The Other Side of the City--Chapter 113

“What?!” Phoenix leaned forward, her eyes wide.  Surely she hadn’t heard the investigator correctly. 

Kurtzman looked surprised at her outburst, and started, his blue eyes wide, backing up slightly.  “I said, you probably have enough Kraang DNA in your make up that the probe didn’t detect you.”

“What Kraang DNA in my make up?” she yelled.

“Shhhh,” Pete put one of his human fingers to his beak.  “They’ll hear you.”

She snapped her head to Pete, and then back to Kurtzman.  “What Kraang DNA?” she whispered harshly.  She could feel the tension in the room rise along with her temper.

“Your Kraang DNA,” Kurtzman said slowly, as if talking to a wild animal.

“I don’t have any Kraang DNA,” she said.  “I’m a plain, ordinary human.”

There was a moment of silence, laden with dread, and she knew what he was going to say before Kurtzman replied, “You are hardly ordinary.”  As if to add insult to injury, he continued, “You don’t think everyone can go around healing people, do you?”

She shook her head, “That doesn’t have anything to do with my DNA,” her voice was emphatic, “I’ve only been able to do that since Ailurosa—“ she stopped short at the sound of her dead daughter’s name.

“What’s Ailurosa?” Kurtzman asked.

He didn’t know about Ailurosa.  She recalled he did not know about Aetos either.  He didn’t know about the man in the funny hat outside of the Asian store, or the great firebird that he had called down to engulf her.  “I’ve only been able to do that for about six years,” she explained, trying to be calm.

“You been healing mutants for ten years,” he said, as if he knew more of her actions than she did.  “And you were healing transient humans before that.”

“I did that with herbs,” she shook her head, her eyebrows drawing together.  “I didn’t do that with,” she didn’t even know what to call it out loud, so she put her hands in the hair and waved them slightly.

Kurtzman looked at her doubtfully.  “When was the last time you got sick?” he asked.

Phoenix opened her mouth, sure a reply would be on the tip of her tongue, but there wasn’t one.

“How often were you sick as a kid?”

“I was sick all the time as a kid,” she said.  “Just like other kids.”

“Did you get the chicken pox?”

She thought for a moment.  “No.”

“Did you get the measles?”  He paused, and she didn’t answer, “The mumps?  The flu?  The common cold?  How many days of school did you miss because you were sick.”

“Mr. Kurtzman,” she said, beginning to get angry again, “that was a long time ago, you can’t expect me to remember—“

“—that you were never sick as child?” he interrupted.  “Think.  Tell me one time you were ill.  Ever.”

She stared at him, her mind going blank.  I’ve been sick, she thought.  Everyone gets sick.  She couldn’t bring a single illness to mind.  Every time she’d been laid up, it had been from a physical injury, not from an illness

“How many doctors have told you that your sports injuries healed with an amazing speed, at the top of the scale?” he asked, as if he could sense her train of thought.

“Lots of athletes heal quickly,” she retorted.  “That’s a scientific fact.  It’s because they’re in good shape.”

“They didn’t heal as fast as you,” Kurtzman leaned on the desk, so they were looking eye to eye.

Phoenix felt her face twisting into despair.  She shook her head again, as if doing so would negate his words.

“Why do you think the Kraang kidnapped you?” Kurtzman asked.

She shook her head again, and backed away from the desk.  “I don’t know,” her voice sounded small and timid.

“The Kraang have been manipulating human DNA for millennia,” Kurtzman looked at her with pity.  “They were trying to find a compatible DNA strand with their own, so they could survive on Earth.  They had several families all throughout the world that they were concentrating on, trying to perfect the combination.”  He stood back up, “Your mother’s family was one of them.”

Phoenix felt as if she’d been hit in the chest with a baseball.  She stumbled backward, and fell into Pete, who put his hands on her shoulders to steady her. 

“I thought you knew…” Kurtzman voice sounded truly sorry.

“That I knew?” she felt her anger flare up again.  “How was I supposed to know that?”

“Shhh,” Pete said again behind her.

“I thought that was why you stayed with your children,” Kurtzman said, a confused look now on his face.  “Because you knew that you were a mutant…” his voice trailed off.

She shook her head again, beginning to get dizzy from the shaking of it, and sank down to the ground on her knees.  She was keenly aware of the five of them looking down on her at the floor, but she wasn’t sure if her legs would be able to hold her up for much longer.

“Then why,” Kurtzman paused, “why did you stay to take care of Arcos, Aries, and Medusa?”

She looked up at him, and felt despondent.  Tears sprang to her eyes and overflowed, before she even had a chance to blink, the warmth of the water was a stark contrast to the cool dark of the basement.  “Because I was already dead,” she told him.  “I stayed because I was already dead.”  She leaned forward, bringing her hands to her face, and her face to her knees, and let out a small sob.

She couldn’t hear anything for a moment, except for her own soft crying.  Then she felt a hand on her back, and heard Pete say, “It’s alright, Phoenix.  Being a mutant isn’t all bad.”

She sat up, and laughed through her tears at the statement.  “Oh, Pete,” she felt shame welling up inside of her.  How spoiled she must look to these people.  “Being a mutant isn’t bad at all.  Being a mutant is perfectly fine.”  The laugh ended and twisted into a little sob.  “It isn’t that.  It’s just that I thought—“ she stopped in midsentence.  It sounded ridiculous now that she was forming it into words.

“That hearing voices and having visions made you special?” Dr. Rockwell asked, his tone slightly condescending. 

She looked at him in horror.  “Wha-?” was all she get out.

“That is what usually classifies one as insane, not extraordinary.”  The chimpanzee turned slightly in the hair and approached her.

“How—how--?”

“—do I know that?” he finished for her.

She nodded.

“He’s telepathic!” Pete said proudly, puffing his chest out as if it were him. 

“And your thoughts are particularly loud, dear lady,” Dr. Rockwell put his hand out to help her up.

She wanted to slap his hand away, she wanted to slap the condescending look off of his face.  The shame of the morning, filled with the shame of her current actions, warped up her insides.  She looked at it uncertainly, and then reached out to take it.  It was warm, the skin calloused, like human skin, only the shape of the hand and fingers were off.   “I don’t understand,” she said, mainly because she could think of nothing else to say that would not cause her anger to explode.

“You understand a great deal,” Dr. Rockwell said, letting her go once she was on her feet. 

She didn’t feel like she understood anything.

The chimpanzee simply stared at her, a smug look on his simian face.  The other four men silent as well.

“Did the Kraang make you telepathic?” she asked through ground teeth.

Dr. Rockwell nodded.  “I was experimented upon, and, well,” he smiled depreciatively, and the genuine look touched Phoenix in a way that his words never could have, and she felt her anger evaporating.  “It is a long story.”

“My family was mutated by the Kraang thousands of years ago?” She turned to Kurtzman for confirmation.  When he nodded, she continued, “And through these mutations, I can heal myself?”  He nodded again.  “And others?” 

“That’s right,” he answered.

“But other people can do this,” she held up her hands as if they were something not attached to her.   This couldn’t be because of some alien tampering with her body.  “There are stories all throughout history of people being able to heal—Entire religions are based on it!”  She felt panic rising in her again.  The pieces of the puzzle were not fitting together, and with each attempt she made at joining two pieces, she more agitated she got.

“Just because one is bestowed with a gift, does not preclude the proclivity for the gift to begin with,” said Dr. Rockwell, still hovering near her.  “Nor the talent to use it.”

She blinked at him, “You mean, it is something enhanced, not something created?”

“Exactly, my dear lady,” he replied.  “The ability to be psychic must already be in place in order for any mutation to bring it into fruition,” he tapped the forehead of his helmet.  “Everyone has the potential to be manipulated to become psychic, but that does not mean that everyone who is manipulated will become so, or that those who are not manipulated will become so.  In order for an item to be manipulated into something, it must have the something to be manipulated already in place.”  He chuckled, “You understand a great deal, good lady,” he continued.

“Are they speaking English?” Pete whispered loudly to no one in particular.

“You are saying that everyone could be any of these things,” she said slowly, making she understood the totality of his words.  “But some people are fiddled with by the Kraang to become a certain way.  And that some people become that way spontaneously.”

“And the two may not be mutually exclusive.”

She blinked rapidly, she didn’t want any of this to be true.  If this was the truth, then everything she’d ever believed about herself, about the universe, was a lie.

“Not so,” said Dr. Rockwell, answering her unspoken thoughts.  “It simply will need to be reworded.  You know as well as I that the universe is populated by more than we can ever know.”

Her ire rose again at what she saw as an intrusion.  “You need to stop doing that,” she almost spat at him.

“He will,” Slash came to take a step forward and looked hard at floating chimp.  Slash put his hand on Phoenix’s shoulder, and smiled down at her.  “It’s comforting to know,” he said, “that the human who helps mutants is actually a mutant, too.”

She cleared her throat, “I, of all people, don’t mind being a mutant,” she said with cheer that sounded as false as it felt.  “I lived like one for the past twenty years.”  She stood up, and looked about at the five men staring at her, each of them with an uncomfortable expression on their faces, save for Pete, whose googley eyes were filled with compassion.  “One of the Kraang said that I was one of the ones known as Not-The-One,” she turned back to Kurtzman.  “What does that mean?”

“The One,” Kurtzman explained, “is the human who the Kraang could use to be able to invade Earth from their dimension.  She’s a very special girl,” he took a deep breath and sighed.  “April O’Neil.”

April O’Neil.  She wondered if this special girl talked to phantom firebirds, too.  Phoenix looked around, her eyes drifting to the high windows at the top of the basement walls that were parallel with the sidewalk outside.  “I guess it worked, huh?”

“It would appear so,” Kurtzman said.

Phoenix took a deep breath of her own, looking at each of the Mighty Mutanimals again, then back to Kurtzman.   She felt like her mind was a racquet ball and had been batted about the room.  It was tired, and it was empty.  “So, what now?” she asked.