If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
[email protected]/Yggdrasil_Loki
….
Washington. A few days after Tony Stark's healing.
She walked down the corridor again, barely perceiving the blurring walls. Her hands tightly gripped work folders, her feet stepped confidently in time with the man hurrying ahead, her lips answered questions asked from time to time clearly and quickly, but all this happened without her will.
How long had this been going on? A month? A year? Or ten years already?
She saw everything, perceived and realized everything, but could do nothing, could influence nothing.
And only when the Other, the one controlling her hands, legs, and speech, remained idle, freezing in anticipation and immobility, could she crack her knuckles.
To momentarily feel a glimmer of control over her limbs, acting out a harmful unconscious habit.
Today, like hundreds of times before, the world before her eyes blurred under an indistinct veil; her own pupils, no longer subject to her will, looked anywhere but where she wanted to see.
Her captor had meetings and conversations.
Offices replaced each other, work folders passed from hand to hand, the Other made reports and brewed coffee for the captor.
Everything was as always, only despair and helplessness in every moment.
The workday was coming to an end. The last meetings, the habitual waiting with the painfully sweet taste of fleeting control over her fingers, and the rapid stride to the car…
She didn't immediately realize something was happening.
She had lost hope of escape too long ago, become too indifferent to what the Other was doing controlling her body at the captor's will.
And yet, subsequent events forced her to shed her apathy, for the Other told the captor something that hadn't happened.
An invitation to dinner from an important patron whom the captor could not ignore.
There was no invitation, but the Other spoke of it.
Reported the place, time, wishes of the inviter…
Clearly and businesslike, as she had done thousands of times before on any other topic.
But all those thousands of times the Other spoke only the verified and impartial truth, and now she lied. Lied to the one who created her.
And he believed. He couldn't not believe, for the Other had never lied to him.
And then they drove. Without a driver or security, because the patron disliked extra eyes outside the walls of official institutions. And again the Other deceived.
They didn't reach the place. Turned onto an inconspicuous side road.
But the captor noticed nothing, he was too immersed in compiling a report the Other told him was needed.
And they stopped. The Other left the car and courteously opened the passenger door so the overweight captor could get out without problems.
The night darkness helped hide reality from him in the first seconds, and when bewilderment began to show in his eyes, her fingers clamped onto the flabby neck, simultaneously twisting the obese body's arms…
"Welcome, Mr. Stryker," an unfamiliar male voice rang out from the darkness, brimming with pleasure from the observed sight.
"I hope you are comfortable in your assistant's tender hands?"
"How did you do this?" the man wheezed hoarsely through a constricted throat. "Who are you?"
"Valid questions," a young man in a light coat over a business suit appeared in the patch of light from the headlights.
His long black hair was neatly slicked back, holding at the nape without any bands or ties, and an ironically cheerful smile played on his lips.
"I'll answer the first: your wonderful potion." He stepped closer, and the Other jerked Colonel Stryker up sharply so he was powerless to prevent the stranger from extracting a dispenser with clear liquid from his inner pocket.
"A very interesting little thing," the brunet finished the phrase, measuring the find with a glance. "But the trouble is, it leaves the victim completely defenseless against mental suggestion."
"Impossible," the man wheezed, frantically scrabbling at the steel grip of her fingers.
"Why not?" the stranger smiled. "It's chemistry, not magic. But we've been chatting too long, and I'm here on business." The hated dispenser disappeared under the man's coat, the man who somehow commanded the Other.
"Oh, don't try," he warned William's attempt to say something, at the same moment her hand tightened on the colonel's throat, not letting him exhale even half a word.
"I have no need for your opinion or tongue." The stranger's right hand landed on Stryker's head. "Just relax and enjoy…"
She felt the man in her hands shudder as if feeling a prick of pain, and then everything froze.
The Other slightly relaxed her fingers, allowing the former captor to breathe, and that second one, apparently having become the new captor, closed his eyes as if listening to something.
And silence fell…
They were in some empty warehouse, having driven through the main gates into the gloom-hidden space.
Not a single bulb burned anywhere; only the car's headlights chased away the darkness in the center of the void.
And from this combination of silence and darkness, it became creepy in her soul.
An hour ago, she thought she had passed through all circles of Hell and gotten stuck in one of them forever, but now the mutant woman, who to her misfortune possessed the ability of regeneration, felt fear again.
Fear that seized her heart more strongly with every second, displacing the black despair that had long reigned there undivided.
Whoever this young brunet was, he wasn't going to leave Stryker alive; that was as obvious as day and night. But what would he do next? How would he act?
Yuriko Oyama had long ceased to fear death… she dreamed of it as deliverance! So she thought… But what would happen now?
Would she become a will-less slave to a new master, or did the fate of discarded material await her along with William Stryker? What to do? What to prepare for?
She thought she couldn't be afraid. Shouldn't! That the worst was behind, that it couldn't get worse…
But that was only until hope appeared.
What… What if he lets her go?.. Frees her?.. He's a mutant too… a telepath, most likely, but a mutant nonetheless!
He might pity her… Might help… Might… save!
That word tore at her heart… Even the Other's breathing became faster.
The potion injected into her neck, at the top vertebra, was still working and was supposed to work for a long time yet, not letting her even blink of her own will, but her cheeks became hot, and her vision blurred not only from the veil of the narcotic delusion but from the moisture welling up.
A chance… The first chance in all these years…
The first since she was captured and turned into a guinea pig… It was so enticing and close, but… But it was so trembling-scary that her hope would be trampled, just as Stryker trampled her life almost ten years ago.
"Please…" inaudibly, with lips barely parting, for the first time in many years burst out… not even a sound, but a shadow, yet a shadow of her own voice.
"Please…" she managed to push out the second word an elusive fraction louder.
"Pl…" but the third was fettered by the Other.
The captor's potion overcame the hormones released into the blood, cutting off the chance for conversation more reliably than any gag.
A lonely tear traced a narrow path down her left cheek, making Yuriko feel as if the wetted skin was burning and twitching like under acid.
It became even scarier. The cold claws of returned despair sank into her chest… No longer displaced, but only amplified by the rolling terror. She wanted to scream, cry, sob… but she could do nothing, locked in her own body as a powerless spectator.
And then she felt a touch…
"Don't be afraid," the stranger's soft voice reached her ears simultaneously as his finger wiped the tear from her cheek.
"I will help you." The brunet's palm moved gently to her temple, and the next words resonated through her whole body with an indescribably sweet echo.
"Follow my voice…"
Not yet realizing what she was doing, Yuriko leaned toward this command with her entire being and…
Gasped convulsively, dropping Stryker's limp body from her weakened hands.
From her hands…
Again… completely… hers…
….
Bonus Chapter on every 500 power stones;
If you want to read ahead by 20+ chapters from here you can visit my Patre-on.
[P] [A] [T] [R] [E] [O] [N]
[email protected]/Yggdrasil_Loki