The Storm Inside

Chapter Twenty Five: Adderly

A/N: now most stuff is revealeddd

"I was never really dead," Mary said. "Or, I guess I was. I hit my head, and I blacked out. I saw lights, almost like my life flashing before me. It was scary. I think I might have been dead for a under a minute, but I'm not sure. When I woke up, I was alone. Well, not entirely. But I'll get to that later." Sophia and I sat down in front of the bars to listen, and she continued. "I thought they'd left me behind. Dove, and Kaiden. I realized later that they'd thought I was dead, but that was my first initial thought when I woke up. I saw the bodies on the pavement. I saw that my best friend was gone, but I'd seen those vines grab her right before I went unconscious. So I knew she'd left without me."

Mary pulled her knees up to her chest, looking more like a frightened girl than a woman. "Maeve had bled out by the time I woke up. But Rhode... she was still alive. I could hear the sounds she was making. I could hear her take her last breaths. And I couldn't... I couldn't save her."

"Didn't you ever tell her you were alive, when you figured out she hadn't left you for dead?" I asked, after a moment.

"I knew that the kids who'd escaped were being looked for," Mary said. "The majority of the group stuck together and laid low. A few lucky ones got adopted. A few died. Some were from health problems related to all the shit they did to us. Some mysteriously turned up dead, I'm sure the people looking for us had nothing to do with that." She laughed bitterly. "I must have a million unsent emails, but it wasn't safe to get in touch with anyone."

"What about Mirai, did you ever find her?" I asked.

"That'd the biggest mystery of them all," Mary said. "No trace of her. I think the doctors killed her. Or she went into hiding like me. Either one is plausible. Or maybe those pills killed her too."

"I don't think so," I said. "She never took them."

The woman's eyes widened in surprise. "What? How do you know that?"

"She told me," I replied.

"She told you?" Sophia asked, confused. "Damira, none of them should have been able to see you, you should just been watching from afar."

"None of them could, except for her," I said. "She knew. She knew why I was there, and she told me I had to keep going, I had to see what happened to them."

"Wow. That girl was mysterious all right. She always kinda freaked me out. Looked at me like she could see right through me," Mary said. "Anyway," she continued. "While I didn't reach out, I did keep tabs on the group, try and figure out what was happening. I watched from afar, but I was too scared to involve myself."

"What about Enzo Montgomery?" I asked. "The man who ran the whole business."

"He's part of a bigger story," she said. "He was the one who started the whole thing, built everything. But then, he realized that his little projects were failing. The energy inside us was too unstable. So he ordered the doctors to feed us pills while trying to figure out how to reverse what he'd done. Why he didn't just kill us, I don't know. But he had these kid interns working for him, basically gave them what they needed to start a new project, so they could do it again. I don't know if that ever happened."

"Thomas," Sophia said, looking over at me.

"It did happen," I told her. "That's how we have our powers. He continued the genetic mutation, but some of us were given this experimental serum when we were born, I was one of them. But we didn't get locked up in any hospital. We got to return to our families while he kept a close eye on us, for the most part."

"He killed my parents to get to me," Sophia murmured.

"I don't know about your guy, but Enzo's dead," Mary told us. "He was said to have died of natural causes, but everyone knows something was covered up. No autopsy. His funeral was private, with an closed casket, from what I've heard. I think some of the people from our group killed him. But that didn't stop people looking for us."

"Is that why you're here?" Sophia asked. "Because they found you?"

Mary nodded. "A few months ago. I was living out of the city, out in practically the middle of nowhere. But they found me anyway. And once again, I'm assumed to be dead."

"But then how come they haven't take Dove, or someone else?" I asked. "I mean, they're living openly."

"They were at first. But once the kids showed how dangerous they'd become with their powers, everyone kind of backed off, not wanting to end up like their boss."

"But they still went for you? That doesn't make sense," Sophia said.

"I didn't defend myself. I couldn't defend myself," Mary said with a sigh. "I don't have my powers. I haven't had them for a long time. Dying, even if it was for such a short time, I think that's what did it. Or at least, that's my theory. I don't know why else I woke up on that rooftop without the ability to manipulate the will of others. But I was no longer able to do it. I tried, sometimes I almost succeeded. But it was like I couldn't remember how to do it."

"So dying gets rid of your powers," I said slowly, thinking of Beatrix.

"Maybe. Like I said, it's a theory. I guess it depends on how you got them. Dying doesn't change your genes, but it could cleanse your system of the serum. For me, I think it's psychological. Maybe I'll be able to do it again someday, but I don't know if I want to."

"So where did got go, what did you do after you escaped the hospital?" Sophia asked.

"At first I stayed in the city," Mary said. "I tried to live. It was such a wonder. I mean, I was only fifteen, I couldn't really comprehend the danger I was in by staying there. But I wanted to explore. Mostly, I didn't want to cause stress on myself by moving out of the city until..." She sighed. "I was pregnant. And I wanted to wait until I'd had the baby to move. I figured it would be easier. And that was part of the reason I stayed away from the others. I didn't want to risk it now that I was carrying precious cargo."

"You had a baby?" I asked.

She nodded with a smile. "A little girl. In a hospital inside the city. I really didn't want to go to the hospital but I knew nothing about babies or giving birth and I was scared of what would happen if I didn't get a doctor's help. But I was also scared of doctors and hospitals, so it wasn't easy."

"They took her from me," Mary continued. "Right after. They said something was wrong, she wasn't breathing properly. She as breathing fine. I knew it. But I'd just given birth, and I didn't have the strength to even move. I was just a kid, I didn't have anyone to speak for me. When they brought her back to me, I knew something had been done. I knew I needed to leave, that we weren't safe."

"Where did you go?" Sophia asked.

"England, where I stayed until I started getting paranoid they'd found me again and changed countries again, back to here. I tried to put it all behind me, keep a low profile. I basically gave myself a new identity, picked up the name Adderly and pretended that I did in fact have parents, but they'd kicked me out for getting pregnant. And it worked, until now."