That meant we needed to move fast.
Glancing around the room, I took stock. “Ahsoka, take Ahri, Ginny, and Sabah and collect the ATC president. We want to neutralize anything Genevieve might be planning.”
Looking at Amy, who was still healing Fleur, I continued. “Amy, when you finish up with Fleur, I want you to stay here on standby and help or reinforce any group that may need it.”
Finally, I turned to Tonks and asked, “You can cast a corporeal patronus, right? We may need that backup depending on how Alma reacts. Follow me if you are feeling up to it.”
Tonks swallowed, her hair flashing a range of colors for a moment before it settled on a determined gold.
Acting quickly and following Thea’s directions, I moved the portal I had left above the ATC headquarters. Genevieve lived only two blocks from the ATC facility, so it ended up taking less than a minute to get into position in front of her apartment and move the portal up to her balcony. Ahsoka’s team immediately headed through even if they needed to be at least a little careful as we heard other agencies moving in.
That left Holly, Tonks, and I to step through another portal to Taylor’s side. All of us watched in fascination as the massive sphere that had been holding Alma’s body slowly depowered itself and then lowered, a door extending into the maelstrom of power that surrounded the psychic dampers.
We could see the control room where Dr. Wade must be controlling things, but from our angle and a distance of over a hundred meters, it was a bit hard to see details. However, there was a security feed on one of the monitors to the side that showed both him and the entrance to the containment sphere..
That was when I was shocked to hear Dr. Wade’s voice once again, this time coming from the speakers in our viewing room. “I have regretted what I did every day since then.”
I wasn’t sure if he could hear me, but I decided to respond to his somewhat rhetorical statement anyway. “That doesn’t really excuse the fact that you killed your daughter, though.”
To my surprise, Dr. Wade responded. “Ah, you are back. I don’t really understand how your team has been moving around, but it doesn’t matter. You are right. It doesn’t, all I can do is this.”
I noted that if he could tell we had left and that we had now returned, then the ATC had records on us. Records that FEAR and the other investigators would eventually find.
However, that didn’t matter. What mattered now was that he was letting Alma out and apparently explaining why to us. Probably because we were the only ones left, since the ATC seemed to have finally given up trying to defend this place.
I considered trying to intervene and maybe save his life somehow. Maybe try to catch his soul when Alma killed him.
However, ironically, I was pretty sure that both of these people wanted this outcome, just like in canon. Alma wanted her revenge for being trapped for 20 years in a dark, water-filled prison, while Dr. Wade wanted absolution for what he had done by letting his daughter kill him.
Not looking away, we waited.
Slowly, we heard the computer cycle through its deactivation protocols, including shutting down the dampeners, draining the water, checking for life-signs (of which there were none), and unlocking the door.
Dr. Wade glanced at us through the camera and monitor setup he had used to track us one last time before he faced the door. “I only wanted the best for humanity. She couldn’t control her powers, so we had to do something. It seemed like the only option.”
As the door opened, we watched through the camera as the chamber inside exuded darkness. A wave of anger seemed to hit us even across the cavernous room as a semi-mummified corpse’s hand wrapped around the edge of the door on the monitor.
If there was any doubt that Alma was dead, this ended that. Her hand alone looked like that of a corpse, nails elongated from the retraction of her skin. Her muscles were mostly gone so that the hand was papery skin overtop protruding bones. The skin was bleached white from being underwater for such a long time. That said, either the fluids had kept the body preserved or her powers had kept her body somewhat intact as she should have been only a skeleton by now.
I shook my head to refocus. Now was not the time to wonder how she had slowed down the decomposition of her body..
Out of the darkness, Alma pulled herself free, like a demon pulling itself out of hell. A part of me paused and considered that it really wasn't an analogy, since she was literally freeing herself from her own personal hell.
There was only a moment of silence before Dr. Wade started screaming.
It was loud and gutteral, the type of scream where the body can’t do anything but react due to the overwhelming level of pain it was suffering.
I momentarily wondered if he would run out of breath, but the scream just kept going and going, getting higher pitch as he fell to his knees.
I swallowed and glanced at my girls, each of which was staring wide-eyed. As completely justified as I felt this was, I couldn’t help but feel a bit worried about what she might due if she came into conflict with my girls.
As the pitch of his scream went above that of human hearing, Dr. Wade’s body began to violently shake, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head and his mouth foaming. There was a pause before Alma reached forward and the moment she made contact, his body exploded.
Instantly, the camera feed we were watching was blocked, completely covered in blood, showing nothing but a deep red tint across the screen.
The view of the control room below wasn’t much better. The glass windows were now equally covered, the blood slowly dripping down onto the floor. Through the tint, I could just barely make out Dr. Wade’s skeleton as it fell to the ground before being stomped into dust by Alma’s feet as she stepped towards the door.
I let myself breathe through my mouth for a second.
I had killed people before, a lot of them. And I had seen this exact same thing play out almost exactly the same during the game, but seeing it in reality, outside of a somewhat sanitized video game, was pretty horrific.
By the time I gained control of myself, we all heard Alma’s voice as she stepped out of the control room and tiled her head up towards us, glowing red eyes the only thing I could see from here through the greasy black hair“... Max…”
Clearing my throat, I glanced at Holly and Tonks to be ready and then nodded. Opening a portal, I stepped through to finally be face to face with the vengeful ghost possessing her own corpse.
Trying to smile, I opened my mouth, “I would- ” However, I was interrupted as Alma approached.
Now tilting her head so I could better see her face, she surprised me by smiling, made all the more terrifying and ghastly coming from a corpse. Her voice struggled to form words from a long dead throat almost like a chain smoker’s rasp while the rest of her body seemed to twitch slightly. “You… mine… now…”
I swallowed and couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably even if I made sure not to break eye contact. “I am sorry, I am not sure I understood. Me and my wives are more than happy to help you gain another body and get you out of here to any…”
Alma’s corpse grinned, and I wasn’t sure if it was a nice grin or not. This time when she answered, she didn’t bother trying to use her actual voice, instead using her power to talk. I wasn’t sure that was via touching our minds ever so gently or by directly creating the soundwaves. Even still, she appeared unused to actual conversation, made worse by seeming to pick her words carefully. “I wish… to go with… all of you together… I do not want to be left behind… again.”
As she spoke, I noticed that her body had stopped twitching as she seemed to get the hang of moving her body again, which seemed to let her focus on talking.
I swallowed again. “I see.” Taking a deep breath, I considered for a moment before I started asking questions. “Inclusion into the Family, as we call it, is something we only offer to those who we trust and get along with us. That said, while I don’t think we are opposed to you joining in principle, it is just too soon to make the offer.”
Then I made a sweeping gesture. “Alma, are you sure that you wouldn’t prefer to be taken to somewhere else so you could be free? The Family moves together, works together, and fights together. If you join, you will be dragged into all of that. I thought that you would have preferred to not have anyone telling you what to do anymore.”
Alma tilted her copse’s head as she thought. The silence stretched for several seconds before she seemed to nod to herself. “I was… watching. You do not demand your… wives follow your commands. You… asked. You fought with them… You went to them when needed.”
Alma tilted her head the other direction in a way that made it clear it wasn’t her muscles moving her body as it just suddenly jerked to the side. “I want… that.”
Slowly clenching my fist and then realising it I considered my answer. Her answer was pretty well thought out and was quite a bit more coherent than I was afraid of. Although I couldn’t be sure how much of that was the influence of Holly’s patronus.
“We can consider that option, assuming that you get along with my wives,” I said carefully “But I have to ask. Can you control your powers?” while gesturing to the room she had just left, “Will that happen to anyone who touches your body?”
Alma seemed to hesitate before she slowly nodded her corpse. “Yes, but my power cannot be constrained with this… broken… body. My… power is… leaking out.”
I nodded back. “We have powers of our own, and so we might be a little more resistant, but I would prefer not to test it. As for your body, we can probably make you a new one, and as a bonus, you wouldn’t have any blood connection to your father anymore.”
While I was considering my next question, Taylor spoke up. “Alma, I can understand wanting to kill him, but why didn’t you kill Dr. Wade until now? You seem to have been able to manifest yourself wherever you wished.”
Alma looked at Taylor, who shunted her emotions to her bugs, maybe to avoid reacting to that literal dead-eyed-stare. “My father and most of the ATC leadership had implanted… psy-blockers. So I could not touch them, hurt them, except in person.”
That did answer several questions I had had when playing the game. However, that was when we heard an explosion from behind us. Glancing towards the sound, I looked back at Alma. “Your son Paxton wanted to free you since you contacted him again. I will help him escape despite his tendency to eat people, because I consider all the killing just him doing everything he could to attempt to escape his imprisonment. However, we are going to need to wipe his memories of this all and place him somewhere where he can grow up right.”
For several long seconds, Alma looked as conflicted as a corpse could, before she pursed her lips. “...alright”
I bit my lip looking deep into the mostly empty sockets of Alma’s corpse, only lit in the back by a red glow. Still, I couldn’t help but be pleased that this version of her actually cared for her son. Especially since he was forced upon her without her consent. It suggested her rationality was much better than I had once feared.
I sighed before muttering under my breath while momentarily looking at my shoes, even if I was pretty sure everyone could hear me, “Ok, I guess we are doing this.”
Looking back up at Alma, I slowly sighed. “Holly, Tonks, please cast your patronus. We are going to have to get closer to her and test a few things, primarily getting her a new body, and I want her to be as calm and in control as possible.”
The two of them raised their wands and cast, a prancing doe and a hopping bunny bounding out of their wands in silvery light and circling around the room.
I felt the pressure of Alma’s dark presence release almost entirely as her corpse took a shaky breath, despite it obviously not needing it.
Looking at me, I watched as Alma’s head slowly tilted as she watched me. “I swear I will not hurt you or your… girls… unless you hurt me first. I will move my spirit out of my body when you need me to.”
I took a deep breath. “Alright, we will head out then.”
Alma made her corpse smile and I locked my face into a return smile as I saw a hint of her mouth which hadn’t dealt with the decay as well. I was glad that she still seemed incapable of directly reading my mind due to our Occlumency defenses.
Alma hesitated and then seemed to firm something to herself before stepping forward, “Wait…” then almost running her hand down my chest, keeping her finger an inch or so from my shirt. “One more… thing… I want babies. Your… babies.”
My eyebrows felt like they were going to jump off my head with how hard I raised them.
At my side, I could practically feel the tension that hit my girls.
The question of kids and family was something that Taylor and Holly felt very strongly about. I didn’t doubt that several of the others felt the same way.
Maybe not all of my girls wanted them, but I was pretty sure the majority did. And so did I for that matter. But I think we all agreed that the time wasn’t quite yet.
It was a bit of a pink elephant problem where once someone mentions something, you couldn’t help but think about it. Up until now babies had been something that none of us really wanted to deal with yet. We weren’t secure nor had a safe world to have them yet. However when it did eventually happen, I was probably going to be having a LOT of children the way I was going about collecting wives.
But, now the proverbial gauntlet had been thrown, and I was going to have to deal with this soon. Not conceiving them, per se, but discussing when, and where, and how many.
Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure why I didn’t see her request coming, since that was literally the plot of FEAR 2. But I had assumed that Alma was being controlled via the changes they made to Beckett in that hospital visit where they experimented on him…
I guess this just confirmed that she was inherently a bit baby crazy…
Which kind of made sense. Now that I was thinking about it, she had had two babies ripped away from her. Then she had 20 years to think about it. She probably wanted to have babies that she could actually hold and raise herself.
Taking a deep breath, I looked her in the eye. “Alma, I can’t promise anything like that quite yet. We don’t even know each other much at all, but I will agree to consider it once we have some time to get to know each other and you have a new body.”
Behind us, I heard another explosion, closer this time.
“For now, would you be willing to disable Paxton? We don’t want to have to fight your son if we don’t have to.”
Alma seemed to consider this for a moment before the glow behind her eye sockets seemed to get brighter. The sounds we could just barely hear in the distance suddenly cut off, but a moment later it continued. This time her hesitant speaking cadence seemed more from uncertainty than her choosing her words carefully. “He is rejecting my instructions… I don’t think… I don’t think I could disable him or those close to him without hurting him. I would… appreciate it if you could… bring him with us as you said.”
I nodded before opening a portal to our island. “It is alright. We should be able to take care of it. I will go grab him, can you wait with Amy? She is another one of my wives. You can even start talking with her on how you want your new body to be. She will probably need to touch you to understand how to make a vessel that is able to contain your psychic power, but other than that anything should be possible.”
Alma glanced through the portal, seeing Amy who was now waiving at her. Fleur looked a little shocked at the sight of a walking corpse, but Amy didn’t so much as blink. Then again, she had spent years working at a hospital and had probably seen a lot more gruesome things.
Alma hesitated for a moment as a large explosion came from behind us. The four replicas that Paxton was using as a scouting party, bursting through the door. Taylor had already turned, guns out, but before she could fire the four replicas simply exploded.
Glancing back at Alma, she smiled. “Mine…” before she nodded her corpse and stepped through the portal.
Letting the portal drop, I sighed and let my shoulders slump. “Ok, that just happened… Lets go pick up Paxton before someone else, like his brother, kills him. I don’t want Alma to decide that we aren’t holding up our end of the bargain.”
Turning towards me with the most deadpan face she could make, Taylor raised her eyebrow. “Yandere Waifu, Get-o?” with her best Japanese impression.
Running a hand down my face, I sighed with a slight smile on my face, making it obvious I was teasing her as I replied, “Like you are much better…”
Shaking my head I continued. “Having got a closer look at Alma’s soul, I am 70% sure I could end her if needed. But I don’t doubt that she would explode my body in the process, to say nothing of the mental torture she might inflict on us durring that time. That said, she is only a bit scarier than the rest of you. Even Thea, the cinnamon bun, is going to completely ruin these people and their company after a few hours of work.”
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There were some amused chuckles before Taylor pointed towards the area behind us, up in the rafters. “I would recommend that we ambush them from that direction so they have to turn to face us. Paxton has brought two dozen standard replicas, eight heavies, six assassins, eight of their elites, and a mecha. Even after Alma cleaned up four standard replicas, that still leaves 20, to say nothing of the rest.”
I nodded, but before we could move into cover, I got a radio call. “Ahsoka here, we have cornered Genevieve. Just in time too, another team seems to be fighting their way up the tower while another group has a helicopter gunship flying around.”
Over the radio, I heard an older lady’s voice on top of a click of a gun’s hammer cocked back as Genevieve probably pointed a gun at my girls. “I'm sorry it came to this. I really am. I'm not a bad person. I just don't have a choice."
I blinked as that was exactly the line she said while shooting Lieutenant Stokes at the end of FEAR 2. The fact she could still say that despite all she had done made it clear she was just as much of a sociopath as we thought.
Her resistance didn’t really matter though, and I heard her grunt in pain as my girls incapacitated her.
I smiled. “Great job. Normally I would say just use your portkeys to head back, but Alma is there right now and I think we may want to interrogate Genevieve before we give her to Alma.”
From out of the radio, but faintly, I could hear Alma respond through Amy’s mic. “I can control myself… probably.”
I hesitated before I shrugged. It was a good test to see her self control. “... Alright. Go ahead.”
Still, I reopened the portal to the medbay just in case.
There was a moment of silence before I heard the four of them call out “PortBack!” before they appeared through the portal in swirls of color and a small pop.
“Welcome back,” an amused Amy greeted them. “Good hunting I suppose?”
Everyone chuckled for a moment, getting the reference because I had previously explained Bloodborne as one of my favorite games and Genevieve certainly wasn’t far off of a crazed beast. After chuckling a moment myself, I pulled us back on topic. “Ahri, once you drop off the trash, why don’t you four come help us grab Fettel.”
Alma was glaring at the unconscious form of Genevieve, but hadn’t done anything else. Perhaps because both Holly and Tonks’ patronus were still standing in the corner of the medbay.
Amy ignored the new body and went back to talking with Alma about what exactly she wanted her new body to look like while Fleur watched, amused..
However, before we could form ranks or anything, we all heard a call out from Lara. “Alma’s tissue samples are secure, we are burning the rest of the laboratory down.” then a moment later they declared “Portback!”
A fraction of a second later, the remaining four girls of Team 2, Lara, Hinata, Hermione, and Chell arrived in their own swirl.
Blinking for a moment as they got their bearings. Seeing Amy talking with Alma, Lara threw threw a small case of vials at her with a casual "Special Delivery."
Catching them easily with a raised brow, Amy huffed before she turned back to Alma to finish up her body’s design.
What I didn’t expect was their absolutely murderous glares that they sent at the unconscious form of Genevieve. Then I remembered a few of the things down in that laboratory from FEAR 2 and I understood.
Body modification, conditioning, mind control, followed by disposal of the subjects that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. Honestly it just showed the continued moral degradation of the ATC after Alma. When Alma killed a few scientists who were hurting her? That was good enough to have her terminated. A few years later, they were having their mutants, who had been experimented on to the point they had gone insane, fighting to the death as a routine experiment.
After shooting my own glare at the monster in the unconscious form of a middle aged woman, I waved goodbye to Amy, Fleur, and Alma. The latter who was watching in confusion as Amy opened up one of the vials went a little glassy eyed as she studied Alma’s DNA. Fleur seemed to be just amused. I double checked, but she was just sitting on her own bed, now completely fine, but was either not feeling up to another fight just yet or unwilling to ask to join us.
Waiting as the team walked out of the portal to join us, I then closed the portal and looked around at the remaining twelve of my girls now that Amy, Thea, and Fleur were busy or resting.
A small grin overtook my face as I considered our numbers. “You know, I was going to just bunker down here and ambush Paxton when it was just the four of us. I mean, Taylor, Holly, Tonks and I could have taken him and his team, but we were going to have to be careful. But now…”
I watched as Lara, Ahsoka, Taylor, Ginny, and Holly, aka our battle maniacs, startled chuckling.
My smile grew. “Now, I think we show Paxton how annoyed we were with him and the ATC ambushing Sabah and her team.”
Turning to our two scouts, I asked, “where are they now?”
The veins around Hianta’s eyes bulged as she glanced through the walls. “He appears to be trying to figure out where his mother went through his powers, but he definitely knows we are here, not sure how. He is barricading himself in the large warehouse room through those doors.” she said while pointing.
I huffed a laugh. “Ok, we need him alive. Hinata you are still the sneakest, if you secure the VIP, the rest of us can put down the rest of the clones.”
At her nod, I continued. “Feel free to be a bit rough. As for the rest of us, we will stay in the same teams. So keep an eye on your partners, but otherwise, let’s… express our displeasure.”
Taylor held up her hand and summoned a grenade. “I think we could even give him a bit of a surprise.”
This time our chuckles were a bit darker.
Ashoka, Ahri, Ginny, and Sabah lined up at the main doors while Lara, Chell, Hinata, and Hermione quickly made their way around to a secondary door. Finally, Taylor, Holly, and Tonks stood next to me as I prepared a portal to appear directly behind Paxton’s heavies.
Glancing around, I smirked before I called out. “On, Three… One, Two, Three!”
The doors banged open via magic, but obviously none of us were standing directly behind them.
Instead, all three teams flicked Taylor’s grenades via the levitation charm through the doorways from around the corner.
The panicked calls from the replicas of “Shit! Grenades!” was amusing before we followed up the moment after the last one went off.
I focused both my guns on the two heavies in front of me. They had taken a step back, but were more or less fine as I took aim, not even bothering to move at my full speed.
Having so many clones must have given Paxton the ability to act like a discount Pain from Naruto because they had started moving even before the two in question would have been able to see me.
That didn’t seem to matter much as I used my silver Desert Eagle to fire repeatedly into the left Heavy’s chest plate.
Almost leisurely ducking, I slid under the right Heavy’s concussion gun and swapped my fire to the left Heavy’s leg.
The Heavy’s shield worked just as well there, and I had to twist out of the way of his 10 millimeter penetrator rifle… an oversized nail gun, really.
I felt its trajectory get bumped up as my bullet shield deflected it even further away from me.
Aiming again, I fired off another three shots before I finally saw the shield flicker.
However, I was now tired of this. Now that we were fighting the replicas together with almost equal numbers, they really weren’t a threat. Not like the Point Man.
The heavies were more annoyances than anything. Even the Mecha was inconsequential as I heard Ahsoka’s lightsaber ring out, ending him. The assassins didn’t matter to those that could see through their stealth, and the rest were more cannon fodder than anything.
Reaching out, I levitated a crate behind the left one and flicked it towards the left Heavy, making him stumble into the right Heavy who had once again tried to line his sights on me.
Now given a moment to dash forward, I stepped around their awkward attempts to bash me with their rifles before I ripped the penetrator out of the left Heavy’s hands while shaking my head. Holly, who had just finished with her own Heavy, came and took the concussion gun from the right Heavy.
Even disarmed, the two Heavies lunged forward from their kneeling positions, attempting to tackle us.
Amused, I just brought my gun around to a point blank distance with the Heavy’s chest.
My assumption was that the shields had the same weakness as our bullet wards, namely that they worked like a bubble around the user and could be bypassed by getting up close and personal. I was proven right as my next three shots went clean through the Heavy.
In the meantime, Holly had immobilized the other Heavy and I was about to perform the same execution when all of a sudden, every replica suddenly went limp.
Glancing around, I noticed that Hinata was now standing in the center of the room, surrounded by the normal but now unconscious replicas that she had ignored to get to and knock out Paxton.
I chuckled at her holding Paxton up by the back of his shirt like a misbehaving child, even as I fired and ended the now motionless Heavy. Taylor dropped down next to me, having dispatched the invisible assassin clones, and quickly cleared out the rest of the small fry.
Opening the portal back to the medbay, Hinata jumped over and tossed Paxton onto one of the beds.
“Amy, if you would be so kind,” I said. “I think we ought to make a decoy corpse for Paxton. Just don’t actually add any of his real DNA, I don’t want them to be able to clone him again.”
Alma looked over at me. “I thought… you were going to end the ATC?”
She sounded like she wanted to be mad, but the continued presence of Holly and Tonk’s patronus seemed to be helping as she ended up more curious sounding than anything.
As I led the rest of us through the portal, I shrugged. “Oh, we are going to do our best, but in my experience, and from the fragments of memories of my life before this, there will always be another idiot who wants to cross the line.”
Alma frowned even as she moved her corpse to look down at the body Amy had been crafting.
Alma's new vessel still had long black hair and high cheekbones, but her body was a bit smaller and curvier than I would have thought at maybe 5 foot 3, or 160 cm. To my relief, she picked a mature woman’s form, not quite her actual age of nearly forty, even if most of that had been dead, but a form that was easily mid-to-late-twenties looking.
She might have made the decision to stay short as an attempt to appeal to me. Although that didn’t really make sense since most of my girls were a bit taller, albeit almost as curvy.
So perhaps she was trying to distance herself from the monster that everyone saw her as. However, even then, she still kept her red eyes.
The new body was also fully clothed. Apparently Fleur had transfigured her a black dress with a high collar and Amy had given her one of her black jackets.
That was also probably based on my preferences as she had clearly been inspecting my girls.
I wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about all of this, especially when she probably should be figuring herself out, but it was something I could deal with later.
I mean, I felt like part of me wanted to roll its eyes at how I was ignoring the fact that while Alma’s new form was obviously gorgeous, it was probably made to try to get me into bed with her.
Shaking my head, I moved a portal back towards the area above the ATC building to look around, trying to find a good place to start blasting out the ATC’s dirty laundry.
Maybe a public or community college library. Somewhere where they would have some decent bandwidth and wouldn’t be able to track down the exact location very easily. But even as I voiced the idea, Thea was already ahead of me. “The best option is 1.7 miles to the west and 2.7 miles to the south.”
However, after arriving and moving Thea’s cables through the portal into one of the ethernet jacks, actual upload took nearly an hour. When I asked about it, she just huffed through her still broken drone since she hadn’t had time to bring out her more limited backup drone. “I don’t want those idiots to come and blow this library up, it’s nice… so I keep needing to pause, and change up my VPNs, proxies, and decoys.”
I couldn’t really argue about that since we were no longer on the clock. So instead I turned my attention to another portal, which I moved around for curiosity sake to look for the Point Man.
I didn’t want to fight him again, but part of me wanted to see how fast he could catch up, and the other felt his mother deserved one last chance to talk to her son before we left.
I once again considered taking him with us, but while it wasn’t a great life he had here, I suspected that now that the Point Man had some companions in FEAR, he would be unwilling to leave.
Plus, I think I remember hearing in the light novel the game was based off, one of his team mates, Jin, was a mutant with her own super hearing abilities so he wasn’t the only one with special abilities. Plus she had a crush on him so that was another reason to stay.
My search was almost immediately rewarded as I found him and his team consisting of a black man, who must be Douglass Holiday, and a Korean woman, who was Jin Sun-Kwon. However I was shocked to also see Alice Wade with the three, carrying a small pistol.
Just from their body language, I could tell they were incredibly annoyed to have her following them, but apparently she had insisted. That head-strong attitude had gotten her killed and eaten in the game. But luckily for her, Paxton was currently unconscious two beds over from me.
Moving my portal down closer to the ground, I positioned it at the now-destroyed entrance to the secret storage facility.
The four of them were moving very carefully through the rubble, so I had a moment to consider what to do.
Stepping back, I addressed Alma as she was using her corpse to inspect her now complete new body. “Can you move yourself over, or would you like me to help?”
Alma glanced over and seemed to consider me for a moment before slowly nodding. “I think I can do it… but if you can help, I would appreciate it.”
Smiling, I walked over and stood a little ways away from her and watched as Alma focused. She slowly, carefully wrapped her soul around her new body. It was actually impressive as, while not as practiced or clean as I could do it, it was still working.
Her old corpse fell backwards onto the bed it had been sitting in, while her new body jerked and twitched for a moment before it started breathing.
That first gasp sounded both painful and euphoric.
Slowly, her breathing started to level out as she blinked her new eyes slowly, body still laying on the bed next to her old corpse.
After a few moments, Alma slowly lifted her head and sat up, looking around the room with a living body for the first time in twenty years.
Yet, even as she moved her body, inspecting her hands, I could tell it wasn’t a complete transfer.
Softly, I brought up the issue. “Alma, you are still a little attached to your old body, would you like me to sever that connection? It shouldn’t hurt you or anything. But normally when I do so, I tie the soul to a gem as a focus. It will allow me to ensure that even if this body is destroyed, I can bring you back, although you personally might not need that help. I can then place said gem into your new body or hide it somewhere safe here."
Alma studied me for a moment before opening her mouth and using her new body’s voice. “Is that why you look so strange?” It sounded a bit rough while still being quiet, and was definitely not high pitched. I suspected that she was going for a seductive purr since that would be on brand for her.
I blinked in surprise. If I could see her soul, it made sense she could see mine, albeit maybe not as clearly. Slowly, I shook my head while glancing at Fleur and Tonks. “The full explanation is a discussion for another time, but my very soul seems to be an experiment or leftover from some sort of higher being. I have tried to get my soul stabilized by bonding with my wives and getting a core established, but I haven’t finished that yet. It is why we are traveling between realities actually.”
Alma simply hummed, her body’s voice getting stronger while Fleur and Tonk’s eyes had gone wide, but they weren’t panicked, so I would take that for a win.
Alma rotated her head a few times, seemingly testing it out. “I would appreciate your help. This body seems able to contain my power, but my control is… still lacking.”
I smiled before reaching out and slowly tugged her soul free from her corpse.
To my shock, the corpse twitched once before the flesh turned to ash and the bones seemed to age in seconds. Apparently she had been quite literally holding that corpse together with nothing more than rage and spite.
Despite my surprise, it didn’t stop me from pulling a ruby out of my storage ring.
Yet as I tied her to the stone, I watched as instead of standing up, Alma instead closed her eyes and laid back down as she felt out the connection.
Then I startled, as another Alma appeared in the same new clothes next to her bed.
I wasn’t the only one to be shocked as, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed nearly everyone else in the room twitched when she appeared.
Obviously aware, Alma made her apparition smile. “I am glad… now I can stay with you… always.”
I blinked and I felt like a part of me laughed in mirth as my fears about being haunted suddenly seemed prophetic.
Opening and closing my mouth, I wasn’t sure what to say before Ahri, who was by far the oldest and recovered her composure the fastest, spoke up. “We have been gaining powers and increasing our bodies strength, are you saying you wouldn’t want that?”
Alma shook her apparition’s head. “No… I will do whatever gets me closer to Max…” She paused and then studied the other girls. “...And get along with his wives, but this way I can always watch his back.”
Thea, in her cinnamon bun way, spoke up next. “And if we get along, then we will be happy to have you as a sister wife.”
Alma’s now only-mildly-disconcerting smile just grew.
I opened my mouth to say something… I wasn’t even sure what, but after a moment longer I decided that now wasn’t the time to discuss her desire to constantly stalk me.
“Alma,” I finally said. “Would you want a chance to say goodbye to your oldest son and your sister? Based on what we sent the FEAR organization, they should know a little bit of what happened to you and should be a lot more sympathetic to your situation.”
Alma looked at me via her apparition for a moment before slowly nodding. “I would like to say goodbye. I am still getting used to my body, so I will do it this way for now.”
Taking a deep breath, I focused on the portal that the Point Man, Douglas, Jin, and Alice had nearly reached.
Opening up the portal, I angled it so that it only saw the corner of the room behind me. Then I ensured that nothing physical could pass through besides light and sound before calling out to the quartet. “Hello again, Point Man.”
Instantly, I watched as the Point Man swerved into cover, followed a bit slower by his two squad-mates. A moment later, Jin reached out and dragged Alice Wade down into cover with her.
Feeling a little amused about now being the mysterious voice calling from an unknown location, I moved the portal so they could better see us.
The Point Man aimed at me almost instantly, guns moving so quickly I could barely see the blur.
Ignoring the guns from all four, I smiled. “I just wanted to let you know that we have neutralized Paxton, and your mother Alma has been rescued, resuscitated, and will be protected from further attempts from the ATC or their allies.”
I was a little amused to see the conflicted faces they made at that. I suspected that each of them, even Alice, had wanted to put a bullet in Paxton’s face, but everyone was happy to hear Alma had been rescued… or maybe they were just happy they wouldn’t have Alma jumpscaring them anymore.
As they processed this, I was interrupted by their leader, Commander Beckett radioing through their equipment. “We are happy to hear Alma is alright. We had heard that she had been terminated, but she still needs to answer some questions. Her crimes might end up being justified, but we have confirmed her killing 2 of our team and an estimated 22 others. That is to say nothing about the estimated 217 that you and your team killed.”
I blinked. I didn’t think we were forced to put down that many, and I suspected he was placing everyone that had died on our heads even when the replicas had probably done most of that, but I wasn’t going to get into a pissing match with him. “That is unfortunate, but we asked them to step down despite their associated guilt-”
I was interrupted when Alma’s apparition in her new form appeared next to me. “I apologize for the death of your two men. I was in pain, unable to fully control my power, and they startled me when they shot at me. Only after Max and his wife Amy's help was I able to obtain a new body and end my suffering.”
Alma let herself flicker back to the corpse and little girl for a moment, probably to reinforce what she had just said.
We all waited for a moment in silence before Alice sniffled. “I am sorry, I am sorry I never knew what was happening.”
Alma frowned, and less than a foot away I felt her power fluctuate, but she quickly gathered herself. “I think I hated you when you were born. I was eight and they stopped letting me go home. All while you got to stay with mother…”
This time Alice didn’t manage to stop her soft sob, but Alma just bulled right through her interruption. “That said, my time being dead in that prison gave me time to focus my hate on the one that deserved it… FATHER.”
Again, I winced at the venom in that title.
Alice sniffled again, but Alma softened her tone. “That said, I am… sorry that I took him from you.”
Alice’s shoulders shook for a moment before she shook her head. “I just don’t understand how he could do such terrible things and then come home and read me bedtime stories.”
I considered for a moment before I slowly and silently encompassed the quartet in a bubble that blocked their radios and body cameras from streaming back to their base station.
Turning to Alma, I spoke up again. “I will give you a moment to say goodbye. We can come visit again in a few years, but we will be dropping off the grid until then. I have deactivated their ability to radio out so this information can’t be leaked. Feel free to say whatever you want.” To the Point Man I continued, “I can’t say it was pleasant to meet you, since we were on opposite sides for a bit there, but I am still glad we did, Point Man.”
Alma looked over at me and then back at the Point Man. “Gabriel…”
I blinked and looked back at her. “Sorry, what?”
Alma smiled sadly while staring at her son, “I was going to name you Gabriel, before my father took you away from me.”
Slowly, I watched as the now named Gabriel reached up and took off his mask, helmet, and goggles. When he did, I had to admit that he was incredibly good looking. Honestly, all of the Wades were.
Stepping away so Alma could say her goodbyes in relative privacy, I looked around the room. Everyone looked more or less fine after resting while Thea did her work uploading the ATC’s crimes.
I stepped over to Thea to check on the data transfers. “How is the upload going, Thea?”
Thea’s chirp was pleased, even as her drone continued to lay there motionlessly. “Data streams will be complete in less than 20 seconds.”
I smiled. “Great, I have one more task for you, if you would. This world is currently in the year 2025. Can you download all the fantasy and fiction media that you can find? Especially if you can find the Tomb Raider games.”
Thea blinked in surprise before she made her avatar smile. “Of course.”
Nodding, I called my girls over and opened a larger portal to the fiction section of the library. “Girls, please use the Doubling charm to copy everything you can here in the next 20 minutes. I know that the copies only last a few hours unless the stasis spell is applied, but I am pretty sure that Thea should be able to scan them in that time if someone occasionally repeats the charm.”
Most of my girls had amused expressions as they stepped forward to begin duplicating the books, while looking for any interesting ones, before I moved a new portal away and started searching the city.
My search didn’t take long as Thea was able to direct me to the location of a retro game and movie store.
Not wanting to get bogged down with something else to copy, I decided against doing anything fancy here and just opened a portal above the shelves and lowered it down so they appeared in front of our gatehouse, before dropping a bar of gold on the counter worth a few thousand dollars. Dobby could grab the games and movies and bring them inside whenever he ran out of things to do, along with the tech we had obtained from this world.
Noting that the girls were still going strong with their copying, I stepped back now that Alma’s heart to heart with her son and sister was apparently winding down.
Removing the portal bubble blocking signals, we were overwhelmed by call outs from Commander Beckett. “Can you hear me? Report!” I could hear the stress in his voice as he muttered to himself. “Damn it, just hold on, Delta team will be there in 10 minutes.”
I cleared my throat to speak, but he must have noticed that his video feed had returned as he immediately grit out, “What the hell did you do?”
I winced, “Sorry, I thought the Wades deserved a chance to say goodbye and that shouldn’t be broadcast around for everyone in the military to analyze. However, we need to go now.”
“Wait!” Beckett said. “What can you tell me about the missing ATC president Genevieve Aristide and technician Norton Mapes.”
I sighed. I had hoped to not deal with explaining this. “Both of them were neutralized."
Beckett sounded confused. “I guess I can understand why, based on what Genevieve did, but what did Norton do?”
I raised my eyebrow. “Didn’t you notice the closing fire doors that funnelled your men into choke points with the ATC and replicas? He was trying to get everyone to kill each other while he hid the ATC’s crimes.” Then I paused and considered for a moment before continuing. “I guess I will also admit that we were the ones that entered the ATC research facility under Wade Elementary and burnt it to the ground.”
Beckett didn’t respond to us directly, but we could still hear him as he pushed away from his still open mic. “They had a god-damn WHAT under an elementary school? …” before cursing up a storm about anything and everything to do with the ATC.
I chuckled, ignoring Beckett’s continuing rant. “Anyway, I think it is best we go now. Please watch out for Alice, she will have a target on her back. Based on your reaction, I also think we can leave the remaining ATC scientists to you.”
I paused and opened the portal just wide enough to throw an extra bullet ward headband to Alice from my storage ring. “That will protect you from sniper bullets.”
Alice looked confused before she just shrugged and pushed it into position behind her ears. “Thanks…”
Stepping away as the Wades said their final goodbyes, I closed the portal.
Ignoring the question of how we would deal with Genevieve and Norton, I led the Family back down to the onsen building for dinner.
I was looking forward to seeing Alma eat her first meal in years. The food was always good, but when my girls and Dobby went all out, it was fabulous.
And I wanted to be able to plan, so I had us stop in the waiting room so I could jump us first.
The jump seemed to stress Alma a little, but no more than Tonks and Fleur before her.
After performing our little checks to ensure we could survive in this new world, I opened a window to peek outside.
I was a little surprised and then concerned to see a room full of teenagers… in PJs.
Interlude Holly:
Holly looked at her hands.
She had killed for the first time today. Max and Ahri had tried to comfort her, telling her that it had just been replicas that she had killed, but that wasn’t what bothered her as she didn’t see much difference between clones and people..
It was the fact that she had felt proud doing it.
Not happy, she would have thought herself sick if she had, but proud that those clones wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
She swallowed. The question was, when it came time to fight the purebloods back in her world, would she put them down the same way?
She wanted to recoil at the thought.
However, she had seen the civilian bodies they had passed in the ATC building. She had seen Fleur’s severed arm. She remembered Hermione falling and lying motionless in the Chamber of Secrets.
Taking a deep breath, she swallowed and looked at her two best friends, Hermione and Ginny, as they sat relaxing on the sofa after dinner. “I don’t want to have to fight, but if the Death Eaters raise their wands at us, I won’t hesitate.”
Hermione looked sad, but Ginny just looked determined. “If they haven’t learned their lesson from the first war, they won’t from the second either. We won’t give them a third chance.”
AN:
1) This will be my last chapter for at least the next 3 weeks as I will be away from my computer as I travel and spend time with family.
So Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah (yesterday) or whatever else you wish to celebrate.
2) Yes, as some of you have noticed, I don’t really recommend explicit stories. However despite being on QQ from an author who does lewds, it was pretty good, and it didn’t actually get around to any lewds. More interestingly to me, it tells the story from Alma’s point of view. I took the name Gabriel from there.
- We are Not Alone (F.E.A.R/XCOM Long War SI story) by Vergil1989