Mentally reaching into the room ahead of them, Gwen proceeded forth without fear, albeit still cautious about setting off alarms, but she knew there was no one else in there. Even so, she jumped a little and clung to Alex's presence when the door shut quickly behind them, leaving them in darkness. She knew Xander was adjusting a light of some kind before the room actually became illuminated, feeling his hand manipulating the toggle to turn them on. Blinking with a slight squint at first, she turned in a circle and let her eyes wander over the large open space.
It was like...an illusion or something. There were most definitely people here - she knew there were - but they did not occupy the above ground floor. In fact it looked to be nothing more than a large warehouse of some kind. The colors of everything hurt her eyes a little, making her feel like it was both extremely bright and too dark at the same time, causing her to squint as she looked around. She couldn't tell if it was the color of the walls or the lights or what, but either way it held a note of menace that she could feel through her skin. The tower of crates surrounding them was a bit stifling, even though there was plenty of space for them to walk between them, but once they came to the open area in the middle of the building, it wasn't much better. The expansive emptiness combined with the shadows wrapped around them sent a shiver up her spine and made her cling to the corridor of crates for something to keep her rooted.
Gwen turned back to look at the two men with her as Xander started to address David with the expected questions. David might not have been here before, but the other in his head certainly had. She felt her shoulders tense as Xander began to call out for the other "insane" one - the one that had tried to bite her and freaked her out with all of that mental skipping - and she frowned at his back as he continued to insist on asking her for assistance.
No don't!-WHY!? she pulsed to Alex hoping that Xander might be able to hear her protest as well, like he had in the car.
God! Was he insane? This was not the place to unleash THAT thing, especially not when so much depended on them remaining undetected and getting out safely. Wasn't there enough unpredictability in this situation as it is? But of course, whether Xander or Alex heard her, it fell on deaf ears as the other rose to consciousness and she felt David slip down into a cloud of murky black. It was odd, she could still feel him there, but more like a faded pattern on the wall than an actual presence. She did not know if he could see or hear anything that was currently going on - he was untouchable in his current state.
And of course, the constantly shifting mental landscape of the "Banshee" set her on edge and turned her stomach, but she kept her protests to herself hoping to glean something useful from that warped and diseased mind. Immediately the banshee returned to her quick spurts of speech, both repetitive and overzealous at the same time. In Gwen's mind, she could see images of the building on the hill and feel a cosmic push and pull surrounding her body as she traveled further and further away from the facility. So when Xander answered her that they'd "brought her back" for only a minute, she knew right away that was not what the banshee meant.
She's been here before.
Finally the possessed teenager devolved into the rapid repetition of the phrase and Gwen tried to search her memories before being jolted around by her neck where ever the banshee's consciousness currently focused.
She's been in this room...I think...
It was hard to say exactly when the banshee had teleported out of here and what room she'd been in, her memories flying like a news reel over a familiar looking crate and blue-white lights that washed the color out of everything - but she wasn't completely certain if there weren't crates somewhere else and how much of the different rooms in this building were painted this way. And her memories were a bit harder to cling to, even diving past the circle of the banshee's mental focus - what she was currently consciously thinking about - everything seemed to alter around her like she was standing inside a kaleidoscope, things half-seen and hinted at before it all twisted and changed shape around her.
So, when Xander started talking about getting the banshee into her own body, Gwen immediately felt a bunch of red flags go up in her mind. Would that even be a good idea? Sure, her current situation was what had supposedly destroyed the "woman's" psyche in the first place - according to David - but at this point was it even salvageable? But who knew? Maybe being returned to her own body would help level her out and return some semblance of sanity.
As the new obsession took hold in the teenager's mind and he started to dig at the floor like a rodent in the bottom of a cage, Gwen got a flash in her mind of a door that opened into the floor. Other than that image repeated, the banshee had nothing to offer by way of a clue and Gwen perked up when Xander turned to her for the answers. Within the odd light, her bright blue eyes had turned a drab shade but still sparkled brightly as she gave him a small smile and nodded.
"Uh, sure. I can try," she didn't like sounding so uncertain, especially when he turned to her with such a confident expectancy, but it was truthfully how she felt. Finding the first door and even opening it had been mostly based on luck and the rest was being made up as she went along.
Slipping the goggles back over her eyes, she smiled slowly as the orange light illuminated the whole space, beyond the beam of light that they stood in, like night vision goggles almost, except the bright color made it seem like the room was filled with daylight. Still facing the doorway that they'd come from, she looked over the crates piled on top of each other, curiosity making her allow the little pop-ups of information cover her screen as she looked them over.
"What the--?" she lifted the goggles up just so they covered her eyebrows and gave Xander a level look. "How many frigging mouthwashes, toothbrushes, and little shampoo bottles do these guys frigging need? Honestly." She shook her head at him as if she were severely disappointed in him even though he kept saying he was just an ex-Agent - and she really was. She'd fully expected there to be high-tech weaponry or other gadgetry of some kind in those boxes. Not a supply of toiletries and things she'd expect to see in someone's luggage. Slipping the goggles back down she murmured, "The energy bars I can understand, though." What with all the running and chasing these people did.
Shaking off that distraction, she moved her eyesight further into the building, looking over the walls that stretched out a mile away from end to end and about half a mile wide in the middle. It's like an airplane hangar or something, she thought as she looked for and found the "front doors" that Xander had pointed out first when they'd been outside. Letting her eyes trail up, she singled out the doorway where they would have come in on the roof with an elevated walkway underneath it that just hovered over empty space. From the pop-up windows of information, she identified that the walkway moved on a track that could be operated both manually and mechanically and was mainly used for accessing the system of lights on the ceiling. With how tall the building was, it was expected that a step-ladder would not cut it when a lightbulb needed changing, she supposed.
Turning back to the front doors along the opposite wall from the back door, which were obscured by darkness, a few feet away from it a pop-up of information pointed to a spot on the ground. The information stated was a code that she suspected identified the base number of the building they were in. Stepping forward, she disappeared out of the circle of light, only stopping to motion to Xander before she was completely swallowed by the darkness.
As she neared the spot to stand over it, all she saw at first was a symbol about 15 feet wide on all sides. "There's something painted on the ground," she said absently, being careful not to stand on it as she tried to see what it was a picture of. "A big arrow or something, in a circle." In the light of the goggles, it wasn't actual colors but a hinted at design, the different shades just a few notches lighter and darker than the color of the actual floor. If the lights were on over here, it would probably fade right into the ground and barely be noticed at all.
Gwen moved quickly around it coming to stand with her back to the front doors before stepping forward onto it. "The Agency logo?" she asked Xander, not even really aware of his location at the moment. She was still looking over the circle itself, exploring every inch of it and curiously placed her feet on the two small triangles in the middle of the much larger one - they were the appropriate size and distance apart from each other for her to stand comfortable with a foot on each one.
A small exclamation left her throat as she felt energy surge beneath her in a loud hum and the floor seemed to jolt slightly before she was moving downward sinking below the floor. It moved so fast, she barely got to the edge of the thing before she was left looking up from the large hole that it made in the floor of the warehouse. Moving the goggles off of her face, her voice came echoing up the well with a slightly anxious note as she watched the light from the room above grow distant as the elevator descended.
"Alex-ex-ex-ex!"
****
After all that excitement, going back to her silent thoughts was both a curse and a relief. On the one hand, it was nice to slip right back into her obsessive planning and thoughts of Gwen, going over familiar territory and anticipating the coming fight and how it would play out. On the other, she found her body still heated and pumping with delight over what she'd just experienced while "playing" with Jason. Even as a teenage girl, Stephanie had possessed a sadistic nature. As a 17 year old young woman, she'd been recruited into the main facilities of the Agency after spending a few years making her way through several professional fighting classes and competitions.
As a preteen, she'd had a habit of antagonizing her fellow classmates and ruthlessly beating them in fights. Even as a girly cheerleader in highschool, she'd been known for getting physical to solve arguments and establish her dominance. Her mother and father had signed her up for kick-boxing and martial arts classes to help channel that violent energy into something useful. It didn't really help much, except that after years of gathering only the most submissive and loyal peers around her, she could manipulate them into doing her dirty work for her, often delegating aggressive tasks to the other girls and young men within her inner circle of friends. And she'd also learned how to pummel the shit out of someone without leaving a mark. Coupled with a fantastic grade point average, there was very little she couldn't get away with by her senior year.
After being contacted by the Agency for a possible job opportunity - something low management at first - she no longer sought to become "Queen" of her school and possibly the college she'd been planning to go to, but replaced it with the desire to become a part of something much bigger than herself. Short of joining the military or finding religion, the Agency offered not only fulfillment of that but a use for every gift she'd developed in her young life and the promise of unlocking the full extent of her potential. For the first few years, she'd trained to become an Agent, while keeping a job in the main computer facilities and helping manage the systems of files and reports from the Agents in the field. Not a lot of information was open to her at that time and it wasn't until she'd upgraded to Agent status that she got a hint of what the Agency was really about.
At that point, she'd found her true calling in life, whether it was helping keep an eye on different targets in the field, or working briefly in the labs as an assistant to lead Agents. The total disregard for free will and the human experimentation appealed greatly to her right away as well as the goal of controlling those with abnormal abilities. It was a cause she believed in whole-heartedly and had dedicated her entire adult life to helping them achieve it.
In the past several years since taking on Gwen's case, her idle interests and desire for violence had been stifled and set aside, hidden within her deeper layers as something unnecessary and inconsequential. For some peculiar reason, Jason reawakened these desires and made her remember what it was like to cause someone pain and discomfort and to manipulate them into doing exactly what she wanted them to do. And she felt a bit dismayed that she'd let herself get so out of practice with it. Where had the dreams and hobbies of her youth gone?
No. Nevermind. It was not important. This was not something she wanted to pursue. As much enjoyment as she'd gotten out of tormenting her partner and twisting him around her naughty, probing fingers, Gwen and her desire to possess the other woman's body had fled from her mind several times, completely replaced with the joy of making Jason squirm and fantasies of what else she could get away with right underneath the French Agents' noses. Short of failure, that was the worst thing that could happen.
She was losing sight of herself and her goals. Stupid Jason and his distracting...delicious vulnerabilities. How could she expect to achieve anything if she let herself get side-tracked so easily? She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes watching as his hand went to his leg and scratched it slightly, causing an imperceptible shiver to course through her. God, how she wanted to tease him and hurt him some more... So weak and so strong, how satisfying it would be to break him... No! God dammit!
Nothing showed through the flawless mask of her face even as she battled within, trying to lock away these old memories and troublesome emotions rearing their ugly heads. She needed to stay focused! It was almost over and he would be out of her hair for good! No more taunting her with his boyish good looks just begging to be forced to break down and cry like a baby in her wounding arms. Or better yet...the other way around...
Okay! Enough! Where had her self-control gone!? This couldn't get any worse. They were mere minutes away from the first part of the most crucial plan that would decide the rest of her life and here she was wrestling with old demons. The past has no power over me! Enough! The sight of the Elmira lab, a large grey slab of concrete and mortar, broad and menacing on the hilltop, helped ease her back into focus and quiet the hormones and wild imaginings in her heart. Gwen. It will almost be over. This torment will be ended finally.
After Benoit finished speaking, she nodded in assent, taking a deep and calming breath even as she turned back to Jason. It probably wasn't important right now, but it was also a test in reestablishing control of her inner layers, talking to him without allowing herself to get sucked back into fantasies of pain and torture involving him.
"For your report, I would like it to be concise and complete. Just the necessary details to establish a chronological order of events, but no need to write down where we ate lunch or the intricacies of our conversations," she probably didn't need to tell him that, but she felt like mentioning it. There would be no misunderstanding of what she expected from him - once she had Gwen in her grasp, the last thing she'd want to do was delay her transfer with sending paperwork back to be re-edited and needing to deal with him further. The whole point of him making a report was so that she wouldn't have to and could deal with other, more important things.
"That includes the first failure to capture the target, which I take full responsibility for - the necessary information should have come from me and not a third party where it got lost in translation - as well as the second when she escaped my grasp in the apartment building. In light of our inevitable success, our ability to adapt and learn from mistakes will be all the more meaningful rather than sweeping it under the rug as if it never happened."
She did not feel it was necessary to tell him NOT to mention her abuse, knowing that he was embarrassed enough by it and also that he wouldn't dare defy her like that. Especially not when she was going to be the first to approve the report before it would be sent in to the higher-ups.
As the car approached the facility standing upon the hill, she felt a sense of triumph that she'd kept such a handle on herself and her thoughts after her most recent loss of control. And then she felt slightly ill that she was even celebrating something that should have been second nature to her. It would be a miracle if she didn't end up killing her partner in the next 3 minutes they had left to wait, just to banish him and these abhorrent desires from her heart once and for all. Stupid...beautiful man...