Gina's body had finally healed, and she had begun to pack her bags. All throughout the few days it had taken for her body to finish repairing itself her friends had tried to talk her out of leaving.
"Don't go Gina, we need you."
"I'm not even hurt Gina. Don't leave us, please!"
"Gina girl we all know what you're going back to. Don't do this to yourself. We want you to stay."
None of their pleading or begging or bribing had changed her mind. She stayed firm in her belief that the best thing for the team was to leave. She couldn't risk their lives for the sake of her own wants or needs.
The last bag was packed. She was ready to go.
Gina looked down at the train ticket in her hand and teared up. She knew what she would face at the orphanage if it came to that. Steeling herself, she grabbed her petticoats and walked down the stone path for her last time. The rest of the team was waiting for her at the gateway along with Vienn.
"Gina—" someone said.
She held up a hand. "I must do this. You have to understand."
"Gina, you vowed to stay with us. Practice. Learn control. Stay with us and be careful." Vienn told her.
"I wish you all a warm farewell. You are my very best friend in the whole world."
"We can't defeat the shadow creature if you're gone."
Gina knew in her heart that they needed her. But all it took was a glance at Quill's still healing hands to make her firm again.
"Goodbye."
She walked away, down the path to the cobblestone road, and went to the train station.
I will make it there, she told herself. Then I will allow myself to break down.
On the long trip back to the shire, Gina thought about all the memories she shared with the other Enhanced. She had never had such good friends.
The countryside whirred by her outside the window but she barely noticed it. She was lost in her thoughts.
What if I made the wrong choice? They truly do need me on the team. I know I understand the creature we're fighting in more depth than the others. Gina had spent her spare hours researching the history of Lia'unn and also of the shadow beast.
I pledged my allegiance to this project. How can I stand by and watch the earth be taken over by something evil when I know that I could have helped it?
She shook her head, trying to get rid of the doubts. She was here now and that's what counted. She was heading back. She trembled in her bench seat. What was she going to do when she arrived there?
The train whistled along on its tracks and Gina decided to practice her knitting. She pulled out some yarn and her needles and began making another hat. She would need lots of them for the orphans this cold winter. It was already nearly November.
Only two months left until the creature comes back to the surface.
Stop that! Gina chided herself after realizing what she had thought. No more thinking about the creature!
She frowned at herself and smoothed out her new rows of knitting. Busy hands, busy mind Miss Karina always said. Maybe she was right about that one thing.
An hour later the train reached her shire, and Gina looked up from her concentration on the knitting.
"Last call for Braxonshire! Last call!" The conductor shouted from a space down the hallway from Gina.
She picked up her new bag–the Lia'unnians had given it to her- and went down the steps that she had thought she would never walk again. She had a long walk before she would reach the orphanage, so she sat on the side of the street and tied her shoes more firmly to her feet.
Hitching her skirt up, she fought against the wind to make it into the deeper heart of Braxonshire. The market day was today so it was especially difficult to maneuver quickly. Not that she wanted to. She dragged her feet as she walked, trying to go as slow as possible.
Is there somewhere that I could go? Anyone that would take me in?
She had no family or friends, and she wasn't skilled in any of the Guild's trades. No one would want her as an apprentice. Her only option must be the orphanage.
An idea sparked in her mind.
What if I could use my enhancements to help me somehow? Could I use them to allow me to pass as a skilled apprentice?
Well, she reviewed mentally. I can create shields, I can heal people, and I can heal myself.
Gina grew bitter along that line of thought. And I can hurt others when I get emotional. Isn't that the whole reason I left the manor? So that I won't hurt anyone?
What if I just use my healing talents in the hospital near here and stop using the shield. That should allow me not to be able to flare out emotionally.
With the most hopeful expression she had had on her face since the nanogene emotions disaster, she changed her direction toward the hospital.
I don't have to go to the orphanage.
Right then she bumped into a tall, snarling lady who looked terrible in the expensive red shawl that she had bought. Gina almost giggled. But wait a minute, that looked like...
Oh no! Gina thought, scrambling away. No! Wait, I'm not back here for the orphanage, I'm here for a job at the hospital. If I have another option to go to then I can't go back.
The woman she had escaped, the woman she feared with all her heart stared back at her. Miss Karina shot her an annoyed glared at her from beneath an enormously large black hat and hissed horribly, "You're in my way."
Gina tried to back up further, but Karina's hand grabbed her just before she made it.
"Wait a second, I know you." She turned Gina to face her. "It's the brat who ran away! Oh Gina, you and your foolish ideas. Just my luck to have an ungrateful runt like you under my care. You and your worthless hide are coming with me now."
Gina thrashed around and tried to call for help, but Karina but a filthy hand over her mouth.
"One peep out of you and I start throwing the other orphans on the streets." Gina stopped struggling.
"There's a good girl. Now we're going to walk back to the Hall and you are going to behave. There was quite the uproar when you left. I'll have to make an example out of you."
Gina trembled in fear. She had to escape. Why had she ever come back here?
Miss Karina marched her up the street that she had just turned away from. Dragging her back to her nightmares, the place that haunted her; the orphanage.
Braxonshire had been an instinctive choice in Gina's mind. It was her original home, the only place she knew. She also had the orphanage as a backup plan in case she couldn't think of anywhere else to go. But now here she was being sucked into the blackness that her life had been before. The more she struggled the deeper she fell. What had she been thinking? It wasn't as though she didn't know that Karina frequented the shire.
Can I use my nanogenes to instaheal her and scare her into letting me go?
Gina wasn't sure what to do. Karina would send children onto the street if Gina tried to get away. Did she really want to risk hurting Karina? Karina deserved it in every way possible, but if it risked little Angelica or William back at the orphanage...
"I will go with you. Promise me you won't hurt them."
Karina hacked out a cough that sprayed spittle all over Gina's new dress and then gave Gina a wicked glare. "There's a good little brat now. Since you've been away there has been a rebellion amongst your many admirers. To show them that not one of you stupid worthlings gets to escape and not be punished, I demand that you work at the mill-"
Gina backed away from her as far as she could with Karina's grip on her arm, terrified to her core.
"- all day every day the number of days that you were gone. At that point perhaps the money you make will have satisfied my anger with you. If not, we'll work out a suitably longer time for you to repay me for your childish and fruitless behavior."
No. Not the mill. I will never go back there! Gina pulled her arm away, her eyes blazing.
"We have to come to some other arrangement Karina." She set her jaw. "I will not go back to the mill with you. What will you accept as payment instead?" An unwelcome desperate edge entered her voice, "Can I pay you money? Sell you these clothes?"
Karina smirked. "Those will all be mine without you giving them to me. I have legal guardianship of you. You offer me nothing."
"I- what about my service? I will stay on after I turn eighteen and manage the children and affairs for you. You can't hurt them."
Gina wished that she could go to the constable for Braxonshire and report the mistreatment. But Karina had paid him off. When funds came in for the orphanage Karina gave a portion to him and in turn he gave a blind eye to her shady treatment of the orphans. Gina had tried again and again to go to the police when she was on rotation for going to the market before she had realized what was happening. They had never listened to her because they had orders not to.
"Your service..." Karina mused, "would be valuable, yes. But enough for all the trouble you caused me?"
"It's a fair trade. I can offer nothing else." Gina said, her heart pleading within her that it would be enough.
"It-" Karina held out for a long torturous moment, causing Gina to clench her teeth together in anger. The woman before her had taken so much from her and hurt her so many times. Karina had robbed all of the orphan children of their childhoods and of their working ability. Gina wanted to nanozap Karina so badly it made her stomach ache, and restraining herself was becoming harder the longer the conversation continued.
Karina finally continued, "- it will suffice, for now."
Then Karina yanked Gina's arm hard and pulled her along down the streets after her. The policeman didn't even bat an eye.
Her feet slipped and slid along the uneven streets, and every time she stumbled Karina only held on tighter. Gina could already feel the healing nanogenes at work in her system, and she was sure that without them she would have a bruise by the time they reached the orphanage.
As the last leg of the journey ended Karina pulled up short in shock, and Gina tumbled into her.
"Woah, wait, ahh!" Her startled cries caused some of the crowd to look up. Gina's face flushed as she hurdled forward; Karina's grip on her arm the only thing keeping her up. She jerked back in an arc after her arm caught, and looked up through her eyelashes at the scene.
Gina gasped. In front of the orphanage was a huge commotion, and she could make out Vienn and her friends standing there. What was going on? Hadn't she just left them?
A fit man stood at the head of the crowd, sporting a brown mustache and goatee and salt and pepper hair. His nose looked like it had been broken several times.
The man scowled in displeasure.
"There you are, Miss Karina. It has been brought to my attention by my good friend Vennton that you have been part of major police bribery and performed abusive behaviors regarding the children under your care in this orphanange. From this moment forward you are no longer the owner and caretaker of the Charles Hall orphanage. You're going to be serving a long sentence in jail."
Karina stood still. "Abuse sir? Are you sure that this man isn't making it up? Surely the word of an innocent young-"
"Get in the carriage, Karina," he said, his gaze hardening. "You are far from innocent and you and everyone else here knows it."
Karina hitched up her skirts and ran, dragging Gina after her. She tumbled back the way we came, eyes wild skirts tussled and hair streaming out after her in a wild whirlwind of snarls and dirt.
"No!" Gina cried, trying her hardest to not use the boiling surge of nanogenes bursting to be released. She had to control it, she had to. If she released this much pent up power right now, who knew who it would hurt?
Control. Control. You can do it, Gina. Control them!
Karina ran through the marketplace and shoved people over. Carts tumbled in an array of brightly colored signs and dresses and wares. People yelled angrily and tried to stop them while others panicked. It was chaos.
Gina was pulled up onto a cliff face while Karina caught her breath in her filthy hands. They weren't filthy with dirt, but Gina knew that filth wasn't always physical. And dirt certainly clung to Karina's hands, visible or not.
Karina eyed the cliff and then eyed her.
"Stop Karina! Stop it!" Gina begged her, eyes filling with tears. The nanogenes were overwhelming her, threatening to be a complete overload if Karina didn't stop. "Don't drag this out any longer. You know that what you did is wrong! Accept the consequences and let me go! I am going to hurt you!"
"Hah. You hurt me? You'll be my leverage when they get here. Heroes always have to save the girl, right? I'll be on my way before you can say a word."
She swung Gina out over the abyss, her arm's grip tightening at the strain. Gina cried out, but she couldn't control the nanogenes any more. They flooded out of her, and in a last effort, she bit Karina's arm hoping it was hard enough to force Karina to release her. It worked.
She felt herself spiraling to the ground below.
"Not if I save myself first," she whispered to the air.
At least my last wish was granted, she thought wistfully. I didn't hurt anyone.
The nanogenes whizzed around her in purple spirals twisting and turning in powerful blasts of energy. She directed it all at the ground until the last drop of the energy was gone.
"Gina!" A familiar voice called. Amryn? She felt a wind around her and arms- strong from the physical training-grasp her. Her friend. Her teammate. She wanted to thank him but the words wouldn't come. She was too winded.
"I got her." Amryn huffed out, slightly breathless. "Not a second too late either. If I had been even a moment behind....."
Other footsteps pounded up the hill like a herd of wild rhinos. She could hear the people from the printing press and the chief of police and Vienn. Where were her other friends?
"Gina girl, you're safe. I mean, of course, you are. You can take care of yourself. But we all got so worried after Karina carted you off like that."
"I-" Gina said softly, unable to look them in the face. "I was a coward. I can't control my power here any better than at the manor, and here I almost killed hundreds of innocent people. How could I have been so selfish to think that I was protecting you by coming back here?" She lowered her face into her hands.
Quill came and sat by her. "None of this was your fault, G." Gina was taken back by the nickname. No one had ever called her that before.
I guess no one had ever gotten close enough to call you anything else. Except for Ro now I guess.
"You didn't decide to be grabbed or threatened. So stop beating yourself up and look at the good in what happened. Miss Karina can never hurt you or another person again; she's getting the justice she deserved. And you realized a valuable lesson about yourself; you sacrifice for what you perceive as the greater good, even if that greater good isn't really what's best in the long term. Please, Gina, come and train with us. Learn how to control your powers so this doesn't happen again. Will you come back to the manor? We set up a special training room for you and we came to some terms with Vienn about changes in the way practice is run."
She began to shake her head no again, desperate to defend them from herself.
"For me, G?" Quill looked her deeply in the eyes. She sighed. She couldn't resist his eyes.
The corners of her mouth lifted for the first time in the days since the accident. "I will come back with you, Quill. I was so foolish for coming back here. My home is with you. It will always be with you; with all of you."
She sucked in a laugh of rising happiness that she shouldn't feel. Now wasn't the time.
She felt so many mixed emotions. Happiness to go back to the manor, fear that she would still hurt someone else, gratefulness for her friend's timing. Mostly an abundance of relief that Karina wouldn't hurt anyone ever again.
"I am just so grateful you came after me," she finally said. "Wait, wait just a minute. How did you know where to find me? How were you here at all?"
They looked sheepish. "Um. Well, you see." Amryn tried to explain, but stopped as he caught the look on Gina's face.
"You followed me! Even after I had told you not to!" Anger and hurt replaced the relief from earlier. "How dare you. How could you have so little faith in me?"
Ro rolled her eyes. "We didn't have no faith in you, you dolt. We had too much, and that was the problem. We thought that you being the awesome kick-butt fighter that you are you would eventually realize that your place was with us fighting the nightmare creature. We didn't think to calculate in how much you care about other people. If you weren't so blasted soft-hearted none of this would have happened." Ro let out a breath. Her face was red.
"So you followed me because you thought I would just change my mind and come back? That doesn't make any sense!" She shouldn't be yelling at her friends. But somehow she couldn't stop.
"Yes!" Amryn butted in, "We thought that you would think about how much the team needed you and decide that the greater good was more important than worry over my or Quill's safety, or even your personal happiness. You're always telling us that we need to focus on the big goal and not be sidetracked."
"But I-"Gina stumbled for the words to express how she felt. "-you're my friends. I wanted to protect you. I needed to protect you. You're the only people I have in the whole world to care for, and I couldn't let anything hurt that."
"We understand, G." Quill told her. His tone was utterly accepting of her, and although Gina searched for any inflection showing that he was angry or hurt she couldn't feel anything else in it. He understood exactly what she had felt, disagreed with it and her actions based on those feelings, and accepted her anyway. She owed him the same in return. "But you also have to understand our reasons for coming after you. We thought it was a rash decision made in the moment. To you, it wasn't. But to us..."
"Well, what are we standing around here moping for then?" Ro tugged on her manly jacket and pants to push out any dirt. "We're sorry, Gina's sorry, we're all dang sorry. Now that that's settled we can be on our way."
Gina's smile lit up her eyes. Ro certainly knew how to sum up something.
"Train leaves in an hour. You want to try and beat me there, Gina girl? This time we aren't racing for my respect; just for pleasure."
"Not for respect?" Gina asked, surprised. Ro had told her that someone had to beat her at racing, Ro's favorite activity, to earn her approval, and Gina had yet to beat her at any race.
"You already earned it." Ro gruffly punched her in the arm.
Gina smiled. "You're on."