Dust to Dust Ch. 04

Dusty walked up and put a hand on the woman's arm. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Why would I not?" Ash was confused. She had never felt that she was unclear as to her objectives.

"You could die!" Dusty said.

"Yes. That is an option." She understood that Dusty was upset. She was the kind of girl who didn't like thinking about death, despite it being a natural part of the order of things. "I see the way they look at me," she told Dusty. "I know that my behavior is becoming less acceptable. They are . . . good . . . people. If my actions are unacceptable to them, then I believe that would be unacceptable to the one I used to be. It has to stop, and it stops today."

Dusty swallowed her fear. She hated this.

The group made its way into the room with the node: a room just labeled "Test Room B." And even the most skeptical amongst them could hear the echo of souls who had been tormented here. How many like Ash had there been?

Eliza finished cleaning the window. She was worried . . . not so much about Ash, who was going to get what she wanted one way or another. Her mother –

[[ It's alright precious, ]] a sagely voice came from behind her. Eliza turned to find her mother smiling.

[[ What's alright? ]] she returned in the vampire's tongue. [[ What . . . am I being that obvious? ]]

[[ Even when you didn't want to admit that anyone could understand you . . . I could. ]]

Eliza looked sullen. [[ They shouldn't have involved you. The Gems are dangerous and . . . and you really haven't been practicing – ]]

[[ I can handle this, ]] her mother said. [[ After putting up with you and your father squabbling all those years, putting this girl back together should be a piece of cake. ]] She placed her hand on her daughter's face when she looked like she might object again. [[ I'm in no danger. The Gems won't see each other, and between you and Valar shielding us . . . Stop worrying! Besides, I need to develop a life outside of your father anyway. ]]

[[ Wait! Does he even know you're here? ]]

Alyidana looked sheepish. [[ He thinks I'm visiting friends. ]]

Eliza looked irritated. [[ He's going to blame me. You know that, right? ]]

"What's that for?" Dusty's question reverberated through the room. A couple of Colonel Corbin's men had arrived, carrying a large black board, each end of which fit into a stand. It was placed one end against the mirror facing Test Room B, effectively dividing that part of the room in half.

"That is to prevent the two Gems from seeing each other," Valar explained. "We discovered quite by accident and with no small amount of headaches that the Living Gems really . . . well, they don't get along."

"They start yelling at each other, in a manner of speaking," Veronica said. "It's really creepy."

Ash was ignoring them all at this point. She didn't care about any of this anymore, if "care" was really an appropriate word. She walked through the door into the observation room. She was almost surprised at how strong the memories were. She could almost remember the sensation . . . the smell of the gas. She certainly remembered "click" noise. Then there had been screaming.

Dr. Trendenfall looked through the window. "I can't imagine what it was like," he muttered.

"Pray you never do," Veronica whispered. She understood more than any of them. She had been a few breaths away from breathing no more. Now, just like what had been done with her, she wondered if these ancient magical objects would be able to save another tortured soul.

"Are we ready?" hissed that voice from the room beyond. Ash wanted . . . yes wanted . . . for this to be over. She dropped her weapons and waited for someone to make the next move.

"Very well," Valar said. He looked at the Alyidana and Martha VanHouten. "Are you both comfortable with the Gems and what you have to do?" Both women nodded. Alyidana looked surprisingly calm, but she had lived a life surrounded by powerful people. Professor VanHouten was new to this, but Valar had the utmost confidence in her.

Dr. Trendenfall pressed a button on the hover platform, and the force field around the Ocean's Heart fizzled and disappeared. That side of the room was seeped in a fluid blue glow.

Dusty had felt a rush when she had let Kalinicia lend her energy. That was nothing compared to what she was feeling now. She felt small next to the power of the Living Gem. And when Mr. McBride deactivated the shield for the Heaven's Eye, things got weirder. While the two gems were not in "sight" of each other, wherever their lights touched around the edges of the separator, there seemed to be a crackle like lightning. The Ocean's Heart's blue versus the white emanations of the Heaven's Eye: Dusty wasn't sure if it took her breath away or was simply crushing down on her.

Professor Martha VanHouten, who's only link to this initially had been her sexual involvement with Dusty, found herself touching something much bigger than she had ever envisioned. Even with Valar and Katrina feeding her energy, she knew she was nothing more than a spec of dust on a comet.

"Sweet heavens above," she whispered. The power was arcing up through her arms, through her shoulders and back out through the other hand, creating a circle of energy. She looked forward and saw Ash standing in the room alone. The woman didn't seem to be staring at anything in particular. She was just staring and waiting. Martha looked at the girl and started breaking down the girl's form . . . the composition of ash versus the composition of flesh. And then there was that glow. She could see it as clear as the sun rising over the ocean . . . that magical node pulsing on the far side of the room. And then there was a smaller pulse, drifting inside of Ash's mind. It was sparking: it seemed to recognize the node, and it wanted to go home. The magic inside of Ash didn't need to be extinguished, but the thin dark mystical tendrils that were holding it in place did. She extended the power of the Heart and let it flow.

Ash felt something . . . cold . . . inside her. She dropped to her knees. She hadn't felt "cold" in a long time. Bits of ash and dust started to fleck from her skin.

Alyidana took her cue. Ash was beginning to dissolve. She experienced similar feelings to Martha's when she touched the Heaven's Eye. It was her turn to look at Ash, or maybe into Ash. The girl was falling apart . . . dissolving. Alyidana looked deeper: there was still some bone there, reforming as the bits of magical energy slipped out of Ash and went flying back into the node they had come from. There was flesh too.

[[ By the powers! ]] she gasped, concentrating hard and fast on her healing arts, using energy from her daughter and from her future daughter-in-law to power the Eye. A white beam shot from the Living Gem and struck Ash, who had fallen to her hands and knees. Alyidana was searching desperately for something . . . some spark of life . . . something to work with. When Ash had been changed, had it been too late? Had her soul and life force already fled the mortal realm?

'No,' she thought. She saw it, hugging the area where Ash's heart had once been. It had been separated from the girl's mind for so long that as the pieces began to reform it almost lashed out, looking for the other half of life's equation. And when it found it, the screaming began again in Test Room B . . . screaming that the room had not heard in forty years.

Dusty pressed her hands to her face as she watched and listened in horror. She had no idea what was going on, but she understood what pain sounded like, and that was too much pain for one person to bear. She saw that Veronica was visibly shaking as she aided her girlfriend's mother. 'Was that what she felt when the Spear of God touched her?' Dusty thought.

Alyidana was mending for all she was worth, trying to undo the ravages of intense flame on a young woman's body. Normally, this kind of healing would take her months, but with the Heaven's Eye, it would be done within minutes. She knew that there would be another problem . . . one that none of them had anticipated. But that would come later. For now, she needed to finish the healing and hopefully, in time, stop the banshee cries of agony.

While the entire process only took a few minutes, for those involved it seemed like eternity. Those glowing lights, the crackling of power and magic, and the screaming.

Then the moment came . . . quiet. It was the kind of quiet that was usually associated with lowering a long pine box into the ground and covering it with worm-filled earth. Dusty pressed her face against the glass.

Lying on the floor of Test Room B was a naked, bald young woman. And she wasn't screaming anymore. In fact, she wasn't moving.

"You killed her!" Dusty shouted, rushing into the room despite protestations from her father and the others. But she was wrong. When she turned Ash's body over, she could see that the young girl was breathing. Her lithe young body was still hyper-taut and her face was frozen in a most unflattering grimace. And there were remnants of tears on the girl's face, which Dusty promptly wiped away. She didn't know what else she could do.

For a moment, Ash opened her eyes. Almost instantly, those eyes started to tear up, and Ash began to sob. Then Alyidana was at her side, placing a hand on Ash's forehead and willed her to sleep.

"What – " Dusty started.

"Mom what's going on?" Eliza said, appearing in the room. The Gems had been secured, and soon everyone was in the room.

"I saw her soul . . . her emotional being trying to reattach to her logical mind. That's when it struck me: what was going to happen when those two things reattached?"

"I don't get it," Dusty sniffed. "Wasn't that the point?"

"Young lady, the relationship between memory and emotion is a powerful one. Her memories kept her mostly on the straight and narrow for many years. But those NEW memories had NO emotional context." Alyidana sighed. "When she comes to, her soul is going to have to deal with everything that she's done for the last forty years, and it's going to happen all at once. And . . . and it's going to start with what she felt the moment she was changed."

"You mean – " This time it was Eliza speaking up. She couldn't finish the statement, but she didn't have to. Veronica read it in her mind.

The blonde hybrid whispered, "We saved her just so she could experience what it was like to be burned alive one more time?"

Alyidana looked pained. "Yes. Her body will survive. Her mind is in for the fight of its life."

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Weeks later . . .

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Dr. Trendenfall had finished packing up his belongings, but the idea of heading back home right away just didn't seem right. True, the Purity had been almost completely broken in the attack, but there was a big difference between "almost" and "completely." He was confident that with Tom's help, he would be safe. But what he was worried about was Dusty.

Ash had been moved to the Hybrid Security compound for safe-keeping. Alyidana had temporarily moved in to overlook the girl's recovery. It had been generally agreed that no one outside that group could know about Ash. Not about her being a Chimera baby and not about her being "cured." If their enemies thought for a moment that magic could be cured, then they would redouble their efforts and have a campaign platform all set for them. Valar, Katrina and Professor VanHouten had all returned to Terra, while Hybrid Security was monitoring the world info streams.

And Dusty had refused to leave Ash's side since they got back. Jon had never seen his daughter behave this way, and hoped she hadn't developed an attachment to the girl. No one knew exactly what kind of person they had managed to bring back.

Ash lay unconscious in a large bed in one of the guest houses at the compound. There was a light dusting of hair that adorned her formerly bald skull . . . it turned out that Ash was a blonde. Her body . . . her face . . . she looked so young! She was a slim girl, lean from her life before being changed . . . before Chimera. And she was very pretty. Dr. Trendenfall wondered if that had been a blessing or a burden when she lived on the streets?

"She looks good," Dusty said, not even raising her eyes to look at her father. "Eliza's mom did a good job."

Jon walked in and sat on the sofa next to Alyidana. "Any change?"

"She wakes up sometimes . . . starts crying or laughing or just staring," Alyidana replied. "We try and let her stay awake for a while, but sleep is when people resolve their emotional issues." She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what to expect. This isn't something that has ever happened before . . . mind and soul existing independently for so long."

"Shh," Dusty whispered heatedly. "She's waking up again."

Ash opened her eyes, which were traced with red. There was only so much that sleep could do with something that had been crying that much. She let out a puff of air, gurgling almost as if she had been drowning. Then she let loose with a maniacal laugh that petered out into a hoarse gasp.

Dr. Trendenfall looked on with some concern. 'Has she gone insane? I couldn't blame her . . . not with everything she's been through.' The girl started to look around wildly.

Alyidana sighed. She reached her hand forward, but this time . . . for the first time . . . Ash reached up and stopped her.

"No more," the girl whispered, then chuckled and then whimpered. "No more sleep. I've been asleep too long . . . too long . . . too many sheep jumping the fence . . . too high . . . too close to the sun." Ash stopped ranting for a moment, a quizzical look on her face. "Sun," she whispered. She looked at Dusty like she was the only person in the world who might understand her. "I want . . .want to see the sun."

Dusty looked at Alyidana, who was just nodding her head in quiet amazement. This was more conversation than she had gotten out of the young girl since un-changing her. Dusty grabbed a robe and draped it over the girl's form, escorting her out of the house. She saw some of the members of Hybrid Security off on the patio to the main house, watching with interest.

When Ash felt the sun on her face, she stopped.

"I feel it," she said, closing her eyes and smiling.

Dusty almost cried. The girl hadn't felt anything in almost half a century. And she was smiling. Slowly but surely, a grin had appeared on that face. Dusty had never seen any expression from Ash in the months that she had known her, and now one emotion or another was dancing across her face, gone as quickly as it had come. But this smile was staying.

Ash stumbled forward a bit, then yelped. She had left the smooth pavement and stepped into the grass. Then she looked down in wonderment, scrunching the grass between her toes. Finally, she just lay down, feeling the grass against her face and the sun on her neck.

Dusty knelt down next to the girl, smiling. "She's asleep," she said. "Can we let her stay out here?"

Alyidana nodded. "Maybe that's what she needs: to reconnect to the world. Let's get something over her so she doesn't get sunburned and see what happens."

The shaman went off to find some kind of sun umbrella, while Jon and his daughter stayed behind.

"She looks happier out here, doesn't she?" Dusty crooned.

"Dusty, you know it's almost time to go, right? You might still be able to salvage some of your semester and – "

Dusty shook her head. "How can we leave her? I mean, after all she did – "

"I PAID her to protect you," her father reminded her, maybe a little too callously. "She's got all of Hybrid Security to protect her now."

Dust was adamant. "I'm not leaving until I know she's going to be okay."

Dr. Trendenfall threw up his hands in defeat. She was a strong-willed young woman, just like her mother had been.

Terillia, the succubus, was the first to come over.

"They are looking for a canopy of some kind," she flittered, looking down at the young woman on the grass. She didn't look like the same creature who had waded through piles of Purity corpses less than a month earlier. This girl was sweet . . . almost innocent. Terillia extended one feather wing, providing some shade.

"Breeze," Ash muttered, not quite as asleep as everyone thought. She had felt the air move over her as Terillia extended her wing. It made her smile . . . it cooled her as the sun had warmed her. They were simple sensations, but each was exquisite to her.

Terillia flapped her wing lightly. She stopped, looking confused when Ash began to cry.

"So many people . . . I killed them . . . buried below where the worms sleep . . . their blood on my hands." Ash started clawing at the grass that had just recently provided her such fascination. Then she stopped, looking mortally offended at what she had done. "Sorry," she whispered, trying to push the small chunks of turf back into place. "I didn't mean to . . ."

No one even knew who or what she was talking to. Dusty wrapped an arm around the girl's trembling shoulders while Terillia shaded her. Alyidana looked on worriedly, as did Dr. Trendenfall. The girl's mind was like single flower, battered by the elements and trying desperately to survive a harsh winter. It was so frail that any little breeze might make it snap.

Ash pulled herself into a fetal position and just started whispering, "What have I done?" over and over again. Finally Alyidana made the decision that this had gone on long enough and slowly helped the girl back to the world of sleep.

"She has no grounding," Alyidana said. "She just clings to these amorphous memories, reconciling what she has done with what she thinks she ought to have done. She needs guidance . . . purpose."

"But how do we reach her?" Dr. Trendenfall said.

"Does she have family or anything?" Alyidana asked.

"No," Dusty said. Everyone looked at her.

"How do you know?" her father asked.

"I talked to her," Dusty replied. "I just wanted to know her." She looked at Alyidana. "Her parents . . . let's just say that even if they were still alive, weren't exactly the types to help anyone but themselves. She was homeless from when she was fourteen until Chimera." Dusty looked deep in thought.

"What?" her father asked.

"If we give her something familiar . . . something to hold onto . . . that might help?"

"Yes."

"When she lived alone, she lived under a bridge near a river. You have a creek on the property, right? We could settle her down over there."

Alyidana nodded, then sent a telepathic message to the house. Eliza and Veronica emerged, both looking confused.

"You want us to build a bridge?" her daughter asked.

"Or something that resembles one. I believe that Dusty may be on to something that could help Ash."

Eliza and Veronica looked at each other, exchanging thoughts. "Okay." She wandered off, grumbling as Veronica looked on with amusement. Eliza wasn't used to being told what to do. "What am I going to do with a bridge?"

"You could keep the trolls under it," Veronica said, slowly following after her fiancée.

Another idea embedded itself into Dusty's brain. She got up and hurried after Eliza. "Could I borrow a car?" she asked.

Eliza pursed her lips. "Why?"

"I've got an idea."

Eliza grinned. She was beginning to like this girl. "Go get Vicky . . . take Dennis and Bear with you for . . . whatever it is you're planning."

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Later that night . . .

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Ash hated her dreams. There was a numbing redundancy to them . . . blood and bones splattered and broken. From the most recent fight in Mexico through every job she ever had for every favor she ever accrued . . . her mind kept going down the list. It had all seemed so logical. How could butchery be logical? But her mind kept blanking at one spot . . . at the beginning . . . something she didn't know how to deal with and –