Hidden - Beyond
This is one of those experimental scenes that decided to pop into my head to write. This is something that happened, though, there isn't really a way for characters to learn about it.
Also, warnings: Violence, swearing, the perspective may be harder to track because of what's happening.
"Alpha Facility under attack, I repeat: Alpha Facility under atta-" Static cut through the radio callout, the first indication that something was wrong for anyone not at ground zero.
No one had predicted what would happen that night. By the time things started going wrong the situation was already far beyond salvaging.
Then again, in the end, it was for the best.
Heavy, panicked breaths. A gaze darting to every shadow, every corner, searching for what was out of place. A rifle raised and ready to fire.
The Malta operative caught a shadow of movement flicker by in his peripheral vision. He twisted and aimed toward it, scanning for the source though it seemed long gone. Gunfire and panicked shouts echoed down the hallway from another part of the already crippled facility.
He wasn't sure what was real and what was someone messing with his head anymore. All he knew for sure was the facility was under attack, and he knew by who.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Perhaps it was because she was young, inexperienced, or she should have been. Perhaps it was because he knew she was a powerful psychic, far beyond the rest of her family.
They'd been training her to be one of their deadlier assets to make use of her capabilities, maybe understand why so far they couldn't replicate what she could do. They weren't fully equipped to handle her turning on them as she had, the memory wipes were supposed to help keep her loyal.
Or... perhaps that was why. Because the organization he worked for had brought this on their own agents.
Whatever exactly had gone wrong... It didn't matter now. She was already in his head.
The operative turned to aim toward another spot of movement, putting a burst into the wall. Again his target was already gone, if she was ever there to begin with. He swore under his breath and scanned for more signs of movement. Maybe, just maybe, he'd get lucky.
Another voice came through on the radio: "If anyone's hearing this don't go near Alpha facility. Subject Zero-Alpha is the attacker. She's already..."
The operative took too long to register it was his voice and that he was actually saying that. Reality started to return to what he could perceive as he realized what she was doing. A pained and frustrated hiss sounded behind him. He could feel her focus still heavy on his mind, he wouldn't have time to turn and fire.
"... Shit... It's too la-"
Deanna watched her latest victim's body drop with a strangled sound. She shuddered and shut her eyes tightly, gritting her teeth at how it felt. She hated it, but she also hated what they were doing, what they had been making her do. It had to stop.
So she was making it stop.
Deanna took a deep breath and dropped to her knees, shuddering and coughing as she curled in on herself. She had been pushing things too hard for not knowing her limits. Admittedly the blood she'd lost from the bullet hole in her leg before she got that under control wasn't helping. She didn't really feel like going easy on the people there. A lot of them seemed too eager to put a bullet in her head if it meant living to see another day. Returning to their control wasn't overly appealing either.
With another deep breath, Deanna cast her focus off toward a small power center within the facility. It was designed to keep the facility off the city's grid, something to help them keep hidden. Several agents were trying to put out a fire sparked by an earlier part of her attack. She cast subtly aside as she dug into the mind of one that was on the edge of the gathering. He wasn't prepared to fend off her influence taking over.
Deanna controlled him like a puppet, capable of using his training for her own ends. She had him fire at his allies and the power generator. Several rounds made it to critical points on the generator. She winced at the burning pain that bleed through to her side of the link, almost violently recoiling back into her body as she narrowly avoided being pulled with the other end.
More shuddering, this time being joined by having to fight back nausea. Deanna gritted her teeth. Waiting for her body and senses to settle again. As things settled enough for her to process what was around her again she felt another handful of operatives searching for her. She stood and limped unsteadily to the nearest wall, preparing to sweep herself out of their perception at the right moment.
With everything that had happened, how much she'd been pushing her powers and how she utilized them... She finally knew what made her father so terrifying of a psychic. Alteration of perception, from subtle changes to seeing things that weren't there, or not seeing what was. That was his focus and just one of many things she found she could do.
And Deanna was so much more powerful than the others in her family.
The operatives swept through the hallway intersection. She heard them talking but cared little for the words. One stopped to check the body of their fallen comrade. The other four kept weapons raised as they watched the area, searching for any sign of her. Signs they wouldn't be able to perceive because of her influence.
Deanna closed her eyes, carefully intensifying her focus on the minds of her targets. A subtle attention pull here, a false flicker of movement there... She pulled parts of memories as she could reach them to craft her next trick.
She started weaving the pieces together, dropping a clusterbomb of various false events across the group. An image of one being attacked and controlled directly by her. Very real feelings of being shot and shot at before real rounds started being exchanged. A false flicker of movement that might've been her in another's peripheral vision.
The chaos didn't last for very long. The operatives managed to get their wits gathered as they figured out what Deanna was doing, but not before one of them was killed, the rest all wounded and shaken at how real she could make things feel.
She stepped hesitantly away from the wall she'd pressed herself against before. Subtly was cast out the window as her focus fell on the Operatives to a more palpable degree. Psychic energy dug viciously into their minds like hundreds of burning needles that only grew more intense the longer she held it. Her targets all tried to resist to varying degrees of success. One fell quickly to the pain and was finished off by a stronger lance of energy. The psychic whiplash disrupted her focus on the rest, including her efforts to hide.
The strongest-willed of the Operatives fought through the pain to raise his weapon toward Deanna. He triggered a short burst in her direction that made her flinch, but the rounds never hit their mark. A telekinetic barrier caught the rounds in the air a few inches in front of her. Deanna let out a quiet breath and tightened the painful grip she held on the Operatives' minds. One word rang through their minds, the voice behind it pained, angry... and afraid.
-Die.-
The deadly wave of psychic energy that followed wasn't limited to the group in front of Deanna, it spread through the rest of the facility.
She dropped to her knees, gaze fixed to the floor in front of her. Was she shaking? Everything hurt. She curled in on herself while barely remaining upright. She needed to get out before the place burned down.
Deep breath... focus... I can... I can still do this...
Deanna took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. Bringing a memory of one of the alleyways one of her work friends often hung around to the front of her mind. After several moments of careful focus the space started to warp until finally, the scenery around her changed.
The first thing she noticed was how cold it was outside like it was close to winter, and it felt damp like there'd been rain. The sounds of sirens responding to the fire hit her senses next.
Shivering, Deanna swept her attention outward until she found the mind of someone specific. Livio Renzoni, a work friend she knew would help. She prodded at him until he woke up. -Hey...Hey! Livio... Wake up!-
-Ugh... Wait wh... Deanna?! Where have--
-Come here... I... please.-
Deanna stuffed enough of an image of the alleyway across the link for him to find her before pulling away. She couldn't keep it going any longer, it hurt too much. Her focus turned inward, gathering memories of the night up to that point and the days she could remember after her powers awakening. That was a large time gap from the weather change, several months at a minimum... possibly longer. She internally sighed before wrapping them in a bundle of psychic energy. She considered what she was doing for a moment before shattering the bundle, regathering the shards, and shattering them again.
Why was she doing this? It hurt. She didn't want... what? She'd already forgotten what it was with what she was doing. Distant sirens and the cold air bit into her. She remembered it being warm last and then... What had happened? Why did it feel like the sirens were her doing..?
Darkness was creeping in. Deanna stared at the fragmented memories, some piece of her wanting to put them back together. No... she'd done that to herself intentionally. She wouldn't have done that without a good reason. Whatever happened had to be horrible for her to do that.
She gathered the fragments and threw them into the darkness encroaching on her mind.
Then everything faded out.
Also, warnings: Violence, swearing, the perspective may be harder to track because of what's happening.
"Alpha Facility under attack, I repeat: Alpha Facility under atta-" Static cut through the radio callout, the first indication that something was wrong for anyone not at ground zero.
No one had predicted what would happen that night. By the time things started going wrong the situation was already far beyond salvaging.
Then again, in the end, it was for the best.
Heavy, panicked breaths. A gaze darting to every shadow, every corner, searching for what was out of place. A rifle raised and ready to fire.
The Malta operative caught a shadow of movement flicker by in his peripheral vision. He twisted and aimed toward it, scanning for the source though it seemed long gone. Gunfire and panicked shouts echoed down the hallway from another part of the already crippled facility.
He wasn't sure what was real and what was someone messing with his head anymore. All he knew for sure was the facility was under attack, and he knew by who.
Somehow, that made it worse.
Perhaps it was because she was young, inexperienced, or she should have been. Perhaps it was because he knew she was a powerful psychic, far beyond the rest of her family.
They'd been training her to be one of their deadlier assets to make use of her capabilities, maybe understand why so far they couldn't replicate what she could do. They weren't fully equipped to handle her turning on them as she had, the memory wipes were supposed to help keep her loyal.
Or... perhaps that was why. Because the organization he worked for had brought this on their own agents.
Whatever exactly had gone wrong... It didn't matter now. She was already in his head.
The operative turned to aim toward another spot of movement, putting a burst into the wall. Again his target was already gone, if she was ever there to begin with. He swore under his breath and scanned for more signs of movement. Maybe, just maybe, he'd get lucky.
Another voice came through on the radio: "If anyone's hearing this don't go near Alpha facility. Subject Zero-Alpha is the attacker. She's already..."
The operative took too long to register it was his voice and that he was actually saying that. Reality started to return to what he could perceive as he realized what she was doing. A pained and frustrated hiss sounded behind him. He could feel her focus still heavy on his mind, he wouldn't have time to turn and fire.
"... Shit... It's too la-"
Deanna watched her latest victim's body drop with a strangled sound. She shuddered and shut her eyes tightly, gritting her teeth at how it felt. She hated it, but she also hated what they were doing, what they had been making her do. It had to stop.
So she was making it stop.
Deanna took a deep breath and dropped to her knees, shuddering and coughing as she curled in on herself. She had been pushing things too hard for not knowing her limits. Admittedly the blood she'd lost from the bullet hole in her leg before she got that under control wasn't helping. She didn't really feel like going easy on the people there. A lot of them seemed too eager to put a bullet in her head if it meant living to see another day. Returning to their control wasn't overly appealing either.
With another deep breath, Deanna cast her focus off toward a small power center within the facility. It was designed to keep the facility off the city's grid, something to help them keep hidden. Several agents were trying to put out a fire sparked by an earlier part of her attack. She cast subtly aside as she dug into the mind of one that was on the edge of the gathering. He wasn't prepared to fend off her influence taking over.
Deanna controlled him like a puppet, capable of using his training for her own ends. She had him fire at his allies and the power generator. Several rounds made it to critical points on the generator. She winced at the burning pain that bleed through to her side of the link, almost violently recoiling back into her body as she narrowly avoided being pulled with the other end.
More shuddering, this time being joined by having to fight back nausea. Deanna gritted her teeth. Waiting for her body and senses to settle again. As things settled enough for her to process what was around her again she felt another handful of operatives searching for her. She stood and limped unsteadily to the nearest wall, preparing to sweep herself out of their perception at the right moment.
With everything that had happened, how much she'd been pushing her powers and how she utilized them... She finally knew what made her father so terrifying of a psychic. Alteration of perception, from subtle changes to seeing things that weren't there, or not seeing what was. That was his focus and just one of many things she found she could do.
And Deanna was so much more powerful than the others in her family.
The operatives swept through the hallway intersection. She heard them talking but cared little for the words. One stopped to check the body of their fallen comrade. The other four kept weapons raised as they watched the area, searching for any sign of her. Signs they wouldn't be able to perceive because of her influence.
Deanna closed her eyes, carefully intensifying her focus on the minds of her targets. A subtle attention pull here, a false flicker of movement there... She pulled parts of memories as she could reach them to craft her next trick.
She started weaving the pieces together, dropping a clusterbomb of various false events across the group. An image of one being attacked and controlled directly by her. Very real feelings of being shot and shot at before real rounds started being exchanged. A false flicker of movement that might've been her in another's peripheral vision.
The chaos didn't last for very long. The operatives managed to get their wits gathered as they figured out what Deanna was doing, but not before one of them was killed, the rest all wounded and shaken at how real she could make things feel.
She stepped hesitantly away from the wall she'd pressed herself against before. Subtly was cast out the window as her focus fell on the Operatives to a more palpable degree. Psychic energy dug viciously into their minds like hundreds of burning needles that only grew more intense the longer she held it. Her targets all tried to resist to varying degrees of success. One fell quickly to the pain and was finished off by a stronger lance of energy. The psychic whiplash disrupted her focus on the rest, including her efforts to hide.
The strongest-willed of the Operatives fought through the pain to raise his weapon toward Deanna. He triggered a short burst in her direction that made her flinch, but the rounds never hit their mark. A telekinetic barrier caught the rounds in the air a few inches in front of her. Deanna let out a quiet breath and tightened the painful grip she held on the Operatives' minds. One word rang through their minds, the voice behind it pained, angry... and afraid.
-Die.-
The deadly wave of psychic energy that followed wasn't limited to the group in front of Deanna, it spread through the rest of the facility.
She dropped to her knees, gaze fixed to the floor in front of her. Was she shaking? Everything hurt. She curled in on herself while barely remaining upright. She needed to get out before the place burned down.
Deep breath... focus... I can... I can still do this...
Deanna took a shuddering breath and closed her eyes. Bringing a memory of one of the alleyways one of her work friends often hung around to the front of her mind. After several moments of careful focus the space started to warp until finally, the scenery around her changed.
The first thing she noticed was how cold it was outside like it was close to winter, and it felt damp like there'd been rain. The sounds of sirens responding to the fire hit her senses next.
Shivering, Deanna swept her attention outward until she found the mind of someone specific. Livio Renzoni, a work friend she knew would help. She prodded at him until he woke up. -Hey...Hey! Livio... Wake up!-
-Ugh... Wait wh... Deanna?! Where have--
-Come here... I... please.-
Deanna stuffed enough of an image of the alleyway across the link for him to find her before pulling away. She couldn't keep it going any longer, it hurt too much. Her focus turned inward, gathering memories of the night up to that point and the days she could remember after her powers awakening. That was a large time gap from the weather change, several months at a minimum... possibly longer. She internally sighed before wrapping them in a bundle of psychic energy. She considered what she was doing for a moment before shattering the bundle, regathering the shards, and shattering them again.
Why was she doing this? It hurt. She didn't want... what? She'd already forgotten what it was with what she was doing. Distant sirens and the cold air bit into her. She remembered it being warm last and then... What had happened? Why did it feel like the sirens were her doing..?
Darkness was creeping in. Deanna stared at the fragmented memories, some piece of her wanting to put them back together. No... she'd done that to herself intentionally. She wouldn't have done that without a good reason. Whatever happened had to be horrible for her to do that.
She gathered the fragments and threw them into the darkness encroaching on her mind.
Then everything faded out.
Characters: Nameless Malta operatives, Silent Eyes <SC-B2>
Also, to put things into perspective on about how trained Dee is compared to how powerful she is at this point in the timeline: Her family teaches control over psionics even before those powers awaken among them. She also got to see some of her two older sibilings efforts in learning how to use theirs. She's only had her powers for a little over a year (though this may change.) and she's about 20-21. And most of that time after her powers awakened was spent being trained or experimented on by Malta.
She is also over twice as powerful as the rest of her family.
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