--XXXIV--

MONDAY

8:04 AM

V4, Approaching Webwork

I twisted in the air one more time, before making contact with the ground, hitting the floor with both feet facing the direction I came from and then whipping backward into two and a half twists. I rebounded toward Connor, who was already waiting for me on the ice-coated rooftop.

"Thank you," I said. I hugged Connor, even though I never hugged Connor. "Connor, what do you have?"

"IS YOU KIDDING ME CHRIS WHAT IS THIS SHIT YOU JUST BOUGHT ME-" said Sam's telepathic voice before I politely shut her out.

Connor hugged me back and held on for much longer than I expected him to, even though I released my own grip immediately after remembering where I was and where I was going, and after realizing I am going to smell like cocaine.

Or whatever it was they snorted nowadays.

He puffed megacigarette fumes to his right, away from my face. His auburn-and-blue hair was disheveled; whiskers swaying in the wind; all gleaming in frost from the turquoise-emerald powder snow.

I wore black jeans and a green jacket and a two-dollar red shirt from a WARGET clearance sale- all totally soaked, down to the fuzzy cotton bandages on my hand.

Soaked but on fire. Freezing but not cold.

I munched on a crunchy miniature apple, one that Happy the raccoon stuffed into my jacket pocket right before I settled into my launch.

I was blinking the snow off my eyelashes when my cell phone rang again. I immediately hooked my earpiece on and answered.

"This is Marblef-"

"MARBLEFUCKYOURSELF MIDNIGHT WHAT ON EARTH IS-"

"IT WAS FROM TIANA NOT EMBER OKAY???" I said politely with multiple invisible question marks that I'm sure Connor heard, too. "OKAY BYE."

I looked at Connor.

"That was a lot of question marks," he said.

No shit, high yeehaw.

His eyes widened. "WHAT did you just-"

"I said I love you now can you please give me what we have please so I can go?" I said.

I didn't even punctuate anything.

AND I MEAN COME ON I DIDN'T EVEN SAY THAT I JUST THOUGHT THAT YOU HIGH YEEHAW

He dropped his megacigarette on the snow and curled both hands into fists.

There was this weird, distinctly-US whistle in his voice I physically probably could not imitate when he said, "You tryna sound like yer so haaigh and mighty now, IS YOU, MIDNATT?"

Midnight. Man, at least say it correctly.

He was, often, a bit similar with Sam and Henry in one aspect: the alcohol on his breath.

I MEAN COME ON HE EVEN SOUNDED LIKE A HIGH YEEHAW

"What are you gonna do?" I said, raising my eyebrows. "Take me to Waffle House?"

YEAH TAKE ME TO WAFFLE HOUSE YOU PERPETUALLY HIGH YEEH-

He shook out his left fist, and aimed it at my right eye socket.

Guess what:

I didn't even try to move.

Flash of light; pinpricks of sparkling, invisible sound. I stumbled back for a bit, set my left hand on fire, and stared at the flames. The sound of impact seemed to come to me seconds later, only after the actual blow. Some combustiflies and and their butterfire companions hovered over, attracted to the flickering firelight that surrounded my fingers. For a moment I stared at the small lightshow of flying sparks, captivated.

Orbiplosions

SHUT UP, STUPID BRAIN

I used to keep those little flying sparks as pets, because the Lowdown was so full of mosquitoes and other parasites- both the literal ones and the other, otherwise-not-literal parasites.

I'm setting fires...

Butterfires often followed me around as a child. I didn't know why, exactly. But they were never bad company- I loved them, and Caleb loved them, too. We were always surrounded by them whenever we visited the Port together. It was always just us and the beach and the flying lights.

Combustiflies did that with me too, all that following around. And also some birds. And stray dogs. And stray cats. It happened less often when I started to work for the US, but not with combustiflies. I don't know why they stuck around.

ORBI

PLOSIONSSSS

I spun in a circle, twisting into my left this time, barely leaving the ground and wrapping into the spin of a human tornado. The trail of flame, smoke, and golden-yellow light followed with each axis, like a comet's tail, faster than a bullet, hotter than the stars.

SHUT. UP. BRAIN!!!

It crossed my mind that maybe Happy followed me around for the same reason combustiflies did. Or, perhaps, sources of light just like other sources of light.

I found the ground with one foot while the other swung up and overhead. Three backwards laid-out rotations, to one full twist into a backwards rotation in pike.

Both my heels slammed into Connor's back, exactly where and how I wanted them to, and I just as quickly rebounded off of him into an immediate full-twisting double-tuck backwards as the impact pushed him onto the floor.

As I landed without a sound, Connor stared at me like I was no longer person he knew the day before. Mouth agape, one hand on his stomach.

"What the fuck's gotten into you?!" he said.

I said nothing.

I didn't hate fighting that day, because I wanted one.

Regrettably, I knew why I wanted one. Also, I thought that that would be my first and only fight of the day.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't.

I watched Connor stumble around on the frozen floor, one hand pulling at his neon-blue, half-invisible whiskers.

I'm the one that got socked, I thought. Not you. Get up.

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The visible skin on my left hand started to change color from pale beige to dark red. That happened only if it was burning hot enough.

More burning butterflies, mostly white and black, fluttered over towards us. I was their very small refuge from the frozen rain, and the thought made me smile. Combustiflies and butterfires often caused huge forest infernos- which, in the Overwoods, were actually essential for keeping the mutated basswood-aspen hybrids from devouring all of V6, all of V7, all of V8, and some parts of V4.

I'm setting fires...

That was better.

Butterfires are to regular butterflies what combustiflies are to regular fireflies: highly illuminated, small-flame-versions of them. I wasn't sure where they originated from, but I knew both butterflies and fireflies- at least the normal kind- were almost extinct. The only butterfly I had seen the entire year was the one tattooed on Torres's face.

Connor's hands were empty. I wondered where his megacigarette went.

"I deeen't mean that," Connor said.

One strand of my hair caught in my left eye. It was red.

"I did," I said.

I extinguished the flames and walked toward Connor, who was fumbling on ice and snow for his massive, synthetically-chemically-mind-altering-artificial cigarette.

I kicked snow into his face.

He was a slow attacker, yet a surprisingly heavy one. Often very predictable, too, which is why I provoked him to begin with. I stood still as a statue as he smashed the same fist into the same part of my face he did earlier.

I stepped back, stepped back again, and covered my right eye with both hands. Blood trickled down between my fingers and dripped onto the rooftop floor, like red raindrops falling onto a canvas of concrete flooring, one made of ice, a canvas clear like the transparent part of any snowglobe, like the thermoplastic part of the boards of any skating rink.

With only my left eye open, I stared at the ground, and at my blurred reflection, covered as it was in tablespoons of spreading red liquid.

From miles above the water that I was deeply submerged and drowning in, Connor called my name. Both of them. I didn't need to pretend I didn't hear, because I mostly didn't.

"I-" he mumbled, "I- I'm really sorry, it's not bad, is it?"

I spotted the megacigarette on the ground first but waited until Connor picked it up.

Only, he didn't.

And then, he did.

It took him a full minute to realize that none of his insides felt like they were actually on fire. I spent that minute scooping up white powder snow, forming it into clumps, and then pressing the clumps to my face.

Snow

Yay

I turned the cold white stuff pink.

Or I thought I did, it actually just turned red. Still, to me, the coldness felt so unbelievably sweet. Indescribably so.

Snow

Yay

Connor took a ridiculously long draft of the large, plum-flavored megacigarette for what to me seemed like forever.

"Shit," he said, swirls of vapor and smoke combining in the air between us and repelling the butterfires, who fluttered away from his liquor breath in the falling snow before disappearing from view. The combustifly stayed perched on my elbow. "Shit," he said again. "Shit. Shit. SHIT!" He was starting to remind me of Sam Shilberg. The interjections of the mentally fractured. "Shit, I'm sorry-"

I tuned out at that point.

1) He wasn't, he probably wasn't, and

2) I wanted it.

Because that is me- sometimes, I like to get hurt.

Not physically. Often, just emotionally. Often, I just need to feel the hurt to know I'm alive; that I even can feel. But that day was an exception, for what I believed were very obvious reasons. Those reasons still seem pretty obvious to me today.

It wasn't his problem.

The interjections of the mentally fractured.

Let me also just make this clear: by "mentally fractured" I also include myself. I am just as broken. I am not better.

Yet at the same time I do remember thinking, But if only we could try to mend each other, not the other way around.

"Connor," I said, "What do we have?"

He blinked at me.

ORBIPLOSIONS.

You already won, brain. You can shut up now.

"Just talk to me, Connor," I said, "Or The Ignite Part happens."

His eyes widened. He didn't like The Ignite Part.

Just from the way Connor looked right then and there, I could tell he didn't have a lot of very good news to tell me.

Probably not, anyway.

"What. Do. We. Have," I said.

There you go. Punctuations.

ORBIPLOSIONS

"Not sure," replied Connor. "But I- I think the perpetrator is... somewhere b'yond them mines."

Beyond the mines?

What "beyond the mines?"

There's no beyond the mines! Maybe a rock. Like, a big rock, or something. Maybe, a rainbow and a pot of gold.

They also say that years ago that's where the war started. The one which eventually led to Experiment Overwood.

I mean, that's what I'm told, so...

Connor continued.

"D'ya have any idea why?" he said.

"Me?" I half-laughed, half-snorted. "And how exactly would I know anything?" I scowled for a second, then took a breath. "I've been off the case a week, Connor. I couldn't even be where Sam was when she was hurt." I glanced over at my phone quickly just to check if whoever called had tried to reach me again. Nothing. "I had to find out later from Kaylee."

"Y'know, James didn't even want you to know anything."

"Is that supposed to surprise me?"

Connor took a puff on his megacigarette, and then huffed, clouds of almost black smoke mixing with the green snowflakes.

"Let's go inside," he said, still exhaling pure darkness through both nostrils and his mouth. "Bless yer heart. I'm freezin' out here."

"No," I said.

He gave me a look.

"Are you coming with us," I said, "or not? I don't have all day. Is that all the info you have?" I closed my eyes, took a breath. "I'm sorry. We're in a hurry here."

A second combustifly- a pink one- landed on my arm, totally extinguished because of the weather, and I tucked it into the hood of my jacket to protect it from the snow. I wasn't wearing the hood up anyway.

"Where's Caleb?"

"We're not sure."

"Well, what else am I here for? Do you know where Malcolm is right now?"

He shook his head.

"Naw," he said.

"Okay," I said. "Thank you. I'm leaving."

"Someone has been sending letters to your desk," he said.

"Belinda?" I asked.

"No."

"YOU?" I asked.

He glared at me.

"More threats?" I said.

"Kind of," Connor said. "But... we think this perpetrator knows you. Almost personally."

That was no information. Hundreds upon hundreds of messages from people pretending to know me and/or threatening to murder me and my nonexistent girlfriend have come in, most of them from the past two years alone.

Interesting because I'd worked for the Union of Stars officially for only one.

"Chris," Connor said, "D'ya know anyone from your..." he fumbled. He was crushing his megacigarette with the heel of his boot- he'd already tossed it onto the ground. You know, just like he crushed the one purple-and-bronze combustifly.

"From my what?"

"When you were, you know..." he said.

"You mean from my constantly-abused-brainwashing-by-criminals-starvation-and-stomped-on-by-brainwashing-liars-sexual-abuse-more-forced-brainwashing era?" I said.

"And Nightingale," Connor said. "From there, too."

And that was that; that conversation was over.

He and I already had one talk the night prior. And another one, too, when we argued about me not going to go show up and be a part of Belinda Klein's investigation.

GET REAL CONNOR. DID YOU REALLY THINK I WANTED TO BE THERE BECAUSE NO.

No. And NO without necessarily needing any punctuation, as well.

NO

It's one thing when you're abused your entire childhood and your entire teenage life.

It's a less damaging- but still hurtful- other thing when you thought you trusted someone. You would have thought that at that point, I'd have seen it enough times to never trust anyone again.

Remind me, what was one thing I didn't like? People wasting my time. Most especially when something- something that mattered- was possibly at stake; possibly in danger.

AND MAYBE BECAUSE OF ME, I thought.

When Connor spoke again, he said, "I know I'm a perpetually high yeehaw." He held something out to me; he was offering me small object; I could barely see it and I only did with my left eye and everything was tinted in bloodred. In one of his hands there was a second, unused, massive cigarette. On its black, cylindrical paper wrapping, it read, DON'T GET TOO HIGH OFF YOU'RE OWN SUPPLY!!! LIMITED-EDITION SUPER SPEEDY LIME FLAVOR.

First off, YOUR*

Second: Ew.

????

??????????????!?????!!

HE REALLY THINKS I'M ACTUALLY GONNA

"I AIN'T GIVIN IT TOOO YAH, you half-assed half-trained MIDGET TUMBLING GYMNAST FREAK," he very literally spat at me. "Could ya just light my cigarette? Sam took my damned lighter 'fore she left the building." He stomped one foot on the ground, impatiently. "Go read a mind one time."

I touched a finger to my right eye socket. It came away wet and red.

I didn't say it; I only thought it. Whether or not Connor Meadows was listening in, I will not say. I dropped blood-red snow from my hands and let it fall onto the ground with a slushie sound. Do you hit your wife like a perpetually high and drunk yeehaw, too? Does she hit you like a perpetually high yeehaw? Or is she too addicted to notice?

I took the massive megacigarette with my damaged left hand; I used my right pinky finger and the warm, dripping blood from my face, and I finger-painted a smiley face on the paper wrapping of the stick. I put the megacigarette back in Connor's hand without lighting it, because I knew that those sticks were very literally killing him. They were making him a perpetually more high yeehaw.

And I faced northeast; I ran, and I vaulted off the rooftop railing without saying goodbye. I chose the Yurchenko onto the metal cap rail and chose the Shirai-II off of it, but remaining in flight with arms behind me and my blood raining down onto the earth below me. It would have been so nice if I had any sleep.

--

*Yurchenko usually means I hit the vaulting surface backwards; Shirai-II usually means I twist 3 & 1/2 times sideways/on the turning axis- once I've already blocked off of the surface of course- while still rotating backwards in the laid-out body position. (Or The Pencil Position, as I sometimes like to call it. That doesn't sound weird at all, right?) Note to myself just in case somehow I forget. These gymnastics terms came from people who performed these flips thousands of years ago. And if you can't read your own handwriting then FIND THE LIBRARY BOOK CALLED "THE OLYMP

--

This pen is running out of ink. What was I writing about? Oh, yes- the book called "THE OLYM