The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 9

By Aladdin

Edited by Christopher Leeson

The Wounded World

Originally written 2006

Revised and posted May 22, 2019 

THE BOY IN THE GRAY COCOON

And this he always kept in mind
And formed a crooked knife
And ran about with bloody hands
To seek his mother's life.
William Blake

With dusk coming upon us like a dark frown, I made the helicopter connection and was soon skimming over the bay. The destination, my pilot informed me, was Alcatraz Island.

That notorious name struck me like a glacial blast.  During the Thirties, I'd been occupying the body of a career criminal. Things had gotten messy and the police intervened into a skirmish that we knights were having with Boneyard's men.  I'd already been  stunned by a head blow in the course of the fight and was apprehended in a place that a legitimate parolee should have been avoiding.  Judged guilty of having broken parole, I'd been dispatched to the new federal prison, and there remained until rescued by Archimage in his own good time. 

It had been a bad experience.  The guards upon “the Rock” were permitted to use brutality as a matter of course.  It was perfectly acceptable to shoot to kill every real or suspected escaping inmate.  Even the location for the prison had been diabolically chosen, a barren island squatting inside a climactic anomaly where the arctic winds blew continually.  A favorite “practical joke” was for the guards to turn on the cell-block air conditioners on the coldest nights of the year.  It was a challenge for even the most hardened thug to endure the soul-destroying miseries of the Rock.

In 1963, the then-president shout down the prison as a blot upon the Republic. Was it only a coincidence that he was assassinated later that year?  For years following its closure, the island was kept as a tourist attraction.  Then, suddenly, it was declared off-limits again.  The media barely put out the story, except convey the official line that Alcatraz was being reconditioned as an anti-terrorist training center.  I'd learned the truth in good time.  The installation had been designated as an Aladdin black site for the internment of ultras, some of them illegally kidnapped, as in the days of the French Bastille.

According to the information I'd gleaned, the Eden Blake of this world must have visited Alcatraz on Saturday the 16th, shortly after her son had been incarcerated.  I had no way of knowing what she'd learned while there, and so would have to bluff my way along. If necessary, I'd cover my cluelessness by making it seem that I was distracted and distraught due to the awful things that had occurred in the Blake home Friday night.   

As we hovered over the complex, my pilot took to the radio and called in.  A voice from below “welcomed” us to what it called “Alactraz Ultra Confinement Center.”  Upon setting down, the first face I recognized on the tarmac was Dr. Sarn's.  Tall, classically handsome, blonde, hard-bodied, Sarn was really stacked.  Though pushing forty, the doctor didn't look it.  Agency rumors held that that she had a colorful past.  Sarn supposedly started out at eighteen as an Aladdin version of the classic “honey-trap,” an international femme fatale spy.  She was built for the role, admittedly, though it was hard to imagine Sarn ever counterfeiting enough warmth to entice enemy agents into vulnerable, controlled situations.

Though head of my division, she'd let her subordinates supervise the lowly job that I'd been performing. That changed when I was preparing for my covert mission to Britain.  From my frequent contacts with her then, I had learned that Sarn was ice-cold and all business.  She didn't offer, nor tolerate, any unnecessary chit-chat.  While “knowing” her, I still hardly knew anything about her.

Having met me outside the 'copter, the doctor extended no greeting but curtly told me to follow her.  While doing so, I did my utmost to memorize every twist and turn along the way, just in case. It was not outside the realm of possibility that I'd soon need to mastermind a prison break from Alcatraz Island.

We paused before a sealed portal that looked about as formidable as a bank vault.   Gaining entry required Sarn to provide both a thumb-print and an eye scan. Once we were inside, we proceeded along a long row of cells, where I saw prisoners being held, captive ultras, probably.  Then I recognized a face that amazingly resembled my own. 

The sight of Blythe Ashwin at that moment brought back memories, some of them guilty.  Until now, I hadn't  been certain where the Aladdin infiltrator had ended up.  Because of her disappearance and our physical resemblance, I had ended up impersonating her.  Like Ashwin, I was an ultra, a spy, and a saboteur working against Aladdin. Unfortunately, her motives had not be  altruistic ones and I felt justified in exposing the woman, leading to her arrest. In this respect, the career of the local Mantra had been walking in my own footsteps.

Ashwin looked exhausted, beat up.  Her blood should have been boiling at the sight of me, but she seemed too beaten-down to get angry.  Clearly, the woman was well into the “breaking” process.  Maybe because she looked so much like myself, I felt distinctly uncomfortable at seeing her treated this way.  I knew that her present fate would have been mine, had I been exposed as Mantra.

My supervisor and I continued down the bleak corridor, at last coming to a heavily barred door, a left-over from the island's prison days, no doubt.  Sarn stood back, allowing me to look inside. I saw heavily armed guards standing by, while a medical team directed its attention toward a large, cocoon-like capsule of some sort.  It looked partially metallic and partially organic. Sarn swiped a key-card inside the nearby security lock and punched in a short code, causing the door to swing open. Several faces turned our way.

"Doctor, how's the prisoner been?" my guide asked one of the medics.

"He was awake and very distraught up to a half hour ago," answered a middle-aged man in a lab coat. "Then he lapsed back into sleep."

“Go to your boy,” Dr. Sarn told me.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped through the cluster of people until I stood over the machine. Then I saw the patient's face.

I had been bracing myself as to not to react to Gus's changed appearance; I didn't want Aladdin knowing that I was seeing him this way for the first time. Even so,the radically different look of the lad jolted me.

Except for his size, the -- person -- was utterly unrecognizable, not just as August Blake, Jr., but even as a little boy. Only his head and shoulders were visible outside the capsule, but the prisoner looked like a hardened adult criminal. His brow was overdeveloped, his nose and chin angular, like those of a dwarf.  Corded muscles traced a thick neck and his hair was a blue-black shag. In a street crowd, such an unlovely visage would certainly have made people want to keep their distance. It must have been pure hell for a child go about in public looking like that. No wonder Gus had come to doubt that even his own family loved him. To put powerful magic into the hands of such a traumatized child would certainly have ignited an explosion of vengeful violence born of intense emotional agony.

Aladdin had power-draining technology and this capsule had to be a part of that.  The boy was being forced to wear some sort of helmet which was a conduit into the ceiling. Honestly, it looked like the brainwashing apparatus of some mad scientist in a low-budget thriller.  What was its purpose?  To read his thoughts?  To change the thoughts already in his mind?

This was hard to take, but I tried to see this situation from Aladdin's POV.  Gus, in his mental state, had tried to kill Mantra – and had presumably succeeded, her life being restored only by the intervention of magic. He had lashed out violently and without provocation, even against his little sister and babysitter, persons.  Rather than react emotionally to what I saw, I needed to learn who and what Gus presently was, from the ground up.
Suddenly, the lad stirred.

Gus was trying to move, but because of the thoroughness of his confinement he could only turn his head from side to side. To be cocooned in such a way would have flummoxed a trained marine. My impulse was to pour out words of fury against those who were subjecting a child to this ordeal.  But I knew that Gus was dangerous. He had god-like powers, powers that he had abused with thoughtless malevolence. Only the extraordinary courage of two other children had prevented him from becoming a murderer. Aladdin had secured him with over-the-top excess because they didn't dare do any less. Gus was, if truth be told, a frightening being.

But, despite all, this was still ~Gus~, or what was left of him. I dared not forget that.

"I think I should talk to him alone," I said to Sarn, my tone flat.

"Are you sure?" asked the spy chief.

"I won't try to free him, if that's what you're worried about. It's safe to touch him, isn't it?"

Sarn glanced at the man who seemed to be the chief physician. The physician shrugged. "It seems that the staff has had no problem so far," Dr. Sarn replied. "Go ahead, Blake, try to perk him up. We'll be waiting right outside the door."

The doctors, medics, and guards all followed her out. Even with the door shut and the staff keeping out of sight, I still felt spied-upon. And of course I was.  Aladdin was always extreme in its surveillances.   I'd have to be very careful.

Inside, my emotions were roiling. A part of me refused to see this unhandsome face, now staring at me so intently, as belonging to Gus. Why, I asked up to Heaven, had all these terrible things happened to an ordinary boy, one who was no better nor worse than so many millions of others? Could it be that he was collateral damage? Was some enemy force targeting Mantra and everyone around her?  Why else should the Blake family have had to endure so much tragedy?

But I was feeling something else, too. From the moment that I'd blinked into this universe, I had been bothered by a sense of the a forbidding shadow looming over it. Until this moment, very little of what seemed amiss had come across as visual and visceral, but it was doing so now.

"No..." he murmured. "It's not you!" Tears filled his eyes.

I leaned closer and rested my hands on the cool dome of his gray capsule. "Are you in pain, Gus?"

"Go away! You're not real!" The voice sounded deep and harsh, but it was also weak and rasping.

I swallowed hard. "I'm here to visit with you, Gus. Why don't you believe that I'm real?"

"I k-killed you!" he replied.

Was the boy weeping in remorse for what he'd tried to do, or only for having been caught and punished?

"Gus! Stop thinking like that! I am alive. You didn't hurt me. You've never hurt anyone.  You've been having terrible nightmares, that's all. I'm here because I love you!"

He shook his head. "No, you're the dream. You're dead!"

I touched his shoulder. "Gus, it really is me."

He stared into my face and I saw an eerie verdant flicker, as if there were a light switched on inside his skull. Both Evie and Lauren had described the way that his eyes had shone green when channeling magic.

"Why do you think that I should be dead, Gus?" I asked softly, trying not to excite him. "Did you dream it?"

"Y-You are dead," he insisted. "I shrunk Mantra and shot her -- you - - with ultra power!"

"Was Mantra in your dream, too?" I was trying to sound innocent, not wanting to have talk about Mantra while being recorded. "I know you met her when she saved you and Evie from that fairy world.”  I still found it hard to believe that such a thing had actually happened, but both newspapers and informants had attested that it had.

"No. I didn't dream it! You're Mantra. I hate her -- you! Mantra promised to change me back, but she never did. She lied!"

This assertion took me by surprise. Had his disappointment been the true source of his fury? Gus, like many children, probably believed that that ultras could do anything they set out to do, like they did in the comic books.  He probably couldn't conceive of one of them failing, except willfully.

"Mantra is a wonderful magician," I explained cautiously. "She tries hard to help people, but she can't do everything. I'm sure she never realized how difficult it would be to break a spell cast by fairies."

"She always liked Evie better than me!" he declared bitterly. "She went looking for Evie and came back for me too late. Evie wasn't even in bad trouble!"

This charge wounded me, all the more so because I could not honestly deny it. I'd found it so very easy to love Evie.  Her brother was a different type, so much less open and giving. Maybe my emotional link with him would have been stronger had I been his true birth mother, but in my mind and in my heart I wasn't the real Eden Blake.

"Gus, Mantra didn't know what sort of trouble Evie was in and, because she's littler and weaker, wasn't it right to try to protect her first? As soon as Mantra found Evie she came to help you, didn't she? What if the bad fairies had taken Evie and not you? Could you really wish that such an awful spell had been put on your little sister instead?"

He turned his head away; his hard-looking lips clamped shut.

"You hit me!"

"What?"

"You slapped me for no reason!"

"Oh, that." I shook my head. It hadn't been me, but I'd learned of the incident from Evie. "Grownups sometimes get angry, just like children do. I'm sorry I flew off the handle, Gus.  But what would you have done had some bully at school grabbed Mr. Paws from Evie, tore his head off, and made her cry?"

Just then, changing my stance, my foot touched something soft on the floor. Glancing down, I saw a teddy bear, the very image of the Mr. Paws.  I recalled how Evie had said that she'd sent Mr. Paws along with Gus to keep her brother from feeling lonely. I picked the little fellow up, thinking how inappropriate the smile on his face now seemed.

"Look, here's Mr. Paws," I told Gus. "Evie couldn't come herself, so she sent her best friend to stay with you. As long as Mr. Paws is keeping you company, you should remember how much Evie loves you."

"Is Evie okay?" Gus asked.

I regarded him. Despite his terrible situation, was he still capable of tender feelings? I hoped so.

"Evie is fine. You didn't hurt her at all. She hopes that you get better soon and can come home with Mr. Paws."

"She kept trying to help you," he murmured. “She was making me so mad that I would've had to hurt her, too, just to make her stop. How come you didn't die? Is it because you're Mantra?"

I tried not to wince, since there might be video cameras running.  If Aladdin believed what Gus was saying, I'd soon end up in a cell next to Ashwin!  I needed to deny the idea, and fast.

“Why did you just say that?  What have I got to do with Mantra?”

“I tied you up with magic, then you suddenly turned into Mantra!”

"Shhh, Gus, I'm not Mantra. Mantra was only a part of your nightmare, like the part where you saw yourself kill me. Think. How could a little boy win a fight with someone as powerful and skillful as Mantra? Did you dream that Evie was an ultra hero, too?"

"No. Uh, yes. I mean she hit me with a big shot of magic once. I didn't know how she did it. But Lauren was the real super hero. She was even tougher than Mantra!"

I stroked his coarse, off-color shock. "And how did your favorite babysitter suddenly get super powers just in time to fight with you?"

"I don't know. I'd put you inside the cracker box, but you were yelling that I shouldn't throw Lauren into Mantra's cloak. I did it anyway, just because you said I couldn't, and then she disappeared. I thought the cloak ate her up, but then guessed that you'd tricked me so she could get away. I brought her back, but she wasn't dressed like before. She had on an ultra costume and she started zapping me with magic that hurt a lot!"

"Wow, Gus, that really was a wild dream! Me in a cracker box? Lauren an ultra hero? Evie using magic? Darling, think about what you're saying. I'm just your mom.  Evie is only a sweet little girl starting the third grade. Lauren was at home with her dad all Friday night."

"I didn't dream about having magic. That was real!" he insisted.

"Yes," I said finally, "you did get magic. It was all very strange, but sometimes inexplicable things happen. Remember how Hardcase and the Strangers got -- zapped -- by ultra lightning that gave them super powers? Somehow you were zapped, too, and became an ultra just like they did. Let me tell you what really happened Friday night. Evie went to your room and saw you using sorcery. She was so surprised that she called me and I came in. But you tied me up and started shouting angry things at me. That was very naughty of you, Gus."

"You turned into Mantra! Your clothes changed!"

"No, Gus. Bad magic gets a person so excited that he starts seeing things. After you tied me up, you got a funny look on your face and started talking to people that no one else could see, as if they were only in your mind. As soon as that happened, all those magical ropes fell off me and I got loose. Then I took Evie and the two of us ran away. We didn't know where you were until the police sent a message saying that you'd started a fight with a patrolman and gotten arrested."

"When did Mantra come?"

"Mantra was never there." I assured him. Then I got an idea.  “I have a super secret to tell you, Gus. Mantra couldn't have come, no matter what, because a month ago she got arrested. Some people say that she robbed a museum and now she's in jail. That's how the world is, Gus. No matter how famous an ultra is, he has to obey the law, all the time, or else he gets into a lot of trouble."

"No, it couldn't all be a dream!"

I stroked the lad's hard, sunken cheek and kissed his beetling brow. The more I spoke with the boy, the more he seemed like the old Gus. "I know that you always did your best to be good, but that magic that zapped you must have been something very evil. You know what, if you stop being bad, maybe UltraForce will ask you to join them. They don't have a powerful wizard yet; you could be very important whenever they need to save the world."

He looked up at me again, this time with heart-rending hopefulness. "Do you think they'd really ask?"

I squeezed his hard-muscled shoulder. "No, not after what's happened.  They won't want an ultra who gets into trouble all the time.  What you'll have to do is be a good wizard for at least next three or four years, because they want ultras who obey the law. Remember, you picked a fight with a police officer.  The way you acted made him think that you were a bad ultra who belonged in jail. He used some of those fancy fighting tricks that all the policemen know and he beat you, just like that." I snapped my fingers. "Gus, no matter how much power a little-boy ultra has, a grownup policeman is going to get the better of him every time. There's lots of bad ultras in jail right now, and most of the rest of them are hiding in attics filled with rats, afraid that the police are going to catch them."

"Is this a jail? They said it was a hospital."

"It's both. I'm sorry, Gus."

"When can I go home?"

I struggled to keep my voice from breaking. "I wish I knew, precious, but the police have to do things their own way. It's the law. There's only two ways a judge is ever going to send you home. You either have to stop being bad, or else you have to stop being an ultra."

"No! I always wanted to be an ultra!"

"Wouldn't you rather have things the way they used to be? Wasn't it nice with all of us living together at home? You could still become a fireman someday and rescue people from burning buildings."

"I can't be a fireman. I'm too ugly. I can't even go to school," he said as tears again flooded his green-flashing eyes. My own eyes started to burn.

"Gus, there's still a good chance that things can be fixed. Scientists are finding out new things all the time. I'm going to talk to as many smart people as I can, until one of them tells me how to make you into a good-looking little boy again." I was thinking of Pinnacle's cloning plan, but didn't dare say more, not with Aladdin listening in. If they knew Penny existed, they'd want to snatch her up, too.

"I can't move and it hurts," Gus whimpered.

I winced. "I know it must be bad, Gus. I'll tell the doctors. But you have to act nice as long as you're here. If judges, doctors, and police stay afraid of you, they won't let you go home."

Gus now began to cry in earnest. He had asked his mother to get him out of trouble, but there was nothing she could do. He seemed very young to start learning how harsh a place the world really is.

"I'm going to try to visit you just as often as I can," I promised. I didn't dare hold out the hope that that Evie, his grandma, or his dad could come, too. This was a secret prison, effectively outside the law. Aladdin would only allow what it felt like allowing.

"Gus, is there anything I can do to help you feel better?"

He didn't answer and I was at a loss. Very probably, there was no chance for the Blakes to go back to the life they had known, not unless Pinnacle could work miracles. My only comfort was the thought that the other Gus -- my own Gus -- might still be safe at home.

The cell door rolled open and Dr. Sarn came back in. For a moment, she stood over the capsule, studying the expression of the child who did not look like a child. Gus was still crying, but seemed to have fallen asleep. It must have been Aladdin's power-draining technology that was exhausting him. 

"I think that's about all you can do for the little guy today," Sarn said. "If the psychoanalysts decide that your visit has had a positive effect, we'll ask you back soon."

I nodded dully. This was a family tragedy, but these people didn't seem to be aware of it.  I was only here on their sufferance and I'd be barred from seeing my own son if my visits didn't serve their particular ends.

"Can the boy's sister visit him, too? She's four years younger -- just a tyke."

"This is a high-security installation..." Sarn began. Then the hard-as-nails woman appeared to relent. "Well, if she's really that small, we'll consider it."

As my departing act, I placed Mr. Paws atop of the capsule. I hoped that Gus would see the stuffed toy upon waking and be reminded that he was a very well loved little boy.

“Please don't throw away this bear,” I asked Sarn.  “It's my daughter's favorite toy and I'd like to return it to her, in case you don't want to keep it here with her brother.”

“Are you able to turn in your report now, Blake?" she asked without addressing my request.

"Report? Ah, no. I'm sorry, Doctor. My mother came in last evening. Then a friend called this morning and asked me out to lunch. I guess she thought I needed commiseration. Then I got your call. It's all too much."

"That's to be expected," Sarn nodded condescendingly. "Perhaps you can write it here, before your helicopter is ready at nine tomorrow morning.  As for sleeping accommodations, this place has plenty of beds."

"Sure, why not?" I replied resignedly.

In actuality, I wanted to pound on the walls and scream. A family was being torn apart and all Sarn cared about was some stupid bureaucratic report that would probably be filed away and never read!

My supervisor called over an aide and the latter led me across the complex, to an office in the administrative wing. While we were walking, I brought up the matter of Gus's painful constraints. The aide said she'd pass along my concerns and then left me, alone, in front of a blank word-processor screen. I sat down and, after a few minutes of letting my thoughts meander, I made some half-hearted attempts at composing a plausible fiction.  I had Lauren's testimony as to what had happened at the Mall, but my mind wouldn't focus. All I could think of was Evie's sadness and the idea of Gus being confined under such onerous conditions.  How was a boy so young expected to endure a mode of imprisonment that was designed for calloused adult criminals?

Was there fix for this disaster?

Was there a way to make at least a few things better?

It was ironic that I could be thinking such optimistic thoughts exactly when fate was making ready to lower the boom again.

#

Suddenly I had two sets of hands in front of me. The one pair started to strike the keys and everything that I had written started to disappear, like it was being deleted.  Just as suddenly, the hands were gone and I was alone.  I tried to rise from my swivel chair, but couldn't.  In a flash, the office was full of people moving at blurring speed blur, but running backwards.  Then everything around me blanked out.

With the swiftness of thought, I found myself leaning forward in cramped circumstances and something was restraining me.  It seemed dark, but then I realized that my hands were covering my eyes. I could hardly hear the man next to me, so loud was the whirring noise all around us.

"Mrs. Blake?" he was saying. "Are you feeling faint?"

I sat up and lowered my hands.  I was inside another helicopter and it was a seatbelt that was holding me in place. How had I gotten there? What was going on?  Had I blacked out and was being taken back to the mainland -- for medical attention, perhaps?

"Mrs. Blake? You're as white as a ghost."

I turned my head. A pilot, a short-bearded man in his twenties, was sitting at the controls.  He was not the same man who'd escorted me to the island a couple hours before. A shiver coursed through my frame. How much time had passed?  Had I already passed the night on Alcatraz Island?  Certainly, hours must have raced by, since all around us was bright daylight.

"Ah, I f-felt woozy for a moment," I stammered, playing for time as I struggled to understand. "Please, excuse me. I've -- I've gone through hell lately."

The young man nodded. "I heard that some pretty bad things went down last night, and not just here in San Francisco. The brass isn't explaining jack, but the scuttlebutt has it that our A-team brought in a new ultra this morning.  The power he's got is supposed to be really something. But it's hard to believe that just one ultra could have caused all the nutty stuff that they've been reporting in the news."

I turned my face to the window, seeing mostly water. Why was my memory a black spot?  What was the pilot talking about?  What could have thrown the city into confusion for the second time in a week?”

"Uh, excuse me -- what -- what day is this?"

"Ma'am?"

"What day is this? I'm a little confused."

"It's Saturday."

"Saturday? The 23rd?"

He blinked in surprise. "No, ma'am. It's the 16th."
 

The 16th? For a few seconds my mind spun. Could I had suffered another time-shift!  If the young serviceman was right, I had not gone into the future this time, but had slipped five days back into the past -- sort of. In reality, I was still two days ahead of the date where I should have been, Thursday the 14th.
 

What's happening? Think, Lukasz, think!

Where was I? Was this my own reality, or was I still a prisoner of that strange alternate world that I'd unwittingly discovered? Or did this world around me have nothing to do with either of the two dimensions and I had entered into a third?

If it were option number two, this would be the day that Eden had returned home from Mrs. Walker's house with Lauren and Evie. Only an hour earlier, or so I calculated, Mantra had been rendered powerless in the course of a fight with Necromantra.

I tried to put together every puzzle piece I had. I knew that Eden, Lauren, and Evie had arrived at the Blake house after dawn on Saturday. There Eden had received, via messenger, a commuter airline ticket and a letter from Dr. Sarn, ordering her to report to San Francisco. The helicopter ride that I was now undergoing had to be tied into to that.  But was I heading for Alcatraz to relive Mantra's “first” visit, or coming back from it?

I scanned the harbor before us and answered my own question. The rocky isle of horrors lay dead ahead.

Deja Vu!

TO BE CONTINUED in Chapter 10