Aberrant: Mutant High - Faces of The Morrigan [Complete]

[z-The Morrigan]

Three pictures of The Morrigan have made it out of Africa.

The first appeared in International Wars, during their “Wars in Africa” special edition. The foreground is a blur of red, basically human in shape. What is disturbing about it is that you realize that most of that red is from the man that the blur is darting in front of; he’s cut from groin to chin. The camera catches not only his expression of shock and grievous wounds, but the broken St. Christopher’s medal that is tumbling away from his neck. The label under the picture is Wiraj Lutfi, age 45, killed by the mutant ‘The Morrigan’. Less scrupulous magazines offer a double-blind email contact for the mutant’s ‘agent’.

The second was featured in the brochure of Legal Rights for Mutants. The picture is of a teen girl lying bleeding and broken on the sand of a desert. She is dark-skinned and naked, but huddled in on herself so that it’s not obscene. A collar of metal encircles her neck. The nearly-white sands outline her form starkly, letting the viewer feel the pain in the form as the child huddles in on herself. The caption: ’The Morrigan’, estimated thirteen years of age, another example of mutants being abused by humanity. You can help stop this, with a donation to Legal Rights for Mutants. Legal Rights for Mutants was later shown to be a scam, and all the money generated for the cause was embezzled.

The third is the famous ‘Face of Death’ picture. It features a close up of the face of The Morrigan, caught in mid-snarl, blood dripping from her very pores. At the bottom of the image, one can see the heavy steel collar around her neck. This image was in National Geographic, obtained for their article on war-torn Sudan. The caption for this one reads: Little is known about this mutant, save that the natives of Sudan call her ‘the white man’s butcher’. The number of people she has murdered remains unknown, but is estimated to be over fifty. Not long after the photographer risked his life to obtain this image, she disappeared. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

[z-The Morrigan]

The Morrigan doesn’t remember meeting Vyse. Her first meeting that she does remember is years after their first actual encounter. Vyse remembers the first time he saw her, quite vividly.

The day is August 11. He’s wearing white and khaki; his white-slaver contact is wearing camo and looks ridiculous. They’ve met Atbarah, on the Nile in Sudan, because Elijah has a deal he can’t pass up. Vyse is sure he can pass it up, but likes to humor Elijah because occasionally he has something good. Today is one of those days.

Today’s deal is for a mutant. Elijah has her covered in a cage when Vyse walks up. The cage is in a rail car, which is a relief because it’s bloody hot in the sun and the car offers some shade. “You’ll love her,” Elijah says in French without even a hello. He’s very excited. “I thought of you first.”

Vyse doubts this in the extreme but nods. “Thank you,” he replies in French as well, though he has a thick Dutch accent. “I appreciate that. Let me see.”

Elijah pulls the cover, revealing a child, dark skinned with pretty features. He can see that clearly because she’s naked, though she tries to hide herself. She’s covered in dried blood. Her eyes glow red as she stares at him. “I got her for a special order for a brothel – paid extra for her virginity. Then she goes mutie on a customer and I have to buy her back from the brothel. Cost me a lot of money. But she’s a good fighter,” he adds quickly with his annoying, ingratiating smile.

Vyse peers at her. She’s been crying and is shaking despite the heat. “Please take me home,” she begs in American-accented English, which Vyse knows but pretends he doesn’t. “I want my mommy.” Whatever she sees in his eyes makes her shoulders slump and she starts to cry again.

“What does she do?” Vyse asks, feeling the first stirrings of interest.

“She uses her blood to make weapons, and she’s very scary,” Elijah says with a big smile, smelling a sell. “She heals well, too. I have video.”

Vyse watches it on the hand-held camcorder that Elijah has with him. Some people would have been excited by what came first; others horrified. Vyse doesn’t care, one way or another. What interests him was what happens halfway through the video, when the girl’s eyes go red and she cuts through her bonds. She kills the man assaulting her and vomits, mixing blood and guts and vomit and tears in a gory scene. She has no style, no finesse; she is so American in her accent and manner that Vyse expects to see her don a pair of Gap jeans.

The video ends and Vyse asks, “How much?”

[z-The Morrigan]

After some training is when her meanness comes out. She begins to attack her cage; she’s smart and it doesn’t take her long to learn that the bars are too thick for her to get through before the guards stop her. The thinner plates which hold the hinges in place are easier for her to cut through. After she nearly escapes, Vyse has a below-ground cage built for her. She’ll have trouble even reaching the hinges. A guard patrolling the edge with a cattle prod keeps her from climbing up and cutting her way out.

The real problem is on the battlefield. She refuses to cooperate. It’s very embarrassing and Vyse is not making enough money to make this profitable. He is, however, patient and willing to invest a bit more. He goes looking for a specific man, someone who he’s heard rumors about in the circles in which he moves.

Harrison Ford Forsheim is down on his luck, but that changes when he meets Vyse. The Dutchman offers him enough money to make him forget his ethics. He comes to Vyse’s headquarters in the Sudan and begins to experiment. Sometimes, he’s bothered that he’s doing this to a teen girl, one who cries and begs when she isn’t slashing at him with bloody weapons. But he has hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical school debt that isn’t going away, so he does it. He just drinks more now.

It works in just a few weeks. Ford is able to induce a berserker rage in her. International Wars has a feature article on her, revealing her prowess to the world. Vyse is in the mutant arms business.

The side effects cause issues. It becomes harder to induce the rage, requiring higher doses. She comes off it more slowly, and he has to start sedating her to handle her afterwards. A growth spurt nearly undoes all his work; he almost loses control of her. He knows that these drugs, especially in the combinations he’s using them, will cause her neurological damage. He watches her succumb to the symptoms, one at a time. She’s becoming an animal, right before his eyes. As if he must match the damage done to her, he starts drinking even more, levels that some would call dangerous. He calls them comfortably numb.

Then she is sent against her first mutant.

[z-The Morrigan]

Warhammer was born a geek. His name comes from the obvious; he is a Warhammer fan. His mutant powers give him an appearance similar to an ogre’s, but he deals with it rather well. In his heart, he is a hero, and this is what gives him the ability to continue.

He is in Sudan to protect her people. He doesn’t feel any real draw to be here; he just knows that these people need his help. So he’s here to be a hero. But even he is against huge odds. He figures that out rather quickly, that for all his power, he’s still a drop of good in the bucket of evil that is Sudan’s war. He does what he can.

Early on, he figures that one thing he can do is stop the mutant named The Morrigan. She’s been operating for a little over a year. She has killed dozens. All he knows is that she works for a man named Vyse, is very young and without mercy.

A town is threatened with her unless they pay a protection fee they cannot afford; he learns of this ahead of time. Warhammer arrives the day before she does, and he waits for her. When she attacks, coming out of the desert already dropping hot blood, he jumps her.

It scares and saddens him, how very young she is. His first crush, more than ten years ago, was no older than she. Despite her beauty, she hasn’t even fully developed a woman’s figure. He knows this for certain, because she fights naked, which is even more unsettling. He takes it easy on her, until she uses a blood sword on him to open him up like a fish. He turns his signature move on her then, a double-fisted maneuver that has crushed men like empty soda cans. It stuns her, and it gives him the time to do it again. He’s impressed; few people have withstood two such attacks from him.

He beats her up and admonishes her to find a new life. After he’s gone, a watching man snaps a picture of her huddled, bleeding form.

That is not the last time she fights a mutant. But is the one that she’ll always remember, on an instinctive level. It was when she learned that her own kind were the most dangerous – one on one. She fears them, fears fighting them for a time.

She learns to fear death next time.

[z-The Morrigan]

Vyse loves showing her off. That’s where the third image comes from; a time when he let in a photographer to take pictures of her. They kept her collared and chained, and Ford was on hand in case she got out of hand. Vyse loves the pictures and loves the exposure that she gave him.

In the U.S., the same pictures are seen by two important people. The first is Eileen Gomez, who has been chasing rumors of The Morrigan for years. She contacts the photographer, who gives her the piece of information she needs; the name of the doctor mentioned in the article. She flies to Africa seeking her.

Another mutant comes to find her, too. He’s called Hunter. He’s called that because that is what he does. He hunts and fights other mutants to prove his worth. He doesn’t kill them, for that would not help the mutants. By hunting them, he finds and tests the strong and the fearless. And she seems both.

He’s disappointed to find that she’s a human’s dog. Worse, she’s a feral; there’s nothing left to her but wildness and rage. She’s strong enough to live, but not sane enough, he judges. And so his hunt becomes a stalking to the death.

For two days, he chases her across the Sudan. She flees from him, flees death, but it is relentless. He finally corners her; she will die. She reaches into herself and finds her defiance; her will to live. She screams it in his face as he comes to kill her. He watches the blood pour down her face, and sees that he’s given her life.

“Never fear death,” he tells her, lowering his fist as the power of her fearsome presence washes over him. “Never stop fighting.”

He is very surprised but pleased when she launches herself at him with renewed vigor. He is out of her class, of course. He defeats her easily, but spares her life. She has learned, he sees, to show no fear.

He is wrong. Morri is now a creature of fear, bound and ruled by its laws and lessons. If she had attacked with seeming boldness, it is because she was afraid of death more. She saw the dark shadow of death looming, and she had lashed out against it.

She has learned to fight when afraid. The terrible face that so many saw and feared is a mask covering the frightened child. She is afraid of everything, now, as a tiger in a zoo will pace and stare at the humans with wide eyes. It seems fierce and bold, but it is frightened and defensive. This is what Morri has learned to be.

It is, she has learned, the one face of the Morrigan she can’t allow others to see.