NewU Pt. 28

Faces and memories. Raw emotion. Hope and dreams. Fears, insecurities, and pride. Love, lust, jealousy, and greed. All of it was mashed together into an incomprehensible storm of conscious and subconscious thought. And all of it was corrupted by whatever malevolent mind had done this to her.

Whatever the hell this was.

I was looking at the very definition of a broken mind. This was insanity given form.

"Can we fix this?" I asked, my wide eyes struggling to understand what I was looking at.

"I..." Charlotte's mouth hung open for a moment, then closed again. The pain on her face was unmistakable. We both knew that we were looking at her friend's mind, frozen at the moment of its destruction. I had tortured myself for weeks, reliving the moment of Faye's execution, and I knew that I would probably find myself doing the same with Becky. Watching that moment of surrender over and over again. Somehow, this was so much worse, if only because Philippa was still alive and was being forced to endure this torment without reprieve. "I don't..." Charlotte stuttered, her haunted eyes wide with shock. "I wouldn't even know where to start."

"How the hell can she function, in the real world, when her mind is like... this?" I asked, gesturing to the madness before us but not expecting an answer.

Charlotte gave one anyway. "I'm not sure that she is. You saw the state of her."

We both winced against the shrill sound of manic laughter that erupted from the lips of Philippa's avatar, forced to wait a few seconds until she flickered into another madness-riddled emotion before Charlotte and I shared another nervous look. "Pete, this is so far beyond me it's ridiculous. We are going to need a lot of help before we even know what has happened to her, let alone have any chance of fixing her."

"I'm not sure any of our 'friends' at the cottage will be of any use. You remembered how baffled they were by the condition of Sterling's victims."

"No, fuck that!" She shook her head vehemently. "Having them with us for a fight is one thing, but I don't want them anywhere near Pip. She needs to be healed, not used. We all want to know what that Evo cunt looked like, and she may have seen him, but mining her for information could push her even further over the edge. More than that, we don't know if they will go to the Conclave to ask for advice. Even if they are discreet and quiet about it, whoever did this to her will know straight away that we are looking for him, and who is working with us."

"I'm not disagreeing," I nodded. "But what other option do we have?"

"It's gotta be the Sect," she sighed.

"I hate to play the devil's advocate here, Charl, but how do we know the Evo involved isn't from there? You said it yourself. Their members have been infiltrating the Conclave for years. One of them could have worked their way up to that position, and what better way to bring them down than to start a war between them and the Inquisition?"

"You're right," she sighed. "But I know a few people I can trust without question. Maybe one of those could help. Agatha would be a good start. More than that, I trust them to keep her safe while they try. I'm not sure we are in a position to do the same."

I took a deep breath but nodded. "Okay, I trust you. If you think that is for the best, then that is what we'll do."

"Let's get Pip to the manor. We can go from there," she took another pained look at the horror show that was being played out in front of us and wiped a tear from her eyes. "I can't look at this anymore. I need to get out."

I took her hand and gave it a squeeze, then watched as the shattered remains of Philippa's mind faded from view.

********

"Alright, the moment of truth," Fiona sighed nervously from her place next to the front window of the cottage. Jerry nodded absently, his vigil of keeping watch outside momentarily forgotten as the days of work came to its conclusion. Uri and Marco, standing next to the bedroom door, remained quiet but watched intently. Charlotte was sitting next to Evie on the sofa.

Pouring my own energy into Toussant's body, in a vastly different manner than the first time around, had healed the enormous amounts of physical damage that had been inflicted upon him. My eyes were closed, and my palm was pressed against the hole in his skull, knitting the bone around the incision back together, regrowing the skin, then finally replacing the hair that had been cut away before the procedure. By the time I blinked my eyes back open again, Jean-Pierre Toussant looked no different than he had the night heforcefully barged his way into Mary's home a week earlier.

His eyes - including the newly repaired one - fluttered open, and his gaze met mine.

The room collectively held its breath.

It took a few moments for his eyes to focus before they darted around at the others, then returned to me. "Hmm," he said ponderously. "I honestly wasn't sure that would work." His face broke out into a wry grin.

The held breath was released, and I looked around at the beaming, proud smiles of the other Evos. Charlotte, despite the pain of our visit to see Philippa, was beaming; the relief on her face was as obvious as the clothes on her back. Even Uri looked suitably impressed.

Toussant stood up, rubbing his hands over the parts of his arms that had been impaled to the chair, and glanced down at his formerly tattered legs, the skin on both now flawlessly healed, before rolling his neck. He strode over to the kitchenette table to retrieve his phone. Punching in a number from memory, he put his finger to his lips to silence the room and placed the call on loudspeaker.

The phone rang with an unfamiliar tone, indicating that it had been routed internationally.

"Nimintsky Extermination services, how may I help you?" A woman answered, speaking Ukrainian but the collective powers in the room translated the conversation for all but one of the assembled crowd.

"Yanky Oscar four-zero-eight, reporting in," Toussant said calmly, his eyes staying on mine as he played his part perfectly,

The woman on the other end of the line paused, and the line clicked before she spoke again. "Line secured, transferring your call."

There was another pause before a man's voice sounded through the phone's speakers. "Four-zero-eight, it's good to hear from you. You are five days overdue. What is your situation?"

"Secure, Sir," Toussant answered without hesitation.

"Report? Was your mission a success?"

"Negative, Sir. Total loss," Toussant flicked a glance at me before continuing. "I am the only one who made it out."

There was a pause. "Jesus. Do you have the target's current location?"

"Negative. He is in the wind."

"Local?"

"Unlikely, Sir. I think he has gone international. Recommend withdrawing local assets until he can be found."

There was another pause. "It is unlike you to be so... cautious."

"Sir, I thought the reports from the assault on the Evo gathering were exaggerated to excuse their failure, just like you. I can confirm that they were not. He destroyed my entire unit without breaking a sweat. I've never seen anything like it; I don't think anybody has. I strongly recommend withdrawing local assets for home defense. Sir, he knows about Ukraine. I think he is on his way to you."

"What?? How can he know about Ukraine."

"Fuck, I don't know, Alexi! But he said something about saying hello to our friends in Ukraine for us when he was burning my men alive, just before burying me under a fucking building! I didn't get a chance to ask for specifics!"

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "Was it really that bad?"

"Worse. Much worse. This went about as wrong as it is possible for an op to go."

"Lord help us. Okay, I will pass your recommendations up the ladder. Can you return to base?"

"Affirmative. I should be able to get there in two to three days, depending on how long it takes to make sure I'm not leading him to you."

"Understood. See you soon, brother."

The line went dead.

The man formerly known as Toussant looked up, gave me a nod and left the building. My mind, or at least a part of it, completely in possession and control of everything that he was.