Bec woke up on the ground in just an absolute fucked amount of pain. She fumbled around on the ground when she realized she was completely and utterly blind.
“Bec, my Word! I can’t see a thing!” Al said with a panic in his voice.
Bec tried to say something sarcastic aloud, but the moment her jaw muscles engaged she realized the entire right side of her face was seared from the heat of her light. I baked my face. I baked it with light! I lasered myself! Don’t move, it hurts when I move.
“Is it a laser if it’s not focused? I think it was just pointblank light, Bec.”
A new voice emerged from the spotty darkness. “Dust sakes, Bec, you overpowered the Faraday cage with whatever yo—FUCK ME. Your face! Bec, what happened?”
“Mmmmff.” Bec’s voice couldn’t slip past the lips that felt like they were starting to stick to each other.
“Can’t speak? Give me a thumbs up if you’re ok!” He yelled.
I’m not deaf, dumbass. Bec gestured vulgarly at him with her good left arm. The right arm felt baked down to her elbow.
“Rude!”
Bec was glad that gesture survived the colony days. “I’m being concerned for you! That being said, this will do wonders for training your nanites, though! I even bet you’ll make it.”
“Ffffdd” Bec made noises with her nose and left side of her mouth.
“Come again?”
“FFFFFFDD,” Bec lifted her hand to her mouth.
“Oh, fooood. Yeah no, you’re not getting any ‘til we have to, or you’re getting out.”
“WWWY?”
“Think of it as a motivator! Frankly, Ms. Scarlet and I went through much worse in our childhoods. The old curmudgeons in the City call us the Lost generation because we lost the taste for outright torturing our kids. I don’t have kids to be clear.”
I didn’t ask…
“My Word, Bec, you’re a sight to be seen. Do you mind if I get some of the boys to watch you regenerate? It’s rare to see damage like this repaired in slow motion.”
Uh, fuck right off with that shit, Robert. “MMMMF.” Bec gestured again.
“Perfect, thanks for this!”
Bec tried to open her mouth to yell and felt the skin pulling from her face.
“Oh, save that for the guys. Hey Pink, come to Cell 4, bring Purple and anyone else that wants to see a Word Mishap repairing. It’s brilliant! Check your phone.” Bec heard a camera shutter sound.
“Is that the idiot? I’ve got to see this!” cackled the crackling response from nowhere.
Bec tried to scream. She reached for her face and felt something pull from it. Clearly, she pulled her soul out with it because she passed out there on the floor. Again.
~~~
When Bec woke up, she was still in darkness, but she realized that she was leaning against a wall. Did Robert prop me up so people could gawk at me better? This is a never-ending nightmare, Al.
“Bec, I’m sorry. The eyes. We need to get expert help. I repaired the radiation burns, and, I know it is of little relief, but I’ve determined that you did incur microwave burns, rather than gamma or beta burns. This seemed to align with our theory that when you increase the amplitude, you’re unintentionally decreasing the frequency and vice versa.
“Yaaaaay.” Bec said aloud. I could speak and move now, so I am happy, but I am blind, which makes me saaad. Al, [Echo]. Bec heard the Timelet start clicking and the room came into fuzzy focus. Right. my phone is somewhere in the forest… Bec was glad the Timelet had a speaker, and that she had this technique bagged from past practice, but to say that was little consolation was an understatement. “Al, is this hell? Am I in a simulation designed to torture me?” All things considered, Bec felt she was holding together pretty well. Maybe she’d completely cracked and there isn’t anything more for her to break? Her headspace was fucked up to say the least. “I can’t believe I begged for death in the previous timelines. I’m… not normal, am I? I always thought that the characters that took to a world of pain had a screw loose, and now I’m baking my face with microwaves, and my first reaction is to be sarcastic.”
“Is the better option to cry and curl up into a ball?”
“It seems more normal.”
“Bec, screw normal. Mundanity doesn’t suit you.”
“You feel my pain, too. Right?” Bec like being told she was special. Especially by someone who would only concede that point for themselves reluctantly.
“Sort of? It’s hard to describe but I’m looking at data in 2 streams. Your senses are always one of them. If I look at them and see you in pain, it feels bad.”
“So, you’re sympathetic to my pain?”
“Yes.”
“Can you transmit data into my head?”
“No. Not with my current capabilities, but I was looking at an AR interface as a potential upgrade, since I’m stuck with you for a while.”
“I’m stuck with you, too.” Bec smiled. Then she frowned. “I just realized that I can’t see my light anymore. How am I going to practice my Word without visual feedback? [Echo].” The Timelet started clicking rhythmically.
“Beg Robert to fix your eyes?”
“Maybe he’ll give me special eyes. Like cyborg eyes. Oooh, I just got an idea! LIDAR!”
“Don’t you need to shoot lasers for that?”
“Not necessarily. I can do a crappy version of Flash Lidar to get a feel for things. I am terrified of flash bulbing myself again, but I need to do something. No one is coming to help me, so I need to figure this out… wait, brain blast! I actually don’t need a light to practice my wave modulation! Al, can you play a tone, like a C note on the Timelet?”
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The Timelet stopped clicking and a tone came from it. Perfect C.
“Al, can you check both the volume and tone received by another device? Does the Timelet have mic?”
“It doesn’t.” Bec cursed before Al reminded her of the obvious, “But your ears will do.” Bec smiled.
“Okay Bec, focus. I need to make the sound get louder AND higher. If it doesn’t do that, then I’m not doing it right.” The monotonous ‘ooooo’ filled the room. “I can manipulate already existing things with my Word. Robert said that.” She placed her hand on the speaker and focused on raising the volume. The ‘ooooo’ fell in pitch to more of an ‘uuuuu’ sound but it got dramatically louder. “Now raise the pitch,” it went back to an ‘ooooo’ sound, but it got quieter. Bec cursed up a storm. “How can I do booooooth?” She laid on her back and let the whole day wash over her. Wave.
“What to do?” Bec meditated on the matter. She was at an impasse. Robert said her Word was limited only by her vision and scope.
“And logistics, this is a logistics problem.” Al butted his dumb face into Bec’s meditation. “But I don’t have a face?” He joked.
“I’m sorry, Al. I’m just frustrated. You did nothing wrong.” Bec felt guilty how easily she lashed out at Al. He’s just trying to help me, but, dammit, this sucked.
“Let’s break this problem down. Think about waves, what are the components of a wave?”
“Frequency and amplitude.”
“Yes, but those aren’t the only ways to imagine a wave.”
“What else is there?”
“So much more. We need to get a textbook on wave mechanics to unpack that question, but I know you know more.”
“Well, there is phase shift but that doesn’t help. Maximum amplitude. I just don’t… I’m an idiot.” Bec sat up. “Wavelength. I was thinking about the components of waves like that had to be how I broke down my power. I could manipulate wavelength as its own thing. Changing the wavelength as a variable quotient of amplitude and frequency. It would be so easy!”
“If it’s so easy, show me.” Al would have smiled if he could.
Bec grabbed her phone and willed the C to rise in pitch. The volume stayed the exact same. “Alright! I can… hold on.” Bec willed the pitch to wobble. She willed the pitch to jump to an E. Bec was always fond of the keyboard, but she never followed through with music in the long term. Short term, she knew scales well enough to ‘do re mi.’ This would probably have to change. Bec grabbed the Geiger counter and focused on gathering all the energy around her to the visible wavelength she heard the Geiger counter quiet down.
“Food, here I come!” Who knew that microwaving her face could make her so hungry? She tried not to think of the smell of burnt skin, but, if she was being honest, it made her hungrier.
She was channeling the energy into light, but she couldn’t see her glow. It was so easy! How could she have mistaken movement for the key? She just had to reach out to the energy around her and change it. Was the fact that she’s blind making it easier to feel the energy around her? The light that was radiating from her was bouncing around and hitting her again. She was surely glowing with energy, but it felt cool to her… in the literal temperature sense. She was changing the infrared energy into light so there was little heat to her glow. She bet she looked awesome.
Something absolutely amazing happened. She was feeling the room with her light. No LIDAR, no [Echo]. She was reaching out for the light and feeling it. She had elevated. “Eyes were holding me back, Al. Muahahahaha.”
Bec strode to the jail cell door humming angelic music and tried to slide it open. It was still locked. “What the fuck.” Her transcendence was being ruined! How dare this jail door not yield to her will. She rattled the bars. “What the fuck is this?”
“You quieted the Geiger counter. I mean, what else is there to do?”
Bec held the Geiger counter and heard it crackle slowly. “It’s crackling a little bit. That was what I was supposed to do, yeah?”
“Robert specifically said that “this lock won’t open until your Geiger counter shows that ambient radiation levels are normal. I’m sure I’m converting every bit of energy that touches me into light. I know it.” Bec stomped in consternation. “I know I am. I have transcended, dammit!” Bec chucked the thing at the far wall. “Damn thing. What did I do?”
The Geiger counter clattered to the floor. Bec heard the thing crackle loudly and vigorously.
“Bec, I got it! The whole room is irradiated! You’ve been tracking radiation everywhere so the ambient levels in this room are elevated! You’re going to have to learn how to absorb radiation and return it to the Fabric, not just convert it!”
“Nononono, fuck that. I’m cheating.” Bec picked up the Geiger counter. She promptly sat down and curled into a ball around the counter.
“Please work!” Bec cried out as she pushed every last ounce of energy away from the Geiger counter. She heard a *cachunk* and the jail cell unlocked. “Thank god, it’s over.”
She stepped out into the hallway and sensed that people were walking towards her. She heard their feet on the concrete before they turned the corner.
“So, you finally did it. Can I say you look positively radiant?” Ms. Scarlet said with a clap.
“Yes, you’re absolutely glowing!” Robert said. “Are you sure you’ve managed to stop leaking radiation, or did you overload the damn thing after last time.”
Turning to them, Bec opened her arms and smiled. “Robert, what made you think I wanted a bunch of guys gawking at my burnt husk of a face? I have half a mind to feed you the chunk of my lip and face that I left in the room.”
Bec could tell by the change in Robert’s posture that he was taken aback. “I… I… uh, I’m sorry?” like he wasn’t sure himself why he decided to do that to her. “Oops?”
Bec lunged at him but was stopped by something. Oh, she knew that sudden on rush of dejection that coursed through her brain. “Ms. Scarlet, why stop me from merely giving Robert what he had given to me?” Bec was incensed and wouldn’t let the woman make her submit.
“Because I know two things, 1) you would have had every bone in your arm dislocated in a heartbeat, and 2) you are severely hurt.”
Bec felt untouchable, the fact that she had finally got a grasp on her powers made her feel like a God. She just got called out on her bullshit so fast that Ms. Scarlet could have uppercut her, and it would have hurt less.
“She’s hurt?”
“She’s blind as a bat, Black.”
“How can you tell? I can barely look at her.”
“I have my tricks, Black, you know that.”
“Bec, you’re blind?”
A moment passed. Bec wobbled unsteadily as the adrenaline and frustration made a cocktail in her brain that frothed over. She fell to her knees. “I—I’m so tired of Words. I’m so tired of danger. I just want to go hoooome.” She bawled her eyes out right in front of the two. The tears oozed out of her eyes in an odd way that reminded her just how damaged her eyes must be. “I hate this place. Everything sucks.”
Ms. Scarlet got down on her knees and hugged Bec. “There, there, sweet baby. You’ve been through so much. You’re lost and confused, and Mr. Black is a horrible, mean man.”
Bec sniffed. “You stabbed meeee.”
“Well, yes.” She coughed. “I did promise you I wouldn’t stab you.”
“No, you didn’t. You said you wouldn’t make it a habit if there wasn’t a good reason. You were totally planning on stabbing meeeee.”
Ms. Scarlet didn’t say anything, so Robert did. “She was. She’s also a horrible, mean woman.”
“Why does everyone suck so bad? Do you like stabbing me?” Bec moaned.
“Jesus, Scarlet, stop it.”
Ms. Scarlet snapped at Robert. “I only jolted her in the beginning, Black. She’s hurt. She needs a friend. This is all her pain.”
Robert sat down on the floor next to them. Bec sniveled, “Tell me a nice memory from your childhood, Robert?”
“Do I have— Okay, okay.” Something interrupted that first sentence. Robert let out a deep breath and thought for a moment. “So, my mom… she is the nicest woman you’d ever meet. I was training with my dad… it was early in the morning and I was tired. I don’t remember why I was sad, but I stepped in from the balcony and I was in a terrible mood.” Robert chuckled. “But I smelled something amazing. She was in the kitchen. A rare sight to be sure. It was a rare sight to see her at all in those days. She was cooking something. I smelled hot oil. I smelled… I don’t know but it smelled brown and delicious. She was humming a song with no melody. My father came in from behind me and said something that made her look over to us. I remember her looking at me. The smile. Her smile. I remember that.” Robert was barely speaking above a whisper.
“That’s nice. Thanks for sharing that with me.” Bec had composed herself during Robert’s story, yet she let out a big fatigued sigh. “I’m never going to see my mom again. I’m sure she’s dead. I don’t remember much, but I know that. The last thing I said to her was goodbye. I had no idea it was the last one I’d say to her.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Dahlia.”
Robert snorted. “That’s funny. That’s my mom’s name, too. Dahlia Namiko-Sterling.”
Bec looked at Robert, dead in the eyes with her dead eyes. “What. The. Fuck.”