Innocence at its Worst

Discovery - 17

Queen Maeve maneuvers the Pugillares Rigidum, searching for her first victim. Aha! There! She follows the circuitry directly into young Rhealynn's brain waves, seeping into her very core. She will first begin with altering the personality. Then with her morals. Her goals. Queen Maeve will strip everything from Rhea and turn her into a shell to be used. 

Queen Maeve will use Rhea as a vessel, daresay. She would smile, had she possessed a body already. To be fair, rules are rules, even in the Shadow kingdom. She had sworn seven days for them to sacrifice themselves. If she were to take them forcefully, they will be damaged. If she were to take them too soon, when their life force is still at their strongest, she would be damaged. Seven days, and she will snatch them.

The wait must conclude shortly. Queen Maeve is growing restless. Today and tomorrow, she must wait. Maeve hears the flustered mutterings of the lab doctors, already deciding to ignore them for the moment. Instead, she watches the Storms--- the children ---sleep in the machine's beds in nothing but white undergarments and a thin sheer for a blanket. She smiles to herself upon seeing a long, black mark on Charlie's forehead. Curiously enough, she wonders why the child has not died yet. Turning her attention to Mason who has turned transparent, she begins to worry. Their powers are seeping into this world as well as she is. There is a slim chance they will know how to use them in their physical bodies, but she must not take any chances. She must detour their practice sessions. She must-- interfere.

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Jaxon watched the net screens apprehensively, "They're closing in," he muttered.

"Then send the com team after them! They've had training!" Maeve exploded. 

"They already went home for the weekend."

"What? Today's Friday already?" Maeve paces the lab, running her hands through her hair.

Chewing his lip, Jaxon stared at the screen thoughtfully. "If we turned ourselves in, they could give the kids the life support they need until they wake up--"

"The Feds don't know how to use our technology! At worst, they'll end up making the situation even more dire. At best-- they'll figure out the power button." Maeve argues, prepping the sedatives for the Originals.

"Compromise," Jaxon crosses his arms. "They might believe us if you said something along the lines of..." Jaxon gesticulates, "I don't know, the simulation kept them under."

"What if they find out what the simulations were really for? That kind of testing is punishable by death!"

"Not necessarily. It's a matter of how we word our experiment," Jaxon nervously glances at the feed. "Whatever it is, better come up with it now. They're at the front door."

"Already!?" Maeve hyperventilated. "Pack up the files. Burn the papers, encrypt the data. Follow through with executive C-19."

"On it," Jaxon's fingers flew across the keyboard, deleting the sensitive files and storing copies on highly secured thumb drives. 

Maeve quickly injected the back up serums into the Originals, ensuring that they didn't wake up until a certain code was entered into the Pugillares Regidum. She could have done it beforehand, but the serum will last only ninety days. For this, she knows she needs plenty of time before she is able to reclaim her project once they are taken.

Just then, a thought occurred to her. "What about the Queen?" she murmured.

Jaxon looked up from his net feeds, "They can deal with her."

"The portal," Maeve anxiously knots her fingers in her gloves. "What if the rest of them get through?"

"Then they can deal with the Queen when the time comes. Work on your story," Jaxon instructs, his glasses reflect the screen full of data.

Maeve exits the lab, meeting the Feds directly in the hallway. "He-hello there," she stammers.

A lead man in a charcoal black suit and sunglasses accosts her. "Are you Maeve Raylee, lead scientist in illegal conduct of brain simulatory hypotheses?"

Knowing a lie would result in certain death, she inclined her head. "Illegal?" she scoffs. "Virtual reality simulations are not at all illegal. If you haven't noticed--"

"Ma'am, where are your subjects," he said, sounding as if it were more a statement than a question. 

Maeve deflates, "They got stuck-- but rest assured, we have done everything we could to get them out. Our life support is running low, if you could--"

"Grab her," the lead man ordered. His two lackeys who had been following him up until this point whipped out a pair of handcuffs, quickly disabling her and holding her hostage. "You have a lot of explaining to do," the lead man glares at her. He raises a radio to his lips, "Send in a retrieval team, and extra men for search. Prep evac for hostages."

The radio buzzes, "Affirmative."

Maeve looks on in horror as the Feds rush past her, carrying odds and ends to and fro. She sighed in relief at the sight of refills for life support, only to freeze in terror to see them escort Jaxon past her. Worry gnawed at her as to where the drives could have been hidden. Or if Jaxon had hidden them at all. 

"Ma'am," the lead detective stops in front of her. "My name is Xavier Lakes. Do you mind answering a few questions?"

"Without a lawyer?" Maeve's shoulders slump.

"In the time it would take to assign you one, these children could already be dead. We were only curious as to how the life support system works on such an... advanced design."

Nodding, Maeve breathes a sigh of relief. They only want to know how it works. The surface of it. She quickly explained the basic mechanics through trial and error. Their lackey was yelled the instructions from a translator who listened to her. Evidently, most of these Feds are foreign.

They assign Jaxon to sit next to her while the process continued on.

"Drives?" she murmured. 

Jaxon gave a tight nod. "I don't think these are our American friends."

"Think they hired on another agency?"

With hesitance, Jaxon says, "I think another agency found us."