Flashes

"Do you think you can do it now?" Lucy asked Don.

Don looked up at her with a frown. Then he looked down at his vibrating hand doubtfully.

"Is this really going to work?"

"Well, we did research. Actual look things up research," Rena said, not looking up from her phone. "There were all these stories where your dad did something like this, and it took a bit of forever to figure out just what it was."

"He just looked like a blur in the footage, so headache inducing," Cassidy muttered, skillfully wielding a screwdriver. The tiny robot under it wriggled. "I think I might have found it," she breathed.

"Finally. I was so getting so tired of your complaining about it," Rena sniped. "I missed out on the bidding for that pair of wicked purple half-boots listening to you."

"You don't need purple boots. They'd clash with your hair," Lucy remarked absently. She carefully set a thick piece of wood between two similar pieces to keep it upright. "Try it through this. If it works, we'll go after the real thing."

Don hesitated for a second before approaching the board. With a deep breath, he slowly thrust his hand towards the board. The others stopped what they were doing to stare. Slowly he moved forward. HIs vibrating fingertip touched the board and then his hand was in the board, his fingers sticking out from the other side.

"It works," Lucy breathed out. "Superheroes are crazy."

"But so are supervillains," Cassidy returned with a roll of her eyes.

"They're both crazy, and by default we're all nuts because that's our base," Dawnie snapped, taking a step back from the counter. "Could you pull your hand out because that's freaking me out." She directed at her brother.

Don laughed as he pulled his hand out. He flexed his hand, wiggling his fingers.

"That felt so weird. Dawnie, you've got to try this out," he said, chuckling.

"That's okay. One of us doing that is more than enough,�� Dawnie said with a firm shake of her head.

"The box looked thinner than this wood, so this should work," Aarti said. She glanced at her communicator. "I haven't been home in so long. I'm sure no one's fed my dog since then."

The rest exchanged silent looks. From all the information they'd gathered and gossiped about in secret, they were sure that Aarti's 'little doggie' wasn't going to starve if ever. They forebore to mention that to Aarti since they didn't want to have that argument with her. Aarti still had anger management issues.

"We should do this before the adults launch their little sorties," Cassidy said. She set her screwdriver down. "So, show me how that little door thingie works."

*****

The visitor's room was cold and sterile. It had been a bit of a shock. He had thought that with the name 'Holcomb Woods' that the place would have some wood somewhere. So far, he'd been walked down sterile white plaster hallways, past sterile white plaster rooms in the company of silent orderlies who kept giving him the side eye.

Court looked up as his mother was escorted in. She looked paler than he remembered, the once manic light in her eyes snuffed out. Or at least it looked snuffed out. Instinct told him that it was still there, but like Rena, she could hide it at will. She mustered up a smile at the sight of him.

"You have five minutes, Dr. Frittawa." The orderly who escorted her in gave Court a hard look before turning and walking away.

Court studied her for a few long seconds. Her time here had let the color she used on her hair to fade away. Her eyes were still that stark black that she preferred. He knew from Jebediah's records that she'd done just as much work on herself as she'd done on her children and experiments. One of them was staining her eyes permanently black.

"We're going to try to eliminate the rest of the overlords," Court said conversationally.

That elicited a small smile. She looked away towards the door. Court glanced upwards at the camera keeping watch. He was sure that the orderly was doing his best to eavesdrop since it was clear that the cameras weren't doing a very good job in the audio department. He wasn't planning on scrambling the cameras on the way out. Very few people knew that his mother was his mother. There weren't any records existing with that information.

Even Jebediah's records didn't record his genetic heritage. Anyone who looked into it would think that he was a hodgepodge attempt, a mix of who knew who. There were several of them among the creches.

"We didn't think that they would be able to salvage some of the creches," his mother finally said, her voice hoarse from disuse.

"What?" Court turned his attention back to her. The look in her eyes was so very sardonic. "They destroyed all the creches."

"No, no, they didn't," his mother softly said. "Our creche was young, and they got most of the older ones, but there was a new one that had just started operation when you escaped."

Court frowned. This wasn't what he expected to hear when he came to visit his mother. Well, he wasn't sure what she was supposed to say, but this wasn't it. He'd been expecting something along the lines of asking about his father who was in another facility across the country. He'd already visited the man who'd only said to be careful.

Now, he knew why. It had been a puzzle that he'd thought about the entire plane trip here, to this nondescript city where his mother was of her own volition. He heaved a mental sigh at the thought. She was punishing herself unnecessarily, cracking under the overwhelming thought that she had betrayed herself for her morals or some such nonsense. Court had never understood it though Lucy had once said it was some weird dichotomy that made her experience a psychotic break.

"Be careful, Court. You're the only one left after all. I wouldn't want all my hard work to go to waste," his mother said, looking down at the table. Strands of pale white hair drifted forward from her careless ponytail.

"I'll be careful, mother," Court assured her in a low voice. "I'll come back to visit again soon."

"No rush, no rush. I'm in penance for my sins against myself and my work and my betters," she said, whispered in a broken voice.

Court stood, staring at her in pained shock. He knew the signs, had seen them frequently in the past few years. Whatever they'd done to her to keep her loyal had broken something in her, no matter what Lucy, Jeb, or whoever thought. He could vaguely hear the broken hiss whenever he was close to her, too deep for him to wrench free or burn out.

"It's okay, Mom. I'm gonna fix you one day," he said in a similar whisper as he turned and walked out of that sterile little room.