Mutatis Mutandis Equals Memento Mori
Subject: Pryde, Katherine
Date of Birth: 02/05/00
Citizenship: American
Family: Located and contained
Location: New Jersey State Institution for Troubled Youth
Enrollment Date: 01/18/12
Status: Possible Latent Mutant
Clearance Level: Alpha
Abilities: Signs of mutant abilities aside, she is smart.
Weaknesses: She is a child, her intelligence means nothing without the experience
Notes: With the right motivation, she can be brought to our side. Rewarding her for good behavior with tolerance of her religious observation, which means she gets her locket back. If Dr. Ambrose gives the signal, take it back.
Kitty is smart. This is not bragging. She is ... she's brilliant. Case in point: she's being sent to a fancy boarding school. Her mom bought her these pretty blue trunks and she's going on an adventure. She's going to Hogwarts.
Okay, so she's not going to Hogwarts, but it's almost as good. She's going going to Xavier's School for Gifted Youth, on a scholarship, one she didn't apply to, because it wasn't one of those types. But she won. She won and now she's going to upstate New York. She's going to Hogwarts!
Hogwarts!
"Kitty," her mother admonishes, watching her daughter jump in glee once more. This was not an occasion for joy, she thought, even as her darling Kitty felt nothing but. "Behave. Now, which books do you want to take? No, 'all of them' is not an answer."
"I guess ... this one, and this one, and this one, and oh, mom, I can't leave this one, not ever."
"Kitty."
"Just these. I can send for the rest, right? Like I'll send these back and you'll send me the others? I mean, even though it's only for half a term, because it's .... but you'll do it, right?"
Her mother smiles dimly. "Of course, darling."
"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"How did they find me?"
That's the million dollar question, isn't it? She wonders, sitting listlessly in her cell.
How did they find me?
~*~*~*~
"Kitty," she says, as she sets her tray on the table. The boy doesn't look up. "Hey, are you okay? Hello?"
"Don't talk to him," the other girl, the only other non robot, says. "Rumor has it his cell mate said something to him."
"Who's his cell mate?" she asks aloud. Internally, she's wondering how she's never met this other cell mate. She thought there was only the two of them, both of the girls.
"Dunno," the girl shrugs.
Jess, her mind supplies. "Hey, Jess, question," she says, before the girl stands, leaves, leaves her alone.
Jess raises a brow. "What?" she says, flatly.
"When did you get here?"
The tray falls.
The guards.
All of the guards.
No questions.
Please, no more questions, Dr. Miller repeats.
"Please, no more questions," Kitty nods. repeats.
~*~*~*~
When Kitty was eight, she learned about the Holocaust. She learned that history is quick to smooth things over, to pretend it never happened. History is quick to lie and twist the truth. History is not as quick to punish. When Kitty was eight, she learned the world tries so hard to be good and fails.
When Kitty is young, she learns that they only remember religious people being massacred, they don't remember the other people, the ... 'unmentionables'. They don't mention depressed people, mentally ill people. They don't mention people who love other people, women who don't like boys (good, because they're icky and dumb), or men who don't like women (but they like other men?), or who don't like anyone. They don't mention the Romani, or any of the nomadic people of all countries. They'd rather not.
When Kitty is eight, she feels old.
She feels burdened by all this ... knowledge, she wishes she could float, float away and stop being part of this whole ... mess. She doesn't want to be human if it means ignoring when others ask for help, when you need to help and decide, it's better if you let it be, let them get rid of the 'waste'.
It's the first time she dissolves into nothing.
It's not the last.
~*~*~*~
"I'm Kitty," she tells the boy, again, except this time he's lucid. "Welcome to Project Wideawake," she adds.
Startled, the boy jolts, looking up at her, as if he was awakened just that second. "Why are we here?"
"Didn't they tell you?"
He shakes his head. "I don't ... it doesn't make sense."
"This is ... well, I don't know where it is, but it's a facility for mutant experimentation. That guy, at the end of the room," she says, pointing across to the door. "He's part of the Mutant Restraint Division."
"What?"
"You're a mutant."
"I think ... I know that," he says wryly. "But I didn't really have time to research my new life."
She gives him a look. "The U.S. Government has been trying to find a way to ... fix this. They're being very uncool German regime about it. You understand, Kaplan."
He blinks, surprised. She pulls out a thin gold chain from inside her shirt, a gold Star of David on the end, before letting it fall back. "Oh."
"It's nice to find another Jewish mutant." She looks around. "Everyone else is ... off."
"What do you mean?"
"They don't seem like real people."
"Are we the ... only ones here?"
Kitty shakes her head. "We have this girl, who's older than us, but she's not allowed outside of her room anymore." Not since I broke her, somehow, last week. "And there are two others, but they're in comas. I pass by them whenever I go back to my room."
"So ... five of us?"
"Six," she corrects, frowning. "I've never actually seen his face, but he's always ... there, in the training rooms."
"Those are ... the ones that let us use our powers, right?" She nods. "Oh."
"He's really fast, too. Usually a blur," she comments, picking at her lunch. "Do they ..." she looks away.
He tugs his sleeve up and slides his arm across, where she can see the needle marks. "They experiment."
"Yeah," she says, softly. He covers his arm again. "They experiment."
He taps his potatoes, taps his slippers, drums his fingers against the table. "Billy," he finally says, strained, as if it took great ...
Good god, are they already brainwashing them?
At dinner, Billy sits across from Kitty. "It's because of that one law," he says. "The Super Human Registration Act," he adds, as if she had been the new one and not him.
Kitty hums tersely, pointedly staring at him as she says, "Registration today, gas chambers tomorrow."
Billy blinks, cold fear seeping into his body. "It's not like that," he says, weakly. "Our parents know we're here."
"Do they?" she asks, eyes flickering down to her lunch. "My parents sent me to a school in Upstate New York."
"We're in New Jersey," he says, stupidly.
"Exactly," she nods.
He doesn't speak after that.
She doesn't feel proud of that.
~*~*~*~
Kitty tugs on other boy's sleeve, the cell mate of Billy. This is the one who has a hat, or maybe it's a helmet, on always. Kitty kind of wants to ask, but she doesn't really want the answer. "You're going to need to be faster," she tells him, as she she looks at the bland lunch choices. "I heard the guards talking. If you don't go faster, they'll give Billy more appointments with Miller."
Tommy glares at her. "I don't care," he hisses, yanking his hand back. "That's his problem and not mine."
"Billy thinks you're on our side," she says, coldly, as she frowns at the choices, at him, and leaves. She leaves before her tiny preteen hands clench into fists and attack the boy with the helmet.
It takes two weeks before Billy reaches Dr. Miller again, and he has no idea why. Kitty merely hums whenever he brings it up at lunch, doesn't look at the tired speedster on the other edge of the cafeteria. But she notices how Billy slips him his food. He already eats very little, apparently getting nourishment from the electrical bolts they slam him with on a thrice daily basis, but he gives Tommy half of his rations. The guards look away, everyone looks away.
Rations, Kitty thinks with derision. That Moira woman was right after all.
Registration first, gas chambers next.
Kitty so very much hopes gas chambers aren't in her future.