I10DT - A Pain in the Neck

[Lora Zalesky]

Lora had had to receive immediate medical care after the battle in New York for the wound in her neck, which would have been decidedly lethal if Ryan hadn't prevented it. She had faded barely in and out of sleep for the rest of her time there, before being drugged into a very, very deep sleep and being moved across the Atlantic to Xavier's in New York. She was sort of awake now, with a lot of pain in her head and some in her neck.

[Michael Asters]

Cassiel had been somewhat harsh with Isabel, it was true. As he went in to see Lora, though, there was a feeling of cool anger about him. When Lora was conscious enough to notice, she'd find him waiting there, looking down at her. "Hello, Lora," he said coolly.

[Lora Zalesky]

"I guess you being the first person that I would see would be logical," she replied, holding her head and leaning up.

[Michael Asters]

"Lay back," he said. "You're hurt."

"I don't suppose that you care how much trouble you've caused?"

[Lora Zalesky]

"Considering how it all feels like a jumbled mess, not as much as I otherwise might, no," she admitted. Laying back again was a small mercy.

[Michael Asters]

"Well, for starters, you've decimated the late-summer and early-fall crops throughout Eurasia, mostly in the former Soviet states. Food riots began breaking out. As you fall under Genoshan authority, it falls on us to make good on this, so our resources have been diverted to doing what can be done to salvage the region, allocate food where it's needed, and basically keep starvation from spreading. Regardless of what we do, there are likely still going to be casualties to your little trip across the continent."

"So in short, you've killed thousands of people, left others starving, impoverished, or sickly, and taken food from the mouths of our nation in trying to repair the damage you've done. Now the question I'm left with is what to do with you."

[Lora Zalesky]

"And I suppose that there are but two answers to that," she said, mulling it over for a few moments.

[Michael Asters]

"Well, it certainly is a possibility to have you publicly dealt with in Genosha and never seen again," he said coldly. "Would you say that that is unfair?"

[Lora Zalesky]

"The two possibilities that I had conjured up were life imprisonment and death, so I guess that that suggestion fits in nicely, too. Whatever you want to do to me, do it."

[Michael Asters]

Cassiel glared at her, and she'd feel him pushing into her mind, shoving aside any facades to see her true reaction to everything that had happened.

[Lora Zalesky]

First he would experience a sense of numbness from her. She knew what had happened, while missing some specifics, and after doing something like that, well, the enormity of it couldn't quite be felt in its entirety.

Aside from that, there was also a sense of resignation. She felt that too many bridges had been burned to ever have a chance to go back whence she came, and Mike's words had only solidified that feeling for her further.

There might also be some regret, for sure, but whatever regret she had was buried deeply and barely felt at that moment, mostly from the combined effects of the numbness and the resignation.

[Michael Asters]

He looked at her for a moment. Then he nodded. "You're going to be going under a battery of psychiatric evaluations. Once those are done, you will be under observation, and another battery of psychiatric evaluations will begin. By the time you're through, you're going to feel like your brain has been picked apart and laid out to study, because in essence it will be. And that is just what I am going to put in place. I don't know what the school is going to decide to do about you if you even wish to stay here. Are we clear so far?"

[Lora Zalesky]

Something about what he had said registered some surprise with her. "Yes, clear."

[Michael Asters]

"As far as you are concerned, you are under constant surveillance. You have no right of privacy from searches, you have no right of privacy from telepaths, the only rights you will have are those that you will earn. Am I still clear?"

[Lora Zalesky]

"Yes," she replied, calmly.