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Started watching Charlie Jade on Hulu and became caught up in Reena's struggle. She's such a fierce warrior/survivor.  So I wrote this in honor of the character.  Reena portrayed by actress Patricia McKenzie.  Charlie Jade, created by Chris Roland and Robert Wertheimer





Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.


Reena took in the alien mountains of sands that in an instance had replaced mountains of lush vegetation, pristine air, and Bern.  This is not her verse.  This is not her home.   Here, in this place she is filled with anger, guilt and the determination to keep her world from the greed of those in control of the powerful corporations vying for control of the three verses.  Her verse will survive.   She looks across the vastness camouflaged as emptiness.   This is not where she is supposed to be.  “We tried to change things,” she screams silently within her raddled mind.  Her shoulders curl inward with the burden of all that she has lost. 

 

The ground shakes around her and she finds herself in the midst of a crowd filled with fear and terror.  Words are thrown about, terrorist, bomb, explosion, dead, hundreds, murderer.  She realizes that they’re talking about the explosion at the reservoir.  But that happened in Gammaverse.  Her confusion weakens her innate self-preservation and she’s herded with the others into the truck, into a strange city, onto the streets, lost, alone.    There are things she has to do to make things right, to save her verse.  What?  Where?  When?  How can she save her verse by herself? 

 

She walks the streets for days hungry, cold and unsettled by the unfamiliar.     Necessity forces her into the space of a stranger.  Her bit of comfort is shattered by strangers in uniform.  From them strangers in masks save her life, but take her freedom.  She’s seen vids of torture victims, read about its effects on the innocent.  But living it?  How many times can a person tell the truth amid pain that never ends?    They’re pain turned beauty into unimaginable horror and like the dog salivating at the sound of a bell in Pavlov’s experiment she pees herself every time a radio plays.  Finally, she realizes that they never wanted the truth, they wanted her in pain, they want her compliance, her torturers wanted her to become something else; they almost succeed.

 

She sits across from the interviewer at Vexcor, her smile false; composed of stretched skin and tinted chemicals.  She’s found a way inside, closer to her enemy, closer to saving her verse.  After being immersed in a world of uncertainty she’s figured it out.  It’s all about control.  It’s all about taking away their choices.    She sits across from her opportunity, answering his questions, using her new found talents.  Her time in Betaverse has taught her many things; subterfuge, grit and a hardness born of anguish that sits just below the surface of her humanity, eating away at it, poking holes in it, doing what the men in masks could not.    And when she’s finished with Vexcor she’ll go home, having saved her world, having saved her soul.










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