crossing_lostrp | [Ami] Half-Light

Five, maybe six days into her captivity, she'd lost count at the beginning and couldn't be certain, Ami's life fell into a routine: breakfast, shower, "interview" with Ethan, lunch and then an indeterminate stretch where she might be left to her devices, subjected to more blood tests and injections, or drilled and questioned by a clinically cold Asian woman. While Ethan psychoanalyzed her, always under the pretense of making her life "here more comfortable" – and Ami never for one moment doubted that it was pretense – the woman bombarded her with questions regarding her abilities and how far she could stretch them. Unlike Ethan, Dr. Sakai – Ami tricked the dinner nurse, Steph, into revealing the name of the woman on the fourth evening – did not hold the captivity of Ami's friends over her head as a threat, though she did reveal and hint at far deeper and greater knowledge than she should have had regarding Ami and Megabyte, the Tomorrow People in general, Scott, Walt, River and Mara than the woman should have been privy to.

Sakai's questions were concise and direct without subterfuge. When they were not, they were simply confusing and frustrating and often embarrassing.

"Did either of your parents have paranormal abilities?"

"No," Ami repeated the same answer that she'd given the day before and the day before that. "I've told you this before. No, my parents were both perfectly normal."

"Grandparents? Aunts? Uncles? Cousins?"

"No already! Am I even speaking English?"

"No brothers or sisters?"

Ami folded her arms beneath her breasts and glared at the woman from the pseudo-safety of her bed. She'd long grown tired of answering the same questions over and over again.

Dr. Sakai returned her stare for a long moment. Finally, heaving a sigh, she flipped to another page in her clipboard. "Are you fertile? Have you ever monitored or measured your fertility?"

*That* was new. Ami actually felt herself frown before she could stop it. "I don't know. No. Why would I?"

"Is your partner fertile?"

"What's that got to do with anything? You're holding me here to find out what Scott's sperm count is? Rather have that arse over tit, don't you, then?" Ami learned early on that trying not to name names or identify her fellow survivors and castaways served no practical purpose. Sakai knew the people, and pretending only made the questioning sessions drag onward.

"How often would you say that you and Mr. Hayden engaged in sexual intercourse on a daily basis?"

The question angered her, mortified her and saddened her all at once. It was none of this woman's business, this woman – this pseudo-doctor who held her captive against her will and was keeping her *away* from Scott, didn't have the right to ask such things or to expect an answer. The asking itself reminded her of the ache and emptiness she felt, of the hollow just beyond her senses where Scott should have been, but couldn't be felt.

"None of your bloody business."

"Did you have intercourse the morning before you were brought here?"

"I'm not going to answer that!"

She didn't answer, and those questions were never asked again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The thing about a routine was that it became … routine. After dinner on day six, Ami was again left to her own devices with the exception of the bird book left by "Colleen." Eventually however, looking at pictures of birds, no matter how beautiful the birds or perfect the pictures, also became boring and Ami put the book aside. With nothing else to do, she padded to the light switch, switched off the light – which effectively only dimmed it enough for sleep – and returned to her bed.

Ami didn't remember falling asleep. She knew that she had fallen asleep when she was jarred awake by a voice in her head. After days of silence, and the reprieve of empathy, the sudden ability to hear thoughts shook her awake. Clawing her way up from the shadows of sleep, Ami cast out and tried to focus on the voice and the rapidly fading words. The voice she knew belonged to "Colleen" . . . (No, not Colleen. Alex. Her name is Alex.) . . . and the words were not just random, overheard thoughts.

They were directed at Ami. They were meant for Ami.

And somehow Co – Alex knew that Ami would hear them.

Your wings aren't clipped.

/Alex? Can you hear me? What do you mean?/ Ami sat up in bed, staring into the dimness of her room but not seeing it. Instead she was stretching herself, trying to pinpoint Alex's mind from the others that dominated the place.

Her only answer was silence.

It was too much to hope for, and Ami knew it. Just because the girl knew that Ami was telepathic, it didn't mean that Alex was telepathic.

She flopped back against the pillow, her attention shifting to the ceiling. Four simple little words, but what did they mean?

(Your wings aren't clipped. But I'm not free, I'm a prisoner here, too. I can't go anywhere, I can't -)

Ami sat back up suddenly as it clicked into place. Her attention darted back and forth between the two survelliance cameras. Placed at opposite corners and so that no part of the room was left uncanvassed, there was no way Ami could test her sudden insight and theory without being caught on camera.

Unless . . .

Projecting a calm and tiredness that she no longer felt, Ami lie back down and rolled over onto her side. Feigning trying to go back to sleep worked well for this because she needed her eyes closed to focus on the camera nearest the bed. She wasn't skilled telekinetically, at least not at the level of what she would be attempting, and it took a good while for Ami to get a sense of and a feel for the camera. Without touching it she couldn't *see* inside of it, but she could *feel* the wires, cables and cords that fed the video back into the wall.

Slowly tugging on the wiring until it came free took time and by the time she was done, a thin sheen of perspiration covered her and her head was beginning to throb. As much as she wanted to rest, there was no time. It would likely only be a matter of moments before someone realized the camera had no video and if she was absent from view, they'd come to check her room. Ami spared a few minutes to center herself, then slipped out of bed. She pretended to head for the light switch, but instead ducked into the area only canvassed by the now out of commission camera.

Ami desperately hoped that if Col – Alex knew enough to give her the hint, that she knew enough to give Ami just a few minutes to test her theory.

Closing her eyes, Ami focused.

And teleported away from the room.

Rich, earthy, leafy smells, gass tickling beneath her bare feet, the chirping of birds and sunlight warming her arms and body were the sensations that greeted Ami as she completed her teleportating jaunt. These were not what she was expecting or anticipating and she knew immediately that she’d not managed to teleport back to the caves. Ami blinked rapidly in the bright sunlight until her eyes adjusted.

(Wait . . . sunlight? But it’s bedtime . . .) The thought trailed off as Ami slowly and deliberately placed one foot in front of the other, cautiously pushing forward through the thigh high, wild, tropical grass.

(Tropical grass? Tropical grass . . . tropical grass!) Ethan *had lied to her: they were still on the island after all. Secreted someplace unexplored and unknown, likely to be as far from the beach camp and caves as possible, but still on the island. If they were still on the island, that meant better hope for being found and rescued. It meant that Ethan’s colleagues were not as all powerful as he implied. Maybe they were trapped here as well, victims of their own technology and nefarious planning. Maybe they caused all this and now had to pay the price in a prison of their own making.

(Speculation later, reconnaissance now,) Ami chided herself, (You can’t be gone long.) She based her experimental teleportation on the untested theory that Alex was somehow running interference. Ami had to get away and bring back help quickly, or barring that, she had to gather as much intel as possible and return to the medical facility where she could plan for a full prison break later.

(Easy enough, as long as they don’t realize I can teleport again.)

Concentrating again, Ami focused again on the caves. Her focus was tight and narrow this time, excluding all the other distractions. A few futile attempts to teleport to the caves, or even the beach camp, only managed to drain her energy while revealing that Ami could no more teleport away from this place than she could teleport off of the island. The realization was as informative as it was frustrating.

It had to mean something, but Ami didn’t know what.

Giving up on teleporting, Ami instead dropped her shields and opened her mind completely. The background hum/purr/hiss/throb of the island was more unsettling now than it had been in those first days following the crash. Here it was somehow clearer and less muted; alien, foreign, indescribable, sleeping but awake, unconscious but sentient, alive but inanimate, Ami required some effort on her part to distract herself from it.

When she did, Ami felt other things, such as the thoughts and feelings of those in the medical facility that wasn’t far off and ran beneath her feet as well. But that wasn’t what she wanted to feel or sense. Ami stretched her mind and her senses, reaching beyond, her mental awareness like smoke fingers reaching for the even less intangible cloud that she knew was Scott. Fumbling and grasping, inept and clumsy, it seemed to dart away each time she came close to it. She pushed harder, stretched further, and just as she began to feel the first pinpricks of pain, she touched it.

Smoke fingers solidified and locked onto that cloud and ever so briefly it was solid as well. For a few fleeting moments that lasted no more than suspended seconds, Ami sensed him, touched him, felt him as clearly as though he stood beside her.

Worry, fear, emptiness, loneliness, desperation – all of it poured into her as the clearing feel way and instead frightfully slow heavy footfalls pressed into the overgrowth. Overhead the morning sun rose higher, shining down through patches in the canopy. A sudden sharpening of awareness and surprise, disbelief, hope, relief and love coursed over their link.

Ami’s hope and love surged as well. She pushed as much of it to Scott as she could before the connection broke dramatically, with sharp needles stabbing behind her eyes, a throbbing in her head and a swirling dizziness that forced her to the ground. The open clearing slanted and spun and her stomach heaved. Only once she wiped her mouth and looked up from her prone position was she able to marvel that she’d somehow managed to not vomit on her clothes. Although it took a few minutes for her to ground herself and right herself, even the headache, nauseau and nosebleed couldn’t deflate her spirits.

(Scott’s coming. They’re all coming. It might take tearing apart the island, but they are coming.) That was the one thing she’d taken away from the brief contact with her lover – that the calvary was indeed coming to save them.

Coming to take them home.

Ami forced herself to her feet, and the spinning of the world around her told her that she’d overdone it, she’d pushed herself too hard. She staggered, took a step forward, then fell to her knees as the world dropped rapidly away and darkness rushed up to swallow her.

[OOC: I hope it was worth the wait. Further ebil this evening or tomorrow.]

[Ami] Half-Light

[Ami] Awakening, Part II

[Ami] Unclipped, Part I

[Ami] Unclipped, Part II