The Pilgrim of Cele — 10

Cele’s emerald eyes opened ever so slightly then she quickly snapped them shut again, regretting the reflexive action instantly. In this thin dimensional envelope you never knew what your eyes would see each time you dared open them and the vision that appeared this time was four creepy black eyes against a backdrop that looked like melted gold. She reached out both of her hands and groped the area around her until each hand hit upon a somewhat recognizable form.

“Oh let it be them this time, please let it be them…” she thought, knowing that her pleas were pointless. The two objects she felt, as she clenched her fingers cautiously around them, well they felt like two hands on either side of her and it was her fervent wish the hands belonged to her two siblings, but this prison’s atoms had already somehow created horrific objects and sights out of what seemed to be thin air. She’d been terrorized so much already that she laid there a few minutes fighting her anxious fear trying to force herself to look at what was going to greet her on the other ends of these two ‘hands’.

Her mind wandered to thinking of some of the pleasant, beautiful things this prison cell had created, sights that invoked bliss and utter joy that had also appeared, less frequently. She never knew what would be next, making an existence in this place a constant emotional roller coaster ride up and down which would’ve challenged the sanest person’s mental health. Cele was not the sanest of people to begin with, at least that’s what her other two triplets were always telling her. She could hear Chloe and Cole’s voices saying “ You are so crazy Cele!” She had no idea if they were really saying it or if she was imagining it. In this space, where a wormhole had been inverted, then folded in upon itself repeatedly, there was no way to tell the difference so anything seemed possible.

“Oh please…please let it be them,” she thought as she gently squeezed each hand she felt. Chloe responded by covering Cele’s small hand with her own unusually large muscular hand. Cole responded as he always did , by turning her hand over and lightly making a straight line across her palm, triplet shorthand for: ‘how are you doing ?’ Cele tapped three times on the back of his hand, their signal for ‘I’m sucking air but things could be better.” A hint of a smile crossed Cele’s lips as Chloe also patted her on the back of her hand three times. Cole reached out for Chloe’s hand then the 3 of them, keeping their eyes closed, were silent a few more minutes in the stillness of that impenetrable prison.

Pegasus Proper was designed and created to house serial killers and Morta Revolutionists (the most despicable form of human hybrid, in appearance, etiquette and smell, to ever try to take over the Cevelian Government). As it was not intended to house innocent children it was barely equipped to sustain the triplet’s lives and was woefully ill-equipped to keep them from losing their minds. It was getting harder every day to sustain any hope they’d ever come out of it alive or sane. All three of them were already feeling the effects of Pegasus Proper’s confinement, although the different genetic mutations the three of them were born with had rendered each more able than the average human being to tolerate Pegasus Proper’s constant assaults on their reality. Their parents illegal union, one forbidden by the Cevelian government for over one hundred years was illegal because of several genetic mutations that had occurred among human beings when two such citizens had offspring. These triplets were unique among all of mankind.

Chloe’s superior physical strength and build made her the most able of the three to fight Pegasus’s damage much more than her siblings. Although only twelve years old, she was six foot three inches tall and over two hundred pounds. Cele, by comparison, was four foot nine inches tall, and dainty to the point of seeming frail.

Cole was five foot two (“Hey — five foot two AND A HALF !! and don’t you forget it!!” he would loudly remind anyone who referred to his height) and quite hairy for a mere child. His build was more average for his age, although his head appeared to be just slightly too large for his body. Their muscles, tendons, ligaments and spinal nerves atrophied in tiny increments every 24 standard of their captivity and they’d lost all concept of how long they had been there within the first month. For the first month Cole’s superior I.Q. could tell them the exact hour since they’d been imprisoned but it felt like a long time had passed since even he had lost count.

Cele’s special gift, layered in among the many gifts the three possessed in common, was unparalleled ability to manipulate the thoughts of others, but she also had the ability to manipulate them in the future and on at least one occasion she’d been successful when changing a person’s thoughts in the past. Two years before they’d woke up in this prison, she had proven this to Chloe and Cole by reaching their thoughts, in the past, and having them leave a note under their mattresses. She told them, prior to their little experiment, what thought she would try to implant in their thoughts. Then she focused and meditated for hours in the quiet of her dark closet. She had them check their mattresses the next day… there in Cole and Chloe’s own writing was the thought she’d sent them in the past.

“Some days the memories still knock the wind out of me.” It was written on a picture in a book their mother had. They never told a soul about this experiment, not even their parents. Cele feared if this ability was proven to be real , this power she had only just touched the surface of — she’d be locked up and caged to be examined like a lab rat while scientists probed her every nook and cranny for the answers to why she could do this. The three swore , by blood oath the day it happened two years earlier. Cele believed intensely in her blood oaths and seemed to think of a new one every week. Chloe could not have cared less, so when Cele would come to her every so often wanting to stick her index finger with a pin Chloe just held out her finger and waited , seeming as if she could barely feel the sharp jabs. Cole didn’t have Chloe’s superior physical stamina and strength and this meant his fingers healed much slower. The pin pricks hurt him more than a lot, so, although he tried to act tough and handle it, his fingers were tender and he’d made it clear , howling with pain, after the last blood oath that he was done with such foolery.

The three could not understand how they’d gone to sleep one night, in their own beds and the next thing they knew they woke up in this insane place where your thoughts could become your realities and life felt like one unending day… an unending existence that had no beginning and no end. Unknown to them, they were well into their eighth month there and irreparable damage to their nervous system was already creeping it’s way throughout their bodies day by day. No one was meant to live through this court sentence and certainly not for long. Eight months was nearly double the amount of time any previous inmate had survived. They had only one way to send their parents a message , to try to let them know where they were .

Cele concentrated for their first few days there on sending out the intention to manipulate somebody’s thoughts, anyone who was anywhere near them and implant one word, one hint, one clue to leave for her parents as to their location in the cosmos. This first effort was to be a first of many breadcrumbs. They did not know where, or when they were even, so they decided for Cele to focus on sending out Cele’s name and for her to implant the thought in whoever received this thought to magnify the name, Cele. She focused herself into exhaustion whenever conscious in that first week and tried to send it as near in time and space as she could. They were hoping that if someone got the thought one to seven days in the past it might leave a clue somehow where and when it was needed to lead to them. They knew that Cele’s name was an original name their parents had created on their own and was not a name commonly used anywhere in the galaxies at that time. They’d picked the names Chloe and Cole when they were told to be expecting twins. Cele had been a surprise two months later which the doctors never could explain satisfactorily. Their father thought up Cele as a way to combine Chloe and Cole and as soon as he said it , their mother loved the sound of it . It stuck immediately. The die was cast, the future sealed.

The three decided if anything had a shot, this name would. It wasn’t long before Cele felt too weak to even try to focus on anything, much less on sending out a manipulation of another’s past thoughts. It was nearly impossible to focus on anything with all the strange sights they battled to ignore constantly inside their own minds in this nowhere place. They had no idea if it had done any good at all.

That the triplet’s had been in Pegasus Proper for eight long months and the fact that no other prisoners had ever survived that long were two cold hard facts known excruciatingly well by their parents and one very devoted Aunt, three former Cevelian Agents who were at that moment deeply undercover and entrenched in a high risk unofficial mission to rescue the three and take down their captors.

Somewhere in a tiny envelope on the edges of both space and interdimensional reality, the soft labored breathing of three very nervous , exhausted twelve year old sintaps was all that could be heard, except for an occasional soft whimper. They longed for home.

At the end of a sixty-eight kilometer platinum tether which fed into the triplet’s cell , Orion got tired quickly of hearing the slow breathing of the three kids and began to nod off to sleep. His large chin had been propped up in his hand and suddenly his elbow slid and slipped off the edge of the desk, causing his chin to plunk down on top of the huge glass of expensive cocoa flavored Canibinopiat liquor he’d been sipping down. It was supposed to be one of those products that was the next best thing to a real opiate or cannabinoid product that one could get now, since the outlawing of all pharmaceuticals that influenced the brain’s natural function in any way. There were a variety of these drinks that intended to mimic the effects of the much more powerful real chemicals humans used to ingest to the tune of billions of dollars every single day. Because none of the concoctions produced any euphoria that felt even slightly close to the real thing , often vendors would add doses of various homemade chemicals to their products, resulting in more than a few deaths throughout the region. Orion decided he was obligated to self test this last batch they’d confiscated from a warehouse last week because he had to make sure there really were illegal drugs in the batch before they turned it in at Ops. They’d look pretty inept if they turned in a product as an illegal product and they charged it that way only to have it turn out that it had no illegal products in it, right? Well, that was the asteroid cruft line he told the storage officer under his command anyway, with a wink -wink, as he took a few bottles out of the sign in locker and erased it off the log. Who wanted to do all that paperwork anyway unless this mixture was the real thing?

Of course there were the standard chemical tests for this very purpose on board but ‘conveniently’ they’d all been ruined because someone spilled water on them. By the time Orion was drinking his third large glass of the stuff he realized he was what the oldsters referred to as “high as a kite” which almost bothered him for a few seconds knowing that if he was caught, he’d get in a lot of trouble. He quickly shoved the pestering concern right out of his head. He just did not care anymore. He wiped the sticky syrupy mixture off his soaked chin with his shirt sleeve and stood up tipsily from the con and tried to steady himself . It was no use . He wobbled down the hall toward his bunk, holding the treasured bottles close to his chest. A small mouse fled the sound of the large man’s boots on the metal floor just in the nick of time. Orion caught a brief glimpse of the tiny shadow flying across the floor and chuckled , “Thasss riight yewwwd betta run …”. Mid sentence confusion spread across his face and he paused for one second clumsily grabbing onto the railing trying to steady himself before he went took the first step to his room. He was trying hard to focus on getting down that first step when he fell forward flat on his face there in the breezeway between the officer’s quarters. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Diane started to maneuver the small ship directly vertical through the hatch it had once come in. Paul watched in amazement at the proficiency the woman was using to fly this craft. Suddenly, Layla tore off the safety straps she’d been clicking in place across her chest and nearly hurled her body at Diane’s spot on the craft. Layla pushed the large button that said ABORT, and the small ship tottered precariously and wobbled back down to the floor of the main ship’s docking port where it landed with a smashing thunderous crash.

“Are you out of your damned mind Layla what in the hell is …” Diane drew back her fist to punch Layla across the face with all the power she could muster. Layla reached out and wrapped her hand around Diane’s clenched and ready fist. Then she yelled back at Paul “You, come here, NOW! NOW!” Paul was already halfway out of his seat when she yelled, and her urgent, serious tone made him move even quicker. Layla reached towards him and still holding Diane’s clenched fist she grabbed Paul’s hand and at once all three of them froze and their eyes locked onto each other’s. All three of them said the one word which until that moment had only been the name of a planet they were headed to recently…

In unison they all said “Cele”… and their memories returned and the reason they were out on the Ark , that spaceship, undercover… undercover so deep that it required all of them to hide the truth even from their own conscious memory… all of it returned.

Why they’d used Paul Kane, that wanted criminal as bait to lure in Orion and find him because they knew Kane was the one most wanted fugitive that Orion wanted to capture for the last decade.

Why this father had undergone surgical reconstruction to appear to be Paul Kane…

Why they all were where they were… Cele.

Someone had scratched the letters deeply into the metal plating over the con panel, and it had triggered Aunt Layla’s memory.