Eyre sat in the driver’s seat of what appeared to be a black luxury car. In reality it was a heavily armored tank in disguise an export from home using ultralight armored materials built to withstand magical and super powered attacks. Sarah had woken up briefly but fallen back asleep. Eyre debated if the teenager would even remember meeting Carly. Eyre tapped her fingers steering wheel waiting for the Naval Intelligence officer to return from getting changed and dropping off the minivan. When Carly came out of the house, she had a duffel bag and was wearing a ballcap, a grey pleated casual skirt and a t-shirt for the Navy Baseball team. She had a pair of runners on, and her brown hair was tied in a ponytail and threaded through the back of her hat, and she was wearing a pair of stylish sunglasses. She looked good. Eyre pressed the button on her console and the trunk opened, Carly threw her duffel bag in after pausing for a couple of moments then closed the trunk. She got in the passenger side of the car. And pointed her thumb to the back of the car.
“A rocket launcher?”
“Sometimes subtlety matters less than making sure whatever you’re after stays down.”
“Does the US government even know the kind of hardware you are packing? This car looks normal, but it could give James Bond’s ride a run for its money.”
“I not sure who James Bond is, but if he has a car like this, his organization is well-funded.”
Carly looked at Eyre again.
“You really have no idea who I’m talking about?”
“No, I don’t which is funny because if any Earth-2 based government had this kind of tech we’d know about it.”
“He’s from a book, some movies?”
“Oh fictional.”
“Yea, written by some guy who worked intelligence in WW2?”
“Our WW2 proceeded a lot differently than yours, Hitler and most of high-ranking Nazi’s were killed in 1942 when 97% of the German population was wiped out in less than three seconds. Pretty much Europe was out of the war at that point and only US and Japan were fighting in the Pacific, along with any European powers that had been attacked by Japan in the east.”
“If only, you don’t know what the Nazi’s did…”
“Well, I’d say fifty-five million dead beats whatever they managed here.”
“Wait is Israel even a country there?”
“Yes. Though a good portion of European Jewish people were killed in the event. Because the Nazi’s had been transporting them from all their conquered territories.”
“Shit. What happened to the Germans?”
“They settled in France, Poland, Russia, Norway, Finland. There is no Germany anymore. Just the German Exclusion zone and Earth Gov held territories around it. Our HQ is in Munich.”
“If you live there, do you hold citizenship in a country?”
“Technically based on the treaties, even though I was born before Great Britain was a cohesive entity, I hold a British Passport. I also have an Earth Gov passport. It’s kind of like the Vatican. It is an independent country.”
“I never even thought of that. How do you figure out what country a vampire who has been alive longer than most countries have existed is their homeland?”
“The Munich Treaty Amendments of 1952 ruled on that based on the majority of signatories. Whatever country is in control of the land you were born on is your country of origin and therefore the country you are a citizen of. More interestingly though, we can’t be bound by laws that were not in force at the time of our birth, like an Iranian vampire who was born before Islam was a thing can’t be bound by Islamic law because their religion predates Islam. Same with Christianity. I think mostly that was done because if you try to tell a six-thousand-year-old vampire that their religion is false when yours came about two thousand years ago goes about as well as you’d expect. We vampires got a lot of passes in those days because frankly without us the world would have descended into Chaos. And with a vampire that old you’d need a full mobilization of your military and probably nuclear weapons to arrest them.”
“Wait, aren’t there laws against supers resisting arrest?”
“There are, but they do not apply to vampires. We weren’t born with superpowers we were given them. We are bound by our own laws. That the Imperial council and current sovereign enforce and maintain.”
“Wait there is a vampire Emperor?”
“No, Empress.”
“She must be a scary vampire.”
“I don’t know, am I?”
“Wait you’re the Empress?”
“Yes, my mother was Empress before me, and my grandfather Emperor.”
“Then where is your escort?”
She laughed.
“Empress is like a tie breaker for the Imperial Council. I give guidance, if I think they’re being idiots then I nix their ideas. I don’t sit on a throne and rule from on high. I just act as the highest authority someone can appeal too. Most of the enforcement is done by Seers. People who have the same gift as you do who have been turned. If a vampire is misbehaving, they go sort them out. Which usually means death by beheading if it’s a younger vampire.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“It keeps the youth in line. And since we’re vampires we’re already dead. Which it turns out is a legal grey area. We pay taxes but our date of death is considered the date we were turned. Basically, we pay taxes to where we were born but if a vampire is killed the governments let us deal with it ourselves unless it was a human or super that did it. Then we must defer to them for justice.
“Your world seems complicated.”
Eyre’s phone buzzed so she pulled over and looked at it. Delivery driver understands food needs to be warm. Provided store address. Called local government to complain advised food has been spoiled. Inspectors were bribed. Called in retired inspectors to visit store and close it down. Store is in New Mexico, Near Goldwater. I’m going to visit with our local inspectors. Eyre responded, Excellent let me know when restaurant is shut down. Thank you for back up. Food is safe and warm. Let the cooks go home. Take order tracking offline before you leave, lock it down.
Eyre put the phone in her belt pouch.
“What’s up?”
“Good news. The kid can probably have her party. Bad news I won’t have a lot of security. But at least I can put a limiter on her.”
“What is next?”
“We drop her off at home, then we head to the hospital, have one more person to heal.”
“Who?”
“The girl Sarah hurt. I need to heal her.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad enough her father tried to empty a Glock into Sarah. Though I don’t think it was entirely his own idea. One of the supers we took out was a Mind manipulator. Are you up to help?”
“Depends, what did the girl do to deserve it?”
“How do you know she did anything?”
“Because you said kids her age usually end up activating their powers instinctually when angry or scared.”
“She’s been bullying Sarah since she arrived in town. From what I understand Sarah became her new target when Sarah befriended a transgender girl named Samantha, Samantha committed suicide. I think the incident that precipitated Sarah’s attack was a deep fake video she posted of Sarah with an Adams apple in a suit and her boyfriend in a dress. Sarah’s mother has been dosing her with puberty blockers to try and prevent her from developing powers.”
She glanced back at Sarah’s sleeping form.
“So that is why she looks like she is a really tall twelve-year-old.”
Eyre nodded.
“She was also dosing her with a cocktail of drugs to keep her emotions dulled, but it was having the opposite effect Sarah has been suffering from panic attacks. Which may be partially my fault I removed the memories of her killing a man who tried to abduct her. She still has the emotional trauma of the event; I can’t remove that.”
“Abduct her? You mean these people have tried before?”
“No, this was your standard run of the mill convicted child molester.”
“How old was she?”
“Twelve.”
“You said they had to hit puberty first.”
“Sarah is special, there was a trauma when she was six. She protected herself and her family with some sort of energy shield. Never happened before. It is always puberty before their powers activate, always. And they are never able to access their full power until, a year or two afterwards. Its why we don’t start them at the Academy until they are fourteen. Grade 9 if you will. Usually by then their power is developed to a point we can train them to use and control them. Her, at six she was already exponentially more powerful than even one of our most powerful teenagers. Basically, I have no idea what is going on and until I get her home, Earth-Prime, that is, I will not know the extent of her abilities.”
“What happened when she was six?”
“Do you remember the accident in Scotland, hundred and forty people killed by a petrol tanker and natural gas tanker?”
“Yes, I think that was all over the news eight years ago I think.”
“Sarah and her family were between the trucks.”
Carly’s eyes went wide, and she looked back at Sarah.
“Does she remember?”
“No, she rarely remembers using her abilities she seems to block it out, or maybe it was the drugs her mother had her on. I am no doctor or psychologist.”
“How do you know?”
“We have satellites in orbit. We can detect power events. I honestly couldn’t explain the science behind it, all I know is the satellites pick up the events, the computer does a calculation tells us the strength of the event and the location. Unfortunately, it’s not real time and we can’t monitor everywhere at once. We lucked out and caught it. We were able to correlate a reading with a cover up we were asked to help with. An untouched family and car at the center of an explosion that leveled trees for half a kilometer the pavement was pristine so was the car. Fire burned for seven hours around it.”
“So how do you rate them?”
“We have an exponential scale. I can’t really translate it for you without you actually seeing what I’m talking about. I’m a PL17-15m. Which means nothing to you. Our scale goes to PL21.”
“What is she?”
“I do not know. First event was PL9, Second event PL10, this one, PL14.”
“So, she is growing in power exponentially with age?”
“Yes. And honestly, I have no idea if she can use magic. Like I said earlier, women from her family have been top of our scale of magical ability, PL15M and in most cases they weren’t classified higher because no one believes its possible.”
“Have you told her any of this?”
“No, I don’t want her developing an ego about it, and I also don’t want to scare her.”
She glanced back at Sarah.
“She has enough to sort out right now, her parents drugging her, forcing her to stay a child physically, finding out her father isn’t who he said he was.”
“Are here parent’s going to be punished?”
“No, she agreed to surrender herself to my custody on the basis I would give her parents immunity to prosecution for their previous crimes, a date with her boyfriend, and the party we’re taking her too this afternoon.”
“You seem to have a lot of power for a school headmistress, I mean you said you’re empress but you said that doesn’t mean much to your governments. I’m just confused why someone like that is here doing what seems to be a simple retrieval job.”
“I used to be President of Earth Gov, before that I was the person who built MANA which is a really stupid name, but I didn’t come up with it. I was director of that agency. I am also technically still an active Agent. Usually, I would not be involved in a retrieval, but I taught her father, and I had come here as a favor to help him cover up the man who was killed. He agreed they would talk to her, and I would pick her a month afterwards, but they fled to here, and I couldn’t track them. I felt responsible for the mess because I gave her father the benefit of the doubt, so I volunteered and here we are. Mostly I was asked to try and convince your president to sign the damn treaty. I don’t know why the US has been so stubborn. I mean the minute something bad happens… they would be begging for help.”
“We like to believe we have ideals. Of course, when the shit hits the fan, we rarely live up to them as a country, the sane voices get drowned out by the burn them sentiment.”
“That is just human nature. Humans can be great; They just need someone to give them a sanity check before they go off the rails. Which is the difference between our worlds. The sanity check for humanity has been vampires for us. Which is funny because one of the laws my grandfather brought into force for us vampires shall not interfere with the course of human history. I pretty much threw that out the moment I gained the power of the Empress. Humans would have turned our world to a magically irradiated wasteland.”
“You used to be human, what makes you better?”
Eyre could hear the annoyance in Carly’s voice.
“That is a good point. Vampires have two especially important qualities human don’t. We have the benefit of an immortal outlook, and we are not driven by hormones.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Humans live for a hundred years, to vampires a hundred-year-old vampire is barely an adult. We look two-three hundred years in the future, what will our current policies mean then? Takes us about a century to realize we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. And the later means we don’t make decisions based on whether I had my period that day, or my daughter pissed me off, or I need to prove I have a big dick. I have nothing prove, no vampire does. We have our own dick swinging contests, but they are social, they aren’t about how much power we have amassed, we’re all powerful, or how much money we have. Money comes naturally. Bribing a vampire is like trying to bribe a stone. The being your trying to bribe has more money than you ever will be able to offer them.”
“I still don’t agree. Humans aren’t savage barbarians because we live less than a hundred years.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“True, individually humans are fine, it’s when mob rule starts to overtake them.”
“So basically, you lot decided to take control of humanity. I thought you said humans should be self-ruled.”
“They should be, but someone has to stop humanity at that point where they’re about to destroy themselves.”
“So, you give the humans the illusion of freedom?”
Eyre sighed.
“Would you rather we just stand by and watch humanity bomb themselves back into the stone age? Wipe themselves out? We have always been guardians of humanity and the Earth.”
“No, you’re just like every other superior feeling human. You know better.”
“The difference is we do know better. You know how many civilizations we vampires as a collective have watched rise and fall repeatedly, the same mistakes. Every time you have raised higher and higher, and then crashed twice as hard. At some point you aren’t growing, you’re just torturing yourselves.”
“Is that what you teach your students, that vampires are wise and just and that they should listen to you?”
“No, I teach our students to think before they act, to use their minds and their hands before their powers. To think for themselves.”
“I sense not all of your people agree with this ideal you have set forth.”
“Yes, there are dissenters, individuals and organizations that think supers should be free to do what they want, that humanity is inferior and should serve them. That is what the vampires are the wall between, humanity existing, and chaos as supers and humanity fight each other to the death. Where no one wins. Or supers fight supers, and fifty-five million people die.”
“You pretend you are doing good, but you’re doing good for your kind. I bet the kids you teach don’t even know they’re being brainwashed.”
“You really believe that? That the Academy is brainwashing students?”
“School has always been a way for governments and corporations to control children you just do it in a more… overt manner.”
“I invite you to come teach at the school, I’m sure you have some sort of degree if you’re an officer.”
“I have a master’s in physics.”
“Then come to the Academy teach science, teach military theory, intelligence.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. The more voices I have telling your government we are what we say we are the better. I can tell you that over and over again, but you won’t know it until you see it. See how our students are treated, see how we teach them.”
“I don’t have any superpowers.”
“You don’t need any, we have plenty of non-powered instructors.”
“You don’t even really know me.”
“Of course, we need to confirm your degree and your credentials.”
“You’re up to something I can feel it.”
“I am always up to something. I’m a vampire. I told you we think far into the future.”
“Wait, that’s why you’re here, it’s not because you felt bad, it’s because this girl, you can’t figure her out. You’re scared of her. I bet you would have normally just tossed her through your gate or whatever and told her join us or be imprisoned. But her, no her you let her parents off, gave her what she asked for so long as she came with you willingly because you weren’t sure you could make her come with you otherwise.”
Eyre glanced at Carly. Her insights were annoyingly close to reality.
“I’m right. Jesus.”
“I would ask you say nothing of this to her.”
“I am not going to say a word. Risk poking the living nuclear weapon, no thanks.”
“She’s also a fourteen-year-old girl. As much as she is dangerous, she is also a human teenager.”
“You actually care about her.”
“I care about all my students. Their safety and growth are my responsibility.”
“Just when I think I have you figured out. Fine I’ll take your bait. I’ll teach at your school. So long as you ensure when I come back here, I get to keep my rank and pension.”
“Done.”
“How can you be sure you can do that?”
“You’ll find this out sooner or later at this point. The President’s daughter is starting at the school in the fall.”
“She’s dead.”
“We’re good at making things vanish, people, evidence.”
“Why wouldn’t she want her daughter here?”
“A president who got elected on the wave of her sympathy for her daughter’s death, suddenly has her show up alive?”
“That is fucking cold.”
“Her daughter has powers, not in the sense we’re used to, but she qualifies. Also, she’s been useful in developing 29th century tech. Which as part of this agreement we are sharing with the United States of Earth-2”
Eyre pulled into a driveway.
“We’re here.”
She got out and pulled a power limiter from her pack and put it around Sarah’s ankle then shook her gently. Sarah stirred after a good five minutes of poking.
“What… where are we ma’am?”
“You’re home. You have about three hours until we’ll pick you up for your party.”
She rubbed her eyes and saw her blood-stained t-shirt. She jumped back like she could get away from it.
“What happed ma’am?”
“You were shot, I healed you. Don’t worry about it I’ll tell you about it later, important thing is you’re fine and the party is still on, so go get ready. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay ma’am.”
Sarah shifted and stood up.
“Your brothers and parents are safe; They should be back soon. And don’t forget your booster pill, since it’s too late to take the other.”
Sarah nodded and shuffled to her door and put in the code and unlocked it and walked inside. Carly looked at Eyre.
“Are you sure she’ll be, okay?”
“I’m sure. I wasn’t lying her parents are fine and they’ll probably be here in twenty or thirty minutes not that I think she’s talking to them at the moment.”
Eyre shut her door and backed out of the driveway. It was quiet ride the hospital. Eyre parked the car and glanced at Carly who looked back at her. Carly motioned to the hospital.
“So, what is the play here? You don’t exactly look like well anything from this world in that armor.”
In response Eyre pulled out her service phone and took a picture of a doctor in a white coat walking between buildings. She tapped the phone a few times more and her armor shimmered away leaving her in a white doctors coat. Carly did a double take because she hadn’t been paying attention.
“Holy shit. How?”
“They’re called Holo-webs let me just program one for you.”
She pulled out a necklace with a weird looking gem on it. She put it next to her phone and tapped a few times. And offered it to Carly.
“Put it on. We’ll have to give it a few minutes to adapt to your dimensions and cloths.”
Carly slipped it over her neck and tapped it like she had seem Eyre tap the one built into her armor. The imaged kept flickering and shifting every time she moved.
“It doesn’t seem to be working.”
“That’s because it is calculating your dimensions and adapting to your clothes and your body language. We just have to wait for it to settle down.”
“How the hell does this work?”
“You’d need to ask a holo-engineer about that. I just use them. They are very expensive, do not lose it.”
“How expensive?”
“First F-35.”
Carly coughed a few times.
“Why is it so expensive?”
“Because its 29th century tech that has been duplicated and creating quantum processors is expensive. At least at this point. Same reason my armor which is based on Atlantean armor unlike my sister’s which is Atlantean armor, is worth two or three F-35’s”
“What makes your armor so good?”
“We have time while we wait, and it will help it adapt faster…so just punch me in the arm as hard as you can. Don’t worry even without the armor it won’t hurt but it will do for an example.”
Carly wound up and punched she started shaking it.
“That was like punching a steel wall.”
“Now touch it.”
Eyre held out her arm Carly ran her fingers along the fabric.
“It feels so soft, that must be like wearing a silk body suit.”
“It is.”
“How does that armor work?”
“Honestly, I don’t know, the harder you hit it, the harder it becomes at the point of impact. Lifts off the skin absorbs the shock over its whole surface. Its technical name is NFIA-5. Which stands for Nanofiber Intelligent Armor, Mark 5. It has a quantum processor in and a micro fusion core that powers it.”
“What the hell are your fighters like?”
“They’re fast, they shoot missiles. They are built of the same materials as this car?”
Carly laughed. Eyre shrugged.
“Not something I need to know or am interested in. I’m sure sister could tell you more. She’s obsessed with military technology. She was never allowed to join the Air Force. British Government considered her too valuable to risk in a fighter. But my mom filled her head with nonsense about flying F-22’s off of an aircraft carrier.”
“You said your mother died in 1942 how was she flying F-22’s.”
“My mother was capable of time travel. In an alternate version of our world’s timeline, she gained access to magic to make herself human during the day in the 1980’s. She attended school in Japan, was a doctor, became a pediatric surgeon. When that ID got too old, she dropped it and attended university in the US and became a Naval Aviator. Fought in a few wars… retired became a police detective and eventually used her real face to reconnect with her sister. Based on her journals on the Atlantean tablet my sister had I was an 80’s pop singer.”
“You? Big hair? Your mother seems like she was quite a woman.”
“There were photos and copies of my albums. It was nice to read the journals even if it was weird to hear about another version of myself. You always think your parents are a certain way, then you find out the real them and realize they had perfectly good reasons for doing what they did. My mother’s number one focus was getting back to the time she came from so she could talk to me again. I thought of her this heartless distant figure. She was so old by the time she had me…I guess she was my age, that she didn’t think like a human. So, it was like being parented by a statue that smiled when it
should, hugged you how it should, but there was this distance. She was keeping us twins at a distance because she knew she would have to leave because she was being hunted by something dangerous. She was also afraid she might hurt us. Her father was abusive. My mother didn’t really understand love. It was strange seeing events from her perspective. She cared very deeply about her family and her friends, but she didn’t know how to express it and she thought that if she did, she would end up like her father and hurt us. So, she just didn’t. But with her later children the ones after me, she was more affectionate. She seems to credit me with teaching her how to love someone without hurting them. I have a sense the mother I saw in 1942 was more humans than most humans. Maybe if I had her by my side, I wouldn’t be like how I am.”
“My parents and I have issues too. They were born in the sixties and are totally anti-war. And here is their daughter who drank the Kool-Aid is a lifer. Let’s just say the wedding was difficult.”
“Well now you can tell them you’re teaching high school. Not exactly where.”
“Okay how does this work? Do I get vacation?”
“You do, unfortunately you need a two-week quarantine before you transit. You’ll get T-Cell enhancement but that won’t do the people around you here any good.”
“So, I don’t carry something that there is no immunity to here.”
“Yes. But that being said, you do get each school break off and summer, and Christmas holidays. And weekends typically if you would like, Munich has a good night life. A lot of the staff chooses not to and just stay on campus and use the facilities. Some just live in a dorm and are a dorm head as well as teachers.”
“What about students?”
“If they are over the age of sixteen, they can make unaccompanied day trips to Munich, but they need to be back before 10 pm local time. Only on weekends. Certain exceptions are made but depends on the student and the circumstances.”
“How big is this campus?”
“A hundred hectares or so. We have a small hospital, three libraries, an athletic complex, full internet access, an Arcade, a hair salon, a general good store, mall style food court, Olympic sized pool. And of course, there is online shopping, mail and courier services are able to deliver packages.”
“Why would they not be able to deliver packages?”
“Because our campus is on Earth-3.”
“There’s another earth?”
Eyre smiled.
“We have identified over six thousand parallel earths. I told you this was a very deep rabbit hole. You want to see an Earth were the Nazi’s won? I could show you one, its ugly.”
“You’ve been?”
“I’ve done a rotation. Vampires first in, last out, our immunity to disease, not having to breath, immunity to toxins. It makes us perfect for it. Which is how I ended up four hundred years older than I should be.”
“What a job.”
“It’s not so bad now, we send drones through first now. But in the beginning, we had vampires.”
Carly nodded Eyre noticed the flickering of the holo-web had stopped.
“It’s adapted. Let’s go.”
Eyre had already gotten the intel she needed to find Candace. The trip through the hospital was uneventful. Eyre was a master of walking and looking like she belonged. Carly was a bit more hesitant about being here she was an operative but seemed unaccustomed to being in plain sight when she infiltrated somewhere. Eyre walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor and glanced at Carly.
“We’re supposed to be here. We are doctors.”
Carly nodded and seemed to try and relax. Eyre exited the elevator and walked past several doctors and nurses without giving them a second glance one of the nurses stopped her.
“Excuse me, who are you?”
Eyre looked her in the eye.
“I’m Dr. Keen. I’m a world-renowned British Neurosurgeon who was flown in to consult on the case of Candace Houston. You were expecting me. This is a surgical resident; You know her well her name is Dr. Matthews.”
Eyre broke eye contact and the nurse blinked a few times.
“Dr. Keen I’m sorry I didn’t know what to expect. With your reputation I expected someone older. Candace is this way. It’s kind of a stressful situation at the moment her father is under arrest for murdering the girl who was accused of doing this. The mother is pretty… difficult?”
Eyre patted her on the arm.
“Karen, could you please go tell her to expect a doctor and a resident? Tell her we’re here to determine if surgery is a viable option for her daughter. I’m just going to go get up to date medical charts.”
“Of course, Dr. Keen.”
The nurse wandered off. Carly looked up at Eyre.
“That… wow. Must be nice to have that trick.”
“For that you’d need to be turned, don’t think you’d be good for military service after that, being clinically dead and all.”
The nurse returned and nodded to Eyre.
“Thank you, Karen. You have a great day.”
Eyre met her gaze again.
“In thirty minutes, you will forget we were here at all.”
Karen was staring into her eyes and nodded. Eyre broke eye contact and walked into Candace’s room. Her mother looked like a wreck. She was looking far older than her thirty-eight years. The last few days had not been good for her. She stood up and met the pair halfway through. Eyre closed the door. She glanced at Carly.
“Close the blinds please.”
Candace’s mother was already in Eyre’s way.
“I don’t remember asking for a British Neurosurgeon. Who are you?”
Eyre smiled.
“I was in town for a speech and your daughter’s Neurologist asked me to review her case I have been able to help people with similar injuries before. If you would rather I leave, I will do so, I’m here as a courtesy, volunteering my time and services.”
The woman rubbed her eyes she looked like she’d gone through hell.
“I’m sorry I just don’t even know how I’m going to pay the hospital bills I have already, I have legal fees now and.”
Eyre touched her arm.
“Mrs. Houston, I’m here to help. As I said I am here to consult, and if I can help her and the hospital authorizes it, I will do my best to make your daughter walk again. I just need you to…”
The sunlight was finally blocked, and Eyre met her gaze.
“Sleep.”
She caught the woman and put her in the seat gently.
“No mother should go through this. If this kid hadn’t been such a sadistic little bitch.”
“You just throw that power around don’t you?”
“I have it, I use it. You’re going to have to catch me I’m going to lose all ability to stand. It will take me a couple of minutes to recover.”
Eyre touched Candace and chanted. As predicted, she collapsed immediately, and it took her a few minutes to recover. Carly had caught her and helped her up when she came out of the temporary black out. Eyre rubbed her neck.
“At least there was no pain.”
She leaned over Candace and shook her awake. Candace started swatting at her then calmed down when she realized she was not in her room.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“I’m a doctor, you’re in the hospital.”
Candace’s breathing slowed and she saw her mother asleep she stopped struggling entirely. Once Eyre could meet her gaze she pushed into her mind deeper then easy surface manipulation and started editing her memories of the attack.
“You were attacked by a man in your room. He was trying to abduct you. You fought back. You recognized his voice as a man you saw at a bus stop. He was six foot tall, had dark hair, blue eyes. He was a large man, you had been scared of him at the bus stop. He followed you all the way to school but you saw him walk away and thought he was just going past the school. You can’t remember his face its blank. The attack has scared you so much because you thought it was someone you had bullied but it wasn’t, it was man. You are scared of people now. You’re afraid if you push them too far they will hurt you. You are also feeling very guilty because you bullied a girl named Samantha until she killed herself and you are afraid you might have done the same to Sarah. You are going to confess to the police that you cyber bullied them and that you are afraid you might have caused Samantha to kill herself. You will not harm yourself or others, but your fear makes you feel physically sick every time you have to urge to bully someone. You will forget you saw us. You woke up and your mom was asleep. You will press the call button in a panic because you had a dream about the man who attacked you. Sleep, and you will wake when the door closes.”
She went to her mother and shook her awake. The groggy woman blinked up at her and Eyre met her gaze.
“You saw an angel come into the room and heal your daughter. The angel spoke to you and told you that they are giving her a second chance because she was going to fall into the pits because of her hate and bigotry. God is angry that she bullied one of his children into suicide. The angel says that for Candace to atone she needs to pay for her crimes. And if you keep covering up for her you will fall to the pits to because you are just as guilty as her. Also that the Church of Christ’s truth is a vile disgusting pit of hate and are not his true children. You should seek a priest at Catholic church and beg for forgiveness. They can show you a better way, one without hate. You will forget you saw us and you will go back to sleep. You can wake once your daughter calls for you. Sleep.”
Eyre broke eye contact and the woman collapsed into the chair again. Eyre motioned for them to leave. She closed the door and the pair walked down the hallway. A nurse rushed to the room. Carly glanced over at Eyre who tapped her holo-web crystal and shifted to jeans and a t-shirt. Carly did so to and she was back to her normal clothes.
“You shouldn’t do that, you basically reprogrammed them, that is not right.”
“And a teenager girl who was taught to hate anything her church says to hate such as transgender kids, homosexuals is right? If I had my way, I’d burn that church to the ground and kill the pastor. But I don’t so I will do my best to make sure that girl makes better choices, ones that don’t end with people committing suicide.”
“You took away their right to choose.”
“I also gave her back her life. Anything she does past this point is on me, and I’m not going to be responsible for more hate being brought into your Earth”
“You’re Catholic, aren’t you? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the crucifix. Don’t you hate those people too.”
Eyre showed a bit of anger for the first time since the pair had met.
“Catholic’s don’t hate. That is against everything Jesus taught. Equating us to that poisonous venomous disgusting church.”
She sighed.
“Sorry religion is always a touchy subject. But on my Earth we have humans that can literally be whatever sex they want it makes it a kind of moot point doesn’t it? Or hell humans who can be whatever gender they want in whatever form they want. There is one student can turn into anything he wants that is a living creature. Can be a female dog one day, male teenage boy the next. Whatever he wants. Now if God allows that, then why is a human who has no powers who chooses to transition to a different gender any worse? There is magic that can do it, literally you pay a mage, and you are what you were born to be. This madness, puberty blockers, hate because someone wants to have their physical appearance match the identity they have. It’s disgusting. Literally a ten-minute ritual and you’re the other gender, if it doesn’t work out you switch back. The only countries that even put gender on ID anymore are the Islamic ones.”
“You really feel strongly about this.”
By this time the pair had reached the car.
“Hate is a poison. If that girl had pulled the shit at home, she’s pulled here, after the first incident she would have been in a police interrogation room for a hate crime. Second time, she’d be in juvie, if a kid killed themselves, she’d be charged with murder. We don’t let hate and bullying stand. It happens but when you have teenagers who can suddenly rip people to shreds with their minds, it can’t be allowed to go on.”
Carly nodded.
“Look, we obviously have different experiences with the world, here bullying just part of growing up.”
“And where I’m from, we know it doesn’t have to be.”
The holo-tablet on Eyre’s wrist vibrated. She opened and looked at it the limiter had detected an event and had been overloaded when it attempted to stop it. Eyre swore under her breath. Carly was staring at the hologram floating in front of Eyre.
“What is wrong?”
“It’s Sarah she just used her power. Limiter…isn’t working on her. She’s too strong.”
“What?”
“She overloaded the limiter. Which is theoretically impossible.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we need to get to her house ASAP.”
Eyre got another text from Helen. WTF Food seems to be on fire. Eyre texted back. On it. Eyre started the car and peeled out.