xx48.12.01 / 15:57 / Still Thursday

Writing this on the run. Well, not 'run'. Brisk walk. C2 is leading me through the lower levels (which are more like a cave than a facility, a natural cavern maybe with mesh walkways). We have to stop to hide often—thank goodness for holo-keyboards and their non-clicky keys!

Lots of people up ahead arguing about something, the cavern is too echoey to hear them properly. We have to wait until they get out of the way. Time to explain about C2.

After our argument she made her choice, but it wasn't to come with me (obviously) or go home. It wasn't to 'just get by', either. C2's choice was to be a hero, but in her way.

On her own, she went into the admin building. She didn't sneak, she just walked in. No one stopped her or even asked why she was there. With the number of students around the campus searching for me and for other 'unknown variables', simply being in uniform (instead of in black form-fitting sneaky clothes like me—yes, I snuck back to my apartment to change) was the best disguise she could've had. She found an empty office and she checked every computer until she found one that was still logged in. She went through the records and emails on it until she found out what was going on here. Of course, they didn't talk about it directly, but it turns out C2 can get a lot from a little. Maybe that's ironic, considering her total inability to intuit another person's feelings. Then again, maybe not. In her own words:

"Something bad is happening, something related to the mental control of the students. Recently the control was increased. You should keep that helmet on, the mesh on the outside will help shield you from the influence of the broadcast. I found references to the advanced program and felt the easiest way to proceed was to become a part of it. This was easy. They're rushing students through. There are eight groups coming to this facility today, over a hundred students in total. Regarding the source of the psychic broadcasts, based on the communications and records I was able to read I am almost certain that it is not mechanical. References were made to something that must be biological; living and in need of care. The source of the broadcasts fell sick last week and required urgent treatment. Machines don't get sick."

I am SO proud of her. The noisy group's splitting up and leaving now, I think we can move forward.

This part's less cavernish and more structured. White corridors and blue lights. C2 has a keycard, I have no idea where she got that. We're through into an inner facility. It's very quiet except for a low hum that's making my teeth tingle. I think possi

...

We had to hide, there aren't guards here but there are a lot of technicians. Some of them are armed. I think this place goes even deeper than this, and we're REALLY far underground already. It's warm, uncomfortably warm. These corridors aren't white, they're just unpainted metal. Now we're coming up to

...

The transmitter isn't small. What I saw up top, covered by that dome, is only the very tip. It extends all the way down here—even further down than we are now, it's narrow but so, so long, they've drilled down, I think, into this cavern, it's hard to see up but it looks like it widens a little down below, I think there's some kind of room down there and that's where the transmitter ends. No, that's wrong. Not where it ends. Where it begins. Whatever the biological source of the broadcasts is, it's down there.

C2 looks scared. I think I probably do too. More corridors now, along away from the transmitter, now sloping down, now back towards it again.

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There's a room up ahead. C2 notices something. Monitoring room, and the technicians at the monitors are definitely armed.

...

I almost just got shot. I'm really shaking quite badly and I'm not sure how to stop. C2 is trying to get the monitors to show something useful instead of meaningless numbers. I just beat up two armed men. I almost got shot. I wrote that already. Guns are really loud, much louder than in the movies and on TV shows and in the training room. It really doesn't do sound very well. They're unconscious now, the men I mean. Still breathing. That's good. I don't want to kill anyone. That's not very 'hero' after all. Knocking someone out is really scary. It's really different to beating up Virtual Bad Guys. Real people don't just grunt and fall down. They make noises that are much more disturbing. The way they fall isn't very nice either. I hope no one else comes. It wasn't difficult to beat these two men. Although I did almost get shot. But I don't want to have to do it again if I can possibly avoid it. I think C2 has

...

I'm having to write this very carefully. If I don't write this down right now, to help both focus myself and distract myself, I think I'd probably throw up. My hands are shaking badly, worse than before. It's not because of the men I beat up. It's because I'm looking at the monitor and it's showing the source of the psychic broadcasts.

It's a girl.

She's young. Maybe younger than me. She's strapped to a kind of frame, and the frame is connected to the transmitter, which is above her. There are drips feeding into both her arms, and I think ... I think she has a catheter. Two catheters. She isn't crying. She's just staring straight ahead and it looks like she's saying something. There's no sound on these monitors. I'm quite glad there isn't. I don't think I want to hear whatever it is that she's saying.

C2 is crying. So am I. This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen.

...

Someone came to the monitoring room, another technician. Maybe she heard the noise from when I was almost shot. She was unarmed, but that isn't why it was easier to fight her. I didn't knock her out. I didn't threaten her, either, not exactly. I just explained very calmly about my curse, about how I cannot lie, about how I always have to tell the truth, and then I told her what I would do if she did not immediately tell me exactly how to get to that girl and how to free her.

I'm writing this now on the elevator back up to the surface. I have no powers. I'm just an ordinary girl with slightly above-average strength and slightly above-average agility. But I hope someone else tries to stop me. I hope they all try to stop me.

C2 is still down below, trying to get to the girl, trying to free her. She has the guns from the technicians I knocked out, and also their stun-batons. She can't read the emotions of others, she has no instinctive empathy, no way of intuitively knowing how others feel. But that doesn't mean she doesn't care. In fact, the opposite is true. C2 cares so deeply about how others feel that she constantly checks herself, examines herself, her actions, her words, she has to ask if she's boring someone, if she has offended them, because otherwise she has no way of knowing, and if she IS boring them, if she IS offending them, then that hurts her so badly...

C2 feels things far more deeply than people realise. Maybe too deeply. And just because she can't read emotions doesn't mean she can't recognise suffering when she sees it.

I hope she uses the stun-batons before she uses the guns. But I don't think she'd hesitate to use either, on those who knew this was happening and did nothing to stop it, on those who helped make this happen.

The elevator's almost at the top. It's time for me to do my part of things. Because the technician didn't just tell me how to get to the girl. She told me about Segregation.

Those weren't fireworks I saw at the gym yesterday. And the big game is tonight. Every student who qualified for advanced self-improvement is already at the facility, which leaves those who didn't make the grade in the gym. The gym which has only one exit.

I haven't slept in days, I've been running and hiding and fighting for hours, kick off is in an hour and there are miles of bad guy infested forests between me and the school.

But even without super-agility, I can run. Even without super-strength, I can fight. And even without phase-shifting, I can win.

I'm Charlotte Powers. I'm a hero.

Let's see them try to stop me.