Strangers and Shadows (22 page)

“New life, new hair cut?”

“Something like that,” the woman said.  “My name is Ava, but then you probably already knew that.”

Celia nodded slightly, indicating that she did.  Jack had shared his meeting with the woman and her companion with her.  “I didn’t see you at the Overlap, did you and your master show up after all the fun was already over?”

“That man is not my master!”  Ava’s face flushed red with anger.

“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s right, you come from a matriarchal world,” Celia mocked.  “How is it, taking orders from a man?”

Ava closed the distance between them faster than Celia expected, and delivered a backhand almost too quickly to see.  Celia instantly felt her lip split, the blood flying out.  She twisted her head to see her assailants hand raised to strike again.

“That will be quite enough, Ava!”
a
nother woman’s voice
shouted
from behind Ava.

Ava backed off slowly, hatred still pouring from her eyes.

Celia addressed the new woman who had entered the room. “Hello,
Mother
, so good to see you again,” she said.

“Hello, Celia.  Nice to see you haven’t lost your sarcasm.  I like to think that I contributed to your upbringing in
some way…
” Lady Julia White said.

“Ha!” Celia said, “You could have contributed more, if you hadn’t run away to another universe.”

“Your father was too unreasonable.  He wouldn’t listen, so I left for home, to find people who
would
listen.  How is your father these days?”

Celia laughed
. 
“As if you don’t know.  I’m sure he’s recovering from you trying to kill him just fine, thanks for asking.”

“
This woman is your daughter?
” Ava asked Lady White, surprised by the turn of events.

“Yes, she is
,
” Lady White said
. 
“At least she
used
to be my daughter.  She’s more of her father’s daughter than anything else these days.”  Turning to Celia she said, “Tell me, daughter dearest, what were you and your father doing in the Third?”

“You don’t know?  After you left we joined the traveling circus.  Our caravan had just arrived in the Third when you showed up and broke the
Overlap Cease Fire Agreement
.”

Lady White laughed patiently.  “Oh
,
Silly… You always did tell the most wonderful stories as a little girl.  Remember when you used to sit on my knee and—”

“
Are you serious?
” Celia interrupted
. 
“You want to have story time right now?  How about you let me out of this bed and I’ll tell you all the stories you want.”

The smile that had been on Lady White’s face left without a trace.  “I was
trying
to be civil about this, but—”

“But what…?
What!?
  What are you going to do?”

Lady White opened her mouth as if to speak and then closed it, pausing.  “Well, do you remember what happened to your last boyfriend?” 
S
he smiled wickedly.

Celia’s jaw dropped, her eyes wide open.  “
You…?  You killed Craig?
”  It wasn’t as much a question as it was a statement of a finally realized fact.

“I had to, I’m afraid.  He was getting soft on me.”  White talked nonchalantly, as if about the weather.  “You see, he was starting to develop
feelings
for you.”  She said the word as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

“What are you saying?  Of course he had feelings for me, we were in love.”

Laughter shot forth out of Lady White
. 
“Oh,
you
were in love, I’m quite sure of that, but
he
was my operative, planted to keep me up to date on what you and your father were up to.”  White walked in a circle around her captive daughter like a cat playing with a mouse.  Behind her, Ava watched with extreme enjoyment.  “Don’t look so surprised and hurt, Celia. 
Anyway
, I did you a favor getting rid of him.”

Celia spoke through gritted teeth, “When I get out of here, I’m going to make sure that I’m the one who squeezes the last breath out of you.”

“
Tsk, tsk,
Celia.  You mustn’t let your feelings get the better of you.  If there’s one thing I learned from my time with your father, it’s that feelings cloud the mind.  They make one weak, unable to act reasonably.”  She looked at Celia with what would have appeared to anyone else as motherly concern, but Celia knew better.

“What do you want from me?” Celia asked.

“An excellent question, my daughter, but I can see that I’ve upset you.  It’s best not to discuss important matters when so upset.”  With that she turned and walked out of the room, Ava following behind her, but not before shooting Celia another dirty look.  

She was alone again.  She wanted to scream, and she wanted to fight, but most of all she wanted to know what the hell her mother was up to, and what this business with the boy was all about.  It had to be something big for her mother to go through all of this deception and manipulation.  Whatever she was up to, Celia knew one thing about her mother that she could take to her grave—she couldn’t be trusted.

Celia closed her eyes and breathed deeply, finding her center.  The center was a place where she could not be touched, and where nothing could exist without her willing it to be there.  She needed no abilities to go there.  She found her center and then thought her escape into existence.

The first hand would be the hardest, Celia knew.  Once she got that free, the rest would be progressively easier, but the first hand, her right hand, she had decided, would be the hardest.

Grateful for all the long hours that
her father
had made her study EM fields, Celia began.

Electro-magnetic fields created a space in which any Shadow’s powers were dampened.  The abilities were still there, but they couldn’t be accessed due to the field’s interference.  Celia found the experience a bit unsettling, like suddenly losing the sense of sight or sound.  There was a part of her, that wasn’t there anymore, but she could still feel it, like a phantom limb.

Celia knew of only one way to use her powers in an EM field.  She had to be unconscious.  This meant sleep.  In a sleep state, the EMF had a much weaker effect.  Unfortunately, Celia’s abilities would be much weaker as well.  She knew she couldn’t break all of the restraints, but if she could just break one than she could physically get the others off her.

Thankfully, they hadn’t sedated her again.  Whether they had forgotten to or not, Celia didn’t care.  She was only interested in exploiting the situation.  Under sedation, she wouldn’t be able to access the dream state which would make her escape possible.

Sleeping while standing, however, was going to be difficult—but not impossible.  

Celia spent the better part of an hour trying to fall asleep, sometimes getting just to the cusp before an automatic reflex would jolt her awake.  After countless attempts, she slept.

She began to dream.

She was a little girl again, six maybe seven.  She was playing down on the beach in the sand by the lake.  It was her birthday, but she couldn’t remember what she got as presents.

She was walking down the hall in the lake house, going to her room, to see her gifts.  The hallway was longer than she remembered.  She walked for what seemed like miles, then just as she began to doubt where she was headed, she saw her door.

She reached out and grabbed hold of the door knob, seeing her small hand, but feeling the knob as she would as an adult.  The door swung open and Celia looked into the room.  It was her room.

There were drawings taped up on the walls that she had done.  Scenes of trees, and rainbows, and horses, and flowers.  Some were portraits of her family, her and her mom and dad.  Stick figures floating above the ground.

Her old dresser stood up against the wall.  Dark wooden drawers with gold handles on them.  It seemed much larger and more imposing than she recalled.

On her bed, in the corner, her mother sat with her.  They were drawing together with crayons.

Her mother was the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world.  Her hair was long and dark like Celia’s, but unlike Celia’s, her mother’s hair was straight.  There wasn’t a single loose curl to be found anywhere.

And her mother’s eyes sparkled.  Green, then blue, then green again.  She loved her mother, she was the best...

Celia woke up in her dream to the state of lucidity.  She remembered what her purpose was in the dreamscape and what she was supposed to do.  A door appeared on the other side of the room.  Celia walked to it, leaving her mother and her younger self playing on the bed together.

She opened the door and stepped through into another room.

This room was dark, except for one light in the middle.  Beneath that light, on a metal table, Celia saw herself.  She was strapped down to the table with leather restraints.  One on each wrist and ankle and several more across her legs and torso.  

Her self on the table was struggling, trying to wriggle free, but failing.  She only succeeded in shaking the table slightly from side to side.

Celia went over and tried to help herself get free of the restraints.  Then she remembered her right hand.  Her right hand was the one she wanted to get free.

Celia took hold of the restraint on her right hand, the leather strap had holes in it. It was fastened like an old belt.  She tried to undo it.  

Nothing happened.  The strap wouldn’t move and she couldn’t undo the fastener no matter how hard she tried.

Slight panic set in.  Someone was coming for her.  She could hear them outside the room.  They were getting closer.

She had to free her other self from this table.  

Celia quickly tried the other hand and found that the strap easily came undone.  She moved to the feet and undid those straps with the same ease.  The straps across the legs and torso gave her no trouble either.

She was back to the right hand.  She grabbed hold of the strap and tried to undo it again.  It held tight, but this time it gave just a little when she pulled on it.

She pulled harder, and it gave some more, but still not enough to come undone.  She needed more leverage.

She jumped up on the table, squatting over the right arm of her self, and grabbed the strap.   She pulled.  She pulled with her arms.  She pulled with her legs.  The strap stretched, giving way. 

Celia could see her other self’s hand turning red, the circulation being cut off.  The veins on the back of the hand stood out like soldiers at attention.

The strap had given enough to come undone, but the the metal pin hadn’t moved out of the way.  If Celia was to let go now, the strap would slide back down onto the pin, re-fastening the restraint.

Celia pulled harder.  It was the only thing she could do.  Any other movement would cause her to lose her grip and the strap would re-fasten.  

Just as her strength was fading and she could feel the strap begin to slip in her grasp.  Celia’s other self reached over with her left hand and moved the pin out of the way.  And not a moment too soon.

Behind them, she heard the door being flung open.  The bright light overhead was blinding.  Celia spun, peering into the darkness, looking for the intruder in the room, when she was suddenly grabbed from behind by the shoulders and flung off the table.

She screamed as she fell backwards into the darkness.  And then she woke up.

Celia was standing.  She was back in the Seventh, surrounded by screens and medical equipment.  Her body was still restrained, but her right hand was now free of the metal cuff that had held her by the wrist.

Celia glanced around the room, slowly gathering her bearings, and making her way back to the state of alert consciousness.  The last little holds that the dream held over her began to wash away.  Her heart was still pounding from the fright of how her dream ended.  

No alarms were going off.  No people running up and down the hallway outside.  Good.  It meant that the restraints weren’t electronically operated.  Not only would her tampering with them not be reported, but most mechanical restraints were easily undone.  At least for someone with Celia’s skill set.

Celia twisted her arm back and forth, loosening her freed right hand even more.  Then she began to snake it backwards in the direction of her head.  The two restraints around her waist and chest that also encompassed her arms made this difficult.

Taking a deep breath, she exhaled as fully as possible, giving herself just enough space to slide her arm back.  She almost had her hand free of the waist restraint when she ran out of room.  This was as far as her tendons and the restraints would allow.