Sam looked up at Rinzo, he had a huge smile on his face and was leaning in towards him. They locked eyes for a moment before Rinzo spoke. “She was looking for canned goods at an old supermarket and just happened to grab some newspapers to look at later.” He was talking so fast that some of the words melded into one another. Then he just sort of looked at Sam with an expectant look.
“Rin, this is amazing! I actually have somewhere to look now! Well we’ve gotta figure out where this was taken and then-” Sam tapered off as he noticed Rinzo still staring at him with that expectant look.
“Well? Do your thing lad!” Rinzo said with excitement.
Sam took in the information the best he could. He was a little excited so he couldn’t blame himself for not catching on immediately. Then it clicked.
“Here? Right now?”Sam said hesitantly. He looked back at the picture of the scientist. “I don’t really have much to go on. This’ll be a completely blind dive.” He said that part slowly, a hint of intrigue and consideration in his tone.
“I’ve seen you do more obscure dives than this lad, c’mon!” Rinzo was excited now. He loved seeing Sam use any of his abilities. He tended to enjoy seeing his Bleeder ability more but he has tossed full on dumbbells at Sam’s face just to see his reaction speed and strength before. Those ones are courtesy of the Pulser genes inside him.
“Nah man, I can’t. I’m late enough already, there’s no way to know how long I’ll be in a dive, it could be hours!” Sam replied quickly. It was true. As tempting as figuring out what this symbol was right now sounded he was running late. 13 was already on edge lately and he really didn’t want anymore of her attention coming his way. Especially right after botching a run.
Rinzo stood for a moment in thought before coming to a decision. “Name anything! Anything you want and I’ll make sure someone gets it for you on their next run. C’mon man, I’m heading to Richmond in a few hours. I won’t be back for at least a month.”
“Richmond? What are you going there for? I thought they were still putting up walls there?” Sam questioned while deciding if he would take Rinzo up on his offer.
“Exactly!” Rinzo blurted out. “And with new walls comes new people and with new people comes new customers! I’ve got the rover mostly packed out back.”
Well if Rizo was going to be gone by the time the meeting with 13 would be over… Rinzo was looking at Sam with an almost puppy-like expression on his face. Big eyes and all.
“Fine, fine I’ll do it!” Sam relented. “Why do you always have to be so dramatic about it?”
Rinzo whooped in excitement then turned to the living room. “I’ll get a rag for you and don’t sit on the good couch please.”
Sam rolled his eyes and scoffed a thanks as he made his way to the center of the living room. There he sat down on the floor cross legged holding the old newspaper clipping.
He was about to “dive” as Rinzo called it. Sam didn’t much care for the name but he hadn’t really thought of a better one. More because he hadn’t really thought of it all but that conveys about the same value. “Diving” as Rinzo called it, was simply the ability that marked Sam as a Bleeder.
Not all bleeder abilities are the same. Well, as far as the people of Wonderland know, there have only ever been five accounted for in the entirety of Distortion 4. Sam was one of them. Along with Anya they make up all that Credence has to offer on the matter. That’s two more than most communities can account for. Other than sharing the normal abilities of a Pulser, all five of them have different abilities from one another.
Sam sat and began to concentrate on the picture of the scientist. Rinzo had just arrived with a rag and surprisingly a glass of water. It would seem that he learned from last time. He sat down silently on his chair but stayed leaning towards Sam, eyes wide with amazement.
Sam closed his eyes and let his mind wander on the photo. He could recall the three scientists, two obscured, one fully visible. He could picture their surroundings, the lab, the equipment, the symbol partially covered on the back wall. All the pieces were separate in his mind, he had to place them where they needed to be. It was as if all the parts of the picture were separated and spaced apart. He needed to move his perspective around until all the separate parts overlapped to make one cohesive set piece. He had to fiddle with it for a moment until he felt it all “click” into place.
When in this separate realm it always felt right to Sam. Like he could do this with anything. Break it down into its separate parts, study them, build it all back together as it should be. He became intimately accustomed with each and every piece of the puzzle when in this state. He knew what they were, where they should go, where they came from.
Voices began to echo from the void beyond Sam’s reach. They started as faint, almost imperceivable whispers creeping towards him. Eventually he was able to make sense of the hushed tones.
“Dr. Anderson. Take a step to your left please, I would like to get a portion of the lab in the photo as well.” A voice with a cockney accent spoke towards the mess of pictures in front of Sam. It came from somewhere within the void surrounding the scene he was building ahead of him.
This wasn’t uncommon. Most scenes Sam recreated with his ability came along with sound as well. It wasn’t as common for the scene he was recreating to include voices however. Typically only the sounds of nature or creatures from The Wastes.
Voices from a conversation began filling in the empty space around Sam. The scene in front of him began to take shape. His perspective shifted to the right, the table behind the scientist rose up and found its place, lighting coming from in front of them began to illuminate the forming room, disconnected voices swirled in the air forming conversations unconnected to one another. All of this built and built to a rising crescendo so loud that Sam nearly had to pull out of the memory. Instead he held on, he had to. This was the first promising piece of evidence that could lead to his mother since she left over four years ago. Four years of constant fear she would never return, worry that he was the reason she hadn’t come back, loneliness after his father passed. Sam could feel the blood welling on his upper lip and running down his chin from outside of his vision. That didn’t matter. All that mattered in this moment was that he learned something that would lead him to his mother. Somethin. Anything at all. Even the slightest hint would mean the world to him in this moment.
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The laboratory came fully into view. All the pieces now lined up perfectly; voices coming from where they should be (or where he assumed they should.) Naturally, the faces of the two scientists that were obscured by a tear in the paper remain fuzzy. In fact, the entire area surrounding where the tear was looks like it is out of focus.
As the final portions of the scene find their place there is a momentary flash. Sam is ready for this. It always happened when the scene finished. One last flash of light to solidify the recreation of the scene. Sam felt liquid pooling at the corners of his eyes. This vision was far more difficult than most. He barely has anything to go off of with just a photo. No names, no physical touch with the location in it, not even tangential knowledge of where they are and what they are doing. This was a full on brute force recreation, still better than a random object but not by much. The face of the scientist unadulterated by the tear and the partial symbol on the wall gave him enough to hang on to for such an endeavor. The light subsided. He had done it.
He could move around now. The lab fully developed around him, portions hidden from view of the camera filled with his own imagination. The scientist and the man he conjured up to play the photographer (Dean Wilkens, a gruff, stout man that lived down the hall from Sam) stood motionless possessed for the photo. Sam took a moment to look around. His subconscious even filled in the sound of his footsteps on tiled ground as he walked around the imaginary scene.
Anything not captured in the photograph he saw was filled in by his own mind. He knew this. So when he saw graffiti covering portions of the wall behind and around the camera man he paid them no mind, most likely pulled from his peripheral vision this morning while walking through The Canyon. It was a puzzle. Figure out what in the recreation his mind had subconsciously added and figure out what is real. He had to fight this battle every time he used his ability. Though he thought he had gotten quite good at it he had made mistakes before when he thought he was certain.
Broken bottles littered the floor behind counters, dark purplish vines hung from ceiling tiles. It was a strange dichotomy between the clean, sterile room that was captured in the photograph and the portions that he had filled in. It was as if his subconscious wanted the place to be rundown. Abandoned. He didn’t like how that made him feel. What did that say about him? Did it have something to do with his own psychology or was it simply because that's what he saw in the world outside of Credence?
He made his way to the symbol on the far wall, making sure to engrave it into the back of his mind. Yes he had a smaller version of it in his mothers picture but seeing it so large and up close felt like it meant something a little more. It took up a good five foot diameter on the wall, pretty much covering the whole thing. Couldn’t have been more than a foot separating it from the floor and ceiling. It was imposing hovering there, like a warden surveying a prison yard from his perch above.
A rectangle cut horizontally along a circle. The rectangle itself was split down the middle parallel to its bottom edge. The center of that separation was interrupted by a thin diamond shape with a keyhole in the middle. Sam didn’t know the story behind the symbol but it never gave him a pleasant feeling. What’s your role in all this mom?
Caught up in the moment looking at the strange symbol on the wall Sam had completely forgotten about the rest of the vision. He began to feel the liquid from his eyes run down his cheeks. He was running out of time. Hurriedly he jogged back around the work counters back over to the group of scientists. He took a moment to take in the features of the one he could see. Tall and imposing. A strong bare chin stuck out towards the camera with an attitude of impertinence almost as if asking him to stop his work for a photo was a crime punishable by death. His blue eyes were stuck in a permanent scowl that even seemed to scare his hairline away.
Now was time for the fun part. He didn’t have too much longer in the dive so he could only do it once. He gestured his hand in a swiping motion and the people before him came to life.
“Dr. Anderson. Take a step to your right please, I need the three of you to be closer together if I’m going to get the lab in the photo as well” The camera man said while waving his hand to the left.
The blurry person on the far right moved in towards the other two. “Will this do?” A male voice asked. It was difficult to decipher exactly which of the two unfocus people said that by sound and visual but he felt pretty confident it was the one that just moved.
“Dr. Dest, just a step forward and in please.” The photographer (Dean) asked while adjusting something on his camera.
“Could this take any longer! I need to get back to the accelerator before Hansen implements his horrendous equations again.” The man that Sam could fully see, presumably this Dr. Dest sniffed before following the directions.
“Hansen won’t do a thing. I sent Fenton to look over the accelerator while we worked with Karl here.” One of the blurry voices assured. This one had a feminine tone. Now all I’m missing is her name. Sam thought while watching the scene play out.
He watched for as long as his body allowed him. He could feel someone wipe the blood from under his nose and dap at the sides of his cheeks. He needed to get out soon. They took the photo and jabbered a bit more about coworkers that weren’t there. They took another picture right in front of the symbol on the wall before they split up, going their separate ways. That felt a good time to end the vision for Sam but just before he ended his connection something caught his eye.
He hadn’t noticed it before when looking at the picture in the real world. Right behind where the scientists were standing for their photo, laying down on a worktable was a contraption of some sort. Three metallic legs pulled up in a stowed position along a black cylindrical tube in the center. It looked like it had some sort of camera or light at the top of it. Something about it felt off to Sam. He didn’t think this was part of the vision that his subconscious had filled in. It felt more real. Familiar.
Stuck looking at this thing Sam didn’t notice at first when the whooshing began. It sounded as if a river was moving at full speed within his ears. The “Warning Rush” Sam called it. That meant it was time to go. The Warning Rush only happened a few seconds before Sam’s sensory portion of his brain turned to mush from over exertion. Holding onto the familiarity of that device and the names of the scientist Sam ended his dive.
The lab before him, Dr. Dest, Dr. Anderson, and the unnamed female doctor were jettisoned out into the void beyond the vision created in Sam’s head. Sam himself was yanked backwards at a breakneck speed. Even though he was not physically there Sam could always feel the force of this pull. The air rushing by his ears, the g-forces yanking his arms and legs out before him as he is pulled backwards into darkness. The light from the scene he crafted fading into the dark. Further and further away until it was nothing but a pinprick of light on the horizon. Eventually it winked out and he was surrounded by nothing, only the pull of force on his ligaments and a burning determination to keep him sane.