Bittersweet Awakening

The bet was on. Alex thrust her hand forward, grabbing the hand of the well dressed boy before her, both of them squeezing the others' fingers tight, trying to cause as much discomfort as possible. Alex didn't flinch away from the pain, but the boy cringed. She flashed him a winning smile, releasing him and said in her cockiest voice, "Let's do this."

Her brother's clothes felt both alien and wonderful on her, baggy over her slight frame, swallowing her up in a boyish countenance, her strawberry blond hair tugged back into a long, tight braid. This certainly felt more natural than all the petticoats and cinched-waist dresses and stockings her Pa demanded she wear all the time. The MacLaren patriarch would have an apoplectic fit if he ever saw his eldest child and only daughter garbed in boys' attire, but Alex figured what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

Quickly climbing into the cockpit of the little Goshawk short range shuttle, she looked down into the sea of faces, consisting of nearly every child from the Seraphim District and some from the neighboring provinces. They had come to see blood, and she was willing to bet they were all hoping it wouldn't be her blood, but Tommy Hilton's. She smirked as her gaze caught Tommy's, the richest boy on Persephone, or so he claimed. At 14, he was two years her senior, and already possessed the rude arrogance of congenitally rich folks, bullying everyone smaller than him, including Alex and her little brother, Blake, because he knew he could get away with it and everyone feared the wrath of his father.

"Easy as eatin' cake," she drawled, strapping herself into the pilot's seat, then took a deep breath, butterflies erupting into a flurry of activity in her stomach. Okay Al, you and your big mouth got us into this pickle. Try not to die. She'd never flown anything this big before, only the few pieces of farming equipment on her family's farm. But for her, anything she'd tried driving had come as second nature to her.

Without giving it much thought, she flipped several switches and hit the ignition, the Goshawk roaring to life, blowing air in violent streams from the depths of its belly, Alex felt the ship rumbling beneath her and closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating on allowing the vibrations to run through her. "Come on, big girl," she muttered softly. "Show me how to make you soar."

Reaching her hands out, she grasped the control stick, pulling slowly and lightly back on it. The ship eased up into a hover five feet over the earth, steadying for a moment, then shot up twenty more feet before she flipped the thrusters from vertical to horizontal, rocketing forward like a racehorse just out of its gate. She whooped with glee at the feeling of exhilaration coursing through her body. This is where I belong!

She banked the ship hard to the left, swinging her around to head back to the gathering of her peers, her equilibrium going haywire as the world spun, spiraling the plane as she burned through the air back toward the open field. As she neared the crowd, she yanked her nose up and rose quickly up into the air, again spinning in a tight spiral as she climbed higher into the sky, touching the clouds. Alex imagined she could feel the water vapor kissing her cheeks as she pressed the Goshawk further up, droplets of water forming on the canopy around her. The atmosphere began to darken around her, stars suddenly shining in the midday brightness, the planet's horizon becoming a rainbow of colors that reached up into the deep blue of open space.

She let up on her rear thrusters, the nose of the Goshawk leveling out, then dipping down as gravity began tugging her back toward the dirt. The change of orientation didn't phase her, feeling as though this ship had somehow become an extension of her body, as though she could maneuver thousands of pounds of metal with a mere thought. I really was born for this...

Aiming the nose all the way down, she slammed the thrust, gunning her speed, the plane screaming around Alex as her wings sliced through atmosphere like a hot knife through butter, in a vertical dive that would have left most people unconscious. She watched the planet rise up around her, the ground racing up to meet her, yanking the stick at the last possible second to pull out of the dive, her ship inverted so that when she looked up, she could see the kids directly below her cheering wildly and trying to remain standing against the windstorm she'd brought onto them.

Alex whooped, looping the Goshawk a few time before bringing her back into a hover ten feet in the air, descending into a perfect landing, the feet of the shuttle kissing sweetly against the dirt before she shut down the engine and leaped from the cockpit. There was tumultuous applause from the crowd of kids, but Tommy Hilton was not among those who looked impressed. He looked mad.

"You cheated," he scowled, folding his arms across his chest in a gesture of defiance.

Alex smirked, fisting her hands at her hips. "Reckon I had a pilot hid in my pocket, do ya? I did that my own gorram self. You're just mad cuz I'm a better pilot than you or your Pa could ever be. Now pay up!"

Instead of reaching for his wallet, Tommy let his arm swing out, his fist clipping Alex across the jaw hard enough to force her head to turn. He sneered, "There's payment, you little shit!" He turned and began to swagger away from her, but Alex launched herself into the air, tackling him to the ground and pinning him on his back, pounding her fists against him as he struggled and flailed in attempt to ward off her blows. The crowd around them was full of jeers and whoops in appreciation of a good fight.

Tommy was finally able to toss her off of him and jumped on her, returning the pounding she'd just given him. The blows wouldn't stop. At one point, Alex felt her nose break, tasting blood as a river of it began flowing freely into her mouth. It infuriated her, and she reached up, grabbing the boy by the throat despite his fists smashing against her face. She tightened her grip, squeezing off his air supply.

As he stopped hitting her to try puling her hand off of his throat, she rammed the palm of her free hand up into his nose, spraying blood everywhere, then shifted herself beneath him, bringing her knee up and connecting it savagely with his groin. He groaned, collapsing over her, and she released her grip on his throat, unceremoniously scrambling from beneath his weight and rising to stand triumphant over him.

"This was worth you not payin' me. Somebody needed to kick your ass." She spat on him and walked away, cutting through the now silent crown of kids who were all trying to figure out if Tommy Hilton was going to make it.

Blake caught her up halfway back to their farm, his face red with exhilaration as he jogged along to keep pace with her long, angry strides. "Al, that was shiny! Tommy couldn't even get up on his own! See if he ever picks on anyone again after he got whupped by a girl!" Then he paused, as if wondering whether it was safe to ask before he did, "What're you gonna tell Pa 'bout your face?"

---

"Have you lost your gorram mind, girl?!" Her Pa raged back and forth across the kitchen floor, his boots stomping so hard the wood creaked ominously beneath him. "Don Hilton waved me and said he had to take his boy to see old Doc Miller this afternoon. Said he'd have to take him to a core hospital to get his nose fixed. What in the hell went through that damned fool head'a yourn?"

Alex knew better than to try to explain herself. It would fall on deaf ears. Her Ma understood, wringing her hands nervously as she looked upon the ruined face of her only daughter and listened to her explain about how Tommy Hilton had been bullying Blake because their father owed his father money. how she'd confronted him and some how made a wager over whether she could fly better than Tommy's father, and that if she won, Tommy would pay her a month worth of his allowance to help pay off the debt, and that he would leave Blake alone. She never said what she would have had to do if she'd lost. Her mother had listened with that quiet anxiety of hers, her gentle eyes full of understanding, the kind that knows more than she could ever let on, silent sadness and a kind of fierce pride.That's right. That's my daughter. Poor kid.


Her Ma had cleaned her up as well as she could, but Alex's face was a mess, her lip split wide open, her nose swollen up to twice its normal size, two spectacular black eyes, and a plethora of brilliant bruises blooming across her skin. No amount of makeup caked onto her could hide all of it. She had taken as good of a beating as she had given.

"Sorry Pa, I wasn't thinkin'." She hung her head, knowing the less she said now, the better it would go for her.

The back of his hand came out of nowhere, catching her fully across her jaw and mouth, knocking her out of her seat. She tasted fresh blood, but didn't dare raise her eyes to his. "Talk proper, gorramit! Least you can do is talk proper!"

Alex answered him with silence, remaining as she'd fallen, submission being one of those qualities he'd tried to instill in her.

"Shoulda been a gorram boy, way you carry on, fightin' and flyin' and playin'. How the hell am I s'posed to get you married off to a respectable gentleman if'n you can't act like a proper lady?" She heard the sound of him slipping his leather belt from around his waist, but still didn't look up as he continued ranting. "You're no use to me as a little tomboy hellraiser, Alexandra. If it kills you, I'll beat the proper into ya."

Alexandra MacLaren focused her mind on the feeling of euphoria she got soaring through the sky in the Goshawk, how the plane had felt like an extension of her body, how she automatically knew exactly what to do flying her, how she knew in those moments that this was where she was supposed to be, why she was born, in attempt to block out the pain of leather cracking against her bare flesh.

---

"I need that coin." The voice echoed in her head without ever losing its power, bouncing around in her conscious every moment of every day. Sometimes, she wondered if it was the voice of God, but then, during calmer moments, she'd remember that it wasn't, it was just Mindo. The coin consumed her. She could think of nothing else. That coin. It had to be found.

The others, people she knew, had gotten suspicious. She couldn't figure out why. She was acting normally, wasn't she? Sometimes she tried to analyze why people who had been her friends treated her like a bomb about to go off. Mindo wouldn't allow her into their heads, so she was left with a maze of guesswork and confusion over it. Her head was already a tangled mass of chaos. She felt like nothing would ever make sense again, and as soon as she tried to make sense of everything, Mindo would assault her conscious with a renewed compulsion to find the coin.

I need that coin. I need that coin. I need that coin. I must have that coin. There is nothing else more important than the coin. I need that coin. I have to do whatever is needed to get the coin.

Her head hurt from the obsession. She didn't know why she needed the coin, but the coin had become her entire existence. The coin was all that mattered. God, how her head ached...

---

She was in a building. It was floating in orbit over a planet, the black of space closing in all around it. It reminded her of a hamster cage, the corridors leading from one area to the next a thick cylinder of plexiglass. She stalked through the entire complex searching for a specific lab. It had to be there somewhere.

Doubling back to begin her search anew, she barely acknowledged stepping over the lifeless bodies of the people who had resided and worked in this place as though they were nothing but furniture. A detached part of her brain thought that they appeared at peace, no horrible bloody wounds to mar their corpses in the serenity of death. The complex was eerily silent in her wake. The silence haunted her, the feeling of ghosts watching her like an itch between her shoulderblades that she couldn't reach.

Finally, her footfalls carried her to the right lab. She had to push someone in a white lab coat who was slumped over his console out of his chair, not even apologizing as his body hit the floor with a dull thud. Here we go, this is what I need, said the voice in her head as she slid into the chair and began calling up data from the lab's mainframe..

---

A moustached man with sad eyes was gazing at her. He seemed vaguely familiar to her, but the more she tried to figure out how she knew him, who he was to her, the further the explanation danced away from her. Her instincts nagged at her, telling her that he was somehow very, very important. He was speaking.

"...haven't been yourself. I don't know what's wrong with you, Imrhien...."

Imrhien? Is that my name? Do I have a name? How does he know my name?

"...leaving. I'm just not in love with the person you've become. I don't know you anymore."

Imrhien tilted her head at the man, confused, the words not even registering, as though he was speaking an entirely foreign language to her.

"Take care of yourself, please." And then he left. And she didn't care, because she didn't have any idea about who he was. And then, somehow, she forgot she had even seen him. All that was left was a vague sense of loss, but she ignored it, because it didn't matter.

---

She was carrying something. It was a baby. In a jar. She didn't know whose baby it was, and it didn't look dead. It was for Mindo. Setting it on the large work desk before him, she stepped back, stilling herself, her blank eyes fixed on the baby in the jar, wondering what was going to happen to it.

"You may leave now, Imrhien," said Mindo's voice in her head, and she obediently turned and walked from the lab, stopping outside the door, a solitary sentinel keeping guard over his precious work, awaiting further instruction.

---

Blackburne was burning. There was no sound. Just fire. So much fire. The one place that sang to her soul, her home, and flames were consuming it. She looked around for water, but there was none, just fire.

Her Ma stepped out of the thick smoke, those gentle, all-knowing eyes gazing at her in the way only her Ma could do, as though she could look into her daughter's soul. She moved closer, pressing her forehead against her daughter's, caressing her cheek so softly that Imrhien wanted to cry. She wanted to crawl into her Ma's arms and mourn Blackburne, but her Ma shook her head, those eyes so sad, her gaze sinking so far into Imrhien's that she wasn't sure where she stopped and her Ma ended.

"Alexandra," she murmured. "This was not why you were created."

Imrhien saw brief, disembodied flashes of scenes: a rack of tiny vials with a corresponding paper stating the genetic trait isolated in each; she heard a man's voice, the words muffled except genetically altered to be a pilot and have to start subconscious conditioning soon; she saw her Ma's younger, unconscious form strapped down to a table in a dark laboratory while men in lab coats moved around her; she heard a terrible shriek of anger as a man exclaimed, "How could you lose her? She's carrying a gen-two psychic! Find her," he roared with finality; she watched her Ma arguing with her Pa, telling him he couldn't sell her into slavery, that she was too valuable, that she wouldn't allow it, and she saw the rain of blows her Pa showered onto her for her defiance...

Her Ma's voice brought her back to reality. "I helped you escape slavery once because I knew what your Pa didn't. Now, you understand, too, and I'll help you escape again..."

"Mama? I don't understand..." But her Ma had vanished, and the smoke was blowing wildly around her.

A voice penetrated her dark prison, reverberating, shaking her to the core, resonating within her soul. "Butterfly." Petra danced around her, wearing Imrhien's favorite old blue debutante gown, her slight frame twirling 'round and 'round, weaving in and out of the smoke. Imrhien tried to catch her, reaching her arms out before her as she chased after the girl, losing herself in the dark plumes, but following her little sister, seeing an arm here, the hem of her dress there, the swish of long hair guiding her into the maze. Acrid smoke filled her lungs again and again as she choked through the maze, running faster and harder to keep up.

"Butterfly."

Imrhien fell to her knees, gagging, pressing her hands to the sides of her head, covering her ears, weeping. "Petra, stop. I can't do it," she wheezed. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Suddenly, the girl was there before her, taking Imrhien's face in her hands, staring at her with those big, blue eyes, and she murmured softly, "Butterfly. This is not your destiny." And then she smiled. "Time to fly free." Before Imrhien could react, Petra had taken a deep breath and blown it out as though she was blowing out candles on a birthday cake, causing all of the smoke to clear, leaving nothing but space. And then, she was gone, too.

---

Imrhien sat bolt upright, entirely, entirely awake for the first time in months. All of it came flooding back to her now, the memories from childhood, adulthood, and during her period of psychic incarceration by Mindo, every terrible, terrible thing she'd done under his control. And with all that came the horrible realization of what she truly was. And the devastating realization that she had forever lost Duncan.

The tears flowed in torrents down her face, dripping from her jaw into her lap. It felt as though her lungs were going to explode with pressure, and she finally gave in, sobbing uncontrollably into her hands. She cried for a long time, and when she finally calmed down, she realized that she was sitting in the cockpit of her stryker, where she'd always felt the most right.

She knew that right now, she couldn't go home. She couldn't face the people she knew and loved after having done the things that she'd done, even under someone else's control. So she would go back to the beginning of her journey, where she'd originally found herself, created herself in essence, and start all over. She opened a channel on her onboard Cortex unit and sent a wave to Captain Domonic Card, then set a course for the nearest settlement to fuel up for her journey to rendezvous with The Lone Reverie.