Chapter 62: A Mind Asunder

Agent Davis was stunned. She saw the wound when I removed the towel from Renée's neck, and the result of my healing after. "How? How did you do that?"

I sat there holding my Golden Goddess. Davis already knew more than she needed to. I had displayed my speed and ability to put people to sleep with a touch. Her witnessing me heal that kind of damage on Renée was truly a miracle. "Would you believe me if I said it was magic?"

She looked up into my eyes. "Magic?" She said the word as if it suddenly didn't mean what she always thought it had. "I can't just tell the Bureau about magic. My superiors would never accept that. I mean, come on Ral! This is straight out of the X-Files. Nobody can move as fast as you have. Nobody can make people - complete strangers - just fall asleep when you touch them. Nobody can heal..." She looked to Renée and swallowed hard. "I'm not going to tell them. You helped at the underground facility and helped us catch Victoria, but how you helped is going to be vastly understated."

I nodded. "Thank you. I'd hate to have to modify your memories."

Her eyes widened. "You can do that, can't you?" It wasn't a question, just a statement of her understanding.

I nodded again.

"Agent Marks isn't going to change his story. He'll stick to the facts. He won't be able to tell them how you do what you do, just that you somehow put several women to sleep with a touch and very quickly."

"I'll have a talk with him," I said as someone moaned behind me.

Agent Davis stood, holding out her gun, pointing it at Vikkor. The others scooted away from me, including Renée.

I looked up at the Agent, "Keep us covered. I'm going to talk to her."

Davis just screwed up her face in response. She didn't understand.

I turned around and pulled Vikkor to me. With her head cradled in my lap, my eyes were the first thing she saw when hers opened. Through our contact I could feel her cold anger. I had a burning anger of my own.

"My turn," I said as I entered her mind.

I dove in like a professional diver jumping from a high cliff into the raging surf at the rocks below. So many dangers presented themselves as I cut that icy water. Her look was cold for a reason. I felt the cold down to my bones. It was the kind of frigid temperature that could kill a person within minutes. I swam down, further, deeper, into the darkness of her mind.

Along the way, her memories flashed by, horrid visions of her past, her life. Vikkor or Victoria Lasarge was a woman with a horrible, scorned and tortured past. I watched and felt her pain.

At six, she had been molested by her Uncle. Her father's brother watched her after school while her parents worked. At first, she had woken up from a nap feeling funny. He would be sitting next to her, smiling serenely at her sleeping form. Then he didn't bother to wait for her to fall asleep. He would sit with her on the couch. She would sit and watch nursery rimes on TV while his hands roamed her small body. She had thought she had done something wrong to deserve such treatment. Why would her parents leave her with him otherwise?

Then her Daddy showed up from work early one day. He was going to surprise Victoria and he just walked right in on them. Her Daddy jumped at his own brother and fought with him, wrestled him to the floor and pummeled him. When her Uncle lay unconscious, her Daddy called the police and then held her while she cried. Her Uncle was sent to prison and she never saw or heard from him again. She was sure her Daddy had told him to stay away.

At eight, she went with her Daddy to the store. They were going to pick up some flowers for her Mommy. She had been sick and Victoria and her Daddy were going to make dinner for her.

While waiting in line to check out, another man stood behind them. He had a suitcase clutched in his hand. The leather was brown and looked so soft. Victoria's curiosity won out and she reached out to run a finger along the supple cover. The man noticed her, but instead of just simply asking her to not touch, he shoved the suitcase at her, hitting her in the face with it. She cried out and her Daddy was there again, pushing the man away, asking the clerk to contact the police. The man started yelling at her, ignoring her Daddy completely. Her Daddy stood up to him and did something to make the man pale and apologize.

She ended up with her two front teeth knocked out. Fortunately they were teeth that would have come out anyway. It took a year for the replacements to grow back in and all the ridicule at school didn't help.

At thirteen, two boys that lived down the street from her met her at a local park. She had liked the older one, Tommy. The other, Luke, was never far from Tommy. She had always thought Tommy was so sweet and cute.

Something about her past warned her though. It tried to tell her that he would hurt her too.

They all talked for a while, swinging and sitting on the merry-go-round. Tommy confessed that he liked Victoria and her heart flew.

That warning voice was lost to the rush of her feelings.

A touch of hands here, catching each other's eyes there. She felt very special to have caught his attention. He suggested something that made her squirm, something that made that warning voice call out louder. Just a kiss - that was all he wanted. They could hide behind the bushes and kiss, just once, maybe twice. She went with him, holding his hand.

They had to lie down so they wouldn't be seen. She lay there and let him kiss her. It felt good, so very good. Then she felt his hand cup her young breast. At first, she tried to push him away, but he asked if she liked it. It had felt good and he wasn't trying to remove her clothes. So she lay back and the kissing continued.

His hands roamed over her and she let him. Every time he started something new, he used the same excuse to get permission. Before long they were laying there, his pants around his ankles and her panties gone. Her virginity was lost and it had hurt. Tommy didn't ease up for her, but kept going and going. She started crying and asking him to stop, to get off her. Then she felt him release in her. She beat at his chest, hating him for doing what she had allowed him to do.

Luke had watched the whole show and laughed as Tommy got up. Tommy tore her heart apart as he got dressed with his departing remark, "Thanks for the fuck, babe."

She laid there crying. Her panties gone, taken by the boys, her skirt and legs covered with her blood and Tommy's fluid. She was so ashamed, so scared, and she hated him so much. It wasn't supposed to be like that. Not like that. She cried until she heard her Dad calling her. He had been looking for her. Before she could get herself presentable for her father, he rounded the corner and saw her. She was so ashamed. Ashamed that Tommy had taken advantage of her. Ashamed her Father had seen her like that. Ashamed that he knew that she was no longer his little girl.

Her Father didn't reprimand. He helped her up and asked her if she was okay. He either didn't notice the mess or was too concerned for her to care. She loved him for that, for not making a big fuss, for not getting mad. He asked her if she wanted to talk about it, but she didn't. He was very bright though. He must have not only figured out what had happened but who did it, because Tommy and Luke were both taken from the school by the police. They never returned.

However much her Daddy, her Dad, her Father loved her. No matter how many times he came to her rescue, she felt herself slip. She needed someone to help her not be her anymore. That was when that voice, the one that had warned her about Tommy, came out clear. That voice took on a persona and called its self Vikkor. Victoria was grateful. She could sleep and Vikkor would care for her, help her find peace, maybe even a bit of revenge on the men and boys who had hurt her.

Vikkor stood tall and proud as I recovered from her history, her story. She smiled and those lips took on a distorted smile, wider than it should have been. Her white teeth had a sharp edge and her cold gray eyes bore into me, drilling in to find my pain, to cause me pain. She leaped at me, razor nails slashing, sharp teeth snapping. I held up my arm and let her take it. I detached from the pain, because it was only in my mind, literally. She couldn't harm me through my mind any more than I could hurt myself. I knew that if I could get through all the pain and misery of what she had suffered, coupled with the loss and suffering of Alexandria, and my own dreary sad life, then a bite and claw to my arm was nothing.

"You cannot harm me and I am not here to harm you, " I thought.

"Then leave. You have no place here. We will not allow you to stay." Her French accented voice spat hatred like poison. She came at me again, a wall of physical force to push me out, but I couldn't be refused. She fought harder, feeling justified in the hatred that she had been born and drew strength from. It was that voice, that personality that had to be squashed. She had to be quieted so Victoria's true original persona could be brought forth.

Looking about, I found Victoria. A six year old girl still crying from the horrible things her uncle had done to her, the beating from a stranger, the rape of a teenager. I reached out to her, offering a helping hand. "You can recover. You can live. You don't have to be afraid any longer."

She shook her head, balled up and turned from me. The stronger, hating personality bit at me, trying to tear me away from the little girl. It was protecting her, but it had gone too far by developing a way to do away with men all together and help women to reign on earth. Vikkor had even found a way to create a virus that would kill men and change women so they could either self-fertilize or impregnate each other. Technically, they would be hermaphrodites. The species wouldn't die but it would be balanced at long last. At least, that's what the attacking personality thought.

I looked back at it. " You do realize that if that virus kills all men and then change women like that, those women would be susceptible to the killing virus too. It would kill our species."

"You lie, just like all men." Vikkor's lips drooled with green venomous froth.

Her appearance didn't bother me. She was trying scare tactics. "Not a lie, it's simple logic. Hermaphrodites have both sexual reproductive organs to create life with. If you're targeting males by the one organ that makes them male, and then transform women to include that organ, they will die too."

"NO! I will save humanity from war, from desolation, from destruction. I will be a god to our new era and all will be thankful to me for saving us!"

I turned my full attention to that personality. "Have you tested for the possibility?"

"I don't need to test for it. All my tests are complete. You and all men will die. Women will inherit the earth and care for it far better."

"You hypocrite."

That simple statement made Vikkor stop and look at me.

"You talked about me not letting my women have their freedom and dreams. My power may not let my women choose someone over me, but you're taking all choices from all women by doing this. There are more women out there that have more to worry about with keeping food on their tables, bills paid and making it to work on time than those who suffer the injustice of the few men who believe themselves better. Those same women love those men, the ones who aren't the violent uncaring brutes that you've suffered. They have fathers who raised them with no mother. They have brothers, uncles, nephews, sons and grandsons who would all be taken from them. They carry unborn sons, waiting to be able to hold and care for them. All that loss, just so you feel justified from the terrors you've suffered. That's not justice, that's insane."