Revolution #9

Rude Awakening

"Donna, honey?"

The hand caressing her cheek was soft and tender. She opened her eyes, bleary and stiff from sleeping on a chair. How long had she slept? What time was it? The place was full of skylights that let in natural light and helped keep it warm. Judging by the sun, it should be almost noon.

She saw her fiancée, Blair, squating by the side of the chair and delicately calling her back from sleep to another difficult day, with a hard task right in front of her. "Wake up, baby," he said. "Adam, Shal and Emma will be here in a half an hour to wake Angela up. He said he needed you."

Donna nodded, caressed Blair's face, stood up and took his hand, heading to her own room to clean and change.

&&&

Adam watched as Emma and Shalimar pulled Angela's limp body up and propped it on pillows in a half sitting position. He, then, sat down at the bird woman's right and motioned Donna to sit by her left. Shalimar and Emma sat facing them, each on either side of the bed. Adam wrapped his left arm around the sleeping woman's shoulders and covered her eyes with his right hand, holding tightly. He nodded to Emma and the young psionic looked at him, formed a mind blast and shot it directly to the sleeping woman's forehead. She stirred and started moving slightly, as she recovered consciousness.

Angela tried to stretch and sit up on the bed, and she was startled by the tight grip that held her almost imobile. "What? What is it..." Instinctively, she grabbed the wrist holding her face and tried to pry it loose, but it only held her more firmly. "Easy, easy. It's me, take it easy." The voice was unmistakable. Releasing his wrist, she touched the hand over her eyes with the tip of her taloned fingers. The hand felt right, but she was confused. What was that all about? "Adam? Is this your idea of a joke? Let me go!"

His grip was firm, but gentle. "Just relax, Angela."

"What's going on?" she asked and moved her left hand, lightly brushing it against Donna's arm. "Who else is here? What is it? Adam, please, you're scaring me."

Shalimar held Angela's right hand. "Relax, Tweety. I'm here, so are Emma and Donna," said the feral in a low, soothing voice.

"Why do I have the feeling that you've all gathered here to bring me very bad news?" asked the bird woman. "If you don't mind my asking, what face is Adam making right now?" Angela heard two breath intakes. "Shalimar? What face?"

The feral sighed, looked at her friends and saw Adam turn to the right, avoiding her eyes. "He's making the 'I hate myself' face, Tweety."

"Oh, damn..." The bird woman shook her head, still in Adam's grip and relaxed her shoulders a bit, groping with her left hand for Donna's.

Adam forced her head up a little, looked down at her and asked, "Angela, what's the last thing you remember?"

"What do you mean, the last thing? I don't understand." She was confused.

"The very last thing, dear, tell me."

Angela frowned under his hand. Dear? He never called her that! Adam wasn't one for displays of affection, no way. This was getting worse by the second. She bit her upper lip in a very characteristic way, reaching back with her mind to the last memories her foggy brain held. "Well... I..." she was thinking hard. "I was up on the building accross the parking lot. It was mayhem down there, all hell was breaking loose, I..." she stopped for a couple of seconds, remembering. "I didn't know who I should attack, who needed help, I..." she stopped again, her mouth working but no words coming out of it. "I..." Adam felt tears under his hand. "I hesitated. I'm so sorry, I..." He felt her eyes shutting down hard and a sob shake her shoulders.

"No, no, don't. That's OK, Angela, go on."

Angela's hand held Donna's more tightly as the memories flooded her mind. The bond that linked the bird feral and the multipsionic made one feel the emotions of the other and Donna felt Angela's embarrassment at her confusion and hesitation to attack. Angela went on, painfully. "I saw you, Adam, leap over Brennan and slam your feet against that dumb blonde punching the ground. I remember I smiled and thought 'Good, go for it.' And I took off to get some height so I could dive better." Angela's tale was getting momentum. "Then, I saw Tremayne grab your hand, smirk and start pouring his power into you. You glowed purple, Adam! The falcon's protective instinct to the falconer took me over and I screeched. I dove talons first directly to Tremayne, I wanted to rip that grin off his face and..." She stopped and drew a deep breath. "And that's when a 747 ran me over, or that was what it felt like. Something hit me very hard. Very hard." The Avian feral stopped again, this time thinking harder. Memories were getting sketchier. She covered Adam's hand with her own, dropped her head and shut her eyes tight. "After that, I... It's less than a memory, more like a nightmare. I remember your call, the whistle. I think I was in a cave... or... a hole in the ground, very dark. Then, just sounds... Then, nothing."

Adam swallowed hard. "Angela, listen to me. Something hit you, yes." He could feel her heart pounding. "The Salamander threw a ball of blue fire at you. It caught you in the face, a direct hit." She shuddered in his arms, and he held her even more firmly.

She was trembling, her heart seemed to leap inside her chest. "I should be dead, then. Why am I not dead?"

"Angela, he wasn't aiming to kill, only to damage." Adam swallowed hard again and hesitated. He seldom felt so at a loss for words as he did now. "And he did a lot of damage, dear. An awful lot of damage."

Angela stiffened, ordered her heart to stop its mad pounding. "You can take your hand off of my face. I won't open my eyes." Her voice was surprisingly steady. "Tell me what happened."

Adam dragged the news on. In the past, he had to inform parents of their children's mutations, many of them impossible to imagine, some of them as painful as the worse diseases. He had to inform mothers of difficult miscarriages, fathers of stillbirths, he had to give terrible news to sensitive people. Never had it been so difficult. Never had it hurt so much. "When we found you, Lux tried to heal your injuries," he wen on. "She healed the burns, the scarring, both inside and outside." He was biting his upper lip to keep his teeth from shattering. "But there was nothing she could do about your eyes. The Salamander..." he couldn't go on, but he had to. Slowly, he removed his hand from Angela's face and drew here head to his chest. He looked at the three women gathered around his niece. They came closer. He had to jump ahead. "Donna hacked into Sanctuary's system, downloaded Charles Marlowe's DNA's binary code and telepathically fed it to you, so you could grow new functioning eyes yourself." The bird woman gasped and buried her face in his chest. "Your stable genes rejected the code half way through the processing. I am so... so sorry..."

Angela thought she was screaming, but no piercing sound came out of her lips, only the moans of a weeping wounded animal were heard. Her shoulders shook, her chest heaved and her tears moistened her uncle's shirt. Still sobbing, she pushed him away from her and turned back to Donna Gryphon. She drew her knees up to ther chest and grabbed her sister's hand in hers. Donna felt the full impact of the panic the bird woman felt, the enormous fear of dark and enclosure, of the black pit her world had turned into. Emma was crying openly and Shal was trying her hardest not to give in to her pain. The three women surrounded Angela in a cocoon of warmth and support. Outside the circle, Adam stepped back, crossed his arms and tucked his chin on his chest, shutting his eyes and trying not to give in to emotion himself. The bird woman lifted her face in the direction she believed Donna's face was and drew courage from the bond she shared with her sister. She opened her milky white eyes to nothing, to emptiness, to black. Losing the last shread of control she had over her fear, the woman screamed, tearing at the hearts and souls of every person in Sanctuary, and they all clamped their hands over their ears, trying to shut off the wail of the torn bird.

rison. "Th�7wb��