Minha is a psychic supersoldier (she has TK: telekinesis). She trained as children along with the twins Rodger and Dodger at the Institute in chapter 3. Here she is as an adult in chapter 6, escaping from death row with a little help.

This is from my novel Aeon of the Twins, click the link to read or download (still a work in progress.)

Some inspiring “soundtrack” music:

I’m wanted and on the run

I’m wanted and on the run

So I’m taking this moment to live in the future

Please use discretion

When you’re messing with the message man

These lyrics aren’t for everyone

Only few understand

-21 Pilots

They came for her in the wee hours of the morning. It was Volkov, the nice one, and another named Barkov or something – she hadn’t seen him much. For her, they would have sent more than two guards, but with her wrists and ankles cuffed, they were feeling confident. She hadn’t slept a wink last night, but they came in quietly anyway, as though they didn’t want to startle her awake. 

“It’s time, Minha,” Volkov told her. He looked apologetic.

She shrugged off his extended hand and stands up – she wasn’t going to let someone else help her, although her knees were pretty weak. She had heard footsteps in the corridor throughout the night, wondering which ones were coming for her. Her nerves were raw, stunned from extended hyper focus, running on fumes.

Standing, her vision blurred, her head swimming. Damn it, Minha, hold it together, she told herself. Now’s the moment, split second decisions would determine life or death. 

And in all likelyhood, death. 

There’s no priest or pastor, not in a place like this, a prison for war criminals, the end of the road. No lavish last meal.

Just the last walk down the long, cold hall. More of a shuffle really, with the heavy-duty nylon restraints around her ankles. She noted Volkov’s key ring jangling at his belt. A few of the other inmates leaned forward in their cells; they recognized the sound of the last walk before dawn. They were curious about the young asian woman who apparently caused such an uproar. Rumor had it she assassinated the big name politician Marchenko at his private villa, and took out half his guards before finally being captured. 

So petite and skinny, her body didn’t match her reputation, except for her face: edgy and war-torn, the face of soldier, cold and hard, eyes like gray marbles that bored into your skull if you were on the receiving end of her stare. A phantom face that haunts your sleep. Yes, in her eyes they would believe the stories about her. Her hair was tangled, caked with dirt and grime. She reeked of old sweat and dried blood.

The place they took her wasn’t really a doctor’s office, it was a death chamber after all, but it had the look and smell of any prison surgery. She immediately scanned the room, training instincts kicking in: the camera in the corner, loose items on the counter that might become projectiles, estimating weights, distances.

 The doctor was a small man with thin round glasses and quick bird-like movements. He avoided eye contact with her, and had already donned a blue surgical mask. To the guards he pointed a trifle shyly to the stainless steel table, as if to try and skirt responsibility for what was about to take place. 

The two guards each took an arm, their grips very firm, and led her like a dog on a leash to the table. She didn’t fight it, now was not the moment. She allowed herself to be propped up on the paper covering. Volkov grabbed her dangling legs and lifted them up; he was trying to be helpful, in her last moments. Barkov pushed her chest down so that she was now lying on her back. Leather straps were pulled around her hands and legs, tightening them into place. This required uncuffing her, she noted with a shimmer of hope. From one restraint into another, but one that didn’t require a key.

They were underestimating her again.

The doctor had his back to her, working on something by the cabinet. She took the chance to close her eyes and practice a secret deep breathing technique that quickly builds chi. Her chi was still very weak from the poor prison food, lack of sleep, and abuse over the last week, as her captors were deciding what to do with her. 

This mission had gone on far too long. 

A shadow fell over the room; the corporate officer from the interrogation was standing in the doorway looking at her. Bald and heavy eyelids, strong Russian accent. A few days ago she had been brought to him and questioned, propositioned.

“Come work for us.”

“I work for nobody.”

“We know you work for FOTA, probably against your will. What do they have on you? What keeps you loyal?”

When she wouldn’t say, even after several beatings, they had brought in a telepath or TP. She tried to blank her mind but was not skilled in Screening. 

“They know the location of her younger brother.” The TP said after a few moments of scanning her mind. 

The corporate officer perked up at this, leaning forward. “Where?”

“She doesn’t know.” It was true, she didn’t have to set up a Screen for that. His location really had been held from her, in case of a moment just like this one. 

“So you do what they say, and they repay you by not murdering your little brother.” The officer tsk tsk’ed, “what a shame. Then we move to Plan B, much more crude, I’m afraid. Much more like FOTA.”

“You’re no better than them,” she spat.

The officer shrugged, looking bored. As he got up from the table he muttered, “to fight a wolf one must be a wolf themselves.”

Through her years of missions Minha had ascertained a key fact about global politics: it was no longer country against country, or even coalitions of countries against coalitions, but one global power group, FOTA, that controlled everything. Nevertheless the group had grown so large that it had splintered into various sub-groups that were always infighting with each other, sending out their assassins like her to take out some rival or another. True, occasionally she had to assassinate a politician that had discovered FOTA and was on the side of good, and about to blow the whistle. But in general her targets all branched from the same mother hydra and had the same desire: world domination and control of the masses, through occult means, remaining hidden from the public eye, and were obsessed with mind control, technology and harnessing psychic ability.

And now, because they couldn’t get her to willingly offer her psychic ability, they were going to harvest it from her organs, to be swapped into a loyal soldier, just like what happened to the dead children at the Institute. 

The doctor turned and her stomach fluttered, but in his hand was an alcohol wipe, the syringe peaking out from the counter behind him. 

She had a few more moments to breathe. He swabbed her arm, a brief splash of cold.

“Last chance to change your mind,” said the officer by the door.

“Go to hell.” 

Another tsk tsk. He said something in Russian and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Good, one less obstacle. 

She flexed her fingers, breathing oxygen into the very tips, gathering energy around her eyeballs, staring as far into space as she could, as though taking in the individual molecules in the white ceiling above her. She then played out in her mind exactly how the next few crucial seconds were going to go, and like a chess master, imagined as many different permutations and possible ways the situation might go.

She flexed her toes and the fluorescent lights buzzed and surged, unnoticed by the others. She was waking up. Fight or flight kicking in. The Followers Of The Apocalypse were going to be sorry they created such a monster. 

Now the doctor returned with the large steel syringe, shaped like a gun, big enough to kill a horse. Small beads of sweat formed on his forehead. The two guards on either side of her gripped her upper arms to keep her from squirming. The needle needed to enter in just the right way, otherwise her precious organs could be damaged. 

That was how they would see her: damaged goods.

Wait for it, you have one chance at this, when you strike, strike hard. She thanked god for the mobility in her fingers, another oversight. Binds at the wrist were enough to restrain a normal human perhaps, but a TK…

The doctor’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and he took that last step forward to be within range, lifted the injection gun –

She squeezed both hands into tight fists and the lights surged out in a puff of smoke and sparks, plunging the room into total darkness. 

Two fingers flicked up, curling around each other on her right hand. There was a blood curdling scream that must have been from the small doctor, and the sound of him collapsing to the ground. 

A heavy object flew off a counter and knocked into Volkov’s head with a sweep of three fingers on her left hand. He collapsed like a sack of Russian potatoes.

“You bastard,” Barkov growled, pulling a night stick from his back pocket. He brought it down on her gut, knocking the wind out of her, possibly cracking a rib. The pain was excruciating but now she could see the stick with her mind’s eye. He lifted it up to strike another blow but when he swung the stick stayed in the air, like a slippery bar of soap. The stick hovered there for a second and then came cracking down on the top of his head. Once, twice, three times, and he collapsed unconscious. 

Three for three. 

Her restraints were finicky and required light to see where the clasps and buckles were. She risked surging TK back into the overhead fluorescents. The room lit up revealing the violence to the wall cam. She flicked it with a finger and the cam rotated into the wall. 

The doctor was dead on the floor, the syringe embedded into his neck, the skin already turning blue. 

She went to work on her wrist binds, now a finicky matter of unclasping. TK is not great for fine motor movements, requiring subtle eye movements and immense concentration. When her arms were finally free, she sat up, wincing at the stabbing pain in her rib, and freed her ankles manually. She shivered, vision swimming from the taxing amount of energy released. No psychic soldier, no matter how advanced, has an unlimited supply. But she can’t rest yet.

As if to confirm this thought, the facility’s alarm system kicked in with its pulsed, earsplitting honks; no doubt someone was watching the camera. 

On her feet now, she slipped out the door into the hall, her bare feet quiet as a mouse. The alarm, though it will bring more guards, will further muffle her footfalls. She sprinted down the hall, hearing the shouts and clanging of guards rushing behind her. She was preternaturally fast —  being small and skinny has its advantages — and turned a corner just as the guards opened fire. Bullets cracked into the cement wall behind her. 

At the stairwell at the end of this hall, she headed down, taking the steps two or three at a time. She turned the corner at the middle landing and ran right into a guard heading up the stairs. They rebounded off each other, and the guard fired in surprise, machine gun bullets flying high above her head as he is knocked backward. He regained his footing but not as fast as she does. She leapt into the air like a flying squirrel and delivered a kick to the chest and another to the head. He tumbled backward down the stairs, and she heard his head crack along the way. He doesn’t move again. 

Rushing past him she bent down and pulled the machine gun from his hand. Just in time too: two more guards slammed open the double doors at the next landing, probably having heard the rifle fire seconds ago. She opened fire on them in a rapid burst before they can pull off a shot. Down they go.

Leaping over their bodies, she could see the exit at the end of the hall, a large set of double doors and metal detector. Beyond the exit was a big open dirt lot, leading to a final barbed wire gate that surrounded the perimeter. To get to the gate she would be a sitting duck for sniper fire. There might be a more stealthy side exit somewhere, but she didn’t have time to go exploring.

It was now or never.   

She disabled the cameras mounted above the metal detector with a palm thrust. The doors were miraculously unguarded; conceivably she just took out the two guards that had been posted there. More shouts and barks in Russian from the stairs above her, they were still hot on her trail. She grabbed one of the downed guard’s night sticks and jammed it through the handles of the double doors behind her, a crude barricade that wouldn’t hold forever, and headed down the final hall, hugging the wall, gun raised, listening to what she can above the din of the alarm.

By some miracle she made it to the main entrance without event. But now she could see what she is up against. The sun hadn’t come up but the yard was lit by floodlights. At each corner of the gated perimeter stood guard towers. No doubt snipers were posted and scanning for movement.  If she could just kill the lights she might make a run for it, but these lights were not like the ones in the doctor’s room, and required alot more TK horsepower to take out than she had at her disposal now.

Panic was threatening to invade her cool combat mode. She couldn’t see the chess moves ahead anymore, indecision clouding her adrenaline-fueled concentration.

Then like a guardian angel, came a female voice in her head that was not hers:

Minha, when you hear the explosions, run! Hug the wall to your right. 

And then there it was: the explosion rocked the tower to her left, lighting up the night in fiery red. Shouts from the tower guards, and the floodlights angled away from the entrance and towards the source of the explosion, searching for this new enemy. 

Blessed darkness fell over her path. 

She gingerly opened the double door a crack and slipped through, then sidestepped to the right as instructed. One hand running along the prison wall she moved in darkness as another explosion rocked the tower. Rifle fire rained down in the distance. 

Sounds of an engine roaring as a truck convoy left a garage and headed towards the explosions.

Shit! Came the voice. That truck is going to reach my barricade. I have to move! Hurry over that fence now, I can’t cover you anymore. 

Minha didn’t have to be told twice. Running as fast as she dared in the semi-darkness, she reached the chain link fence and started to climb. Nasty coils of barbed wire met her at the top. Letting go of the fence and holding her balance with just her feet, she threw off her shirt. Twisting the shirt into the shape of a rope and looping it around her palms as a buffer, she gingerly gripped the barbed wire. She could still feel the spikes digging into her palms as she attempted to hoist one leg over, loose cotton prison pants catching and ripping, and a sharp pain as the barbs sliced into her inner thigh. She pulled her leg back, it was no use. The coils were too tall to mount over, one leg at a time. Eyes watering, as blood ran down her leg she realized what she had to do, calculating that the chance of coming out without injury was very low. 

Holding tight on the barbs, ignoring the slices into her palm, she bent her knees slightly and then leapt with both legs rotating up and over her head, vaulting the coils like a gymnast over a bar. For a second she was upside down, hands gripping the top of the fence, then turning her body, she was now on the other side, and pushed off to avoid slicing into the barbs on her way down. It worked, but now she was free falling to the ground on other side. If she landed on her back it would be all over.. She whipped her left arm and leg, attempting to rotate in the air, and came crashing down on her side, the blow fracturing her right wrist, and dislocating her arm. 

She groaned into the dirt. Thankfully the dry grass had partially cushioned her fall, or it might have been worse, maybe fatal.

A desire came over her to just lie here and give up, give in to the pain.

No. Move it Minha, you didn’t come this far to die in the grass in some strange land.

 She clamored up using her left arm, the right dangling and throbbing uselessly at her side.

The floodlights were moving now, in search mode around the perimeter. She took off running through the field. 

She ran and ran, not daring to stop until she felt she would faint from exhaustion. Dawn was approaching, the first hints of sun peeking up over the mountains to the east. The terrain was mostly flat shrublands, occasional willow trees grew in dry creek beds that must fill up in the rainy season. 

She followed a dry creek until she found that it met up with a larger tributary that had a little trickle of water. She stopped to drink, cupping the precious liquid in her sweaty palms, dried over with blood. She then washed off the blood from her sliced open palms, but these weren’t as bad as her thigh, which was still bleeding; her running was not allowing the area to clot. Her rib also continued to throb and ache from the blow from Barkov’s night stick.

But her shoulder and wrist would need attention now.  Biting into her shirt, she gripped at the elbow and shoved up hard, screaming into the sky as her shoulder popped back into place. She gingerly rotated it, the pain throbbing but at least she could move it normally. Her wrist would need to be splinted, she had been holding it with her other hand as she ran. 

She rinsed the blood off her shirt and made a makeshift wrap for her wrist, tying it tightly with her teeth.

Then she allowed herself to collapse on her back in the dirt, ever alert for the sounds or vibrations of trucks or ATV’s. 

All was quiet save for the buzz of insects, the rustle of grass and trickle of the creek.

Was she really free? Part of her couldn’t believe it. She’d had some narrow escapes in the past, but this had been the worst.

And what of that woman’s voice in her head?

As though responding to her thoughts the voice came again, continue North West until you come to the river. Hide under the willows and wait for me. 

Minha found the river about an hour later by following the tributary as it grew from a trickle to a running creek that she could wade in, and finally meeting a larger body of water that snaked through the shrublands. The ground became more stony, she was running over pebbles shot through with foxtails and reeds. At the river she jumped in, the blessed coolness reviving her, bringing her back to her senses, back to life. Floating on her back and staring up at the cloudless morning sky, she felt a brief spasm of wild euphoria.

Just hours ago she had been on death row! And now, this oasis.

 She swam to other side, gulping large mouthfuls of water like a fish, and found a dense crop of willow trees that threw the river bank and pebbly beach beyond it in cool shade.

Here she would wait. 

She was busy synching her thigh wound closed with a bundle of dried reeds, tying it around her leg like a bandage, when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. 

She turned around and a woman stepped out from behind a willow.

Minha jumped up, reflexively throwing her good palm out.

“It’s OK, it’s me,” the woman placated, holding up her hands, apparently unarmed. Perhaps in her fifties, face lined and weather-beaten but still full of vitality.

“You…you’re the voice in my head.”

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Sarah. Sarah Middleton.”

“Middleton…where have I heard — ”

“I’m Rodger and Dodger’s mom.”

***