By Absinthe Disclaimers: My apologies to Melissa Etheridge, and my further apologies to Universal and Rennaissance for borrowing their characters. I'm sorry, I was only playing with them for a little while... Chapter 1: They're Gonna Change My Name Something was wrong. It was not the right time of day to be waking up. She reached to her left for the comforting presence that had been with her for the past weeks. Sarah wasn't there. When her hand came up against a cold metal railing, Maia tried to open her eyes. She couldn't see. She'd experienced many things in her years with Section, but enforced blindness had never been one of them. Reality seeped in. Her face felt like she'd been kicked in the head by someone wearing steel toed boots. She groped her head gingerly with the hand she thought was relatively unencumbered by I.V.s and sensors. Her face and neck, and as she felt farther down, breasts, and then the right thigh were all heavily bandaged. This was going to be one hell of a convalescence. "I see you're awake. How do you feel?" the ominously cool voice of Operations was the first human sound she detected. She stiffened visibly and then forced her sluggish body to relax. "Like Tartarus," came her muffled reply. "Well, that's to be expected," he said blithely, "You've always been a fast healer." Maia heard him set something down and then walk out of the room. Left alone with her misery, she cried silently into her bandages. The double edge to Ops' words had not been lost on her. She felt a howl well up from deep within her chest. It erupted as an inhuman scream of grief and pent up rage. In Amanda's office, Operations and Amanda sat, sharing a pot of tea and half-watching the monitor on Maia's room. Amanda tilted her head slightly to the right and sighed at Maia's writhing. "She deconditioned herself with that little stunt," Operations pointed out needlessly. "Let's just hope that she can stay that way. The more panicked she is when we plant her, the more effective she'll be." "Just as long as she remembers what she's there to do." "She will. She was our best." She was running. Her feet were bare and bloody from the rough ground, and her breath rasped drily in her chest; yet she did not stop. She couldn't. Something drew her inexorably forward. There was an ache in her head that had nothing to do with her exertions. Strange vegetation slapped wetly at her legs and stomach as she pounded through the thick, damp underbrush. Her hair hung wet and heavy against her neck, even though in the waking world it had all been shorn. At last, the trees fell away around her until she stood on the shore of a vast lake. Maia swayed wearily, her eyes glued to the surface of the water. Suddenly, the still water began to roil and froth. At the center of the disturbance, a mounted figure emerged. The rider walked her horse slowly over the angry waters until she stood a few mere feet from Maia. Feeling extremely vulnerable, Maia peered up at the rider. She was dressed as a warrior, that much was clear. What really struck home though, was her face. She had Maia's face. The face that she would always look for in a mirror in spite of the plastic surgery. The warrior spent a long minute staring shamelessly at the broken woman on the shore before speaking. "Maia," she began, "You're so close to finding your Way. Don't give up. The light is there; inside you. You just have to look." Maia returned the warrior's gaze emptily, feeling a sudden up welling of contempt for this dream that spouted platitudes at her. "Don't you dare give up. You've been through so much, to lose your chance now . . ." The warrior spoke then with more vehemence. "What the fuck do you know about my life?" Maia snorted. Before she even realized that the warrior woman had moved, she found that she was staring her in the face; eye to eye. "She gave you a gift. Don't let it go out," the warrior said. At some cue invisible to Maia, she turned her head. The warrior cast one last look at her visitor before Maia woke up. She threw the damp sheets back savagely and heaved herself to her feet. She fell to her knees as soon as their soles hit the carpet. They were sore to the touch and oozing blood. Pulling herself into a sitting position on the edge of her bed, Maia looked down at the stains on the floor in amazement. She was hallucinating, she was sure of it. Or else this was still part of the dream. She wasn't going to play along. Maia edged backwards until she was laying down again and, folding her hands over her stomach, closed her eyes and tried to sleep. The throbbing of her feet kept her awake for hours. It seemed she had just drifted off when the phone rang. Swearing, she stood up without thinking. No pain. That had been a part of the dream too. She lunged and scooped up the handset. "Renee," a voice said. It took her a moment to remember that this was her new code name. Maia hung up the phone and sat staring at it as though it were a venomous snake. They were writing a new reality for her, and soon she would have to step into it. Her skin was no longer tender, even though it didn't yet feel like her own, she knew that she was the spitting image of a thief and dealer in weaponry schematics and industrial secrets, Cassandra Lyle. They would drown her memories, change her name, her past, even her concept of who she was. In an intense thirty six hour session, the rewiring of her brain was begun. Because of her high tolerance for pain, extraordinarily severe electric shocks were administered. They were so severe that deep into the session, her heart stopped once. "Your name is Cassandra Lyle. What is your name?" "Cassandra," Maia replied. The lie detection equipment she was wired up to beeped and Maia's body threw itself against the restraints, her eyes rolling up in her head and her teeth grinding against each other. When the pain abated, she dimly heard the question repeated. "What is your name?" "Cassandra Lyle," she panted, only to hear the machine beep again. The shock cut off her desperate protest even before the words had formed. This seemed to go on for hours, and at first she resisted, but after twenty or so repetitions, she began to want to believe that her name was Cassandra. There was nothing to her existence but the name, and the machine. After thirty repetitions, she did believe. "What is your name?" "Cassandra Lyle," Maia groaned weakly. There followed only silence and her own harsh breathing. A round of quiet congratulations circulated in the control booth. The first break through was invariably the most difficult. It would gradually become easier after this. They taught her everything they had in their immense database that related to Cassandra. Facts about her own history were being painstakingly overwritten; her father's name, her favorite kind of car, her allegiances. She was being taught who Cassandra's usual contacts and customers were, and the woman's methods. Almost thirty hours after the first break through, Amanda called the session to a halt. "Let her rest. Take her to a holding cell and be careful not to say anything to her, no matter how harmless it may seem," she ordered. It was hard to tell if the faint glint in her eyes was one of sorrow or glee. As soon as Maia was unstrapped, she fell forward and vomited a stomach full of bile. Her two escorts waited for her to finish and then gently lifted her by her armpits and carrying her to a cell. Curled on the padded whit floor, Cassandra soon passed out. When she came to, she found herself confronted with a hazy swirl of conflicting memories She knew that her name was Maia, yet she also knew that it was Cassandra. More importantly, she knew that Cassandra was the safer of the two names. Her mission profile dictated that she push away thoughts of herself, but she stubbornly clung to her life. It was hers after all. It wasn't perfect, but it was what she had wrought for herself. Did they think they could make her forget? Before long, she was given something to eat and then led unresistingly back to the lab. Amanda awaited her within. "You did well yesterday. In a few days, when you've learned all we can teach you, Cassandra will be brought in person to fill in the blanks," Amanda smiled thinly without showing her teeth. "Tell me how you feel this morning?" "Like I've got two people in my head, how the Hell am I supposed to feel?" Amanda nodded sharply , and , turning on her heel, stalked out of the room. Maia couldn't recall her superior ever acting with such calm professionalism. Lost in thought, Maia didn't even notice when she was strapped in. "What is your name?" Continued in Chapter 2 Back to Under the Pink To My Fic Page
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