THE OVERWOODS [[Midnight's Notebooks]]

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

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

I win like that

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

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

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

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

Or the rest of the telepath world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They might be-" Kaylee started.

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

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

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

"Keep shooting," I said.

[[ BONUS: CHAPTER XLIX OF THE OVERWOODS - UNABRIDGED FULL ORIGINAL VERSION ]]

--ovw--XLIX--ovw--

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

MONDAY

8:59 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Status: Unavailable

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

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

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

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

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

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

No.

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

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

I felt the subtle gush of heat leave my body upon contact and out through my left foot. Connor broke free, spun around, and threw a punch to the Talon's nose the millisecond that I front flipped in pike position over them both. On the half turn right before my landing, Connor dropkicked the large creature in both shins.

And in that split moment right before the Talon toppled onto his knees, my right palm and right elbow connected into the same temple I'd gone after earlier. I caught light green and teal-tinted snow on my wet lips as I inhaled again. The male Talon attempted some kind of very inexperienced parry to Connor's next punch, and then an even worse attempt at evasion, failing miserably at both. It was like watching me at the real-competition-vault (not the beach-makeshift-table-vault) before I understood my powers- both physical and mental. I followed up with attacks from both elbows to a gainer flash kick to modified back walkover. I acro layout series'ed backwards to give way for Connor Meadows.

He followed with his left hooks and a very intentional spit in the Talon's face (those left hooks, I myself was very familiar with, but thank goodness he never spit in my face *in that way* during any physical beatdowns between the two of us) until I lifted off the ground again for a butterfly kick to modified twisting fast hurricanrana (Connor Meadows was familiar with *THAT*), with Connor stomping his boot down hard on the male Talon's chest upon slam-to-ground impact.

"Make sure he doesn't get back up," said Connor.

I performed a modified back walkover up from the snowy ground and into my default fight stance while Connor lit himself another megacigarette. And then he threw one at me for no reason. I caught it with a look on my face, shadow-stepped towards him, and put it in his pocket. I then walked over to the Talon lying on the ground.

I looked at him, observing him for a moment while pain flared up in both my feet, both my legs, and in my left hand- even though I hardly used it.

"Christopher," uttered Connor in his slow, slurring, South-ish moo. Not that he was a cow or anything. But he sometimes sounded like one. I looked at him.

I said nothing.

"You gon' set that hand on fire and headlock this monster," he said, "or what?"

I took a few small apple bits from one of my pockets, and laid them on the ground, in a straight line.

I shook my head.

"No."

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

Neither was I... probably. If I thought about it.

--ovw--XLIX.I--ovw--

MONDAY

9:04 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Status: Still unavailable

--ovw--

Sam "Alacrity/Edge/Eldredge" Shilberg zoomed in towards us- a lightning-quick flash of Christmas lights. A bullet of racing, bolting, speeding comet-tailing shining yellow and golden and pink and military-green clothing, and dreadlocked blond hair- to stomp the Talon man in the head for her maybe 7,386,553,025th knockout of the year and then immediately zoomed off again.

I remember I caught her smile at me, for just a quarter of a millisecond.

I smiled back, and songs started to play in my little corgi marshmallow strawberry ice cream oatmeal-with-raspberries vanilla cookie mind.

A combustifly perched on my left shoulder, where Happy usually settled himself.

Jupiter (and Jupiter Two) tried doing that, too- a bunch of times- but both dogs were bigger than I was.

--ovw--

At Windcreek, Jupiter Two flamed every bird-person Kaylee didn't shoot. It was an awesome sight.

"Bet we could eat them," Connor said.

"Shut up, Connor," I replied.

--ovw--

Jupiter...

Sam once gave me a bottle of some kind of alcohol- vodka, I think it was- that she stole from V1, when I told her the story of what happened to Jupiter.

I might've mentioned Jupiter didn't die of natural causes.

I was surrounded by animal abuse.

As if abusing the child was STILL NOT ENOUGH

I never drank the alcohol, but I kept the bottle. Penguinowo protects it.

Typical brutal from the streets unrefined impulsive and crazy and high and junkie but very friendly and kind and very reliable Sam, I thought to myself, without literally *any* punctuation marks or grammar rules (sue me)- Beautiful girl with eyes just like the Overwoods snow. The fellow dirty fighter friend I loved both inside of the ring and out. The only dirty fighter friend I had in the world who had a... a similar "streets" kind of hypervigilance as I had; we both moved fast for a reason; we both ran and also attacked like poisonous hellhounds; she understood, and I understood her. We just coped in different ways, we all did- like Kaylee; like James; like Connor; Henry and Tiana and Wyatt and Chaquille and those drug-addicted smokers at the webwork, most of whom actually turned out to be very nice humans under the shells of leather and scars and eleven thousand tattoo coatings.

--ovw--

"I am not gonna lie," Kaylee said as she shot more arrows. "It literally does smell like chicken."

"Good chicken," Connor added.

I rolled my eyes.

--ovw--

People didn't talk to Sam the same way I did. In fact, most people just didn't talk to her at all. Unless they thought she was a hooker, or something.

I didn't understand why; I still don't. Her parents didn't speak to her with any respect because she used to date a girl that they didn't like. The girl overdosed on some kind of crushed pill and died, but her parents still treated her like a handicapped stray rat.

I didn't have any parents, unless you count the "legal" "guardians" who sexually abused me. I didn't drink or smoke. We came from completely different universes- but to me, it was almost like we practically had the same name. We were both totally thrown to wolves.

Both street rats. Both damaged. Both fearful and wounded and scarred and treated as complete, total, useless and worthless trash. Treated as totally invisible. And we both believed we really were worthless, yet we still fought, fought for ourselves because nobody else ever, ever, ever would.

Sam told me her mother molested her, and that her father introduced her to megacigarettes and other drugs around the age of nine.

--ovw--

"I swear, youse guys makin' a girl hungry."

I looked at Sam.

"You'd eat a mutated human?"

--ovw--

I saw her mother the next day. In the streets of V4. And it took more than everything in me and more than everything in the whole universe not to charge at her and throw her to the ground and crush every single bone in her body and not to tear apart every tendon, tooth, tissue, intestine, organ, follicle and strand of hair and piece of cartilage in her physical sack of pathetic demonic mentally fractured tainted adulterated contaminated cells-

I didn't do it; I looked away and carried on with my life, and never mentioned seeing the walking demonic bag of actual crap to Sam because I didn't want Sam to relapse on fentanyl or on heroin or whatever it was and I didn't want Sam to drink all night, either. I let her beat me up in SRA. She deserved more than just a victory, and so I also bought her a rainbow bracelet. I bought one for me, too, and we both had one. We wore wear them whenever I'd accompany her out partying, making she didn't do anything too stupid and making sure she got home before she passed out completely on a random dirty unsafe street while peeing on herself- because that's actually happened and it was not fun.

Only days after I saw the evil woman and consciously chose not to murder her, she was hit by a car and died while luring freezing street children with cheap spiked candy. Her husband- Sam's other biological parent- overdosed and died hours later.

I spent that entire night, and the entire next 48 hours afterward, with Sam Shilberg; sometimes with Caleb visiting us. But Sam wasn't worried nor was she upset nor was she going hysterical nor was she grieving; grieving at all. At one point she had cried but said she was only crying tears of pure joy.

She had told me that she was genuinely and truly happy for the first time in her life. And I have to say she didn't seem sad to me in the slightest. She even laughed when I asked her if she knew why she was so happy.

"Because I feel so much safer now," she had said to me. She'd looked from me to Caleb and back to me. She was holding a clear plastic bag with gray pills and green pills and white pills in it. "Youz guys wan' help me flush this shit?"

That was when I knew, at least for myself: she was just like me. Just in a different body.

She was sober after that. Well, sober from half the stuff she used to do.

Since her money wasn't going to drugs as much, she could spend them on video games and pearl necklaces and hair accessories and different hair dyes and fancy sunglasses. So that's what she did. I told her her natural shade of blond was beautiful and perfect just as it was.

"It yeminz me of that disgusting bitch, y'dickhead!" she'd hollered at me, half her R's turning into Y's the way they typically did. "Hoe had the same fuckin' haiyh."

I said nothing.

"YO," she'd continued, "JUS KEEPIN SHIT ABEAN WITMY YUNG BUL Y'KNOW?"

I had no idea what that meant.

She'd gone from black, to red, to purple, to just her usual hair, but in dreadlocks and with pink highlights.

We were both underestimated sometimes.

Two skinny adults with long hair who didn't eat much, but ones who could still physically (and mentally) strike you much harder than others- wherever needed, whenever needed, however needed.

--ovw--

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

"Does your eye hurt?" Connor asked me.

"I don't know, what do you think?" I said.

"I think I gave you retinal detachment to the tenth level."

"Fiftieth," I said.

"That's what she said."

"STOP."

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

Connor, apparently, was otherwise occupied as well.

I heard the sound of a blow behind me.

"What are they holding?" Connor asked me.

Other thoughts please other thoughts other thoughts other thoughts other thoughts

He said something he said something he said something

Something.

Actually I don't know

What did he say?

"WHAT," Connor Meadows mooed at me, "ARE THEY HOLDING?"

I turned off my telepathic guard for only a moment while I analyzed the weapons of our adversaries.

Ohhhhhh they're armed LOL

Zomg lol yas armed and big and evil and selfish and ugly creatures ofc

Ofcccc

Just like the ones that used to rule the planet

Lol

They wazz soooo big tho

Lowkey iz theez even still telepathic thoughts anymore because real????

I triple-shut the doors to my mind, and put up four telepathic barriers- effectively murdering one-half of my strength.

I blinked away monsters and mental-tsunami-memory-ice-glacier-flash-floods of people larger than me holding sharp or blunt or heavy or rusted objects back in the Lowdown.

I shook off memories of blood puddles mixed with gin and of and crushed red pills and of vomit and of broken bodies and of bloodstains and alcohol stains, and of constant sexual abuse and of constant gaslighting and of constant nightmares.

Nightmares- those, I still have sometimes. And sometimes a lot of them, even as I write this now. Sometimes, when a memory is so ugly (or the person in the memory is), it attempts to ruin the beauty of what's in front of you. But it only does the opposite; it reminds you of what is beautiful and what is not abusive. And sometimes, those who tried to destroy you fail at something else, too- they fail at yet another disgusting piece of miserable evil:

They fail at turning you into them. Because as much as it hurts and feels like garbage, nobody will ever be as miserable as them. Take how you feel but multiply that by ten thousand, another ten thousand and another ten thousand- that's how they feel deep down inside, where it sinks into the subconscious mind, buried under all of their abuse and insanity and lunacy and full-on psychopathness. They can't even express it; they can't even unravel it.

--ovw--

(*Psychopathness because words because English language btw lmao.)

--ovw--

At Windcreek, another massive woman-bird body hit the ground with a thud.

"My fists have never orgasmed so hard," said Sam.

"I'm happy for you," I replied.

I blinked away little light green and teal snowflakes, and I blinked away a few tears.

I started a mental playlist of very un-mainstream indie pop albums from thousands and thousands of years ago; from secret archives granted only to the most talented members recognized by the Union's leaders.

In my case, granted by James.

--ovw--

I thought of James for a minute. His red-orange carrot hair and pistachio ice cream light green eyes.

He once caught me with my ukulele, writing a new song, seemingly alone save for him; that was in the center of the Coliseum at around three in the morning.

I lied and said I was just visualizing strategy for my next SRA, while playing myself some acoustic music. You know, like a normal person/NPC/normie. Eww. And that was years after the first time James found me in the middle of writing a new song, also alone save for him and my pet ukulele. Except that time, I didn't know he was there at all. And I didn't know for years until he told me. It was on the pier at The Port of course. I was walking slowly, just like I always did while I hummed and strummed. Vaguely I can still remember staring blankly at the glow of the combustiflies, at the little hermit crabs, and at the glow of Vicinity Two and the Everglades far in the distance.

"That was precisely 12:00 AM," James had said to me.

I just stared back at him, with literally the most expressionless face imaginable. I remember proactively having to think of things like happy place and whoa, ferrets! in order to not strangle him with ignite on.

"The only 12:00 AM where you were doing something other than working out alone or tumbling alone or physically beating up ex-convicts and child traffickers," he'd continued. "Or sitting. Or crying."

Of course, I said nothing. I remember just fiddling with an empty cardboard box, one that I had in my pocket. Sam gave it to me and it had a few pills in it. I gave her the pills and kept the box.

"That isn't the reason I baptized you as Midnight, though," he had said.

I'd said nothing; I just stared.

BAPTIZED

MY

BUTT.

JAMES.

I wanted to puke on his face.

I only agreed to his shit because money and Malcolm's Vystir issues and because GOODBYE FREAKING UGLYASS LOWDOWN GOODBYE GOODBYE GOODBYE.

To me: That is NOT a BAPTISM. It is NOT now, and it never WAS THEN.

You do NOT give me a name and decide who I am; I decide that.

He gave me a list of names to choose from once, probably because he read my mind; I didn't even look at the list.

Because you can call me whatever you want to call me. I will be the same person. The choices I will make are not dependent on a name or on a label that you call me.

I allowed him to talk and talk and talk and smile at me and talk and laugh and talk and talk and talk and talk some more and laugh and finish talking.

I said nothing.

But I can certainly still remember crying.

--ovw--XLIX.II--ovw--

MONDAY

9:07 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Status: Still unavailable

--ovw--

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

Multiple, actually. Multiple little dark red happy apples and happy little apple bits.

Happy little apples, get it? Happy apples. Hah.

Pun intended fully.

I'm clever.

I repeated simple words in my mind.

It's fine

I have an apple in my pocket

I am not hungry

ORBIPLOSIONZZZZ

Yuh.

I win like that

--ovw--

"WHAT," Connor Meadows mooed at me, "ARE THEY HOLDING?"

I bit my tongue, bit the inside of my cheek, bit my lower lip, and took a closer look just to answer Connor's question.

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

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

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

"You have killer fists already."

"Thanks."

"It wasn't really a compliment."

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

Or the rest of the telepath world.

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

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

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

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

"Y'ALL 'ON NEEDA KEEP TELLIN' ME WHAT TO DO HEEAYH," it said. "I'M HAVING A BLAST YO!" I heard her knuckles connect with a Talon's face- and I saw it from where Connor and I stood. The Talon woman stumbled a million steps back until Sam again pursued her and connected her knockout blow, all the while still throwing hands at the others around her, her brass knuckles gleaming and shining the more she threw her fists. She was a glowing rainbow of pure destruction. I saw her smile at me. "I DUNNO ABOUT YOUZ GUYS!"

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

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

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

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

"They might be-" Kaylee started.

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

"They might be in an experiment. They might be subjected to stuff. They might be. Might be being experimented on, tortured, raped, kidnapped, brainwashed, maimed, killed. Anything- these people do anything and everything and I've seen-" I paused to pull out one knife, throw it in one straight line- at the right wing of a Talon that mercilessly lacerated half of Kaylee's back- before she could say much else. From atop the tall trees around and all above us, Happy the raccoon tossed a mini-apple, which I barely axe-kicked in Kaylee's direction. "Kayles!" I yelled. She caught the apple in her right hand and started consuming it immediately, as her blood saturated the back of the impractical, delicate, silk orange top.

"We don't know," I said. "But I think we all know that if they're tested on or tortured for even one day, and it's my fault, I will never forgive myself."

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

"MORPHINE," said Sam. "More accuyate yite now."

I locked eyes with Sam for a moment, before looking at Connor.

"I gotta agree with the crazy bitch," he said. "You are a walking painkiller."

"Too bad you guys can't get high off it," Kaylee muttered, ostensibly to nobody in particular. She looked at me. "I'm good, Midnight-full-of-rainbows. Morphine. And I owe you an ice cream." She nodded toward the rest of the Talon. "Go give 'em that Danny fire."

I looked towards the Talon and sighed.

"It better be two scoops of cookies-n-cream," I said. "Large scoops. With brownies. And with cherries."

Cherries, and a magic pill and a magic potion for severe PTSD and bad dreams and flashbacks. Thing was, no such potion or pill existed.

Sam grabbed a pill from a pocket and swallowed it dry. For a moment I considered possibly asking her for one.

"Give mah young boul a break," uttered Sam. "You ain't hizz boss yo and you not even employed yo!" Sam cracked her knuckles. Then, she started twirling her strawberry-pink highlighted locks around one finger and performed arguably the most horribly exaggerated, and quite possibly the dumbest (and yet also the funniest) Kaylee impression I had ever seen in my life. She walked on tiptoe; she waltzed a few steps towards me. She did a bow and then also a curtsy while lifting up an invisible orange skirt which I swear only I could see, and said, "Oh, but Marblefox, if you die at the claws of these Talonfolk, I can give you unlimited perfect pink and orange funeral bouquets of the most perfect flowers, while I wear that beautiful, expensive pink U.S. dress you bought for me, and give you the most wholesome of all eulogies!"

Kaylee's nostrils flared, like two invisible green peas becoming slightly bigger invisible green peas. A shift that only I noticed.

I shook my head.

"Y'all read my mind too much, I swear."

"She'd- "

"Die before he does, yeah, I would. The eulogy is mine."

Mentally I replayed Sam's Kaylee impression.

"You guys gotta argue right now?"

"She started it."

"Oh, I'll end it, you just make me."

It was so un-Sam. It was mildly Kayl-esque. I almost laughed inwardly but only almost because stinging on my hands and on my back plus Kaylee's emotional responses can be extremely and unpredictably fragile at times.

Like mine, slightly (well, sort of, I'm usually very predictable if you know me), but with less streets-ish-type-toughening, and also less observer-intel-collector-conditioning, and much, much more princessing.

She and Tiana Ambervi had quite a number of things in common, if I really thought about it.

I watched Jupiter Two and Connor neutralizing our Talon targets.

Sam snorted a few grams of crushed powder from a small sheet of foil she took from a pocket. She knocked out a female Talon; the sound of her fist and the Talon's skull connecting was the loudest sound we all heard, beside our voices and the argument.

Happy covered his eyes with his little raccoon-hands.

"I don't take shit from a spoiled princess who's been rich her entire life," Sam snarled.

Connor walked over quickly and handed her a megacig. "Calm down," he said.

"That's convincing, Connor," I said. "Coming from you."

Kaylee got up, spawned into her hand a hemlock-nightshade hybrid, one of her literally deadliest combinations- it could actually kill you- and took two steps in Sam's direction.

"Kaylee, stop!"

With no obvious verbal warning, Kaylee slammed her massive bow into Samantha Shilberg's stomach, slammed her foot against her shin, spawned a massive branch of what looked like stone pine while her back was still bleeding and took out Sam's Talon opponent- before Sam threw a punch at Kaylee.

Kaylee used the stone pine to shield herself. It cracked, but didn't break.

"You don't know the first thing about Nightingale," she hissed at Sam- her voice both sinister and cautionary- dropping the enormous branch on Sam's toes and spinning once; she slammed her bow into Sam's head and knocked her down. She started screaming. She took the poison plant from her pocket. "And no amount of money- " She double-stabbed a Talon in the neck with oversized pyracantha thorns- "in the world prepares you for kidnapping and torture!"

I looked away. I closed my eyes.

Happy place happy place happy place happy happy happy

I shook my head, and opened my eyes again.

Sam uttered obscenities while scrambling to her feet. She aimed a glowing, brass-knuckled fist at Kaylee until she saw the very deadly hemlock-nightshade hybrid. She froze, her fist still poised by her face; the statue of a girl mid-fight.

Kaylee smiled.

"Survive three months of pure torture," she said to Sam, "and then you can talk smack at me."

Without looking, she tossed the poison plant straight to her right where it collided and bounced off a few Talon. As it hit the ground, it started to rot. Fast. Like mutated plant flesh.

Happy and I exchanged a glance.

"Kaylee- "

As I write this now, I question why I looked.

The Talon that were hit with the plant wheezed, vomited, bent their limbs in odd angles and then curled on the ground. Happy climbed up on my shoulder and I shielded his eyes.

No one had anything to say. Kaylee only had the ability to create fatally poisonous plant mutations- and I mean, only- if she was in extreme psychological agony. Frankly, I still thank God that I didn't get her powers.

"That'll be you next," she said to Sam. I think only I understood the morbid, ominous reference. "My father can have you fired."

"That he can," said Connor, who was lighting yet another megacigarette, snowflakes collecting on his neon-blue whiskers.

"Now," Kaylee continued, still talking to Sam- "shut your dirty Vicinity Four mouth-" amidst arrow-reloads, "or else the only eulogy in the foreseeable future is yours." Then she fired at the Talon, and fired again. Menacingly, she pointed one arrow at Sam's face. I gripped one of my knives; I locked my sights on the bowstring. Sam didn't even look scared.

I watched Kaylee's chest rise and fall, the same way that mine often did when I remembered something, and then she turned and walked back to me.

Just like I did during training.

I put the knife down. I wiped the water off my cheeks.

"Sorry, Chris."

"I'll go help Jupiter."

"Yo, iz we seriously running outta birdbags to pummel?"

I glared at Sam.

"Okay, fine. Go beat 'em up, Morphine, I ain't in the mood no more."

I rolled my eyes.

"Bless 'yer heart, give 'im a break, I punched the boy in the face and y'all can see it. Let the other flamethrower and the tank handle this."

Tank-

"Aww, damn, yo! I thought that'uzz MY PUNCH from last yeayh's SRA. Yeah, no, mine was way better and redder and darker and bigger'enn 'dat. Yo, gimme another megacig." Sam was high. She raised her eyebrow at me and then at Meadows while he muttered something unpleasant under his breath and reluctantly gave Sam a red stick from a box. "I WANT THE GYEEN, THE DAYK GYEEN." Sam took the box of megacigarettes from Connor's hand and fumbled for a dark green stick, and then lit both. She raised her eyebrow at me for a second time and said, "Wuzee mean?" She took a really, really long double-drag from the combo of drug sticks. Literally, I winced, cringed, and flinched all at the same time. It probably tasted horrible. "Other flamethrower?" She asked. "Wuddhe talkin' 'bout?"

I pointed at Jupiter Two, the happiest Samoyed alive. The big white floofy floof trotting around, keeping the Talonfolk busy while we "convened"-

HAH. CONVENED.

More like beat the shit out of each other while doing drugs

Happy was now watching over him and over all of us from tree branches far above, tossing down little dark red apples and little apple chunks as needed.

The little painkiller floof.

:D

:DDDDDDDDD

Widdw painkiwwer fwoof

:3

I changed the playlist on my phone.

"Only flamethrower," I said, correcting Connor. "I don't throw fire at anything. Not literally, anyway. I can throw knives, yes- and even throw myself if needed- but not throw actual flames."

Kaylee snorted. She spawned more Welwitschia arrows.

"You literally set things and monsters and people on fire from the inside by striking them," Kaylee said, her voice still coated with animosity. "Duh. Like, how is that not flamethrowing? A flamethrower is that circle thing on a stove and you do the same thing."

I stared at her.

"Kayles," I said. "I'm pretty sure they call those circle things 'bur-'"

"YO OKAY YO," blurted Sam, interrupting me, "YOU GIRL IZZ THE DUMBEST LITERAL PEASHOOTAH IN THE OVEYWUZZ."

I glared at Sam again.

"YOU ARE VERY HIGH," I said only to Sam, telepathically.

She continued to smoke the two megacigarettes simultaneously, blowing the smoke away from us, which was something so sweet of her to do and not something Belinda ever cared about doing and hence literally never did do, and something that made Sam's usually-emotionally-evoked V4 accent very bearable. To me, anyway. I think she meant to say peashooter. I wasn't sure at the time. "'Cept that a peashootah is actually cute and a zombie would actually be interested in one!"

Kaylee rolled her eyes in the Kaylee Ann Davenport Signature Queen Royalty™ fashion.

"I'm sorry my dad didn't KILL HIMSELF," she said.

"I'm sorry you have TOO MANY DADS TO START WITH," said Sam.

"YOUR MOM," said Kaylee.

"That's not funny," I said.

"I'm lost right now, so I'm gon' go beat me up some good birdfolk," said Connor as he backed away slowly.

I stared at him. I said nothing.

"What?" he said. "I'mma go get y'all some good birdsoup. That oughtta calm y'all down."

My eyes widened.

"They're still people, we can't cook them," I said to Connor with literally zero actual conviction because I technically had no idea. I still don't even now, as I write this, actually. Were they people? Are politicians people? Are Talon people? Dogs are people. In fact, dogs are the best people. Always have been. "No soup, no thanks, Connor. But, you know, if you find me a strawberry donut tree or a pancake bush or a French Toa-"

"YO BITCH I HAD A MOM YO." Sam threw both megacigarettes on the ground and stomped them. "AND SHE WAS A FUCKIN' PEDOPHILE HOE YO." She stomped and stomped and re-stomped the dark green and red cinders. "BUT YO THAT'S STILL MOH' THAN YOU CAN SAY MISSUS ORANGE DUMB PRINCESS HOE BITCH YO."

"Why you rapping?" said Kaylee. "And I'm not the blond one, you can't call me dumb. And I'm not married."

"Just start a fire, Midnight. We're all hungry, anyway."

"You start a fire, Meadows."

I shook my head. I glanced at Kaylee's bow, and then I glanced at her- the walking, talking supply of unlimited totally vegan dairy-free animal-friendly arrows. (Animal-friendly unless shot directly at them, please do not shoot animals, or I will kill you, also I haven't killed Kaylee because she hasn't shot at animals- other than the Talon if the Talon are in fact animals because, like I just wrote, I still do not know now.)

I still didn't know where Caleb was. Or Malcolm.

Connor, Sam, Happy, Jupiter Two; no Caleb.

But Kaylee was there. To help me find both her older brother and Malcolm. Wherever they were. I still didn't know where they were, but I had to believe that they were breathing.

I had to believe that they were alive.

They had to be. I tried to pretend like I wasn't remembering the message on the phone; the note on the strange sheet of paper-like material; like I wasn't remembering those things every two seconds.

Like I wasn't remembering the phone call.

She is alive

My other counterpart.

She is here and we will find them together

She is still here

The only other survivor of N-word.

I shut my eyes.

Not that N-word, the other N-word.

En Gail

I'd like a day without a nightmare or flashback please if that isn't too much to ask for

The experiments. The actual torture. The nightmare that sometimes still haunts my actual dreams if I'm having a bad week.

"YO HE HAVING AN ACTUAL FLASHBACK NOW AND IT'S 'YER FAULT YO AND Y'WENT THROUGH THE SAME DAMNED ACTUAL SHIT YO GIRL YOU A MESSED UP HOE YO I HOPE Y'CAN'T SLEEP YO AND 'YER BRO FUCKIN' LEAKS ALL 'YER PASSWORDS YO AND ALL 'YER DAMNED PO-"

"Kayles," I muttered, interrupting them both as politely as I could. "Keep shooting."

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

"Keep shooting," I said.

MONDAY

9:00 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

Kaylee shook her head, in what looked like disappointment.

"I should have worn the double layer top."

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

Literally what the eff is a deadass pine tree whip.

ORBIPLOSIONS

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

Kaylee looked offended, but she said nothing.

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

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

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

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

I said no.

I really loved James back then...

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

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

"It looks like shit," Sam interrupted.

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

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

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

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

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

Something tugged at my head.

"Wait," I said.

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

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

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

This map...

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Okay," Kaylee said.

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

And then didn't continue.

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

I groaned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Combine that with the blood and the fighting.

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

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

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

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

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

Karma is a thing.

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

WHAT did you and Caleb find?

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

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

Pffffffffffffft. Yeah. Sure.

Sam, who was the opposite of subtle, responded.

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

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

I wasn't sure what else to say exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

--ovw--

--ovw--LI--ovw--

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

MONDAY

9:13 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

"Been a while since a situation got this messed up from one murder case."

I reviewed records and composites on my U.S.-issued mobile device as Connor Meadows lead the way.

To where, I didn't know at the time.

Sam popped her pink bubble gum.

"A ten-year old girl, right?" she said.

"Fourteen," said Kaylee. "I think."

Kaylee and Connor were the ones that helped take in the armed suspect we found at Il Male Nekantral.

"And from the Lowdown," I remarked.

"Just like our star Christopher Midnight," quipped Connor. "Funny because if you never told anyone they'd think you were from the Suburbs, or something."

"Sure, Connor."

Connor's device blinked and beeped, alerting us to take a turn in some sort of direction.

"Kaylee," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Who was the lady in the mask?"

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

"Lady in the mask," I repeated. I watched Jupiter Two wag his big fluffy white tail as he trotted along beside us, a happy dog, not a care in the entire world. "Kayles?"

"Sorry," she said. "Sarah Olivia 'Coke Sandwich' Peters." The name was vaguely familiar. Though I knew it wasn't one of my cases- I would've known immediately. Maybe one of Kaylee's? Her vigilante ones, anyway. "Previously identified drug trafficker and addict."

"Any other known or alleged crimes?" I said.

"Apart from trying to assault us at the hotel," Connor said, "none that we've heard of."

Jupiter Two jumped up and down. I gave him a biscuit I still had on me from Baker Joe's. It was soggy from the snow, despite the wrapping.

"Why is she nicknamed Coke Sandwich?" I said.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"I'll send him the warrants," Sam said. "Girl puts coke in her sandwiches."

Sheesh. I wondered what I missed in a week.

"We missed you, you know," said Kaylee.

"I missed having a purpose," I said. "I had to sneak inside just to use the training simulation rooms. Although that was fun."

"The guards wouldn't have stopped you," said Kaylee. "You were off the case a week, not the entire Union of Sta-"

Another resounding blast, and almost-blinding flash of pure white- from one side of the huge abandoned diamond mine we were now approaching.

"Shit," said Connor.

The soft lilac sky and its soft glow was seemingly so out of place from all the blood and all the fear I assumed we all felt.

"Fuck this," said Sam.

"This was... this was a diamond mine?" I said. "Supposedly, right?"

"Did anyone ever really believe there were any diamonds in here?" said Kaylee.

"Nope," said Connor.

"If by diamonds you mean heroin then yeah, probably," said Sam.

We all gave her some sort of look.

I had the perfect response.

"Umm," I said. "Cool."

"That shit ain't even strong, Chris." She popped a pill and swallowed it dry, around the peach-and-strawberry Baker Joe's bubble gum. "You should see the stuff they sell in mainland U.S., it's pure fire."

Kaylee and I stared at each other.

"I have," I said. I addressed Connor. "So... this place we're going. What is it?"

"We don't know. But Reynaldo Mendoza Torres, and Sarah Coke Shit, and Belinda, all had this same file with the same coordinates... and what seems like the same map. And, apparently, so did you."

"Coke Sandwich," said Sam.

"Please arrest me, Mr. Meadows, for having a random four-inch piece of soggy paper from a human trafficking patron, who offered to buy me shoes I couldn't accept per human abuse job protocol." I checked myself. "Correction, sorry- he offered me money to go buy shoes; money I couldn't take. Can you give me a cell away from Belinda Klein's and closer to the Davenports' office?"

"I'm not saying you're in on this," Connor said. "But... there has to be some reason he gave it to you."

"He felt bad for me. They all did. They hurt me anyway then felt bad then did it again." Jupiter Two nuzzled my arm. "Hey, if it's pointless... let's not talk about this today."

"Do you remember his name? How old was he? Where was he from?"

"Connor," said Sam. "Leave him alone."

It might help the murder victim. I mean- the case. It might help for the murder victim's case. There was no saving that girl now.

I stopped walking, and closed my eyes.

Kaylee put her hand around my wrist.

"Chris?"

"I... don't remember much. Older man, wore some kind of... a tux."

"Tuxedo?" asked Connor.

"Or a suit. I'm sorry, there were so many. This one wasn't ugly like a lot of them were. He was... he was kind of nice. I think he was."

"I told you to just leave him alone," said Sam.

Happy the raccoon poked the dimple on my left cheek.

"I tried," I muttered.

I kept walking.

"Any... distinguishing characteristics?"

"He told me to 'get out of here,' something like that."

"What do you think he meant by that?"

"Connor," said Kaylee. "Stop."

"No idea. We have a case, and now a kidnapping- two kidnappings. Are we any closer yet?"

Another explosion. Was it the third, or the fourth? We didn't even know what we'd heard earlier during the fight with the Talon.

Sam removed her hands from her ears.

"This shit's louder and more annoying than Jeminem X Cardo P rapping on crack," she remarked. "Real talk. This place mad gully, bro. Let's leave."

"No," the three of us replied in unison.

"You're the one that wanted to be here," Kaylee said.

Happy gave Sam an apple.

"Heat signatures," Connor said.

--ovw--

--ovw--LII--ovw--

"Heat signatures," Connor said.

MONDAY

9:14 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

"I'm running straight into them," I said. "I got this."

I tapped my own holographic projection and immediately saw two bodies- human bodies as far as I could tell. We were only a half-kilometer away from the abandoned mine's lift.

"Visuals." I spotted them, both in black, masked- almost similar to Sarah Peters back at the hotel, but not quite exactly identical.

As they pulled out their guns, I roundoffed into a whipback and launched for a long arc takeoff, facing the direction of our antagonists.

They almost reminded me of those evil bandits in that one video game Kaylee and I played, Webesteria.

I smiled.

"Coming in hot, my friends!" I yelled from above them.

As if in slow motion, I slid the U.S. tapping device face shut and closed the hologram, pocketed the mobile, and spun into my left and into my backwards arched layout. They shot at me but that wasn't good enough; if there was one thing as unpredictable as the Overwoods weather, it was possibly my spin lines and the modifications I made, to in-air body positions.

And Sam, probably.

Two seconds later both my of my beat-up black shoes were on the taller adversary's shoulders.

"Hello there," I said. "Tell me what you know, and I won't have to knock one of you out and then otherwise silence the other."

"Is this kid on crack?" said the other masked adversary, a seemingly female voice.

"If by crack you mean apples," I said, "then yes."

I twisted and spun fast into a forward quadruple as she shot but missed awfully, horribly- because as I did, I saw the blood start to flow heavily from one of the ears of the bandit I just took off of.

Well, bandit- or criminal or gangster or warden or bouncer or guard or whatever. Either it was just his ear hopefully, or, hopefully not, somewhere near his skull. His or hers or theirs or xeirs, I didn't know the pronoun at the time.

I landed on the woman's shoulders- with ignite on this time- and dropped into a double-twisting hurricanrana whip to a hard right elbow to the side of her cranium- the hardest single elbow I had thrown that day so far. There was no need for the Americana submission arm lock Carter White taught me. I pocketed her two Bauer 355OD handguns (instantly feeling disgusted because at the time I generally still hated guns) and ran back to the taller person.

"Hey," I said. "Are you okay?"

The muffled response rang clear in the empty space between us.

"Stay back!" the man said- in some kind of neutral mainland U.S. accent, he sounded almost like James, or even a little bit like me, "this is protected territory!"

Protected?

Protected by who?

The man tried to shoot but only dropped his one handgun upon pulling the trigger, stumbled back, and put his right hand to his temple- near his ear, where all the blood was coming from. He dropped to some kind of partly sitting, partly crawling position- half on his back and half on his side. It reminded me of that centipede I saw outside of school back in the Suburbs.

Well, a heavily bleeding centipede.

Didn't he have backups? Fellow recruits? A healer or a medical agent, like I was depending on the mission?

"Help," he said to no one in particular.

I front walkovered in his direction, hands on the ground then feet then hands for four flips and a half, soundlessly, until I lowered myself onto the ground beside him for the final landing. I simply tossed his handgun to the side with my left hand, tossed it down beside the lift, where it slid into a rock and then fell down. Down, down, down, into the enormous mine. I stared at it until it disappeared from any human eye's field of perception.

"Help," he said again to no one in particular.

"I got you," I said.

See, this is why I hated guns.

At the time I did...

"Help," he said for the third time.

I tore his mask with one of my small black combat knives, hollered at Kaylee, as Happy the raccoon bounded toward me, riding on top of Jupiter Two. I placed two fingers into the mess of blood and torn skin.

Suddenly, I was afraid. Afraid that we might not save him- this... this whoever he was. The blood that pooled around our legs was sizeable in amount and pool diameter and I'd survived it before in Nightingale and otherwise- but... what about him?

"Happy! Kayles! Asses over here!"

"We're here, we're here!" Kaylee hopped over the unconscious woman's body, whereas Sam stepped on both her breasts and then took the cash from her pockets before zooming over. Kaylee immediately made stielvine to wrap around the bandit's head.

"We need him conscious," I said. "Arrowvine- read his mind, now. Get whatever you find. Cognito, Edge- surveillance. Let us know what's down there."

"Eldredge copies!" cheered Sam. "Last one to the lift is a monkey's megacigarette butt! Oops, sorry, you lose!" She zoomed to the old, creaky-looking lift. "Pulling up in dat whip, I done dat dumb shit..." she rapped to herself as Connor made his way toward her.

--ovw--LIII--ovw--

MONDAY

9:19 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

"Pulling up in dat whip, I done dat dumb shit..." she rapped to herself as Connor made his way toward her.

I turned my attention to the man under us.

Compassion, not the need to get clear and coherent answers, moved my other hand onto the skin of his neck. And yes, here was the pain; awful, heavy, like a headache but more so like the death and the foggy blurry gore and the necrosis that Zapryekavil brought on- not as bad, but almost.

"Can you please not think about Zapryekavil right now!?" said Kaylee.

"Dude," I said, "read this guy's mind, not mine!"

"Muscle memory," she said. "I read everything."

"Fuck that right now, Kayles, freaking concentrate."

"Help me, please," the man mumbled.

You'll be fine, I wanted to say.

But the reality was, I didn't know.

Despite the stielvine, he was bleeding. There was... some part of me that almost knew it was too late, too late for him. But just didn't want to acknowledge it. Not yet, anyway.

No-

I was going to save him. I was there to help him; I was going to save him.

Enough people were abused or tortured or killed in front of me.

The black streaks under my eyes, the skin on my hands as well as my face turning white, the irises of my eyes probably changing color from brown to gray to white at this point; I didn't know how much time we had.

I spoke telepathically to Kaylee, because of the mission, and, because, this man I didn't know was probably dying.

Concentrate.

I'm doing that.

Well, do better.

"Shut up, Chris," Kaylee said physically, with a tone of acid to her normal singsong Southern U.S. voice.

The man started to laugh. It was terrifying. Because... I'd heard that kind of laughter before. We both did, Kaylee and I.

Blood ran down both my eyes.

"It's funny... I don't... I don't... I don't feel any pain at all anymore. Thank you."

Those were the last words he spoke.

--ovw--LIV--ovw--

I break down walls then put up fences.

- from Towards the Light V

Did I believe when you said,

"Hey, come with me, I won't brainwash you?"

- from If Jealousy Was Money

--ovw--

MONDAY

9:22 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

"It's funny... I don't... I don't... I don't feel any pain at all anymore. Thank you."

Those were the last words he spoke.

My hands shook erratically, my skin crawled, like they didn't want to be a part of me. I didn't want to be a part of me.

I got up, turned around, and walked.

I did this.

"By the time you read this, you'll either have discovered your powers or this paper will be on top of your dead body. I'll guess you're alive because you get everything you want and my attempt to kill you probably didn't work.

I just want you to know you're worthless.

That you're pitiful, that everything you do is a mistake.

People will know you and remember you. And they will say good things about you.

I'll make sure you don't hear them. You'll hear only me. You will believe only what I said about you then, and what I think about you now.

Nothing you do is right."

Blood stopped running down my face, the blood from my eyes. And then it was blood with water. My breaths turned into that same ragged, uneven, choked breathing- it was like Nightingale, it was just like Nightingale... and that stupid experiment should have killed me.

I couldn't do one thing right.

"Fuck!"

My voice echoed around the walls of the mine below us, bouncing off to empty space around us.

What was this life, anyway? What did I ever do? It seemed to me, my only purpose was to be a mop bucket for all of the dirt in this world, all of the garbage and the dirt it had to offer.

AS IF I DIDN'T FEEL DIRTY ENOUGH ALREADY.

I hated guns...

And that other one, it fell down, down, down, down this deep, empty mine of who knew how many floors. I felt my feet, I felt my legs walking.

Kaylee's voice yelled from somewhere in the area.

"Chris!"

I heard it. But what else I heard was bedroom moans, torture wails, pleading. Seventeen years of what seemed mostly like senseless pain, senseless persecution. This eighteenth one didn't seem to be that much different.

Not now.

And I thought, probably not tomorrow...

"CHRIS!"

Two steps, four steps, six.

Seven.

He was in a black coat, a tuxedo, I think they called it. The man was across from me as I sat on the bed reading my only copy of the Bible. I wanted more books, but couldn't afford them. The only cloth on my body was half the bed sheet.

The man took his watch from the drawer and looked back at me. It was maybe the prettiest, shiniest thing I had ever seen then, his watch. Gold and silver, and shining things, I thought it was made of. He smiled at me.

"You don't want me to go," he said. "Do you?"

I looked at the man- he was somewhere in his thirties, maybe early forties? His hair was a mix of blond and some gray.

"You're the one that... doesn't make things hurt too badly," I said. I surveyed his eyes, any nuances in their movement or any movement of his body that was out of his ordinary behavior. It was something I knew to do, from early. How early, I don't remember. "So I guess not."

I was always honest with these people. Even the ones that hurt me the most. I was eleven.

"Do you have kids?" I asked.

He looked at me.

"Why do you ask?" he said.

I shook my head. "I don't know. Curious, I guess."

The man put a stack of paper bills on top of a table beside the bed.

"I'm not supposed to take gifts," I said.

"You don't have to tell anyone," he replied, discreetly. Hushed. "Get yourself something nice. Something new to read. A pair of shoes, something."

"I can't take it," I said. I tried hard to disguise the disappointment I felt but couldn't. "There's a camera."

Was there a difference, between "wouldn't" or "couldn't?"

One of Kaylee's vines wrapped around my less-damaged wrist and hand- the right one. I cut it off with a combat knife. I used the special marked one; the special marked one that I used on nobody but myself.

I counted one cut for each of the people that I was not able to save, when I saved myself; I counted one cut for each individual that used me all for themselves. I wanted one cut for each time that someone else had hurt me, because this way, I was hurting myself.

You make goodbye look so easy.

I remember noting how strong her accent was when she popped her gum again, chewed, and replied with, "Yeah, me too. You get to call me Sam." She pulled a folded piece of paper from a jacket pocket and snorted whatever was in it, then said, "Let's do this, Morphine."

I remember how her black-and-yellow striped pants made her look like a bumblebee; a bumblebee with the most breathtakingly colored eyes.

You make goodbye look so easy.

How's your life in wonderland?

I glanced at the strange, slow, orange-with-purple-clouds Overwoods summer sunset; I remembered Marie. Summers here that rained and snowed with typhoons or hurricanes or every other catastrophe you could possibly think of. The boys and girls- the children- that have never and will never recover from the tortures.

But Kaylee and I are damaged forever.

While the ones who ran the experiment are probably out drunk and partying.

I am so hungry...

You make goodbye look so easy.

How's your life in wonderland?

You're spending for another call, and another time

Just to get me near you

Fifteen steps, twenty.

From the snakes, from the most evil of all the most evil, from the oblivion, from the misery that existed only in some places.

I plunged into the earth.

--ovw--

You make goodbye look so easy.

How's your life in wonderland?

You're spending for another call, and another time

Just to get me near you

But I've lost everything.

--ovw--LV--ovw--

Scream it

Watch as I turn midnight

All I have

Is thanks to you

- from Does to You, Thanks to You

Fifteen steps, twenty.

From the snakes, from the most evil of all the most evil, from the oblivion, from the misery that existed only in some places.

I plunged into the earth.

Wind- I descended and descended. I didn't remember how high the fall was; how deep this mine was. They must have been mining for long if it was that deep. Air tossed my black hair back and around and my double-tied ponytail everywhere, I felt this and nothing else as I kept my eyes closed and awaited my death.

Of course, like Century Spire, that's not how it happened.

I didn't remember hitting any kind of ground.

I was still descending, falling to death; I didn't know what hit me- or if anything even did- when I blacked out.

MONDAY

Around 10:36 AM

Below the earth

Exact location unknown

Bottles.

Bottles of... Vystir antidote. Just like the ones I begged for, from James, years ago.

Vystir antidote. That was the first thing I saw.

My teeth... bloody, only slightly more damaged than how fucked up they already were; the taste of blood was what seemed to tell me that I was alive still.

A very vaguely familiar, yet somehow deep and relaxing, almost musical- well, to me it was anyway- voice spoke. I wasn't sure it was real. And it was almost like I knew who it was. But this could've all been a trick.

"Chris."

I spun up and off the ground, until a chain on my left wrist cut me from the air and dragged me back down.

And then, it wasn't a chain; it was some kind of red plastic, tied to some kind of machine. There was... some kind of IV drip, several of them actually, on my right arm.

I was left bleeding on the ground but stuck with needles?

I...

I remember feeling like a trapped animal; a small helpless trapped animal knowing he was about to get slaughtered, or worse.

Much worse.

I don't want to be here

I don't want to be here I don't want to be here I don't want to be here I don't want to be here

"Chris, over here."

I ripped needles and micro tubing off my right arm, and glanced over at where the male voice came from. This room was dark- the walls were black.

Kind of like Nightingale...

The bottles of Vystir antidote were on a midnight blue tinted glass table. And there he was- the man who called my name. He looked maybe a few years older than I was? Perhaps five years, something? He had sandy-colored hair and silver-blue eyes, piercing and utterly luminous; Labradorite and Tourmaline gemstones mixed with a light blue sky.

Yes, exactly- it took me that long to put my guard back up. The kindest-looking men can be dangerous. I was off, I was so off. An easy target, trapped in a place unknown yet also strangely familiar.

Oh wait hold on a second

"Where am I?" I said, wincing, as more blood spouted off and onto my left hand when savagely I tore off whatever was above it; to say that I was dizzy was the top five understatement of the decade. A white light bulb, concealed inside a deep black mission style lamp to my left, started to flicker. But it almost seemed to flicker in a specific pattern.

No wait a second I know this place

My eyes wide, I tucked my right elbow and tightened my core, performed my half-turn evade into front double to one-legged roundoff to backwards whip- one of my most basic but most useful maneuvers- then dropping to the floor as black shards of wood and glass and plastic flew like bomb shrapnel from thirty-nine feet away. Twelve meters. Like a gymnastics floor.

I didn't even go out of bounds.

I remember wanting to immediately ask more questions; I didn't. Experience had taught me to always await at least the first response, to assess the situation (or assess whoever was in a room with you, especially if they were larger, or both) further, and to pause before you take any kind of next step.

I took a deep, slow breath, closed my eyes, and then made the decision to speak again.

Rising slowly from the marble floor which now had my blood on it, I said, "Should I repeat my question?"

He paused before answering me, like he was trying to put something together. The short, buzzed hair on his face was a funny shade of yellow, darker than blond.

"Wilson-Delos Santos-Martinez diamond mine. You..." he paused again. This man had the strangest expression on his face as he locked his eyes on mine. I couldn't place it. "You might know it as the, um."

Okay kill me now

"The what?" I insisted.

"Well-"

"SAY IT."

"Experimentation site."

Experimentation site...

"So..." I said. "You mean, like... like Nightingale?"

I pretended my voice didn't totally wobble at the N-part, the first syllable of that word. Even though it completely obviously did. It's possible I even stuttered.

Yeah, I probably did.

The man looked at me, like he wanted to say more... or, was it possible? Almost like he wanted to put arms around me.

But not in a bad way.

"Possibly," he said.

"Why are you here?" I said. "Why are we here?"

To our right, there was a glass wall. Just barely, vaguely, I made out the silhouette of what looked like a tall man.

Of course, almost any man or woman was tall to me.

"Chris."

"What? And how do you know my name?

He stood still, one of his wrists also tied by what looked like plastic of some kind. And then, I knew immediately it probably wasn't just plastic.

For just one fleeting moment, a blurry recollection of my body breaking through thin acrylic and pseudopolycarbonate sheets and layers of mysterious glass ran through my mind. It might have been my imagination. But the sense that my arms had been dragged and the strange, almost-dislocated-but-not-exactly sensation in my shoulders told me that's exactly what happened.

I continued.

"I..."

Well, I tried to continue, anyway.

I am a marshmallow

He said nothing; he just looked at me. His eyes locked hard on mine like he was asking some kind of unspoken question.

I kept my thoughts as logical as I possibly could have.

I am a marshmallow

This was not making any sense. I wasn't even sure if I was alive. If I said anything, what loss could that cause me? I was probably dead anyway, and this guy wasn't going to hurt me; he was behind something.

"I jumped." I looked at my torn pant leg. I remembered the shard of wood from the mutated giant tree I smashed into before I rolled like a cotton ball soaked of his own blood. "I jumped and now I'm... here."

"Yeah," the man said. "You attempted suicide trying to find me."

"Find you?" I said. "Dude, I don't even know you."

"Caleb," he said. "Your boyfriend. Kaylee's brother."

There was a pause before he spoke again, at which time I took the opportunity to select a very useful shard of black glass off the bloody marble floor. There was so much blood on it; how was I alive? Perks of having been forcefully stuck with a million needles in an eighteen-year career/lifetime of starvation? Perks of being one-half of the only two Nightingale survivors?

I visibly shuddered; I hugged my arms and added more blood to the front of my shirt.

UGH I couldn't even THINK that word

"Please," he said. "Don't tell me you've-"

"I'm literally triple gay, yes," I butt in- "But I am single, and I like it that way, and seriously, eff men sometimes because, like- eighty percent of them are really just awful."

I was lying. I was lonely and I wanted someone.

I didn't know if I wanted someone if I just needed distraction from the memories of the brutality of... of the... of the N word.

Not *THAT* N word OMG

I hoped he couldn't read that off me from behind the transparent physical divide between us. Was he a telepath? Because he seriously looked like he knew me; looked like he knew exactly what I was thinking.

"Anyway, Kaylee's..."

Kaylee. Where was my most valued friend; fellow Nightingale survivor?

"She... she tried to help me make it somewhere." I shook my head. This felt way too much like Nightingale. "We were... finding something, somewhere." I of course omitted the part that we were probably doing it as part of the Union of Stars; I didn't know who this guy was. "I met her dads. Awesome people. But the other one's kind of an alcoholic." I cleared my throat. "Sometimes. I don't know who you are."

Why was I talking to him, anyway? He could have been Krasvya, or a spy, or a torturer, or a murderer or rapist or both, or something.

Why was I talking to him?

"Do I know you from somewhere?" I said, trying to be polite. "I'm so sorry. I'm... lost."

I could have been wrong, but I think there was almost some kind of sheen in his eyes.

Sheesh. I thought I was the crybaby- I mean, I really was. Anything made me cry.

"Sorry if I insulted you," I said.

--ovw--LVI--ovw--

"Sorry if I insulted you," I said.

MONDAY

10:39 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

He turned, to face the back of his... of the capsule he was in. I wasn't in one.

Okay, this was too much like En Gail.

Shit.

I tried to slow my breathing. The man said nothing, and then... from what seemed like nowhere, he began to sob; albeit softly. I was so confused- and even more so when the next voice spoke.

"It worked," a deep, resonant, gruff-ish voice announced. "He won. The boy's forgotten us."

Someone won?

"Won a what?" I asked idiotically.

ORBIPLOSIONS

"Danny," said this other man- a strange one by the looks of him; almost very mysterious. To me he was, anyway. He wore a large glowing red mantle, and some kind of brown pair of leather gloves. They looked almost familiar... somehow. I knew he'd beat me easily in an unarmed SRA. The red mantle he wore could cover two times my body size; one of those gloves could have both my hands in one.

I can't fight a huge dude

YES YES I CAN NOW

I'm like 5'2

FIVE THREE!!! And who says he wanted to hurt you?

I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know

HE LOOKS TERRIFYING

NO HE DOESN'T

I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know

I was terrified- but, no. He couldn't hurt me. The two of them were in those En Gail capsules; I wasn't.

I exhaled a sigh of relief.

And then I was terrified.

How did they both know... both my names?

"If you won't tell me why we're here-"

Something flickered in the darkness, to my left. It floated in the air- a tiny glowing shiny purple thing- and then it latched on to my arm. I didn't move.

Is this a new explosive-

I remained frozen. Half of me was thinking that perhaps movement would set the thing off; the other half of me was thinking that perhaps it should just go off.

I was tired. I was

so

tired

Of everything, of myself; of not doing anything right JUST ONCE.

But I couldn't afford to let it show...

I tried to look closer at the small glowing thing. I didn't know what it was.

"That's a combustifly," said the older-looking of the two men. "They're like butterfires. They're also like fireflies- but those are endangered now."

I've heard this guy speak before...

Fireflies?

Why does that SOUND familiar-

I knew what fireflies were! I read about them once. In an old book. An old book, from... An old book from

...

From...

Uhm

Uhm-

Uhm.

Uhm?

Yes, I read about them in an old book from... somewhere.

"And they also really like you," the man continued. His mantle seemed to glow in the dark, like a charred log from a mutated red sequoia tree when it's tossed in the fire at home.

At home?

I... don't have a home.

"You like them because they're good for keeping really pesky mosquitoes away. From both dogs and from yourself," he said.

Doggy

:3

I smiled. "Well, I do like dogs!" I paused. I shook my head. "Where are we?"

I looked at the En Gail capsules- or whatever they were but really I had nothing else to call them at the time- and tried not to think at all.

Perfect cylinders. Almost-invisible glass walls.

Assuming it was glass.

Thinner than paper. Almost-invisible walls that are thinner than paper.

They weren't tinted, not like the wall Marie was behind when I spoke to her.

Can you please

NOT THINK ABOUT *THAT*????!

The socket of my right eye felt odd- numb yet achy somehow at the same time- and I touched it with my left hand. I discovered that it was covered in dried blood.

Wait.

HOW did this happen?

The rest of me was also covered in either dried or fresh blood. I was dizzy. A feather, the color of a seriously burnt eggplant, floated from my scalp onto my torn left shoe. I knelt down- which seriously hurt both my legs, particularly the left one- and took a closer look at it.

A deep violet... FEATHER

WHAT

How when WHY

WHAT

WHAT??? with three question marks politely.

Did I go fight a bird version of Wyatt last night?

I repeated myself for what felt like the millionth time. It sounded like it ended with a period, like:

"WHERE. AM. I."

"We're not sure, either," was the reply. I stood slowly and turned toward the sound. It was the dead ringer for the teacher... guy. "I'd have told you by now, Chris," said the one that was, apparently, still wiping tears from his eyes. "And you'd know that I'd have told you by now." He put a fist against the transparent barrier that kept him from attacking me. "You should KNOW that I would have told you by now!"

He had that common-ish Southern U.S. accent. It almost reminded me of Scott, one of Kaylee's dads.

A wave of nausea hit me from nowhere. They have to know something! They MUST know something!

I was becoming increasingly impatient with the lot of them.

"If you won't tell me why we're here," I said, "then at least tell me what my relationship is with the two of you." How did they know, not one, but both of my names?

"I feel sick," said the blond man.

YEAH NO SHIT DUDE JOIN THE CLUB

"Are you friends of Belinda's?" I asked. "Do you work at the Webwork in V4?"

"Do you still know who James is?" said the older man, the one with chestnut brown hair and some kind of cartoon Christmas-tree sideways shaped beard.

Still know?

"I'm not answering until you give me what you know." I flexed the fingers of my left hand, felt the very subtle rush of heat. I was in no mood to negotiate. "And there's probably a trillion different Jameses."

"James Tobler," the older man said. "Union of Stars."

Okay. They knew.

"Yeah, I mean, of course I know the guy."

"Do you still know Kaylee?"

Still know Kaylee?

"I've been brainwashed before," I said, somewhat belligerently- "and they didn't manage to even do that. The very few memories they managed to even mess up at all came back eventually. So stop treating me like a test subject."

BECAUSE I WAS SO DONE WITH THAT.

"Let me in your head, Chris," said the dirty blond-haired one, the one with the gray-blue eyes.

They were actually kind of pretty. Maybe to me, anyway. So different from mine.

Let me in your head, Chris.

It was a whisper. An almost sweet one. And even strangely familiar, but...

But how?

His eyes reminded me of... of a sidewalk I once slipped on. It was covered in ice on a cloudless day.

And then I snapped back to reality.

LET ME IN YOUR HEAD???

"How about I break open yours?" I said.

And then- he continued to cry, and he said nothing.

--ovw--LVII--ovw--

"Let me in your head, Chris," said the dirty blond-haired one, the one with the gray-blue eyes.

They were actually kind of pretty, to me, anyway. So different from mine.

And then I snapped back to reality.

"How about I break open yours?" I said.

And then- he continued to cry, and he said nothing.

MONDAY

10:42 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

I had to think clearly.

They knew my names. They knew James.

I had to think, I reminded myself. Clearly. But there was that almost... ambiguously, hazily familiar feeling of fingers, hands, hands... on my head. I reached for the back of my head but there was nothing- just the ponytail; the two elastic bands still caked with my blood, a lot of it. That was blood, right? Not like my hair had any red in it? I wasn't sure what I was imagining at that point; my vision was still out of focus and mostly still gray and black. I simultaneously still wanted to vomit but also really, really wanted some potato chips, both of these things while PTSD with conveniently appropriate flashbacks ate away at my mind. It took all the strength I had to not fall forwards onto my face on the floor.

Dark red marble tile...

It's nothing, I said to myself- it feels like before but it's nothing.

It felt like hands were pulling my hair; dragging my head back. Something was in my thoughts- something that shouldn't be there, but it was. Something or someone.

Strands of my hair stuck to the blood on my neck; I remember they didn't look as black as they usually did.

Maybe it's all the blood, I thought. Maybe I've run out of the red stuff or I'm running too low and now my brain is overcompensating. I should eat cheese. That'll help.

Red hair. It reminded me of James. And of someone else.

Ew.

I literally physically puked, again.

I never had any reason to look at my hair, I never even visited any barber shops. Why would I literally sit down in a chair, while someone (someone I probably didn't even know) literally stood behind me with sharp objects?

The words came to mind again.

"IF YOUR TEAM COMES FOR ME

I'LL BREAK MORE THAN HIS BONES

DAVENPORT WILL DIE

-M M

PS

I LET YOU LIVE TO HAVE YOU

AGAIN"

I snorted. So we had Peters, Klein, Torres.

Whoever it was... they certainly didn't break anyone's bones. Except perhaps mine if they were someone from my past.

I wiped my mouth and face, smearing more blood on myself.

"So, we have to get out of here," I said. "Don't we?" My eyes scanned the shiny, black marble walls. Beautiful, absolutely elegant; the floor- different shades of red. Different hues of red, just like...

"Who's running this show?" I continued. "Torres? Peters? Someone they work for?"

My right hand moved automatically to my jeans pocket, for the combat knives, in the leather holder. I heaved another sigh of relief. Still there.

And then, there was an answer.

"Neither," said the voice that haunted me only in my dreams. "Well, sort of. They do work for me, in one sense."

Happy place happy place happy place happy place

Ferrets and puppies and corgis and dogs and raccoons and marshmallows, and hot chocolate. All free.

Happy place

Happy place

A world where I had the money and the opportunity to do what I wanted, not be a child abused by those completely incapable of humanity, because they simply did not have the brain to be capable of it at all.

Happy place. Happy place.

...

Happy place

Here's what I remember: my spine, it turned to ice. That's what it felt like. I was ready to combust, explode into flames and blood and diamond and detonate, blow up- and take this entire mine with me in the process.

Of course, that probably was not on the table.

But when I turned around, it was... Belinda.

"Klein?"

No response, from anyone there.

"Klein, who was that, where is he?"

And then, he shifted. Shape shifted. From a tied-up curly mess of thinning gray hair, dyed pink, bamboo and ladders-and-snakes tattoos with thorns and the tiger and the red eyes; within seconds he was the man I saw just that one week in the B14 training simulation. The one who saw me, a child, as nothing- and I meant nothing even in the least- except for a source of income.

It took all that I had not to bury every single one of the twenty-five knives in my pocket into his face.

"You realize you left me armed," I said. "Tell me your name before I arrest you."

He looked at me, sad, a disappointed look on his face. He almost pouted.

"But you know my name," he said.

"I did know, yeah," I said. "You were Belinda, just now." I scathingly forced the dimple into my left cheek, forcing the smile onto my face- the smile even reaching my eyes; I'd smiled at people enough that even when it was fake, it was still slightly believable at the very least. "And now, you're... something that belongs exactly where you are," I said. "In the brain and in the body of something only as low down, as wretched, as miscreant, as scum as you. Nothing is worse, nothing."

Low down, was the understatement of the century; understatement of the millennium.

"What planet are you from?" I said. "Where ABHORRENT corruption, pride, delusion- delusion and pride and false dominance from a fake sack of nonexistent accomplishment is all you ever brag about?"

He looked at me, and frowned.

Then he shifted again.

The black walls seemed to shake, there was a sense of the invisible hands disappearing- off from where they were on my mind.

Because: I knew who I was, and I knew a lie when I saw one.

Guess who it was...

"Jeff," he said, only to me, walking close to my face, looking down at me. "Jeff," he repeated. "I told you, my boy." He took a step back, and pulled out a cell phone. My cell phone.

In one swift and lightning-fast motion, I snatched my U.S.-issued device from his right hand; I struggled inside of myself not to smash my elbow or the back of my right fist into his head as hard and as barbarously as I could- and with IGNITE- because, for all I knew, maybe he was running these show. And these two innocent people who I'd never met, were under his mercy. Possibly, thereby, mine. As I spun in the air I kept my arms tucked so as not touch him any further. He spoke his next words as I landed without a sound, both my feet and one hand on the red, subtly patterned, tile floor.

I looked down at it.

I'd been here...

There he was: fully shifted.

"Is this you?"

And, of course, I meant you.

"This is the actual me, yes," spoke the sociopath and psychopath; criminal and manipulator. "Imagine speaking to your father the way you spoke to me now."

I almost puked.

Here he was, no mask on. Strangely, he almost looked like someone I knew. The eyes were green, darker a shade of green than the pistachio-ice-cream light green shade of that ice cream I had with Kaylee on our graduation day, years ago. I didn't remember where we bought it. Did one of the teachers buy it for us? I didn't remember spending for it- so I guessed maybe one of the teachers bought it for us. Or maybe Carter did? The Carter that gave me the brownie, not the Carter that taught me the Americana armlock submission.

Something was missing...

"Something is missing, my boy," said Jeff.

"You don't deserve what's in my mind," I said, "and you need to stop talking to me like..."

"Like what?"

"We are not related."

He raised his eyebrows at me.

The man who said his name was Caleb called for my attention.

"Danny," he said, his tears mostly dried, but his eyes still conveying a heavy sense of... dread? Concern? HE was distressed, that was for sure. "I was going to tell you."

"Yes," said Jeff. "That's why you're here. Because you were going to tell him."

What? Please. "I was going to tell you?" Tell me what? I didn't even know this guy, and the already-existing list of people pretending they knew me was a pathetically and disgustingly long one. What, tell me I had another surprise SRA coming up per order of James?

Didn't Connor say he wanted to tell me something...?

I shook my head.

Head in the fight. I was probably imagining it; I avoided the chainsmoking animal-talker, if I could.

I think...

Yeah, it was probably just another SRA; Connor and Belinda only ever gave me bad news, if we were working, anyway. I think the only good news Connor ever gave me was, "Congratulations, B21 is busted so James gave you special access to B14 so you can make yourself suffer from self-imposed training on weekends THERE instead!"

"Then why is he here!?" Caleb said, pointing at the older man with the slight Port accent.

Jeff looked at the ground, then smoothed back his sleek dark red hair with his right hand.

He did that before, too. In the bedroom...

"Because," said Jeff, slowly, "because nobody else can have him but me."

I could have sworn I tasted some kind of bile at the back of my throat. Although, that partly may have been the fact that I quite recently actually vomited.

Whatever look was on my face, it wasn't a not-confused one; it wasn't a not-disgusted one.

BECAUSE I WAS DISGUSTED.

"You see," continued Jeff, as he walked around to a panel, not unlike the one that Avyeena Paleros stood in front of when she died, when both her eyes came off and dropped to the ground in front of me as her skin and muscle and intestines turned into a pool of brown and red and black- the same kind of screen they used to test our minds and demand answers to questions that, sometimes, even I did not know the answers to.

How I even survived...

"You see, what?" I said.

Jeff continued his little speech.

I'll say now that even without painsteal, the black streaks started to brand themselves into the skin under my eyes- not because I was taking any pain, but because I was that horribly disgusted. It was a rare occurrence. If something bothered me too much, it was the same physical symptoms of using my painsteal power.

I remembered how James decided to start calling me "Methadone," on my second takedown assignment- it was a team takedown assignment that saw multiple agents hurt: Kaylee Davenport, Wyatt Shafer, and Lyca- she was a brawler not unlike Sam; my ability got to see a lot of action that whole week. That was a while ago; it was one of my first call signs until they "settled" on Marblefox for me. Typically, they named me after painkillers.

"You see," he said, again, "I'm your father. And you're my son. Nobody can have you, but me. I have the right to own you, no one else does."

Now, I didn't MEAN to- but it happened. My right fist collided, hard, into his face- and then it caught fire.

"You had that coming," I said.

He lay on the ground a moment, writhing, and then he shifted again; into Elyza- but only his one arm and face- to extinguish the fire with cold and with vapor ice. And then he stood.

"That's the second mistake you made," he said, seething, the venom in his words almost half the tone of mine, but with no conviction. That was the difference between us, at all times.

"What was the first one?" I said sarcastically. "Shutting down your child sex business? Or not keeping my mouth shut and telling people what you did when I was nine? Probably the former, right?"

--ovw--LVIII--ovw--

"That's the second mistake you made," he said, seething, the venom in his words almost half the tone of mine, but with no conviction. That was the difference between us, at all times.

"What was the first one?" I said sarcastically. "Shutting down your child sex business? Or not keeping my mouth shut and telling people what you did when I was nine? Probably the former, right?"

MONDAY

10:44 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

In response, he shot dark black clouds of vapor in a long projectile line at me, as if in slow motion; I shielded myself with my left hand, but that was a mistake.

My left hand, down to my wrist, immediately became dark blue, almost black, and the same little worms, tentacles, arms, started to come up from little red, oozing holes, blood and water and pus and who knew what else. Only this time- it felt like my left hand was coming off.

This wasn't skin. This wasn't poison. This was unearthly, disgusting, disgust that existed only on other metaphorical planets- only inside of the man I now had to be in a faceoff with. I knew, and I only knew, I would have rather been anywhere else.

Except- there were two innocent people who were trapped by this torturer.

And I was wrong, too. At that time, I thought it was only two.

"Leave him alone!" the older man yelled from his capsule. "You can have what you want! He won't arrest you, he won't! Do what you want, please, just leave the boy alone."

I looked at this man and almost felt like I had met him somewhere. I'd been to the port a lot. I'd go there at midnight. There was a strange moment where I felt, again, that something, something was missing...

Jeff smiled.

"Okay," he said, lifting both his hands. "I'll leave the boy alone."

Now I was the one writhing, more so from disgust and the fact that little pieces of the oozing, blackened skin of my hand started to fall like sprinkles or salt grains onto the red floor.

"I missed injecting you, boy."

I said nothing.

"And I missed injecting you in bed."

I said nothing.

He laughed.

"Injecting," he said, "you in bed."

I said nothing.

"Tell me you miss me."

No.

I flipped backwards, twisting in the air, both my feet twisting and crossed into the ceiling sprinkler head- setting it on fire, and causing the ceiling high, high, high above us to start raining clean Experiment Site WDSM Diamond Mine tap water, down on us.

It tasted like the Overwoods.

--ovw--LIX--ovw--

"Tell me you miss me."

No.

I flipped backwards, twisting in the air, both my feet twisting and crossed into the ceiling sprinkler head- setting it on fire, and causing the ceiling high, high, high above us to start raining clean Experiment Site WDSM Diamond Mine tap water, down on us.

MONDAY

10:47 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

It tasted like the Overwoods.

I opened my mouth before landing, caught a spoonful of the cold, clean water in my mouth and swallowed, before twisting twice and whipping back twice upon landing and then throwing a black combat knife toward the exposed pipe above my head- and gray smoke concealed both me and the screen behind me.

I remember how the water tasted: clean. Until Experiment Nightingale, I never even had truly clean water- real water. It was awful, to say the least- to have an experience as wonderful as clean water, or even sex, to be taken from you by these monsters.

Strangling us wasn't the worst thing they did- to me; to Charlotte; to Marie; perhaps to Kaylee but she won't talk about it, nor did I see it.

One reality that the whole world knows regardless of the lies: some people are on a throne, and their only purpose is to let all the world suffer, and to want all the world to suffer, while they sit in comfort and do everything they can just to be praised as the good guys.

I faced the screen. I knew his password: Honorable777IAm*THE*MostRighteousAND@HONORABLE777IAmTheSaintPreacher,iamthePerfection.

He'd use this password on his portable device and the sleek computer he'd use when he thought I was asleep. Perhaps, the one advantage that I had, the one gift that I was given, from spending nights and nights and night after night after night in his bed. This key, this password, was the one thing that helped me and also thereby Kaylee Davenport to survive.

I don't know if he would have spared us either way.

But, personally, I doubt it. And it's such a big wonder why I would, right?

I unlocked the screen with the password and the still-memorized panel commands I entered using the touch-activated keys below it.

And then, there were three names. Two I didn't recognize, and one that I did.

--ovw--LX--ovw--

And if what tomorrow brings

Is nothing short of the truth

Then it'll tell you

That I never took the part for you

I never played that part for you

MONDAY

10:47 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

And then, there were three names. Two I didn't recognize, and one that I did.

CALEB SAMUEL DAVENPORT

ANTHONY DAVID MALCOLM

DENICE LYCA ZAMBAIA

I had to take a moment. Even though that was not possible.

He had ZAMBAIA?

I hadn't seen her for a while. Denice Lyca Zambaia: like me but even more like Sam, she was a fighter, very strong and extremely athletic and employed by the Union of Stars mainly for target takedowns. She got more high-paying jobs than Sam did, because while they had similar strengths, and then even some overlapping fight styles, Denice was trained formally and usually showed more discipline, whereas... well, Sam learned on the streets and continued to fight outside of U.S. or competition affairs.

I didn't believe it; Denice Lyca Zambaia had a mixed martial arts record of 14-0-0, and this was outside of SRAs. Ten of them by knockout.

How was she placed here?

The water from the ceiling stopped at once. I thought, well- I still had the smoke from the burst pi-

And then thorned stems wrapped around my neck from behind, immediately cutting holes and punctures into my skin and dragging me backward.

"You're very clever, my boy."

Even his voice was enough to make me crawl under my skin.

I tried to never hate anyone. And to this day, I can't say I "hated" him; it's just that if anything even remotely like him at all was around- much less, actually him- I just had to go far, far away.

"IT'S GROSS," I said, "if anyone's gonna act like they're my dad at all, then it's FUCKING NOT GOING TO BE YOU, of all people."

The older man with the slicked back brown hair guffawed, but only for a moment. Almost like he found that funny- it WASN'T- and then all of a sudden thought otherwise.

"Why don't you check that phone you wanted back from me so badly?" said Jeff.

"If you promise not to hurt them," I said, as I glanced over to the far corner of the dark room where I saw her- Denice. She would invite me to MMA matches until she picked up on the matter that I generally avoided all violence; and then, she invited me only if she was in one of the bouts. She truly was awesome in a fight; inside a ring or out. And I'd go, just for her.

Because, like Kaylee, she was beautiful inside and out.

Her brown hair was usually dyed blond- as it was in that moment- and braided and tied back in the MMA-athlete-fighter style, as I liked to call it; I didn't know what else it was. Dutch braid? Fish braid? Cabbage braid? Infinity Möbius?

Dragonfruit braid?

Tomato?

"I won't hurt them for now." He gestured at the still-glowing screen inside my jeans pocket, opposite the one where the knives were.

He was reading my mind and I knew it; I closed up all the entrances, set up all the barriers there possibly could be for my mind and its nuances and its resonances- if Kaylee wanted me, she'd have to call, or come down here.

Jeff glowered at me.

"Well, go on, then," he said. "Look at it."

I took the phone, its face still on and glowing white with black text.

A message- from Connor.

--ovw--LXI--ovw--

This could be the last time that I ever say to you that I mean it.

- from Integrity

MONDAY

10:53 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

A message- from Connor.

I glanced at the man who introduced himself as Caleb. Why I did, I didn't know.

Well- he didn't really introduce himself. He assumed I knew who he was.

As I slid my finger across the screen to scroll back up to the top of the text, I called her name- without looking backward, without turning away from this... from this abomination.

"Denice!" I shouted.

"Copy, Morphine."

She still called me by my old call sign. One of them- when we did covert together.

Something feels off

"You okay?" I said.

"Yeah."

Sam lost SRAs to very few people; Lyca was one of them. I watched, but only because Sam always wanted me there- she'd give me phone calls at 2AM (when she was probably very high) to say that she needed my moral support- and then, after, I always waited at the exit gates with her favorite addictive Baker Joe's strawberry bubble gum, Kaylee and her look of Sam-disapproval, and my double-coupons for Pacifico chocolate raisin bread.

You know, the stuff I like to dip in the hot chocolate while other people stare.

A new thought scratched at the back of my head.

Wasn't someone else there, too?

Nope

Someone else was there, too...

No one else was there

I felt like someone else was there, like there was a puzzle in my head that needed solving. In my mind I pulled up memories of Sam's already-black eye; that other time when Carter caught her ankle in a submission hold, and I had two plastic bags full of ice with me in advance; that time she and Tiana and I won against three of the U.S.'s highest-ranked agents- which, as soon as I got the message, I knew was OBVIOUSLY for James's ENTERTAINMENT rather than an actually useful and constructive training bout.

I guessed maybe it was getting boring for him, to be popping stimulants all the time. All day, all night.

The question in my head.

But wasn't someone else there???

The three question marks in my head screamed at me; there was something wrong about the empty space beside me in all those memories.

"That wasn't empty space," said the blond man from behind the transparent wall.

I glanced at him again. He looked like a friendlier version of my old biology teacher. Same larger build, same eyes; only the hair was slightly different, because this man's was a perhaps a bit darker.

I looked closely. Of all the things- I fixated on his hair.

Only for a moment, though.

Yeah. Maybe, like, two shades darker.

He shook his head at me.

"Empty space?" he repeated.

Creepy.

"So that's all I am now?" he said.

Who was he talking to?

For just a second, I forced myself to look at Jeff.

But I felt nothing.

Creepy...

But a bit attractive almost? Sort of? Maybe he knows something?

YEAH HE KNOWS ALL OF YOUR NAMES

Hold on. What was I thinking about?

THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE THERE, MOVE ON

No one else?

No one else was where? Move on from what?

READ THE MESSAGE ON THE SCREEN

My eyes hyperfocused on the text on the screen; all of the people in that room- Lyca, Anthony David, Caleb Samuel, Jeff- fixated on me. The soft glow of white-and-blue light from the phone illuminated the loose strands of my hair; stray hair next to my ears and my chin and my neck; all seemingly dipped in blood. All the eyes in that black and dark red room, save for my own, were on me. My left hand- or should I say the skin on it- was only slowly un-growing the worms or tentacles; it was still murky dark blue and absolutely, horribly gross. I stared at the movement of the little worms. Maggots.

There was nothing for me to vomit.

Read. The message. On. The screen.

Nightingale snatched back at me in my mind. Calling to me for my attention again.

Voices; screams; large limbs and large hands on my small body.

No one saved me.

Sinister red. Everything was dark, perverse, sinister red.

Sam often told me she would have punched all the memories in the face for me. And all of the criminals associated with them, too.

I read the message on the screen.

Monday

9:31 AM

Sent via SecureWeb

Chris.

Or, I should say- Daniel Tobler.

If you get this- we're trying to find you. We hope, and we are praying to every God that exists and even to the God that *YOU* always believed in, that you're alive. PLEASE BE ALIVE.

If you get this, the three of us are still making a way down to however far you dropped... And, if you're alive, AND YOU BETTER BE BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW YOU JUMPED FROM CENTURY SPIRE AND LIVED, here's what I wanted to... Well, what I wanted to tell you.

I'm asking you, or I'm asking OF YOU a deal. You get to have this, but you hold on to the map, SEND IT TO US IF YOU CAN.

Use the holograph projector and review this.

ATTACHED

Daniel Tobler - File, 9TB

Reply Forward Delete

I flipped on the holograph scanner, scanned the paper, with its creases, folds, and lines, and sent it to Sam and not Connor, carbon-copying both Kaylee and Wyatt.

And to Connor, I replied:

"I love you, Connor.

Platonically. Even though I'm literally gay.

If I acted like I hated you it's because sometimes I did. But if I hate then that's a reflection of me, not of you.

This might be goodbye."

I moved on immediately to reviewing this nine-terabyte file he text messaged to me.

And then, of course, I wished I hadn't.

DANIEL TOBLER

Recruited Age Twelve

Birth Mother: NOT YET IDENTIFIED

Birth Father: JEFFERY PHILIP CHRISTIAN TOBLER

Known abilities: NONE CONFIRMED

[UPDATE]

Known abilities:

STILL TO BE FIRMLY VALIDATED

*Able to set objects on fire

*^Yet subject is non-pyrokinetic?

*Able to decrease pain experienced by direct contact with other individual

*^Sacrifices self. Experiences "same" pain as that of other subject in process; other subject will not experience pain if in contact with this subject

*^Subject does not "numb" pain, subject takes pain from other test subjects

*Occasionally hypermobile

*^Particularly the spine and shoulders

[UPDATE]

Known abilities:

STILL TO BE FIRMLY VALIDATED

*Telepathy

*Flight?

*^Not levitation. Flight is manual and must physically be executed correctly to achieve said flight

[UPDATE]

Birth mother: NOT VALIDATED

*Possible match #1: HAVAILIE JENNA GRAYSON - Incarcerated for murder, drug addict, passed away in prison.

*Possible match #2: ISABELLA MADISON GARCIA-COOPER - Incarcerated for murder, confirmed child trafficker, passed away in prison.

*^Bodies not yet found. Cannot confirm.

*There may be other matches.

*^Verification may take 40 to 50 months or longer; as with 99% of all Overwoods individuals, any DNA samples have been intermixed with compound OVERWOOD-V-STIIR-B or OVRW-STRANULUS-A

[UPDATE]

DANIEL TOBLER AKA CHRISTOPHER MIDNIGHT

*SAME FILE

*All compounds/files/composites/etc. attached

*Will pass file handling to separate division/branch due to relationship:

*^This was initially assigned to the brother of subject's father

*^Tests to confirm this only completed today

*As such, will hand off text file handling

[UPDATE]

*Request to be re-assigned text file handling/update compilation DENIED due to:

*^Requesting handler

*^1 Is previous holder of file and update collection/organization/coordination

*^2 Requester is current handler of subject

*^3 Requester has known substance addiction to the ff: DEPRESSANTS, STIMULANTS

*^4 Requester was noted to be under influence of alcohol when requesting re-assignment

*^5 Requester is related to subject

All compiled evidence uploaded to same file.

[UPDATE]

Known abilities:

*Able to set objects on fire

*^From outside as well as from inside

[UPDATE]

*Request for file to be re-assigned to original holder APPROVED due to:

*^1 Requester is permitted access and authorization to all Union of Stars agent-level files

*^2 Requester is new head of OVERWOODS BRANCH Union of Stars

*^3 Overriding - Requester is original file holder

*^4 Second holder of file is presently MIA.

*^5 Second holder of this file has not responded to messages/MIA - Status unknown - Whereabouts unknown

[UPDATE]

*Subject is only survivor of male control group #9

*Subject is also only survivor from male experimental group #17

*Subject has proven ability in combat

*^Despite refusing to engage in said combat

*Subject is same age as only female survivor from NIGHTINGALE.

*^Subject has same birthday as only other survivor from NIGHTINGALE

*^Only other survivor is DAVENPORT, Kaylee Ann.

*ANIMAL-related experiments [MID-NIGHTINGALE, PRE-NIGHTINGALE, POST-NIGHTINGALE] were performed on subject TOBLER, Daniel

*PLANT-related experiments [MID-NIGHTINGALE, PRE-NIGHTINGALE, POST-NIGHTINGALE] were performed on subject DAVENPORT, Kaylee Ann

[UPDATE]

*POST-NIGHTINGALE experiments shall be halted IMMEDIATELY

[UPDATE]

*Attaching scans of DNA/OVERWOOD-V-STIIR-B/OVRW-STRANULUS-A

*Subject will be included in ANIMAL TESTING OPERATION #6 as opposed to original proposed NIGHTINGALE II

*Female survivor will also be included

*^DAVENPORT, Kaylee Ann

*Rejected appeal to NIGHTINGALE II

[UPDATE]

*Confirming that JEFFERY PHILIP CHRISTIAN TOBLER is subject's birth father.

*^Birth mother still not known/confirmed

*^Genetic tests failed

*^DNA test results for mother's side so far are inconclusive

*^File holder and subject's handler is confirmed family member of subject as father's side uncle

*This file holder and AGENT's caretaker will attempt sobriety for said AGENT

*[SIMPLE NONINVASIVE TESTING] Determined AGENT is able to detect deception (98% more accurately than peers)

*Will place AGENT in interrogations/interviewers or criminal investigators

*Will not approve further experimentations on AGENT.

[UPDATE]

*EX-SUBJECT IS NOW AGENT

*NO FURTHER EXPERIMENTATIONS WILL BE APPROVED

Last modified by JAMESON ADAM TOBLER

--ovw--LXII--ovw--

This could be the last time that I ever say to you that I mean it

And if what tomorrow brings is nothing short of the truth

Then it'll tell you that I never took the part for you

I never played that part for you

- from Integrity

MONDAY

11:01 AM

Experiment Site: WDSM Diamond Mine

A message buzzed in, and previewed itself at the top of the holographic projections as I was presented with all of the wonderful DNA-Overwoods-Experiment-Whatever scans that absolutely delighted me, and filled me with such joy.

I'm lying.

"WE GOT YOUR MAP, WE KNOW YOUR LOCATION. IT'S A MIND MAZE. STAY ALIVE. - ARRVN"

At least that map was good for something.

If only I was good for anything...

--ovw--

"CHRIS."

The voice played itself in my mind, as Lyca and Caleb Samuel and Anthony David and Jeff Tobler all stared at me; just watching my reactions.

I responded, through my mind. There was only one person whose bond was powerful enough to break through to me, even in moments like this.

James.

"It's me," I responded.

It wasn't possible. I saw all the proof in the world and it still wasn't possible.

"No, buddy, it's possible," he said telepathically, "and it's my fault."

I felt nothing.

I felt nothing, yet tears threatened to spill over my eyelashes when I spoke the only words that acknowledged the truth:

"So you did it to me." It was a whisper. A whisper through the white and gray webs of telepathy, the ones that in my mind were now turning to water, and then to ice, and then to nothingness. "So you were there, and you knew, and you were just like them."

In front of me there were monsters and moving cadavers with broken bones and Charlotte; Charlotte Miller's body, exactly as thin and fragile as mine was, disfigured; broken. Dead. She was just as old as I was, and she was no more important; she was no less valuable.

Somewhere in my mind, I saw Kaylee. I think she was speaking, trying to talk to me. But I wasn't sure. And it did not matter.

Monsters in the form of snakes and liquid chemicals burned and swam on the amber marble floor before me; I saw Marie's dead body on it; in reflections on the floor, I saw Crayon and Skittles and Jupiter One. And a thousand dead bodies of children, teenagers and young adults that I once saw myself. I saw Elyza covered in her own blood. I remembered Belinda.

I heard another voice; I wasn't sure who it was. It was the voice of a man. Maybe Connor, or James Tobler, or Anthony, or maybe even Jeff Tobler. It did not matter to me. And pretty soon, they were all shouts. My eyes were open and yet I could not see. I smiled, refusing to suffer any longer than I had, remembering that I had already rescued enough humans and, maybe even more importantly, innocent non-human animals who have never kidnapped, nor tortured, nor raped, nor exploited, nor otherwise abused any children or the disadvantaged for their profit.

It is not a day you forget- the one on which you realize that nothing is worth it; the one on which you deeply and so truly realize that absolutely no one cares; the one on which every piece of yourself that you crawled for on shattered glass, just to salvage, and just to piece together again, is stolen by a monster. All of those pieces, gone.

It is not a day you forget when you see, up close, the man who literally used someone a quarter of his age purely only to benefit himself economically, socially, financially, narcissistically, illegally and immorally, and as a part of his disguising cloak faced towards the world's perception, because he is a miserable coward who will never be more than that.

The word poison is not strong enough.

Monster is not the right word.

Garbage is not the right word.

Something lower. Something unearthly. Something beyond your very worst, most atrocious, most horrendous and most perverse of imaginations. Something farther, far, far, far, far, and farther than and lower-than-lower than the pits of the underworld. Something below the volcanic, poisonous pathogens of the venomous, dreadful, horrific cosmos where only the lowest of demons go.

Something from hell who belongs only as fuel for the burning of their own nerves and skin and soul and eyes from eternal hellfire; the pot of their own permanent boiling; the conflagration of consequence.

The forever haunting of them from all of their victims.

--ovw--

Speeding into me like a bullet train

It's the last thing I will see

Speeding into me like a bullet train

It's the last thing I will see

I wasn't looking for a lighthouse

Even though it was a really dark bedroom

Don't even ask me again if I wanna go

You ask no question, but my answer is still no

I'm gonna heal this all on my own is what I thought I said

Will I be waking up in someone else's bed

And if the lies sing you to sleep

The concrete breaks beneath my feet

What other song that I wrote, is this a hurricane versus a raincoat

Sinister red.

Everything was dark, perverse, sinister red.

Voices; screams; large limbs and large hands on my smaller frame and unfed body. A small body cannot protect itself; a child's body is not a shield of armor nor can it stand naked on its own in a room of torture; in a war.

No one saved me.

Sometimes, I felt like I couldn't see anything.

--ovw--

I said the words again: "So you did it to me."

Only demons- only DEMONS from hell itself could cause children so much suffering; so much PAIN.

Could cause the innocent to suffer to the point of not knowing who they are anymore.

The cost of the pleasure, of the games of these people.

To them- they are the only ones in the world.

No one saved me.

James paused.

"Please be more specific," he said, like he was pleading with me to understand. To understand whatever it was, because whatever it was, I was not going to understand.

My telepathic voice transformed into a version of itself I hadn't heard before; a version of itself I never thought I would ever hear. I can still remember it now. It wasn't my voice; it was a knife, it was a tower of collapsing cards all set on fire; it was the bile and the blood and the chemicals that I vomited into Jeff's experiment bathroom sink; it was all of these things; all of the ugliness in the world combined with the fact I was yards away from a man who raped me, raped me in absolutely every sense of the word possible.

"You want me to be more specific."

"I had to do a lot of things."

Yeah, I bet he did.

I only had to pull up the memory for him to see it, and so that was what I did:

*^Sacrifices self. Experiences "same" pain as that of other subject in process; other subject will not experience pain if in contact with this subject

He continued. "Chris..."

I remember now how Jeff was still smiling at me. Like he wanted me to know; he wanted for me to know.

I don't remember crying.

But I do remember realizing I had fallen 500 floors to my death only to find that the truth was that I was related by blood and on paper to the two most depraved, corrupted, abnormality freaks the entire universe had ever known. Add to that my alleged mom who was a proven drug addict murderer child trafficker.

I also remember thinking about how far I had fallen from the tree.

Such a good thing, then, that blood never meant anything for me.

Looks like I had done a lot of things right after all.

--ovw--

Now: which of the two evils did I want to get rid of first?

Very slowly, one word at a time, my telepathic voice returned to itself, like a robot monster methodically disassembling one sheath, one gun, one piece of armor at a time; a mutated half-monstrosity from the underworlds of Experiment Nightingale removing its own limbs and its own claws.

"Is it Chris, or is it Danny?" I said to James. I felt no connection to either of these two men; it might have been on paper, but it was not possible to feel a connection. I was 500 floors under the ground and 500 million miles from that apple tree. I had seen proof yet to me it was not possible. "You were one of them." Is it Chris, or is it Danny? I tried to swallow the thought- and the memories- and failed. "Do you choose everything for me, just like you chose all those 'tests' you decided to run?"

I'd done a lot of things right; it wasn't enough for me.

These two monsters with green eyes still existed.

Colors in our minds, for me and James both, transformed from ice blue to gray to black to hellfire to the deepest color of red one could want; it was the color of my blood, on these very tiles. And I was a child then. All of us were, the victims. And I felt everything James felt, and vice versa, because that was how it was when the strong telepaths were connected; I could run, but I could not run; I could put up the wall but then how long would it last until I saw him?

And the truth...

It wasn't from James; it didn't come from James. It came in a nine-terabyte holographic message from Connor Meadows.

Of all people.

"First, I didn't run those tests," James said in the bitterest tone I had ever heard of him to that point. "Second..." I felt his guilt through the telepathic binding; I felt his guilt. As the telepath that I am, I experienced it, and yet magically still I felt absolutely nothing at all. I didn't know how it was possible. "I didn't know it was you. I didn't know who you were- just that you were an exceptional telepath and a healer-"

"Flattering," I interrupted, beyond any respect that I used to have for the man, if any. "But I'm not even a healer, I just take pain because apparently I get to be hurt all the time while you sit in a chair and watch."

And then I realized I hated him.

I understood why he never told me: it was his own form of brainwashing me.

Brainwashing me...

Because his brother did the same thing.

I felt it- there was apology and sincerity and a true compassion in both our minds, and all of that came from his- but I was tired. And people I cared about were near a threat.

In our minds, he tried to continue, and then he didn't anymore. When you know there's no point, you don't bother.

"Chris," he said, almost choking on my name- the only true name I thought I knew- the name I grew to love; almost shaking but not quite, "if I could have saved you sooner-"

Stop, I thought to no one in particular; to the whole world in general.

I remember my exact thought at that exact moment:

There is no point in tears now; there is no objective.

I remember simultaneously wanting to fall apart, and wanting to hurt Mr. Jameson Adam Tobler for all of the hurt he put me through- as if that as possible; as if there was any pain to describe to him that he WATCHED while all of us suffered- but, no, wasn't my anger misdirected?

No. He watched children die.

I no longer remember whose voices were in my mind; which telepaths were intervening, jumping into the blood and into the fire, if any were; maybe they were all my own cries; my own thoughts on fire and covered in my blood.

He saved you.

My anger is misdirected.

I stared at the black mission style lamp's broken pieces; I stared at the crystal chandelier above it and all of its gold and glass and the little flickering candles.

Just like the fires. Just like the burning glass tiles.

Kaylee still screams herself awake, just like I do. You take a step and then it's over; you hop over the air and survive but at the cost of your body and the cost of your sanity.

You will be in pain forever after. Because it doesn't stop.

Was my anger really misdirected?

No, he stood in front of a screen while you DIED like he always does!

My anger is misdirected.

Or was it?

No. He watched children die.

He did.

Yes. That he did.

And he gets to live with it AS HEAD OF the Union of Stars' Overwoods branch?

But... wasn't he also the one who ensured I wouldn't be harmed any further?

No. He watched children die.

My

anger

is

misdirected.

But wasn't he also the one who watched while his brother raped me and touched me and pushed me and yelled at me?

RAPED ME IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD???

Destroyed me and every part of me.

My anger is misdirected. It must be misdirected... it has to be misdirected. He saved me.

There was nothing left; I had nothing left.

Red hair.

I always hated red hair. I even hate his hair.

Wasn't he someone who stared and kept reports and filed papers and signed warrants and signed approvals on things that could have taken my life, at twelve, all in the name of bettering conditions only for people who already had more than all of us?

Anthony David- the older man, in the other capsule- started to slam his fists on the transparent divide. His mouth was moving.

But I heard nothing.

He was getting drunk and shooting drugs up his arms for a high while his brother was abusing, violating, corrupting you.

I blinked blood and water off my eyes.

They have red hair; I even hate their hair. They are the same person.

THEY ARE THE SAME.

They were not the same. Were they?

THEY ARE THE SAME

"You can't hate me like this, Chris," James's voice echoed in my head.

He's begging you just like you begged him to stop, thousands and thousands and thousands of times.

Hundreds.

Of thousands. Of times.

You can't hate me like this, he said.

One of the candles fell from the chandelier I had been looking at; its wax was black and it transformed into an oily pool of lurid, reflective, shiny blood the second it hit the dark red marble floor. Reflective and shiny like a gas leak, but red now; not black.

Sinister red.

In the reflection on the floor, I saw Charlotte Miller's face; her dislocated shoulders were not completely concealed by the ropes. The angles of the bones were severely disjointed; troublesome to anyone's eyes- both arms going entirely backwards; the blackness of Jeff's nonexistent soul the exact same blackness of Charlotte's now-empty eye sockets.

They choked her, to her death.

Yes. They did that, in front of me.

And she was NOT the only victim, and Marie was there, and Kaylee was there.

No, she was not the only victim. Not the only child-turned-to-dead-body, AT ALL, in that three-month torture setup. Set up by adults, willing and thinking and choosing; deciding adults.

Sick, evil torturers. Monsters.

Walking sacks of pure garbage.

They choked her, to her death.

Not the only child-turned-to-dead-body.

Not by a long shot.

What was it that James said? You can't hate me like this, Chris. That's what James said.

I smiled a twisted smile, and shook my head; I did both these things slowly.

"Yes," I said. "I can."

--ovw--

In the old sport of gymnastics, from thousands of years ago, you were rewarded for the difficulty of what you did.

What exact element did you throw; what trick did you just perform; how hard was it? People who threw the biggest, most potentially dangerous, riskiest, most high-impact, most difficult skills- they were the ones that usually won the medals; they were the ones that were rewarded.

Almost like a gladiator game.

Someone once told me that life was the exact same way.

You got rewarded… for difficulty.

That is what someone told me.

But, at the time, I could not fathom what the possible reward could be for all of the harm that I had been put through.

As I write this today, have I changed my mind?

Has my view changed and did my view change me?

Stick around.

Maybe you'll find out.

--ovw--

A million potential reactions- from begging Jeff to kill me, to asking Lyca to destroy the cylinder/chamber/trap/thing she was in (I think she was in mine, actually, and Anthony David was in Kaylee's), to simply laughing and doing a triple twist on two injured legs- ran through my mind. At the same time, the odd man called Caleb Samuel Davenport started to hum a tune. It was a beautiful tune; a really, really pretty melody that I could listen to for days. And I was so fascinated by his eyes, even though their color literally reminded me of the ice-covered sidewalk that I once slipped on.

ORBIPLOSIONS

Orbiplosions?

What's that all about?

And then suddenly I realized the entire tune he was humming was literally A SONG THAT I WROTE.

How???

How does he know my song?

I kept seeing Charlotte choked to her death in front of me.

This shit mad gully bro and literally I'm not even Sam like WTF???

I kept seeing how her bones were forcefully snapped out of the right places. No, PUSHED, right out of the right places.

HOW

I heard again the tightening of the cord on her neck and around her shoulders. I heard it. The most bizarre, nauseating, bloodcurdling yet inconspicuous sound. Followed by the sounds that were made of the grinding misalignment of her own bones.

It was my name she screamed. My name, before she died. And it wasn't just her, too.

Like- I would ONLY share that kind of info WITH A REALLY GOOD FRIEND OR PARTNER!

I heard Marie call out my name. Not once. Not twice. Not thrice. Again, again, again, again. And at night. Every night, in my sleep.

Kaylee also screamed my name. But... did I save her? Was I able to save the girl who was my best friend?

She was my only friend, wasn't she?

Was Kaylee my only friend?

Aren't you forgetting Sam?

What night of Nightingale is this?

WHAT NIGHT

OF NIGHTINGALE

IS THIS

HOW???

I put three fingers on my neck to feel my pulse.

I felt nothing.

--ovw--

I feel nothing.

Why

do I

feel nothing

I breathed in slowly through my mouth, and out slowly through my mouth. I counted to three.

"Chris," James said, slowly. "You know I care about you." He paused. "You know this."

Does he ever run out of bullshit?

Apparently not, right?

Whose SHIT has he been smoking?

I paused.

...you don't want the answer to that

"This piece of shit's your brother?" I said.

At that point, to me, the last conversation didn't happen, because there was a threat to the lives of people I cared about- people who actually, truly, genuinely showed that they cared about me. The thought of how close Kaylee was to this man they called Jeffery Philip Christian Tobler made me shudder; the movement sent spikes of pain through my neck and shoulder and hand and leg and entire body.

Do I have to kill him to keep my friends from getting hurt?

I wasn't going to kill him.

No.

No.

Maybe Sam could do that, if absolutely needed...

She would. She was always prepared to kill when needed. And she always did everything she could to protect me. People like her, people like Tiana, people as hurt as Emberion, the good and possibly the last good people are why I fight.

I can't kill.

But if Kaylee comes here and he tries anything, anything at all-

But I knew exactly what things he was capable of doing and three innocent people were right in front of me, all in his trap.

Just like all of us kids were in his trap, when Kaylee and I were kidnapped. Taken and murdered. Because he murdered all of us.

And I knew right then, though I didn't know how much of the battle was won or lost, that to go near this man at all would require more of me than I could possibly ever ask of myself.

"Older brother," James replied. I'd almost forgotten I even asked him a question. "Yup."

"Why didn't you kill the damned thing?"

"I tried."

"I'm arresting him."

"Chris," he said.

We both felt my flare of anger.

"Jameson Adam Tobler," I replied.

He laughed, telepathically, BECAUSE LIKE OMG, IT WAS SO FUNNY.

"Wait for the others to get there. Sam, Elyza-"

"Elyza isn't here."

"That's where you're wrong. You think she'd abandon the world's brightest night sky at a time like this?"

I shifted my eyes- slowly, carefully, politely- off of Jeff, and to the transparent divides that were the capsules, the ones holding Caleb Samuel and Anthony David in place.

Davenport. And Malcolm.

Malcolm...

I felt a pinching sensation at the back of my head, near where my ponytail was. I took the elastic bands off for the time being.

Two separate cylinders; knowing my own experience from Nightingale, I doubted there was much in my power to break them. But maybe Lyca...

My gaze shifted to the dark red marble floor.

It was so beautiful. So shiny. And so twisted at once.

And I'd seen it before.

What did he say? The world's brightest night sky?

What on earth did that even mean?

"That's you, buddy."

What?

I heard James's telepathic sigh. "It's a compliment," he said. "Midnight."

"So, Elyza Cobb is on the way?" I said.

"Yup. Your very favorite Liquid Nitrogen is on the way."

He paused.

"So am I," he said. "And so is Tiana."

I put the elastic bands back on my hair, smearing blood on the long black wisps while I tied them.

"Ambervi?" I said.

"Yes."

Slowly, I dropped to my knees- and then on my butt- and sat there on the floor with the phone still flashing its text and glowing blue with its holographic images in my right hand. The left hand was...

UGH

How long did it take for me to recover from that one part of Nightingale again...?

"Myelantic is bringing the poison antidote to you. Hang on."

"MYELANTIC?"

"Who else is the drug expert?" James asked. A question as a response to my question.

I looked at my left hand. I shook my head again.

Orbiplosions.

Vaguely, I recalled a blinding, white flash of light. Somewhere in the past. I couldn't quite place it. Maybe it was the memory of a bad dream.

Bad dreams...

I shook my head again.

I get lots of those.

I also recalled what I saw in that file.

ANIMAL-related experiments [MID-NIGHTINGALE, PRE-NIGHTINGALE, POST-NIGHTINGALE] were performed on subject TOBLER, Daniel

Yeah, well. I knew I was a corgi.

PLANT-related experiments [MID-NIGHTINGALE, PRE-NIGHTINGALE, POST-NIGHTINGALE] were performed on subject DAVENPORT, Kaylee Ann

Explains why she's a peashooter.

Shut up

Hands on the back of my head...

Hands on my mind hands on my mind

Well- she really was a peashooter. Wait, what did James say to me?

I looked at him.

"You," I replied.

Jeff still looked like he was going to have the time of his life. And for all I knew at that time, maybe he really was going to.

"Oh. Well, yes, Emberion is also on the way there."

Jeff and I locked eyes; we surveyed each other's statures. He was a tall man, his hair unlike James's and unlike mine, save perhaps for its length, which like mine, I never bothered to think about. I was two-and-a-half feet tall and about to be absolutely destroyed by a murderer molester abuser giant.

One who had no conviction. One who lied, to everyone, about everything.

I put out the blaze on my left hand. I didn't even realize it had set itself on fire again.

"I'll do this on my own," I said to James. Even to myself I sounded like a robot. A robot who was dying, or one who wanted to die.

James said nothing.

Do robots die?

Or maybe I sounded already dead- it was barely a telepathic whisper.

I cleared my throat physically. I repeated myself telepathically.

"I'll do this on my own," I said.

"You're an idiot," said James.

I shook my head again. "How did you even know how to-"

"The map."

That one map.

Okay.

"And how did you-"

"As soon as you sent it to Kaylee, Caleb sent it to practically everyone in the Union of Stars," said James, "which already presents a hazard in itself. But as soon as this man figures..." He trailed off.

Which man?

Figures what?

"You mean your sociopath psychopath brother?" I said. "And do you mean 'Caleb' like-" I glanced at Caleb Samuel. "Like, Caleb Samuel Davenport? Like the guy here? Is he related to Kaylee in some way?"

"They're related. And yes," said James, "as soon as he figures out that he can't have you, he kills you, kills himself maybe, and a whole lot of other people in the process."

That made sense but it also didn't.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

I actually said that word...

"You're his endgame," said James.

What?

"How do you know that?" I responded.

How did he know that?

Maybe he just knows his brother really well.

Right? What else could it be?

I knew Jeff was going to kill me. That's exactly what I was banking on.

"Chris," James said. "I'm not letting him kill you. I'm not letting him hurt you."

Oh, really?

"Too late," I said. "But thanks for the thought."

Stop reading my mind, you powerful telepath idiot.

"You still in there, Morphine?" yelled Lyca, physically, from her capsule. I turned to her and nodded, subtly. Slowly. It was as quick as I could respond at that time at least.

How does he know this?

"Answer the question, James," I said. "And don't make it like the stuff you wrote into my file."

I watched Anthony David attempt to set fire to the glass capsule he was in- I had no idea he was pyrokinetic. I raised my eyebrows and blinked a few times. He didn't seem like a pyrokinetic; like the kid in class I knew from second grade who blew up a frog in a science experiment.

Marie was there...

But the glass capsule didn't catch fire; it didn't break Anthony out.

Jeff laughed.

I didn't see that pyrokinetic kid at Nightingale. Either he wasn't selected or wasn't there- which is extremely unlikely, as almost all of the kids in our age bracket were in that experiment- or he was killed by Jeff and James and their high-ranking mainland US counterparts really early into the experiment. Or maybe he was in another experiment?

"James," I repeated.

He hesitated.

"Because you were my endgame, too, once."

--ovw--LXIII--ovw--

"Because you were my endgame, too, once."

MONDAY

11:03 AM

WDSM DIAMOND MINE - JEFFERY PHILIP CHRISTIAN TOBLER'S UNDERGROUND EXPERIMENTATION/TORTURE HOUSE*

Status: Available

*Or so I called it.

Oh, wait.

That's actually what it was.

Hah. Go me.

--ovw--

"Because you were my endgame, too, once."

I wasn't sure what that meant.

"What-"

"Don't ask."

"I am asking."

"Chris, buddy, there's a lot I have to explain to you."

"No shit. Question one: who was that man, that gave me that map years ago?"

"That may have been me."

"WHAT?"

"We'll talk about it later."

I was a PTSD pie from Baker Joe's with extra strawberry topping. I was a marshmallow on a spinning diamond plate.

"Your jokes were never funny," I said, mostly to myself, really. Almost. Sort of. I continued. "Question two: This Caleb guy sent it to everyone in the Union of Stars? How?"

That was when a giant rock- yes, a giant rock- smashed through the far wall, just beside Lyca, and effectively forced more incandescent light from Jeff's ginormous living room (which was still just like it was back in Nightingale- full of beautiful, warm, orange light and fireplaces) into this oversized torture cell.

That was when I saw them- Tiana Ambervi, and Emberion Myelantic.

I continued to speak En Telepathe to James.

"Dude. How did they-?"

"They were already on the way there. As soon as you... attempted suicide Kaylee notified everyone."

I said nothing.

And then, I said:

"Oh. Thanks."

"I'll let her know."

"I'm about to engage. Any further instructions?"

"Do NOT engage."

I rolled my eyes. Jeff was still smiling at me. He was, as he usually was with me at least- delighted. Almost like he was looking at a meal. Almost like how delighted I typically get whenever I see French toast, or how delighted I typically get whenever I see practically any dog (especially corgis, because they are adorable and they are happiness), or how delighted I typically get to see Sam or Kaylee on or after a bad day.

Except a very disgusting, exploitative, predatory version of it.

I'm literally a marshmallow. Ugh. Like, go find a sandwich or something if you're hungry!

Why am I-

Hands. Hands at the back of my head.

I shook my head.

I'm a bit dizzy...

I realized he'd been staring at me just standing there for quite some time, actually, just... standing there breathing really hard. I made the mistake of looking at his pants.

"Do not engage why?" I asked James. "I mean, apart from the fact he doesn't even try to be an appealing predator, like, at all?"

Not the point. But ugh. I mean, he kinda tried- like. Sometimes. I guessed.

"You remember those explosions and white flashes of light?"

"Yeah."

"That was him."

I immediately put a hand up, and toward Ember and Tia, to signal to them to stop. They stopped where they were, Tiana Ambervi hopping off of Emberion Myelantic's back, and manipulating the little bits of rocky, earthy, rubble on the ground that she could; flipping them over on the ground like you would an egg or a piece of meat on a frying pan.

Tiana "Tia" Ambervi: Earth Manipulation. Or, as she liked to call it, "Earthbending." Or, as I liked to call it, "VROOM VROOM SMASH BRING DA HAUS DOWN!!!"

Not literally, of course. Don't do that. Don't destroy houses.

Not like I had one...

"Tell me, my boy," piped Jeff, "do you know these three lovely individuals I've selected so carefully, just for you?"

As I write this now, I seriously cannot believe I spoke to him at all, the way I did, with the answers that I did.

Even as I write this down now, I still cannot understand the… how fragile I was rendered; the fear injected straight into me again.

Syringe number 634,775,234. Experiment 437,236,758,764.

Not literally exact numbers; not exact on this page only; I do like to be precise- but that was PRECISELY WHAT IT FELT LIKE.

Fear

Fear was injected straight into him again

Him? Me? Who?

WHO????

WHO IS TALKING HERE?!

Who. Is. TALKING?!

I still remember the words.

Injected fear.

Just like the chemicals…

"I know Lyca," I said.

Why are you answering?

WHY ARE YOU ANSWERING-

"I mean, Denice," I said. "Denice Lyca Zambaia. We do know each other."

Jeff's smile carved deeper lines into his face. He was almost attractive.

Almost.

"And what about these two... disgusting men-"

He literally just called them lovely.

Wait, wait.

I'm a bit dizzy...

Is that what he said?

That's what he said, right?

"...do you happen to know them?"

Nice of him to say that. You know, if I thought about it... he was lovely, too. In his own way.

Jeff nodded, almost in approval of my last thought.

NO WAIT HOLD ON A SECOND