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."

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