locator on it. They will not be gone long." Temeras, still trying to recover his hearing, said nothing, and only hoped that this madman would never recapture the two girls.

***

She had found it. Raisha had gone through all of Tememras' notes and research material, and her people had made a breakthrough. The processor was done. They merely needed to imprint a human consciousness on it, and they would be all set to build others. Her company would take the world by storm. And nothing could stop her.

***

"They need our help."

"We cannot expose ourselves. The Church would have us removed, all of us! If we try to help them, do you realize what would happen? We can offer them shelter, but no more. One of the priests who is with us has a church near them. Have him offer them shelter. If they refuse, we do nothing. We cannot afford to slip up, if we are removed, those... heathens will get their hands on the angel, and the world will cease to be! We cannot allow that! For all its faults, humanity must survive!"

"I understand."

*****

"Aiyee, aiyee.." gulped Morgan, scrambling out of the jeep half dressed, fretting over her now unconscious friend. Her mind reeled, still partly under the effect of the drugs that had seeped into her system, and now Sarah had fainted. She didn't even have time to fret about having been nude before, worry for Sarah taking control. With slight effort, considering her body type, Sarah's, and how Morgan tried her best to avoid certain parts of Sarah's anatomy, Morgan disentangled Sarah from the truck, pulling her away from it.

Feeling a wave of deja vu, Morgan tugged Sarah towards a tree, leaning against it with Sarah's head in her lap. For a moment, she considered getting up and setting up camp or something, but for one, she'd have had no clue what she was doing, and for two, the world still had an interesting tendency to spin slightly as she walked.

Cradling Sarah's head in her lap, she drowsily combed her fingers through Sarah's hair, brushing her fingertips over Sarah's face, pursing her lips in worry at the expressions resting there. Then sleep overtook her, heavy and dreamless... until a hand rested upon her shoulder, lightly shaking her and bringing her back into wakefulness.

***

Even now, her mind was awake. Her body dead to the world around her, unconscious, her mind continued its activities. Including the ones involving her mental conditioning.

The voices begged, pleaded, and cajoled her to find someone to be with if only for a half hour. Then they implored, suggested, asked. Slowly, however, the simple queries turned to orders, demands, then threats, and finally, mental pain. Headaches, the feel of her brain trying to beat itself into submission, then silence. An unnerving silence.

Slowly, a scene formed around her. She wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not, it was hard to tell. a hungering ache, a sense of need filled her, one that would not-could not-be denied. A woman, nude and faceless appeared before her. It was as if her mind had no say in what her body did. The woman seemed to protest Sarah’s actions, to not want to do what she was suggesting, but in a matter of moments was subdued by force, and then...

In the space of what felt like a millionth of a second, the woman and she were both resting in the aftermath of what could only have been a sexual encounter. Another, different woman, yet, still faceless like the first appeared and the process repeated. Again, and again, this went on, her mind recoiling in numb horror at what she was doing. Dreams or not, there was an oddly real feel to all this, and that just made it worse. Again she blacked out, the women sleeping next to her now numbering seventeen, with another beside her in bed....

She gasped, and awoke. A nightmare. That was all it had been. God, she felt physically tired. She stopped for a second, letting herself think. She could think clearly. Her mind, the mental programming, was silent. No pleas or threats urging her to go out and find someone to hop in bed with, no nothing. Her mind felt light, free. The tiny voice that had been crying out for sex for the last 3 days straight only let out an occasional contented murmur at the back of her consciousness, as though it had glutted itself on the "food" it craved and was now feeling... well, if not happy, then contented at least.

Her whole body was sore and achy, and she guessed that she looked a total mess. Morgan was asleep, propped against a tree. Sarah groaned, and got to her feet in the early morning light. She stuck the tents, set up a small cookstove and set some soup in a pot for a light meal. she looked through the stuff on the truck. First aid, toolkit tent stuff, clothing, weaponry, crates of food? two crates of canned food and paraffin for the tiny cookstove were in the cramped rear of the military jeep, and a pair of file folders. Sarah sat down and looked through he folders. the first one had a serial number and name on it.

"Genetic Subject MLN-∆ µ

Name: Sarah

Genetic stock: completely custom made and designed, only outside material was DNA from the Arctic Esper creature

History: trained for pleasure and little else, she is currently at large with unknown training and resources. Mental conditioning limits activity by inducing carnal relations in frequent periods, longest possible survival time alone is two days, longer results in mental damage. Unknown bodily problems, possibly reactionary in nature to the Esper DNA used in her creation. Possible fighter's capabilities."

"Shit."

That one word was spoken aloud and she closed the folder and placed it in her bag. The other one....

The other one was the file on Morgan.

"Psionic subject file.

Name: Morgan Roeske

History: Born in 1987, in a hospital outside of San Francisco. Victim of an accident involving a lightning strike - doctors noted that while several bolts of lightning had struck her, she seemed to have suffered no harm, though was very frightened afterwards and needed sedation. She is rumored among most religious sects to be part angel. She is able to heal quickly, evident by an incident in a controlled setting. Her body expelled a bullet shot from close range and was only left with a small scar.

She also has mind-reading abilities that have only grown stronger with age. She is mentally fragile, due to her age- in some ways she has not aged at all mentally. Some would call this purity, the few psychologists whom I have spoken to about this seem to think it’s some for of mental regression or self-made mental block.”

This file also went into Sarah’s ever present backpack. One of the minor twinges she had been having lately beset her. She ignored it, as she had before, but suddenly, the twinge changed to a roaring bonfire of pain that creased up her entire side. She grimaced and fell over clutching at the pained area, the sensation passing after several excruciating minutes. She grabbed a painkiller from the medkit and took it, then finishes rifling through the stuff that was in the jeep.

She shoved all the food and living supplies over to the left side of the rear area of the jeep, and put the weapons and other things on the other side, stacking the two boxes of chain fed bullets next to the small stand that held the jeep's 40mm machine gun on a swivel mount. She patted the big machine gun and looked over the jeep one last time, then took the first aid kit and put it back in the glove compartment. And stopped. There was a note in the compartment.