Chương 232: Act 3, Chapter 81: Fathers and mothers

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), night Alexandra May as Jess Hare"So you are saying that—""I am saying that your case beat me. Physically, you are a true specimen. There is nothing wrong with any part of you, and apparently the amputated leg is regrowing, so whatever magic you had applied to you in that department is, well—shit—miraculous." Thorne interrupted me and started his tirade.

"And on spiritual and magical levels, I excluded everything that I came up with. The Eldritch being that your clone is in the presence of has no effect on you at all. There is no foreign Authority messing with any part of you. The artifacts within your Domain that you suggested are also not the cause of the issue."

"Are you sure? I have one that seems very powerful." I mentioned the necklace I stole from Eveline last night, and he ran some tests meant to check whether it could be anything tied to my resonance that was causing this. Damien, who'd been standing with me then had raised his brows at the mention of the artifact, but now he just stood menacingly like any threat to me would be crushed before it had a chance to become one. I loved him for that.

"Your resonance is unusually high for the amount of time you've been a sourceress, but other than that it has no adverse effect on you. Nothing inside your Domain seems to be affecting you negatively. There is some misalignment between the Domain itself and you, but it's probably one more effect of what's freezing you and not the cause. I've never heard of a case where the Domain itself worked against the mage."

"But you never had a case like me either, right?"

"That is indeed true, but I can't do anything about it. Whether that's the reason or the effect, it is either way entirely up to you and the soul in the crystal to correct this. I have no tools or treatments that can cure this."

"So you are saying, Thorne, that you can't help her too." Dam's voice was quiet and measured. Each syllable coming out of his mouth hit like a heartbeat. There was so much weight hidden inside each and every one of them, I felt for both the doctor and my caretaker.

"Damien," my physician leaned against his desk and raised his cane to look at its tip. He sighed deeply and continued, "that's exactly what I am saying. It's not what I'd want to say, but that's the only thing I can."

"Can't you run any more tests?" Dam's voice was relentless, as was his posture. He stood defiantly now, with both his arms alongside his body. His fingers dug deep into the palms of his hands.

"Of course I can, but they'd be repeating what I already know, and that is that Miss Hare's case is unlike anything I've encountered before."

"What if she is not who she says she is?" Damien asked.

"Those Personas she lets walk in the world," he continued before I had a chance to instinctively protest. He was right, however, to bring it up—it could be crucial, and I was too stuck in my ways to get there.

"They are each very individual and autonomous in how they behave, because she is so used to playing them that she might have forgotten who she truly is." Thorne's brows furrowed and he looked at me.

"What does he mean by that?" he asked, entirely focused on my body sitting in front of him.

"I am not Jess Hare. This is just a mask I crafted so long ago I forgot when exactly. So are those artificial extensions of me, each given exactly one extrapolation of my traits to become somewhat cohesive, full persons. But Damien is right in that all throughout my life I've always been someone I designed—a person I decided to be."

"So there is a dose of control in who you are now? You pretend to be someone else and can't move at all—what if you stopped pretending and just were yourself?"

"And who exactly would that be, good doctor?"

"Why are you asking me? You are the one pretending. Just stop."

"I could give you my true name, tell you my life's story, stop with the speech and thought patterns I decided Jessica should have and go with the ones I reserved for my everyday face. I actually did just now, minus the name that is, but unfortunately nothing changed. I still am paralyzed whether I like it or not."

"Maybe the name is important?" Damien suggested.

"Alexandra May." I whispered through the painted mouth on my neck.

"There, I said it. Shared with the world. Still paralyzed, still persona non grata—unaccepted by the universe to be steering my own body, or any of the ones I created for myself. So, unfortunately that was not the big revelation you'd hoped for, Dam, that I'd hoped for."

"May! That's right." Thorne shouted.

"I knew your face looked familiar."

"What? I am wearing magical make-up, doctor."

"And I have a half-working soul-mark of insight and a fully functional one of memory. I do not forget anything health-related. Your face shape is that of your mother's, and those eyes—your father's. How old are you?" he asked, but then quickly counted on his fingers.

"You'd have to be around twenty-one, twenty-two if I am right."

"Yes," I replied, unsure where that conversation was going. Leben was standing stiff as well.

"You'd not believe how messy the day I saw you for the first time was."

"What?" I asked, completely caught off guard.

"You might be right about that persona non grata thing. Care for a longer story?"

"It's not like I can just stand up and go away, so please go ahead. If this is truly about my parents, I'd like to know."

"I was working on Earth back then, although I already had my Domain active for quite some time. It was a rather calm night at the ICU for all intents and purposes, and I was bored out of my fucking mind when those two people came in. She was in a full ball dress, emerald green and sparkling, her hair blonde and skin freckled like you would not believe—a beauty by all standards—and she carried that big stomach with one hand as she walked in. The other helped your father in his suit.

His eyes were green like that dress of hers, brown hair, but his leg was messed up." He took a small pause to look at his own.

"What about it?" Damian asked.

"It was destroyed, mangled—broken. The man said that he and his wife had been at some art gala or something, and some Asian man just came in and kung-fu kicked him into the knee."

"Ouch," Damian said, while I'd have grit my teeth if I could.

"Yeah. A knee should not bend the way his did, so she did the smart thing and carried him into a car and drove to a hospital, where my good hands could help him."

"You are not an orthopedic surgeon," I replied.

"No. But I did stabilize him before he could be treated by one, and your mother—and I believe she had to be, as they were both May and you look like the spitting image of her—that woman was fierce. She would not let the man out of her sight. Even though I insisted, and I bloody insisted a lot, for her to give me space. Luckily for her and you, she did not listen."

"Me?" I asked.

"Yes, you, Miss May. You were not due for like the next two weeks, but suddenly, when that fierceness of your mother mellowed out, I noticed that she was way paler than she had any right to be. I checked her pulse, then yours, and I knew that something was wrong. You were caught up in the umbilical cord and were suffocating, and I had no time to wait for a surgeon or obstetrician, so I laid your mother next to your father and performed the first and only C-section I'd ever done.

I'd never heard a woman curse so much like your mother back then. And it was when I cut through that dress of hers to get to the skin. She got calmer when I got to the actual body." He smiled and looked to the ceiling.

"Learned a few words I did not know, that day. Used them ever since."

"That might have been her. I remember my mother being blonde with freckled skin. She used to swear a lot too."

"Do you believe in fate, Miss May?"

"No, I see how you might look at what happened here that way, but that's just coincidence. The world is a small place after all. It's not too far-fetched to think that we met by pure chance." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"I am not asking because of that. I asked because if not for that leg break and its severity, your parents would not have gotten to a hospital that night and, consequently, you'd be dead. Stillborn."

"What?"

"Yes. Even if your mother realized something was wrong with you and not just her, if she had decided to get to the hospital, she would not have been able to get there in time to save you. You'd suffocate. It's a miracle your father's leg had been so viciously mangled."

"Might be a theme," I said back to him.

"It's interesting, but it doesn't really help my case, doctor. Neither does the admittance to playing someone I am not, although that is a very big stretch to say."

"Why?" he asked, tapping his finger against the wood of the desk.

"Because I am each and every one of my Personas. I don't so much pretend as I switch into them."

"How you call it doesn't matter, really. The mechanism itself might be the cause, but that warrants help through the only approach I did not consider. All of this might be psychosomatic and you may require a physician who deals with the mind."

"A psychiatrist? Do you know any who treat mages?"

"Unfortunately not. Most of those who lose their minds are institutionalized or killed on the spot due to the danger they pose to society."

"So I am unwanted three times over. Unwanted by my Personas, for whom my presence means paralysis. Unwanted by society, to which I am little more than a walking disaster. And unwanted by the world itself—the same world that I was dragged into from the clutches of death while I was still in my mother's womb."

"You are artistically overdramatic, my dear," Damien said, as the air escaped him.

"I've known you for a few months, and yet my heart beats faster for you. I know my wife feels the same way, girl. We let you in, and you are a calamity—but one we welcomed and want to stay. So stay with us," he said, and a tear escaped me. It ran slowly down my cheek. Just one drop of rain, and yet the weight of a downpour behind it. He wanted me—more than that—he knew me, accepted me and… loved me. However misguided that feeling was.

"Thank you, Dam," I whispered back to him.

"Don't mention it." He wiped a tear of his own.

"If we've exhausted everything you can offer me, then I'd like to see myself out, Mr. Thorne. It was a pleasure." I began, noticing him lean forward slightly. It seemed as if he wanted to say something more, but he remained silent and only nodded.

"I do have one request, though. I'd prefer the name I mentioned become a memory you conveniently can forget."

"He'll do just that," Damien added.

"Hugh understands better than most how to stay healthy, and few things are more dangerous than the wrong words shared aloud about people I care about." His tone was utterly uncompromising.

"There's no need for threats, Dam." Thorne pointed his walking stick toward my protector.

"I would never share it. I only wish I could do more to help."

"Then use your head and think about it after we leave."

"I will," he replied, looking directly at me, his mouth twisting into an unpleasant grimace.

"I'll file the paperwork for you. Do you need me to'escort' you to the gate downstairs?"

"No," I said.

"My other self will be here shortly to pick us up, doctor. Don't I also need to pay first?"

"Oh, no. That's covered by your mageblood."

"My what?"

"It's an insurance arrangement issued through the Guild. You have the highest grade possible. The USG will reimburse me for all associated costs."

"The highest possible? Why? Because I'm a Hexblade?" Both Damien and Thorne laughed.

"No, dear. Unfortunately, that's not the reason."

"Then who paid for me? Was it you, Dam?" He slowly shook his head.

"I can check that for you," Thorne said, reaching for his iPad. He typed something in, then looked back up at me a minute later.

"The name attached to the account is Phillip Penrose." He glanced between Damien and me while Dam sighed uneasily.

"Okay," I said slowly, wondering why Phillip would do something like that without ever mentioning it. It had to be a form of leverage he'd want to use against me later on. Nothing builds reciprocity more than a helping hand extended in a time of a greatest need. I was the wiser now however and knew well enough that with power over money what he actually bought cost him nothing and I'd treat it as such—a worthless gesture of a wicked man.

"You expected it to be your parents?" Thorne asked, pulling the attention of my own biological brain, while the threat analysis I started conducting was redirected to those that were still free.

"The thought crossed my mind."

"I wouldn't blame you for thinking that. I have no idea whether your parents had the magical spene in their souls, but it is a fair assumption, and as such they might have paid for mageblood for you." Thorne continued, tapping a finger of his left hand against the frame of the iPad he held.

"Spene?"

"It's a term we use to describe the smallest part of the spiritual network that builds the soul. Name is based on the spiritual gene."

"Souls are created from them?"

"Yes, at the moment of creation creators copy part of their spenes into the newly created soul, so when the baby is made not only do the genes mix, but the souls of the mother and father too. And children of mages are more likely to develop their own Domain than those coming from sleeper families. So the theory is that there is a spene for that, although it has not been discovered yet. We frankly do not yet have the technology to properly map them."

"What about craftsmen and artists, and generally people that create unliving things? We know they do have souls of their own, so are those also made from their spenes?"

"I… do not know that. Never really thought about it. I will ask around, so if we meet again I might have that answer for you."

"Thank you, doctor." I replied, when Alex appeared right next to me. He used the fact that the tattoos on me were infused with my Authority, were artistic creations and were within my to teleport instantly toward them, avoiding searching for some external anchor point altogether.

"We will be going now," my Weatherlight self said in slow cadence. He looked at me and I restricted myself from focusing on him, letting him be himself. He touched me and extended a hand toward Damien, who grabbed it steadily. Folded Arachnid #117 I hid in the corner. Ceiling was floor. Room was small. My nest behind the shelf. Out of reach. My eyes saw what giant did not want them to see. My skin felt vibration and I knew sound that it brought. I observed and send it away to the goddess that observed me.

Hide and watch. Do not be seen. Always within my mind. But I heard more now. Someone else was talking through the web that the goddess spun. Sophie. Peter. Danger. Strange voice, coarse and fearful. I do not send if away. My goddess might be scared too. I watch the giant below me, a female. She reaches for that device that she talks to and other can hear her and speaks about plans. She too weaves something, for her prey.

"This is getting out of control. Next time he appears, do whatever you can to stop him. We can't let that dissident ruin our plans." She crawled on her two long legs. She spoke. Her voice was risen, vibrations hitting my skin more than usual.

"Yes, we proceed as scheduled," Other voice spoke. Difficult to understand. My place too far away to feel sound well.

"Yes, Defenestration is a go." Alexandra May'Defenestration' doesn't exactly sound peaceful, does it? [That's why I brought it to your attention.] Fair enough. Damien shifted my position slightly in his arms. Still, it doesn't seem tied to our EoT situation. Not yet. We should watch and wait for now. [Agreed. All observed outposts continue operating normally. Even the ones Alex hit are slowly returning to standard procedure. Though there is one notable change. Mage presence has thinned considerably, almost as if the majority were reassigned elsewhere.]"I can confirm that." Alex's voice sliced through the quiet night, just like the blades he used, or the music he commanded.

"Confirm what?" Dam asked.

"We're discussing unusual activity inside Edge of Tomorrow outposts," Alex answered before I could. He leaned lazily against a nearby column.

"Most of the mages are vanishing off the grid. Reality knows where they're sending them." Damien answered only with a low grunt.

"You know I'm perfectly capable of carrying Alexa myself."

"That's unacceptable." Damien adjusted his hold on me instinctively.

"I'm here to make sure she..." He stopped, jaw tightening slightly before correcting himself.

"That you are safe. Comfortable too, as much as possible considering your condition. I'm not letting you carry yourself around."

"Dam," I asked quietly through my painted mouth, "why are you so good to me?" That made him pause. The question lingered there between us for a second.

"Is it because of your daughter?" I added softly. That stopped him completely. Alex went still as well. Even Liora who just darted in through the quiet blackness of the night, stopped and hovered nearby in unusual silence, his colorful glow dimming against the dark.

"No," Damien said at last. His voice came out low and rough. For a moment his eyes drifted away from me, toward the distant forest woven into the edges of my Domain. The crystalline trees swayed faintly beneath rainbow light spilling through the Weaver's Tree's webbed branches. Then his gaze returned to me. To the small body curled against his chest.

"It isn't some transfer of feelings, Alexa. Don't misunderstand me." His expression tightened briefly.

"I loved my daughter. Losing her nearly destroyed me. And when you appeared in our lives, after we learned your story..." He exhaled slowly.

"Yes. It became easy to care about you."

"A stray puppy situation?" Alex muttered, nudging a pebble across the stone floor with his boot.

"No," Dam answered quickly. Then a sigh escaped him.

"Maybe?" He shook his head faintly.

"You were alone, and there was a hole in our hearts, and it was shaped so eerily similar to your silhouette, so yes, we pushed you into it. But it was your own traits that made us grow attached to you. Your wicked sense of humor, your relentless pursuit of excellence, your passion, and your self-awareness. You understand that what you've been taught doesn't have to be the only way to live, and you adjust accordingly."

"I feared as much. You care for her and not me, my evil twin," I said, and Alex pointed at the Weaver's Tree. The movement caught Damien's attention. He turned to look, his eyes following the rivers of rainbow light trapped within the crystal bark and woven branches glowing against the night and the dark surface of the still lake below it.

"You were not listening, my dear," he replied and started walking toward my bedroom again.

"I care for you like you're my own because of many reasons, but at this point there could have been none at all and my stance would not change. That's what the love you give a child is. There are no conditions, no tests for you to pass so you can be worthy of it. Once awakened, it persists until I perish." We crossed into my Art Palace, where moonlight poured in through the translucent ceiling, washing the white walls in silver.

"Whether you change because your Shadow is influencing you or not doesn't matter much. You are one now."

"Dam," I whispered.

"Yes?" he answered.

"I love you too."