The AllMother was so very, very tired. She did her best to keep up with these people who were not even a tenth her age, but it was wearing her down. She'd keep going, putting one foot in front of the other, but all she wanted to do was rest.
Rather than worry if she'd be protected during this flight to wherever, she did just that.
Her mind took her back.
It remembered things from long ago, things she hadn’t ever wanted to think about again.
Alex opened her eyes, then blinked.
She didn't understand where she was at first. Her body hurt tremendously, and she appeared to be in some kind of glass capsule.
Alex turned her head to the left and saw herself. She wasn't looking into a mirror but another capsule. She tried to understand how she could be in two places at once.
It wasn't possible.
Yet her vision didn’t clear.
"She's awake."
Alex didn't know the voice. It came from her right, so she sluggishly turned her head in that direction. A man was standing there in a black robe, meaning he was medical. He was staring at her, and Alex could see a comm in his ear. He looked scared, she thought. He's scared of me.
"She's awake, godsdamn it. They both are from the look of it. Gas the tanks. Put 'em both to sleep," the doctor nearly screamed into his comm. His fear was making Alex very nervous.
Gas shot into the capsule and Alex panicked. She didn't know what was going on or where she was.
Only that this doctor was trying to knock her out.
Something happened that Alex had never before experienced. Her mind reached out like a physical hand and slammed into the glass harder than she could have punched, shattering it.
Every bit of it at once. The glass started to fall toward her, and she was scared of being cut.
Her mind reached out again, and the glass paused in mid-air, not falling nor shooting outward, frozen.
How am I doing this? she wondered. She turned her head to look at the woman in the other tank. Her mind was still refusing to believe it was her. The gas flowed into the capsule, and the other person's eyes closed as she succumbed.
Alex turned to the right then. The man's mouth opened and closed but no words exited. His bladder let loose, and his robe darkened in the front.
"SHE'S OUT!" he shouted, then he turned and ran. He didn't look back or slow. He fled as if for his life.
Alex turned back to the glass hovering around her, and a question came to her: What do I do with it? She decided she didn't want it around her, then she saw it rush across the room and slam into the wall. Alex swung her feet off the platform she lay on but didn't hop down to the floor. She didn't trust her legs.
Instead, she stared at the girl in the other capsule. Her eyes were closed, but Alex couldn't deny it anymore. She was staring at herself.
She remembered what her father had done to her when she was staring at this replica.
Her eyes are red, she thought about the girl who looked like her. They had been red when she first looked out of the capsule at her. "Are mine?" she asked aloud, the memories of her father's awful plans rushing back. Alex started trembling, her arms, her legs, even her lips. She saw a mirror across the room and knew she couldn't get to it, but it floated over to her.
She didn't need to look in any mirror to know her eyes were red. She'd seen the proof ever since she'd awoken. She did look, though, and sure enough, red eyes stared back at her. She was now a mutant, modified.
Alex glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping woman who looked exactly like her. Alex's body was still trembling, and real fear sank in.
She didn't know who was who. She didn't know if she or the other woman was the clone. That was the whole point, the cells copying their very memories. Was she real, or was the other one?
Footfalls, many of them, echoed in a hallway leading to this room. The little doctor had brought people, perhaps her father's Titans or the Praetorian Guard.
Still trembling, Alex hopped off the platform. Her legs gave out immediately, and she fell to one knee. She looked up in time to see her father enter the room. His Praetorians trailed him in two rows. Her father was wearing the same purple as always, looking royal even as his daughter wore a gown showing her ass.
He stopped when he saw her eyes and the red irises. His mouth opened to say something, but like the doctor before him, he seemed to have lost the ability to speak. Alex's trembling had stopped. She remembered how savagely this man had beaten her. He'd knocked her unconscious, then locked her away for a month.
Very carefully, Alex rose to her feet. Her father was still standing there, as dumbfounded as if this hadn't been what he'd wanted all along. His eyes flashed to the capsule behind Alex, then quickly came back to her.
"Two of us, Father, as you asked for," Alex said. Her voice was cruel, and she no longer questioned what her mind could do. Perhaps she didn't know everything, but she knew it felt like another appendage. She could control it, and these men standing here with all their weapons couldn't.
"I need you to lie back down on that platform, Alexandria," her father instructed. "Right now."
"Have you seen Alexander, Father? Is he like me?" she asked. "Where is he? I'd like to see him?"
"Lie down!" he screamed, red heat rising on his cheeks.
She'd never seen him this angry except when he'd beaten her.
"No," Alex answered. "I want to see him." She dipped her chin slightly so her red eyes were full in his vision. Alex smiled, and at that moment, she understood how her father had felt when
