Waking Up

Sphinxie paced anxiously around the little room. In the middle of the room sat an enormous four poster bed complete with curtains. Curled up in the middle of the bed was Ella, fast asleep. Sphinxie would stop from time to time to stare at Ella and then resume her pacing.

Sphinxie finally ground to a halt and stared at where the little door that she and Ella used to change places once was. Now the doorway was an enormous tunnel-like entity shrouded faintly in the mist that used to make up most of the boundary of the room. She could see faint shreds of the outside through the tunnel intermittently and that scared her.

Ella hadn't woken up in days. The last time she'd been awake, she'd charged out of the room for a few minutes and then just as hastily came back, muttering something about impossible things before crawling back into the bed and falling asleep. The mist had thinned at an abnormal rate at that point. What scared Sphinxie the most was the thick medicinal odor that hung around Ella.

She shouldn't be able to taste or smell anything. Sphinxie gnawed on her thumb, a bad habit she'd recently picked up. WIth Ella asleep, she was de facto in charge of the body. The lure of the tunnel was increasing every day. She kept resisting.

She was here to keep everything in check. Until puberty, Ella's body wasn't strong enough to handle the amount of power she had. Sphinxie was well aware that she was a stop-gap solution that Ella had come up with. If she emerged for longer than a few minutes, the damage done to the body would be increasingly severe.

Ella would be lucky if she didn't wind up crippled.

Sphinxie sank down onto the bed, facing the tunnel. Even as she watched, the edges eroded even more, increasing the dark tunnel even more. There was a flash of light that lingered, a fuzzy view of a laboratory full of beings peering at her.

Sphinxie wrapped her arms around the bedpost, turning her head away and towards Ella. Ella shifted in her sleep, the medicinal odor increasing.

****

San sat up straight as the guards entered as a group, a girl slung over one's shoulder. The entire room grew silent as Pleja followed after them, a toothy grin on his face and eyes glittering. The guards stopped at the cylinder across from San's and keyed it open.

The glass silently rose just enough for them to sling the girl onto the cylinder pad and then it just as silently slid shut.

San worked to keep his breath even, his eyes half-lidding. The guards glanced around before parting to let Pleja through. The overlord stalked forward and leaned forward. He let out a slow huff of laughter before straightening up.

"Looks like we're nearly done," Pleja said, glancing around the room. "Don't worry, my little soldiers. Soon, you'll all be put to use."

He turned and walked away, the guards following in his wake.

They waited until he left, the door closing behind him with a singular finality. Then San shot to his feet, leaning against the glass closest to the girl's cylinder.

"Sabrina? That's you, right? Sabrina, wake up!" He said, pounding on the glass.

"This wasn't one of my sights," Paul muttered, blearily staring at the girl. He winced and put his hand to his forehead. "I'm so tired it hurts."

San rested his forehead against the glass of his cylinder. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. He could sympathize with Paul. Whatever he'd been hooked on had left him with a heartfelt yearning for more as well as bones that ached. He had a suspicion that it was his bones purging whatever it was out of them, bit by bit. While it could make him happy and content and a pseudo-human, his kryptonian genes were slowly activating and rejecting it, remodeling the parts he'd damaged.

It would make sense that the last part to be mended would be his mind.

"I think she's just knocked out," Morris said. He looked from Paul to Sabrina and then to San. "This is getting out of hand, San. Can you get out?"

"Of course, he can't get out. Whatever are you saying," Niles said as he sauntered into the cylinder room. Circe was trotting at his heels, grasping a datapad in her arms in a parody of a faithful secretary. "As if he would prove me wrong," Niles sneered, coming to a stop in front of Sabrina's cylinder.

"They gave her thirty milligrams of Sofonil," Circe said, checking the pad. She looked at Sabrina critically. "They haven't done anything to her."

"Yet, they haven't done anything yet," Niles corrected. He ran a hand through his hair once and then knocked on the cylinder. "They'll have her scheduled for testing soon. If only there was a way to contact the outside…" His voice trailed off as he peered more closely at Sabrina. Then he stepped back, shaking his head. "The hubris of them all," he breathed.

"Niles?" Circe asked. She placed a hand on his arm.

"It might not be a disaster yet." Niles turned and speared San with a look. "Isn't it about time you stop feeling sorry about yourself and do something?"

Niles and Circe strolled out of the cylinder room.

"They didn't even check on it," someone muttered as the door slid shut behind them.

"Shut it," San barked. "They're probably monitoring the room to see if their two main targets are waking up any time soon." He glanced around the room. "Do you know how disastrous it would be if they got their hands on that kid? It'll be downtime soon. We'll start making our move then. Perhaps we'll be able to wake up Ella at least."

San looked in the direction of Ella's cylinder. She was still sleeping, but it was a more fitful sleep than it had been when he arrived a few days earlier. Whatever they were doing in the labs was close to succeeding in waking up her Sphinxie side. He knew what Paul's vision of her crying blood meant. Sphinxie controlled most of Ella's power, and if she was put in permanent charge of their body, it would probably slowly destroy her.

San clenched his fist. HIs previous experiments had shown him that his destructive power was faster than the cylinder's auto-repair capability. If he was quick enough, he'd be able to break them out. Then they, and Niles' kid, would make another run for it.

Hopefully, Lucy was on the same page attack-wise.