Support Team, page 15
part #6 of Damsel Series
Then, there was nothing wrong with not being materialistic. She’d been raised a certain way, as had her brother, but the truth was that he’d lived in hell for three, nearly four years, or even longer. She’d lived in splendor and had only recently even thought about doing anything different with her life.
She was starting to see how not worrying about things like that could have a certain charm.
~Nate? This is Hannah.~
There was a soft, slightly shocked feeling, then he spoke. Clearly out loud, instead of just thinking back at her.
~Hannah? Um, this is a lot clearer than earlier?~
~Yep. I’m pretty awesome. Anyway, we’re supposed to meet up at Dad’s for dinner. It’s mainly some kind of talk? He asked for Cynthia as well. So, you can finish your food there, or eat there? I don’t know if it’s an emergency or anything, but it sounded kind of important? It might not be. I don’t know.~
There was a groan, then speaking, which wasn’t meant for her at all.
~Hannah is using real telepathy now, apparently. I’m supposed to rush off to my parents, for some reason. Family meeting, I think? I don’t know if you’re invited or not?~
She didn’t pick up what Jaime was thinking, but could hear what Nate did, in a weird fashion.
~I won’t push in. I... I mean, are we serious enough to meet the parents? Do they even know that I exist?~
There was only a feeling then, which she thought was nodding. She wasn’t certain, on that score.
It also wasn’t her problem. On the good side, her parents weren’t homophobes or anything. They might want her brother to marry a woman, of course, since it was really hard for men to make babies, but if it became an issue, they might also be good with him just getting a surrogate pregnant.
The big issue would be if Nate wanted to have kids or not.
Hannah having kids might be nice, and even desired. Nate having them would be about the family name, however. It had been a subtle thing, but even as kids, that had been mentioned, more than once. Regularly, really.
A lot had happened since then.
~I can be there in twenty minutes?~
She nodded. He was a fast flier, after all. Enough to chase down a small jet plane, even.
~I can teleport you over now? In, call it a minute?~
There was a long pause, then an odd... Something. It was, she thought, something like happiness and pride, which she hadn’t expected from him at all.
~Standing by.~
She wasn’t dressed too casually, even if she’d been at home. There had been business calls, so she was in a business skirt, a nice blouse, a rust-colored blazer that matched and of course, running shoes and several weapons. Even just to sit in her living room.
Instead of moving to her brother first thing, she went to her dad’s mansion. Just ending up in the hallway, outside of the dining room. Then, a moment later, she snagged Nate and brought him to her. That part still hurt. It ached, like a bad migraine, for about twenty seconds, in fact. Then faded, completely. That part was expected, if not all that welcome. Still, they were both there, in good time.
Her brother gave her a small hug with one arm.
“Hey! That was cool. I need to hang out with you more. In Hawaii?”
She smiled at the banter, but actually nodded.
“You know, if you don’t mind going with a group, we should all do that? I mean, The Trainees, Jaime, and a few other people? We could set that up somewhere else, of course. I just...” She didn't really know what she was going to say, and didn't get to, since her father, step-mother and little sister rounded the corner, smiling when they saw them there.
Her father moved in and gave her a hug, then did the same with Nate.
“Thank you for coming, on such short notice. I... Well, this way? We can talk in the other room. I think it’s time to let you all in on the family secret. One of them, anyway.”
That sounded ominous. Hannah simply followed him into the large dining room. He took the head of the table, but instead of calling for the meal to be served, first thing, he gestured for them all to sit, and looked around the space. The red carpet was new, since the last time she’d been in it. The nice wooden chairs, and huge well-polished table were the same. The tablecloth was fresh, but that didn't mean new, even there.
Her dad got up, his lean, almost hard seeming, body wasn’t stressed by it. He moved in a smoother fashion than she would have expected him to, really. Like a lot of the people with powers that she knew.
That thought actually got her to sit up. It wasn’t what he normally did. Uncertain about what was going on, she actually reached out and tried to read his mind. What she found, of course, was just her dad. Except that, after he moved to the side of the room, picking up a small crystal ornament, a thing about the size of both Hannah’s fists, put together, he simply turned, nodded at her, and then put the small bird statue on the red tablecloth.
Instead of speaking he stepped back, and looked at the glass figure. Staring, hard. Hannah felt what was going on before it started to move, so didn’t jump. The pattern, seeming almost silver to her, flowing from him, to the glass, and then, subtly, shifting part of the information on the tiniest level.
Then, it slid, moving about four feet away from him, in a straight line.
Everyone else seemed... Stoney. Even Karen didn't speak. Hannah cleared her throat.
“So... I’m not just an incredibly talented normal person?”
Her father smiled, just a little.
“Well, you’ve had a bit of a head start? Everyone in our family has this power. Rarely in a strong enough way to allow easy teleportation or as many powers as you’ve shown. Generally, it’s precognitive or telepathic in expression, but everyone has something. Which means that all of you kids have this basic gift.”
The information was, actually, nice to hear. She’d wondered for a while if she was possessed by a demon, since otherwise there was no logical source for her abilities. Now she had a rope to hold on to.
One that probably wouldn’t mean that much. Not for her.
She looked at Nate, then Cynthia.
“So, no excuses not to work on the new psychic program with Al and Aliza. Learning to block mental take over?”
They’d caught wind of the idea, but her dad let his eyebrows go up.
“There are classes for that? I should get in on that, too, if it ever goes public.”
She could see that being totally valid. Especially since the man probably had the basic talent to be good at that kind of thing, apparently.
Shrugging, she looked at Karen. Leaving anyone out just then seemed like a horrible plan, after all.
“You, too. My understanding is that you won’t need a lot of psychic power for this to work. Possibly not any. Though, I mean, I don’t know if you have that or not? We should get you tested. Most people have something that way.”
Everyone gave her a funny look, but no one shouted at her that Karen was mentally dead or anything. It wouldn’t be true, even though she might not have a family gift to use for that kind of thing. That Hannah did... Well, it made sense, but it really wasn’t what she’d thought was happening. Her hard work had still done the job, but once again, she’d been born with a leg up, that she’d never even known about.
It didn’t take away from her work and effort, but it did allow the whole thing to make more sense. How, she, the ditzy, tiny and not that good looking heiress could move things with her mind and teleport. Not because of hundreds, maybe thousands of hours spent working on it, but just because, once again, she’d been born lucky.
Not a thing she’d really earned. For a moment she had to concentrate very hard, in order to not let that show on her face.
Still, feeling a little bitter about the whole thing, since she’d thought that her new abilities had actually all been her, she didn’t let it show. When anger came over that part of things, she shut it down, and forced herself to relax. It was petty of her to think that. Regardless, she wasn’t going to let herself go down that road too far. She was a new Hannah. Not a victim. The only thing that had changed was that she now understood reality a little better.
Her dad spoke again.
“There’s a problem in the world right now. Obviously. That won’t be news to any of you. Recently, some of our relatives have contacted me, so that we could share information. That’s what I was doing, leaving in the middle of the night, Honey. Not having an affair. I wish it was just that. It would be easier to deal with. There is a great, evil, force, attempting to destroy the entire world. All human life. We, as a group, have agreed to attempt to stop them. I know, the ridiculously wealthy not wanting to die... Hardly a great shock. Still, we, some of us, have been working into the inside of this group. They call themselves Omega.”
Nathanial snorted.
“That’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?”
Her father gave his son a brief nod. A single movement of the head.
“Rather. We have some names, but not much more than that. We’re presuming that the ones we can identify are mainly low-level participants.” He shrugged. “No one that we know is on the list. At least, that I know of. I can show what I have to you all?”
Hannah nodded. She knew about a hundred people who would love to hear even the little that she’d just learned. If it was real.
“Can we get that tonight? I have friends who might want to learn about it. You said we have people on the inside? We... Have to go carefully. Just, even if it might seem odd to some of them, we have more people in on this than it seems like. Mom, for instance.” She glanced at Karen. “Other mom. You, too?”
She wasn’t going to presume anything at that point.
Karen, instead of acting scared or reserved, or even helpless, went still.
“Ah... I...” She looked at everyone there, nodded and then swallowed, rather firmly. “Okay, no one freak out? I’m... Yeah. I’ll just show you.”
Then, naturally, she changed shape. From Karen, her step mother of nearly twenty years, into... Her mom. Marina Seres.
Everyone stared, and her father nearly seemed panicked.
“What did you do to Karen. Also, how?” He waved at his wife. There were no sputtering noises, but his mouth moved like he was giving that one a good effort.
Hannah simply called out, with her mind.
~Al? Um, help? Emergency! ~
There was a pause, but after about fifteen seconds, the boy’s voice was inside of her mind.
~Hannah, this is her. Your mother. She’s also in her home by the ocean, right now. This one is from the future.~
“Got it, Al. Thanks. Okay, this really is mom. From the future. So, time travelers are all over this thing? Now, you were always here for us? You didn’t kill Karen and hide the body or anything?”
Her mother was, currently, a blonde. That was, like with Hannah and Nate, her natural hair color. Currently, the version of her that Hannah figured was her younger self, was a brunette. Out of a bottle, to hide who she was, being basically a super villain. That or a revolutionary. One of those two things.
Her mother smiled at her.
“Always. For all of you. All of you.” That last one was spoken to Charles. Her husband. The one whom had a few hundred million taken by her, as she’d run away. Which had really happened, but within a very few years, Karen had come into his life. All of their lives.
Thinking about what that meant, Hannah just sat for a moment. Breathing.
Not doing much more than that at all.
Chapter ten
The next few minutes, sitting at her family dinner table, as Hannah had done often over nearly two decades of her life, went a lot differently than she would have thought things would have given the bomb that had just been dropped. For instance, while it was clear that several of the others, all of them other than her mother, were baffled, no one jumped up to fight or started screaming. Which was a good sign in her book. Especially since, to her way of thinking, they probably didn’t have time for major family drama at the moment.
Not if they were about to be given a list of names that might just allow the good guys to break open what was happening to the world. The information on the plan, if it was real at all, was so different to her way of thinking that she was, Hannah had to admit, if only to herself, shock inducing. The destruction of all humanity. That didn’t leave a lot of room for anything else. If asked, she would have thought it would be a power grab, or even an attempt to reduce the population. A lot of the very rich and powerful people she’d met had spoken about that kind of thing. Even when drunk.
In short, they were true believers that the little people needed to die, in order for the rich and worthy to survive, long term. None of them had done more than talk, though, and even then, it was clear that they were planning to survive the whole thing, personally.
This sounded different than that.
A plan that would, if it succeeded, end in the death of everyone. After a moment, she spoke, probably being weird and sounding strange to everyone there, when she did it. After all, Karen was her mother. Marina Seres. Which, if you didn’t know that she’d been a shape shifter the whole time, might be bizarre to most.
Still, she kind of had other things in mind at the moment.
“Wait. So, if you managed to come back in time, then that means the future exists?”
Oddly, it was Cynthia, the geeky girl who actually bothered to read books, who shook her head, almost instantly.
“No... It probably means that this isn’t the same person at all. Um, from a different timeline or even reality? Those are pretty much the same thing. We aren’t certain it works that way.”
Karen, still wearing the wrong face, grinned at her younger daughter.
“Exactly. I don’t know what will happen in your future here. This is a different reality scheme for me. Where I came from, you all died, except for Hannah. There were a few of us left. Mainly immortals. About a hundred thousand or so, over all. You weren’t one of them there, Nate, even if it’s clear you are here. You as well, Cynthia. Anyway, one of them had the power to travel in time, so brought me back. I always knew that this wasn’t the same timeline, of course. There was no Karen de Peyser at all in that one, and no Cynthia de Peyser, of course.”
Feeling slow, Hannah nodded.
“Right. Because if you weren’t Karen, then no little sis. Only... She has brown hair?” A rounder face as well. Far more oval, and a bigger bustline.”
No one else got what she was talking about, except for her mother, who nodded.
“Sure. You know that I’m a shape changer...” That was a question, and everyone looked at her, as if that were impossible. Then, she’d been kept out of the loop on a lot of things in life. Apparently, they all had.
“Yes. I mean, I just worked that out, inside the last few weeks, and it was only confirmed yesterday, but yeah, I know. Um... Dorothy?”
That one was a long shot, if this woman wasn’t from the same basic reality that her real mom was. Still, it sounded like there might be some overlap.
Karen, looking very wrong in the moment, nodded.
“Patty is here already, then? That happened in my history, as well.” Then, she stopped and looked at everyone else. “When I was about ten, I was attacked. Savagely. By what I can only describe as Civil War zombies. They killed me, which wasn’t an easy feat to pull off. I was born with the capacity to become immortal. That takes time to grow in, about a hundred years for the full effect, but at ten I was much harder to remove than a normal child. Stronger, faster and with the ability to change shape, which pretty much means nearly instant healing. It’s a hard combination to beat. Only, I wasn’t an adult and didn’t have all my powers fully yet, so I died.”
She sucked in a huge breath, as if retelling the story was hard for her. It could be. Hannah didn’t love telling people about parts of her own life, and she’d never been hit even half as hard as that. Dying. It was kind of a big thing, even over a hundred years later.
Marina went on.
“I was off, near the woods, by the small stream, playing with dolls. With my twin sister, Larina, and my friend from down the road, Patty. She... She was a normal girl. Regular, I think would be a better way of saying it. Not normal, but she didn't have any powers. Not back then. Anyway, when I was being attacked, and the twenty or so undead soldiers only came for me, she got Larina to run for help. Then she picked up a rock and fought.”
Everyone in the room just sat, seeming odd, as if they didn't understand what was being said. Only, Hannah had heard the tale before. At least a different version of something similar. So she waited as well.
“You have to understand... This was about nineteen-hundred. We had people with powers, who lived more or less in secret. Some even helped people, from time to time. That event though, was probably the first time in history that someone did what Patty managed. She didn’t have special skills, or powers, but she willed herself to go on. Even as she was injured doing it. Knocked out, broken. Bitten. Dying even as she rose, again and again. I wasn’t able to help her, or even see it happening, I only heard about it later. After I was brought back. I guess my parents got there, after a minute or two. When I was already dead. They... handled things.”
There was a nervous slapping of the table then, even though no one was acting as if the story was unbelievable at all.
“I know that most people would miss this, but that one event changed the course of the entire world. Not just for me, or my father and mother, either. Patty was the start, the first, of what would become the superhero later. Not some soldier with an iron will. Not a demi-god who could control reality with a thought. A little girl, who had tried against all logic and reason to protect her friend, even if it meant dying. Everything that we know about that kind of thing started right there, in a field, next to the trees. I... You all know about June? About Lewis?”
Hannah had to speak, but everyone else shook their heads.
“June Seres is our grandmother, and yes, I think that we’ve all met her. Liberty?” She said that to Cynthia, directly.
