Note: This chapter contains a scene that might be a little disturbing. [PG-13]

Day Twelve ∞ Tuesday

THE DOZEN MEN EXITED THE ROOM just as quickly a few minutes later, and immediately the four men from earlier returned and got to work. A basin of water brought in. Equipment brought in. Selina recognized one piece as some sort of a generator on wheels. Her stiff legs were released from the highest rung of the chair and tugged painfully down into the cold water, then strapped again. Her arms were released next. Large porous sponges were submerged in the water and placed on the armrests, her arms tied palm down on them.

Then the bucket came in again, and although she knew what was in store, her body was already chilled and tense with alertness. The shock of the ice water hitting her in the face, her body, was worse than the first time, and the men swiftly exited as she gasped, barely able to contain the shivers.

Next, Apocalypse entered, striding over to the table. "How are you feeling?" he said in a conversational tone, calmly going through the motions with his case, glasses, jacket, sleeves.

Selina did not answer. She was still trying to bring her body under control, and he noticed that although he acted like he did not.

He came to her and calmly rolled up her sleeve. "I have something special in store for you," he said and loaded a syringe from one bottle. "But first, I'm giving you a double dose of Amphetamine this time."

She closed her eyes as the drug entered her bloodstream. Isolating and ejecting it took more effort this time because she still had not fully stilled the internal tremors. It was also more difficult to move with her hand being tied closer to the wrist and with the sponge in the way. She was only able to get her little and ring fingers off the edge to leak onto the floor. And now her arm was burning.

"Thirsty?"

Hydration? That was the least of her worries.

"You seem amused. Why?"

"I am not thirsty," she replied, lifting her eyes momentarily.

"Careful what you say. You have a human body and human bodies need water."

Of course. But she was being well supplied.

He brought his chair in front of her and sat down, bending close as if for an intimate conversation. He looked into her eyes, from one eye to the other, left to right and back again.

She kept staring through him, maintaining focus on the wall beyond him, a foot from the floor. She had just quietened her core, but the fire in her vein was not helping.

He sat back in his chair and studied her. "We have some interesting recordings of you," he said eventually. "I could see you drying yourself. Like self-induced fever... lit up like a furnace. How do you do that?" He paused, recognizing her difficulty. "Aren't you going to do that now?"

She drew a breath but did not answer.

"Let's see. You can make yourself a drying element. You can eject chemicals out of your body. You can hear and see beyond this room. You can read minds. What else can you do?" He cocked his head. "I guess we'll just have to find out, now won't we?"

She relaxed her shoulders and focused on him. She had disrupted the signals of pain from her arm, virtually disconnecting the exposed nerves. The pain, though there, was now just an annoying tingle. She could monitor it without being distracted.

"That made you work hard, didn't it? Don't worry, I'll give you some more work. So tell me, where's your ghost?"

"I know not," she said.

"What? Isn't it here? It said it would remain here with its companion—you. So why don't you know where it is?"

She did not answer. She just noticed that Sterling was watching from the control room again, along with another man at the console, and this time she sensed how he felt even more disturbed about her situation than previously. He did not approve of it but he had no say in it.

"It comes and goes as it pleases, huh? Obviously not a ghost of its word..."

She brought her attention back to Apocalypse. "It cannot be commanded."

"Who said anything about commanding it? I just want to know why it comes and why it leaves. Why doesn't it come to your aid?"

"I expect it not to."

"You expect it not..." He shook his head slowly, clicking his tongue. "Not much of a companion either, I must say..." He narrowed his eyes momentarily, then got up to go to the table. He turned a large device around, facing away from her, and pulled out a couple of electrodes. 

"Let's see where your vitals are at," he said and bent in front of her. He tugged open the collar of her blouse, causing two buttons to fly off. He placed the electrodes on both sides of her chest. "I'm using a defibrillator to monitor your vitals... This one will also take your temperature." He patted down her collar and returned to the machine. "Based on the baseline of your records, you are now... less dead." He tapped on the display. "This is your new baseline." He turned his head and eyed her. "Let's get to work, shall we?"

Selina reduced the pressure on her arms and ankles and adjusted her spine on the hard backrest as she watched Apocalypse step to the generator and turn on a switch. Then he slowly turned a black dial, a humming increasing ominously.

"Do you know what this is?" he said and turned to her, holding up two clamps, each protruding from a sponge. Two metal pins extended from the clamps, about an inch long.

Selina recognized the change in the air, a certain vibration.

"Of course you do. You can read my mind..." He brought the two clamps close together but not touching, causing the pins to zap suddenly.

She stared at the blue and red sparks that appeared.

"Yeah... Well, this is a...," he started as he moved his hands slowly, making the spark grow between the pins. "We call it a Pic..." He played with it as if controlling it, teasing it. "It comes in handy actually," he said, looking past the clamps at her. "When you need to charge a car battery, run some power tools... or extract information from someone. Either way, it's a great piece of equipment." The spark was now a dancing arc between the pins, brilliant white and crackling. The further apart he moved the pins, the bigger and angrier the arc became, twisting, jumping, snapping, each lasting for longer periods of time.

Selina lowered her head slightly, intensely focused on the electrical arc. Energy. She needed more energy. She had not eaten and she had depleted most of her reserves. Under normal circumstances, she could forgo a meal, and just use her true form to capture what she needed. But in this situation, how was she supposed to reenergize without revealing her light self?

"Normal people would be very afraid right now," Apocalypse commented with narrow eyes.

Afraid? Why should she be afraid? Was that what Sterling disapproved of?

She followed the clamps as he put them down, then watched him put on a heavy pair of bright orange rubber gloves before he returned to his chair with the clamps in hand. Another man walked into the room with a bucket, one of her regulars. But this time he was armed with a pistol at his waist and wore black leather gloves. He halted next to Apocalypse and put down the bucket. More water, with a floating sponge.

"Now... I promised you, I would never lie to you... Correct?" Apocalypse said patiently.

She met his gaze calmly. "Yes."

"Have I lied to you?"

"No."

"But you haven't been truthful with me... And that bothers me." He nodded to the man to turn the black dial on the generator and leaned forward expectantly. The man then took the sponge out of the bucket and systematically emptied it on both of her thighs before taking up position behind the defibrillator.

Selina drew a long deep breath, just realizing what was coming next. Her physical body functioned as any other when it came to sending signals to make it function. It generated is own low-level electricity to achieve all its tasks. It was not meant to handle what came out of the generator—and in the next instant, any semblance of coherent thought fled her mind. The metal pins touching the inside of her thighs caused a huge charge to run through her legs, up her spine, back, severe pain shooting into her neck and the base of her skull, her body contracting, bending over uncontrollably, hands clenching, a long moan squeezing through her clamped jaws. She lost all sense of time, and control over her arm. She was still in contraction when the Pics were removed, and seconds later her arm started burning again, with the affected blood pumping up to her shoulder.

Before her muscles could relax fully, the Pics were in contact again, and no matter how much she wanted to, she could not move her legs away, her feet splashing in the water, unable to put distance between her and the cause of this pain. Her muscles drew together against her will, so severely that if she tried to counter it, she could easily tear a muscle or break a bone. She was barely aware of the momentary release before the Pics were applied a third time, and she finally allowed the pressure to squeeze out from the pit of her stomach with a scream she never knew she could produce. It tore through her throat, her ears, her head, cutting through the searing pain into silence.

That was when she became aware of the counting.

"Four... Five..."

And she found she was lucid behind her eyelids.

"Six..."

And she could focus through the pain, through the contractions...

"Seven..."

And she could direct her starved atoms to start absorption...

"Eight..."

To make sure nothing went to waste...

"Nine..."

Nothing goes to waste...

"Ten."

The counting stopped but her body did not. Her muscles would not release the overpowering charge that made them contract. It took a while before the spasms ended and she could open her eyes through the pounding in her head, panting. She had to blink a few times to clear the tears. The first thing she saw were the black marks on the inside of her thighs. The high voltage charge had burnt her slacks. "A crude – way of – applying – electricity," she managed to say between breaths. She no longer noticed the effects of the drug.

"What did you say?"

She slowly lifted her head, meeting Apocalypse's gaze from under her brows, perspiration, and water from her hair wetting her face. "A crude way of – applying electricity," she said through clenched teeth, then straightened herself gradually, testing her muscles if they would allow her to sit upright again.

"Is it now? Quite effective, I'd say." Apocalypse shook his head but his expression was that of relentless fascination. "I promise I'm not trying to kill you. I hope that doesn't happen. I just want to know about the ghost." He nodded without releasing her gaze.

The man came to her side and flattened out her hand with a thick leather strap, forcing her fingers flush with the armrest, then stepped back to monitor her vitals on the defibrillator. Apocalypse bent forward and released her gaze.

The next moment a hard pressure under the nails of two of her fingers sent a searing pain up her arm into her shoulders, neck, jaw and head, forcing her muscles to constrict her neck to the point that it almost felt like it would snap. Her hand was trapped, she could not pull it away, the fingers unable to clench the way the muscles wanted, straining against her joints. She barely heard that the counting stopped at five. Her heartbeat was now at one per second, pounding in her ears, her lips stretched in a grin across gritted teeth. But she was still lucid. She was almost there now, there was no more hunger for energy, the hunger she had been ignoring.

"Where – is – your – ghost?" the voice said, hard and familiar.

"I know not," came her answer, unfiltered by consideration. She knew not—because there was no ghost. Ask wrong question, get wrong answer, her lips moved as her face remained turned up toward the ceiling. Almost there...

She was aware of Apocalypse pulling himself back, an understood signal. This time the man took the paddles from the defibrillator and, standing behind her, placed them on either side of her chest. "Clear!"

The current made her torso constrict, her neck flex, but the agony that should have been was now harnessed along with the surge through her body. As another charge shot up her arm from her fingers, the muscles in her neck stood taut. The only sound to escape her was a long, noisy breath as her lips moved stiffly, two... three... four... five... in sync with the voice. 

Yes.

Her head dropped, and she allowed it to hang, the contractions gradually releasing. Her breathing had increased to almost normal human rest frequency, resulting in quadruple the normal amount of oxygen in her bloodstream.

It took almost a whole minute this time for her muscles to relax before she could inspect her cells, her atoms, her electrons. There was no major damage. The remainder of the injection was neutralized. There was increased activity, enough energy to warm herself with some to spare. 

Yes. 

Too much energy could not be hosted by her body alone for long. She had to use it. She had to keep her self together. They must not know she was one and the same.

Stay together...

She drew a long breath and raised her head slowly to meet his sharp gaze again, feeling the temperature rising from within her core. She could feel the heat traveling outward to her skin, to her limbs, up her neck to her head like she was entering a body of hot water, then the perspiration started pressing out of her pores on her forehead.

"Body temp is... one-ten and climbing," said the man calmly at the defibrillator.

Apocalypse maintained eye contact with Selina. He was paying close attention to her body language, looking for signs that she was weakening and ready for the next phase of interrogation.

The heat was now surrounding her as an inch-thick aura causing the moisture in her clothes to visibly evaporate, ringlets of steam rising from her. She could feel her eyes glazing with fever, but she never wavered.

"One-twenty... and climbing..."

Apocalypse got up and moved his chair away, and the man came around, took up the bucket and sponge, and threw the remaining water in her face. She gasped and shook her head as he went back behind the monitor.

"One-thirty-two and holding..." Then he took the bucket and handed it to a man outside the door.

Apocalypse returned his chair in front of Selina and sat down, watching her.

She blinked, exhaled a long breath and, with it, maintained the electron frequency until the fresh water and perspiration had evaporated. Then she gradually lowered her temperature.

"One-oh-six and dropping..."

She lifted her gaze to lock with Apocalypse's, while surreptitiously absorbing an inch of water from the basin with her feet, quenching her sudden thirst.

Apocalypse leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms carefully, the live clamps still in hand. "Well, well... I'm impressed... Fuck... you have an incredible tolerance for pain!" He sighed. "You know I hate to do this—but you're still not cooperating." Selina sensed the understanding between the two men. Apocalypse did not even have to nod. This was something they rehearsed so many times on so many other victims that the man immediately moved for another shock.

She braced herself mentally and loosened her muscles. She had rid herself of the excess, but now she was getting another dose. 

Stay together.

"What did you say? Speak louder."

Selina bit together, just realizing she had been thinking aloud.

The man paused behind her, waiting.

"Well? Where is your ghost?"

That was when she decided. She was not ready to do a full display yet, but she could do a sample. The electron stream was already on the way to the ceiling.

You seek me. I am here.

She did not move as she made the fluorescent bulb flicker wildly.

"We've got a reading, sir. It's above your head."

She heard the voice in the control room, but so did the two men. It took her a moment to realize they both were wearing earpieces.

Apocalypse got up with his eyes on her, carefully stepping backward with the clamps in his hands before looking at the flashing bulb. "Make yourself visible," he said, his voice demanding full cooperation.

It is not time.

A swift movement behind her produced an unfamiliar drawing and snapping sound before something pressed against the back of her head. She understood immediately she had to be prepared to synchronize her solidity with the pressing of that trigger—at the risk of exposing herself. It depended on what went through Apocalypse's mind, and she needed to pay close attention to that. He could make that decision in an instant.

"Well... I'm not sure we understand each other," he said. "I need to see you—visible. Now."

Selina lifted her eyes to the ceiling, then to the control room, considering the next step.

It is not time.

She moved her probe along the light fixture, causing the light to flicker along its length.

"You're not cooperating..."

I remain nearby...

"Very well." Apocalypse nodded, returned to his chair in front of Selina and bent close, drilling his eyes into hers. Then he put the clamps on her stomach and started counting, "One..."

Selina hunched stiffly over the contractions, forcing herself to keep her head up to maintain eye contact as she drew her probe down from the ceiling and into the generator.

"Two..."

In the next moment, smoke started curling out of the side of the machine, with a crackling sound.

"Sir," the man behind her said.

Apocalypse pulled back, holding the clamps far apart and looked at the generator. Some bubbles started to grow in the insulation at the base of the cables, the smell of burnt plastic hitting him. Selina could hear him admitting to himself that it would not be safe to use the generator anymore before he got up and switched off the machine.

She switched her attention to the man at the console as she made her probe return to the ceiling. Its energy multiplied a hundredfold for its size, causing the light to amplify in intensity.

I shall return.

She moved it away from the light bulb to prevent it from blowing, but she could not bring it back to herself with so much extra energy. That would be immediately picked up by the monitoring system. She decided to have her probe make a run to the next floor and shed some of that energy before re-merging with her self.

"It has dissipated, sir. No traces of it in the room. Power surge fluctuations reported on the main floor have stopped."

Apocalypse turned to Selina, shaking his head slowly. "So your ghost can protect you. Why didn't it try that sooner?" His pause was not long enough for her to answer. "All in a day's work, I suppose... You know what I'm thinking. I don't have to tell you that we're running out of time here." He studied her for a while, then he and the man packed up the equipment and headed for the door. As they exited, another man entered with a bucket and dumped ice-cold water over Selina's head.

She was left, still strapped to the chair and her feet in the basin, gasping from the cold, her joints and muscles sore, her head and electrocution points hurting. But at least she was not starting to feel the effects of hunger. And she had enough energy to dry herself again, do minor self-repairs, and restructure the waste from her last meal on a molecular level for repurposing—since she did not know when she would be allowed to leave the room.

Best of all, she had learned a few things about her self. She had learned that there were more things that she could do with her physical body than she thought. She was getting more skilled in separating her self. Most importantly, she had discovered she could feed herself energy without changing to her light self—with a measure of discomfort. The trick was, doing it without being discovered.

∞

Damn sadist! Sterling returned with fists clenched to the director's office, escorted by two of Apoc's men who remained on guard outside the door. He'd never let anyone know what he thought of interrogation techniques, it was something they were all trained in. But Apoc was a different kettle of fish. He was someone who would and could go to the extremes with his own brand of 'ethics' and wouldn't bat an eye—in fact, he would take personal pleasure in it.

Sterling muttered under his breath and barely got the chance to sit down when the private line on the side desk started flashing. He looked toward the door, but no one seemed to notice, so he picked up the receiver and spun the chair around so the back would hide what he was doing.

"Yes?" he said quietly.

"The last test results, sir."

"Go ahead."

"They were incomplete. I detected unusual activity under the electron microscope—but..."

"Yes?"

"But when I – ah  – was about to... record it—well... it vanished! Every cell, every vestige..."

"Excuse me?"

"All samples of the subject—zap, gone!"

"Did someone walk in and take them?"

"Not a chance, sir. Just zap!"

Zap? "Okay..." He thought for a moment. "And when was this?"

"Just some fifteen minutes ago."

"Okay, well... This no longer our operation, so forget that it ever happened. Understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you." Sterling turned the chair partway, checking that no attention was on him before he placed the receiver on the cradle, his eyes squinting in thought. Vanished. All blood and tissue samples, zap. What were the chances of that, if it didn't mean what he thought it meant?

∞

Four days had passed since the decision to go "off the reservation". They'd continued to maintain radio silence as they monitored the subjects' surroundings. After the second day, Weaver had turned on the radio and, as he expected, HQ was trying to reestablish contact with them at the prescribed times. He knew that if he stayed quiet too long, the Director of Operations would send someone to locate them, and he didn't want that. So he left Dawson monitoring the area around Myers' Auto Shop and drove across the long bridge and causeway into the twin city Georgetown to make the call. He used a pay phone at the easternmost service station he could find, furthest away from Eufaula.

He used a handkerchief to wipe the grime off the receiver before holding it next to his face. "Black marten," he said after the operator responded.

The call was immediately transferred and after a couple of clicks, he recognized the D.O.'s raspy voice: "Where the hell have you been? Just as we have to move back to HQ, you and your boy go M.I.A.! Just poof! What the hell were you thinking? I expect you two to report to me first thing tomorrow morning!"

Weaver remained silent until he was sure O'Malley was finished. "Someone once said, they'll be damned if they're going to hand over all their good work to them." He spoke distinctly.

He heard a steady breath at the other end and then silence. He listened a few more seconds. He knew that O'Malley had gotten the message: don't come looking for them. Just as he was about to hang up, O'Malley spoke again. "You should know..."

He brought the receiver back to his ear.

"—that the end of the world is involved."

Weaver hung up slowly, deep in thought. He was not happy about what he'd just learned.

Apocalypse was involved.

If Apoc was involved then things were getting downright dirty. It was only a matter of time.

Shit!

— ∞ —

Thanks Echo4Echo for helping me with Apocalypse!!

©2017 by kemorgan65