Innocence at its Worst

Outside Realm - 15

Doctor Maeve paced back and forth in the lab, racking her brain for any ideas against this new threat. 

"What shall we do?" Jaxon, her head assistant stood at the ready, a clipboard in hand and a pen at the ready.

"I don't know," Maeve covered her face with her hands. "They only have three days left of life support and-- the Feds are coming."

"Should we give ourselves up willingly?" Jaxon asked hesitantly. "If we do it now, the charges will be easier to deal with."

"Don't you realize?" Maeve bites her lip, "Their parents are not going to stop once they wake up and find out what we've done... There is no chance we can escape this time," she gestures to the six teens in the Pugillares Rigidum, hooked up to various wires and virtual headsets. "They were only meant to be in there for three hours..." she whispers.

"It's not our fault they don't want to leave," Jaxon comforts her, standing at her back. 

Maeve relaxes into him, worry gnawing at her insides. "Three hours turned into four days..."

"We still have three days left to figure this out," Jaxon reassures her. "It'll be okay. We can still wake them up."

A blinking red light draws Maeve's attention. Rushing over to it, she examined the control station, searching for what could cause the blinking.

"Maeve," Jaxon's warning voice alarmed Maeve. "Subject one is reaching stage one of awakening."

Maeve clenches her fists, "Not yet," she mutters. "Alex isn't supposed to wake up yet!"

"Subject two entering stage one of awakening," Jaxon announces.

"No! Not for three more days!" Maeve pounds her fist on the exam station. "Get them some more sedative! Hurry!" she ordered through the com.

"Response team on lunch break," Jaxon checks his watch.

"Dammit!" Maeve storms to the other side of the lab, entering the hypnosis room where Alex, Jules, Jen, and several others rest in their own Pugillares Rigidum stations.

"Subject three--"

"SHUT UP JAXON!!" Maeve roars. She quickly and efficiently gathers the sedative tools, injecting them as fast as she could into each person's arm. Jaxon had counted off who was at what stage already. By the time she finished, Alex had reached stage three. 

"Subject one entering neutral stage, subject two..." Jaxon listed off each and every single one of the Wallflowers, a rebellious group who fought against United Nations when corruption was at it's all time high. Maeve sighs in relief, recounting the details and horrors silently in her mind, slightly afraid of what would happen if these five girls were to awaken.

"Feds detected on radar within fifty mile radius," Jaxon examines the computer screen over the rim of his glasses.

Maeve leans against the bleak, white wall, nearly defeated. "How close are we?" she asks in a weak voice. "How soon will they wake up?" she gestures to the group of teens.

"Not sure," Jaxon frowns. "Rhea is coming close though. If Levi were to ever get out of the way, then we might stand a chance... All of us," his gaze pans the lab. 

"If they die..." Maeve's voice breaks. 

"Then we all lose. You don't believe what the net screens are saying, do you?"

"I do," Maeve nods. "If there really are other worlds and these people in here are a part of it... If it's real, then it's our key. We can escape everything. We can-- we can live in a world like that," she looks at the feed currently displaying Rhea's simulation. They are all gathered in Levi's room and she was playing with the darkness.

"If," Jaxon echoes hollowly. 

"Simulations don't lie," Maeve crosses her arms. If anything, they should only be reality based. Maeve had designed these machines to gather data from the brain to construct the inner turmoil everybody faces into a world of it's own. The simulations are reality, in a way. There shouldn't be magic or darkness, or anything else preposterous inside these, but these kids broke it somehow. Maeve adjusts her lab coat collar, analyzing the feeds closely. She wished she knew how she managed to intertwine magic and science together, binding all the worlds with just this simple machine. 

Tapping his pen on the clipboard, Jaxon glances at Maeve. "Ever wonder how Arian got the sight from Rhea?"

"Not really," Maeve frowns. "I just noticed that she stopped seeing things after she collapsed in school."

"The precise time Arian contracted the sight," Jaxon noted. "She passed her... power onto him. He's the only one that can handle it, because see right here?" Jaxon rewinded the feed to a few minutes after the Domino had occurred. "He tried passing it to Brook, but it was too much for her. She can only sustain a certain amount of power just like any of them. But Arian? He's a void for power. Almost as if--"

"Alex's feed," Maeve interrupted. "She showed me a man named Max. He was... unstoppable."

"The leader of the rebellion?" Jaxon queries.

"Years ago. Look," she took control of the panel and showed Jaxon the feed. "See the leader in black? Never showed himself, but his face is right here in her simulation. If the Feds ever got their hands on this kind of information... they just might try to make a portal to their world. A world where magic actually exists."

Jaxon nods silently, his gaze resting on subject two. 

"The leader's power is unfathomable. As is Arian's. I'm sure if we can find him, we can snatch a DNA sample and test these two. Maybe farm Arian for some--"

"Stop," Jaxon cuts her off. "That's not what we're here for."

"I know, but--" Maeve protests, stopping herself once she realized what had come out of her mouth. "It's getting to me, isn't it?" she asks hesitantly.

"Your counterpart? Yes," Jaxon answers. "Queen Maeve is infecting you every time you come into contact with the Pugillares Rigidum."

"She's sneaking through the existing tunnels for me, isn't she?" Maeve lowers herself onto a chair, holding her head in her hands. 

"There's only one way to save them all you know," Jaxon stands apart from her, distancing himself. 

"I'm not doing it."

"We have three days left. If you'll only allow her to--"

"She'll corrupt this world too! She'll leak herself through the Pugillares Rigidum into the Otherworld."

"The one of magic where they can easily take her on. When she opens the gateway, it'll also leak into our world and boost them. They can fight her."

"You mean me."

Jaxon shrugs, "Better than her killing everybody here and nobody to fight."

Maeve lowers her gaze, torn between sacrificing herself, or everyone else. Her counterpart is evil, and she hasn't accepted that yet. If she doesn't let Queen Maeve out of the Pugillares Rigidum, she'll kill everybody that's connected to the machines in three days. Three days, it will all end; either for the world, or just for Doctor Maeve, nobody can tell for certain.

Maeve turns her worried gaze to the Storms, praying beyond hope that they will wake up before the inevitable happens. Keep fighting, everyone... Don't give in.