Stepping into the Sky - Chapter 23

Operation Blue Sun

Elena Snape was a gifted child. She knew things no one could have known or imagined. She knew how objects felt. She felt the nature of an object deep within her mind and from within it, came the power to manipulate said object. To others it was like Elena touched a thing and it moved and bent and swayed as Elena desired. The more complex the thing, the more the difficulty of manipulation. She had been tempted to try her powers on living things and the Blue Sun Corporation had encouraged it. She had been given a rabbit to experiment with but nothing came of it. It hadn’t worked and Elena had felt relieved. She didn’t know why, it just made her feel guilty to even try. She was glad that chapter had been closed and was eager to test the extent of her powers.

Ebenezer Snape had never been prouder the day Elena’s magic manifested. He established a school for the gifted just for her and used Blue Sun Corporation to attempt to mold her into the perfect leader to head the Alliance.

Unfortunately, his dreams collapsed when Elena refused to listen to what was deemed as a syllabus and instead chose to dwell on her dominant desire of the month or year if he was lucky. The recruits of the school were left to Blue Sun for further research. Within that research, Ebenezer created weapons to suppress the one loose end left in the elimination of the purged Wizard Society.

Eventually Elena’s power matured into a state where simple objects could be manipulated with barely a thought and it was then Ebenezer introduced her to the Lost History. The era of Magic and its tragic end. Elena was fascinated by the story of Harry Potter and his role in the destruction of Earth. The Disappointment, she called him. 

Spade believed he was the key to destroying Lord Voldemort. Elena for a start, wanted to know what it was like to be the final trigger for the death of an entire civilization. She was thrilled to have a chance to personally interrogate the Disappointment. She knew neither Spade nor her father would stop her. They wanted to see if the next desire she developed would be more in line with the path they wanted her to take.

Elena knew she was an open experiment. And she was undecided on how that made her feel. For now, only her desire mattered.

So far it was vaguely like what she had imagined. He was rude, powerful and shameless. She was already finding it difficult to read him. She knew the story of him being a reserved boy who did his best to be a hero was gorram nonsense.

That was what she wanted to figure out... how would such a person feel? To get information, she had to push him to the edge. And to do that, she decided to put Harry and the runaway in the same lockup.

Elena looked into the optical scanner and the thick door hissed open, leading into the special cell zone. Five rooms, all that angles to each other, shielded by a force field that canceled magic. No one but Tom Riddle had broken out of the special cell zone.

Would Harry Potter be the second with the power he had? Or would she succeed in manipulating his will? Her excitement boiled when she entered the steel room and saw Harry and the runaway sitting opposite each other around the pentagon shaped metal table, not talking or looking at each other.

The runaway who didn’t want to be here and the wizard who had put her here. Elena was curious to see if there was anything between them and if it would help her unravel the Disappointment.

In the Command Centre, Shepard and Spade watched with keen eyes at the live feed from the bright room. They watched Elena walk inside and clear her throat to grab her prisoner’s attention.

Spade wondered why Elena had brought along the girl? She was towing a thin line that crossed the moral obligation of the Alliance to respect the rights of an Alliance citizen.

The door to Harry’s cell slid shut and Elena took in her first sight of Harry Potter in the flesh. She could feel his magic fill the room. 

She couldn’t help but smile.

Elena stood at the door for a while just looking at Harry. Observing every minute detail until Harry, creeped out by her stare, spoke up.

“Why is she here?” he asked. He didn’t want Natalie to get dragged into his problems.

“To shed light on your activities since your awakening,” Elena replied calmly. Her eyes glittered with meaning and her voice was steady with authority.

“How much am I allowed to say?” he asked. He was quite sure Natalie knew next to nothing about magic. If Natalie found out, would the Alliance just let her go?

“I’ll get straight to the point. We require your complete cooperation with regards to a certain problem and further, contribute to the continued research at our Blue Sun facility. Doing so with free will is our preferred option.”

Natalie turned and looked at Harry with wide eyes. She had heard whispers about it during her travels through the shady side of the verse. Blue Sun, the secret organization of the Alliance specializing in artificial enhancements of the human body. It was easy to read between the lines and she had seen Harry freaking teleport. She was smacked in the middle of a Blue Sun experiment that she had dismissed as gorram fiction. She wished she had ignored Harry instead of getting seduced by her sex drive.

“You’re a researcher?” Natalie gasped. “And you’re on the run from the Military?!” Natalie’s first goal to get the fuck of this ship.

“Sort of,” Harry replied with a scowl. He didn’t have to read her mind to know she was going to throw him under the bus so that she could escape. While it did irritate him to see how easy it was for her, he also supposed it was karma kicking him in the balls for trying to be an ass.

“What’s it going to be?” Elena asked.

Harry felt his ire grow. Fine, he thought. If she wanted to be blunt he’d reciprocate. 

“I’ve been in a room like this before,” he said with a slight scoff. “A room built a lot stronger than this one and I broke out of that one with some effort. I can get away anytime I want. I can bring this ship down with minimal effort. So, unless you want a war, why don’t we get rid of Natalie and talk Man to…. Woman.”

“We can’t do that and her name’s not Natalie. She’s listed as missing by her parents on Londinium. They must be worried sick.”

Liar, thought Harry. She had a decent shield around her mind but not good enough to prevent him from discretely pulling bits and pieces of information. He hadn’t sensed it the first time but now, being in the same room with her for a while, he could feel her magic. She was like River but her magic was very refined. Controlled. Trained. Suddenly his anger spiked.

These were the people who subjected River to terrible experiments.

“Or…” Harry said after a moment. “…she ran away realizing what a shitty verse the Alliance has built. Either way, let her go and I’ll cooperate with you within the boundaries of morality and if you don’t, you already know what I want to do.”

Elena took a deep controlled breath. She wanted complete control over him before asking him questions and she didn’t like the fact that the runaway could now be used either way and was no longer a useful asset. This was a mission where they had to toe the line of the laws laid down by the Alliance. The girl was more trouble than she was worth.

“Fine,” she said and activated her coms device. “Spade, can we drop her off back on the planet?”

“We’ll be wasting a whole lot of fuel,” he said.

“You’re off the hook,” Elena said to Natalie., ignoring the comment. “We’re going to be sending a bulletin to the Alliance Police Department. So, you have a choice. Stay with us and return home or keep running.”

Natalie smiled tightly. “I’d rather keep running.”

Elena nodded impassively and knocked on the door. A man entered. “Tell him everything you know about Harry Potter and then they’ll shuttle you back to the planet.”

Relief spread across Natalie’s face and she stood up to leave as quickly as possible.

Before she was out the door, Harry called out. “I hope this makes us even!”

Natalie paused, turned back and smiled faintly. “We’ll find out if we ever meet again.”

After a heartbeat of a moment, Harry was the first to speak. “So… how did you break my memory charm?”

His mind was focused and magic active.

“You meddled in my mind. You think I’d not notice?” Elena sneered in a way that made Harry feel the strangest Déjà vu.

“Are you another Blue Sun experiment manipulated into serving the Alliance?”

“I do not serve the Alliance. I am a part of it. And you, Harry Potter, are the reason it exists.”

“What? The Alliance?” The chick was being cryptic and he had had his fill of cryptic talks with an old man 500 years ago.

“No, Harry Potter. I’m talking about Blue Sun. It was born in the cold confines of deep space when Earth disappeared from sight and the warmth of its sun left humanity forever. Blue Sun was born to protect humanity from your failure. Blue Sun, that was founded by a man you knew quite well - Severus Snape. Severus Snape, who continued the war against Tom Riddle until he eradicated the entire race of magical people.”

Harry went cold. He now recognized her eyes. Black as coal and with the depth of the eyes of a hawk. If her neatly tied, shoulder length black hair was shorter and greasy, he would have made the connection earlier.

“My failure?” he whispered. Memories of his last days on Earth came forth like the howl of a coming storm. “How typical of Snape. He always was a coward.”

The table tore at the seams and deformed into a human-like shape in an instant. 

Harry was slammed against the wall held up by his neck by a metal golem. “Don’t insult Severus Snape,” she growled. “He was a great man who pursued the cause for unification right until the day he died.”

In the control room, Spade frowned. “Did you notice that?” He asked Shepard.

“Notice what?”

“Never mind,” Spade replied, staring intently at Harry.

Shepard noticed the slight smirk he was now sporting. What had the operative of the Parliament seen?

“You’re his descendant, aren’t you?” Harry choked out with humor in his voice. 

“I can’t believe a woman actually slept with him! I was always convinced he was going to die a virgin. Looks like that damn bat managed to survive and drag my name through the mud even after my supposed death.”

“Don’t talk all high and mighty. It was your failure to do your job that led to Earth’s eventual destruction. We spent centuries trying to fix it. And now you come back out of the blue which conveniently leads to the escape of the most dangerous person in the verse!”

Harry’s building anger was prevented from spilling by her last line. This was his worst fear. “What dangerous person?” he asked. He didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Tom Riddle,” Elena said. “Former Emperor of the Magical World. If it weren’t for Severus Snape, this verse would not even exist. You’re a Disappointment Harry Potter. And if you have even the slightest regret, you would do everything in your power to help us.”

“Shut it,” Harry snapped. “Help you do what? Kill millions of innocent people all over the verse? You are the people who massacred an entire planet just for the sake of an experiment. You’re as bad as Voldemort. If not worse.”

“The dark side of magic is not moral, Harry Potter. All that matters there is power and that’s the world you were born in. Tell me, if you were in a position to see it grow like a cancer, what would you be willing to do to stop it?”

Harry was beginning to feel like coming here was a mistake. He had chosen this path just to purge his guilt of hiding and fighting back on Earth. Now, he was understanding, that kind of fighting was the best kind. As a result of his rutting saving’s people thing, Snape’s descendant was holding him prisoner and she was batshit crazy.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “I think I’ve heard enough. I thought you’d have a better reason for being evil shit stains but I guess I was wrong. I’m outta here.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Elena said with a roll of her eyes. “We’re in deep space and you’re in a cell reinforced with energy shields”

Harry began to fade out of sight. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said and then disappeared.

Elena and Shepard gasped with disbelief. The shields hadn’t even flickered!

Elena was about to scream for guards or Spade when Spade, in a calm voice, spoke through the coms. “Calm down,” he said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

In the hanger bay, Harry opened his eyes and took a moment to reorient his senses. 

Projection of himself; using a target's mind to help create a mass delusion required complete focus. It was something he’d been working on at the back of his mind but for it to be so successful?! He’d dwell on it after getting out.

He had to blink his eyes a lot and shake his head to get out the feeling and image of being in the cell. It took him a few minutes to reorient his sense of sight and when he did, he rushed to the cockpit and powered on the shuttle. He hoped he was not too late. Mal had told him before he left, that they would be waiting for 2 hours, half a light year towards New Kashmir for him.

In the control room, Elena goggled at Spade. “What do you mean calm down! He’s going to escape! He can turn things invisible!”

Spade’s mask crumbled and Elena saw the eyes that every Brown Coat feared. They were the eyes of an intelligent and ruthless assassin. Her father’s operative.

“Ok,” she said meekly. “I guess you have a plan.”

Harry knew invisibility was the only way out. He summoned his magic and cast the disillusion spell on the shuttle.

Almost immediately, he felt a force opposing his magic and his eyes widened. 

When had they put a shield around his shuttle! He had been careful and even put up proximity runes discreetly.

In the control room, Spade smiled. “This is a lesson I hope you’ve learnt well Elena,” he said. “No matter how powerful your enemy. Everyone has a blind spot. All that matters is how you use it.

Through the camera they saw at least a dozen men appear out of nowhere, wearing black suits with a strange white disk fixed on their chests.

They had surrounded a shuttle and Elena could make out a faint shield around the shuttle. What was it? she wondered.

“In this respect, Harry Potter would have beaten you blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.”

Elena felt a burn in her neck. She looked at the screen and glared at the smoking shuttle. Spade was always full of himself. If she had those cool toys she’d make good use of them as well!

In the shuttle Harry contemplated his next move. Should he attack or disengage? 

He had got the information he wanted and now he had to get the fuck out. 

However, it seemed he had underestimated the Alliance. They had made good use of their research on Magic and created a stronger shield that could contain magic in a confined space. How did they do it?

“Harry Potter,” came a voice from the loud speakers outside. "Please step outside. 

You've tested us and now you know our capabilities go further than you could imagine. I can assure you all we want is to take you to Councillor Snape for a chat and then, if you want to leave, you'd be free to do so. However, if you continue to resist and play games, I will be forced to protect my ship and crew. The choice is yours."

Harry was unable to use magic.. He could still feel the magic inside him. It just wasn’t materializing outside. Something in the air was canceling it out. He could still use magic to shield his mind, strengthen his body to protect it from harm. He bit his lip. There was a distinct lack of options. He had no choice. He had to surrender. But more importantly, he had to make sure he figured out a way to bypass their technology. It was a race against time. 

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

2 hours had passed by on Serenity. Mal and River were in the cockpit, Mal with his fingers on the throttle and River sitting with her knees drawn up, staring solemnly into the black.

Mal didn’t say anything. He could tell she was hoping to see Harry’s shuttle. Her eyes seemed impassive, but he could see the emotion hidden underneath.

There was something unresolved between the two.

5 more minutes passed by in silence. In the engine room, Kaylee and Simon waited for the order to flee with unnatural calm. Kaylee was still heartbroken that Harry had sacrificed himself for them.

Further 15 minutes passed and Jayne, Zoe and Inara realized Harry wasn’t coming back. Inara and Zoe exchanged a look and Inara got up with a sigh.

She went up the ladder to the cockpit and poked her head in. “River,” she said.

River didn’t react.

“River, honey. I know this might be hard...” Inara was cut off as River suddenly powered on the engine and with smooth handling, turned the ship one eighty degrees and pushed on the throttle.

“Guess he’s going to do it on his own,” she muttered.

“Alright,” Mal said with a sad sigh. “Let’s hope New Kashmir will be a little more peaceful eh?”

The Verse was in a state of flux. Everything was heading to a singular event that would define the next phase of evolution of the human race.

River could read it in the vast emptiness of space.