The psionic metronome of the Empath is a strange thing. Lucina, and others like her, were heavily modified, advanced and thrust past the limitations of human biology. She could ‘feel’ the theta waves of minds, and connect to their pulsing waves, small, novel organs deep in the brain allowing for sensing, interpretation, and feedback of thought.
In Killian’s mind, his theta wave activity swung wide like a calm sine wave on graph paper, gently rising and falling like the deep breathing sleep, and Lucina ‘matched’ her own to his. That connection allowed the world between them to dissolve, and all the matter, atoms, photons, quarks, gluons their individual bodies were made up of were thrust aside; their awareness met on that vibrating string of proto-matter at the base of everything. They were essentially, in that moment, one mind.
Killian was aware of the world at large, but it didn’t matter. Not really. The cold floor of the cafeteria, the debris, the worries and stresses of catching a killer, his thumb. His eyes were open, and he knew he was blinking, breathing, seeing, hearing, but it all went in slow-motion, like molasses dripping from the end of a spoon. Those fractal eyes before him held everything. All that mattered.
It felt like he was in a deep dream, his eyes open. That dream was parallel to the real world, and he walked it. He felt, rather than truly saw, a wide, vast expanse stretching into an eternal and hazy distance, shining with sunlight, grassy hillocks flecked with solitary ancient trees, a mirror-like sky above scudded with clouds, reflecting the ground in all its minute details. He was seated beneath a tree, face dappled in leaf-shadow, breathing slowly, just watching time drift by. He was seated on the cafeteria floor, gentle pain in his thumb, whisky burning in his gut. He had a mission.
“Lucina?”
“I’m here.”
But he didn’t see her, only heard her voice.
“What do I do?”
A pause. “Open the door.”
He stood and looked about. Doors stretched in a line into the horizon behind the tree. They were not the same door, repeated infinitely, but each unique in size, shape, color, decoration. And they didn’t stay the same, shifting constantly in the way dreams do, their handles and hinges going brass, chrome, wooden, iron, steel. Paint flickered over them, teal, crimson, gray. Their size grew and shrank, massive portcullises, great oak gates weathered by time, a garden gate of wrought iron, a wooden entry door. Filigreed, plain, golden, pale. As he reached for the first one, all the doors collapsed into one, and before him stood a simple wooden door, a piece of construction paper with a painted yellow daffodil in child-like strokes. He turned the handle.
---
Warm sunlight, a crying child, hair shaved short, sitting on the ground. Looking down, a flower in small hands, the fingernails colored with flaking nail polish, a little black dress. “You okay?” Killian could feel the voice come from his throat, but it was child’s high and reedy pitch. The flower was made of paper, simple and crude. Everyone in the classroom had been asked to make flowers, and the tables were littered with them.
The crying child accepted her flower, looking up with tear-streaked face. He sniffed loudly, then grimaced. Several bigger kids at a nearby table stuck out their tongues at the weeping boy. There was such fury, such sorrow on his little face.
“You like it? The flower?” A smile in this child’s dark moment. “Don’t let the big Kids push you around, okay?”
He nodded, then looked back at her. “They want m-my rations. Th-thanks for sticking up for me.”
Killian stared at the child, recognizing 23, even as from ‘his’ mouth, Lucina’s childish voice said “Sure!” And then he felt Lucina probe the boy, unconsciously, searching him out. He could ‘feel’ his sorrow at his weakness, his rage at the other children, and, as those fractal eyes focused on 23’s, there, deep within, like a seed, sprang to life a quiet possessiveness, which young Lucina marked as simply ‘devotion’.
---
The memory blurred, streaking as if dragged by a cosmic hand, and he was back in the endless rolling plain, grasses whispering about him in a cool breeze. The door stood there, now made of steel, finger-print locked. He touched the cool metal, and it slid open on quiet pneumatics.
---
Taller now, Lucina sat on her bed, legs crossed beneath her, as she read an old paperback novel, her thoughts wandering into the eternal spaces between words. ‘Robinson Crusoe’.
A tentative double-tap knock at the door, followed by a single sharp rap, and she slid off the bed to remove a panel by the door. Touching two wires together, the door slid open for the unauthorized visitor. 23…Jonquil greeted her with a clumsy hug, awkward in his early adolescence. “Hey,” he said in a loud whisper, as the door closed behind them. It was absolutely forbidden to visit one another in their rooms, a precaution against unfavorable genetic ‘mishaps’, but a bit of clever coding and wiring, and the door, and by extension the Family, was none the wiser. “So? What’s the news?” he asked, eyes glancing at the book disinterestedly. He wasn’t much for reading.
“I got the highest marks on my Empath qualifiers. I think they’ll make me a Big Sister soon!”
Jonquil…forced a smile. A stupid thing to do in front of an Empath. “Oh! That’s great! Really? Aren’t you kind of young?” A wave of jealousy pulsed from him, unbidden, and he looked away from her, breaking eye contact, too little too late.
“Well,” she said, struggling to sound natural, as if her accomplishment hadn’t just been summarily dismissed by her best friend, “It’s all merit-based, right? I-”
“Sure, no I get it,” he interrupted, nodding “Listen, though, I managed to swipe a key card to get up to the Atrium.” He flopped onto her bed, showing the little tap-card, a sleek metal rectangle that caught the light. “Got if off Mark. Grabbed it with a little telekinesis. I’m getting better, I think.” A lie, passing his lips simply, easily as breathing. He most likely used sleight of hand, a recent pastime of his.
The jealousy surrounded him like an aura, and she could see it. She could understand it. His telekinetics were weak. He was feeling isolated, thinking she might move on without him. Worried that she might abandon him. She would not. Lucina forgave him in that moment, and smiled, true and warm.
“No way, that’s awesome!” she squealed, channeling genuine pleasure, setting herself aside to revel in a bit of teenage rebellion, setting herself aside for him. Jonquil grinned, and pride flared in his heart of hearts; she felt it.
---
In that strange way dreams have, Killian was no longer in that small steel room, suddenly standing before the Door, the mirror sky high above, warm sun frozen above the horizon.
“I’m intrudin’,” he whispered to the air.
“No. You are a guest.”
He felt her shaking, her hands cold and pale in his own, the dim cafeteria only partially illuminated by the moonlight and the torch-laps. His fingers laced into her, and he felt her go still.
The Door became an arch, simple and unadorned steel, the endless rolling expanse spreading out behind the metal. He stepped through it.
---
The Commons were abuzz with Children today, all intermingling, eating from the commissary, a low, warm buzz of conversation in the air. Lucina sat on one of the plain couches, giggling with a group of girls. She stood, holding her tray of dirty dishes, moving to set them for cleaning, when a hand caught her wrist, and she felt the familiar emotionality of Jonquil. He stood against the wall, just around a little corner, and she grinned at him. Glancing back at the room, she scanned to make sure no one was paying them any mind, then raised a brow. “What?”
Mischievously, he held up a small chocolate truffle wrapped in delicate silver foil, smiling wide. “Gotcha something.” There was an aura of deep satisfaction pulsing gently from him, and she clapped her hands gently, giggling.
“Jonquil,” she hissed in gentle reprimand, but clearly pleased as she snatched the treat. “You’re gonna get caught one day! You can’t keep stealing from the teachers.” They’d do more than rap his knuckles if he was caught.
He waved off her concern, cupping her cheek briefly, and she leaned into his touch as his thumb stroked her skin. “You’re worth it, Lucina. I’ll never compare to you, you know. The least I can do is give you a token of affection once in a while. And what’s that worth without a little…risk?” Winking impishly, he drew her into a hug, just around that corner, just out of sight.
Simple words, but she pulled them into herself, made them part of her fabric, her being. No one else spoke to her this way. No one else cared for her like Jonquil.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said in near whisper. “You’re the only thing keeping me going, Lucina. They’re really…amping up the protocols on me.”
She raised her head from his chest, and looked him in the face. Burn marks from electrodes on his forehead, small bandages on his neck from injection sites, dark bags beneath his eyes from sleep deprivation. “I was wondering where you’ve been,” she said stiffly, voice nearly cracking. She clenched her arms around his torso tightly, stifling the need to cry. Empaths were the emotional sort.
He simply held her, kissing her forehead, and he looked down at her with a sad smile, and those wide blue, so like the sky over the mountain just after a hard rain, right before golden hour. She felt the pain of the protocols, those techniques the Moloch Family had perfected in promoting psionic powers in recalcitrant and untalented Children. She felt in his mind, and found anguish, pride, stubborn resolve, fear, and most of all, his love for her. His deep devotion to her. That absolute adherence. And, something a little like greed, deep within, tucked far back, far from the front of his mind. The faintest tint of something like condescension, coloring his affection.
Then he slipped away, the moment broken by the need for stealth and care. It would not do to be caught in a tryst with another Child.
She looked down at her cupped hands at the small confection and as Killian watched through her eyes, the chocolate shifted into a small copper ring, a little hand-made brass pin in the shape of a hummingbird, a small moon made of painted ceramic, a small bag of brightly colored jelly beans, letters pressed with wax, notes, a bracelet made of dark, false wood. Gift after small gift. The hands beneath them flickered as if movie frames had been stitched together, and the rooms changed, blurred and indistinct around him, unimportant details of the dream-memory. He stepped away from Lucina’s form, now standing in front of her as she grew a little more, blossomed into womanhood, her hair lengthening, shortening, lengthening, styled down, bound up in a bun, down again all while staring into her hands.
“He loves me,” she said softly, as her body and the world continued to meld and bend and shift and drip and grow and shrink. She looked up, holding her little pile of gifts, as one would hold a wounded bird, gently, carefully, lest anything should fall. “No one has ever given me anything at all before.” Her fractal eyes met his in this dream-state, but here there was no Empathic connection, no probing, just one person looking at another. “Look. He thinks the world of me, right? ” Her face was drawn, tight, worried, a faint, forced smile on her face. The doubt in her own words was like a solid thing. “He said it. Over and over.”
Killian said nothing, could say nothing, as Lucina seemed to drift away, her little gifts trailing behind her as they fell from her hands. He blinked...
---
And stood before the Door again. He turned away from it, breathing in sharply, his heart creaking like old leather as it beat in his chest. “I don’t wanna do this no more,” he whispered to the lonely rolling waves of grass, a too-bright sun, the trees buffeted by stiff, cool winds.
“Don’t squander the opportunity to be sure…of me,” came Lucina’s voice, low and quiet, murmuring in the wind. “I’m not so fragile a thing, Killian.”
He clenched his fists, turning back to the door. He had to be sure. But he felt everything that Lucina had felt, every little emotion, every little obscure sorrow. Even here, in this eternal rolling plain, he felt her. It was like reading a diary of every thought she’d ever had, every shame, every joy, fear, anxiety; it was intrusive, her mind on display like a particularly brutal sort of nudity.
“Why you doin’ this, Lucina?” That chill wind bit through his coat, fluttering the leather, mussing his hair. “Coulda just left you locked up in a room. You don’t have t’confront this.”
“It is time I did,” came the response on the wind. “I’ll take no more cold comfort in an illusory past, willfully deceiving myself. Door…”
This time, the heavy Door opened on its own, and he recognized it. It was the Atrium door, a massive tungsten and gold construction leading to the welcome tunnel, where visiting dignitaries and guests were led through to visit with the Family executives. It was beautiful, two stories tall, inscribed with curvilinear vines and branches, motifs of Prometheus, Zeus on his mountain, all in gold.
---
The Atrium was quiet at this time of night, and the guard’s mind had been swayed and coddled gently when Lucina unexpectedly showed up from the service elevator, using all her skill on the surprised man. His mouth was open to start speaking into a comm, but froze as feelings of goodwill, mischievous rebellion, and affection for the wayward girl and her friend overcame his good sense. He blinked, grinned, then winked at them. “Don’t get in trouble, now, alright? Avoid the camera angles.”
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As they stole forward to the large picture windows looking out towards the mountain peaks, Lucina couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for her manipulation, despite having done it many times before. But Jonquil radiated nothing but contempt and pleasure at the Empathic control she had exerted. They settled on the ground in front of the window, bathed in cool moonlight. It was winter, the winds corralling wild snowdrifts outside, but they sizzled as they pressed against the plasma shield, streams of fog hissing into the air and then whisked away by playful zephyrs.
She leaned against him, as she did so often, and settled into his affection and pleasure. “It’s so beautiful,” she murmured, clasping his hand, her long fingers pressing against the calluses on his palm before lacing with his.
He stared out the window absently, nodding. But she felt he was distracted. He didn’t speak, though, so she filled the silence. “I want to be out there, Jon,” she said. “I want to be in the Wilds. I want to see what lies beyond everything.” Picking at the hem of her skirt, a nervous habit, she sighed. “This Tower, the Children, everything above and below us, it all just… presses on me.”
He stayed quiet. She continued.
“I know it’s not better out there, but at least there’s freedom to do what you want. Necessity, weather, danger, they set the rules. Not petty little men in suits.” She smiled gently, looking down at her lap, palms up, fingers spread. “Guess it’s a little naive, but I just want to make my own way.”
“Nothing but danger out there, Lucina,” he said finally, stroking his bristle-like hair, considering the mountains. “Madmen, Abhumans, tribalists, little pockets of civilization few and far between. The Outer Government has only enough power to protect themselves, barely any modern amenities, a faltering electric grid, and constantly entangled in corruption or skirmishes on their borders from barbarians, or worse things.” He tapped the tiled floor with his fist. “Bad as it is, probably much safer here.”
“I know, I know, but…I want something more, Jon. Something that…I can’t find.” She struggled to explain herself. “It’s like I was born with a hollow heart, and nothing can fill it. I read these books, and imagine these worlds. Dark, verdant woods full of moss and moist earth, birdsong and giggling streams. People on city streets, walking without fear, umbrellas in the night rain, light glittering off wet asphalt, tea in a cozy little cafe. Golden sunlight on a distant field, all rolling hills and windswept skies, a path leading who-knows-where among tall grasses.” She waved her hand in the air impotently, clearly not getting through to him as he sat there radiating bemusement and confusion. “The world as it should be, not as it is. A world full of eternal discovery, adventure, peace. I’m nostalgic after something that doesn’t exist…” She trailed off abruptly, deflating a bit.
“Yeah, that all sounds good. That’s not life though, Lucina. It’s all tooth and talon out there, like in here. Blood and grief. Reality festers, and has always festered, rotten all the way through. No such thing as Paradise.” He chuckled grimly, squinting out the window, fancying he saw some animal on a distant crag.
“‘That is Sensucht: living in turmoil and having no home in time’,” she murmured distantly, a little bitter, drawing away from him, hugging her knees as she stared out the window. “Forget it.” From beside her, she could faintly feel his discomfort, his confusion, a little anger.
“Lucina, c’mon, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just don’t get it, that’s all. Look,” he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, drawing her to him. “I’ll get you out of here, okay? And we can chase that dream together, your dream, find that something out there. Whatever we wanna do.” He glanced at her, and she appeared mollified. “I’ll free you, Lucina,” he said, clasping her hands in his, drawing her gaze up to those ardent blue eyes. “I’ll save you from this pit. Just trust in me, okay?” Looking back at the guard, who was tapping at his comm tab, face aglow from the screen, smiling at something there, Jonquil sneered in condescension. “It’ll require breaking a few eggs, as they say, though.”
Lucina snapped her head up sharply at him, and felt murder in him at that moment, a bloodlust that obliterated everything else. The rage in his heart had grown and grown and grown, swelling and spreading like black mold. She can almost ‘see’ it as he brought his blue eyes to look at hers.
Her heart quaked within her and Killian could feel a resonance with that murderous rot, that rage affecting and poisoning Lucina as the scene froze to a stop, the snowdrifts halting in complex patterns, the rise and fall of Jonquil’s chest stilling, the soft sounds of a guard making rounds and the creaks and groans of a sleeping Tower silencing. Again, he seemed to step from her body, and she looked up at him.
“He’s right, you know. They’ll never let us go.” She stood to face Killian, her hands dribbling blood, stained up to the wrist in fresh scarlet, the drops pattering to the floor. Her lips, smeared with blood, drew taut and hard. “Look him in the eyes. You’ll see.”
Killian turned his attention to Jonquil, and concentrated on the telekinetic’s eyes. Frozen, cloudy blue irises surrounding pinprick pupils. He ‘felt’ just as Lucina could feel. He delved as Lucina could delve. That need to be free, it had become tangled up with the need for revenge. The constant pain. The constant humiliation. The Family had managed to twist his soul completely, fanning an ember that had burned in his stomach, visible and pulsing in this strange vision. With a flare of light, Jonquil’s figure was engulfed in flames, though he remained unconsumed. From the flames, an ember alit on Lucina, and her skirt flared with heat and light, yellow-red tongues licking greedily at the skin, the hair, the face, but it left her unburned. Killian stepped back from the heat.
Lucina smiled gently, incongruous to the blood, the flame. “It’s infectious, at least in the moment. Empaths are not immune to being swayed by the emotions they feel, you know.” She stepped forward, red, flaming hand settling on Killian’s chest. Then everything crumbled into ash.
---
A great cloud, like a giant anvil, encroached from the south, flickering lightning lapping at the ground, as if the blades of light were the legs of that massive storm. It twisted, pushing a cold wind before it, sweeping through the grass like waves on the sea. The storm rumbled in the distances, as if clearing its throat. The sun still showed, though the edge of the storm brushed against the glinting rays, a threat. The tree above groaned like an ancient man as it was pushed and buffeted.
Killian felt the primal fear of a man born of the Wilds, of lashing rains and mudslides, of treacherous wet causing hypothermia, of the wildfires. “He got to you,” he yelled into the wind, at the oncoming wave of rain. “He infected you. This ain’t helping your case, Lucina.”
“It’s the truth, and not all of it,” came her voice in peals of lightning. “They say it’ll set you free.”
He turned towards the Door again, a plain white metal with a simple latch handle. A Garden Room, he realized. As the storm struck and obfuscated the sun, he stepped through the Door.
---
Somewhere along the line, the Moloch Family had realized that the Children, though unable to leave the basement levels, were still in need of some greenery and ‘natural’ sunlight, mainly to avoid severe depression and suicidality among their precious investment population. So, the Garden Rooms were open to them, mostly hydroponic plants and trees with false sunlight lamps in the ceiling, the walls cleverly disguised with landscape holograms to give the place a sense of depth and reality. It often flickered and malfunctioned though, not exactly top priority in terms of allocations, revealing blank gray walls, occasionally smeared with dirty handprints left by the gardener.
Lucina sat on the edge of the fountain, alone at the moment, having developed the habit of stealing away to think here. She let her fingers dangle in the water, a little murky, but mostly clean. Algae managed to get even into the aseptic basement levels, of course. Nothing stops life from invading. A book sat, splayed open on the lip of the fountain, cover up. ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’.
The door slid open suddenly, and she looked up quickly, smiling as Jonquil stepped through the door. Her smile faltered, though, as she saw his face. Sizzling, thermal rage. His face was twisted by it, but his eyes bore into hers, feeding that rage deep into her core. She felt it starting to grip her, but she pushed it aside. “Jon?”
“I failed my qualifiers again,” he spat, moving to stand beside her, staring into the murky water, his face flickering in the gentle ripples. “Again! That was the third strike, Lucina. I’m gonna be harvested for parts!”
“You don’t know that,” she said weakly, feeling herself curl inwards at the onslaught of his emotional state, hating herself for shaking.
“Yes I do!” he roared at her, eyes wild. He stomped on his reflection in the water furiously, wetting her dress. “You know they remove Children if they can’t perform. Where do you think they go? Fairyland, you Kěwù de mǔgǒu!? Get your head out of the gāisǐ clouds!” Contempt, fear, that wild hurricane of fury, shedding from him, an emotional miasma.
Lucina flinched, standing slowly and moving away. “Please, Jon, you need to calm down.” She locked eyes with him, gently pressing a sense of calm, a sense of contemplation, peace, introspection. For a moment, he relaxed, but only a moment, and his face twisted up again.
“Don’t do that!” he barked, and shoved her hard in the chest.
The air was driven out of her and she fell flat onto her back into a bed of anemic posies, crushing them. She struck her head on a decorative ceramic toad, and the world grew fuzzy and indistinct as a high-pitched whining sounded in her head. For a moment, she couldn’t inhale, and her body convulsed around the pain of her head and ribs, before drawing a ragged breath. Her vision cleared to see him kneeling beside her, voice muffled, slowly clearing, her hand clasped in his, his face creased with worry. “--ina. Lucina! I’m so sorry, my love. Wǒ shì gè gāisǐ de shǎguā. I’m so sorry.”
Lucina’s mind cleared, and her eyes fixed on his. His expression was correct, his words were apologetic, but his emotions… She felt contempt, aggravation, irritation, not sorrow or remorse. She felt no true regret. She just felt a sense of entitlement and self justification. He radiated an aura of outward blame. Look what you made me do.
He helped her up, brushing her off. “I’m so stupid, love. I really am. Please, please forgive me.” Again, all the right words, all the properly expressed emotion, the right tone of voice. But she’d had the truth shoved into her.
It was all about him. Every. Single. Thing.
The realization dawned on her sharply and suddenly, and her stomach twisted and bile burned in the back of her throat. But she smiled in that moment, nodding, faking along. She whispered her forgiveness as tears brimmed in her eyes, turning the world into a watery mess. He would think it was because of pain.
After assuring himself she was alright, he made an excuse and retreated out the door, not even a hint of shame about him. She turned away from the door as it slid shut, staring into that murky water, tears dripping against her reflection before she covered her face in her hands and wept.
Killian stood in the place of her reflection, looking down at his own feet, as if through a quivering window of water. The girl sobbed gently there, muffled as if underwater. The Garden Room around him was the mirror reverse of the one she stood it, though darker and still, no splashing of the fountain, or the hum of the air conditioning.
“I finally see him,” came the quaking, water-logged voice from the reflection at his feet. The mirage of Lucina pulled her face from her hands, wiping tears, flicking them away, sniffing contemptuously at her mourning. “Everything was always about him. He can never see when he’s in the wrong. He can’t feel it.” Her voice was thick and heavy, roughened from crying. “It felt so good to be loved. I self-deceived because of love, for years. Now, I just feel more alone than ever.”
The world shimmered as if a pebble had been dropped in a pond, and they found themselves suspended in a boundless, obsidian void. Their eyes met, both looking down at the other. They stood perpendicular, as if on the surface of an immense, glassy lake, each gazing down at their reflection, which was the other. The space between them rippled. Killian listened.
She straightened, brushing her hair back from her face, a curtain she’d used to hide her weeping, now drawn back. “Self-deceit is a potent ambrosia, a sweet liquor, but it poisons the roots of your soul.” A shuddering breath. “I refuse to drink it any longer.”
---
The storm had passed, leaving everything drenched in glittering jewels of water, the setting sun coloring the mirror sky with the purple of violets, the reds of blood, the blues of water. The world felt refreshed, though hastening towards night.
Killian watched the sun as it kissed the horizon of this place. He understood now, how one could love and hate someone, years of ensnared emotion and patient investment in a person. It made one loathe to let that person go, even when they were destroying the core of you. Wind blew, though a gentler, kinder breeze, and tousled his hair.
The Door was still there, though, now a pretty, glass-paned wooden French door, the kind one would see at a cafe. A ‘closed’ sign hung on the opposite side of the glass. He touched the doorhandle.
“Killian? Wai--”
---
It was the cafe.
Killian blinked, looking about confused. He saw himself sitting, cross-legged, just a few paces away, watching the pig roasting. He was seeing himself, through fractal eyes.
Lucina turned back to see the Seer, Sybil, staring straight back at her from across the firepit. The pig continued to crackle as flames gently toasted its abdomen. Almost subconsciously, she made an Empathetic connection and probed Sybil’s mind, hardly trying at all. And the old woman did not fight her off. The gaze remained unbroken, solid, revealing. Lucina….saw. The future unfolded like a triptych, unfurled like a rose-bud blooming. Time became a flat plane and it bent, wrinkled, parts drew near, others fled away, past, present, future. A vision shivered into being from the roiling cosmos of twisted chronos, manifold coils of time-space events unwinding, straightening, revealing.
The trees had caught fire. Massive redwoods, 150 years old, thick with time, hissed and steamed as the inferno charred them, blackened their bark. Jonquil stood surrounded by a halo of metal, glittering and flickering in the mad shadows cast by the forest fire. Killian lay on his chest, breathing raggedly, his face bleeding from multiple small lacerations, his right arm twisted unnaturally, a large spike of metal pinning his forearm to the forest floor. His finger was still wrapped around the trigger of the railgun, a steam trail left by the sabot evaporating in the heat. Another miss.
Jonquil howled in victory, silhouetted by the blaze. Killian was watching himself on the ground, struggling, coughing, his breath burbling with blood. The mad Subject 23 formed a large spike of iron, steel, nickel, the spinning, roiling metals heating each other into a bright orange glow, arc welded loosely by the immense energies being pumped into them, flickering lightning lapping out from the maelstrom.
Killian felt himself scream with Lucina’s voice, and felt a wave of horror, fear, and desperate need to protect the Security Captain. She threw herself down against Killian’s side, trying to shield him with her body, the second time in a single night. “Jon, no! Please! Please don’t.” She had to shout to be heard over the roar of the flames, one hand up, palm out, in imprecation. Those foolish, sentimental tears again, they chased each other down her cheeks.
Despite his madness, the broken telekinetic paused momentarily
“Are you stupid, Lucina?” grunted Killian weakly. “I told you to haul out!”
“And I told you not to die,” she screamed at him, eyes locking. “Guess we both can’t follow orders!” Deep sorrow, fear, and heartache twisted her heart, and she saw he felt it.
“Saw this coming, didn’t we?” he said with a grin, teeth bloodied.
“Guess we did,” she said weakly, kissing him gently, desperately, with all her heart.
---
Killian felt Lucina yank her hands out of his, and he jolted out of the trance, inhaling deeply, overwhelmed momentarily by another’s emotion, by the Oracle’s vision. Lucina had stood up and walked to the cafeteria window, staring out at the moon as it began to slip behind the shoulder of the mountain. Her arms were crossed, her face hidden in her curtain of dark hair, her foot tapping quickly. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” she murmured. “And there’s margins of error in a Seer’s predictions, anyway,” she finished weakly.
“Hm,” said Killian, forearms draped over his knees, staring at the ground. “Prob’ly right. Maybe not. Sorry about…walking through.” He sighed, scrubbing his palms against his face. “Didn’t hear ya in time.”
Lucina glanced towards him briefly, and he caught a brief glimpse of her reddened cheeks. “Not like I’ve really done this kind of thing before, no practice. Not sure what’ll crop up. Did you get what you wanted?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure did. Guess you can say I’m hundred percent convinced you ain’t gonna stab me in the back, Lucina. Leastaways, not in the near future.” He stood, stretching, checking an analog watch, the kind one winds up, full gears and quartz crystals. “Three in the morning.” Pushing some of his hair from his face, he stepped up behind the Big Sister, setting his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened, then relaxed visibly, turning her head slightly to look back and up at him, questioningly.
“Fair’s fair, though.” He blew a long breath out, considering the near future, the seemingly distant past, and all the little bits in between. The Security Captain had seen all that one can see of a soul, and the vulnerability that it took. Courage, he knew, was being ‘scared to death, but saddling up anyway’. He thought, perhaps this once, the walls could come down. “Your turn t’delve, ma’am.”