Invisible Death

For a Limited Time Only

Four people were enough to fill the penthouse apartment on AR&D Medcare roof where Angela lived, almost a nest to a bird. The doctor Head of Staff had made the kitchen provide a meal to her guests, nothing fancy, but filling and hot, as all of them needed to recover their strength. Donna, now sleeping calmly, was left under Emilia's personal care, and Melissa Bloomenfeld was keeping an eye on the special patient, too. The young nurse had been ordered not to leave Donna alone for a moment and to report if she but stirred in her slumber.

Between spoons of thick vegetable soup, they talked. Emma and Lux had woken up from their fainting spell, and they needed to refuel. Angela noticed, happily, that Adam was eating for the first time in days without having to be threatened with forced feeding by his own niece. Physician, heal thyself indeed.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more, Adam." Lux pushed her bowl away.

"You did a lot, Lux, and I can't thank you enough," answered Adam.

"You know I've only bought her time." Lux looked away, at the city below. The overcast sky reminded her of her dream, and Lux's dreams were as good as her visions. Something was making the very fabric of the Universe come loose at the seams, and somehow, Lux knew Donna's fate was tied to the greater scheme of things. She might be the "one card", thought the Californian multipsionic, the one card that, when pulled away, made the whole house of cards crumble and fall. "Donna's organs are as compromised as before. If she is lucky, she will die in three months; if she isn't, maybe in six."

"In that time, we will find a way to heal her." Angela was filled with hope.

"No, you won't, Tweety Bird," shot Emma.

"What do you mean?"

"The power blast blowing up wasn't our doing, Angela," explained Lux. "It exploded when Donna pushed us out of her mind and body."

"Donna? Why would she do that?" The bird doctor couldn't understand.

"Because she doesn't want to heal." Emma was studying Psychology in college, and her psionic powers enabled her to jump much ahead of her class, landing her at a Ph.D. level of knowledge in record time. "I've studied Donna's medical records and psychological evaluation. And I read the confidential files the Phoenix Foundation had on their experiment, the one Donna was a volunteer." Emma pushed her own plate away. "They aimed at a psionic equivalent to Gabriel Ashlocke, that is, an artificial multipsionic, covering the whole spectrum of mental powers. But they knew about Ashlocke's lack of conscience. Adam," she said, "I'm firmly convinced Ashlocke was a sociopath from birth. Before you put him in stasis, he had already shown the three evidences of a psychopathic personality: bed wetting, fire play and cruelty to small animals. I believe powers or no powers, he would have grown into a serial killer, a criminal, a monster as so many others who are human, and I use the term loosely."

"That's possible," Adam agreed. "That would explain a lot, Emma. I tried to boost up his conscience medically, but I couldn't grow something out of nothing."

"Exactly!" exclaimed Emma. "Donna, on the other hand, was a moral person to begin with. She had a conscience, she had feelings, she empathized. She was a complete human being, and now I use the term properly. Therefore, already aware of the Ashlocke failure, the Phoenix Foundation didn't want to risk another problem. So, they added your 'conscience in a bottle' component, Adam, to their own mixture. Everybody knows the experiment was a failure, and Donna is the only surviving specimen. She survived because she had already the makings of a multipsionic and all the Phoenix did was boost up her innate powers. And they boosted up her conscience in the process. They gave her a capacity for guilt that can give you, Adam, a run for your money."