The Paths Not Taken
Phoenix Rising (Alternate scenes . . . muddled. Very muddled. If you know the ep well, you'll do ok.)
//Private thoughts or mental argument - when one person is trying to decide something.//
*//Thoughts broadcast to/from (another) telepath.//*
~Emphasis marks~
"Translated words from another language."
~~~~ Scene change - small (or POV change)
******** Scene change - large (or POV change)
~~~~
//We are no longer what we were. We are what we have become. What YOU made us.//
Byron was dead. He wasn't the only one.
Susan Ivanova was watching the worst day of her life ending, staring at the wall in her office. 3 days after the 60th day, just past 23 hundred.
Byron was dead.
Marcus was dead.
//Ashes to ashes, dust to dust . . . my life is screwed. We are what we have become. I can't mourn for him. I can't let the others know I'm a telepath. Especially since some of the bloodhounds are still here, waiting to be shuttled back.// Their prey had already left.
//They killed Marcus. And I let them leave?// She still couldn't quite believe it.
It had been so easy for just a little while this afternoon . . .
********
60th day, 6 hundred hours. She'd watched from C&C as a Psi Corps Transport came through the jumpgate. //Right on time.// Enough room to hold over a hundred prisoners. More than the original 52, more than the 23 who'd come afterward and had to register as teeps to be allowed in. They didn't know yet how many ~had~ been here. More than half had fled. New 'legal' identicards to match new names and histories. Over 2 dozen had approached Delenn, in ones, two's and small groups, and had gone to Minbar to see if they could pass the testing needed to become a ranger. Over a hundred more had gone to alien colonies, continuing the education needed in scouting, planetary exploration, geologic surveys, xenobiology, and all the other skills needed to find their new home. The rogues might not want to have anything to do with technology, but they knew better than to expect someone to find their home for them.
But the Corps transport still had plenty of room for all the remaining rogues. For Byron. For Lyta, if they found out about her pregnancy and claimed 'the right of the fetus to protection'. They had room for Susan.
"Lt. Commander." she said sharply.
"Sir?" Corwin asked.
She took off her hip holster, giving it to him. "Put this on. If even one of those sons-of-bitches comes within 200 feet of me, regardless of whether or not they seem to have line-of-slight, you are under express orders to blow their brains out." She gave the semi-surprised Corwin an extra cap of ammo. "I learned a great deal of information on the rogues, the underground railway, and what has already been done for them earning their freedom. If that information is learned by the Corps, literally hundreds will die. Your orders are to shoot without hesitation, is that clear?"
"Yes, Sir," he replied crisply.
Susan turned back to watching the first Psi shuttle dock. The weight of the PPG in her ankle holster was very reassuring. A final measure, to prevent her own possible capture. Lyta wasn't around to jam them this time. Because Susan had paniced over her 'accident'. //Byron's accident. Lyta had probably fled to the sanctuary that very morning.// Susan didn't know whether Lyta's being there when they sealed themselves up almost a week ago was accidental or deliberate, but Susan did hope the morning sickness wasn't affecting her. Lyta couldn't have stayed willingly, she knew. Or at least she'd said so, out loud. The cutting in after the teeps wasn't doing much - the welders kept freaking. Sometimes Susan would circle around the sanctuary, scanning. She couldn't sense Lyta. A few others at times, but metal barriers and the majority of the teeps keeping to the center (not enough air to inhabit all the rooms) had combined to make her limited 'talent' all but useless. The only clear answer she had gotten was a telepathic *//Go away, earthFORCE.//*
But any minute now, Bester and dozens of bloodhounds would be arriving. Susan had every intention of avoiding them. When she couldn't hide in C&C, she'd be in her office or quarters. Blue sector was posted off-limits to the bloodhounds. If a rogue ran there, they had to turn the hunt over to security. As for any travelling she had to do in between . . . she had a few aces up her sleeve. She'd had them started just after Byron had holed up her last 'bodyguard'. The first one should be waiting just outside the restricted corridors by now. A little minbari sculptor's clan boy, one she'd taken under her wing for English lessons after a not-so-minor incident where he'd unwittingly repeated a phrase children were not supposed to know. That part was quite true, but what all but a select few didn't know was that he was a telepath, who'd recently learned how to jam even a P-12 from entering a single person's mind. The Captain's mind in particular.
She hated to pass the buck to Zack and his security teams, but he wasn't one to argue when she'd pulled rank. She just prayed Bester didn't scan Zack, find out she was a rogue herself that way. He'd assured her Bester would stay out of his brain. She'd asked how. He'd replied, not now, you've just eaten. It'll work. Trust me.
She'd decided to trust him. //Not that I had a choice in the matter.//
********
63rd Day, early afternoon.
The blood had started to run. Just a stream, but the faint roaring in Zack's subconscious told him there was a flash flood coming.
Two bodies, not counting the bloodhound . . . how many more would be added? Zack leaned tiredly against the wall. //I hate this part. Everything else, I've learned to handle. But not this.// He'd just come from telling the sister she was now an only child. Shot, on duty, by a few of the rogues who'd gotten out. Nasty way to confirm they weren't all holed away. What had they done during the past week while running around loose? How many more of his troops would end up dead, because of the teeps. He still had to go inform the welder's family. The widow. Their 7 year old baby. //I hate this part.//
The one brief flash he'd seen of one of them confirmed something. A few details he'd picked up in the past few weeks. A name. Thomas. A face. Worn. Long curly brown hair in a thick mane. An expression. Ferocious desperation, of the worst kind.
A face . . . a familiar face.
~~~~
The last two children to leave. Their mother had agreed to let them be smuggled away only after news of a safe landing on Minbar for the first group was confirmed. Through red sector, using timing and circutious routes to avoid being spotted by the security cameras. Lyta cradled a drugged 18-month old teep in one arm, a confused but quiet 7-month-old latent in the other as Zack led them towards the docking bays, a route he'd taken too often.~~~~Not often enough. Lyta was trying not to cry . . . there were 3 babies left. Their parents had refused to part with them, safe passage guaranteed or not. They'd refused to be separated, letting the fact the Corps would soon force them apart not derail the immediate concern for staying together.
The routine had become familiar. Hell, it was probably the same as what Garibaldi had been doing the year before, only this was different. This was about life, the preservation of. Keeping children - babies! - out of the Corps' clutches. Zack had been startled to a halt when he'd rounded a corner and nearly walked into him.
Zack didn't recognise him, or the little girl beside him, and the man gave no sign of acknowledging Zack. He drew in a shaky breath and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, urging her forward a step, towards Zack and Lyta. The girl was weeping, knuckles white around a homemade rag doll. She carried nothing else.
"Thomas?" Lyta had asked in a quiet plea, having also been halted mid-stride.
"Take her. Go. Now. Please!" The man kept his hand on her shoulder, focused his eyes on her for a few seconds, and the girl nodded.
Lyta passed the 7-month old to Zack, offering her hand to the trembling child, who hesitantly took the step forward and put her fingers into Lyta's. They continued walking past Thomas, who never met the other adult's eyes. His daughter didn't look back.
A few corridors later, just at the end before passing through a doorway only he could access, two minbari rangers waited. As Zack gave the youngest charges to them, his hand touched Lyta's for a second, and he could hear the girl through her.
*//Daddy loves me. None of this is my fault. I couldn't have changed things. Daddy loves me. None of this-//*
The girl was clinging onto his last message, knowing she couldn't see her father again for a long while. If ever.
Zack's heart re-broke in that instant, as he passed custody to the rangers and carded them through. No record. No memory. Lyta kissed all three youngsters on their foreheads, then followed Zack without a word, back around the long, legal way to customs, and they watched the info screens. 'Minbari Shuttle' and a string of numbers departed without incident, and the 'enroute' sign changed to 'docked' a few minutes afterwards. The Warship and its convoy was set to depart in a few more hours. Zack had left a command with the computer to alert him when they jumped.
His quarters were closer than Lyta's were. She managed to hold herself together until the door closed behind them. He held her, shaking and crying, on the couch, letting her de-stress after the hectic past two weeks.
"We got almost all of them, Lyta." He whispered a consolation. "And there's still a chance the last two will be allowed in the next few days. We even got some of the pregnant mothers. We did ok. YOU did ok."
"I want to do more, but I don't know how. I have to do more. I have to . . ." Her voice faded away.
"Lie down, angel. I've got time to hold you. When the convoy jumps, I'll know, you'll know they're safe. Lie down, try to rest. I know you did nothing but pace the past few nights, you need to rest." He urged her to try to relax, letting her curl up on his sofa, her head cradled in his lab, his hand resting on her shoulder.
"Thank you, Zack, I'll never be able to thank you enough."
"Be easy, Lyta. I love you too much to not have helped." He stroked his index finger along the edge of her ear as she stared out at the wall. "Want me to put on a vid, or something?"
She shook her head no. "Talk to me. About anything."
So he told her about some interesting times working on B5, before she'd returned, all the while remembering the man's face, his expression. He had been grieving, but determined that his daughter survive.
//At what cost did Thomas put the girl's life at? The cost was at three so far.// Zack was sure it would climb steeply before this was over.
He was more right than even he knew.
His link suddenly squealed an alarm at him. "Zack here, Have you found them?"
Gunfire could be heard through the man's words. Zack was already heading back towards the lift before the sentence was even fully out. The rogues had been pinned down in Medlab Two.
********
Faces. Familiar. Terrible.
Almost 3 hours had passed. The body count had added another 4 dead, 17 more injured. At least two of the injured guards were beyond recovery. The grim reaper already stood vigil by their beds, waiting none too patiently.
The nameless one had already claimed the man who had been laid out on the table before him.
Zack pulled the sheet over Thomas' face. //Costs . . . inflation's everywhere,// he thought without even a trace of humor.
Zack's week had been downright miserable. Worrying about Lyta, the rogues, whether or not any of the teeps had gotten out before the sealing, petty day-to-day concerns, trying to figure out a way to keep Bester out of his brain, and worrying about Lyta.
Only the Bester part had been solved . . . the ugly little Psi Cop didn't seem to be a "man's man", and since Zack had pictured Byron doing the sodomizing . . . Bester had vacated the security office within seconds, choosing to let Zack's subordinates carry messages instead from that point on. A bittersweet victory. //Ugh, it was disgusting to keep that block up! At least it had worked.//
The rogues would be leaving their sanctuary about now. He didn't really want to know. Pass into holding for a few hours, then be shuttled off to various Alliance outposts. Scattered and separated, but out of Corps reach. Byron and the violent group - well - those that still lived - would be kept basically together, under tight control. A minbari penal colony. Not forever, but it was a secured location and a damn sight better than being killed by the Corps. Zack offered up another silent prayer that Lyta was a) NOT pregnant, and b) didn't go off with Byron's gang. If choice 'a' did apply, he didn't know what he would do. Zack just hoped that she wasn't. A seizure from growing abilities, however scary that might be, he could still wrap his brain around. The idea of Lyta cheating on him was harder. He berated himself while going from bed to bed, checking on his troops, reassuring them as to their health and cracking old, well-used jokes with them. He wasn't on the clock, he could afford to take time. The visits to the injured guards helped keep his brain from totally fixating on the Lyta problem. It wasn't a complete cure.
//It's not like you're her husband, fiance, boyfriend or a one-night stand! She can't cheat on you if you're not a couple! Never mind the rumors going around, ok, so she's been spotted leaving my quarters a few mornings, and I ran into a few mill-grinders myself those two nights I was at her room. All I did was hold her! It wasn't enough, it was too much, it . . . I don't know what it was. It was a chance to help her, and I don't regret it at all. She felt good sleeping next to me! But why? It probably wasn't just to help Tyler and his rather extended family. The kids were sneaked on, they could have been sneaked off without my help. But this way they were assured safety. All but two. Well, the last pair will probably be safe, anyway . . . but the Corps will get their picture, age, ability level, DNA, everything. And if any of the mothers who had been nursing are caught while they still had evidence of lactating, the Psi Cops would know ~something~ was up. But that doesn't answer the question. Why would Lyta choose me if she was doing it with Byron? Maybe she was jealous of his other lovers. Maybe she had others to go to, but when to me when they were busy. I DON'T KNOW! Maybe I'm overreacting. I can't make any decisions until I talk to her. Find out for sure what the hell is going on!//
His link suddenly activated.
~~~~
30 minutes later . . .
Lyta Alexander was screaming.
Perhaps it was because the universe pitied her, that she screamed. Perhaps it was because she somehow knew no one could hear her. But the most likely cause was her soul's very essence was destroyed beyond repair.
Her link with Byron had been severed, but not by her choice. He'd killed himself, and over half-a-dozen others. They nearly took her with them, physically. Ivanova had hauled her out, not even getting around the corner before Lyta passed out and had to be dragged out of the blast zone. They had taken her with them emotionally, mentally, telepathically.
Lyta Alexander, currently unconscious and on a stretcher heading full speed back to medlab - not medlab two, which was frantically undergoing repairs - had had just undergone a mindshred that would have killed anyone rated P12 or under, and her erratic vital signs were giving the doctors a paniced case of confusion. Perhaps it was a blessing she was stronger than a P12, because it enabled her to survive. Perhaps it was a curse, for the same reason.
Lyta didn't consider any of this. Fever, exhaustion, and having been unable to eat for the past two days had left her physical state in shambles. She just screamed inside the walls of her mind, a lingering state from when she had tried too late to sever the connection with Byron, before the explosion took him.
She had felt him die. She had felt all the others die, from PPG hits, from the fireball that had crisped her skin and seared right through her, the pain from the PPG blast to her - Byron's? - arm had been horrible enough, but to feel herself as so many lives being blasted into the white tunnel that only went away . . . she hadn't made it back.
Not completely.
What was left of her, screamed.
Silently.
She was aware of nothing else.
~~~~
Zack Allan stood on the other side of the window, not hearing a single word Dr. Franklin said to him before giving up and moving on to more responsive patients. Zack just stared at her twitching body. Lyta seemed to be in a coma. Dehydrated, malnourished, in shock, thankfully free of infection, but still not breathing on her own yet. Machines moved her lungs for her, beeping complaints as her dry heaves interfered with their job. The triple injection had almost an hour left to take full effect. Hobbs had slipped it in with the other drugs, and set the monitors to not show her 'condition'. The Psi Cops were still around. Bester looked to be in a trance. The bloodhounds were screaming bloody hell - or had been, until Zack's second had decked one out cold and ordered the rest to house arrest on their shuttles to prevent further interference.
Lyta might wake up when the drugs kicked in. She might never come out of her bizarre coma. If she had been scanning or was being scanned when the rogues self-immolated . . . the few recorded cases of deathbed scans had showed the teeps were never the same. Many died with the victim. Many never woke up. The Corp's records weren't exactly available through normal channels, but Zack had friends, favors, and the knowledge of who would hack what how easily.
Zack knew his way around computers, as well. Medlab 1 was full of computers. The staff, thinking they knew the reason he watched over her, left him alone. They had enough problems, and they couldn't do any more for Lyta anyway.
The firefight had shorted a lot of equipment. Some of the injured had died in the delay. Some systems had crashed, some files were lost, and the two dozen cryotubes in a restricted back room had gone off-line. Not all were full. Altered telepaths had filled most, and the ones who lived through the shutdown were now frantically being moved to functional cryotubes elsewhere. There was just enough to spare for them. But they were still one short, it's occupant ignored when they saw he was already dead and unaltered. They left him in the morgue, not having the time to spare to wonder why he'd been in a cryotube in the first place.
Zack was aware of none of those events. He just knew what the DNA scanner had told him, a report which was never printed, never recorded, never made official.
Earthforce kept a DNA profile of its members, for identification. Zack's was among them. He called it up, and requested the computer to check it with the one pulled from the patient's abdomen. He knew they wouldn't match.
They didn't.
With trembling fingers, he called up the DNA patterns taken from the charred corpses, still warm in the morgue. DNA would be the only way to identify who was who in the mess. One by one, the computer ran a crosscheck. It took less than two minutes for the first match to come in, then two more in fast succession.
An unknown male, non earth-force.
And two fetuses, too young for their mothers to have been noticeably pregnant, especially with the BBQ in brown sector. Zack deleted the connections to Lyta, leaving just the dead links.
Byron. It had to be.
Lyta carried Byron's child.
The rage Zack had suppressed for so many days began to bubble unrestrained to the surface.
He didn't quite notice that Lyta's spasms had gradually slowed to a normal rest. He didn't notice, looking right through her into his own private little hell, that her brainwaves had returned to semi-normal as she shattered the last of her fugue and a nurse did a fast once-over, confirming she would live before going back to her other duties.
Zack just watched until he noticed with a start that her eyes were fluttering open.
~~~~
It was not quite 18 hundred hours when she woke up to agony, and a blurry Zack standing over her.
She couldn't talk around the tube in the throat, and Zack wasn't touching her to contact him that way. All she could do was listen, begging without being heard for him to stop his slow, quiet tirade. She wanted to close her ears, to close her drugged mind. Not to hear the rage and jealousy and hatred that spewed forth from his mouth, but between not being able to move and the drugs in her weakened system, she could only receive the full force of his rage.
Paternal DNA testing. Drugs for morning sickness. Lies. Accusations. Speculation - raw, crude, hateful, furious. A check through medlab records for a nonexistent transfer, and the fact that none of the symbionts in medlab's storage tanks had been used or gone missing, so there was no way it had happened by any other means.
He left after a few endless minutes, telling the doctors to watch her very carefully while he got rid of the bloodhounds.
He didn't acknowledge her struggle to get up as he left, the way she tried to force out the ventilation tube, her frantic attempts to talk before collapsing from O2 depravation. He just left her.
Lyta was too upset to cry.
It had gotten a little too late for explanations.
We are no longer what we were. We are what we have become . . .
********
Packing had only taken a few hours, as Susan tried to put out of her mind the horrible scene she'd witnessed, his last words. It had only strengthened her resolve to leave . . . if they'd do THAT to prevent going back to the Psi Corps, then she knew even more so now that she couldn't let herself be caught. She packed only the bare essentials, what would fit in a single bag. A few uniforms, undergarments, toiletries. The rest of her personal stuff she packed up for storage, to be retrieved by lackies whenever she got around to sending them.
Captain Susan Ivanova, a few hours before the incident, had received a call on the Gold channels, right from earthdome. The Warlock's reconfiguration was complete, and artificial gravity was working. The ship would be launched inside of 2 weeks. Was she still interested? They knew she was cleaning up the last bits of that 'unfortunate telepath business', but afterwards, if she still wanted command of the new ship, it was hers. They just had to hear back, either way.
She had agreed. She just had to oversee the prisoner's exodus to the Minbari transport that would take them to the penal colony, then she could be on her way right afterwards.
Her departure had been delayed slightly, but the cause had only hastened her determination to leave this place, all of its memories. She was in her office, had alerted the command staff as to her decision (they had been expecting it, but had been hoping she'd stay), and left a message for Delenn to pry the details about the replacement out of her husband. It was better if she was forewarned. Hell, Delenn and Lochley might even get along . . . time would tell, but Ivanova wasn't sticking around long enough to find out for herself.
Susan had been debating on whether or not to talk to Lyta before leaving, but decided to make it a clean break, to protect both of them. Zack would be a good daddy, she figured. The message from Medlab had showed Lyta had regained consciousness, but had been extremely traumatized, and they couldn't risk doing a scan because the trauma was certainly due to telepathic interference, at least in part. The expression on Lyta's face that all the guards had seen clearly showed the Byron was doing ~something~ telepathically to her en route to his demise, and from the condition medlab said - no evidence of food or water ingested in the past 2 days - she wasn't a willing victim. But whether she couldn't visit because of Lyta's illness or because of Susan's fear of being linked to the teeps, Susan wasn't about to go see her.
Ivanova's mood wasn't a good one. She was still in shock over Byron's dramatic finish.
Her comm screen suddenly leaped to life, Dr. Franklin's face on it. "Hey, Steven, can't come in person to say bye? I leave at midnight, that's just over an hour away," she tried to joke.
His grim expression didn't falter. "Captain . . . there was a problem in Medlab two . . . you weren't aware of - hell, I didn't find out until a few seconds ago, I had to check. You - you aren't going to like this. It's not their fault, they didn't know-"
"Who didn't know what?" She interrupted impatiently.
"My staff . . . they . . . didn't know - they were so busy trying to move the altered telepaths who'd survived the Cryosystem crashing back into safe freezers before the teepsicles could wake up and cause more havoc, they - didn't have time to check why Marcus had been in cryosleep."
Susan's face lost all pretense of disinterest. "What are you saying, Steven? The report I got said there was just enough freezers left intact for - oh god. Because he was already dead? Did they . . ." Her question trailed off.
"He - he'd started the initial decomposition before I could find him . . . Susan . . . It will be days before even one of the cryotubes is repaired, but by then . . . we can't help him, Susan, he's gone. I'm sorry, but there's nothing we c-"
She cut the connection, sitting there in the dark. //No . . . //
//We are what have we become.//
~~~~
The corridors to the customs bay were pretty much deserted, this time of night. The only ship leaving in the next few hours was a single medium-sized transport, earthforce, and bound for the Proxima System, where the shipyards were. She carried only the one bag, and a broken heart. The only people she saw were in the Zocalo as she crossed it, the last customers buying the last items before the vendors closed up for the night. She was almost across and half-up a small flight of stairs when she saw them, and froze, hidden by shadows.
A doctor she didn't know was walking beside Lyta, a few dozen feet away. Susan could hear the doctor chastising her patient. " . . . getting out of bed when you could barely stand on your own, nevermind getting dressed and going to customs. The teeps were in shock, and surrounded by guards. They were not about to get violent again, not matter what you might have said to them to calm them down. Even with Bester there. Not that you'd let me in the room anyway. Hey. Why'd you stop?"
Lyta, apparently still drugged, had halted her slow walk to a stop and stared right at the spot that Ivanova hid.
*//I didn't know that was going to happen!//* She broadcast frantically to Lyta.
Lyta, her face still vacant of any expression, just turned away without any sign that Susan even existed. Her hand moved from her side to cover her belly as she began to walk again.
"Well," the doctor kept up his mindless chatter as they rounded a corner and disappeared, "at least the teeps are all gone, you can't be hurt by them now. Locking you up and everything . . ."
Ivanova stood there for a few seconds, worrying, then bit her lip and hurried for the shuttle. //What have I become?//
********