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And now, on with the show :}

Aleshia walked along the shoulder of the road, gravel crunching beneath her shoes. Her thoughts tumbled after each other in an ever tightening spiral like a dog chasing its own tail. She hadn't yet told her mother about the armour. It looked like she might never get the chance to, now. Tears filled her eyes and she wiped them angrily away. Her mother might not be missing, might just, just... At this stage her imagination broke down; there was no reason for her mother not to contact her or show up at home for twenty-four hours. Especially not with Kevin missing.

Seven days. One week ago today, Kevin hadn't come home from school. She and her mother had been frantic, hoping against hope that he'd turn up. The police search hadn't turned up anything and they'd both fallen into a shocked stupor lately, the agony of not knowing what had befallen Kevin pressing down on their lives. When her mother hadn't shown up last night, she'd become worried, when the morning had reavealed a distinct lack of Helen, she had nearly panicked; it felt as if she was trapped in a horror movie, slowly losing her mind. She'd phoned the sheriff, breaking down into tears over the phone, and he'd promised to arrange a search party if her mother didn't show up by the following evening. Aleshia wasn't happy with it, but didn't know what else to do, so she carried on as usual, going to school, hoping against hope that her mother would be there when she got home.

So now she was on her way home, having deliberately missed the bus and stayed after school as for as long as she could think up an excuse to avoid going home to what she dreaded would be a house empty of not only her brother, but her mother as well.

Late afternoon sunlight streamed past her shoulders, throwing her shadow out in front of her. The sound of an engine approaching intruded into her musings. It turned out to be a minibus, which pulled up alongside her and stopped. She looked disinterestedly over at the man in the driver's seat and so was taken by surprise by the cloth that was shoved into her face and, more specifically, over her mouth and nose. She struggled, scrabbling frantically at the arms encircling her, but the element of surprise was with her captors and she soon succumbed to the chloroform.

* * *

The blackness swirled at the edges of her awareness, falling back to leave in it's wake a throbbing head. Rising and falling voices drifted over to her, but she was too legarthic to care.

A breathy groan escaped her as she rose the rest of the way from oblivion to consciousness. It was, thankfully, not loud enough to carry to the people talking nearby as she mulled muzzily over the fact that she was apparently face down on a concrete, very cold, floor. Memory of her capture came flooding back to her. She held back a gasp, then continued to lie quiescent, hoping to hear something relevant to her situation.

The first voice was timid, almost frightened, as it said, "...rother is coming along nicely, though. He's almost ready to leave the incubation tank, all he needs is to finish the stabilization stage and have his mindcontrol developed. Then we'll have space for her."

A lower, threatening voice replied, "For which you can be grateful, sloppiness is not tolerated around here and if you'd read that memo this could all have been avoided - we do not make a practice of providing a hotel for pre-Zoanoids." No bonuses for guessing who was in charge here.

The first voice came again, more nervous now. "Yes, well, we'll have tank 13G ready for her by tomorrow morning, we won't have to keep her here much longer. Rather fitting, don't you think, that they should both be brought over to Chronos in the same tank?" The first voice laughed nervously, dying away into strained silence. The first voice cleared his throat nervously and muttered about needing to be elsewhere before leaving rather hastily. As she lay still, she could feel the stare of the second person boring into her back. That sixth sense built up over generations upon generations of being stalked by big dangerous things in the dark of night screamed at her to turn and face the predator behind her. The skin on her very vulnerable back crawled and she was hard pressed not to turn around and face the threat.

Finally, a second pair of footsteps retreated. She heard a door close and was finally alone in what she quickly determined to be a cell. The windowless space was small and dusty with iron bars on the fourth side. There was another cell oposite hers, a single light out between the cells, and a wooden door to the left, but other than that her new surroundings were bare. Rother? After a few moments the mention of 'fitting,' Kevin, and 'rother' clicked together in a rather nasty and complete whole. Well, maybe not complete, she still wasn't sure what was going on, but she was certain that these people had her brother. Her eyes narrowed. That meant they probably had Mom as well.

She had to get out, had to do something... But what? What could she do? Methodically and without much hope, she began looking for an escape. No windows, no keys hanging convieniently on hooks outside the cell, no way to get the cell door open. She leaned despondantly against the bars. She was helpless. Something awful was happening to her family and all she couldn't help them or even herself. There was nothing she could do.

Anger boiled up in her. No, she couldn't just rot here while they did God knew what to Mom and Kevin, she wouldn't. Back and forth she strode in front of the bars. Swearing, she threw her fist into a wall. Of course the wall simply stood there, impassive to her temper. Pain throbbed in her hand now as well as her head. "Aaaaaarrrgh!" Up went both her arms, fullly meant to pound into the offending wall. She had to get *out* of here!

The world distorted around her and out of nowhere and everywhere there was the strangest sensation she'd ever felt, like she was falling in every direction at once. It ended almost before it started, but the momentary disorientation had her off balance and she went down with a thump. She'd had the wierdest feeling that the suit itself had almost caught her balance for her, but that notion was quickly dismissed.

Alleshia sat on the floor, not a little shocked at this new development. This was certainly one of the last things she'd been expecting. Absently she noticed that her headache was fading, as was the pain in her hand. She could probably remove the armour again, but right then she didn't really care enough to try. All she was interested in was getting out of there. What she wouldn't give for a key, or even a good sledgehammer, or any kind of weapon at all, really. Right on the heels of that thought information popped into her head, crowding through her perception all at once.

head laser - low power, mainly defensive

sonics - shatter weapons, mid-power

high frequency vibration blades - slash/cut weapon, versatile, retractable

chestlaser - high power, offensive, destrucive *use with caution*

gravity canon - offe-

Her head seemed filled to the bursting point. Frantically a mental scream of protest rose in her. The information overload ceased abruptly, leaving her a little off balance. She would have been breathing hard, if not for the armour, which adjusted to her needs and met them.

Covering her loss of poise, even though there was nobody to hide it from, she examined the small blades on her elbows. And stopped. The information on the blades hung fresh in her memory and, with a feeling of facination, she willed the vibration blade to extend, which it did smoothly. She studied this new development, seeing that the edges were indistict, somehow. They're vibrating, it dawned on her. So, she thought with more optimism than she'd felt all week, let's see how sharp this puppy is.

She twisted her arm so that the elbow faced forward and inserted the blade between the cell door frame and the bars, pressing it down on the lock. Astonished, she watched as the metal parted before her humming blade like, like, well, the phrase 'a hot knife through butter' sprang to mind.

Silently she tried the outer,wooden door, finding it unlocked. Aleshia stopped dead, door not quite open, suddenly realizing that there might be a guard outside. But no, the sensors on her helmet detected no movement beyond the door. An exploritory hand softly probed one of the the silver orbs on her head, which moved almost reflexively out of the way. Quite calmly she considered freaking out. But if she did that there would be nobody to rescue her family. She moved cautiously out of the room into a bleak grey hallway with walls that went up and up until they almost disappeared into darkness. For lack of a better option, she arbitrarily picked a direction and started walking.

After she'd been going for a while her sensors picked up movement close by, around the corner, in fact. In a panic, for the corridor behind her stretched long and devoid of hiding places, she tried the only thing she could think of. She launched herself into the air, as with her defensive move against her brother, this was almost instinctive. That wasn't the strangest part though. When she felt herself reaching the apex of her jump, a good fifteen feet above the ground, she just... stayed there. In fact, she rose till she reached the girders of the ceiling, where she gently floated. She'd finally figured out that the armour was responding to her, like - as Kevin had said - a computer. So she shakily asked of nothing in particular 'l-levitation - how?'. Her mind filled with details about the gravity orb, only a fraction of which she could make any sense, but she did get that the metal orb at her waist, smaller than the control medal, was responsible for it. She was pulled from her daze as the technician, or at least so his white overcoat indicated him to be, walked beneath her, intent on a clipboard. Having no better idea, she decided to follow him.

As she drifted behind him, she thought, and came to the conclusion that it was probably night, based on the fact that the building, for all it's gigantic size, seemed almost deserted. Finally the technician and his floating shadow reached a pair of large doors that opened as the white coated man passed a card through a slot. Hmm, whatever they're doing, it's certainly very high tech for a kidnapper, so what's going on? She descended to hover right above the closed doors, and after a few minutes her patience was rewarded. The doors slid open and the technician exited. As he walked away she dropped down behind him, ducked backwards into the doorway, narrowly missing the closing doors, and spun around as she rose up again. Only to bang her head against the low ceiling. Clamping down on a yelp of surprise more than pain, she found herself abruptly on the floor. Her embarrasment was forgotten, however, as she took in her surroundings. Rows upon rows of large, circular tanks filled the dark, low ceilinged room. The low ceiling seemed to serve a practical purpose, as bundles of tubes and wiring led from down into the tanks. Dim green lights lit up the interior of the tanks, revealing their occupants in all their monstrous glory. For each tank held a montrosity in various stages ranging from half human to mishappen, animalistic shapes, all curled up in a fetal position. Tearing her eyes away, she noticed a display panel in the base of each tank coming to about her waist. Her stomach gave a sickening lurch as she saw a label attached to each panel, each held a number and a letter. 13G... Kevin!! She sped along the rows, coming to number thirteen, she spun and raced down the isle until she reached tank 13G.

No...

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