Myths and Legends - Amazons Ch. 12

Chapter 12

Langley, Virginia

CIA Headquarters

"Well, he doesn't want much, does he?" Andy Larson sarcastically asked.

"Considering the information he's bargaining with I would think this is a small price to pay," Bill Anderson replied. "Now why am I here at fuck-o'clock in the morning?"

"You wanted to be read-in," Andy answered.

"You could have done that at a reasonable hour, Andy. What gives?"

"I don't know what to do with this, Bill."

"Follow protocol," Bill responded with a roll of his eyes.

"Protocol? Bill, there's literally nothing like this that has a protocol to follow!"

"That's why you send it up the chain and let the next fuck-wit in charge deal with it. All you gotta do is wait the weeks to sometimes months it takes to get a response," Bill informed him. "There is nothing in our job description that calls for creating a SOP for something we haven't dealt with. That's miles above our pay grade."

Andy sighed as he read the note again. "A hundred thousand acres. Where would we even get that much land in the midwest? Montana, maybe, or perhaps Texas if we can convince some cowboy or vaquero to sell it to us. But Nebraska or Kansas?"

Bill shrugged. "Who knows. There're tons of wide-open acres in both of those states. My question is how is he planning on containing that damn monster so it doesn't start munching on some poor shmuck's cattle, or worse, the shmuck himself? But again, that's for higher-paid, much smarter people than us to deal with."

"Not to mention, he doesn't want to be officially brought back from the dead, yet he wants his family to have access to him? The logistics of that alone create a nightmare for all of us involved. Add to that, there's this Jessie Duplantis, who claims to be over five-thousand years old, just up and walks out of a maximum security prison with literally no resistance, like she owns the place! How the hell did a woman like that get a security clearance for the SR-80 anyway?"

"Where is she now?" Bill asked.

"In a small house just offsite," Andy replied. "Her things from Bermuda have already been packed and are en route to her house."

"Who authorized that?" Bill asked.

"I did, Bill," Andy replied with a heavy sigh. "You saw the video of her breakout. What the hell do we with do with someone like that except appease them until we can figure out a proper course of action?"

"Send it all up, Andy," Bill replied. "Let somebody else handle it. As far as Miss Duplantis is concerned, do what you've been doing until you're told otherwise."

~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~

Twelve hours earlier

Xāda woke up cold and hungry. Her eyes fluttered open and she took in her surroundings. Fear stabbed her heart for a brief moment before she recalled the hazy dream. She had woken up at one point groggy and lethargic. The two female seals were her guardians while she was being transported back to Blackbird Island. The last thing she remembered before falling unconscious once more was them telling her that Jake asked her not to kill anybody.

Not that she needed to be reminded of that. She reveled not only in the fact that she had reconnected with her queen and her people, but that there were others in the world she would help save. She was disheartened when her king asked her to return to the US after only just finding her people. However, now that she understood why, she knew it was a necessary sacrifice she had to make.

Xāda's body tingled with the recent memory of the love of her king. It was still somewhat confusing that a male now led her people, but she trusted her queen's decision. And if Tatiana was certain Jake could lead them, then who was she to say otherwise?

Jake's fucking her was magical, both metaphorical and literal as she seemed to wake up from a dream. Xāda was herself once more. All her memories since the fall of Themiscyra had assaulted her in her dreams. Her birth mother even greeted her in her dreams, telling her in no uncertain terms that she was disappointed that she allowed a male to have his way with her. Xāda had rolled her eyes and flipped her mother the bird before walking out of the temple and waking up.

Xāda was still Jessie Duplantis, Alice Davenport, Trudy Blevins, and a host of other names she had taken for herself throughout the many lives she lived. She was also still an Air Traffic Controller, a Lawyer, a Midwife, and many other professions she'd held over the centuries. She remembered them all. She remembered everything about every profession she ever took upon herself. She smiled to herself as the memories cascaded across her mind. She would use every bit of knowledge she ever possessed to the benefit of her people.

She swung her legs off the small cot she lay on and sat up. Looking down at herself, she saw that she wore an orange jumpsuit and could feel nothing beneath it. She also felt something in herself she'd never felt before. Power. Strength, vitality, endurance, invulnerability, all nearly overwhelmed her senses. She felt alive, invigorated even, with immeasurable power.

"So, you're finally awake."

Xāda looked up to see a sinister, sneering face leering back at her through the bars of her cell. Looking around, she found herself alone in a ten-by-ten foot cell with solid, plain gray walls to the sides and back. Steel bars separated her from the sneering woman she assumed was her guard. In the middle of the barred wall was a steel bar door measuring six foot tall by three feet wide. A solid steel, rectangular plate fastened horizontally across the middle of the door. The steel plate was the width of the door but only a foot high.

"It would appear so," Xāda replied cordially. "I'm hungry. Can I have some food?"

A small, sliding steel door slid to the side and a tray was pushed through. It had a single pot pie, a plastic spoon, and a glass of water.

"There aren't any peas in that pot pie, are there?" Xāda asked with a smile. "I'm allergic to peas."

She wasn't really allergic to peas. She just didn't like them. Since she was a doctor in another life, she was able to create a modern medical chart for herself and have it secretly added to the base's medical records. If the prison she found herself in had called to get a copy of her chart, they would have known. Since she knew just about every pot pie in existence had peas in it, either the prison didn't get a copy of her known allergies, or they didn't care.

"Then pick them out!!" the guard snarled. "Now, hurry up and take your food or I'm dropping it on the floor! I've got better things to do than baby-sit a wanna-be Xena Warrior Princess!"

Xāda approached the door and took the proffered food as she smiled sweetly at the woman. "Well, I don't suppose any one will care if I accidentally eat a pea and go into anaphylactic shock and die, will they? I wonder if anyone will get into trouble if that happens?"

"Since there's nothing in your medical chart that says you're allergic to anything at all, I don't suppose anyone would get into trouble," the guard sniffed dismissively as she turned and strode away.

Xāda smiled as she took a bite of her food. Her smile turned into a grimace with the first bite. It was cold in the middle, but she was hungry so she ate it anyway as a plan formulated in her mind.

An hour later, the guard returned to check on her ward, only to find Xāda lying haphazardly on the floor with foam coming out of her mouth. The tray and mostly eaten pot pie lay scattered around the room.

"Shit!" the guard cursed. "Code Blue in Iso! Code Blue in Isolation!" she yelled as the cell door clicked unlocked.

The guard was halfway into the room when Xāda abruptly sat up. Standing up, she smiled at the dumbfounded guard who froze in her tracks, uncertainty about the situation spurring indecision on her part. Xāda just continued to smile at the guard.

"Thank you," she said. "I could have broken the lock if I wanted to but I'd rather not cause too much of an inconvenience if I can avoid it."

The guard blinked for a moment before regaining her wits. "Stop right there!" she ordered.

"I'd rather not," Xāda replied. "I have somewhere I need to be."

"Yeah, your cell," the guard growled and reached a hand out to grab Xāda's arm.

Quick as lightning, Xāda turned and slapped the guard's hand away. The sound of bones breaking echoed off of the metal walls a split second before the guard shrieked in agony.

"I won't kill anyone," Xāda replied with a stern expression. "But neither will I allow anyone to keep me from my duty."

Closing the cell door on the wailing woman, Xāda walked down the short hallway. The door to the next area slammed shut and locked. Xāda sighed and shook her head sadly before kicking it open, the sound of twisting metal and the steel door banging open echoing off of the walls.

"Prisoner! Get back to your cell!" another female guard ordered. "Or we will use lethal force!"

As Xāda walked through the broken door, she saw half a dozen guards in the narrow passageway. Their automatic rifles were pointed directly at her. The guards were positioned in two rows, with three abreast in each row. The guards in the front row were kneeling to provide an unobstructed line of sight for those standing behind them.

"Aww fuck," Xāda complained. "Look, you're not gonna be able to stop me from leaving. The sooner you realize that, the sooner I can get out of here and you all can get back to doing your jobs guarding the actual criminals. Okay?" She stood there with her hands outstretched to either side of her body. "So, go ahead. Shoot."

"Get back in your cell!" the lead guard ordered. "This is your final warning!!"

"No," Xāda said. "Just shoot me and get it over with."

So, she did. The lead guard fired one shot at Xāda's chest. The bullet struck her sternum directly between her breasts, tearing a hole in the orange suit before falling in an erratic zig-zag pattern to the floor. The sound of the bullet zipping down fabric as it fell inside Xāda's jumpsuit drew the attention of six pairs of eyes, and it bounced twice before clattering as it settled on the floor. Those same eyes slowly looked back up at Xāda in astonishment.

"See?" Xāda said, pointing to the deformed bullet at her feet. "Now, can we--"

"FIRE!" the lead guard yelled and a hail of bullets screamed for Xāda.

"Fuuuck!" Xāda groaned as she backed up, bracing against the bars behind her, turning her back to the sounds of gunfire. Bullets struck her from head to foot and bounced off, leaving red welts all up and down her body. Ten seconds later, the rifles clicked empty. Xāda turned with fists clenched and looked at the guards with barely restrained fury. "I'm trying my VERY best not to kill anyone today," she seethed. "You're not stopping me from leaving--so get, out, of, my, WAY!"

The guards stared at Xāda with a mixture of horror and shock. "What the fuck are you?" the lead guard whispered as Xāda shouldered past the flabbergasted guards.

"Right now?" Xāda asked. "Pissed."

Finding her way to the room that held all the prisoners' personal items, Xāda found her clothes and quickly changed. A folded up sheet of paper fell out of the small sack of meager clothing and she stooped to pick it up. She silently thanked her queen for outfitting her with a breastplate and battle skirt she hadn't worn in millennia. She still wore her pale blue bikini to at least attempt at a measure of modesty, but she felt infinitely more at home in her battle dress.

Crumpling the paper in her hand, she made her way lazily to the entrance to the prison. When she arrived, two dozen guards in full tactical gear blocked the exit in a half-circle with automatic rifles cocked and aimed in her direction. An older man with gray hair stood straight behind the center of the soldiers, staring at her with a worried, yet hardened expression.

The room was wide with a domed, vaulted ceiling. The floor appeared to be polished concrete with an emblem in the very center that Xāda didn't recognize. The walls were a dull gray, with vertical tiered spines every two feet apart rising twenty feet in the air. Where the walls ended, an off-white ceiling angled upwards to complete the dome. In the center of the domed ceiling, an identical emblem to the one of the floor mirrored its counterpart.

"Young lady," the man started to say when Xāda opened the door to the antechamber, but she cut him off.

"Young?" she replied with a haughty chuckle. "Warden, you are the warden, correct? Warden, I may not look it, but I'm over five-thousand years old. I was alive and fighting battles long before your distant ancestors even thought about existing. Now, I knew I was going to be put in jail when I came back from Theros. Even my king knew I was going to be put in jail when I came back from Theros, and he asked me-- notice I said asked-- to try and not kill anyone."

Xāda twirled in place to show the growing bruises along her back and legs. "I've already been shot at multiple times and would very much not like to experience that again. Now, I'm only going to say this once. The next person that shoots me, at the very least, is going to end up in the hospital." Her eyes took on a menacing glare as her mouth hardened into a thin line. "If you continue to shoot me, somebody is going to end up in the morgue."

"What do you want?" the warden asked.

"Two things," Xāda replied. "First," she held up the hand with the crumpled piece of paper, opening her fingers slightly to show what she held, "I need to get this letter over to the boys in the CIA. Second, I need to do whatever I can to convince your boss' boss' boss'-- never mind. Too many bosses-- to agree to my king's request."

"And who exactly is your king?" the warden asked.

"I doubt you'll recognize the name since nothing of the situation has been declassified yet, but his name is Jacob Blackburn," Xāda replied.

"Give me a moment," the warden replied as he pulled out his cell phone.

"You have thirty seconds, warden," Xāda warned. "After that, I'm leaving. Now, whether or not you and these fine soldiers here are still standing when I do is up to you. Make it count."

The warden put the phone up to his ear after punching a couple of times on the screen.

"Oh, and warden?" Xāda called. The man looked back as she gave him an additional warning that nearly made his blood run cold. "Before you go and decide to be stupid and call for backup, say, like a fully armed tactical SWAT team with RPG's and snipers, which I highly doubt would get here in time anyway, just don't, okay? Remember that scene in Hancock where he diverts an RPG with his hand and blows up a car? Well, I don't think you want your precious prison damaged any more than it already is. Not to mention you'd be endangering the lives of your inmates, some of which are guilty of nothing more than money laundering. Your thirty seconds starts now."

The warden nodded slowly before talking with someone on the other line. A few seconds later, the warden hung up. "A member of the CIA is on his way here to take your letter," he said. "If you're willing to wait a bit longer?"

"Coming here?" Xāda asked, her eyebrows rising slightly in surprise. "Does that mean we're in Langley?"

"Miss Duplantis," the warden replied. "You are no doubt aware that the CIA have offices all over the country, correct?"

"True," Xāda replied, not bothering to correct the man on his misuse of her name. "So tell me, where am I?"

"Langley," the warden dryly replied.

"Uh huh," Xāda said with a raised eyebrow. "Why don't we wait outside? I'd like to sit down in fresh air. As you can imagine, I've been through quite a harrowing experience."

"I can not in good conscience allow you to leave the building."

"Your 'good conscience' is going to be your undoing, warden," Xāda flippantly replied with air quotes. "You don't seriously believe that I'm going back in a cell after I hand off this letter, do you?"

The warden's jaw tensed and Xāda could see his jaw muscles rippling in frustration. [He actually does!] she thought to herself with an inward chuckle.

"You disobeyed a direct order from your superior. You put lives in danger! American lives that could very well have been taken due to your selfishness!" the warden spat.

"Yes," Xāda answered with a hint of malice in her tone as she stepped to the center of the room and stopped on the emblem in the floor. "And I would do it again in a heartbeat, over and over and over again for no other reason than to reunite with my people!"

"You're delusional," the warden scoffed as the guards tensed at Xāda's approach. "Do you really expect me to believe you're some ancient, immortal being?"

Xāda reared back with a fist and slammed it down on the floor. The impact caused the thick, polished concrete decoration emblem to crack, with lines spidering out from the center of the blow. Several guards nearly fell back on their asses in their haste to get away from the cracking floor beneath them."I don't give a fuck what you believe. But I'm leaving, today, whether you like it or not."

There was a commotion behind her, and Xāda turned to see the six guards who'd fired on her enter, coming around to join the others. Two of them were huddled around the guard with the broken hand, who was staring daggers at Xāda.

"Sir," the lead guard from earlier spoke up. She gave Xāda a wide berth and a wary eye as she approached her boss. "We emptied our rifles on her and the bullets didn't even faze her. She broke through one of the cell doors like it was paper. How do we contain someone like that!?"

The warden looked at the ruined floor as he looked to the woman who spoke. After a long moment, he sighed as his shoulders slumped. "We don't. We can't. Stand down," he reluctantly ordered.

"Wise decision, Warden," Xāda said with a smile. She walked confidently toward the entrance to the building as the soldiers lowered their weapons and stood to the side to allow her to pass.

~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~

"I'll need one more favor from you, Mr. Larson," Xāda said to the man on the other end of the line. "I have a storage unit in Dallas, Texas. Inside that unit is a fire box the size of a small wall safe. Inside that fire box, you'll find all the evidence you need to satisfy your curiosity as to the veracity of my claims. Retrieve it for me and I'll personally open it for you when we begin negotiations."

"No need, Miss Duplantis," Andy Larson replied. "We took the liberty of retrieving all of your possessions already. They'll be delivered to your new address within the next couple of days."

"I wish you hadn't done that, Mr. Larson," Xāda replied. "This address is only temporary as I will be residing with my king and my people when the negotiations are concluded. I assume you already have a list of potential locations we requested for suitable long-term accommodations?"

"I... apologize," Andy Larson said. "I thought it prudent given that your quarters on Blackbird Isle had already been vacated and shipped to you as well. Shall I have the items from your storage unit returned, all but the fire box?"

"No. It's fine," Xāda replied with a sigh. "I'll just need you to be responsible for shipping them to the new location when we decide upon one."

"That won't be a problem," Andy agreed. "And, yes, I have two possible locations available that might serve your people's needs. Just give me a call when your fire box arrives and we can arrange a meeting location at that time."

"Ta ta for now, Mr. Larson," Xāda replied dismissively and ended the call.

Andy Larson sighed heavily as he hung up the receiver and scrubbed his face with his hands. Growling in frustration, he said, "Why the hell do I have to be the liaison for this? Surely there's got to be someone more qualified."

Bill Anderson sat across from Andy's desk, looking just as grumpy at the situation as Andy was. He tempered his anger before replying to his colleague in as placating a tone as possible. "There just might be. However, you offered yourself, albeit unknowingly, when you took the initiative to get all of the girl's things to her."