My memories hide from me, or I hide from them. It’s the same thing. Sometimes they come out and play across the back of my mind too swiftly to grasp, remaining just long enough to impress a single image on my mind’s eye. I can control them, most of the time. Sometimes the memories become too strong.
In my mind she is touching me… holding me… kissing me… lying with me… Lying.
Her touch is electricity tingling through my body. Her arms cradle me and protect me. Her lips are transportation to paradise. Her body warms me and comforts me. But everything is an illusion, she is a sickness and she has infected me. She has tainted me with her touch.
I’m dirty now. I scrub my skin but I can’t wash away her defiling caress. I can’t get clean. Her foul stench fills my nostrils and though I brush my teeth, her taste still lingers in my mouth. The tendrils of her manipulation reach deep into my mind. I can’t break free of her grasp. I am infected. I am dirty. Everything I touch becomes revolting. I’m dirty inside, all the way inside, in my soul. How do you clean a soul?
Fire.
The demons she planted in my mind and body threaten to break free and rend me apart from the inside. She created them to climb out of the depths of my soul and drag me into a pit of torture and despair. She wants me to be trapped in my mind with my memories. She wants me to relive my defilement, my disgrace, my shame.
Anger burns! Lust Burns! The demons of my mind and body are afraid of the flames. They won’t come out until I bank the fires in my soul, but I can fool them. I lure them out. They think it is safe to ravage me, to violate me but the embers of my wrath still smolder.
Now the demons come and take me but I am not theirs. They are mine. I trap them with me, inside the furnace of my mind. My passion stokes the embers of my wrath… my lust flares... my anger blazes... consuming them… consuming me. Together we burn… my mind… my body… my soul… my demons.
My passion is spent. The landscape of my soul lays barren covered in the ashen remains of my demons and my memories. “I’m here for you Kim.” The voice pierces through my desolation. It is the first drop of rain in a cleansing shower that washes away the ashes and brings life and hope to the wasteland of my spirit. “I’m right here.”
I rise from the ashes… purged… clean… for a while.
When Shego heard the sound of the shower running, she started heating a pot of soup. Kim emerged from the bedroom looking strained and followed the smell of food into the kitchen. The pale thief gestured to a place at the table and poured a bowl for the tired red head. She sat down opposite the girl and silently waited until the soup was finished.
“You’re probably still hungry but I think you should let that settle before you try to eat anything else. Too much too soon and you’ll get sick.”
The red head looked longingly at the pot on the stove but nodded in agreement. “Thank you.” She whispered. Her voice was harsh from hours of crying.
“You need to wake up your boyfriend and both of you need to get going.”
“He’s not my…” Something in the pale woman’s face stopped Kim mid sentence.
“I don’t care what he is.” Shego continued, “You two, three if you count that nerd on the other end of your Blackberry, are trouble. I don’t need trouble.”
Kim met her gaze, “You still have something I need.”
“You want to know who I sold the processor to.” The girl hesitated a moment and then nodded. Shego felt a twinge inside, on some level she had hoped for a different answer but she hadn’t consciously allowed herself to even consider it. “I’m not in the habit of breaking contracts.”
Kim looked down at her hands in her lap, “I know I’ve imposed on you…”
“Imposed?” the pale woman was incredulous, “Imposed!? You interfere with my work, you attack me, you try to rape me and then you use my bed to screw your boyfriend…”
“He’s not…”
“I don’t care!” Shego shouted, “Impose doesn’t begin to cover it.” The pale woman waited a moment to see if the red head would interrupt again, “After all that, you want me to ruin my life and my career and quite possibly get myself killed for a drug addled kid I met yesterday.”
Kim struggled to put her feelings into words, “I thought we had connected.”
“Whatever connection we had was severed when you turned out to be ‘psycho government experiment girl.’”
The girls head snapped up, her eyes wide with astonishment and a trace of fear, “How do you know about that?” she gasped.
Was it possible Kitten didn’t understand the loyalty and commitment her champions had for her? “Your friends care about you very much. So much that they are willing to risk everything for you.” Shego picked up the Kimmunicator, “The nerdlinger on the other end of your phone cracks top secret ‘this-will-get-your-whole-family-killed’ files for you, and your boy…” she relented, “your other friend gives you his soul whenever you need it because he knows it will help you for a while, no matter how much it hurts him emotionally.” Shego handed the Kimmunicator to the red head, “Don’t you think its time for you to tell them what’s going on?”
The red head, fiddled with her phone for a while, she had been carrying this secret for a long time and she was feeling the strain. Every day it was harder to get up and every time she lost control it was harder to get it back. “I don’t know how.”
“Your friend has quite a file on that Director woman; he’s ready to go public.”
Kim raised Wade on the small screen. “What’s up Kim?”
“Wade…” Kim held the portable device tightly, “you can’t go public with this”
“Kim, we can shut down GJ with what I have…” The boy said excitedly, “Heck, we might even shut down the NSA, the CIA and the FBI with what I’ve uncovered. She kept records of everything, names, dates, contacts, accomplices… Do you know what we could do with this information?”
“Nothing!” Kim snapped, “One phone call from her and” she snapped her fingers, “two deaths is just another routine accident.” Kim set the Kimmunicator on the table; “She broke Jenny’s neck and told the cops to report it as an accident… And they did!”
“Whoa!” Ron exclaimed from the doorway, “Who broke Jenny’s neck? What are you talking about? Who’s Jenny?”
“I…” Kim looked at the faces around her and saw only concern. “Maybe I should start from the beginning…”
Ron moved over to sit next to Kim. Taking one of her hands in his he said, “Start wherever you want.”
Shego wondered how the girl could command such loyalty. Sure she was cute but that wasn’t enough to make someone put their entire existence on the line. The people Shego dealt with respected her because she always delivered what she promised, but loyalty wasn’t part of the equation and never had been. The slogan in her world was “No cash, No deal, No exceptions.” And the question on everyone’s lips was “What have you done for me lately?” The pale woman knew instinctively that either of the boys… men, her mind corrected her… would gladly step in front of a bullet for the red head. That notion was discomforting. She had to rid herself of them before they entwined themselves too deeply into her life. She wondered if it was too late already.
Kim began to speak. Her monotone voice betrayed little emotion and yet her halting words dripped horror.
“…I ran down the hall. Everything seemed scary. She is using me. Just using me… all of us really. Everyone is being used. She’s sick. She’s a sick, twisted bitch… and… and I love her... Does that make me sick? Twisted? I don’t know, but I have to run! I have to get out of there…
“I’m running down the hall, trying to remember the way out… and I’m almost out when I remember them. The other girls… There are six of us at the school right now… Jenny is twelve. She’s twelve years old… So excited… So happy to be chosen… She doesn’t understand. None of us do…
“I find them. All sitting around the lounge talking about boys or something. Giggling and laughing like they don’t know we’re all being set up, and they don’t know. I have to figure out how to get them out…
“I tell ‘em it’s a special surprise drill and we’ve got ten minutes to get to the surface without being seen. Anyone who is seen has to clean up the dojo for a week and… and the first one to the rendezvous gets…” Kim’s voice broke, “gets an extra training session with the chief.”
The red head turned to Shego, “that’s when I know that the chief… that’s when I knew it was true. They all react to the prize like it’s back stage passes to the O-Boyz… and I know the chief is using them… just like she’s using me. Because that’s how I would have felt ten minutes ago…
“But Kaylee isn’t there and Jen won’t start without her… Says it isn’t fair… She’s always trying to do what’s right but… when she goes to find Kaylee I tell everyone else to get started… I tell them that missions don’t happen when you’re ready and that Kaylee might be closer to the door… and that Jenny might be trying to gain an advantage by stalling them… and they go.
“The chief is paging me. I can’t face her but I can’t leave Jenny and Kaylee either… I’m running and looking. I’m calling Wade and asking him to get us a ride and he’s saying no one is close enough. I remind him that the Turner’s have a four wheel drive truck they use for tours, it will be able to reach us, they’re only about fifteen minutes away.
“I find Kaylee and Jenny, they’re coming out of the bathroom, Jen is pulling on Kaylee. They take off and I give them the thumbs up. I start for the surface myself… avoiding the cameras and other security measures. I get to the spot and all the girls are there. Amber made it first and she’s crowing over the others. And we’re waiting… and we’re waiting…
“When my ride finally comes, it isn’t the Turners. It’s a helicopter and there’s only room for three… The pilot tells me he’ll be back in twenty minutes… But I don’t know how long it will be before the chief realizes that something is up. First come first served, so Kaylee, Jenny and I will wait for the next trip…
“I tell them to hide… Stay perfectly still. Don’t come out for anyone. And I relive it in my mind over and over again but no matter how many times I try to do it again I never say ‘don’t even come out for the chief’ I go looking for the Turners, I’m sure they’re close by… but they aren’t coming. When I get back, Jenny is laying on the ground… her neck is broken… Kaylee is nowhere to be seen.
“They didn’t come… Jenny is dead… They aren’t coming.” Her voice continues in a haunting monotone but now tears trickle down the side of her face. “I hear the chief’s voice… she’s screaming. ‘Where are they?’ I see her…her face is purple with rage. The man next to her, the man who was in her office, is trying to stop her but she keeps hitting Kaylee over and over again, screaming ‘where are they?’
Kim paused and looked down at her hands. The silence stretched out but no one could think of a way to break it. Ron held Kim’s hand and stroked her arm, no shame at the tears rolling down his face. Wade stared open mouthed, fingers quiet at the keyboards oblivious to all other information coming at him.
Shego found her voice, “Did you try to kill her?”
The red head nodded, “I tried. The rest of the day is kind of a blur; I thought that I had killed her. I left her laying on the ground with the branch of a tree sticking into her face. But I found out later that she survived.”
“You did your best KP!” Ron said trying to be supportive and encouraging, “you saved four lives that day.”
“No.” She was stone faced again and her voice was like ice. “I killed them all.”
“Kim,” the genius said, “that’s not your fault, you didn’t know about the drugs.”
“What drugs?” asked Ron, “What are you talking about Wade?”
Kim answered, “Tell him, Wade.” When Wade remained silent, she continued. “They’re all dead, Ron. I killed them.”
“Kim, that wasn’t your…” Wade started to say again.
“They’re dead because of me. Because of what I did. That makes it my fault.”
“Bull!”
Shocked, everyone turned to look at Shego. She repeated herself, “Complete Bull! Your brain must be really messed up if you believe that.” The pale woman started picking up dishes and putting them in the sink. “You’re alive, they’re not. It doesn’t make it your fault and your guilt doesn’t make them any more alive.” She could see the girl wasn’t listening. “Kitten you don’t need help, you need a damn miracle.”
“I need to know where the nano-tech processor is.”
Exasperated, Shego said; “If that’s all you want I’ll make you a deal, princess. You clear your menagerie out of my house and I’ll consider it.”
Shego didn’t know what kind of response she had expected from the red head but it sure wasn’t meek acceptance. The girl nodded her head again and quietly left the room, presumably to collect her things and leave. She could her them murmuring in the bedroom, the blonde was trying to talk her into something but the red head wasn’t buying it.
In just a few moments, she would be rid of these kids and whatever vengeance they brought after them. She began to go over her mental checklist of what she needed to do to erase them from her life completely. Her records were all electronic so no packing required but she’d have to figure out how to keep the red head’s hacker out of her files. Her work related items could be packed in a few minutes. The rest was a total write off, “Damn,” she thought, “I really liked this apartment.”
The kitten tried to catch her eye as she and the blonde walked out, but Shego avoided it. Why didn’t it make her feel good to know that they were leaving?
The explosion rocked the building, and was felt almost two blocks away. The young couple, in the apartment directly above the detonation, felt the floor buckle but miraculously hold. The gentleman in the apartment directly below the explosion felt the shaking of the blast and was knocked out by falling debris. Kim and Ron felt the blast through the walls of the elevator and then the elevator started to fall, but it was caught by the emergency brakes.
Shego didn’t feel anything at all.