by wildbow
“Then it’s better I’m along for the ride, isn’t it?”
Grace didn’t respond. Instead, she turned around and walked away.
When she reached the back of the truck, she hopped in. “You fucking owe me, Tec.”
She slammed the one door closed, as if to punctuate her irritation with the situation, leaving the other open for my teammates.
Tattletale dropped her armband out the driver’s side window. The rest of the Undersiders discarded theirs. There was a pause before Tecton and Grace followed suit, throwing theirs free of the van.
That done, Tattletale put the van in gear. It was already starting to move by the time Imp and Regent had climbed in and slammed the doors behind them.
With Tattletale’s ability to identify Eidolon’s general location and my ability to narrow the result down with my bugs, it only took a few minutes to find them. The issue was that we only had a few minutes to begin with.
Eidolon was in the air, flying a safe distance above Noelle. And Noelle…
I couldn’t get a read on Noelle. My bugs disappeared into her as they made contact, their signal distorting and cutting off. It left me with a hazy picture. She was big. African elephant big. I didn’t get much more than that.
They were talking.
Eidolon had his hands folded into his sleeves, like an ancient sensei, legs dangling, his costume billowing around him. His voice was calm, quiet, in stark contrast to the hot breath that billowed around Noelle as she panted with no less than five mouths. Four of the mouths were considerably larger than the one owned by the rough human shape on top.
I only caught two words as he spoke to her. Coil was one. Cauldron was another.
Interlude 18 (Donation Bonus #3)
Thursday, June 16th, 2011, 22:11
“Are you comfortable? Is there anything I can get you?” Jessica Yamada asked.
“A… okay,” the staff employee said. What had her name been? Worthwhile? No. Worth-something. She was elderly, and took more time than was necessary to go through the letters, “M… okay. M, n, o, p, q, r, s t, u…”
A… M…
“Stop,” Jessica said. “I can guess.”
“I have to continue,” the older woman said. “Patient’s right to communicate. T, u, v, w, x, y… Y. Third letter is Y.”
“We’ve been over this, Victoria,” Jessica said. “You know that’s something I don’t have any power to give you.”
Victoria blinked three times, the signal for the alphabet. The older woman started. As Victoria’s right eye was the only one open, she started with the second half. “M, n, o, p… P, okay.”
Victoria switched eyes, closing one and opening the other. First half of the alphabet.
“A, b, c, d, e, f, g, h…”
Another blink.
“H. Okay.”
“Phone?” Jessica interrupted, before the reading started again.
A blink. Affirmation.
“I’ve explained you can’t phone her. She’s gone to the Birdcage—”
Jessica paused. Her own heart rate was climbing, her breathing involuntarily quickening. She felt a bead of sweat running down the back of her neck. The old woman had stepped out of her chair, backing away.
“Stop that,” Jessica said, her voice firm. She’d managed to keep her voice from trembling.
The sensation didn’t fade.
“She went to the Birdcage because she wanted to,” Jessica said. “And we let her because there were serious concerns about her unleashing an epidemic if she had another psychotic break.”
Three blinks. To the old woman’s credit, she stuck to doing her job. “A, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i… I, okay.”
“Victoria,” Jessica said, and she wasn’t able to hide the tremor this time, “if you want to communicate with me, I’m going to insist that you turn your power off.”
Victoria reduced the effect of her power, scaling it down to a general sensation of unease.
“Thank you. Returning to our previous topic, Amy had to be contained somewhere. Everyone involved agreed on that point. There was too much danger, otherwise, with the possibility of uncontrollable, incurable plagues that could eat through plastic or metal.”
Jessica waited patiently as the staff member went down the list. I. D. O. N. T. C. A. R. E.
I don’t care.
“Others do care, Victoria,” Jessica Yamada informed her patient. “Amy cared. She knew her own limits and her own potential, for good or for ill. It wasn’t an easy decision, for her or for the authorities, but that decision was made with everyone’s best interests at heart.”
Again, the letters.
N. O. T. M. I. N. E.
Not mine. Not in my best interests.
“She didn’t feel that she could fix you, or that it was right to use her power on you again.”
Two blinks. Negation.
“You… that’s not what you meant?”
Blink. Agreement. Three blinks to signal for the board.
A. L. O. N. E.
“Not entirely, Victoria,” Jessica said, her voice gentle. “There are others who care about you.”
No blinks, now. Long seconds passed.
“Back to my original question. Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?”
B. A. T. H.
“Excellent,” Jessica said. “We’ll see what we can do. Anything else?”
Two blinks. No.
“I’ll be seeing you for a longer appointment next Tuesday, then,” she said. “Tell any of the staff if you would like to get in touch with me before then. I’m on-call, twenty-four-seven.”
One blink.
Jessica exited the room. The door sealed shut as it closed behind her.
“Well?” the head nurse asked.
“Some headway,” Jessica said. She took off her suit jacket and folded it over the nearest chair. Her back was drenched with sweat, shoulder-blade to belt. “Hard to endure.”
“She’s upset. Understandably.”
“I know. But I’ll take her on as a patient, and hopefully we can get her in a better head space. Thank you again, for letting me overstep my duties. It helps me to open a dialogue if I can offer her something she wants or needs.”
“You can’t offer her what she really wants.”
“But a bath is a good starting point. Is it doable?”
“Yes. We’re well equipped for disabled patients. We’ll lower her in with hoists.”
“She won’t break? Or tear?”
“No. She’s far more durable than she appears. For better or for worse, she retains her invincibility.”
“I see.”
“Who’s the next patient on your caseload?”
“Sveta.”
“Garotte. I know you’ve heard the instructions about the protective safeguards a thousand times—”
Jessica sighed.
“—but I have to go over them anyways. There are regulations, Jessica, as you well know. You’ll be wearing a type-C reinforced protective suit. The suits include both an inner and outer layer, the inner layer—”
“Has a button in the palm. I can withdraw my fingers from the outer glove and press the button. At random intervals, you’ll buzz me surreptitiously…”
“And we expect you to press the button to verify that you’re okay. You can press it twice in the event of an emergency.”
“The damn thing has malfunctioned and interrupted three of my last seven sessions with her.”
“It’s what we have for the time being. If you don’t verify your own safety or if you signal an emergency, we’ll employ containment foam through the sprinkler system.”
“And I’ll be stuck here for another hour, with another four pages of paperwork after the fact.”
“Is she your last patient for the day?”
“No. I’m scheduled to see Nicholas after.”
“Sadboy.”
Jessica didn’t correct the head nurse. She hated using the codenames; it reinforced t
he idea of the patients being less than human. “Yes. I’ll see him, then I’m done for the day. I’m on rotation with the PRT for Friday–Saturday, then I have Sunday all to myself.”
“Any plans?” the head nurse asked.
“I’ve learned not to make any. There’s always a crisis of some sort.”
They’d reached the changing room, and Jessica pulled on the protective inner-suit. The suit fit close to her body, smelled faintly of someone else’s sweat, and consisted of a stretching mesh covered in fine chain link. The entire thing was reinforced by a grid of metal bars, complete with oiled hinges at each joint, so she had a near-full range of motion. Zipping it up, it went straight up her neck, the bars running vertically down her throat. She couldn’t look down without getting jabbed in the soft flesh beneath her jaw.
It made it harder to get the outer suit on. The entire thing was one piece, like footie-pyjamas, and the fabric was heavy, with alternating layers of insulated fabric and more chain mesh.
She liked to go into situations armed with knowledge. When she’d been new to the job, fearing her first week of work at the asylum, she’d researched all of the protective measures, even running down the patents that were public access to see what they entailed.
Odd as it might have sounded, she’d stopped doing that as of late. It wasn’t due to a growing confidence. Just the opposite. Now that she had a better grasp of what her patients were capable of, it was easier to hope the people designing the safeguards were doing everything they needed to. It was better than researching it and knowing they weren’t.
The heavy fabric exterior suit fit her like hazardous materials gear, bulky, broad, leaving a great deal of empty space between her body and the fabric. Protective airbags of more reinforced cloth inflated to fill that space.
She stepped into the dock, and the door behind her shut. The next door opened.
The room was empty. The wall had a mural painted on it, ocean waves and beautiful architecture that Jessica couldn’t place as belonging to any particular era or culture. There was a short, translucent table littered with painting and drawing supplies, and what looked like a cat’s tiered scratching post, extending floor to ceiling, securely bolted to both. Mirrors were fixed to the wall, to show that the room’s resident wasn’t hiding behind it.
“Come on out, Sveta,” she said. She clenched her teeth and braced herself for the ambush.
Sveta had been waiting above the door. Tendrils snaked around the neck of the protective suit, and cinched tight in a moment.
Even with her full knowledge of the suit’s protective qualities, Jessica felt her heartbeat quicken.
Deep breath.
Her breath caught in her chest as she heard the faintest, almost inaudible sound of metal creaking.
More tendrils had caught her legs and arms, and even lashed across the room to catch the only points available to hold, the two-inch diameter bolts that held the scratching post ‘bed’ to the ground.
“So sorry,” Sveta whispered. “Sorry.”
Jessica felt her arm jolt as one set of tendrils lashed up the length of her right arm to catch her gloved fingers. Each finger was pulled in a different direction, but the metal reinforcement in the outer glove held, and her hand wasn’t crumpled like tissue paper.
“Relaxation exercises, Sveta. Don’t try to fight the instincts all at once, don’t worry about me…”
Sveta convulsed, contorted, and every part of her drew tighter. Jessica heard something metal give way, felt a small component tap her shoulder, bouncing around the interior of the outer suit before settling in her boot.
Calm. Sound calm. “…just focus on your extremities. Flex them, release them, repeat.”
Another contortion. Jessica forced herself to take a deep breath, simultaneously cursing whoever had let this defective equipment go back in the changing room.
“I’m so sorry,” Sveta said. “I’m trying, but it’s making it worse.”
“Take your time,” she replied, defying every instinct that was telling her to get out of this dangerous situation: to press the button, fight or panic. Like Sveta’s, her instincts weren’t serving her best interests here. Unlike Sveta, she could fight them.
Sveta contorted, and an airbag gave way in the suit’s midsection.
“Oh!” Sveta said. She’d noticed, and the realization coincided with further constriction. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Yamada! No, no!”
“It’s fine,” Jessica lied. Too many things were going wrong with the suit, all at once. Why? There had to have been an altercation between another staff member and a violent patient. The only reason this many safeguards would be giving way would be if the suit had sustained recent damage.
Except it had gone unreported, and the suit had gone back on the shelf.
“Should have—we should have done this through the glass,” Sveta moaned. “I’m sorry. I like you. I don’t want you to die.”
“We’re striving to socialize you, right? That’s our goal? We can’t do that without regular human contact.”
“I’m going to kill you. I don’t want to but I’m going to. I’ll—”
“Hush,” Jessica said, sounding far, far calmer than she felt. “Take—”
She nearly said take a deep breath. She corrected herself. “—a few seconds and keep doing your relaxation exercises. Flex your extremities, relax them. Flex, relax, steadily work your way up, inch by inch. Look at me. I’m not worried. I’m in this suit. I feel safe. Okay?”
“O-okay.”
“I want you to think of all the progress we’ve made since the start of the year.”
“But something popped in the suit just now.”
“We wear the same suits for multiple patients. That was a safeguard to protect any patients that might collide with us. It’s not meant for you. Don’t worry.”
Jessica hated lying to her patients.
“It’s not—it’s okay?”
“It’s okay,” Jessica soothed. “You remember our goal, right?”
“Christmas?”
“I think you’re well on your way to your goal. That’s what you think of when you’re trying to be positive, right? You can celebrate Christmas with a few other patients, people who you can’t hurt. I just met one of them, I think. A new patient of mine. She’s someone who could use some friends.”
Like a dozen frog’s tongues, tendrils snapped across the length of the room to the ‘bed’, encircling it. In another second, as though each tendril were elastic bands stretched to their limits, Sveta had shifted there, her tendrils gripping the post as she hung from it. Jessica was free.
Sveta was little more than a very pale face with thin tendrils streaming around it like hair. Small organs dangled from the largest of the tendrils that extended from the back of her face. A small symbol marked the girl’s cheekbone: a stylized ‘c’, in black.
It took Sveta a second before she relaxed enough to let the tendrils uncoil from the post. The tendrils settled in the air, in a rough facsimile of where a person’s limbs might be. She’d positioned herself so that the organs could rest on the ‘shelves’ on the post.
“I’m sorry,” Sveta said, eyes downcast.
“I’m fine. I understand,” Jessica soothed. She shifted position, and one tendril snapped out to catch her leg, gripping her around the knee, squeezing and twisting with a strength that could have torn every ligament in her knee and wrenched Jessica’s calf from her upper leg. Sveta flinched, closed her eyes for a second, and the tendril moved back to the post. The suit had held. No damage done.
“Can… can you tell me about her? The girl you just saw?”
“I can’t talk to you about my patients, just like I couldn’t tell them about you.”
Sveta clutched the pole harder. “I understand. Was she… was she a bad guy? Like me?”
“Do you think you were a ‘bad guy’?”
“I killed people. Yes.”
“It wasn’t you. It was your power.”
&nbs
p; “I still killed people.”
“I think that’s a good topic for today’s session. But there’s a few things I want to cover first, before we get into the meat of it, so let’s put a pin in that topic for now.”
“Okay.”
“She was a superhero, I can say that much without betraying any confidence.” And you’ll hear it from the staff sooner or later. Better to hear it from me. “There may be wiggle room. Maybe I could convince one of the hospital staff to stop by, and she could tell you a bit about the new patient through the intercom? If the patient gives consent?”
Sveta’s eyes lit up. “Yes please.”
“I can’t make any promises.”
“I understand.”
“Now, have you been keeping that journal?”
Sveta snatched a notebook off of the small table with the art supplies, reaching out and bringing it to her faster than the eye could follow. She passed it to Jessica with just as much speed and force. Even with the air bags filling the void in the protective suit and offering a cushioning effect, Jessica had to take a step back to catch her balance.
“May I?”
Sveta nodded, bobbing the mask with the mass of tendrils behind it.
The bed-post contorted into an ‘s’ shape as the girl twined around it. It indicated some kind of negative emotion. Jessica paged through the recent entries. The letters of the words were exaggerated, and they got more so as the writer got agitated. Worries, daydreams about being human, the vividness of her imagination when she pictured places like she’d drawn in the mural, her day-long spell of depression after waking up from a dream where she’d been human, in bed with a boy…
Jessica closed the book. None of this was so unusual, capable of explaining the sudden anxiety she saw now. “Can I ask what’s bothering you?”
“I… why aren’t you scared of me?”
“Because I have no reason to be,” Jessica lied, meeting the girl’s eyes.
The truth is that it’s because I’ve spent more time in the company of monsters than Legend, she thought. Trust me, honey, you aren’t the scariest I’ve run into, not by half.
* * *
Friday, June 17th, 2011, 10:15