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Elektra, Rising
An Invasion America Story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 1998
PG
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Dreamworks SKG owns the characters and situations.  Consider the
story a love letter for a fine series.  Leva, this one is your fault.


     Keeping an eye on the road, she tuned the radio to an
alternative station out of Baltimore.  Simon opened one glassy eye,
smiled dreamily, and fell back into his drugged slumber.  She
sensed his sleep, the dulling of the throb in his hand.  She shook
her own to clear it of the same sensation, knowing it would do no
good.
     They, or to be more precise, she had swiped the car as soon as
they were out of sight of the lab.  They needed time to lay low and
figure where to go from here.  The Tyrusians tolerated no failures. 
Gordon's attention was focused on capturing David Carter; once he
had succeeded in that endeavour, she and Simon would die, by
gunshot if they were lucky, by Lomack or a Mangler if not.
     Bitter sweat stood on her arms and legs, down her back.  When
they had been five, Mother had taken them to Utah.  She'd been more
impressed with the airplane ride, even if Simon spent it running
along the aisles yelling.  All the vehicles in which she'd
traveled, all that she'd seen, and still she could call up the
image of the sun, sparkling on the clouds below them, the shadow of
the plane bathed in a halo.  She remembered the hot taste of the
dust during the Jeep ride from Salt Lake City, the way her dress
had stuck to her legs.
     When they'd arrived, General Konrad had already been there,
making a speech before the troops about honour and loyalty to the
Dragit.  Beside him had been a tall cage.  Two Manglers paced
inside, glaring out from time to time, and she'd been certain they
were looking at her.  Then a Tyrusian man, stripped to the waist,
had been brought out.  His eyes had been the widest she'd ever seen
on anyone, and he struggled, terrified, screaming that he was
sorry, he was sorry, and then the guards threw him into the cage. 
She remembered thinking about the clouds, how pretty they had been,
and then she'd thrown up on Mother's shoes.
     Mother was dead.
     The full force of the concept hit her with such intensity that
for a moment, she thought Simon had wakened and slapped her.  Her
hands shaking, she pulled the car off to the side of the road.
     Green Day crooned from the speakers:

     "Another turning point in the fork stuck in the road.
     Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go.
     So make the best of this test, and don't ask why.
     It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time.
     It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
     I hope you had the time of your life."

     Her chest hitched.  Fearfully, she checked to see if Simon was
still asleep.  He lay sprawled on the seat beside her, his thoughts
tranquil.  She wouldn't waken him.  Grateful for the opportunity,
she lay her forehead on the steering wheel and sobbed into the
foggy morning.

***

     Her earliest memories were of Simon, what he was thinking,
what he was doing, how faraway he was in relation to where she was. 
Their playroom had been decorated in black and white: white walls,
black outlines of birds and animals, black and white checkerboard
carpet, black and white pillows and blankets.  Mother had believed
in toys only so far as they served to stimulate the two of them
into thinking.  They'd had books, board games, flash cards, and
Mother had reluctantly allowed them one stuffed animal each.  Sonia
had a white bear.  Simon had a black dog.
     There had been no windows, only a large mirror on one end of 
the room.  Two black and white doors led out of the room.  One led 
to the nursery, where they slept, the other out into the hallway.  
The knowledge that the playroom was actually a laboratory in itself 
had come to her so gradually that, thinking back, she could not
think of the point where she had suddenly known.  By that time, it 
seemed natural that they were experiments, like everything else in the 
maze-like building.
     Her earliest nightmares had involved being sucked through one
of the two doors to the playroom, and it wasn't difficult to see
why.  In the nursery, Mother would pick them up and put them on her
lap, and read them stories before they went to sleep.  When the
door to the hallway opened, it meant they would have to be tested. 
The physical tests weren't bad.  She would demonstrate how much she
could pick up with her arms and with her mind, and then the doctors
would give them ice cream before sending them back to the playroom. 
Other times, the tests meant blood work, or other pokes and prods
with needles.  Those doctors were different, and gave them licorice
whips.  Sonia hated the smell of licorice; it made her arms
remember blood-takings of yore.  Wherever they were taken, Mother
would be there, not smiling, taking notes.
     The trip to Utah had been their first real excursion away from
the lab.  They sometimes went home with Mother to her nice split-
level house in her nice neighbourhood in Alexandria, surrounded on 
all sides by equally nice houses with nice people and nice children, 
but that had been just for the weekends, and they had to stay inside.  
After the trip, they were allowed to come home with Mother in the 
evenings, and sometimes General Konrad would come by to check their 
progress.  Mother would show him her notes.
     During the day, they still went to the lab with Mother, still
went to the playroom.  The few toys, including the bear and the
dog, were gone, replaced by encyclopedias, more involved games, and
computer terminals.  Tutors came in, and they were given lessons in
math, science and languages.  They were also allowed time in the
gym, to hone their natural physical skills.
     Other tests began.  Doctors she did not know asked her what
Simon was thinking.  Sometimes she knew, sometimes she didn't. 
Sometimes, out of spite, she refused to tell them even when she
did.
     Simon's thoughts were scary things.  Inside them, she could
see her own face reflected back, distorted like in a fun house
mirror.  His dreams were filled with monsters, Manglers breaking
down the door and devouring him.  When she told them that, they
started making him take pills.  There was no keeping from him the
fact that she'd told.  The next day in the gym, he'd kicked her in
the stomach so hard she couldn't breathe.  Black spots had jumped
in front of her eyes, like Manglers.
     "Loyalty," General Konrad had said, "is the basic principle
for every society.  Where there is no loyalty to one's own, there
is chaos."  Gasping for air, Sonia had learned loyalty meant not
ratting on the brother who could read your thoughts or he'd kill
you.  It was her second lesson in Tyrusian loyalty, and unlike the
man she'd watched die, for her it was not a fatal one.
     Mother had given Simon a stern lecture afterwards, and stayed
by her side as the doctors ran her through different kinds of
tests.  By now she knew she was an experiment, one in which too
much money and effort had been expended to be needlessly damaged. 
Fortunately, nothing had broken, and her unique heritage let her
heal quickly.
     The next time the doctors had asked what Simon was dreaming,
she'd lied.  If they wanted to know he was thinking about a nice
girl in their nice neighbourhood and touching himself, they could
strap on a monitor or something.
     They weren't supposed to associate with the other kids who
lived nearby, and frankly, she hadn't been interested in them much
anyway.  She and he were Tyrusian, obviously superior to the other 
kids their age like General Konrad always said.  Simon thought they 
were a waste of skin, and she'd always agreed with him.  Agreeing was
easier.  The other kids, for their part, asked them to come out and
play, and when they wouldn't, hurled insults.  They were known as
"The Freaks Next Door," even by parents.  Mother ignored them, and
she attempted to do the same, but found it hard when she could look
out her bedroom window and see girls of her own age in another
backyard, playing with Barbies or playing house.  She knew Simon
watched them, too, though he never admitted it.  He watched, and he
wanted, just as she did.

***

     Sticking to the side roads, they made it most of the way
through Pennsylvania before the road started swimming before her. 
She was tired, and Simon couldn't drive because he'd gone and tried
on the Exotar.
     "We're stopping," she said, spying a motel sign.
     "Why do we need to stop?"
     ~Because I'm hungry and tired, that's why,~ she thought. 
Whether he heard her or not, she didn't know.  "You need food and
rest if you're going to recover."
     "Fine," he said, looking back out the window.  His crushed
hand, wrapped in a bandage that would need changing soon, lay
uselessly in his lap.  Mother wasn't sure if he would ever use it
again.  Bitterness rolled off him like sweat, towards David for
getting away, towards her for letting him go, even towards Mother,
for telling on them in a last, and ultimately futile, attempt to
save herself from punishment.  He felt no particular anger towards
Gordon or Lomack.  In his mind, they had seen to it that loyalty
was maintained among the ranks, no more.
     She went past the motel to a McDonald's, drove up to the
speaker, and ordered a Number 2 with a shake for Simon, and a
Number 6 for herself.  The girl at the window took their money, then
frowned in disgust.  Sonia turned to see Simon leering at them both
suggestively, and felt her stomach turn.  She grabbed the food,
mumbled her thanks, and floored it.
     They reached the motel quickly.  "Wait here," she said.
     Before she went inside, she adjusted her outfit and hair in
the mirror.  The desk clerk's eyes didn't meet hers once as she
signed for the room and paid the thirty-five bucks.  She had less
than fifty left.  There was no way to get more short of robbery;
the minute she put her bank or credit card into an ATM, Gordon
would have their location.  And then Lomack would come.
     When she got back to the car, Simon had already scarfed down
his burgers and all the fries.  She took her own sandwich before he
could eat that, too, and wolfed it.  Still hungry, she thought
about going back to the restaurant, but remembered the state of
their funds.  That was their eating money for the foreseeable
future.  She'd live.
     In the room, he flipped on the tv, and cursed at the lack of
cable.  She ignored him, went into the little bathroom, locked the
door, and ran water into the tub, heedless of the germs and worse
that were probably already living there.  It seemed like forever
since she'd had a bath. She washed her hair with soap, having no
shampoo, and thought about David Carter.
     She knew only a smattering of her own heritage, knew that her
biological father was Tyrusian, that somewhere, the Dragit ruled
the remnants of the people, that the Ooshati were weak.  Those were
abstracts.  In her own little world, there had been Simon, and
Mother, and General Konrad, who gave order to their lives.  Because
of the Ooshati prince, General Konrad and her mother were both
dead.  She tried to hate him, the way Simon did, found she could
not, the way he could not hate General Gordon or Major Lomack.  It
was not David's fault they had failed.  If anything, it was hers.
     ~Sonia, do you have any idea what you've done to us?~
     She slipped her head beneath the water.
     She had let him go, and she didn't know why.  It had been the
right thing to do at the time.  Simon, the other half of her, was
in agony.  The only way to save him had been to let David go. 
Surely any soldier, discovering her arm on fire, would stop and put
out the fire before fighting again.  Not when it meant letting the
enemy free.  That was disloyal.  At that moment, she'd found a
different kind of loyalty, her first loyalty.  She had to protect
Simon.  It was as simple as that.
     No.
     She came up from the water, gasping for air.  She rinsed the
last of the soap from her hair, stepped out, and dried off.
     Nothing was that simple.  She had watched David as he'd lived
their fantasy world, and she'd seen something wonderful and awful. 
Here he was, a half breed just like them, but nothing like them. 
He had also been raised by his mother, but she hadn't locked him in
a lab.  She'd let him breathe unfiltered air, and go fishing.  When
he was five, he'd gone to kindergarten, not Utah.  He'd gone to
school.  He had friends.  Maybe he even dated.  She was three years
his senior, and hadn't lived half as much.  When she'd looked in
his eyes, she'd seen a world of possibilities, things she'd never
wanted in her own life, because she'd thought them unimaginable,
because she was half Tyrusian.
     David was who they could have been, once upon a time.
     Simon had already fallen back asleep by the time she exited
the bathroom.  He cradled his hurt hand delicately against him.  The
wound would need tending, but it could wait until morning.
     She lay on her own bed, staring at the spider-web cracks in
the plaster ceiling.  They needed to find David.  And then what?  Ask 
to join him?  They'd been trying to catch him since the beginning of 
this mess.  If Gordon or his men caught up with them first, they were 
dead, as simple as that.  Their enemy was now their only prayer.
     She turned off the light.  From the wall, she could hear the
low noise of someone else's television.  She curled on her side
away from Simon, pretending to be alone again.
     When she closed her eyes, she could see her mother's face
against the glass, terrified, could hear the screams of the
Metamorph as he picked her up, turned her from a breathing,
thinking, even occasionally loving person into a dying lump of bone
and tissue.
     She could smell her mother's perfume, hear her voice reading
from Maurice Sendak in the nursery.  Her face was younger then, and
as lovely as she ever would be.  After the execution, Mother had
taken them both to the restroom and cleaned them up, and she'd held
them close to her for a long time, telling them not to be afraid,
that she would always be there to protect them.  It was the only
time Sonia could recall her mother telling them she loved them.
     Had she ever wished for a normal life, for children who were
as human as she?  Did it matter now?
     In the end, she had protected them, protected *her*.  She had
offered them a chance at escape, a chance bought with her own
blood.  Whatever reasons she'd had for doing such a thing had died
with her.  ~It could have been worse.  It could have been the
Manglers.~
     What she knew of Tyrusian loyalty meant blood, on the bars of
a cage, or splashed on the floor of the lab.  She didn't know if
the Ooshati would demand it as well, and thought perhaps not.  She
would find out soon.  Simon would object, but even he had to see,
they had no choice.
     "Good-bye, Mother," she whispered into the pillow.  Sonia
wondered where she had gone, whether to a paradise, or to torment, or
into a new human child, or to somewhere she could not imagine, or
to nowhere at all.  Considering how low her life expectancy was at
this point, she'd probably have the opportunity to find out first-
hand soon enough.
     On the return trip from Utah, Mother had held her hand as they
stared out the window together, letting them know by her touch, by
her presence, that she would not allow the Manglers to come for them
in the night.  Sonia would always remember her mother this way: 
soaring through the sky, clouds passing beneath them like seafoam,
sparkling from a hidden sun.

***
The End
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