Microstory 140: Máire Lyne

This is an experimental Bellevue Profile microstory. The introduction can be found in Microstory 101. More to follow.

The standard tactical team of the Confederacy’s paramilitary arm carried seven people: a leader, his or her lieutenant, a sniper, a spotter, an engineer, a technician, and a combat expert. Teams were designed this way for a number of reasons. Scientists and other researchers had determined, based on basic dimensional physics and other strategic factors, that whenever a team needed to sufficiently surround and neutralize a threat, seven was always the minimum number focal points. The smaller team was also capable of infiltrating enemy lines without being detected, and the odd number prevented internal disputes from being stuck in a stalemate. Seoc Lyne and his sister, Máire Lyne belonged to a special strike team that had a total of eighteen members. Unlike her brother, who could fuse his body with one other person at a time and become nigh invulnerable, Máire could merge other people into herself. Each person she merged with increased her physical strength exponentially, and this appeared to be limited to around a dozen. While Seoc was fused with the team’s lieutenant, Rashad, Máire was merged with ten other people, and though she was assigned to be the combat expert, those ten others gave her a huge variety of skills and expertise that she utilized with a psychic connection. The eighteen of them were compressed into seven and sent all over the globe on missions, protecting the world from threats that it was sometimes not even aware of. Upon joining Bellevue, Máire discovered that she was capable of presenting the abilities of other anomalies when merged with them. Because of this, Bellevue’s leader asked her to form a special new team. As the need arose, she and her brother would merge with one person from each department and go out on extremely vital missions as a single, nearly unstoppable, force. Tamra Shore provided telekinesis, Dores Roach allowed them to heal the innocent, Dathan Shapiro was more knowledgeable than all of them put together, Serenity Theodo gave them the ability to phase through solid objects, Valary Sela enhanced their vision, and Levi Jacobson allowed them to fly. They referred to this as Team 8.