Gateway to Life
-:Book 1:-
Through Death, Rebirth
by Faeriemage

Sometimes, it is what you do that matters. Sometimes, it is who you are. Usually it is just being in the proper place at the proper moment in time with the will to act.

Chapter 8:
Help, I need some body. Not just any body.

Tumbling across dimensions is not my idea of fun. I felt a lot like a rubber band. One second we were in bed, both of us focusing on our destination, and the next we were nowhere.

It's hard to describe. I watched the decor of the room change some items flickering faster than the eye could see, and some only slowly changing. The bedspread and bed seemed to be fairly constant. The rapid change in color made it seem mainly black with the edges and wrinkles flashing in different colors. We were passing through the objects as if they, or we, did not exist.

I began to realize that we had started to move in relation to the room. We were moving toward the roof and the outer wall. The further we moved from our starting point, the faster we traveled. I thought we might get a sense of flying, but there was no feeling of movement at all.

'It would probably be a good idea to orient ourselves better for landing, Sis.'

'I wouldn't want to land on my back, that's true.'

I began to try to sit up, or turn, or adjust my position at all. It wasn't working. No matter how I flailed around I couldn't move myself at all.

'Jams, it's not working.' I was getting a little hysterical at this point.

'Sis, relax. We can do this.'

'How, we have nothing to push against. We are floating through objects.'

I stopped to think for a moment. I could still feel the pull of our destination on me. Maybe. . .

'Sis, maybe you should push against the thing that is pulling us toward it.'

I smiled, but I let her have her moment. I didn't want to argue about who thought of this idea first, since we were both currently using the same grey matter. I reached out with the. . .hand. . .tentacle. . .thing that I had let go with and grabbed onto the thing we were going toward. In the instant that I grasped hold we were there.

I rubbed my behind as I climbed to my feet. "Ow"

"Who are you?" This was said by a man sitting next to a hospital bed. There was a Jamie in the bed, but she looked really pale. The machines I had envisioned were there as well. I was trying to figure out who this guy could possibly be. Ok, so he probably wasn't much older than we were. His anger changed into confusion. "Jamie?" He looked from the bed to me to the bed again. He got out of the chair and started walking toward me.

"I know I look like her. . ."
"But you're not her, are you. You're not Jamie. I'm sorry for bothering you. Can you leave please?"

'What are we going to do, Sis. He wants her to wake up, and we can't tell him we're going to steal her body.'

'Is it really stealing if you are in there? Isn't possession nine tenths of the law?'

She giggled at my bad joke. 'I'm not sure we should do that to him.'

'Couldn't we ask him?'

'I don't know.'

Well, since I was in charge, I took charge. "Excuse me. . ."

"I thought I asked you to leave. You remind me too much of Jamie."

"How much do you know about Jamie?"

"We met at the sanitarium. I was there because I tried to kill myself. She heard voices. She said they were trying to kill her."

"Are you always this open with strangers?"

He chuckled sadly. "Like I said, you remind me of her."

"You know she wasn't insane, right?"

"I wanted to believe her. I just couldn't believe that there was anything beyond this reality."

"In other words, she said that there were a whole bunch of realities, all stacked on top of each other?"

"Something like that."

"And that she was in all of them?"

"All of them she could touch. . ."

"Hi, My name is Jamie."

His jaw dropped. Then his expression changed. "I don't believe you my Jamie is gone, and you can't replace her."

"I'm not trying to replace her, but a friend of mine will need to take her body."

"It's all I have left. We were going to get married eventually. You can't have her! NURSE!"

We ducked out of the room. There as a huge male nurse coming toward us. We ran down the hall with him in hot pursuit. 'Jams, just take the body. We'll sort it out later.'

'He'll know something is up, I won't remember common things.'

'Pretend you have amnesia or something.'

'Well, that might work.'

I continued to run for my life for a few moments, and then I felt Jams start to panic. 'I can't get out. There is some sort of barrier keeping me in.'

I felt the nurses hand on my shoulder, and had to dodge to the right to get out of his reach. I had to move smarter, since I wasn't going to be faster than him. I dodged right down a side corridor and pulled a gurney I passed so that it blocked the hallway behind me. I glanced behind to see what the nurse would do just in time to see him hurdle it without breaking stride.

'Crap.'

I think both of us said that at the same time. I kept changing direction, but he was always just a step or two behind me.

I saw the fire stairs ahead and pushed through the door. Instead of going down the stairs I went halfway down and started hopping the hand rails, snaking from one stairway to another. The space between the top of the rail and the bottom of the upper stairs wasn't big enough for the nurse to follow the same way, so we started to pull ahead. . .at least until he started jumping from landing to landing.

'I think he's into parkour, Sis'

'What?'

'I'll explain later. Just keep moving.'

I was a couple of flights below him when I hit the ground floor and rushed through it. I was outside. I ran over to the parking lot, and hid myself between two cars, putting the tire between me and the hospital.

I heard the door slam open, and then the sound of heavy footfalls for a moment or two.

"Damn it.! I lost her. Did you see where she went on the camera out here?"

'Camera!?'

Again, we spoke simultaneously. I thought for a moment, and then got down on my stomach and started crawling under the car furthest from the hospital. It tore up my hands a bit, and my nightgown got dirty. My feet had already gotten torn up a bit when we ran across the parking lot. I didn't know what they were using to surface the road, but it felt like broken glass. I was getting small cuts on my front now, so I figured I was tearing up my nightgown as well.
I stopped under the third car. I saw the nurses white shoes moving around between the cars. I tried to breathe quieter.

"I don't see her." He paused for a moment or two. "Ok. I'll head back up to the ward. Keep the entrances locked down for a couple of hours so she can't get back in."

I watched as the shoes walked away. You know what I mean. I got up and looked at my eyes in the side mirror of the car I had been hiding under. They were almost completely orange.

'But, we made a connection, didn't we?'

'I don't know, Sis. But we're about taped out, and will probably need at least a full night's sleep to recharge again.'

We got on the grass and walked over to the sidewalk. It would be a long walk home from here. At the time I didn't even think about how far home really was. I was tired and almost falling asleep.

As we were walking a black car with blue neon piping pulled over in front of us. "'Scuse me miss. Can I scan your ID please.?" A police officer in a black uniform got out of the car. The steering wheel was on the wrong side, so he got out on our side.

He pulled a wand of some sort off his belt and ran it over my left wrist. Nothing happened, so I did it again. He tried once more on my right wrist. "Control, I've got a girl, about 10 years old, no ID and walking around in a torn nightgown." He paused like the nurse had. "Ok, I'll bring her into the station so that we can get positive identification." He turned to me, and gestured toward the car. "Would you mind, miss?"

The rear door moved out away from the car and then rotated out of the way. The interior of the back was roomier than the last police car I had been in. I climbed in and the door closed behind me, sealing me in. I couldn't see out at all. As soon as the car started moving, the lights went out. I sat there in the darkness, listening to the sound of my own breathing. I could barely feel any acceleration at all.

'Jams?' The instant I though this, I felt a blinding headache come on. I put my hands to my head and cried out in pain.

'Sis?' Again the pain. "Don't speak while we're in here." I said this last aloud, knowing she would hear me, and hoping that they wouldn't be listening, but I had the feeling that they would be. These people had technology that I could not understand at all.

I felt the car accelerate a lot more than it had before. It seemed to coincide with my first thought to Jams. Could they possibly be tapping into that somehow? I'd know soon enough because we began to decelerate as quickly as we had accelerated.

We came to a stop and the door I had entered opened up again. The cop was wearing a sort of helmet made out of a silver mesh. It looked a lot like a chainmail coif, except it only covered his hair. "Miss, you have been found in violation of the Psi Edict of 2204. Your demonstrable ability with, and use of, psionics has been recorded and sentence passed. You will be transported to a Sanitarium for the Psychologically Dangerous for the remainder of your natural days."
What in the world had I gotten myself into. I felt an answering thought. We didn't try to talk to each other because I feared a repeat of the pain from earlier. They took me into the building and processed me. I expected to be finger printed and photographed, but that was only the beginning. They took blood. They photographed my retinas. They put a chip into my left hand. They discovered I was physically a boy.

They brought out boy clothing. "You will dress in this." Said the gruff officer who now replaced the female officer who had been processing me.

I opened my mouth to protest, but he interrupted me. "The charge for sexual deviance of a minor has been suspended assuming you had no choice in your attire. Your hair will be shaved as is the hair of all male inmates."

I shut my mouth and dressed in the clothing. It was scratchy and the underwear was uncomfortable. The machine beeped. The officers eyes rose. "You're fourteen? Looks like we'll need a full body scan. Strip please." He said please, but there was no leeway in his tone.

I quickly stripped and he pushed me into a cabinet. Some lights and clicking noises went on for a minute or two. When the light and sound show stopped he opened up the box.

"I don't know where you grew up, but I'm sorry for my earlier attitude." The officer looked completely different with a smile. "You're lead a really hard life, haven't you, Young Buck."

I nodded and he continued, "Your Father beat you quite a bit, Huh?"

"Step-father"

"No excuse for that. He the one who dressed you as a girl?"

I needed him to help me as much as he could, so I lied with my body. I nodded.

"I'm so sorry, Young Buck. What's your name?"

"Jamie Paxton"

"Isn't Jamie a bit of a girl's name?" asked the officer. He didn't seem hostile, so I thought I'd help him out.

"James, my name is James."

"How bout we call you Jim then. It's a nice manly name."

I just nodded. I tried to be grateful to the officer, but it was hard not to cry. Luckily he mistook my reason for crying.

"It's ok, Little Man. That criminal is never going to touch you again. He probably never even told you that public Psi use was illegal."

I just shook my head.

"Get dressed. Ok, I'll tell you what, Jim. You go quietly to the sanitarium, and I'll see what I can do about getting you out of there. Just remember that you can't use any Psi while you're there. Don't even think Psi thoughts. No talking to others remotely. No trying to move items you aren't touching. Just do everything normal. Talk with your mouth and move with your body."

Sure, he wanted me to be a boy, but he wasn't a bad person overall. If he could really get me out of this place, then I would do my best. I suddenly had a thought that scared me.

"Is controlling your dreams Psi use?"

"As long as you only control your own dreams, and don't get into anyone else's head and control their dreams, you are perfectly fine."

I smiled for the first time since I'd felt that first blinding headache. We wouldn't be able to talk while awake, but at least Jams and I could talk when we were asleep.

I hated my boy clothes already, but I would live with them while I was in this world. I felt a nod in my head, but no pain. It seemed that their sensors only detected speech, not the other sense that I seemed to have for what Jams was doing. She smiled and gave me a thumbs up. I assumed that she was saying that she agreed. That and she could read my louder thoughts.

They shaved my head, and removed my earrings. I tried to "man up" but it was hard when all I wanted to do was crawl into a corner and cry.

At this point processing was done, and I was led to where a number of other kids my age were sitting. Most of them had lots of piercings or tattoos. One boy had the sides of his head shaved shorter than the rest of his close shaven head and he had a strange sun pattern engraved into the skin on both sides of his head.

I really mean engraved. It was like a reverse scar. It went into his skin about an eighth of an inch. No hair grew on the lines. "It's not safe to stare too intently at one of the priests of the Sun god."

I turned to look at the speaker. It was a girl about my age. "I thought they didn't shave girl's hair here." She said to me continuing.

"They don't. I'm a boy."

"You don't look like one to me."

I smiled and blushed. "Well, the machine says I am, so it must be right."

"The machine also says that I use Psi, which can't be true either. My parents had my Psi nexus removed from my brain when I was born. They didn't want to worry about something like this happening."

"Maybe you just don't know you can use psi with it removed?"

"You really are cute," She replied. "The Psi nexus is what generates all known Psi powers."

"Um, what about unknown ones?"
She stopped, blinked, and then blushed bright red. "I never thought about that."

"And without your Psi nexus, you probably don't even know if you're using it."

"Well, I do know that I don't feel the pain they say I should when using my 'power' in here. What am I going to do?" She began to cry a little bit. I put my arms around her and held her and cried a bit myself.

"Look, a sissy boy's huggin' little miss mind melter." I turned to see one of the bigger boys getting up and walking toward us.

"Mind melter?"

"He means a Psi user."

"No, I mean a scum sucking mind melter. You deserve what's going to happen to you at the sanitarium."

She shuddered and went pale. "Leave her alone." I said and got up to stand between King Kong and Fae Rae.

"What's you going to do, sissy boy? Cry on me until I wrinkle into a prune? Or maybe you'll trade that sweet little body of yours for hers."

The way he was looking at me made me really uncomfortable. I decided it was time to make a stand. I hoped my sense forgave me. I was supposed to only use my training for defense only.

"Look, you imbecile. The lady asked you to back off. I asked you to back off. Now, if you don't back off, I'll have to make you."

"Look, at this, people, the sissy boy thinks he's a real man now." I had turned his upper body to look at everyone else in the room. As he finished, he twisted his upper body and shoulders bringing his fist around in what would likely have been a life ending punch for me, if I'd still been there.

"Rule number one, worm, never take your eyes off your opponent. Grandstanding is for idiots and politicians." I said this as I threw an uppercut to his ribs. This was just to get his attention. He threw his arm back toward me, so I obliged him by catching it and twisting it into a lock. I kneed him in the ribs a couple of times, and then straightened my leg, forcefully, and planted the heel of my foot into his knee. It popped out sideways with a sickening crunch.

He collapsed to the floor cradling his knee. I sat back down next to the girl, and she leaned into me. "Thanks," she whispered to me and kissed me on the cheek. I blushed. "I still think you're a girl." She continued. "You move to fast to be one of these boys. They use their size and power, not their minds, to beat people down."

I wasn't sure if that was a compliment to me, or an insult to the other boys, but I took it how I wanted to: a compliment on my femininity.

It was another five or ten minutes before an officer finally came into the room. It was the one who had befriended me. He walked over to the boy who was still groaning on the floor, picked him up by the scruff of the neck, and half dragged him out of the room.

A couple of minutes later, he returned. "Jim, a word please." I got up and went over to him.

"The only reason that you aren't in more trouble is because I watched that whole interaction. I know someone with training when I see it. I don't ever want to see, or hear about, you picking a fight like that again."

I opened my mouth to protest, but he shushed me.

"Don't give me any of that. I know you escalated that fight expecting him to take a swing at you. You got your prince charming moment, don't do it again."

"What if he attacks me?"

"People like that one usually only prey on perceived weakness. They know that anytime you're awake, you're a dangerous target. Get someone you can trust to bunk with in there. It will keep you a bit safer at night. If they attack you first, without any provocation, protect yourself. Just don't go picking any more fights, or there might not be anything I can do to get you out of there."

I nodded and went back over to sit next to the girl. She leaned into me again. I felt really weird about it. Having her lean on me just didn't feel right for some reason.

"My name is Mary Pierce." She said after a little while. I felt Jams' eyes open wide. I tried my best not to jump up and step away. She felt me tense up. "Something wrong, Jim?"

"No, Mary. Nothing's wrong. I knew a Mary once, and your name startled me with a memory of her."

"Not a bad one I hope," she said with a flirtatious little pout.

We are so screwed, "No, Mary, she was almost like a mother to me. Only the your name reminds me of her."

What in the world was I going to do now. My counselor was hitting on me.