37. Olly #2
Thanks to the kraken stirring in me now, I had sucked those people’s mental abilities dry, until we were certain there wasn’t a threat left amongst them.
Or rather, a threat we wouldn’t be able to foresee.
I understood, then, what was happening, why my mind and body were preparing for war, mustering in a way my powers never had.
Fatima and I were going to see someone more powerful than Clark and I put together: Beatrice.
A premature baby who, according to the photographs I saw now on Fatima’s cell phone, looked much better this morning than she had yesterday.
She was healing at an accelerated rate, and what’s worse is that she was still inside me when all of that psychic power had been siphoned off the others.
How much of it went to her directly? Hell, how much went to Clark?
Let’s just say, as far as I could tell, a lot.
I felt like I was getting ready to climb inside a nuclear reactor as we hit the button for the doors to the NICU to open, and Fatima wheeled us inside, got us away from the door, and said low, so I would be the only one to hear, “Bea is strong, but you must not be afraid. She has inherited more than just powers from you. She has inherited a strong moral code from you and Shepard, and from Clark’s influence as well.
The only people who should be scared of her are doctors Bell and Levy, and their time is coming.
Having all this power from birth, she will need her Mama to help her navigate what this means.
To guide her, soothe her, and direct her powers to good or absorb them if they run to bad.
You are more than capable of all these things.
Now. Would you like to meet your daughter? ”
We pulled up to an incubator holding a mewling little thing, nude except for her diaper and a wool hat, and more lines connected to her than I’d like, but I’d been assured they were for monitoring, not medication.
Fatima did some wizardry with my hospital gown so I could hold Bea skin to skin and try to feed her, but not expose myself to the entire unit, not that I cared.
And I was past trying to solve mysteries and figure out what talents she might have: I just wanted her, in my arms, and then at home in the nursery that awaited her.
Fatima lifted Bea from her incubator and lay her on my patch of chest she’d cleared, and the second our skin touched, it was like a missing part of myself had just joined me, after all these years of waiting for it.
I couldn’t hold back tears and didn’t even try, just let the joy wash over me, as I felt the creatures of the deep within me, even the kraken who was doggedly trying to return to sleep, clamour with joy.
Bea was finally here, she was healthy, she was whole.
Before too long, we would be headed home.
I plucked up some more courage from goodness knows where, and then looked down again at the wee miracle in my arms, her image already burned into my brain for life, yet I couldn’t feast my eyes upon her enough.
I made sure to keep her warm, as other than the diaper she was bundled in nothing but a crocheted pink hat.
I wondered if Gemma Diaz made the hat while she was visiting.
The baby was so small, so perfect, I was afraid to even breathe on her, lest she get caught up in my desperate struggle to, in the words of Thomas that echoed in my head, “put that shit on lockdown.” But at the same time, I just knew it wouldn’t work like that.
She couldn’t pick up more of my psychic abilities just from me holding her—could she?
No, I decided, though that was based on zero evidence and a bunch of bunk.
All I really knew was that she was her own soul, and a stubborn, screaming one at that, hungry for what my body could provide.
While Fatima helped me get the baby in position, and I gasped because I wasn’t ready for the sharpness of those little gums when she latched on, a thought just ran over and over through my mind.
I gazed out the window at a flock of starlings.
This was a broad, beautiful world, and I wanted to be the one to show this child—my child!
—all of it. Almost instinctively, I did something that was once as natural as breathing.
I reached out and ever so gently touched her mind, like I did when she was in my womb, and I heard a word as old as time in my head: “Mama?” I was temporarily startled, and replied quickly, in the same way: “Yes, it’s me, little sprout.
I’m not giving you up, Bumblebee. Not for the whole world. ”
I instinctively held the suckling baby closer to me, so much so that she was practically under my chin.
I breathed in her scent to ground me and keep me from getting lost in the psychic upheaval happening in the room.
I was starting to have that feeling again of electricity crackling in the air, and I didn't know what risk there might be to the baby that I was clutching.
Fatima was no longer holding on to my arm in support because she was gone, either doing nurse duties in the hospital or having to stop visiting for a time.
I really wish I had someone I could talk this over with, but any former psychics I knew might just be vindictive enough to try to inflict good old physical harm.
If they remembered anything about what actually happened, which was actually what my gut was telling me—confusion and some monster headaches when they awoke, but no recall of their years as psychics, about being experimented on, about exploiting others under orders, none of it. All wiped clean.
In my arms Bea was stirring, her little limbs wiggling a bit. A nurse popped by and said, “Goodness, she’s been out a while! Where on Earth did your nurse go?” Considering I wasn’t sure if Fatima even was on this Earthly plane anymore, I just managed,
“I don’t know. But you’re going to put her back in the box now?”
The nurse nodded, and I asked quickly, “May I kiss her?” The stern woman’s features softened at that, and she let me have one more moment with Bea before setting her back up in the incubator and making sure all her lines were connected properly and the IV bags were still at a satisfactory level.
I watched her doing all this, while I had a vision: Bea, Maya, Clark, Rosie, and myself laughing so hard because we were having a tea party on the ceiling just like in Mary Poppins.
This was the first time, finally, that I saw a future where both Bea and I were alive, together.
The unparalleled joy I felt at that moment took me by surprise, because I had been so certain of my imminent demise.
But no, Bea was at least seven or eight in the tea party, and I looked well into my thirties, laughing and enjoying time with my husband and daughters.
Oh my goodness, I thought. I'm a mother to these girls, in a sense, not just to Bea.
Wait...husband?