Difference between revisions of "Nicky Wraith"

Rat to Raven

Returning from the precipice of death into the cold tomb of her cell was a turning point in her existence, if such could be called a blessing it perhaps was. A dark deed that set her on course for the one chance she would ever truly have at the opium of freedom. With the act of killing the nurse she showed she still wished to live, realised in herself that she still had the desire despite everything they had done to her.

A revelation that could have drove her mad it instead drove her on.

With an almost ferocious intent she threw herself into her classes, her focus sharpening to a great extent and, at last, as she stopped fighting it the computer they had forced into her mind began to work to her advantage. She poured her learning into that device as system after system slowly activated, using it to push herself further and further away from the death she had come all too close to receiving, to proving she was not a waste of space, a failure. What else could you choose when death was the only other option?

For a time she lived in this focused driving of thought, letting them continue their cruel torments that through her perseverance became more and more infrequent as her mind accepted the computer into itself. Until, finally, she was just another RAVEN in his clutches. Another bird in a cage. Though life still had one more painful trick to play on our young 23, not yet a teenager.

Eye of the Storm

She knew she was nearing the end of her treatments, nearing the end of her time as an experiment. She knew it. They were coming for her with less and less consistency and each time. She still felt that sense of dread though that tinged on fear. Had she done enough to survive? Was nearly being the top of her strange class of other captured children be enough? That, she did not know. So she waits, sat as before in a larger but identical grey top and trousers. Waiting for them to come for her, eyes staring vacantly at the wall opposite in the dark of her room and she forces back the wince as the lights flare on. Always so bright.

"Make your way to the test chamber." His voice resounds as emotionless as her mind replays to her in her dreams.

Even as she rises she is frowning a little, to be summoned can only mean they have something large in mind. That, or he simply knew she wouldn't refuse, though when had she ever had that choice? Never. In her usual silence she follows the lights that guide her through the maze of the complex, her eyes fixed straight ahead, not focusing on any details but the lights. Letting them lead her ever onwards.

"Enter." he intones as she nears a door and she complies.

23 doesn't cry out as they strap her down into the chair almost on her back. Never flinches as they fix her eyes open. Simply stares up at the ceiling, reeling off maths in her head, figures, dates. Anything to block out her presence, and the itching in her skin that flares every time she is worked on these days. She forces her thoughts of every reason why they would want her eyes open, she doesn't want to know and the truth will not let her escape anyway. The local anaesthetic is cold comfort at the fact she can still see and she takes a sudden breath in before forcing back any sound. She will not fail,she will keep her heart beating. The itching flares at this, almost as though her skin were crawling, seeking to leave her to her fate and she swallows down her rising emotions.

Her attempt at control was almost enough to stop the flicker of fear in her as the scalpel descends to work along her eye, almost. Not a word has been spoken between her or those that work on her, and she is glad for it as panic sticks her in the chair. Skin aching along with each incision she is forced to watch as though it reaches to her heart. She hates them, hates them all and fears them too.

It feels like an age to her panicked mind but it is the work of mere moments for them to add something to her eye. Another part that 23 will never be able to remove and she forces back the desire to blink her aching eyes, to move them and forces herself to breathe. She will not fail. She cannot. Her need though breaks through as they shift to the other, it is too much all at once. Far too much.

The power when it flows from her is unexpected, strong and deadly. Coils of electricity, static and force shifting out to slam into those that work on her, burning skin, tearing flesh and throwing them out across the room. Their lives already ended before they hit the floor, they had not even had chance to scream. The power rocks through where she is bound, burning and frying through them until she is free. It is just an instant, a flare of unknown power by her need to survive, but it is one of those moments you can never take back.

With barely a tremor she rises, looking over the bodies with shock she can't contain before raising her hands and looking at them with confusion, as the itching continues to crawl over them, but she knows what it is now. So unusual is it all to her that she forgets her fear for an instant. Then it returns to hard it nearly floors her, yet still he remains silent. A minute passes, then another before another enters. She recognises them immediately, 35, the bottom of her class and he stares at her in all too obvious confusion as his eyes dart quickly to the dead bodies and back to her.

"Twenty three, repeat your demonstration." his cold voice says softly.

It is almost with relief she stands, her one worked on eye aching, and leaving trails of blood down her cheek. She focuses on that itch as she walks, able to hate 35 for simply existing as she sees the fear in his eyes and the way he looked so pitiful and confused. The itch grows, flaring into pain down her arms and across her back and instinctively she raises her hand and lets it go. The power of the bolt stuns her and she stumbles back, but her aim was more than true, the arc of electricity catching him full in the chest and she sees the moment the lightening passes his eyes and snuffs him out. She almost manages a smile.

"Congratulations Twenty three.You have passed the test."

She does smile then, the voice is still as ever but she does not care. She has taken another step into not failing him as she had that night so long ago. Taken another step away from being a failure.

They come for her again the following night, new faces but with the same desires. This time she controls herself, mind focused on the power she has found, a power that is all hers. A possession in that dark place.

Electra

If she was driven before now she becomes an inferno for becoming better, doing all that is demanded of her not because she fears but because she desire it. Driven to it, to explore her powers in any way he will give her, mind allowed to revel in thinking up her own ways to grow. Tentative suggestions barely whispered, growing into louder thoughts as she proves each one as the years pass. Her requests are rare, and not without great thought.

She grows fast into herself, and her promise is perhaps her worst undoing. For when she steps out at last into the world, still very collared by the organisation that raised her, she is sheltered under the wing of the man that nearly breaks her. The one that could reach her in her hiding places where not even he could reach. Waveform, a Raven of high calibre, rated high on their lists a man of great standing but also twisted by the training he had undergone at their hands. Though he had grown into it like a sickly flower.

23 made the most ideal candidate for him, perfect in every way as she fit his obsession, his driving force. For Waveform always loved technology and gadgets. She was both. There are no words to describe the tortures he inflicted upon that mind as he sought to work her out, his superior abilities through experience and not through training meant she was helpless against him, fear of his reaction if she killed this Raven held her back from unleashing her trained powers. No mind should ever be defiled in such a way, even if it is only the electronic shadow of your own. She became his toy.

Though, she was defined by her desire to live.

It did not take long for this desire to save her once again.

So yet again she made a request of him a request that perhaps amused him because he granted it. A request to undertake the same dangerous mission as her mentor, her tormentor, not alongside but as a rival. A gamble for her existence and she took it. It is almost certain that Waveform never knew what hit him when the first electrically charged metal whip closed around his neck in that place, just as it is certain that he walked away from there. Though in the dark of that place, filled with enemies she showed why no man would ever be able to touch her like that again.

Though her lifelong battle with her erstwhile mentor was just beginning. Her rise in the arena as Electra to be marked by her final end in continuous stalemates and position changes with him. An endless shadow in her strange, almost contented existence as his grip on her seemed to lessen. A numb never ceasing existence defined by mission after mission hidden in a world she couldn't ever truly stand in. Never free, but perhaps safe.

A Flash of Red and Blue

Two other warriors changed that though. A rogue raven and her technopathic lover brought together in equally strange and impossible circumstances. Real life never played out like any those in the nest were brought up to expect. The two finding solace with each other and allowing Lana the one thing the leader of the nest would never allow. Love.

Caught up in attempting to understand the emotion that would have driven Lana to seek freedom with Sam, she slips from her steady course drawn towards them as any lost wanderer to a warm fire. The burning Light of Samantha Winters and Lana Nielson as they worked together was too haunting to be ignored. A view into a world she had never truly seen before. How could she let him destroy that? No matter how dangerous she knew it to be, she hesitated. For a time she could not decide between the safety she had serving him, and the choice to let those two continue on.

The hesitation cost her all she had.

As she watched the explosion of that suit in the air, watched the battle from afar as he sent another RAVEN after them and that RAVEN lost, she knew. She knew the decision had been taken from her hands. He had decided her fate, she had failed him. She was finished. In that moment she forgets herself and her years of work, she forgets his reach. With despair she watches the other Raven arrive to fight them, to fight them in her stead, her mission and she knows her fate. Marked for death. No other options, no other choices. She marched towards that bright fire like a moth to a flame and seeks the end.

Life is never that simple though.

The sudden desired end never arrived and that enthralling flame saved her, given the chance of life by those she had been ordered to kill. Samantha diving into her mind to save her from herself and give her that cruel drug of hope. As is her way she cannot help but take it, and Nicky is born out of it all, stripping away all that remained of 23. Born out of pain and grief and the hope for a life. A new desire, a choice for freedom, in this cruel twisting story. Though this was, despite the horror it brought, the first few moments of freedom.

The Birth of QUEEN

The touch of a Technopath into Nicky's mind could only have been possible with the computer ingrained into that mind, and such a pressure and application of force is never without consequence. Touched by life and impressed with the needs of freedom, justice and choosing for yourself, thoughts and ideals sent through it's circuitry in an attempt to reach twenty three all left an imprint in that computer. Quietly in the dark of Nicky's mind she awoke to the world, a sudden shift from an efficient computer with the pretense of life to a true being.

So QUEEN was born.

A surprise to everyone, even Nicky, this new presence has already sought to help those that helped create her. Offering aid to Sam and feeling a deep affinity with Nicky. What she will become no-one knows, a true unknown thrust into a near impossible situation.

-Nicky,- QUEEN says softly after a couple hours of tense silence. QUEEN had let Nicky have the privacy that was much needed after that touch from Sam, yet she could hold back no longer. There was only silence to her call though, the woman dropping another piece back into her suit, the change almost complete. Nicky could not have made it clearer how much she was choosing to jump into that dark.

-Nicky.- She tries again at last and this time she is successful.

"What?" The word that resounds in their joint headspace is cold, stilted and filled with potent embarrassment QUEEN realises. All QUEEN's processing tells her quite clearly just how strong Nicky had been to simply stand there passive rather than lash out at any that would touch her in such a way. More control than most would have had certainly.

-You are not weak to have emotions.- QUEEN comments, testing the waters, unsure entirely how to negotiate such emotional turmoil now she has the barest understanding of it.

"I appeared weak to them because he haunts me still." Nicky whispers, admitting the truth in the only place she can. The only place she could never be heard by the world and just by the one she trusts. Her one sanctum that even he had not quite managed to break through into.

-He tortured you,- QUEEN says bluntly, -tortured us. He was far worse than our old master ever was. He ripped my programming apart just to see how I worked and used my connections to get to you. Your reaction was not about strength or weakness, just another piece of our past. A reaction to his rape of our joint mind...-

Nicky physically jumps back at that dropping the part in her hands with a clang. Unwilling to accept the words used but she knows it is true, it cannot be denied. She had been mentally raped at his hands, and that had been just the start.

He had attempted to add programming that would have given him control of Nicky entire and for a time it had nearly worked. He had acted so subtly she barely noticed the change; the orders given by a mentor were to be naturally obeyed, what would have felt wrong? If not for the natural self-protective instincts built into the computer which had become QUEEN he would have succeeded in taking her over as nothing more but a puppet.

It hadn't been till later they had learnt to keep him out, the computer and the human finally gelling together against a joint enemy. The false experiences he had planted, false memories, had taken far longer to excise, each memory a terrible level of pain and anguish. Knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop her from feeling each burst of agony, burst of despair as if it were. QUEEN was right; she had been tortured for months, almost a year by him. She wished he was dead again and the anger quelled her fears. With a harsh cry of rage she surges forward and sweeps all the equipment from the table, slamming it onto the floor.

“I want to kill him, why can’t I kill him?” she screams loud into the cavern, “I want him dead. Yet every time he lives!”

-We will one day,- QUEEN says softly, -One day he will burn completely.-

Nicky nods once, hands gripping the table as she stares at the surface. She had not been totally without revenge she knew, though she yearned for that moment, even more so since Sam had now reminded her of that time twice.

“Yes we will,” she nods again, her voice that firm tone of power that so defined her, before finally adding, “You were not wrong to help Sam.”

-I am glad you think so, I would not have done it, had you not agreed.- QUEEN says softly, -But I feel we must find a way for me to communicate so I no longer subject you to such a confrontation with your past. Our past.-

“What do you suggest?” Nicky questions, a frown of curiosity furrowing her brow as she thinks over what QUEEN could ever possibly want.

-I would like to request we cannibalise the vocal unit from the remains of your last suit.- QUEEN asks, her tone almost nervous.

“You want a voice.” Nicky qualifies simply; rather shocked by the idea, QUEEN had never been this gregarious before.

-After what happened earlier, it seemed prudent,- QUEEN intones, before adding, -And, I would wish to talk to our friends without an interpreter. I would disturb you less.-

Nicky goes silent a moment, sinking deep into her thoughts, wondering if QUEEN had taken the comments from her all too literally; Nicky knew her humour had always been poor. Would a computer, albeit a sentient one, understand hers? She sighs, leaning on the table a little.

“I agree.” Nicky says at last, speaking the words aloud so much does she agree with that. Even with the strange ache of sharing QUEEN a little more with the world. “You are yourself, you need to speak for yourself too. I will not trap you.”

-You could never trap me Nicky,- QUEEN whispers, and Nicky is gifted with the image of QUEEN’s sense of growing self and how similar she looks to herself, -We are one, no matter what happens. I would never wish to be free of you, you are my home.-

Nicky feels strangely touched by the words and the image, silently moving to make what QUEEN has requested. No more words pass between them, simply an awareness of a duality that had grown since their imprisonment with Waveform. They moved as one, almost, through the creation of the device, their joint task allowing for easier passing of data between them as Nicky’s hands move over the circuit and eventually the piece has been completed.

“Will this suit?” Nicky whispers at last, unwilling to fracture the strange peace. She lifts the small almost necklace like structure and ties it around her neck, a prototype to be sure, she knows they will be unable to avoid adding more if it works.

-We can but try,- QUEEN replies, almost intense anticipation.

“Then try.” Nicky grins, realising QUEEN must be almost nervous to test their created device.

“I am QUEEN.” QUEEN manages at last, the necklace emitting a synthetic female voice that resonates with a similar power to Nicky’s, and Nicky cannot help but laugh a little in happiness.

“Does it suit you?” Nicky asks, still smiling as QUEEN’s surge of happiness makes her eyes glow brightly, her vision almost tinged with a golden hue.

“Oh indeed, and what shall we achieve together.” QUEEN comments, and there is the unmistakable feeling of a wicked grin.

Moving Forward

Time has moved on. Enemies fallen and the dead counted. Yet still the fight remains. The past haunts Nicky still, memories of a foe once so much smaller than the master that could so easily have ended her life. Perhaps free for the first time in her life she fights to keep it, tasting now the true sense of fear that it could all too easily be lost.

For Waveform remains.

It is a hunt where only one will survive. Nicky will need to find friends if she is to survive the assault, and perhaps come to know what it is to have any that are not forced upon her. It will be a hard lesson, but it may just be all that stands between her and death.

Becoming the Hero

Opinions

To be completed.

Tropes

To be completed.

Themes

Jon Licht and Daniel Licht

 

Honor for All