Ioana Musca Ch. 01

Startled he froze for a minute, on his knees one arm extended over the cliff and just felt her within him. Felt her fears. Watched highlights of her life where she would carefully note the political play for power around her. The lies and abuse. The winners and the losers and the pain and death in between. So she hid, knowing if given an opportunity those who would know her secret would only see her as a means to an end, and nothing more. Each experience she witnessed heightened that belief, that fear.

Her compassionate heart couldn't take it. He saw her weakness, but he also saw her strength. Strength she didn't even know she possessed. The strength to abandon her needs for emotion love and devotion to protect those she cared for by alienating herself. The sacrifices she made for others. The few times she used her powers to save someone. And the pain that came with her abilities. How intense everything felt. And the debilitating weakness afterwards of the merging taking up all the energy she possessed. He stood up and turning moved back towards the car, unsteadily as he wasn't used to sharing his body as well as his mind with another being.

She in turn she felt him. Felt his strength and confidence. His determination, and also his kindness. His concern for others seated over the fear that he himself was somehow worthless if he couldn't make himself useful, needed. The abandoned child who craved a family, but never felt worthy of one. Who had found a family in his work. Who knew what he fought for and against and at what personal sacrifices, possibly someday the ultimate one. But she also saw what specifically they had planned for her. She gasped as she saw the faces. Hundreds of women's pictures taped to walls. Women with a few scattered men and children. All kidnapped and used as sex slaves. Of the few that were found, bloody broken piles, or only pieces remained. Most were foreigners, a lot of them Russians just like the men who ran the organization. A lot of them were poor nobodies with little family to miss them, most some were rich elitists, but they were all people. And so few clues as to the depth of the organization. It's interconnections. Just a clue that the leader was in the Manhattan area. The desperate need for information to put a stop to the circle of black market human sex slaves. The few undercover spies who disappeared without a trace, never found alive or dead since. The guilt involved with losing a teammate without a trace. The knowledge that with her ability to merge into any material, living or not, and take on the characteristics of that material made her nearly invulnerable, and would allow her to assist them in gaining information with minimal risk to herself. She also saw his initial confusion as to her paranoia. And that confusion dissipate and turn to empathy as in reading her he understood why she was so afraid.

Just like that she separated, and they both fell backwards to the ground, her skirt sliding high up her legs. He turned and sat up, facing her. She lay on her side, half propped up on an elbow, breathing heavily, her brow beaded with sweat and her face lined with exhaustion.

He bent and picked her up. She curled against him, only slightly stiff. "Shh. I won't let anyone hurt you. I'm just going to take you someplace safe to rest. Then we can talk, and only talk." He said. She nodded against his neck. He moved around the car to the passenger seat. By the time he wrestled the door open she was already asleep in his arms.

(Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for chapter 2, thanks.)