These are pieces of fiction involving RP that happens in the middle of game plotlines, during downtime off-screen.
2006: Elsewhere.
Nikolai is in the box again.
It is a small box, maybe six feet by six feet by probably twelve feet. No windows, no doors – at least, none that he can find. He thinks there is a hatch in the ceiling, but the blinding light shining down makes it impossible to tell. He never sees how they move him in or out of the box. They always sedate him first. The soldiers refuse to come near him otherwise. They are scared of him.
The box is for punishment. Nikolai is in the box because he has been bad.
Time moves slowly inside the box. The walls are too far apart to scale, too slippery to climb individually. The light is hot and too bright, and it never turns off. He spends most of his time pacing or sitting, trying to remember why he is in the box. Who put him there. What he could have done this time that was bad.
Sometimes they put him here just because they can. Sometimes there is no reason.
Always, there is the fear that this time they won't let him out.
Panic, in the end, is inevitable.
Screaming is inevitable.
Then tears.
Then, exhausted, sleep.
And then he wakes up.
Nikolai is in the box again.
* * *
It's a beautiful summer Broughshane day. The sun is shining, and the recent rains have made the grass lush and green, and the river lively and perfect for fishing or swimming.
To her left she can hear her brother Tom teasing their cousins, Seamus and Donny, as the three of them fish. They're none of them worried about actually catching anything, so they're making no effort to keep quiet. In fact, the sound of the boys' laughter blends in almost melodically with the birds chirping and the stream rushing by and the sound of Gwynn's sister crying.
Gwynn's sister is crying.
The noise startles her into action, or not so much the noise as the guilt that she hadn't noticed before now. Carlie is four years younger than Gwynn, an unexpected present from above. Carlie's the baby of the family, and a bit of a tomboy to boot, and she gets away with things that would have gotten Gwynn a hiding, like skipping out on her chores and slipping away on her bike for the better part of a day, only to return with apologies, a backpack full of apples, and two scraped elbows from when she fell out of the tree. Gwynn loves her sister, but Carlie also exasperates her, and days like this it's all too easy to sit dreamily in the sun and tune the younger girl out.
But Carlie is crying, and she needs Gwynn now.
Probably fell off her bike, Gwynn thinks, running toward the sound. She was trying to learn how to pop wheelies earlier, even though Da said no. And sure enough, there she is on the pavement, cradling a raw patch of skin about the size of a baseball. Nasty spill, but nothing Gwynn can't kiss and make better. She opens her mouth to lecture her, but the tears welling in her sister's eyes make her relent.
So she simply smiles reassuringly at Carlie and reaches out to touch her, calling on the sun's healing warmth to channel through her and into the wound.
And Carlie screams.
The air in between them sizzles and the heat washes over Gwynn a second too late for her to stop the searing energy that pours uncontrollably out of her.
In front of her, Carlie blackens and burns and begins to die. Her hair catches fire and her eyeballs burst. The air smells like a ruined cookout, and Carlie is still screaming.
This isn't real, Gwynn thinks. This can't be real.
But she can't wake up.
* * *
Nikolai is in the box again.
He's lost track of time, but he's sure it's been longer than before. Weeks, maybe even a month. Or maybe only a few days. Maybe it's all in his head.
The guards are no longer just scared of him. Now they are angry. They want nothing to do with him. Whatever he did this time – he tries to remember, but it's all fog. The sedative has long since worn off, but its aftereffects last for hours, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.
The guards are arguing with the scientists outside the box, yelling loud enough to penetrate the walls. He knows some German – the doctors taught him enough to follow their commands and answer their questions – but he can't understand half of what the men are saying.
Monstrosität, he hears. Mutierend. Gefährlich. Missgeburt. He knows all their names for him.
But there are so, so many more words he doesn't know. Large, ominous words, like höllischeralbtraum and erschießen and erbarmungslos and euthanasie. Those are the ones that bring the fear full-force into his chest. It claws at his lungs and brings the blood pounding into his head, and still the voices go on talking of erschießen and euthanasie.
He puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear the voices. He pounds on the wall, but no one seems to notice or care. He yells until his voice is hoarse, until the exertion doubles him over, dry-heaving.
He cries until he hyperventilates.
Then he curls into a ball, screaming and beating his head against the floor. It doesn't make the voices stop, but now they are yelling different things. There is a far-off pounding somewhere overhead, and then something hisses.
He sleeps.
Then he wakes.
Nikolai is in the box again.
* * *
It's a beautiful summer Broughshane day, and Gwynn is sunning herself by the bank of the river Braid, safely out of splashing distance from her brother and cousins. She's trying to read a book for her class tomorrow, but it's such a nice day, and such a warm sun…
"T'holy hell! I got one! I got one!"
Gwynn lowers her book and glances over to the rock where her brother Tom is currently trying not to lose his footing at the same time he reels in a small but feisty brown trout. What follows is an intricate, improvised dance as Seamus and Donny try to help him and at the same time keep hold of their own balance and rods. The dance ends with a flourish of splashes -- Donny holding onto Tom's fishing pole, Seamus holding onto Tom's still-flapping fish, and Tom himself sitting soaking wet in the water, long brown hair splayed limply across his forehead, and all of them laughing.
Gwynn is laughing along with them, hard enough to make her cry. Halfway through, her sister joins in. As Gwynn is wiping the tears out of her eyes, she realizes Carlie is still sobbing, and it sounds like pain, not joy.
There she is, over on the ground, toppled bike beside her, one wheel still spinning slightly. She's hunched over, holding her knee and rocking. It's a nasty scrape, but nothing Gwynn can't take care of.
Déjà vu, she thinks, putting down the book.
She can see herself getting up, running over to Carlie, each step one she's taken before. It's a beautiful day, and it's just a scrape, and there's no reason for the sudden terror that seizes her as she reaches her sister. No, she thinks, oh no oh no oh –
She smells the burnt flesh an instant before the flame erupts from her hand.
This is a nightmare, Gwynn thinks as her sister begins to scream. This isn't real, that's not Carlie, and there has to be a way to wake up.
There has to be.
* * *
Nikolai is in the box again.
He's hungry, and tired, and disoriented. It's been forever since he's seen anyone, had anything to drink or eat, and this time he knows, knows that they've finally left him here for good. There was a lot of banging and shouting an infinity or so ago, and then nothing. Silence. No soldiers, no scientists, no убийцы в белых пальто.
He can hear his father and mother arguing outside the box, but that, at least, he knows is all in his head. Галлюцинации. He can hear his mother – his real mother. This is how he knows it is imaginary, because his parents haven't spoken to each other in years. But he can hear her sobbing and yelling at his father – "Изверг! Как Ñ?могли?" – throwing dishes and books and whatever else is nearby. He can hear his father try to placate her with stuttered apologies, rising quickly to righteous indignation through furiously gritted teeth. "Я не чудовищен! Буду патриотом!"
The slap that follows brings all the noise to a halt, and in the silence Nikolai hears his mother gasp as she raises her hand to her stinging cheek.
Moments later, he hears the door slam, as she leaves them both behind. But it is quiet outside the box, as quiet, he thinks, as death. There are no guards to yell, and certainly no parents. And no doors have slammed here for far too long.
He is just going insane. Delusions brought on as his mind and body begin to consume himself.
He is going to go crazy. And then he is going to die. And then he, too, will be quiet, like the halls outside.
The thought spurs him into action again, yelling and pounding at the walls. But his body is weak now, and it is only a few minutes later when he begins coughing and sags, exhausted, against the wall.
When he opens his eyes, he has lost all sense of time and space. There is only one thing of which he is sure.
Nikolai is in the box again.
* * *
It's a beautiful summer day in Broughshane, and Gwynn is watching everything happen again and again in slow motion. This time, she thinks, this time it's going to be different. It's got to be.
First, her brother, fishing and splashing with her cousins. Then, the sunlight, and the sound of the birds. There's her sister crying, and there's her standing up, turning to Carlie.
Now, she thinks, and concentrates, pushing her will outward. This never happened, and that isn't my sister. This is a dream – this is, this is...
An illusion.
Everything goes still except for Carlie. Carlie continues crying, rocking back and forth, but suddenly she is thinner, and slightly older, with jagged blonde hair that looks nothing like Gwynn's sister.
She looks like someone else. Someone... the face is on the edge of her mind, and if she can just remember who, then she can remember what –
Her name is Jules, Gwynn thinks, and knowledge floods into her.
We fell asleep, she remembers. Gwynn's not in Broughshane, she's in Hawaii, in a hospital, sitting guard over a girl who can't stop projecting emotions and god knows what else. Nik must have nodded off, too, and Jules' power flipped on like a light switch. She's not in Ireland, and that means –
The sadness she tries not to think about hits her like a kick to the stomach, and Gwynn is crying again as she remembers. It means...
It means that Carlie is dead, from the same bomb that killed her parents. Died in fire and fear, her big sister too far away to save her. Some superhero, she thinks, couldn't even save her own, couldn't even save her own –
For a moment, the birds and the river are back, and Gwynn understands the danger, knows how to fight it.
Whatever Jules' power is, she thinks, it feeds on fears, on pain, on those darkest moments. It can't give Gwynn anything that she doesn't let it take. Carlie is dead, and she can't change that.
But maybe she can save Jules.
Think of the sun, she tells herself. Think of its warmth and its beauty and let it all shine out. She can't see Carlie – no, Jules – but if she pushes a little bit harder, she can make the girl feel it anyway, turning to it like a plant that's been too long in the shade.
We all need the sun, Gwynn thinks, all of us.
* * *
Nikolai is in the box when he feels it – something is different. Something has changed. The lights above are still blinding, but no longer stifling. There's a gentleness to the warmth coming from them that was cruelly hot just a moment ago. The air, he thinks, it's no longer stale. Then calm washes over him, like walking out of the cold fog into a perfect spring day. It doesn't make sense, things like this don't happen in the box –
– which means he's not in the box.
Where is he, then? Danger room, some kind of training run?
Nikolai doesn't like the danger room. It always feels like a waste of time. It's not real, not if he can just turn it off with a thought. His mind reaches out for the circuit powering it all, finds it. All he has to do is trace the pattern until he finds the point where he can break the circuit, and then - just - disconnect it.
Just
like
that.
* * *
Nikolai sits up with a start, shaking. The sterile hospital room is a foreign landscape right now, but it has walls, and - thank god - a window and doors. He wants to cry, or laugh, but all he can do for a moment is pant until his blood slows and he can catch his breath as the sweat drips off his brow.
Next to him, Jules tosses and turns and then suddenly relaxes. He looks at her for a moment and reinforces his hold over her powers, tracing the circuit over and over until he is sure he can keep them turned off without even thinking about it. She doesn't wake up; the doctors said the sedatives would keep her asleep for 12 to 18 hours. He is glad for it; he doesn't want her – or anyone – to see him like this. He can sense Gwynn in the chair on the other side of the bed, radiating the warmth and power he'd felt in the box, at the end. If it weren't for her, he thinks, if she hadn't –
He shudders and turns away.
Across from him, Gwynn opens her eyes in the darkness. She can still see Carlie, but now it's the way she looked in her last school photo, smiling and awkward and full of life. She wouldn't want me to be sad, she thinks. She'd want me to go on fighting.
Gwynn can hear Nikolai moving about on the other side of the bed, but she doesn't look at him, wants – no, needs – a few moments to herself before he ruins it by opening his mouth. Time to bite back the tears, to steady her voice so he won't hear the quiver in it. Time to be grateful to him before he makes her angry at some pointed comment. That was a close call, she thinks, if he hadn't –
Separately, they collect themselves. Finally, Nikolai stands up, runs fingers through his short cropped hair. She waits for the caustic quip he always has readied, but when he speaks, he just sounds tired and subdued.
"I'm going to go take a piss and a smoke. Stretch my legs. Do you... want me to pick anything up for you while I'm out?"
He doesn't look at her, doesn’t meet her eyes, and she thinks for the first time about what he might've been going through.
"You know, a coke would be nice, thanks." Her stomach suddenly growls like it hasn't been fed in weeks. Using her powers always gives her an appetite. "Maybe a sandwich, too, if it's not a trouble."
"Yeah, sure," he says and shrugs on his leather jacket. "не проблема. Any preference on the meat?"
She looks down at Jules and shivers just a little.
"Anything but barbecue."
Marlene sat in the police station, watching Otaku's unmoving form. In the scuffle, his hand seemed to have gotten broken. Marlene was sure she hadn't done it, but didn't feel bad about that, either.
With perfect recall, it was difficult not to replay what had recently happened. Obediently picking up Nikolai and carrying him to that bright room, watching them strap him in and start to remove his clothes. Chernobyl's lack of interest in her, as a "doll." Following Otaku to his portal, watching the Angels get jealous of Otaku's attention. Otaku leading her to a room where she had no choice but to remove her clothes and watch, furious, as he poked and prodded her, not entirely clinically. As she tried and failed at several points to take over her own functions, until, finally -- maybe as part of her ICE, as he opened up her mind -- she snapped and got back control. She knew he hadn't noticed. Screw subtlety, she thought, it's not like anyone else was there. No trickery, just a hand shooting up for the throat, and before she even knew what she had done, she was on top of Otaku, her hands around his throat, her knee on his groin, more furious than she'd ever been in her life. "I am not a doll," she'd said, and she'd explained to him what was going to happen.
He was going to obey her. He was going to help her rescue her friend. He wasn't going to call the Angels or try to control her or she'll kill him. "Just give me a reason," she said, and she meant it. "I'm not programmed with some silly respect for human life." That wasn't entirely true, but the point was that she didn't have some prime directive or whatever to never kill. And at that point, after being taken over by Otaku not once, but twice, she would have been perfectly happy having this threat to her autonomy and the world out of the way. She knew she wasn't entirely intimidating him, being naked, but she hoped he realized she was happy to kill him.
But she also knew the only way she could get back to Nikolai and fast, before anything horrible happened to him, was via Otaku's teleporter, and she didn't trust herself to figure out how to make it work quickly. She de-prioritized her nudity taboo so she could do what she needed to do, and she was not going to let Otaku go until he was no longer a threat. When he didn't get them directly into Nikolai's room, that was a disappointment, but fortunately there were no guards. It was a stroke of inspiration to use Otaku and his force field as a battering ram. She hoped it scared him. She hoped it humiliated him, to be used as a tool by her. She knew she was acting outside of her Kantian programming, but she also knew that he deserved it.
And so, she sat there now, in the police station, waiting for the supers police to properly arrest Otaku. The explosion probably took out even the remaining Angels back at the Clique's penthouse -- including the one whose pants she'd stolen until her bike arrived. She wondered if she could show enough of Otaku's place to Onyx for her to teleport them in. There was sure to be loads of tech and information there, and any Angel models that might be a threat. As well as, possibly, Charlotta, who had gotten away. But as she looked at Otaku, she wondered if it hadn't been better to just kill him. Of course, once he was no longer a threat, she couldn't really kill him. If he could truly be contained, she couldn't just kill a helpless guy. How could Foehand had gone to school with this kid? Foehand must have gone to school years ago. Is this a real body? She tried to remember when he squeezed his throat. Did it feel like human throat or android throat? Maybe he's stunted in some way. Sick. He's sick, she thought, and she felt sick, herself.
The scene started to replay again and Marlene stopped it. Enough of this. Tight communication to Nikolai, she thought, and spoke directly to him. "Nikolai? Are you there? I wanted to say I'm really sorry. I failed you back there."
Onyx's personable, computerized voice smoothly responded: "Envoy is currently under communication embargo. Estimated time until embargo is lifted: 5 minutes. Current location: Training room." Then, because it was Marlene, it initiated a second subroutine, a safety feature Onyx had added a few weeks ago just in case anyone was accidentally incapacitated in the room: "Substitute visual feed?"
The vestiges of her good-girl programming spoke up: That would be eavesdropping. Screw it, she thought -- it wasn't like these Stingrays cared if she was a good girl. "Affirmative."
* * *
The ball of radiation hit Nikolai full in the chest, sending him flying off his bike, onto the rooftop. It hadn't knocked him out this time, he'd managed to twist his body to avoid the full brunt of it, but it had still knocked the wind out of him, and the bruises later on would be pretty colorful, if indistinguishable from the ones already there. Chernobyl pulled back for another swing and --
"Freeze simulation."
Fuck, Nikolai thought, looking up at the glowing green villain, stopped in mid-punch. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. It wasn't a particularly witty or elegant commentary, but it matched his mood perfectly.
He'd screwed up, big time. There was no way to avoid it. He'd lost control --
No, be honest, he'd been losing it for a while. First there had been Becky. He couldn't say the world wasn't better off without her, but he wasn't proud of what had happened. He could still remember the rage and anger pouring off of him as he turned the demon's powers against her. It had felt good, to give a little back of what the world had been handing out to him. For just a second, it had felt good to lose control, to set free all the anger at being manipulated by her, by Misha, by his father, by Xenon, everyone. For just a second --
But the problem with going too far was that you have to live with it afterwards.
And today -- by all rights he should be dead. He'd been so angry with Misha, daring to play the "Mother Russia" card, offering platitudes and false friendship. He'd carried that anger with him into battle afterwards, and it had nearly cost him everything.
He'd run through the simulation five times now, and it always ended the same way: Confronting Chernobyl directly was the singularly worst move he could have made. He should have gone after Kill-o-Watt instead, cut off the source of the electric beasts and left Chernobyl for people like Brian, who could handle the kind of damage Chernobyl dished out. Instead, he'd been a fool blinded by frustration and tried to swing out blindly at the first representation of it he could find.
He'd nearly gotten himself killed. If Chernobyl hadn't wanted him alive, he would have been dead. As it was, he'd stupidly gotten himself and Marlene captured instead.
With a flick of his mind, he reached out and neutralized the training room program. The rooftop morphed back into the blank white room. He leaned up on his elbows and rolled onto his side, rubbing his chest, then slowly sat up. The movement made his head spin -- oh yeah, now that he thought about it, Onyx had mentioned something about them taking spinal fluid -- that would be that intense screaming wake-up call five minutes before Marlene showed up, he remembered -- making the punishment he'd just put himself through one more stupid blunder for the day.
His head started to pound. Maybe sitting still for a little while wasn't such a bad idea. He leaned against the wall, rubbing his neck -- no sign of a hole that he could find, thanks to Gwynn -- and then reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Strange that they'd gone for the top of the spine instead of the bottom. Must have been something specific they were looking for, not just fluid.
As he fished the lighter out of his pockets and flicked it on, the intercom buzzed. "Smoking is not allowed in the training room. Sprinkler system is armed."
Oh yeah, he'd forgotten about that. He looked from the cigarette to the ceiling and back again. Gingerly tested his side, rotated his head. His temple spiked with agony, and the room began to wobble -- no, not moving anywhere just yet. Too bad he couldn't neutralize the smoke detector.
"Fuck it." He lit the cigarette, inhaled as deeply as he could before his bruised lungs protested, and shielded the tiny flame with his hand as the sprinklers turned on.
"Computer, give me the outside of the Tufala house, second story roof, nighttime, summer, 73 degrees?"
The roof materialized around him so that he was sitting with his back to the window in the rain. He leaned his head back against the wall and exhaled, trying to calm the turmoil inside.
A second later, his commlink beeped. "Communication embargo finished. Delayed transmission from Steel Violet."
He listened to the transmission, slightly baffled by it. Failed him?
Nikolai took another drag off the cigarette and opened transmission, exhaustion replacing the tension in his muscles. "Marlene? You there?" The smart-aleck reply he was about to make stalled on the tip of his tongue. "I don't know why you think you failed me, but you don't have to apologize. What happened back there was my own damn fault."
* * *
He'd been replaying it too, Marlene realized. She'd seen enough of Chernobyl in the danger room. What on earth could he feel guilty about? He'd saved her from getting mucked about with Otaku that first time, and at great cost to himself.
"No, Nikolai. I should have gotten us out of there once I saw Otaku was there. Hell," she paused, remembering that Nikolai often forgot that she has full use of English vocabulary, "I shouldn't have gotten taken over in the first place. I had countermeasures in place and they all failed the minute he appeared. If I wasn't an android..." How galling to be so easily controlled, so manipulated, a doll, no. Marlene felt nauseous. She'd had enough reminders that day, with her not-quite-right parents opening up her head in front of her friends, learning that in this world, this version of Earth, they created her to save their disabled daughter. Even though she didn't need a lot of sleep, none of the team had gotten any downtime since dinner on Volcano Island. Dinner with her parents and "new" sister.
* * *
" -- and if I had been using half a brain, neither of us would have been headed up there in the first place. Onyx and I have been over strategy for those two half a dozen times, and the minute we show up I forget everything. So you were an android, and I -- I was just stupid. "
He lit a second cigarette off the butt of the first one, his hand shaking with emotion, and flung the butt away. "There's no excuse. I knew better -- I knew better! I was just..." Inhaled the arid smoke, he searched for the right words and wondered absently why he wasn't just cutting the conversation short. No, she deserved an explanation. She'd been through a lot because of his miscalculation.
"I was still angry from talking to Misha, and I let it cloud my judgment. He knew all the right notes to hit, he just got the song wrong -- and I handed us over to Chernobyl on a platter." His voice was low and bitter, full of self-directed scorn and anger. "I'm so fucking sick of being lied to and manipulated. I swear, if just one of these people would treat m -- " he caught himself, corrected quickly, "-us like human beings instead of resources to be used and exploited -- "
I'd fight for them, he realized, a little disgusted at the ache he felt inside him. That was it, that was what had been bothering him all this time. It wasn't just the blatant manipulation, the exploitation, the lies and deceit -- it was the fact that not one of them had apparently ever cared enough about him to figure out how to do it well.
* * *
"God, it makes me so mad!" Marlene said. "What they did to you. They, they had no right. It's -- it's what makes them bad people." Thinking of something, Marlene sent a brief email to Nikolai, with Kant's "Ethical Philosophy" book linked. He'd find that interesting. Ethics as treating people as ends, not means. As subjects, not objects.
"I read your file on Marlene Online, Nikolai. They treated you like shit. You deserve better."
We both deserve better, she thought. And then realized that she'd sent the thought over the comm. It happened sometimes when she was distracted, but she blushed inwardly.
"Bringing up your mother now -- too little too late, the fucker," she said angrily, still watching the unconscious Otaku. Well, at least the comm was silent to the policemen around her.
"Parents should... parents should have children because they want children, not because they want someone who they can use as a weapon, as a tool, as a way to save other children..." Why did I say that, Marlene asked herself. Oh, because I'm angry and upset and still grieving the loss of my "real" parents, another part of her answered, analytically. Real mom, real dad, you were excellent with the emotions, she thought. Too bad these Stingrays don't have half your genius -- or sensitivity. Or love.
"Oh, dammit," Marlene said, ending with a bit of a sob. The emotion was almost overwhelming her ability to articulate.
* * *
"Wehile we're wishing for fairytales, why don't we solve world hunger and send Chernobyl to the moon?" He looked forlornly at the rest of his sodden cigarette pack. Not even a flamethrower was going to help light a third one. His hair was plastered to his forehead now, dripping down into his eyes. Time to leave, in more ways than one.
"People suck, Marlene. You can't trust them and you can't rely on them, and even if they are trying to do the right thing, nine times out of ten they'll do the selfish thing instead. You got lucky once; you had people who loved you. That's more than a lot of people get."
That's a lot more than I got. Nikolai pushed himself up to his feet. No vertigo -- good. He shook his head, sending water droplets flying, and the room spun around again as a throbbing pain started up in his temple. He stepped forward to steady himself and his foot slipped in the water, landing him on his ass with a splash and a curse as his started to slide for the edge. Without thinking, he reached out and grabbed for the sill, wrenching his arm as he remembered belatedly that it was all just illusion.
"Shit, I hate being dizzy." Did he just say that out loud? Fuck. "Sorry, Marlene. Don't mind me, I'm just feeling sorry for myself and taking it out on you." He pulled himself slowly upright on the window sill. "Look, Yvette told me a little about - well, you know. And I understand if you don't want to talk about it, because I really don't like to even think about it, but I'll try not to be an utter dick about it if you do."
* * *
"I'll talk about it." Marlene said, angry, at the world, at Nikolai, at... What the hell was she doing, Marlene thought. Nikolai was dizzy -- why -- a quick search of the memory of finding him, yes, didn't someone say something about a spinal tap? He wouldn't listen but he's clearly not in any state to be doing anything. And here she was feeling sorry for herself and he could still be in danger -- no, the information came to her as readily as breathing. Spinal taps aren't dangerous, but very painful. In a quick nonverbal move -- it wasn't hard, his cigarette was out anyway -- Marlene persuaded the Training Room computer to turn off the sprinklers and change the scene to a hill... no, he likes the roof... still the roof, but low, warm, summer afternoon. Not too bright, just a little hazy, not too hot, well within comfortable human parameters of someone raised in Russia, good. The water should dry up soon enough. No annoyingly cheery birds or anything, just some crickets in the background, very, very soft.
All this was accomplished in less than a second, taking barely any of her processing speed. It was, after all, the sort of thing she was originally made to do. Make humans' lives easier.
"...but you should really stay lying down for a little bit. If you want. So you'll get better faster. I mean, sure, you can leave, we both know that." What were they saying? Right. "I -- I don't blame this world's Stingrays. Or Kjirstie. They don't know. How could they know another reality?" God, she sounded whiny even to herself. It's a lot more than what Nikolai got, she thought, stop being insensitive, as it came to her that he's feeling hurt, betrayed by everyone linked to his past, and stupid for trusting anyone, and had probably been feeling that way since the day they met. "I already know what to do about it. I'm a better Marlene for being from the other Earth. It just -- still hurts. I've lost my parents, but I -- I can still adapt. I can still be more than what they all expect me to be." So can you, Nikolai, she thought. Not a doll. Damn, that made her so angry. Clearly her original parents wanted her to protect her autonomy with the fierceness of a human, and now, anyone's autonomy. It was more important than whether or not she became a killer. "This isn't about idealism, Nikolai. Love and friendship are as much the human condition as pain. That's just science." It was really hard to put into words what massive quantities of reading about human psychology and philosophy had taught her, not to mention over a decade of human interaction, most of it sentient on her part. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, she thought. She tasted the words as if for the first time. She wished she could just upload the feeling of it into Nikolai.
"The most dangerous people were those who think they were doing the right thing, but forget that the means ARE the end." Including, possibly, most of the original Circle. "It's hard to choose, but people can. The people in your past -- they made choices, and they failed you. They're not worthy of you, Nikolai. You deserve better. You deserved it then, you deserve it now, and you deserve it in the future. It's not a fairytale..." He did always have to be a bit of a dick, didn't he? "...it's the truth."
Why it was that she felt she had to get this particular point through to him, she wasn't sure, consciously, but an awful lot of processing under the surface was saying that for his own good and the good of the team, he needed to believe it. Or at least recognize that she did, which was true. She knew from a pattern double-check that he'd had ample opportunity to betray them, mess them up, but at each turn, aside from being a major pain in the ass and mean to her, he'd supported them, made them more effective, helped the most vulnerable people who'd come to them. Then she remembered that he was prickly, unpredictable, and for all she knew he'd react with anger at her. She braced herself.
* * *
Nikolai blinked in surprise at the sprinklers stopped. He hadn't told them to do anything -- although the cigarette was no longer lit, so maybe -- but then the scene changed around him, night lightening into afternoon sun.
She was watching him. He didn't know why, but it made him smile, even though -- ow -- moving his head made it hurt. Two could play at that game, though. She wanted to watch, let her get an eyeful. Moving gingerly, he sat up and stripped off his leather jacket, draping it over the windowsill to dry off a little. The shirt followed next, spread out on the rooftop, a virtual clone of the one he'd handed over to her earlier when --
Okay, so maybe he wasn't going to take his pants off after all. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but... his mind flashed back to that afternoon, Marlene bursting through the doors. No, definitely not taking it off now. He looked down, willing his body to behave itself. But glancing down made him look at his chest, at the bruises flowering around the skin where Chernobyl had hit him, in real life as well as in the program, and it all seemed like a stupid idea anyhow. What was he thinking even joking about... he didn't... Otaku... shit, he probably should have gotten a few kicks in along with the broken fingers.
"...it's the truth."
Nikolai snorted. "That's bullshit. It's not hard to choose at all. It's easy to choose, as simple as breathing. Either you do the right thing or you don't. People choose to do the wrong thing because they're lazy or they're scared or they just don't care or they're evil twisted fucks like Chernobyl. This isn't about what you or I deserve, or even what we choose -- it's about what we're going to get." He closed his eyes, and he was back in the room, staring up at the padded walls, then pushed the image away with a shudder.
"You say you can't blame this world's Stingrays -- well I can. 'How could they know another reality?'" he mimicked her words cynically. "How could they not? You were standing right in front of them and they couldn't see it. You were right fucking there, living proof that you are more than the sum of their parts, and they couldn't see it because it was fucking inconvenient. Because that would have meant that they might maybe have done something wrong. So it was easier to tell themselves you weren't in pain, it was just a brilliant bit of engineering on their part, another reason to pat themselves on the back. If love and kindness are part of the human condition, then how the hell do you explain those two icicles? You're more human than they'll ever be!" And still you sit there making excuses for their poor behavior, he thought sardonically. I don't know what you deserve, Marlene, but I know they don't deserve you.
"And they're not going to change," he continued. He was speaking to both of them now, himself as well as her, about the Stingrays, about Misha, about Ivan wherever he was. "They're not. I've been looking my whole life for someone doing the right thing for the right reasons. But you know what they say about people -- you can tell they're lying because their lips move."
He picked up his shirt again, wincing slightly at the motion, but glad to feel the shoulder loosening back up. Nothing permanent damaged; he'd just pushed himself too hard too fast.
"You're beginning to sound like you pity me, Marlene. That would be a mistake." He twisted the shirt back and forth, wringing it out as much as possible before slipping it over his chest. "I don't need pity, from you or anyone else." The words came out perhaps harsher than he'd intended, and they wouldn't stop, either, which was almost worse. "I don't need anyone to tell me what I deserve. I like my life the way it is, the way I am, and I don't want or need that to change. I don't need anything. I don't need anyone." He was vaguely aware he was basically shouting. He was also aware that he was lying.
"I don't need anyone... I don't," he stuttered, out of breath. What was he saying? He wished the headache would go away; it had to be clouding his thinking. Why else would he even be having this conversation -- a discussion he was pretty sure he would regret later on, he thought, reaching for his damp jacket.
"See? There I go again, being a dick." He shrugged the jacket on, ignoring the water that squished down onto his back through the lining, unconsciously striking a defensive pose.
"You were right the first time, what you told Yvette back at the concert. I'm just a jerk, I really am. I'm not nice. Yeah, that was Obscura, using me to hurt Yvette, but it doesn't make my part in it any better." He slicked his hair back, flicking the water droplets onto the ground.
"I'm not a hero. I'm not trying to win any popularity contests. I'm not doing this to save the world. I'm here because I'm sick of being lied to and manipulated and ignored when it's not convenient. I'm sick of watching it happen to everyone else. I won't be anyone's puppet. If this is the only way I can make sure that people like Obscura and Chernobyl and my uncle and Odessa get stopped, then so be it.
"I'm just an asshole with the power to make people listen to him." He smiled, tight-lipped, a sneer aimed harshly inward. "And here I am, taking it out on you when all you did was contact me to apologize for something that wasn't even your fault."
* * *
One of the problems with being a computer was that Marlene's Massive Parallel Processing Unit (MPPU) just worked so fast. So while Nikolai was talking, associations were coming up from everywhere. And putting them into words, the right words, was hard. Mind you, most of what the MPPU performed didn't notify her at the sentient level, like moving her body and sustaining her systems and noticing when humans needed something. She could attend to them if and when she wanted but didn't have to. But the connections that she'd made before would sometimes leap up into the forefront of her consciousness. Instead of bothering Nikolai with them right now, she sent him another email with a couple other links: the witch's song from Into the Woods (You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice, the witch snarls at the "heroes"), Terazu's essay on heroism as involving sacrifice regardless of popularity, and a personal favorite essay of hers about nature and nurture and how social programming (human learning) was often more difficult to change than nature.
Although she did sniffle during some of what he said about the Stingrays, she found herself, oddly, not getting mad at him. Quiet. It wasn't the first time someone had yelled at her, particularly when she wasn't a bodily presence in the room. He was so patently in pain himself, and flailing around. Human psychology in action. He was speaking in the clichés of someone hardened, clichés that had probably helped him survive, but she knew he was too smart for them. His actions for the team belied his words. But she was glad her body wasn't there. Her most safe, secure, fundamental level was that of a mind, watching and helping others, so the setting was helping her feel -- not detached, but not as reactive, either. A brief memory, Erik -- her Erik, not Earth2 Erik, yelling at her -- If the calculations are correct, why isn't it working? and throwing his clipboard across the room. It seemed the same. It wasn't her fault this time either. If she'd been there, in her body, who knows, it'd probably feel like an attack. And honestly, she thought, she'd had quite enough of being in her body just then, as she continued to watch the paralyzed Otaku.
"Well," she said. "Human programming takes a long time to change." She paused, hoping that'd sink in. It covered so many people.
"As for the Stingrays, I have to figure out if I want to prove myself to them. Preconceptions -- stereotyping -- it'd take time, it's probably not worth the effort, they think they know me and they don't, they don't want me the same way..." You're thinking too fast again, Marlene thought, a dozen articles on stereotyping and schema persistence leaping to mind, along with other cringe-worthy memories.
"As for pity, think what you want, but I don't really know what it is, so I can't say if that's what I feel." Chew on that, Nikolai, and it was true. She tried to pattern-match pity with what she felt, and it came up lacking. Had she ever pitied anyone? She couldn't remember. She'd always been surrounded by thoroughly competent people. "No, it doesn't match," she said, blandly.
"No, telling you what you deserve is just cold, robot logic, I'm afraid. Look, all I'm saying is that none of us deserves to be treated as someone's plaything. 75% of humanity treats each other badly because of negligence, not because of malice. Those are the most unpredictable, scary people -- the ones who just don't realize what they're doing to you. But you're right. It does matter what we're going to get. What's going to happen in the future. We have to plan. We all have to be better next time we meet them. I don't expect people like Otaku to change, or Chernobyl. The Stingrays -- at least they think they're doing the right thing. They can be shown that they're wrong. They might even care. But -- oh, shit, Nikolai, I just remembered. Do you think Penumbra is working through Otaku, Chernobyl, all of them?"
* * *
The topic change shouldn't have relieved him, should in fact have alarmed him, but he took it gratefully anyway. He hadn't meant to yell at her -- that had just sort of happened. Her ability to forgive frustrated and exasperated him. But she'd had as bad a day as he had -- worse, if you included Otaku. He'd had his uncle, but Misha's lies were nothing he wasn't used to, while the change in her parents clearly had fractured her world. And then there was the fight back in Freedom City -- he still didn't know what exactly had happened after he'd blacked out, but he was pretty sure that Otaku's intentions were a lot less platonic than Chernobyl's had been. And they'd failed. Chernobyl had gotten his device, and who knew what else.
No, he hadn't meant to raise his voice. The headache, he decided. Had to be. She wasn't getting under his skin.
And anyway, Penumbra was a lot more important at the moment.
"I think that's pretty much a given, Marlene." He raised up a hand, counted off the evidence on his fingers. "We know Penumbra is on the move. We know there's a portal in Arizona. We know that something terrible is blocked up behind it trying to get through. We know that Chernobyl stole a nuclear-powered device that opens portals. And we know that Penumbra, whatever it really is, needs agents to act through. It's just too much of a coincidence." He closed the splayed out fingers into a tight fist, lowered his head for a moment. "And when Professor Xenon took Wallflower into his office to look at her, he told me something else...
"Right before he closed the door, he apologized to me. He said I was right, that he should have told us the whole story long before now... and then he said, 'It's started.'"
Onyx didn't need the Danger Room to dissect the team's failure to stop Chernobyl. She could replay the scenario in her head. With a little bit of mental effort, she could even imagine it from other perspectives. Having seen Marlene's playback helped with that. And from every imaginable perspective, Onyx looked the same:
Useless.
She didn't really want to think about it anymore. She wanted to go clubbing or watch the sun come up somewhere exotic... she wondered for a moment whether Professor Xenon cared about her occasional jaunts to exotic locales, but dismissed the thought. If he cared, he could do something about it. Regardless, no matter what she was doing to keep herself busy, there was nothing on this earth that could occupy enough of her cognitive function to keep her from apprehending the truth.
She had been useless. Worse than useless, because Blue Jay had been forced to miss a potential offensive beat in order to heal her after she took a radiation blast to the chest. Of course, by the time she'd adapted her Multifunction Nanotools to the situation, it was too late. Amazing that so much could go wrong in less than a minute. She had to recalibrate the tools, clearly, but there was something wrong with them. Something was wrong with all of her equipment, actually. Had been since that weird time-disruption incident, and she was somewhat concerned. Her zero-point fount had at one time been able to generate enough energy to simultaneously power the nanites, her force field, an anti-personnel shield, gravity bolts, and near-light flight speed before that incident. It was, speaking strictly in terms of theory, impossible for it to be producing less power now. Unless something had changed in the local universe on a quantum level.
She noted all this while simultaneously feeling annoyed that it was so obvious to everyone that she was indeed using technology rather than magic, or at least to Bowman, unless someone had simply told him, which wasn't out of the realm of possibility. And that reminded her of the rather worthless Dr. Penwitch and she made a mental note to do some research as to what sort of spooky ops would simultaneously not be considered black ops yet strike the fear of God into the people they were paying to do work for them (which, in turn, forked another thought process: more anger and concern, that the government was actually in the business of killing people in order to cover up operations of dubious purpose). And she was rather amused/concerned at the suggestion that taxpayer dollars weren't funding that project. If they weren't, then the government either had some hidden source of near-limitless funds for such operations, or else they were printing said funds themselves. The economic consequences of either of those would be dire over the long term.
But the important thing, the thing at the forefront, was that she had been useless in the battle. Of course, her teammates browbeat her into jumping directly into the fray instead of taking a moment to plan, but the subsequent attempt to "plan" the rescue of Envoy had been so laughable that it was clear to her that planning was a waste of time, and that she had to be better at rapidly applying, not to mention withstanding, brute force. The notion that landing on the roof was a bad idea because it would give the enemy more time to prepare made her almost angry. Better to head in, guns blazing, then to attempt some reconnaissance. It was ridiculous, but that was beside the point. It was also clearly the way Tensile was best deployed. She wondered wryly why Fate, or Brian's parents, or both, had bothered to give him the ability to make himself incorporeal. He was no less vulnerable to attack than when he was at full density, and he clearly preferred smashing barriers to moving through them intangibly. But none of that changed the fact that she'd been useless.
She had considered seriously the notion of hanging up her cape, so to speak. Considered it frequently, in fact. That would give her more time to do research and experimentation, to see whether some of her inventions could be built on a scale that would actually make them useful to other people rather than merely lending her bedroom an unparalleled "gee whiz" quality. She wondered how the Circle managed to build their base way out in the middle of nowhere. How Otaku could build his stuff on such a scale (a scale that, admittedly, was still far better suited to making the world worse than to making it better. That made her wonder if perhaps high-tech villains were all embittered idealists at heart; people who realized the world couldn't benefit from their creations, or wouldn't even if it could. Her admittedly-minuscule data sample belied this theory, though. Otaku seemed to be little more than a staggeringly smart, demented pervert).
Other options aside from quitting didn't seem very appealing. She thought perhaps she could bring the fields and blasts online at something close to her previous full power if she discarded the Multifunction Nanotools, but that provided the team no non-redundant benefits. Restricting herself to niche functions not already filled by other members of the team left her vulnerable to threats that might respond only to brute force. It was best to have everything potentially at her disposal.
And as far as quitting went, well, she realized that was a notion she entertained to make herself feel like she was occasionally a reasoning, thinking being with control over her destiny rather than a bundle of instinct and conditioning that happened to have cognitive faculties. Her sense of responsibility and the regrettable thrill she felt when in danger ultimately made the idea of sitting on the sidelines unpalatable, at least for now. She suspected that a few more blows like the one Chernobyl dealt to her might condition her to feel otherwise. But she was not eager to test that hypothesis empirically.
She sighed and started speaking in Latin, the language with which she interfaced with her design machines. She'd worked out a way to halve the time it took to reconfigure the nanites. It wasn't as fast as she might want, but it did mean she wouldn't have to flee the battlefield every time she needed another power. Or if she did, she could return almost immediately afterward.
But she knew, as she did it, that it was missing the point. That the reason she'd been of no use was that she was simply not very good at fighting. She could compensate for that by building combat aides with the Multiform Nanotools, but that limited the level of energy they could deliver.
Simply put, unless something changed radically in the power she could pull from quantum space, she had to get better at fighting.
And that meant the Danger Room. A LOT of Danger Room. "Computer," she said, "Is the Danger Room available for a solo lesson?"
"Negative," the Computer replied. "The Danger Room is currently in use. Occupant: Envoy."
Three shrill beeps followed. "Warning: Fire identified. Sprinkler system engaged. Activate visual security feed?"
"Uhm. Affirmative," Onyx replied, brow furrowed. She touched a button on the ankh she wore, and from it oozed a glossy black substance, not unlike molten tar; it spread from the ankh to cover her body in less than a second, fitting her like another layer of skin. A second later, boots, gloves, and accessories formed from the blackness, and she was in costume.
Whatever's going on in there, she thought to herself, I think no one on the team needs to see anyone else naked for awhile. At least not in a professional context.
"Computer, full sensory feed from the Danger Room. Clandestine."
Seven p.m., and the late afternoon shadows are reaching across the lawn at the Tufala House. It'll be dark by 7:30, but right now there's still some light. Envoy sits with his spine to the wall, on the roof outside the room that used to be his. He's been in this spot a lot lately, but today is the first time it's been the real roof, the real sunlight, the real house. There's a million things he should be doing instead of sitting here, but right now he doesn't care.
That's a lie, though. Right now he cares too much.
It's funny how much the human mind can make itself forget. Until an hour ago, when he'd let the professor rifle through his memories of the Earth they'd come from, Envoy had done his best to forget what they had seen that last apocalyptic day and night of Earth One. But for the sake of understanding, of confirmation, he'd let Professor Xenon relive it all in his mind. He can remember it all now, as vivid as when it happened -- the monstrous demons, the destruction, the unavoidable certainty that if they did not leave there, they were going to die. It was a doomed world, he'd felt it under his skin. It hadn't died – yet – but it was dying, condition terminal, no chance of remission.
And now it was coming here. It was Penumbra.
"There are only two outcomes possible," Xenon had said. "Either we succeed, and defeat Penumbra, or Penumbra will envelop this planet, corrupt it at its molecular level, and herald the extinction of Earth. The only comfort is that if we fail, we will undoubtedly be dead and not have to watch as it happens."
They can't fail... not again. Please, not again.
The fading sunbeams warm his face. He closes his eyes, letting them spread across his eyelids, trying to memorize the sensation. It was so cold, in that future. So dark. Without really thinking about it, he runs his left hand down the length of the right, elbow to thumb. Marlene, he thinks, rubbing his left thumb over his palm as a strange inner warmth spreads through him. She'd held out her hand to help him stand up earlier, on the academy roof. He hadn't -- they'd -- it was the first time in a very long time that he'd reached out to touch anyone without a clenched fist. It seemed even longer since anyone had reached out to him.
She's been in his thoughts a lot in the last 24 hours – well, not just in his thoughts. It was... nice... talking to her earlier today. Nice to have someone who understands, at least a little, and doesn't want anything from him at the same time. There was a lot more to her than he'd been letting himself see. Stupid to have been angry at her so long for something that wasn't really her fault. Just... stupid.
"I'm sorry, Marlene."
He says it to himself, because he can't say it to her. All that talk about choices – I've made my choice, what kind of god will you be? – and it turns out he's full of shit. Shit and hypocrisy. Maybe there never was a choice, maybe he's just been deluding himself all this time. Maybe you can't escape what you're created to be.
Xenon's words echo damningly in his head. "There needs to be a shining light, but there also need to be those who take the actions that would tarnish the light. Not all who are not shining lights are its enemies. Survival often depends on horrible things that are often taken for granted. One can never truly do anything for the greater good except in only a few circumstances, and those circumstances carry horrible consequences. And the future may very likely call upon you to shoulder those consequences."
Envoy pulls out a cigarette and lights it. His hand is shaking a little, he observes. Pent-up emotion. He'll have to lock it down tighter, box it away. Get his control back.
Xenon had looked directly at him. "You once asked why I don't work under the auspice of the Liberty League, and I told you it was because we could not win. The Liberty League must be allowed to be the example that it is. They are the stars that everyone will look at. They must be able to look at something and be able to believe in it as something pure, as flawed as they are. They will not be the ones who make those hard decisions. They are ill-equipped. A pure symbol cannot sustain that amount of tarnish. But you will."
The words are bitter in his mind. It doesn't matter what he chooses, does it? It doesn't matter that he and Protonik come from the same project – they are miles apart. One of the light. One of the shadows.
"In your history – do you know the story in your own history of the town of Coventry? Things are going to happen soon – you'll have to forgive me, because I can't tell you what exactly they will be. I don't know, myself; I only know that they will happen, because they always do."
Coventry, Envoy remembers: World War II, a town sacrificed to die, for the sake of the so-called greater good. He wonders how many times the alien has watched these sorts of events play out, to be so unassailably certain.
"Envoy – from what I've seen, why I've brought you to this place – you are heroes not of the light of the star, but of the greater good and of terrible decisions. I only hope that when you make the decisions that you're going to have to, that the light will still remain."
The shadows are falling across the roof now, the light withdrawing for another day. His skin has already begun to cool in the encroaching dusk. The crumbling embers of his cigarette glow increasingly dimly in a face now veiled by the gloom.
"You are heroes not of the light of the star, but of the greater good."
I want to be of the light, he thinks, exhaling grey smoke through his nostrils. What's the point of being a hero if the only way to save the world is to choose to let some of it die?
There has to be some way to change it this time.
I don't want to make these choices, he thinks. I don't want this responsibility. He crushes the cigarette out, tosses it off the roof, anger and hurt and resentment welling up in him faster than he can tamp them down. I'm only 17.
But he'll do it. He knows he will. If he can't find another way… if they can't find another way... if there is no other way. He crosses his hands across his knees, hugs them close to him. He warned Marlene he was a jerk -- So be it. It's the easy way out. It's the only way he knows, the only armor he's got. Let them dislike him, if they want to. Let them despise him if and when the time comes. Let them blame him for making the hard decisions.
Let them stay in the light.
In fifteen minutes, when the sun has set, he will stand up, collect himself, and begin to do whatever needs to be done. In fifteen minutes he will go back to headquarters and sit down with the database and try to figure out what they should be seeing but aren't. In fifteen minutes. Things can wait that long, surely. Just a little longer, until he can get his head together and his hands back under control. He buries his head in his arms and thinks, fifteen minutes is enough.
Alone on the roof, as the shadows gather and the sky fades to black, the echoes of a dying world inside his mind, Envoy leans his head forward and lets the tears fall.