--ovw--XXXI--ovw--

"Monday

7:34 AM

Sent via SecureWeb

I LET YOU LIVE TO HAVE YOU

AGAIN

Reply Forward Delete"

MONDAY

7:35 AM

Thornton Building

Almost obvious no-brainer: Delete.

But I refrained from tapping the delete button. Caleb might use this. I now had to decide whether to contact Wyatt first, to ask if Belinda knew anything about whatever was going on in the mines, or Kaylee.

Calling Caleb was out of the question. If he was wherever the assault was taking place, contacting him would further spur the assailant. One thing you learned working for the US: you gave information only to those on your side, only to those that deserved it.

I politely held a hand up to indicate to Ember that I needed a minute.

"Kayles," I said, telepathically.

"Yes?" she said.

"Where are you?" I said.

"Pacifico." Her mood changed from a forest green to an amber-red shade of alarm. "Chris. What's going on?"

"How many people did you say you spotted?" I said. "Back at the hotel?"

"One tripped the stringweed," she replied. "Four people. Medium height, average builds. One taller. One had wings."

"Talon?" I said.

"Possibly," she said. "Where are you?"

Weren't most Talon from V8?

Some were from V6, if I remembered correctly the things that Tiana Ambervi used to tell me about all the time. I didn't have much cause to really take notes, and I was no expert on hybrids of that sort- only an expert on survival in the Lowdown, where 99% of the enemy are humans that are so miserable, all they can ever do is force their own misery on other humans.

Actually, were they even human?

I pulled out my phone. I started scanning faces of other killers, holographs of suspects, most of whom were from the Lowdown and thus were assigned to me, facial composites wherever photographs were not available.

Just looking at those ugly faces made me want to vomit.

You know how you feel when you see a cockroach? Well, imagine that feeling multiplied by ten, by a hundred, by a thousand.

That was how I felt whenever I saw those people.

"Thornton Building, V4. Not far from you," I said. I telepathically spoke only half of my next sentence, before the most vehement interruption. "We need to get to the mi-"

A resounding blast. A quick flash of light that penetrated even this tiny shack of a room. Something, not far away, had seemingly detonated. Ember shielded his ears from the consequent static while I turned to exit.

"I know where to go," said Kaylee.

I was glad I left Caleb's jacket at home. Who knew what we were about to walk into? I was halfway down the hall when Ember's voice halted me.

"I have somethin' for ya!"

What, another deadly, addictive drug that was half of all of his profits? One that I couldn't even afford?

I didn't even bother to roll my eyes. Thoughts ran through my mind- thoughts I'd had before, from past interactions with him.

No thanks.

I wondered what he was selling me this time; I didn't stop walking.

To be fair, at least he's making death and misery a little bit more on the painless side, at least for some people, I remember thinking.

I felt sick.

I heard crates being knocked over, the rattling of a set of keys, and then hooves racing toward me from behind just as I reached the exit.

"We got something for the Christopher Midnight," Ember said, grabbing my arm. "From allzus nobodies here in V-fouwh. We wanted to thank ya. Y'know, f'reverything."

Ember unlocked a green polyvinyl chloride door a foot away from where we stood. He gestured for me to open the door.

"You'll love 'em, I sweah." He smiled. "Promise ya."

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. There were two beings inside the small room- both of which had metallic brown collars on them which read, "FOR MIDNIGHT." A large, white Samoyed... and Happy the raccoon.

I looked at him with a look of disgust on my face. Disgust and disbelief.

"You imprisoned animals for me?" I said, unable to believe he could be so dumb.

"We stole 'em," said Ember, "from the labs."

"What 'labs,'" I replied flatly, and with no intonation- before realizing the answer.

Okay why on earth do I ask THE STUPIDEST questions

I wanted to cover my ears; I wanted to take the question back; I was shaking my head and I'm pretty sure there was a rainbow and a marshmallow and a blue sky-

"Same labs whe' they expeeyimented ahn us," said Ember. "I heard you been thyeah."

--ovw--

Nightingale

Day #4

Subprocedure Eleven

Like they hadn't injected enough stuff into us already.

They had us all in a circle facing away from each other. Kaylee spoke to me, telepathically.

"You're alive," she said.

I was concentrating too much on the burning glass tiles that shifted in front of me. They moved laterally. I remember thinking I just might survive- there was a method to their movement, a system; I was excellent at pattern recognition.

"Danny!" she screamed inside my head.

I responded back through the same telepathic connection, just through thoughts. I didn't know I was a telepath at the time, I didn't get it. It didn't matter to me.

"Kayles," I said. "The cracked tiles."

"What?" she said.

"The cracked tiles." I shifted my eyes, from my bare feet on the podium I was on- to the men and women who observed us from their glowing cinereous den, far away, to the left side of the behemothic expanse. "They move only if something around them gives off smoke."

The voice on the intercom flickered with the lights; flickered with the flames that lit half the space- the space below us.

"You will survive this test." It was a woman's voice that time. It still sounded like the voice of evil. Just like the other one. "Simply make your way to any of the marked-off green platforms attached to the far walls."

"All of these squares are on fire, Danny! And none of them even have any cracks in them!" Kaylee's telepathic voice vociferated in my head. "How... are we going to survive this?"

She was crying and I felt it in my mind, without even seeing her.

I responded with thoughts, unaware I was now communicating the same way she reached me- through telepathy.

"Kayles." My telepathic voice was mostly similar to my physical one: always silvery and mellow and soft, no matter what I did, no matter what song I sang. Only it was a touch lighter than it already was. It worked in our favor here. "Calm down, think, breathe, and look," I said to her, smoothly, and as soothingly as I could. I paid attention to the path I was going to take to the nearest platform. "Look, and I mean: really look. Closely."

In my mind I could feel her slowly calming, slowly coming to the understanding.

"We are going to burn," she said.

"We have burned before. That's why we're still here."

"What did they inject into us?"

"Can't think about that now, Kayles."

The gong sounded.

I somersaulted forward onto a tile and instantly wished that I hadn't- as the podiums all crumbled to dust that seemed to be blown away, by some wind that no one there could feel. It wasn't fire, at least not real fire; no fire sparked and sizzled and seared and hurt like this fire did.

My mind kicked itself into overdrive; the pain was blinding- physically and mentally. The latter was a problem because I needed to think clearly.

I heard other kids wail and scream and cry as the sound of bodies hit the poison-covered concrete far below us. I didn't look down.

Forward, or die.

A strange combination of yell, growl, and animal howl tore out of my throat and resonated in the seemingly empty space above tile-level. I was in pain, so much pain, a murderous amount of exceedingly unimaginable agony and sickness- like my Achilles' tendons were snapping themselves repeatedly on a frying pan- but I needed a few more seconds to identify the squares that had those insanely subtle markings- cracks- on them.

What an indicator. What a way to help us, help us stay alive. I didn't know what this was. I just wanted out.

Did I tell you there was no "out" and it wasn't over for three months?

"Move slowly," I said to Kaylee, through our minds. It was a tug-of-war between extreme pain, or death. "It's temporary, Kayles. The pain will eventually stop. Think about your next move-"

"I can't!" The sounds in our heads; her telepathic voice almost paralyzed me completely. Someone's pain could travel, you experienced it, when you communicated with telepaths this way.

"You can or you will die and I will lose you!"

I spotted my next glass tile as the beastlike, animal instinct to just survive, the instinct probably ingrained into my very being by generations and generations and more generations of people who liked to cause war, took over entirely.

It was a torture chamber, just one of many in the awful, awful thing they called Experiment Nightingale. That day it looked like a chess board: children made pawns in a fire of agony and shards and dust and blood; children made pawns under the hands of adult humans- the ones that were supposed to protect them.

Like I hadn't already been in that setup.

The corners of my field of vision were changing colors, from some deep shade of violet, and then a painfully bright white, and then back again and back again.

Left.

Forward.

Left.

Left-

Somewhere in all the pain, my two existing brain cells called out to me. I breathed as deeply as I possibly could- which was not deep at all because of the pain- and took one look around me, at the faint, faint little lines of the cracks in these dark glass squares.

"Kaylee!" I screamed her name, out loud, so that others that were still alive might hear me. "Left, left..." I lurched, sideways, gasping for breath and heaving my own body onto the next square. The glass didn't shatter, didn't crumble and burn to dust and then ashes and fall- but that had nothing to do with my weight. I knew, then. "Left, then forward! Find the ones with cracks in them- if one's in front of you, take it, and the next three correct tiles are always the ones on the left!"

Somehow in all this chaos, something caught my eye, just for a fraction of a second. Far at the den of the adult torturers- a man, it seemed like, I couldn't really tell for sure because they all wore masks or helmets- with long straight hair, almost scarlet in color... or maybe it just looked that way to me at the time. I wouldn't know.

Did I imagine it, or did he say my name? Call out to me?

I guessed I did just imagine it, because before I even looked away he had already walked out their little terrace, and back into... wherever. Whatever was behind the far walls. Laboratories, I assumed? I wasn't sure I'd ever find out.

Halfway between these thoughts, and clouds, and affliction, I performed my one last maneuver of that day- a front layout full in, pike out- and onto the marked-off green platform; the exact same one that I had set my sights on while still on that no-longer-present podium. I landed a perfect stick with both my feet together, not realizing they both were already broken.

--ovw--

Don't wait for my answer

Don't call back

Got none for you

More silver, no bullets

The wolf cries

When I touch you

Give it up when it all comes to an end

Because I'm not fighting for you

--ovw--

--ovw--XXXII--ovw--

MONDAY

7:46 AM

Thornton Building

OMG DOGGY YAY!!!, screamed a voice in my mind.

Mine.

Happy the raccoon bounded instantly up and onto my shoulder, like a cat that needed to climb up a tree to avoid a mutated coyote-wolf hybrid- the kind you occasionally still saw in some areas of V6 and V8. The Samoyed followed minus the climbing up on top of me.

"I'm calling you Jupiter Two," I said to the dog.

Jupiter was an Alaskan Malamute we had before Crayon or Skittles. He didn't die of old age or natural causes, either. Good thing Emberion didn't just randomly incarcerate these two or else I would've ignited him in the balls. The Samoyed looked up at me with its tongue out, wagging its fluffy white curled tail and alternately flapping its ears. I knelt on one knee and patted its head.

"Awwwwww!" I squealed, the way I almost always did around virtually any dog. "I'm sorry," I said to the Samoyed, and the raccoon, "but neither of you can come with me right now!"

The Samoyed cocked its head.

"You can't come with me," I repeated.

Almost in answer- and much to my surprise- the dog turned to face the tile-and-cement wall, barked at it, and then offhandedly opened its jaws to projectile vomit flame at it.

PROJECTILE VOMIT FLAME at it.

I had to stand there and process what I just saw.

Same labs whe' they expeeyimented ahn us, Ember had said.

My jaw dropped but only barely.

"Okay," I said. "So..." I was still wrapping the rest of my mind around how simultaneously perplexing and bothersome, yet also riveting, these... results were. I cleared my throat, flexed my fingers, and continued. "A fluffy, adorable, fire-breathing... doggy."

"Samoyed," Ember said.

"YES EMBER I KNOW WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE," I replied. "Does the raccoon... shoot lasers or something?"

"The 'yacoon iz a combination," Ember said, turning to look at me with a rather grim look on his slightly lopsided face, "of youse' and the Davenport girl."

I wasn't sure how much information I could handle at once.

"Which means?" I demanded, yet not at all certain I really wanted to know an answer.

From nothing at all and with only a very subtle flash of light, between its little hand-paws, our fluffy, brown, white, and gray friend created what looked almost like... a small, red apple.

A slow exhale hissed through my imperfect teeth.

A combination of youse' and the Davenport girl.

Was it, really? Could it? And if so, how? And if so, was it a coincidence?

How could...

I took a breath.

It has to be a coincidence.

"Okay, it makes apples." I looked at the floor, pressing the tips of my middle fingers to the tops of my ears. "I..." I paused, I took a breath. I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I don't do that, I don't make apples. I just tumble."

Emberion took the tiny red fruit from Happy's forepaws, casually took a bite and crunched away next to my ear.

Within seconds he swallowed, and then he made some kind of sighing sound that to me sounded almost like relief- really sweet relief.

"Ember," I said.

"Thyea' both male. Both move pretty fast. Should be helpful. New pets youse' can take to the beach."

"Just tell me, Ember."

Jupiter Two sat down in front of me and raised his paw in the air. I wrapped a hand around it.

"Chris," Ember said, "it'z not dat big of a deal."

Emberion Myelantic put his hands, perhaps in his most comforting way, on my arms, just below my shoulders. The little apple core was still in the fingers of his left hand.

Maybe not that big of a deal if you weren't the boy that actually lived through Nightingale with exactly one other survivor- and wanted nothing to do with that trauma and that fear. No, thank you. Even if that reminder was a cute raccoon with superpowers. Even Kaylee wouldn't need it.

So maybe not that big a deal for Ember.

He was talking, but I was in a fog. I shook my head.

"Sorry," I said, perceptibly, gradually coming back into focus. "Say that again." What were we talking about, again? Somewhere in the last couple of moments I released Jupiter Two's paw and he was holding it up for me again, but I didn't move at all this time. I was a frozen statue with lungs and a beating heart. "My fault. Sorry. What was that?"

"We don't know," Ember said, very slowly, in a low and soft voice that almost didn't belong to him- save for the very conspicuous Vicinity Four accent and the rough, raspy speech- "if it'z coincidence. Maybe it iz. Da frootz take away pain, too."

--ovw--

Because to you

It doesn't matter if I mean it, no

It only matters if it "sells"

--ovw--

--ovw--XXXIII--ovw--

MONDAY

7:59 AM

V4

Nothing to do with Nightingale, please, repeated the voice in my head. Nothing. Please. Thanks.

My head had the words on rewind and repeat as the sky- which just half an hour earlier indicated no perceptible incoming change- shifted slowly into a shade somewhere between turquoise blue and emerald green. Same was the color of the snow that was falling down as I wrapped my left hand in cotton bandages. I was told that thousands of years ago, the weather was "just a little" less unpredictable than what we have now, here in the Overwoods, but I wouldn't know.

Happy the raccoon nibbled on the biscuit I bought for him at Baker Joe's, the small fluffy thing still perched on my left shoulder. Jupiter Two seemed to almost lead the way. The adorable dog knew the way to the mines; that to me was a whole other mystery in itself.

Well... the dog knew where to go, right?

I started calculating distance. I was five blocks south of the Webwork, and maybe about thirty south of the entrance to Windcreek mines, when my phone rang.

"Midnight," I said.

No answer. Except for some static.

Jupiter Two trotted ahead and Happy followed him; I stayed in place on the sidewalk.

Where was Malcolm? Where was Caleb?

Did Kaylee already get there?

Somehow I hoped and intended not to be second to the mines- though I knew I had to drop by the Webwork first. I already left Meadows a message.

"This is Midnight, Union of Stars," I said into the microphone, quickly glancing at the screen to see that I was in fact still connected to whoever this was. The top of the screen, which usually showed the phone number calling, read "UNKNOWN."

I could make out the tower of the Webwork from where I stood. I positioned my feet- right foot on the ground behind me, left poised on the asphalt in front of me, ready to run, and throw my half-turn takeoff.

"If you can hear me," I said, "I don't hear any response from you right now." I calculated my line. About sixteen or seventeen running steps before I throw myself onto my hands and back again onto my feet, my back to the correct direction, how high to lift up...

I continued.

"If this in any way U.S. related," I said, "and urgent, please reach James Tobler." I swung my free arm. "If this is one of my friends, I love you." Without further thought, I started running. "Either way, I wish you happiness."

Typically I said I wish you happiness, sunflowers, love, and light, but I had a lot on my mind.*

I didn't usually believe in hurting people. There was almost zero exception- but if this was the same person who had hurt Malcolm, killed the innocent pets that harmed not a single soul, ever, and now potentially could be holding someone I cared about in their grip, I might not choose to negotiate.

This threat wasn't exactly new. People I loved were in captivity before.

Silence. More static.

No time.

I disconnected, and then rebounded off the ground so hard it broke the ice inside of me.

--ovw--

*(Besides- that was said on my I'm-unavailable-right-now-please-leave-a-voicemail recording, so they'd hear it anyway if they called back.)

--ovw--XXXIV--ovw--

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.

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.

--ovw--

*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

--ovw--

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

--ovw--XXXV--ovw--

New pen. WE GOOD, M8S!! Oh no so ungrammatical oh no.

Was I writing about something specific?

--ovw--

MONDAY

8:16 AM

V4

I was in the air flying toward Windcreek mines. My phone rang, and of course, it was Connor Meadows.

"Do you have anything for me?" I said.

"Sam is going to join you," Connor said.

She was injured and yet still wanted to be there- a trait that she and I shared in the best of times, and in the worst of times.

I nodded, though Connor couldn't see it.

"Okay," I said.

I heard him exhale raspily. Probably more smoke.

"And I'll be there," he said. "You'll need another undetectable."

Still in the air, with sparkling blue-and-green skies around me, I smiled some sort of smile. Like, an "oh wow really?" and also a "well yeah why not" kind of smile.

You know, WHY NOT 'cuz I mean he MOST CERTAINLY has the fists for it

As you can see.

Or not see.

Pun half-intended.

"Should I hang up?" I said.

I was descending fast into my landing, colors of tall buildings lapsing by fast on both my sides, then turning into swift flashes of dark green intermixed with brown- the trees of the woods here. Some unmutated. Some... unlike the unmutated. Some way too large. Maybe because of their closeness and exposure to pure Vystir, or maybe also a result of experiment Overwood and the war- like in V8.

Quickly, and with my right hand, I grabbed onto the long branch of an overly mutated scots pine, intending to swing upwards, northeast, and onto the large wooden platform that borders the mine's least popular entrance- one Kaylee and I discovered on accident in one of our adventures years ago.

One microsecond after my trajectory changed I knew I was headed for trouble.

I'd calculated the extra weight of the biting water that soaked all my clothes- but not how the snow would affect my grasp on the branch. I lost my grip on the branch just a fraction of a second too early, now I had no idea where I'd land. I knew immediately I'd end up passing the platform where Kaylee was armed and waiting for me by about a mile, at least.

I kept my eyes peeled, stayed alert, now needing to anticipate unfamiliar landing spaces I wasn't familiar with. I twisted, spinning with my arms kicked out to slow my rotation, waving to Kaylee as I passed her, standing there on the elevated podium outside the entrance where I had initially expected to land.

"Hiiiiiiii!" I yelled, maybe two seconds before my weight of maybe about 102 pounds finally pulled down toward the ground, but not before slamming into several overlarge trees that basically turned me into a molecule in appearance- a molecule slamming from one tree to the next, bouncing in a zigzag pattern until I landed somewhere near an old, abandoned hydraulic shovel, with a few abandoned mining drill rigs around it, and some more trees. I still landed on my feet.

Well, I landed on my feet and then rolled into the hydraulic shovel.

I don't think I was injured- at least not too badly- apart from the heavily bleeding nose. I crawled, and then sat with my back leaning on the side of the hydraulic shovel. I pinched my nose shut and then ended up just having to swallow the blood, which somehow decided to just drip down and make its way to my esophagus instead.

"Yay," I whispered to no one. "I love trees."

And I really did, for the most part. I still do. I loved them until a moment later, when dark shapes emerged from the surrounding trees.

Okay get out of here please like now, I thought to myself.

Out out out out out out out

But I stumbled, fumbling as I realized that a giant splinter had embedded itself into the inside of my left leg. It was a piece of bark from a mutated tree, half-covered in skin and half-covered in fresh blood. It was disgusting. Hideous. I debated pulling it out with my bare hands, but I wasn't sure if that would only make it worse. I marveled at how black and how red it was at the same time.

Maybe the blood that decorated my leg was somehow actually from my nose.

Yeah, that totally makes sense.

And I still didn't know where Caleb was. Or Malcolm, for that matter.

ORBIPLOSIONS

I reached through to Kaylee telepathically. And I knew that she sensed my tone and aura immediately; the kind of energy you get immediately upon connection with a fellow telepath, as long as their guards weren't on and you were close to them.

"Kayles." My telepathic voice was still a very mellow and very calm sound.

Very, very slowly, I limped over toward one of the mining drill rigs. I wiped my hands on what Caleb once told me is called the drill boom, a rusty old thing on the front of the rig. It was broken and low, closer to the ground than it normally would be. I smeared my blood on it.

"You're okay, aren't you?" she said.

I stared at my own blood. Just like I did, just like I did thousands of times, most of those times during the three-month experiment they called Nightingale.

Once during a suicide attempt after.

"Nope," I said.

"Can you defend yourself?" said Kaylee.

My ignite was either unreliable or just extremely inefficient if I was badly hurt, or disoriented. It was a 50/50 in a case like this- my ability to inflict the intense burning sensation of pain upon contact.

"I..." I said. I swallowed some more blood. "I don't know if I can ignite right now."

"Just turn it on anyway," she replied. "I'm coming to you, I'll find you."

Wings, the feathers black on some, and then a very dark shade of purple on others. Big wings.

The Talon.

I thought they weren't supposed to be anywhere except Vicinity Eight?

"Kayles," I said, a new degree of alarm spreading like plasma mixing into the already red effluence and aura, the energy I put into the telepathic binding. "Don't." I took a moment to accept what was around me. "Talon."

I looked around, before speaking through the connection again. Some of them were larger than others. None of them under six foot five. People- well, partly people, I supposed- who were larger than regular humans, with sharp mouths, un-metaphorically sharp mouths that almost looked a lot more like...

"Okay," I said. "They don't have mouths. They have beaks."

"What?" said Kaylee. "But they're-"

"Not supposed to be anywhere but V8," I replied.

She spoke slowly. "So..."

One of the Talon approached me slowly, like a zombie, a zombie executioner; an enormous red axe was held lifted in his large, insanely muscular arm. His eyes were the exact same color of my blood. Others followed, from almost all sides.

Almost like that one time in Nightingale.

Maybe there were even more coming from behind the drill rig...

"We've been lied to again, Kayles." I closed my eyes for a moment. And then, I thought a fleeting thought out loud to where Kaylee could hear it: "We're not the only test subjects that left the place we were supposed to be confined to." I stood on one leg, though thankfully adrenaline was now course through me, starting to make the pain just slightly tolerable. I was still dizzy.

I coughed, again, this time with blood exiting my system through both my mouth as well my nostrils. I coughed again, then cleared my throat. I looked up at the sky. Light blue and light green, like peppermint bubblegum candy.

"Charlie November Alpha," I said, "on the ignite situation. Arrowvine, don't come here."

"You're not stopping me," she said.

"I'm stopping you," I replied.

"You wouldn't leave me behind," Kaylee said. "Even if I told you to."

I tried to see if the trees were an escape option. No, there were several more that I could see- and possibly even more, but concealed- up in the mutated sugar pines and the sequoias. Even if I was fast enough.

I was going to have to fight, and probably die.

"...don't come here." I repeated myself. "You know those monsters back in the, um." I couldn't say it; I didn't say it.

"The N-word?"

"Um," I said. "Yeah."

"Nightingale," she said.

One of the Talon swooped above my head, almost decapitating me in the process. I just barely made it below the fortified drill feed of the machine behind me. It chopped that off, instead.

"They're almost like some of the monsters from that experiment!" I said, flexing my fingers, reminding myself I was still in control of them. "Only... a little bit different. Maybe." Without meaning to, I began to cry. "I don't know. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything. I don't want to remember anything."

"Chris," she said, firmly, "just stay calm. I'll be there whatever you say. Remember what you said to me in Nightingale?"

...what I said to her in Nightingale?

One of the creatures, a different one from the axe-holder and the flying head-chopper, stabbed at me with some kind of almost medieval-looking pitchfork. Only this one was on fire and blazing hot; the entire weapon was glowing, searing orange. I sidestepped, parrying and pushing it away with my right elbow. Sparks flew into my face and eyes as I stepped backward, managing whatever distance I could from these monsters, grunting from the effort it took to move my leg normally and now the burn on my elbow.

What I said to her, in Nightingale? That was a three-month long experiment; she certainly wouldn't be getting any points for specificity. I knew she was reading my mind.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Kayles," I said. "Which night?"

"Fifty-three," she replied.

"I..." I was remembering other things that happened that night. That day of the experiment. It wasn't the nicest night of my life and it isn't one I like to remember very much. Kaylee should know that...

Kaylee's telepathic voice surged, powerful and blunt like a tidal wave of anger visible only to two telepaths in that moment, into both our minds- something she chose to do; perhaps she was trying to drown out my vivid memories of the nightmare that was Nightingale, or maybe her own, or both. "If we die we die together."

I ran toward one of the Talon, no longer planning to attempt communication or negotiation. Right knee up, left leg behind, a twisting spin toward my left, and my right heel and fist both connected with the face of the creature- and the axe fell.

It took me about two seconds to then realize- there was no was I could possibly lift it. It was probably twice my weight or maybe even triple.

I knew that pretty soon that Talon man or Talon creature or whatever it was would be back up and simply wield the weapon again. And he was bigger than me of course, yet also bigger than all of the other Talon...

Just like that one time in Nightingale.

Or every other time.

I looked up, and saw the extension of one of the rigs was directly above me.

Did I want to kill one of them? No. Did I want to at least stay alive until Kaylee got here? Probably.

With my relatively un-hurt leg I swung four hard kicks- using backward gainers- into the rusty extension, then landing one one knee and rolling sideways.

I had only the time to get up as the drill boom and drill rod broke apart, the drill hammer falling precisely where I calculated it would- on the axe handle. I flinched as the handle snapped- it didn't sound like a piece of wood breaking. At least not regular wood. It sounded almost like the snapping of a tree, magnified by ten.

The Talon man whose weapon I destroyed let out an electrifyingly loud cry- some kind of crow noise but combined with that opera my class had to watch in third grade (which, by the way, nobody liked except for the teacher), and also combined with an audible, palpable, amount of agony.

"Did a tree fall?" said Kaylee.

Is that what it sounded like?

"Answer: no." The Talon man got up, flew over to his axe, and got a grip on the blunt side of the axe head. He was still crying out, either unwilling to pull it free from under the broken drill hammer... or unable to. His wings were flapping like crazy, almost like he was throwing some kind of crow tantrum. "Question: Where are you?" And physically, to the Talon man, I said, "I'm so sorry about your axe!"

"I... don't know. I just followed the general direction you flew in," Kaylee replied.

I didn't eat anything for a week except for the three pieces of French toast. That stupid spray from the canister or whatever was still making me cough.

I threw a roundoff and then a layout with a full, landing stuck on the shoulders of the second-tallest Talon creature and then double-flipped backward to get away from the biggest threat. I wondered what I did to it...

I effectively landed both my feet on one of the monsters eye sockets and rebounded off of it. From the way it cried out after- and the little "sparking" sensation I felt in my heels- I'd guess my ignite was on. At least for the moment.

But as soon as I landed, another Talon- I guessed a woman Talon, by the looks of it- grabbed me by both my arms. I kicked wildly- with both my injured and uninjured legs- willing my ability to inflict the burning sensation to work, but it wouldn't. She grabbed arms from behind me, and like all the other Talon, there was no chance someone my size was going to outmuscle her.

Then that other Talon- seemingly a male, the one that held the blazing pitchfork- was swinging his weapon like a lunatic, burning and stabbing the horde in front of him, anything in his way.

To get to me.

"Kaylee," I said. "Just don't come here. I... don't have a chance of surviving."

I tugged one more time, hard; my arms didn't come loose.

I'd been tied to chairs or torture devices or to dead bodies, or even to Kaylee- but these were arms I had, seemingly, no way of breaking out of.

"We survived three months of torture, Chris," she replied. "This is nothing. Stay calm, and just stay alive! I'll find you very soon!"

"No, I-"

I closed my eyes- waiting, anticipating, expecting the crazed Talon man to shove the tines of his blazing pitchfork straight through me.

"Chris?"

I remember thinking maybe, maybe I'd see Skittles or Crayon again, or maybe even Marie, too. Maybe I'd meet a family that was for me; I wasn't going to survive this, and I could give up the fight. Maybe I could finally have some sort of cute fox-like animal pet, like the one on that little trinket Sam Shilberg wore on her wrist.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered, for a moment, if the murdered child I hadn't met might be with them- would I ask for answers? Would it matter?

Did I believe I'd see my parents again- my real ones?

In that split fraction of a moment I felt maybe somehow I knew them; I'd just lost them so early. I wasn't one to be dependent- never was, but an unusual sliver of helplessness and a longing for nurture or love had cut through me.

I remember my eyes were closed, the wooden shard in my left leg, thinking that maybe it was no different from the experiment, afterward; perhaps, it was enough that I helped Kaylee survive through that ordeal and all that followed.

Perhaps, it was easier to deal with. I was already out of Nightingale- me and Kaylee both.

I remember thinking: Hey. I was going to kill myself, anyway... wasn't I? Maybe, Caleb can catch the instigator of the murders.

The only sad thought I can remember was that there were possibly still rings, abuse rings, exploitative hellions and firebrands- evil scum with no principles, no morals- that I still hadn't stopped.

Part of me waited- waited for the pain- both physical and emotional, to ebb; to stop and to go away.

"Danny! What's going on?"

I remembering saying a prayer, the way I always did.

--ovw--

I felt something, and I wasn't sure if it was the sensation of burning metal through my body.

The Talon woman's arms loosened on mine and, more muscle memory than anything else, I elbowed her hard in the solar plexus- with my left arm now- and spun into a left arc kick to disarm the creature in front of me. As it were, I didn't need to disarm him, even as my heel smashed hard into his temple- because when I turned to look... the pitchfork was on the ground; embedded into the Talon woman's face.

I communicated telepathically with Kaylee Ann Davenport once more.

The crazed Talon who initially held the pitchfork looked at me- his eye color was some type of red mixed with purple and some brown- and then flew away. He didn't retaliate, after I attacked him out of defense.

I felt the spark in my heel. I'd ignited him.

"Kaylee, your sense of direction right now is maybe kind of crap," I said, "but I love you, and if no one gets here soon... I will die. Find Caleb and Malcolm-" I dodged fangs and claws from a Talon man that used no visible weapons, but he was fast. If he would be the one that would end up killing me, I hoped he would make it fast, too. Physically, I spoke the words "I'm not here to fight you!" which none of the horde seemed to really understand, or care about.

"We'll find them together," Kaylee said. She spoke her next words very slowly. "Marblefox, you're still alive. And that is no surprise to anyone, at all." She gripped me telepathically with the sound of her words, like she was there and shaking my shoulders. "Radio silence. I know where you are; we both need to focus. Find a sharp object. Survive. Arrowvine out."

Find a sharp object.

Survive.

I'd done this before.

Find a sharp object. Survive. I looked around, hoping for something, anything. But I found nothing- there was nothing. And I couldn't pick up that pitchfork, or the axe. And then, my eyes drifted to my leg, the left one. The one where a giant splinter from a mutated tree had embedded itself.

Not again...

--ovw--XXXVI--ovw--

MONDAY

8:46 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

From injuries, to mind control, to Zapryekavil, to being told I was loved and appreciated and desperately, desperately wanting so bad to believe it...

Don't get me wrong; sometimes, I did. I did, at times really believe it- which to me was better than nothing; better than never, in my opinion at least.

As I watched the horde of the Talon closing in on me- again- I sat just about unmoving, on the ground, letting the turquoise-emerald snow shimmer and fall down around me. I knew I was going to fight; I knew I was going to have to. I didn't know where Kaylee was. Or Caleb, or Malcolm. I didn't know the future. I still don't. But, hey- I saved a little combustifly that day and from what the one surgeon-doctor-guy had said, and according to Caleb and Kaylee, and according to Wyatt (though that probably didn't count)- I saved Elyza, too. And Elyza's not nobody. While I worked for a union that I didn't necessarily always understand (I didn't think any of us really did understand... except for James, maybe?), I knew that the small fraction of the U.S. population that I held close to me were humans- humans with good hearts, the kind that to me had positive intents (though that intent didn't always come in the prettiest of packaging).

I wasn't one that searched for much- just one that searched for the ones that are capable of love; the ones that are capable- capable of the kindness that makes us human.

It was so much better than the Lowdown.

I remember as I sat there, with the mutated shard of Overwoods mutated giant splinter thingamabob thingy buried in my one leg, I told myself that if I was about to get killed, I'd at least stopped several ring leaders of abuse or murders or drugs or trafficking already- one way, or the other. Sometimes that way was something I'd tell the board at the Union of Stars' headquarters... sometimes not.

I felt like, I had a few friends, a job where I was needed, people I was helping- and I felt fortunate, that I was helping constantly; that I was able to do so.

It was more, much more, than what I had only three years prior to that moment.

Welcome to my mind, I guess.

--ovw--XXXVII--ovw--

MONDAY

8:47 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Find a sharp object. Survive.

I took a deep breath- at least the deepest possible breath I could- bent down, placed my fingers on the edge of the mutated wood shard.

This is a joke, I lied to myself.

--ovw--

Nightingale

Day #16

Subprocedure Twenty

"I can't breathe."

The girl behind me was gasping. Screaming and gasping, the rope of deep velvet polyethylene and nylon wrapping and tightening slowly around her neck and shoulders. Crushing them, but only as slowly as the torturers wanted.

Why? Why did they pick her?

Because I volunteered to be the one "tested" on, and then they intentionally selected the other child across from my cage, instead.

That didn't mean I was spared; I was one of fifteen other prepubescent humans, none of us (save, perhaps, for Kaylee Ann Davenport) ever having enough to eat, not once in our lives- unless perhaps the food shops in Vicinity Two had any wastage they couldn't take to the collectors in time; anything that went past the actual demand and was about to expire, things they had to throw out.

Almost all people from the Lowdown, and most people from the Vicinities, simply hated those that were from the Suburbs, or from mainland U.S..

Personally, I didn't resent any of the rich folks- with the understanding that there is no good thing that does not take work. I supposed it was another thing that the people from the Lowdown found so different about me; I simply didn't hate or didn't resent. For them, it was so easy; so natural- to simply live in resentment or bitterness than to learn from those that might show more capability.

But I did renounce anyone that spoke of hunger like it was something of entertainment.

That said, I hadn't eaten, except for a bottle of chlorinated water and an expired MRE they were generous enough to give me through the thin iron bars. I was still vomiting.

"Charlotte Miller," read the name on the tag of the girl choking to death behind me.

A hologram of a man appeared in front of us in the center of the pit, smack dab in the middle of the concrete and macadam. Spotlights, huge, bright white beams of light- twice the compass and dimension of the glass fish bowl from my science classroom (the same science classroom where Kaylee and I always partnered together) in terms of their diameter- promenaded around us; blinding gyroscopic lights in this dance to the death.

The hologram of the man- his eyes covered by two-way glasses, his hair covered by some kind of expensive black fedora which almost no one who I knew at the time could ever afford to buy- and his chain of blue diamond and gold, shined in the high-quality fakeness of the intangible image. The man himself was about fifty feet above us and then about twenty yards laterally behind me, and safe behind his multi-layered walls of FR4 laminated fiberglass and inhumanity.

The girl behind me croaked, like a crow's caw, and I heard what sounded like snapping of bone.

I'd be next if I didn't win; I'd be next if I didn't survive.

The man's hologram seemed to look at Kaylee Davenport, who was one of the fifteen remaining in this test.

"That'll be you next," the man said, his voice some strange tone and inflection, still sounding like the disembodied, afflictive, ear-destroying voice of defilement; of corruption and of evil itself- a voice I learned to listen for and knew to recognize early from my days in the Lowdown, though this man's was slightly more tolerable. "If your little puppy boyfriend..." He turned slightly, looked over his shoulder... at me? "Can't do what needs to be done."

All at once, arms- either human arms or arms of some sort of human-like monster, or at least to me that's what they felt like- took hold of me, from behind.

I only barely remember, but I think for just one fraction of a second, I saw the monster's face; the face of whatever grabbed me. And I remember, because he looked like the friend I went to school with; the only other person who remembered my birthday the year before, besides Kaylee or her brother.

"You're a nice person, and you shouldn't do other people's homework," he told me, as he gave me the pudding and the banana from his lunch bag. And a slice of chocolate cake. "My mom made this," he told me. "I told her to save one for my best friend at school."

His name was Carter. I never saw his face again after the monster Carter stuck the needle into my neck, two seconds after he grabbed me.

--ovw--

Tears stung in my eyes, and they were dark red- blood red. I could feel the needle buried in my neck and wanted to do something, anything- but for those few seconds I was unable to move. I remember shutting my eyes, and hearing something snap- maybe something in my body; maybe something in Charlotte Miller's body. I could no longer tell. I was still trapped, in the arms of a friend I once knew; the one that gave me a brownie and a slice of cake.

"Your friend's not a killer," I heard the man's voice say. I saw almost nothing, barely anything but dark red. I'm not sure who exactly he was addressing. But I tried to blink a few times and saw he was still looking at Kaylee. There was an awful, absolutely horrible pause where all I heard was Charlotte's ragged wails of pain. "But I heard he does what he has to."

I remember hearing the strange man's laughter, echoing back and forth, all over the cavernlike walls around us- as Carter tossed my diminutive body straight onto the ground, hard. What little air I had in me during the struggle was knocked dead right out of my lungs; I was gasping but felt like no air would enter my body. The only indication of what was up or down was that my hands were on the dusty graphite floor. I blinked, rapidly, desperately trying to slowly regain whatever degree of visual perception I could. I looked to Kaylee, who was, literally, a shade of light green- and called her name.

"Kayles," I said, my voice merely some kind of pain-induced caw mixed with all of the panting, "Help."

No response.

Much weaker than usual, I pulled the syringe needle savagely out of my own neck, the buried end still shining with some kind of metallic dark purple, almost like some of those little orchids I helped Kaylee and the custodian-slash-gardener lady water or sometimes prune, back in school, in the mornings after my every night of abuse. This little activity was a small light; one that waited always at the end of each and every one of the 5,000 tunnels I was forced to walk through on a nightly basis. Unless it was snowing, of course. Cold, shiny, teal and turquoise. Sam Shilberg was someone I met years later, and one of the very first things I said to her was that her eyes were just like the Overwoods snow.

My fingers scraped the dirt, the needle now a blurry violet stick on the end of a plastic syringe lying on the ground, in yet another now-familiar puddle of my own plasma. I didn't remember bleeding. I didn't remember dropping the syringe, either.

What I did remember was what happened next: a rattling sound, like sewing needles and buttons inside a circular, empty, metal tin for sugary and buttery biscuits- the ones I saw in magazines in the school library and in the massive garbage dumps back in the Lowdown, where I sometimes stole my dinner from. The sound was behind me, and I turned not to find the monster Carter, but to find some kind of corpse- but a walking one. A set of bones and flesh with no head, limbs in awkward and bothersome angles, twitching and snapping at random.

This was not something that even the most archaic of dictionaries had any words for. Not to me. Maybe walking wasn't the best word. Maybe gravitating. Pulling itself towards me. The other children were gone; there was nothing there but me, and moving, crackling, disfigured cadavers. The gyroscopic motion of the lights slowed, and then flickered. They were no longer white but instead red; red, and everything else- save for the bodies- was some kind of dreary, bleak gray, and black.

Deep red light and mutilated cadavers were all I saw as I fought for my life yet again; for however long that particular fight was.

What I knew at that moment was that a fight of even five minutes felt like eternity, if all you knew was that you had absolutely nothing anymore, but the primal, animal part inside you that begged to survive even as you consciously wanted only to escape.

I felt something- to this day I'm still unsure what- some kind of, perhaps, mind control, hands wrapping around my very skull and turning, though what I felt was not a physical torment but one that told me that what I had to do was to grab a knife and then do the very opposite of what I wanted most; what I wanted most was to harm myself. Not anything else or anyone else; myself. The lights flickered blood and the mutilated specters- now multiple of them- cracked their own ribs as they all danced towards me.

"Dance, Danny! Dance, my boy, dance!" screamed a voice that was simultaneously too many octaves too low and also too many octaves too high, at once. Was it the man's voice? The man in the fedora? Was it Kaylee's? Who else was around that might speak at all? The girl, who was my age, who was being choked to her death? I didn't remember seeing anyone. Suddenly, Charlotte Miller was in front of me, her neck snapped, her shoulders both severely dislocated, her eyes open and staring straight at me. One moment, she was nowhere; not nearby or in the periphery- then without blinking, she was there. In her hand she held a razor blade. She offered it to me.

I felt nothing but guilt.

Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.

If Kaylee was reading my mind from wherever she was, she either didn't come in to stop me from what I was going to do, or she wasn't able to.

Then Charlotte Miller spoke.

To me, it was surprising, and frightening enough, that she spoke at all; that she spoke to me. But the words she spoke made even less sense.

"Survive," she said to me. There were tears in her eyes. "Survive for us."

I took the blade and held one of her hands, tight. But I felt nothing- nothing. No pain. I could take no pain; I could hold her, or press my hand to her skin all I wanted- but I could not save her. I could not soothe her, soften the pain, take away the suffering which she did not ask for, did not deserve.

She was gone.

How do you take pain from someone who's died? And because of you?

Something liquid ran from my eyes; this time, it was water, not blood.

"Don't dance with them," she said, "don't go with them, don't follow them."

That was when I felt it-

Something unearthly, unreal, bizarre, something that to me was beyond harrowing- beyond frightening. My head snapped backward, one of my arms circled in some kind of ghastly, horrendous, disgusting motion. I had no idea what sick idea of satisfaction that was to anyone. My legs walked, a crooked, unnatural motion- toward a chair. A chair with ropes on it.

A girl's voice spoke, once more. I was, at that point, unsure if it was Charlotte Miller, or if it was some other girl, perhaps even Kaylee. Whoever it was, she was yelling at me like her life depended on it; the voice was screaming at me.

"Don't follow them!" it said.

"Don't let him turn you into another one of him," said another voice- one I recognized.

I shut my eyes from the blood and brutalness, from the morbidness, the violence.

That other, second voice, was my own.

Then a third voice rang out, the voice of the man behind the glass. The man with the fedora.

He always wore a belt. He always wore the buttoned kind of shirt. Sometimes, he wore a tie. Occasionally, a suit.

Not the first abuser I'd come across, and not the first by a long, long, long shot. But at that time, the man who I could not sleep with... but the only one I could sleep with. No other bed was warmer.

Because there was no other bed.

"Welcome to my mind, telepath!" the man said to me. I didn't know if he was proud of it or just happy to be able to manipulate me like he always did. It was almost as though I could even hear him grinning. "Dance with me!"

I stared at the razor blade in my hand, and looked at Charlotte. She was there, still. In front of me, almost protecting me- as though she were some kind of invisible wall from the many mutilated, headless, broken cadavers and skeletons, which still moved; eerie marionettes, just calling me, begging to make me join them, and begging to make me become just another one of them. But they stopped pursuit wherever she stood.

Had I only known what they were going to do...

She looked at me and I looked back; I was ready to fight to survive again and yet I was done. This girl, who was no older than I was, no better and no worse than I- was killed. Lifeless. Because of a decision that I made. I knew her shoulders were dislocated or broken, I knew she was choked to her death- but I also knew she was dead and so I did what would no longer hurt her: I wrapped my arms around her. I sobbed, I remember speaking my next words with only heartache, desolation, despair, as my arms held on to her broken body. But she spoke first.

"I don't have much time," the girl said, parts of her body- her fingers, her wrists, parts of her face- slowly deteriorating, turning to dust, falling off and simply being blown away as though she was evaporating into some nonexistent wind.

"I'm sorry," I said, as I sobbed, into her broken shoulder and into her face which was slowly, slowly vanishing, "I'm sorry," I repeated, and then again, "I'm sorry I couldn't save you." Now, she wasn't the one who was choking, I was. Though I wasn't taking her pain, or desperately trying to free myself from a choking tangle of torture. "I didn't mean to-"

"Well, now you need to save yourself," she interrupted. "Do it for us," she said. "For all of us."

"For all of who?"

She smiled at me, before she vanished.

"Goodbye, Danny."

"For all of who?!"

Kaylee's voice.

"For all of the good out there, Danny. We have a lot to make right. Grab that handle," she said.

Tangleweed, stringweed, Kaylee's whipvine, poison Welwitschia arrows were flying all around me as Kaylee defended me from our ex-fellow survivors. They were now all mutated. At the time, I didn't know that all the greenery that was defending me was actually Kaylee's work. At the time, I didn't really understand our powers, or even telepathy. I still don't, but as far as the plants attacking for us, it didn't take too long for me to pick up on what was happening. She looked at me- her brown hair a mess just like I was- and then nodded toward some sort of blue lever, with a white flashing light, far away and mounted high up on one of the cavern-type walls.

The other voice came back. The evil one.

From the man up above us, we heard his laugh, again- though perhaps one percent less threatening now that my mind had cleared from whatever mind control or whatever poison, or both, he had put me under. And, slowly, his laugh started to bother me less and less.

"Did you have fun dancing for me, Danny boy?!" He laughed, a mad, depraved, immoral laugh. But not too unlike the laughter of some from the Lowdown. "Come on, dance for me!"

I shook my head, and as I felt the coldest shiver- colder than anything that the human imagination can possibly even conceive- run through me, I remember I had one thought.

Kaylee read it; perhaps the man did, too- but I spoke it aloud.

"I will not dance for a devil."

--ovw--XXXVIII--ovw--

I shook my head, and as I felt the coldest shiver- colder than anything that the human imagination can possibly even conceive- run through me, I remember I had one thought.

Kaylee read it; perhaps the man did, too- but I spoke it aloud.

"I will not dance for a devil."

Nightingale

Day #16

Subprocedure Twenty

I will not dance for a devil.

My eyes hyperfocused on that blinking white light.

One of our ex-survivors, a boy now mutated and completely brainwashed, spit some kind of acid at me- it was a projectile spray that I just barely avoided by swinging off of an exposed brass pipe of some kind, attached on to one of the pillars in the hippodrome.

That was when the pipe burst, searing off the entire fingernail off my little finger and about half of my left hand.

Some of my skin was still on fire. I tried extinguishing it by waving my hand freely as I ran toward the lever at full speed- but it didn't work. It burned into my flesh, burned deeper and deeper until tears sprung from my eyes and I wanted to beg our kidnappers and torturers to stop, to beg them for mercy and cry; to tell them just I wanted to go home.

Even if "home" just meant being prostituted, and/or being surrounded by abuse, or drugs.

I also knew, that if I did that, and got on my knees, begging while very clearly showing that I was in an atrocious and immense amount of pain,

1) That would very likely would only give the man above me a hard-on,

and

2) I'd just be admitting weakness, which I generally was okay with, unless I knew- such as in this case- knew that the person I was exposing weakness to or vulnerability to would only use it to later harm me and manipulate me.

It was day sixteen, but I read him from day one.

One of my abilities: read people without the mind reading.

Though eventually I got mind reading, too.

Besides, he'd hurt me enough- and would keep hurting me. No need to give him any more leverage over me if I didn't have to.

The burning was unnatural; unnaturally painful.

In a moment of sheer insanity and desperation combined, I used the razor blade given to me earlier to rip the skin straight off my hand- the skin that was on fire, the skin that burned.

But what happened next was almost as unanticipated as what happened with Charlotte Miller- and was not nearly as painful as I'd thought or expected.

Upon contact with my burning skin, the razor blade morphed- MORPHED- into some kind of gold substance, gold-colored, almost like a liquid metal or steel or something, combining itself with the fire and then molding itself back onto my flesh. The gleaming, lustrous transformation was mesmerizing to me.

Maybe a little too mesmerizing, because I was still staring at my scarred, but now un-bleeding hand, when a girl from school grabbed me by the leg, pulling me off my standing position. I almost didn't even notice because while I wasn't bleeding anymore, there was still some kind of burning sensation in my hand; I couldn't make sense of it. She grabbed my calf with both hands and simultaneously someone behind me grabbed my right arm- and someone else punched me in the nose, hard. Blood instantly poured down off my face and onto the floor.

I was wrong- it wasn't three people, it was the same girl.

But clones of the same girl.

Up until that point, I'd heard of "double-teaming" only from books or from magazines that talked about video games I'd never played.

Totally freaked out by the fact that one of the school bullies was now not only about twice my size but now also three or maybe even four times more powerful, given that there wasn't just one of her, I started wildly flailing about like a cat (or a clownfish) tossed into water (or maybe out of water if you're thinking the clownfish?).

Without really meaning to, my left fist collided into her jaw- at least the jaw of the clone behind me, who had punched my nose earlier- and the next moment I was on the ground and the clones were gone, it was just me and this big girl that picked on mostly girls and also sometimes boys like me, saying that we were "too pretty" and threatening to steal my nonexistent lunch money.

If I think about it, she wasn't that different from Wyatt.

With my right hand I pinched the flow of blood shut, from the bridge of my nose- not exactly caring much to defend myself at that moment as Kaylee, at least in my eyes, was doing a pretty good job with the Plants vs. Semi-zombies, and this girl in front of me was busy making these really, really weird zombie groaning noises, both her hands pressed to her face.

I remember thinking there was no way I'd hit her that hard. I was tiny. I still am. At that age I was, what? 78 pounds? Maybe even less?

"I-" I said. "I'm..." I slowly turned to run back again, and then find my way toward that flashing light- "I'm really sorry. I mean if I hurt your teeth, you broke mine and other people did, too, so they're really fucked now-"

I'd have continued, but she got up from her half-crouched position to put hands on me again. This time, not really knowing how she'd clone up or attack me, I let her throw her now-slightly-predictable punch to my face as I did a very simple sidestep to my right and and aimed my left fist where I taught myself to aim, if I could reach it: the solar plexus. I'd have gone for the groin- I do that, too, sometimes- but I knew that would have taken just a fraction of a second longer to land and make contact, given the sidestep, and given the body position she was in as well as mine.

And I'm pretty sure those weren't necessarily as effective on girls anyway. Not that I was assuming her gender or anything.

...I think.

But the minute my fist landed, exactly where I'd calculated, she puked on me.

It was so gross.

And then she started flailing around- kinda like I did but definitely much more clownfish there than cat, in my humble opinion- and then she started... maybe swearing? She had a Southern U.S. accent similar to Kaylee and Henry's- only maybe thicker. And at that point, almost zombified after the minor experimentations. I wouldn't want to know what she was swearing about or how, anyway.

I was surprised again. I didn't think I'd hurt her that bad. Not even close.

I performed a triple-front-handspring towards my destination not because it was less tiring- it wasn't any less tiring- but because to me it was more practical; I'd always relied more on momentum and swing rather than weight and muscle given my body type, something I learned which in my experience, was a big part of the reason I was still alive.

Only this time- it wasn't tiring at all. I wondered if it was, perhaps, just the adrenaline, or perhaps whatever took place there with my left hand; the scar and the burning? Did that have something to do with it? I didn't stop at triple, some kind of muscle memory combined with my intuition told me to keep going, and so I adjusted trajectory, with Kaylee and her Welwitschia arrows- which I eventually just started calling "arrowvines"- still around me and flying in perfect arcs. She was a sharpshooter, and that wasn't something I ever learned about her from partnering up with her in science class.

And a moment later, I learned I was a sharpshooter, too.

Still flipping, I calculated what line and what distance I needed to hit at least a foot below that mounted lever- the "handle" Kaylee told me to grab on to earlier- and, switching from forward to backwards with the stepout-to-roundoff to whip to back handspring, and back again to forward, using the whip with half-turn, I launched into an accidental skill I'd end up using not only in Nightingale but also when taking down abusers and criminals when I worked in the U.S.- my triple twisting front layout in, pike out.

But I didn't hit at least a foot below that lever. The flashing white light was at least thirty feet below me when I came out of the pike position. Only a yard away from the wall, I twisted, with my arms flared out to slow the spin, as I- seemingly in slow motion- descended onto that lever delicately, like a sweet pea flower petal made of cotton, hitting the grass but while spinning and yet still without making a sound.

I touched the lever, wrapped my left hand on it as I went down. It caught flame for some reason upon contact with my hand- as bright white lights from the ceiling far above us all turned on at once.

Neither Kaylee nor I looked behind us. We both waited still, standing like statues, until we were collected for the night. We both always refused to look behind us, wherever we were in whatever experiment or procedure they decided to perform on us on whatever day of that three-month child torture. Neither of us wanted to see the injured or the bodies; neither of us wanted to see who we hadn't killed, and who we had killed.

--ovw--

--ovw--XXXIX--ovw--

Neither Kaylee nor I looked behind us. We both waited still, standing like statues, until we were collected for the night. We both always refused to look behind us, wherever we were in whatever experiment or procedure they decided to perform on us on whatever day of that three-month child torture. Neither of us wanted to see the injured or the bodies; neither of us wanted to see who we hadn't killed, and who we had killed.

MONDAY

8:47 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Leaves and snow fell and swirled around me. They seemed to be almost spinning; they seemed to be ablaze. I didn't know if I was dizzy- from perhaps the loss of blood or hunger or fear. Or it was confetti, confetti to decorate the brutality of one more terror-ridden flashback nightmare; frills to ornament the show. Frills to ornament the horrible memories. I couldn't afford to freeze, and so, my hands weren't idle.

My blood- a familiar dark color- was not the first thing I noticed as I pulled as hard as I humanly could.

What I noticed first was the unusual trembling of my fingers. And I thought, probably it was just my PTSD- memories of rapes or abuse or Nightingale; or that combined with the fact that all I ate for an entire week of worthlessness was a few pieces of toast.

Well, at least it was French toast, I remember thinking to myself. Yummy bread.

Hurray.

I heard myself make some kind of whimper, like pain was something I wasn't accustomed to. And I would've been right- I never was accustomed to it; never got accustomed to it- it just hurt me every single time.

I grunted, and moaned, the flesh under my skin shifting like plates under the earth's surface before the earthquake; like the surgery done to my bones without the knockout.

"This is really not the best remedy for a starving self-taught gymnast with an already-existing self-harm condition!" I yelled, not at the Talon, and not at anyone else in particular- just at myself; through my imperfect and gritted teeth. It was, to me, what seemed like another moment of terror and/or anger not unlike the ones from Nightingale- almost like I didn't choose to speak; I just heard the words. "Especially not a tiny five-foot-three one who doesn't even have a full rings routine!" I kept pulling, harder- and harder and harder. I remember in that moment, songs that I wrote filled my head; not because they were pretty, but because most of them matched the situation- and also, because most of them were my only solace from the tortures of the past. "And hasn't even competed!" My own voice, which always sounded like what a marshmallow would sound like if it sang, seemed to lower itself to whisper, after several more groans of pain- horrendous and morbid groans mixed with breathy, dainty, nervous laughter. "Since when, exactly, were sharp objects so hard to come by-"

The enormous Talon man's axe blade- the one I had zero chance of lifting- buried itself in the ground next to me, only two inches away from my hand.

Instinctively I jumped up and threw a backwards handspring, to a back with a full- but landing only on one leg after.

He was back. Though it could have been only my imagination, his eyes weren't as deep as the red color that I remembered from only minutes ago. I'd been staring at my blood too much, perhaps; the hues of fresh- and raw, and hot- human hemoglobin.

Though I do remember not having even enough hemoglobin at times, during my days in the Lowdown and sometimes even after that. Things got a bit better, after becoming friends with Tiana and her family.

"Do you..." I said, my voice shaking like a leaf rustling in the wind. A leaf made of soft marshmallow. "Do you speak words?"

Ugh. Such intelligence, such acumen, such genius- amazing dialogue choice, right? Do you speak WORDS. Why I spoke at all, I'll never know. I started doing these small little hops backward, on one leg. I swung both my arms and threw another backwards handspring, onto one leg. My head and chest were only just rising back into the standing position- when I heard a voice speak.

"He won't speak to you, Midnight."

--ovw--XL--ovw--

Ugh. Such intelligence, such acumen, such genius- amazing dialogue choice, right? Do you speak WORDS. Why I spoke at all, I'll never know. I started doing these small little hops backward, on one leg. I swung both my arms and threw another backwards handspring, onto one leg. My head and chest were only just rising back into the standing position- when I heard a voice speak.

"He won't speak to you, Midnight."

MONDAY

8:49 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

I snapped to an upright position, my head looking forward and my eyes scanning the Talon man's face.

Who just spoke?

I looked around- no one, no one I could see at least.

No one I could see, at least.

My voice was almost that of a dying person's. At least to me, it's what it sounded like.

"Connor?" I said, choked up, mewling like a wounded animal.

A snowflake, emerald and turquoise, landed in my eye and I had to blink it away.

The somewhat raspy, sleepy, Southern voice spoke again.

"Bless yer heart, Christopher-"

Connor.

"Yes, yes, thank you," I responded, interrupting him. I took a breath. "Can you lecture me later?"

"Ain't no lecturing someone who flies away each time you talk to him," said Connor.

Aimlessly, sloppily, I wiped blood off my nose and mouth; I examined the blood running down my calf. A wave of what seemed almost like diagonal, invisible gravity pushed me sideways; dizzy was an understatement for whatever it was I was feeling. Though the adrenaline running through me was enough to engage in one more fight, or maybe even a few- the burning fire inside my hands and feet told me so.

"I'll stay just for you," I said. "Just this time."

We heard what sounded like the snapping of a tree.

"Chris, what was that?" Kaylee's voice, telepathically.

"I'm alive and we have Connor," I said, both aloud and telepathically; heard by Connor and anyone connected to the telepath binding- including Kaylee and anyone else that cared.

"You'll excuse me," said Connor. He manifested like a ghost in a horror movie- from out of nowhere- right in front of me, his back to me and facing the Talon.

"I dunno, Kayles," I replied. I sidestepped left to perform a spin, and throw hands at an airborne Talon which judging by its trajectory had aimed for Connor. As I twisted in the air, my left palm and right fist both made contact with the Talon's upper body- their shoulder and their solar plexus. It cried out as both its wings fluttered and we both crashed into the ground. It started squawking, loudly, as I ignored the pain in my body- and twisted my way back to Connor, spinning back in one calculated arc of air. "I don't know that it matters- where are you?!"

"Silence, please!" Connor yelled, at both me and Kaylee. His thick accent particularly affected the word please. He composed himself enough to start making this strange, cawing noise; a cawing, combined with an unusual- yet also utterly amazing- series of rattles and coos and clicking intonations. The sounds were so incongruous, so alien as to be almost frightening, to me at least. I started thinking that possibly I'd run away, if I was the only one still there. I listened to more low, gurgling croaks, in combination with these harsh, grating vocalizations- a cacophony so irregular, and one that I wasn't sure how many people were capable of making, or even imitating. I stood there unmoving, as Connor's neon blue, semi-invisible, twiggy and long whiskers swayed in the wind, swayed with the snow.

Connor Meadows: He hated almost all animals, but could communicate with most of them if he chose to.

The Talon man spoke back, in this uproar, in this dissonance of a language that I could only hope to ever master.

Not that I really wanted to.

Kaylee- breathless and wheezing, a bow and her arrowvines, poison anthurium bombs and tangleweed shells in all her fingers- materialized from behind us and stopped in her tracks a foot from where I stood. Her long brown hair fell in flawless waves over her right shoulder, her orange top soaked entirely in the green snow, and also probably with sweat. She crouched down to put her hands near the mutated shard of wood- not near enough to touch but near enough to manipulate. I didn't look down to see how exactly she was fixing the problem; I trusted her, and my heightened situational awareness was needed elsewhere.

"Chris," said Connor cautiously- his tone only a slightly lower version of the rasping treble which was his normal voice- "no sudden movements."

"No shit, Connor."

"What do they want?" whispered Kaylee.

"He said," Connor hesitated, before saying, "that they recognize you."

--ovw--XLI--ovw--

"He said," Connor hesitated, before saying, "that they recognize you."

MONDAY

8:54 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

I pointed at my chest, a look of confusion on my face, and then pointed at Kaylee.

Connor gave me a look.

"You, you dummy!"

"Me?" I said.

"Yes, you!"

I felt Kaylee wrapping something rough but not unpleasant over and around the wound. Probably stielvine, also known as healervine or settlevine to us- which was the magical mutation of a plant we discovered she could create from our days back at the experiment together; slightly rough leaflike canvas that worked as bandages, and allowed cuts or bruises to heal faster than wounds usually do, if covered correctly under its chloroplasts.

And I remember thinking:

How many things were going to not make sense that day?

"Okay?" I said like a question- a question that probably wasn't going to have any answers to it, either- "What do we do about it?"

The Talon man, his eyes a shade of what looked like pink now, continued his little soliloquy- or should I say continued the dialogue- while I tested the weight on my leg, subtly shifting weight from one foot to the other, and back and forth, and back again.

"Chris."

"Yes, Meadows."

"He said you look like someone who tested on them, some years ago. He'll leave you alone, and the rest of his family will, too. But not the entire murder of crows."

"Talon," I corrected him. Because whatever they were, they weren't crows.

And... tested on them?

"Can you tell him that two of the three people in front of him are Nightingale survivors? Can you tell him that?" I said, a small degree of anger starting to flare up inside of me. "Because there's no need for any experiment survivors, to be warring with fellow survivors, in my opinion."

Kaylee snorted beside me.

"As if that wasn't obvious," she uttered.

"Do I look like the kind to run an experiment?" I hissed.

I was ready to puke- and then I actually did, whatever French toast was in my stomach spilling like projectile water fountain rays of bile and sugar and electrolytes onto the ground next to me, away from me and Kaylee and Connor.

"Ugh," I moaned. "Ugh. Ugh, so gross."

Small yellow flowers and weeds grew where I puked and absorbed the mess until it disappeared entirely.

Anyway.

"Me?" I said. "Test on them, run an experiment."

To say I was indignant was probably an understatement.

The Talon man turned to leave, without taking the blade of his axe.

"Hey!" I yelled. "HEY!"

The Talon man turned to look, and I pointed at the axe.

He walked over, picked it up, made some kind of eye contact with me, and then flew away. About a dozen or so of the other Talon did the same.

The snow had lightened somewhat, the sky turning subtly from emerald and blue to something that resembled a light lilac. Cute. But I didn't know if the fighting was over.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't.

I watched the dark purple wings become smaller, and eventually fade into the dull lilac of the cloudy Overwoods sky. Some of the clouds were still green or turquoise. Overcast, barely a ray of sunlight.

"Connor," I said.

"What?"

"I know he told you more," I quipped. "Other things."

"Yeah," he said. "But we'll talk about that later."

Fair enough.

"Do you really want to know?" remarked Kaylee. "I wouldn't!"

Life in the Overwoods, at its finest. Experiment survivors' lives at their best.

"No," I responded. "I don't want to know. But the information might be useful."

"JOINING THE PARTY!" bellowed a loud and somewhat obnoxious Vicinity Four accented voice, a hundred yards to our right- Sam, vaulting over a broken drill rig and zooming past it and right to us, past the abandoned equipment and the blood and the trees and the wreckage. The minute she materialized in front of us, she offered me a set of small, black blades- my throwing knives.

"I'm not killing them," I said.

"Fine," she said with a shrug. "I will."

A caw- or a squawk, I didn't know which, louder than even Sam's voice- rang out from the middle of the not-exactly-depleted horde.

An unkindness of ravens- maddened, malevolent, and deranged ravens- the remaining Talon either charged at us or took to the air, wings and feathers of dark purple or black or occasionally red fluttering furiously in the air toward us.

"Tango Echo Delta," grumbled Kaylee, fitting five different arrowvines into the string of her ironwood bow.

"Uh huh," I agreed.

"No problem by me!" trilled Sam, putting my knives into a leather holder and then stuffing it into my back jeans pocket for me without my request.

Tango Echo Delta was one of many commands Kaylee made herself as she secretly worked in the Union of Stars, often with me.

As Connor disappeared in front of our eyes, and Sam popped a pill, swallowing it dry- something she did a lot; something I had learned to do back in Nightingale and therefore could never imagine myself doing again- and then zoomed ahead of us to throw her fists at the first Talon she could come into contact with, wet snow still on the bandages on her shoulder, and as Kaylee slowly adjusted herself on one knee, aiming up at the airborne; the Talon now swooping over us- movement caught my eye.

I felt some degree of alarm for only a few moments, because I understood immediately.

Several hundred feet to our left and behind us- coming in fast. Coming in hot.

Literally hot.

Seemingly at first a flash of white- and then, a blazing, burning flash of white. I smiled when I saw Happy just riding on top of him, mini-apples in his paws just waiting to be consumed. There, running through the trees, leaping through the foliage to get to me. Burning the empty air in front of him in apparent excitement. Jupiter Two.

"Thank God," I uttered, shaking my head, feeling both disbelief and recognition. And then, indebtedness; gratitude. "I was starving."

One of the Talon hit the ground hard right next to me and squawked- a female by the looks of her, I guessed- her face and arms and wings covered in tangleweed. Dark purple feathers drifted with the snow. I stepped back to politely allow her the space to thrash around.

As I flexed the fingers in both my hands- and adjusted the wet cotton bandages on the left one- I knew someone was going to be visiting the forests around V8 for miracle apples soon. I adjusted my dirty, bloody green jacket, pulling it up, tucked in my bloody red shirt, reached down to straighten by blood-soaked black jeans- and barely whispered the words; sent them to him from miles and miles away. "Thanks, Ember."

--ovw--

--ovw--XLII--ovw--

As I flexed the fingers in both my hands- and adjusted the wet cotton bandages on the left one- I knew someone was going to be visiting the forests around V8 for miracle apples soon. I adjusted my dirty, bloody green jacket, pulling it up, tucked in my bloody red shirt, reached down to straighten by blood-soaked black jeans- and barely whispered the words; sent them to him from miles and miles away. "Thanks, Ember."

Nightingale

Day #45

Subprocedure Nine

"Tell me you miss me."

The woman in front of me was blond. I remember because one side of her face was almost totally covered by it. The other half was scarred; her cheek and her neck both had red marks on them, and blood.

So did mine.

I said nothing. Whoever this person was, it did not matter. Were they worth a response, no one knows.

She was, of course, taller than I was- as most people were- her eyes blue; both of them tinted a shade of red mixed with violet, from whatever chemicals were on her. In each of her hands she held jagged, curved, asymmetrical shards of what looked like brown glass; her breath... it smelled terribly.

Smelled terribly of alcohol.

My head spun. The smell... and something else.

I didn't know why exactly, but for some inexplicable reason, I wanted to be anywhere else. Anywhere but near whoever this person was. I took a step back, and then, when I did, my shoulders and head immediately bounced off of what felt like a human body. If I think about it now, I'm not sure if it really was fear that I felt.

Fear, or revulsion.

Subtly, I shifted my bare feet on the floor, sliding them across the smooth surface. Tile, some kind of scarlet color; some of them were a slightly lighter shade of deep red, some darker. Cold, like the rest of the room. Or at least at that moment it was. This was what it felt like:

I had no memories; no context, no awareness except for what felt like fabric pressed against my back and my feet. It was soft. Velour and velveteen, but it wasn't there. I felt it and yet, it wasn't something I could put hands on- because it wasn't there. Or maybe it was somehow invisible? Even now, I don't really remember which room I was in. With my less damaged hand- my right one- I probed the ankles, the bridges, and the arches of my feet, or as much as I could, at least- because that was a feat as close to impossible as it could possibly get. I touched my back, which was a bit easier. Nothing. There were blue lights in the room- blue mixed with white. Was it antiseptic in the air, mixed with the liquor breath? I didn't know.

This was all that I could remember. My hands- they were tied. The rope I actually can, and I do, remember. It was black, and it was tied tight; much too tight. And I was, yet again, gagged. At that minute, it felt like the first time something abhorrent was in my mouth- something that I just didn't want there. No, it wasn't the first time. Not by a horrendously long shot; not in the least, not in any way.

I shut my eyes.

--ovw--

I didn't know how long my eyes were closed for; I also don't remember even opening them- but then they were open, or it seemed. Bats flew above us. There were five of us; I was the only child in the room. Were they bats, or were they just shadows? Shadows which blended, almost perfectly, with the backdrop? Because, apart from the polychromatic, deep crimson and scarlet floor of different hues, this room was black.

Somehow, I was more comfortable that way. A dark black room was less likely to show me horrors I didn't have to know.

But, of course, it was already too late then, anyway.

The contraption on my mouth loosened, and fell to the red tile floor with a loud clack. It was covered heavily in spit, and covered even more heavily in blood. The blond woman didn't go anywhere; there she was, in front of me. Not speaking, but looking at me as though there was something she wanted to say. I didn't care to know what it was. I turned around, and I was right; a body was behind me. It wasn't a dead one. Instead, it was the man who sought me out often during this experiment.

It was a fair deal. He got what he wanted, I got a warm bed. He got what he wanted, I didn't starve. As if the Lowdown wasn't bad enough. Yet at the same time, he was still kinder than most of the people I'd had to... had to eff with. Literally...

I can't even say that word sometimes.

I almost liked him, in some ways. Until the tortures began.

When the only source of comfort seems to come from the thing that hurts you-

You just... you don't know, sometimes.

I felt something, something grasping at my head; at my mind. To this day I don't know what it was. Sometimes, I assume it was myself, my self, reaching out to me- telling me that something was wrong and that whatever I was feeling was a feeling that I was programmed to feel.

To justify what it was. Conditioning.

See, grooming was one thing. Brainwashing was another.

I swallowed spit and blood, and the forced chemicals that still remained on both my tongue as well as the roof of my mouth, and attempted to clear my throat. Of course, it ended up only sounding like a very soft whimper.

I took one deep breath, and then spoke.

"Are you ever gonna tell me what your name is?" I said.

The man smiled at me. Dark, reddish stubble, most of everything else covered by the mask.

"Jeff," he said.

My mind was, to say the least, cloudy. They'd injected me five times already that day, and that didn't include all of the substances that they made us swallow.

--ovw--XLIII--ovw--

My mind was, to say the least, cloudy. They'd injected me five times already that day, and that didn't include all of the substances that they made us swallow.

Nightingale

Day #45

Subprocedure Nine

Jeff.

Jeff- just like one of my social studies teachers, in that one school that I used to go to for a little while. Jeff. Like one of my old classmates, Jeffery Locklear; like Jefferson Smith who worked research and analysis, at one of those desks, at the Webwork; closer to the ground floor, just above the parking spaces. I remembered that one teacher, at that one school. Jeff. Before that school blew up; before he and all of the others died of exposure to actinides and the air pollution which proved to be deadly; pathogens and chemicals gone way out of control. It was just one of the reasons I didn't play with substances.

I crawled out of that rubble and felt nothing. There were only two ambulances for that entire school of hundreds of filthy dead bodies, because it was the Lowdown. That was before Nightingale. I'd say I felt sorry for them; I can't. Half of them were part of a child trafficking ring. I'm the one that finally brought them down.

I didn't kill unless I had to- and I didn't. I just shut them down.

"I'm sure you could be a really great person, Jeff," I said. "And you probably were, once." I coughed blood, almost on his pants- until this blood was stopped in mid-air by an invisible screen. I wiped the remaining blood off my mouth with my less damaged hand. "Jeff, why do you hurt people?"

His smile faded. I, of course, was not sure what expression his eyes wore, when he said anything. I was a master at reading people for the most part. But it was taking all of my cognitive capacity just to look at him. Jeff tucked his shirt collar, even though it was perfectly in place, and then he answered.

"It's all I know."

"Is it?"

Clouds of vapor, a mist of some dark black substance- not unlike the smoke that frequently came out of the mouths of Connor or James or Chaquille or Belinda or sometimes Sam, perhaps just without that same salty, poisoned, toxoid pungency- and yet still poison nonetheless, seemed to slowly distil itself, from the invisible walls to both my right and my left.

The air... the very air around me started to wrap around my neck. That's what it felt like. Compactly, crampedly. The veins and the skin on my neck actually receded; moved inward, closer and closer, to the back of my spine. It was not the hands of someone bigger than I was wrapping tightly around my neck, not the exact same thing as what I knew I'd already experienced on numerous occasions- and yet in that moment somehow couldn't remember from where or from who exactly- but the tightness had to come from somewhere. Was it the poison? Was it something that they'd forced into my body? Was I suffocating to death and just didn't know it?

Did I care?

I smiled back at him. That's how cloudy and foggy it was in my head- I truly believed that he was killing me, because he cared, because he wanted my pain to end.

And I was grateful.

For all of the poisons this man injected into me, it was somehow still hard for me to even imagine- imagine that he was one-hundred percent, absolute, sheer, complete, pure evil, and nothing else. In that moment, it just didn't feel that way. Sometimes, it still doesn't. Strange as it might sound, especially now, at the time I felt almost as though I knew him somehow. From... somewhere.

As if I was the one that failed to save him somehow. Something tugged at my mind again. Was I being brainwashed?

I snapped out of it. I was twelve; whatever situation it might have been- how is the child expected to save the 200-pound Caucasian adult male?

The sluggishness, the lethargy, the fog. The literal fog and also the mist in my head. It wasn't totally unwelcome. It dulled the pain. The bones in my left hand were still fractured. I noticed the tears in my eyes, but felt less pain.

Four invisible walls. To my left, right, in front and behind me. The first thing I felt I can't describe- not in the way I'd like to.

As the walls around me sprayed chemicals at me, my skin- from top to toe- started to turn blue. I wasn't cold. The shade of blue was exactly that of that cute stuffed animal- a smiling, huggable, soft, blue shark- that I saw once at the toy store, but never ever could afford then. I didn't even believe that I ever would get to afford one. I wanted one so badly. It was an adorable stuffed animal, white and light blue and dark blue and gray. I went inside just to touch it. It was soft, like the only pillow that I had at the time.

"Jeff," I said, robotically, like I wasn't there; like I was a puppet manipulated by every microorganism, every toxin, every virus, every synthetic compound, every hydrocarbon they had injected into us. "What is it that you want from me now?"

My skin, light blue now turned to dark blue from the strange black mist, started to produce little red holes. Blood- but not just blood- started to ooze, seep out from every single one of them. Little tentacles- black, small, like jellyfish tentacles, cuttlefish tentacles, snail tentacles- grew from all of them.

Jeff spoke again.

"I want to try to see if you can acquire this new superpower that we've created."

I reached for the ground, on my knees, tried to steady myself in the very limited way that I could manage- trying desperately, so desperately, to not heave. Despite that there were cupfuls, vialfuls, wine-glassfuls and beakerfuls they'd forced into me- the one slice of bread they let me have that morning was in there swimming with all of the poisons. The amount of starvation I'd been put through was too much; just too much- I was done with it, done with hunger and dehydration and thirst.

--ovw--XLIV--ovw--

The amount of starvation I'd been put through was too much; just too much- I was done with it, done with hunger and dehydration and thirst.

Nightingale

Day #45

Subprocedure Nine

"Who..." I said, then gripping my own neck with my right hand, thinking that just maybe that would somehow help, "...who is 'we?!' Stop, just stop this, PLEASE!" Please? Please was not a word even remotely strong enough to convey how much; just how much I was begging for it to end. I'd seen a lot of ugly stuff, but this was somehow still something else entirely.

Or it felt like it. At the end of the day, abuse was abuse; abusers were made of the same garbage they try to inflict upon others.

I cried out like a drunk hardcore metal band vocalist on fentanyl, the horror of the entire situation gripping me cold like an ice-covered vise. But... but what else would I have said? I didn't really know anymore, did I? "Please! I... I don't have anything you want. I have NOTHING that you want, I don't." I remember hearing shards of glass grind together, the sound of thin ice cracking, the sound of smoke obscuring my every view of anything I ever wanted to look at and sounding like a cathedral orchestra composed of criminals screaming out lies and nonsense and insanity. "Kill me now, please, just do it."

I vomited, blood, and acids, and the cup of yellow crushed pills they forced me to swallow the half hour earlier. It tasted exactly the same going back up: bitter, more bitter than any poison I'd ever imagined. The aftertaste a sour and unpleasant and chilling sensation, before it transitioned into the annihilating headaches and shaking hands and sweating from too much invisible warmth and heat, moments afterwards. The vomit on the floor had tentacles on them. Little black protruding arms and feelers and limbs. Everywhere. My arms and legs, my neck, my tongue. The woman behind my was sobbing, sobbing as though her family had all died, but I didn't know why.

"Just let him go!" her voice screamed. And then, she returned to sobbing.

"I..." I choked down the grit and bile and poisons, and repeated, "I... I don't want a new superpower. Please. Please."

"You know," Jeff said, "If I don't do this test on you... I'll do this to Davenport instead."

"I'll take it," said a voice, female, young, a powerful telepathic voice.

Kaylee's.

The small tentacles started to come out of my mouth, working their way up through my throat. They were still small, still thin- but slowly, slowly growing longer, subtly.

Now, now was a good time to die.

Now was a good time to die

die

die

This was all I thought to myself.

This was all that I could think.

"Please!" my own voice screamed of its own volition- and it was a death scream; it was the scream that only a child could make, trembling from one vocal cord, shaking like a fast five-note run from one microscopic part of the larynx to the other to the other and out through the mouth. "Stop-" I don't remember choosing to speak. It was like it just happened. "Stop, please."

There was more sobbing now, though, I think some of it was mine.

die

die

"I know you can HEAR ME!" screamed Kaylee's telepathic voice again. "Experiment on me, do it TO ME!"

Sobs from the woman standing behind me.

Kaylee screamed again, and again, and again, and again.

die

die

die

die

die...

This was all that I thought, until the woman standing behind me ran, ran around and behind Jeff, but not to do what I had hoped- at least attempt to stop him; she ran to a spinning contraption, almost like an exhaust fan- a windmill of some sort- and it blew powerfully, strong currents of air, probably a hundred thousand rotations per minute, or something. I saw this from how her hair blew back from her face, when she shoved her face into it and her blood flew and splattered all over the left and side and front of the impenetrable, transparent glass or plastic or acrylic box that Jeff had me trapped in, with handfuls of wisps of her hair or her tongue or nose cartilage or eyeballs. Her hands, which gripped the broken glass pieces, uncurled as her body slowly, slowly toppled forward, and then slid to the floor, like a very heavy rag doll. The blood poured out like a melted candy bar, in a wrapper broken open by ants, languidly, one pint at a time- from her totally washed, defaced head. As her hands uncurled, I was able to fully see what she held in one of them; in the one hand that I could see from my side. A shard of glass, and... and another thing. Something else; something that took me a moment to fully recognize. It seemed almost vaguely familiar, as my memories returned to me and as my mind returned to me; like a the heart being returned to a small broken body that needs a heart; needs a heart to see, to breathe. As the black fog slowly vanished, and as the walls- two into the floor, and two into the ceiling- retracted, and as the tiny, sinister, upsetting, disturbing limbs and arms and tentacles consumed the blood that oozed from the holes that simply rotted onto my skin from the outside, I understood what it was; it was a contraption- one of the contraptions that the torturers forced into the skin and onto the bones of my left hand.

--ovw--

--ovw--XLV--ovw--

As the black fog slowly vanished, and as the walls- two into the floor, and two into the ceiling- retracted, and as the tiny, sinister, upsetting, disturbing limbs and arms and tentacles consumed the blood that oozed from the holes that simply rotted onto my skin from the outside, I understood what it was; it was a contraption- one of the contraptions that the torturers forced into the skin and onto the bones of my left hand.

Nightingale

Day #45

Subprocedure Nine

As I laid there, on the floor, breathing pure fear and with water still streaming like a small faucet from both my eyes, I repeated myself.

"Who is 'we?'" I said, not demanding but rather begging for an answer.

Kaylee's telepathic voice spoke to me, to me only.

"The Union of Stars." It was a whisper.

Just muddled thoughts, I spoke back- only mentally and only as though it were a dream- hoping she would answer, because Jeff wouldn't.

"But..." Even in my mind, I sobbed, into my hands, into the blood of the woman whose name I'll never know. The blood that was on the floor but now on the hands that only people like Kaylee will see. And while I cried on the floor, I mentally spoke the next words.

"But..." I said again, "...but they're supposed to be the good guys."

"It's just some of them, Danny."

About a dozen or so, men and women, men or women because really I didn't know, wearing masks and gloves; scrubs or surgeon's uniforms, or whatever they were called- swarmed in to put more chemicals into my small, underfed, malnourished, damaged, injured, and broken body.

"We'll just test it on someone a bit older than you," Jeff said.

I didn't know how I dared to say the words I spoke next.

"That's what you should have done to begin with," I said. I swallowed blood and then coughed it out again before I said, "If you even had to do it at all!"

There was silence, as the torturers all stared at me for a moment- perhaps astonished at the fact that I spoke the words with all the conviction that I possibly could- at a man that could have me killed, or worse, at any time that he wanted.

"There's no one part of you," I said, "no one part of you that's even human."

He let me sleep in his bed that night, but he wasn't there. If there was one night in Nightingale where I got anything even remotely close to a full night's sleep... It was that one.

--ovw--XLVI--ovw--

He let me sleep in his bed that night, but he wasn't there. If there was one night in Nightingale where I got anything even remotely close to a full night's sleep... It was that one.

MONDAY

8:57 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

To me, the apple tasted... well, kind of more like an almost-tasteless pear, sprinkled with a little salt. The sky was a light purple; the crystal snowflakes still came down all around us. The sounds of Sam's fist hitting bodies, and of Kaylee's bowstring propelling five Welwitschia arrows every thirty seconds and the sound of them making contact, was almost a harmony to me as I munched on the crispy and crunchy fruits; with both Jupiter Two the Samoyed and Happy the raccoon munching on them with me, from the shade of a broken drill rig and also some giant sugar maple trees.

Sam constantly hollered profanities at the Talon, who probably didn't even understand her.

"Chris-" Connor's strangled voice, heavily accented as always, rang out from somewhere to my right. "A little help here?"

I felt some degree of urgency, but in that moment even the adrenaline was taking a momentary break, it seemed. That, or I couldn't see him. Probably both.

I took another tiny little bite of the tiny little apple.

"Can't see you, Cognito," I said. "Maybe if you un-Cognito."

I surveyed our surroundings.

Wrapped, tangled, cut by leaves, stems, roots, and bark, about half the horde of fifty winged people-birds were now nothing but a mass of filthy bodies constantly humiliating themselves. On the other hand, Sam was having the time of her life.

"C'MON!" She yelled at the horde in her eighty-percent V4, ten-percent U.S. Southern, ten-percent stimulant-junkie accent. "YO MAMA raise y'better than THIS, HEY?! YO SHIT WACK!" Her piercing and slightly raspy voice blasted at us as she proceeded to put a female Talon in a choke hold, and apparently proceeded to snap her neck.

"We don't need to kill them!" I yelled at her. "Sam! SAM!"

"Y'all," a strangled voice said. "A little help."

--ovw--XLVII--ovw--

"Y'all," a strangled voice said. "A little help."

MONDAY

8:59 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

I turned around. There he was; Connor. Blue-and-brown hair and neon-blue whiskers and pale as a stick of chalk. The stranglehold the Talon man had on him from behind was not unlike the one Sam did to people, quite a lot- whether she was working or even just around Vicinity Four and getting into fights over drugs... or who effed who, or something.

Still can't say that word sometimes.

I was in an SRA with her once, and literally just allowed her to knock me out with one blow. Afterward she bought me cold strawberry pudding from Baker Joe's and brought it to me at the nurse's clinic. Sam was always great to watch; to me she was the perfect blend of speed and power, the same thing that James said that I was to him.

Not that James's opinions made sense. Not that James's opinions mattered.

I sighed. "Stay here, okay?" I said, as I patted Jupiter Two's big fluffy white head and gave the rest of my mini-healing-healer-happy-apples back to Happy. He took them in both his little paws and then climbed up a tree.

I adjusted the cotton bandage on my left hand.

"I am giving you a chance to stop," I said to the Talon man, "and I am also hoping that you are capable of understanding this."

In response, he squawked at me, and then almost growled- except the growl sounded more like a loud, grating caw that sounded strangely like Sam to me.

"Bless yer heart, Christopher Midnight-"

"Uh huh."

"Do something now, please!"

His "please" was really funny when his accent was on it. And then it was also, like, "ple-e-ease" like he was singing, because of the stranglehold in addition to the accent.

Or was it more like a standing rear naked choke, I wondered, a little bit? Or maybe some kind of standing triangle choke, like, from behind? Carter White, from the twenty-fourth floor, tried to teach me jiu jitsu once. I was really bad at it, in my opinion. I was helping Elsie out with a case and she was running late, so he and I went to one of the basement floors. B14. Because, of course, practically everybody in the Webwork knew it was my favorite. Until they fixed the training room in B21, anyway.

Carter was really nice, he didn't break any of my bones or anything. He knew my history and knew how much I hated any sort of thing of that nature at all, I supposed. But he taught me the straight armbar and the Americana armlock for non-lethal submissions. I once did use the armlock; it was on an identified murderer, to get him to drop his weapon. I'm actually not sure I'm did it exactly the right way, I mean, I did do it in connection from a whip to a hurricanrana- so maybe it was just another self-taught maneuver. Either way, I was still super thankful and let Carter give me a hug any time he saw me.

The jiu jitsu lesson itself- I'm not really sure if I had liked it all that much. Maybe because I was small, and maybe also because I was really bothered by it, probably maybe because I was choked a lot before...

And I mean, come on. Locked limbs with a large male who was twice my size, maybe more than twice even. At that time, at least, Caleb was the only exception.

Of course, I almost said "NO" with capital metaphorical letters, a small and maybe shy smile, and then a single flip with two twists in the opposite direction- except deep down I knew Carter had a good heart; he genuinely was trying to help me, and, like most people who went out of their way to make time for me, was not only kind- knew how to do the right thing.

--ovw--XLVIII--ovw--

Of course, I almost said "NO" with capital metaphorical letters, a small and maybe shy smile, and then a single flip with two twists in the opposite direction- except deep down I knew Carter had a good heart; he genuinely was trying to help me, and, like most people who went out of their way to make time for me, was not only kind- knew how to do the right thing.

MONDAY

8:59 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

They say Windcreek used to be ruled by a king who started out as a peasant in a farm; a pig farmer.

I felt every single snowflake and drop of cold blood on the skin of my left hand.

--ovw--

I pressed the middle fingers of both my hands to the tops of my ears. I just wished I had told him- Carter, that is- not to put hands around my neck, because he gave me nightmares for about... oh, I don't know. Maybe just ten weeks. I'm so glad it was Carter and not Wyatt- because, probably, Wyatt would have just laughed; me having level-9,000-intensity PTSD nightmares for 2.5 weeks, and then 7.5 with slightly less intensity, all because of a planned scrap in an airconditioned environment with a fellow agent. It probably would just be funny to him. Right?

I mentally ran through a list of suspects in my head.

I mean, probably- he did think stealing someone's lunch money was entertainment; was so comical, was such entertainment. Caleb took me home that day for dinner and then hacked into all of Wyatt's video game platforms. Caleb sold all of his... like, rare legendary items, or something. "That doesn't make anything right, you know," was what I had told him that night. It was 11 PM and I sat in front of their fireplace eating cereal. He told me that Kaylee would have done something even worse, and then wrapped his blanket around me.

I wiped a snowflake off my left hand. And then, I wiped off a tear, before it had a chance to really fall anywhere- and shut my eyes.

"Help."

I snapped out of it, not because he said "help," but mainly because I remembered being choked as a small child a lot and it was really, really not nice.

It was actually quite painful.

Kaylee always took the time, and took the effort, to remind me that we were the two Nightingale survivors- the only ones. We have the powers, and the minds and emotional intelligence that come only with being the strongest of the strongest survivors. At least for the most part- we certainly weren't perfect.

I stepped back with my left foot, calculated line and distance- and went all out.

This wasn't a workout. But if my body was going to do something nice for someone that day, then hey, let's flip.

--ovw--

--ovw--XLIX--ovw--

This wasn't a workout. But if my body was going to do something nice for someone that day, then hey, let's flip.

MONDAY

8:59 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Status: Unavailable

I put my phone back in its pocket, and took one of the tiny, compact combat knives. I wasn't intending to really use it, unless necessary.

The light purple shade of the 9AM Overwoods sky spun, and glowed, like milky purple Taro bubble tea. The kind Kaylee and I were practically addicted to; I just didn't buy as much because I cared about not spending funny crazy money.

"You have about a second and a half to stop because I don't believe in hurting anyone."

Most of the time I didn't, at least.

Those wore the words I spoke as I took my first two steps.

"Just..." Connor croaked, "...just stab him."

No.

Arms out, roundoff half turn, two whips, flip with three twists, full in back out back pike. With both my shoes now on top of the Talon's large head, I twisted into my left for the quadruple twisting dismount- without trying to stick this time, because the heel of my left foot was going into this Talon's left temple, near the left ear and impact swinging into his frontal and limbic lobe, and corpus callosum.

Assuming Talons' brains were the same as that of "normal humans," anyway.

I felt the subtle gush of heat leave my body upon contact and out through my left foot. Connor broke free, spun around, and threw a punch to the Talon's nose the millisecond the I front flipped over them both. On the half turn right before my landing, Connor dropkicked the large creature in both shins. And in that split moment right before the Talon toppled onto his knees, my right palm connected into the same temple I'd gone after earlier.

There was no need to put this man in a submission lock. He wasn't going to be walking for a week.

Neither was I... probably.

I backed up into Connor. Two more Talon- seemingly a male and a female, at least by the looks of them- approached us with weapons. One was flying and the other was running. Sam and Kaylee were occupied.

I watched as the large bird-people-mutants brandished their weapons at us. Both were visible. Both were sharp and jagged.

Connor, apparently, was otherwise occupied as well.

I heard the sound of a blow behind me.

"What are they holding?" Connor asked me.

Other thoughts please other thoughts other thoughts other thoughts other thoughts

I blinked away monsters and flashes of people larger than me holding pointed objects in the Lowdown. I shook off memories of blood puddles with gin vomit and of broken bodies and of bloodstains and alcohol stains.

It's fine, I have an apple in my pocket

I win like that

"A bear trap and a beer bottle?" I said, as I pocketed my one wielded knife, carefully placing it back in alignment with all the other ones in the black leather. "A bear trap and a beer bottle. That's... certainly a choice for weapons."

Connor spit, twice, on the ground behind my shoes before responding in his very fascinating accent.

"Hell, man," he said. "I'd use the same ones."

"Tango Echo Delta, team!" Kaylee yelled from her spot on the ground about twenty feet away from where we stood. She probably telepathically heard our conversations, or, more probably, was reading all of our minds- as long as none of us were locking up from her.

Or the rest of the telepath world.

"Eldredge here," said Sam's telepathic voice.

From about fifteen yards to my right, I saw Jupiter Two practically sear two Talons with one opening of his mouth. I smiled. My new friend had jaws.

"Team- Tango Echo Delta," Kaylee commanded again. "What's up, Edge?"

Sam's voice was the physical one when she replied, and we all heard it.

"Y'ALL DON'T NEED TO KEEP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO HERE," it said. "I'm having a blast!" I heard her knuckles connect with a Talon's face- and I saw it from where Connor and I stood. The Talon woman stumbled a million steps back until Sam again pursued her and connected her knockout blow, all the while still throwing hands at the others around her, her brass knuckles gleaming and shining the more she threw her fists. She was a glowing rainbow of pure destruction. I saw her smile at me. "I don't know about you!"

"A brother and a father are missing," Kaylee replied, with her physical voice, slowly backing up toward us while still shooting Welwitschia arrows; throwing mutated poison anthurium bombs. There was still a smile in her voice; it wasn't as prominent.

"They could be..." I paused. "For all we know they might be hurt."

Sam zoomed her way in and toward us, a glowing speeding lightshow of yellow and green and white and blond and pink.

"That's why we're here," she said.

"They might be-" Kaylee started.

I wasn't frantic, but my next words were automatic and five times faster than my words normally were.

"They might be in an experiment. They might be subjected to stuff; they might be, might be being experimented on." I paused to pull out one knife, throw it in one straight line- at the right wing of the Talon man that viciously lacerated Kaylee's back- before she could say much else. From atop the tall trees around and all above us, Happy the raccoon tossed a mini-apple, which I axe-kicked in Kaylee's direction. "Kayles!" I yelled. She caught the apple in her right hand and started consuming it immediately, as her blood saturated the back of her delicate, silk, orange top. "We don't know," I said. "But I think we all know that if they're tested on or tortured for even one day, and it's my fault, I will never forgive myself."

"Me neither," Kaylee groaned, as Sam shielded us with her body. I put my left hand under the fabric of Kaylee's halter tank top, on her waist- as the skin of my back started to sting madly. Whatever claws these monsters had on them, they weren't normal claws. "Thanks, Marblefox."

"Keep shooting," I said.

--ovw--XLX--ovw-- [L]

"Keep shooting," I said.

MONDAY

9:00 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Kaylee shook her head, in what looked like disappointment.

"I should have worn the double layer top."

In front of us and still hard at work protecting us, Sam snorted, in the middle of her favorite Muay Thai clinch, to a step-up kick to a horizontal elbow to a haymaker- putting three Talon down in the process. "Oh, PLEASE." Her accent and speech both were particularly far from neutral when in a fight; it was a shift from her conversational voice. Like if she was an intense fight it was almost the V4 accent in her voice doubled or tripled itself or something. She threw a diagonal kick to another haymaker. "You frontin' like a deadass pine tree whip."

Literally what the eff is a deadass pine tree whip.

ORBIPLOSIONS

Another haymaker, another forward elbow thrust, straight jabs- the one move we probably shared or had in common at all- diagonal kick, punch to the midsection. She spoke between breaths. "Girl, that orange halter Guap you got ova thyeah shoulda gone anyway."

Kaylee looked offended, but she said nothing.

I gripped a blade and threw it, hard, straight into the arm of a Talon woman that was about to lay hands on Sam's head or neck or whatever from behind. She squawked, and stepped backward, giving Sam enough time to uppercut her- the Talon was off the ground when I moved in, forward and onto my right leg, to spin backward with my left foot way above my head for the high, spinning, calculated, diagonal arc that connected into the Talon's face; Sam followed up with what she liked to call her right-right-to-left power cross straight jab to power straight- and this Talon was another one down before she/it/him/they had even touched the ground; wings and arms and limbs flew and then landed hard in the opposite direction.

I observed the subtle motion of very faint shadows on the ground- shadows of very large wings- behind me and to the right.

Sensing the massive Talon behind me, I shifted one very small step to the right and performed the undercut forwards handstand pop (which I very rarely ever did at all, because this maneuver to me was more power than momentum, and I didn't exactly have a lot of power). And it was quite possibly the only way I would have reached this Talon man's jaw at all- connecting hard exactly where I hoped I would; lifting him up and off the ground. I felt that almost-inconspicuous flow of not just adrenaline but also heat from my palms down to my heels, in that half-second transfer of weight. I pushed with my palms, spun into my right in the air- and connected with an elbow to an elbow to a knee into my very common spinning high arc heel. The Talon man seemed to almost crash into the ground, attempting to soften his fall with air resistance and counter force from his wings, but invisible arms wrapped around him- Connor slammed him into the ground before gravity had the chance to do it on its own. I noticed only because of the suddenly and oddly intercepted trajectory- and also the very, very pithy "Goin' down!" sound bite I heard Connor say during fights or video games or SRAs. I soundlessly met the ground, handspringed backward just for extra flight and quadruple twisted in the air on my way back to Kaylee. I flicked my wrist, and the two small black combat knives I'd used at all, flew- in a perfect straight line- back into my left hand. I placed them back inside the leather holder, readjusting the cloth bandages on my hand.

"I think she's beautiful whatever she wears," I said. I also bought her the halter tank top. We both liked orange, we liked delicate-looking things that were pretty; things that reminded her of flowers. I liked green more. On most days red was my favorite color, orange was Kaylee's. I think we liked all colors; Sam hated practically every other clothing item that Kaylee wore. This particular article of Kaylee's apparel was silk and charmeuse, was also straight from mainland U.S., and cost me about two hundred dollars. I remember James telling me to stop buying gifts for the girl that was practically an heiress to a quarter of the U.S. Overwoods division.

I said no.

I really loved James back then...

Connor's sourceless physical voice spoke from somewhere in the melee.

"I'm sorry to distract y'all from yer topic of fashion and all-"

"It looks like shit," Sam interrupted.

"It really doesn't, Sam," said Connor from wherever he was, "but that's not the point-"

As I helped Kaylee cover her harsher lacerations with stielvine, Sam bobbed and ducked and weaved into an overhand right- which missed- when a Talon woman sunk her teeth into Sam's right forearm.

"YOU DUMB BITCH," Sam snarled, smashing the Talon woman's face with her left fist once, effectively knocking her out, and then grabbing her legs, giving her the Samoan drop- and then giant swinging her to maybe a half mile away. She quite efficiently got rid of the rest of the group in the process during the swing rotations. The one Talon man left had only the time to turn and attempt to run when Sam grabbed him by the back, dragged him by the wings, and then gave him the hammerlock suplex.

Kaylee visibly winced while I took the physical and emotional pain for her, for the moment.

"Ahem ahem," continued Connor, who now reappeared once more and was already smoking a megacigarette- probably the Eggnog Matcha one judging by the smell of it, ugh, it was AWFUL- and walked up to us, showing us the face of his sleek, expensive, cutting-edge, deluxe, $5,000 cell phone. There was a map on it.

Something tugged at my head.

"Wait," I said.

Connor looked at me, like he was examining me, probing my response. Like every fiber of him was scrutinizing my reaction to this... this map.

I took the card, now a crumpled and folded paper, from where it was sealed inside the plastic casing of the back of my cell phone. I straightened it; pressed the folds outwards, to look at it again- but this time, juxtaposed to what Connor was showing me.

"Dumb bitch," Sam fumed again, but at this point nobody was paying attention. "Mother fuckers destroyed my Givenchy watch from 2nd Avenue-"

This map...

"Connor," I said. "Where did you get this?"

His sleepy, slow, Southern-ish voice chastised me.

"How 'bout I ask you the same thing?"

"You mean this?" I said, gesturing at the little card which was now creased and slightly faded. "One of the men that abused me gave this to me. One of the... one of the paying ones. I think I was eleven, or something."

There was a silence, a silence so unusual, so dismal, so full of gloom. That's how it felt to me, with Sam gone almost statue-still, her eyes no longer on her Givenchy watch from 2nd Avenue, rather her eyes locked on my face with what I supposed was some look of maybe shock- unless it was compassion or pity which I DID NOT want at that very minute- and Kaylee and Connor both silently just waiting, perhaps, for something else to be said. They both looked at the ground for a moment.

"There were hundreds of them," I said. "Come on, let's move on. I survived, I lived through it, let's focus on that," I expressed. "At least, for now." I cleared my throat, flexed my fingers, stared down at my left hand. Then I looked up at the soft lilac sky, the green and turquoise snowflakes falling down calmly in light, spiral patterns. "My PTSD's killing me already, okay?"

"Okay," Kaylee said.

"I got this from Belinda's files," said Connor. "After she was taken for interrogation... Caleb and I unlocked her stuff. We found..." He paused.

And then didn't continue.

"Say it, Mr. Benzo Disappear-o," said Sam.

I groaned.

"He doesn't do benzodiazepines," I said.

Kaylee and Sam both gave me some kind of "oh you didn't know?" look.

"Okay," I said. I put my hands up in a dramatic, sarcastic gesture. "Whatever, I don't know. I know nothing, okay?- now what did you and Caleb find?"

More silence. Happy the raccoon was cheerfully riding on Jupiter Two's back, as they delightedly walked into the circle of conversation; Happy playing with a stick he found somewhere during the fight and Jupiter Two with an apple in his mouth. He dropped it on the ground in front of me, and I gave it to Kaylee.

"Hey, Jupiter," I said, patting his big fluffy white doggy Samoyed head as he licked the dirt and blood off my face. "Hi, Happy!" The small raccoon bounded up and onto my shoulder, just like he did at the Thornton Building, where Ember had given them to me just earlier that same day.

Because of the flashbacks of memories, it felt almost like eons ago...

Combine that with the blood and the fighting.

I sighed. "Happy-" I removed the little strands of white dog fur from my bandaged hand and jacket sleeve, as Jupiter shook the snow- and burnt twigs and ash- off himself. "Happy, one little happy apple, please."

Happy produced one immediately. Kaylee made one, too, probably not the exact same healing-caliber but with that same very subtle flash of mysterious, almost captivating light that you saw only for a fraction of a second- then the next moment the plant or the fruit or the stem or the leaf was there. Whichever one they chose, if they were capable of it.

Kaylee threw the normal apple at Sam's chest, where she caught it- with a look of surprise- in both hands.

"Criticize your own outfit choices next time," said Kaylee.

Shush, I said only to Kaylee, telepathically. Not worth it.

Karma is a thing.

I locked eyes with Connor. After a fight, after the invisibility and superpowers, we both had eyes a more metallic, more colloidal, more reflective shade from their original hue- his turned to black like oil and mine turned to gray like ash.

WHAT did you and Caleb find?

Kaylee walked away to go collect her Welwitschia arrows. I waited for Connor's response.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing else."

Pffffffffffffft. Yeah. Sure.

Sam, who was the opposite of subtle, responded.

"C'mon," she bleated, "d'ya really gotta lie so smooth?" She popped two orange-and-pink colored pills in her mouth and swallowed them dry. "Smooth like poopy chicken ass."

"It's fine," I said. "Whatever it is... Connor will tell me, if it has to be said." I locked eyes with Connor. "I'll just... I'll just guess what it is, until you decide it's time. I guess."

I wasn't sure what else to say exactly.

"Is it bad?" I said. "How bad is it?"

Connor took another huff and another puff, his megacigarette smoke the same dark black that moved like slowly vanishing molasses from the cold and yet still humid Overwoods air. He blew it in Kaylee's direction; she wasn't near enough to really breathe it. I coughed because I still smelled it; Sam cracked her knuckles repeatedly.

"It isn't bad," he said. Happy the raccoon poked my cheek, where my dimple was. I patted his head with my left hand. Connor continued. "But you don't deserve to hate yourself."

"Too late," I said. "I probably already do."

Half of Connor's auburn-and-blue hair was fading in and out of vision, pulsing- this was how it was if he was either nervous, or just used up a lot of his powers, or both. He hadn't shaved for a while and his sky-blue colored stubble was almost that of Caleb's in terms of length and thickness.

He replied with, "That's why I'm not telling you."

--ovw--