- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yeah, I was a little shocked at the suggestion to turn the whole first arc into, like, ten paragraphs. Looking back, it could possibly be tightened some, the eternal curse of fanfic, that, but that much?
An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
Yeah, I was a little shocked at the suggestion to turn the whole first arc into, like, ten paragraphs. Looking back, it could possibly be tightened some, the eternal curse of fanfic, that, but that much?
Nero200
High Priest of Eito, Part Time Nyar.
Slightly too wordy? Sure.
Basically toss the entire first arc so we can get to the 'Good stuff'? No.
If you honestly want to skip that much, then you are missing the focus of the story.
You don't go to a fancy restaurant and scarf down the starter and the main course just so you can have the desert faster, no matter how nice a desert it is.
That's just a bloody waste.
Basically toss the entire first arc so we can get to the 'Good stuff'? No.
If you honestly want to skip that much, then you are missing the focus of the story.
You don't go to a fancy restaurant and scarf down the starter and the main course just so you can have the desert faster, no matter how nice a desert it is.
That's just a bloody waste.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I kinda think the original Worm did have one thing going in that it started after all of that went down, so that we didn't have to get treated to the 'power' part of the origin story, for all that the first couple Arcs are a roundabout supervillain origin story sort of thing. But while she experimented with the powers, Wildbow skipped through the 'discovering I have powers' stage.
Well, I was going to come in with a response, but it turns out that you've all pretty much said most of what I was going to say already. Which is reassuring in its own way, because it confirms that I'm not just barking up the wrong tree.
Is there a pacing problem with bits of the story? Hell yes. I've admitted as much publicly before. I am aware of it. That's why the last arc picked up steam so much more - I'm working to a master plan and I was lagging behind - and more than that, the word count's been creeping up in places that it shouldn't have been. It's something I'm consciously tracking and trying to avoid as I go on.
But the suggested "cure" is approximately equivalent to the use of full decapitation to cure a boil on the neck. In quite a few ways, Imago has to be taken as a response to Worm - and a response to Worm fanfic, too. Everyone else glosses over the state of the world established and how it's really not going to resemble the real world? I'll dwell on it. Everyone else treats gangs as a collection of videogame bosses overseeing respawning mooks, existing separately from mainstream society? I'm going to embed them into the world and make it clear that people have reasons for doing what they do. People will accept without question a Great Man interpretation of history? I sure as hell won't. Within three chapters, Taylor has beaten Lung, joined one of the Usual Suspect groups and is busy outwitting people with ease while also beginning to romance Panacea? Ha ha ha ha not on your life.
(Goddamn Panacea)
So, to conclude, yes, I know it's slow. But the idea of cramming the first arc into one chapter to "get to the good bits" as well as the disdain for the idea that investigating sweatshops is something a street level hero should do? Such criticism isn't constructive, because it's effectively "write something totally different".
Ah, but would you have accepted a Taylor akin to the one in Imago if I hadn't demonstrated the way that her broad and flexible powerset doesn't come with an instruction manual and requires not only effort, but also a particular state of mind, particular emotions and that she has plenty of reason to be worried about the risks of experimentation? One who just had teleportation, mind-affecting powers, mental invisibility, clairvoyance, etc etc straight off the bat?
I would argue that this would have produced a significantly different feel to the work which would not have been in its benefit.
Is there a pacing problem with bits of the story? Hell yes. I've admitted as much publicly before. I am aware of it. That's why the last arc picked up steam so much more - I'm working to a master plan and I was lagging behind - and more than that, the word count's been creeping up in places that it shouldn't have been. It's something I'm consciously tracking and trying to avoid as I go on.
But the suggested "cure" is approximately equivalent to the use of full decapitation to cure a boil on the neck. In quite a few ways, Imago has to be taken as a response to Worm - and a response to Worm fanfic, too. Everyone else glosses over the state of the world established and how it's really not going to resemble the real world? I'll dwell on it. Everyone else treats gangs as a collection of videogame bosses overseeing respawning mooks, existing separately from mainstream society? I'm going to embed them into the world and make it clear that people have reasons for doing what they do. People will accept without question a Great Man interpretation of history? I sure as hell won't. Within three chapters, Taylor has beaten Lung, joined one of the Usual Suspect groups and is busy outwitting people with ease while also beginning to romance Panacea? Ha ha ha ha not on your life.
(Goddamn Panacea)
So, to conclude, yes, I know it's slow. But the idea of cramming the first arc into one chapter to "get to the good bits" as well as the disdain for the idea that investigating sweatshops is something a street level hero should do? Such criticism isn't constructive, because it's effectively "write something totally different".
Ah, but would you have accepted a Taylor akin to the one in Imago if I hadn't demonstrated the way that her broad and flexible powerset doesn't come with an instruction manual and requires not only effort, but also a particular state of mind, particular emotions and that she has plenty of reason to be worried about the risks of experimentation? One who just had teleportation, mind-affecting powers, mental invisibility, clairvoyance, etc etc straight off the bat?
I would argue that this would have produced a significantly different feel to the work which would not have been in its benefit.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh, I wasn't claiming that this should be the approach for this work. I was merely saying that I think Worm actually made not having a power exploration work for it. That doesn't mean that your fic has to go in the same directions. I was just commenting on 'power experimentation' in general. I understand why you, in your own fic, included it because Taylor has a weird ability to be complete overpowered one moment, and then running away from a guy with a dog the other, that would only make more sense if you knew about how the power worked.
I do think that you're 'everyone else' is a little bit arrogant in assuming that yours is the only fanfic to not be crap (or at least there's that implication), but I suppose it's not worth getting into an argument over.
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As the one who raised that complaint to begin with...its entirely a personal taste issue. I prefer power development to be abstract, and the specifics revealed as it becomes relevant to the plot...but that's far from popular at SB/SV, so I'd ALSO credit this with her figuring out powers more organically, rather than like someone detached, running through a checklist of how to potentially abuse its interactions.
Well, I suppose it is a little bit. Some of it is just overgeneralising rhetorical flourishes - for example, I know there are other fics out there that treat gang members more like human beings, rather than Chaotic Evil NPCs. But they weren't the ones I was writing this as a counter to. And of course I'm focussing on the areas that I feel I do better than most people - I'd hardly be raising them if I was going "Man, I know other people write tight and snappy action scenes - but not me!".
(I won't hide my contempt for Panacea romances, though. I've seen... like one that was done well (Walkabouts), and that was helped by being heavily grounded in the chaotic refugee-camp feel of post-Leviathan Brockton Bay and the way that it was two people the narrative acknowledged as being fucked up trying to stumble into something. Meanwhile, I had to moderate a lot of shit which did that back on SB. Call me biased, but I consider myself entirely fairly biased there).
No, that's certainly a fair point. Certainly for more straightforwards powersets (and especially ones which aren't basically a character exploration in their own right, as "I make monsters from the dark bits of my mind" is), there's a lot to be said for just showing off what she can do with an initial sequence (as, indeed, I basically did with Victoria - as I don't write Imago with the assumption that anyone knows canon).
TBH, the most distinguishing characteristic of your work is the amount of attention you pay to the setting (especially with respect to AUs); while I can see the argument that it's hurting the pace, if forced to choose between the two, I'd rather have you emphasize the former over the later. The former is just a lot more interesting.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well, I can agree with you as for my view of Panacea romances. I think she can be an interesting character, but I never got why/how she was shipped with Taylor in the first place, considering they actually disliked each other for most of the entire story and Panacea fucked Taylor over on multiple occasions. So even if well-written, it tends to be a little baffling. And it usually isn't well-written.
Skipping over power discovery and experimentation is a generally good advice that more people should follow because normally this stuff is unbearably boring. Yeah, I get it, Taylor has a new power, now show me her doing something important with that power.
Same goes for skipping the locker scene. Everyone who was in the Worm fandom for more than, like, five minutes has seen one, and typically it doesn't add anything to the narrative. It's here because people have trouble with coming up with something new and just repeat scenes established in canon or other fics, just with a different power.
However, as with many other good advises, there are exceptions, and I do feel this fic is one of them. The focus is more on Taylor's psyche and her relationships with people around, so it makes much more sense for the story to take its time before jumping into action, especially since, indeed, the power of Other Place is a direct extension of Taylor's inner world.
It's true that the story sometimes takes far too much time for itself, especially in the second arc, and could have been written more tightly, but it's a matter of degree, not the core structure.
- Location
- Just south of nowhere and a little to the left.
I haven't checked back since I made my original post but I just want to clarify a few things. My major gripe isn't that the author wants to include so much detail, worldbuild so much, or give such an accurate depiction of what s/he feels the worm world would be like. It's that s/he does nothing but that for over an arc. Doing that is BORING. Slipping in a chapter of worldbuilding or a chapter of power discovery/experimentation here or there (or even every other chapter if you're good at it) is fine.
Heck look at authors like David Weber who's Honor Harrington series commonly drops into page after page descriptions of how this or that spaceship or weapon was developed or functions. He includes enormous amounts of detail that is extraneous to the plot of the story but still makes it interesting. Many authors will spend chapter after chapter doing nothing but describing this or that country, a group of people, or business/orginization and manage to keep the readers interest. To do so though you need to have a hook, either by those details being plot relevant or by splitting them up enough that they aren't all forced down your throat in one sitting.
My suggestion of reducing the first arc to one or two chapters wasn't because I hate worldbuilding or watching MCs learn they have powers and how they work. It's because the events that occur during that time (locker/hospital/asylum/coming home) ARE a prelude, and a prelude should never be as long as the one in this story.
If you want your main focus to be on how terribad the world is that's fine, but your first arc is over 30k words long, just shy of 35k words if you include the 1.x interlude and almost nothing actually HAPPENS during that entire time. Although, to be fair, the interlude was the exception to this as something did actually happen in it.
According to wikipedia, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America puts the word length for the novel category of it's Nebula awards at "over 40,000". Commonly accepted nanowrimo rules state that the novel written must be 50k+ words and typical novel lengths for most teen/adult genres are around 100k give or take a few 10k either way. Which means that the first arc almost qualifies as a short stand alone novel. Having an almost novel length prologue means that there is something wrong.
Heck look at authors like David Weber who's Honor Harrington series commonly drops into page after page descriptions of how this or that spaceship or weapon was developed or functions. He includes enormous amounts of detail that is extraneous to the plot of the story but still makes it interesting. Many authors will spend chapter after chapter doing nothing but describing this or that country, a group of people, or business/orginization and manage to keep the readers interest. To do so though you need to have a hook, either by those details being plot relevant or by splitting them up enough that they aren't all forced down your throat in one sitting.
My suggestion of reducing the first arc to one or two chapters wasn't because I hate worldbuilding or watching MCs learn they have powers and how they work. It's because the events that occur during that time (locker/hospital/asylum/coming home) ARE a prelude, and a prelude should never be as long as the one in this story.
If you want your main focus to be on how terribad the world is that's fine, but your first arc is over 30k words long, just shy of 35k words if you include the 1.x interlude and almost nothing actually HAPPENS during that entire time. Although, to be fair, the interlude was the exception to this as something did actually happen in it.
According to wikipedia, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America puts the word length for the novel category of it's Nebula awards at "over 40,000". Commonly accepted nanowrimo rules state that the novel written must be 50k+ words and typical novel lengths for most teen/adult genres are around 100k give or take a few 10k either way. Which means that the first arc almost qualifies as a short stand alone novel. Having an almost novel length prologue means that there is something wrong.
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- Location
- usa
No having a long prelude as good as this one means that we get to enjoy this story for longer. I, for one, enjoyed the first few arcs. While they may not have been much fist-to-face action, there is a lot of drama and suspense. Saying that the dramatic parts should be taken out for the action scenes completely ignores the fact that this is a horror/suspense story! That's like taking a horror movie and removing all the parts where the characters aren't shooting the monster. It would make it boring.
Dr. Mercurious
Strangest Person You Know
- Location
- New England
Personally? I'm loving the creepy atmosphere and the world building; however, there is such a thing as 'too much'; I would say pepper the world building with some action beats and it'll be perfect. 
- Location
- Just south of nowhere and a little to the left.
My problem isn't about there not being action, it's that nothing happens. There is no real drama or suspense in the first arc. The only "dramatic" or "suspenseful" type of things in that arc are Taylor getting a bit freaked out over figuring out her powers (which would be far more dramatic/suspenseful for the reader if it weren't obvious that is what's happening) and the question of whether she's going to end up being committed for being insane. The story would have been better if she were committed and stuck acting from an insane asylum.
Seeing her try to be a hero solely via her minions from the "other place" while also slowly becoming disconnected from reality by spending more and more time there would have been a good story and was the direction I thought the author was going to go when I first read it. Even just having her experience a true disconnect from reality (ala Luna from Harry Potter) would have been interesting. But yet again NOTHING happens. This is my gripe, not that there is no "action".
I don't get why everyone seems to think when I say "there is no plot advancement" or "nothing happens" I mean "MOR SPLOSIONS PLOX!!!!!" It's insulting and annoying.
EDIT: Just realized I totally missed the author's post above.
I've looked back at my original post and realized that I made a couple mistakes. When I said the first arc "should" be reduced to one chapter the word I meant to use was "could" as that was the intent I was trying to get across. My reasoning for stating that was to point out that over 9/10ths of what had been written, while possibly interesting to some or adding detail to the setting, was completely extraneous to the story which is too much "fluff". I apologize for being unclear and the fact that the way I wrote that made it come across as both insulting and ignorant.
I also should have been more clear about the sweatshop bit. What I wrote was shortened and not very descriptive beyond the fact that I didn't like it. Mainly because it wasn't my biggest gripe with the story but just the last snowflake to cause me to stop reading. It wasn't that I thought it "not worth her time" but that first, she had absolutely no reason to go in person to see what was happening since one of the primary uses of her power is it's amazing reconnaissance capabilities. Then secondly, most if not all of the second arc (I didn't finish it) is her dealing with this one crime when it should be ridiculously easy to fix with her powerset. In fact I'm not sure why she didn't just drop an anonymous tip with the location of the sweatshop and felt she had to have proof. It likely would have been investigated and even if it wasn't she could have gone for proof then.
So I apologize that my first post was a bit rushed and that my annoyance seems to have caused me to misrepresent some of what I was trying to get across as your response did make excellent points with regards to the way what I wrote came across.
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Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
Well, you have to keep in mind that it's equally annoying to have someone point to the parts we enjoy, such as the world-building and the exploration of Taylor's power and psyche, and say that it should all be cut down to a few paragraphs. That so many people have rebuffed your comments should indicate that for all you dislike how the story is going, there are many of us who quite enjoy this more introspective adventure.
- Location
- Just south of nowhere and a little to the left.
As I said in my subsequent posts my problem isn't world-building or the explorations of Taylor's power and psyche. It's perfectly fine to include that or even have that as the main purpose of the story. The issue is that this is still a story and should include a plot. If you want to show the world and Taylor's thought process it should be done as a result of what is happening around her, not just a long infodump. The goal seems to be for this to fall into the "psychological thriller" genre with perhaps a touch of action, drama, and fantasy/sci-fi depending on how similar the later arcs are to canon. But what I read had very little of any of that. The closest genre I can think of for what I read of the story would be slice of life with a touch of crime/mystery, drama, and fantasy/sci-fi as nothing really happens during that time.
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Now, not everything always gels with me about EarthScorpion's setting, and I think there are elements that could just as easily work a different way (for instance, he's right that overall, the most powerful white nationalist groups would likely be Christian Patriot type-groups, but that doesn't make it impossible for E88 type groups to exist, in a similar way that they do in real life, not as successful as some of the others, but also sorta trend-setters in some ways...though that'd mean that Brockton Bay actually wasn't the center of the universe and was instead some random cape-filled backwater that happened to have Nazis), but his overall point of "This should feel like Detroit" is a completely reasonable one, all in all.
Been catching up to the latest update. I have to agree with this. The worldbuilding is what makes this story for me but at the same time reading some of the comments on the thinking that goes behind it is occasionally painful. In canon E88 exists because it's comparitively polite groupe of civily conscious individuals who keep their noses down and just so happen to share an affection for wearing white hoodies. The cease to exist the moment they make the news. Their seeming succsess was purely due to the fact that one of them had the bright idea to pretend to support a foreign power in order to get the business funding which seems like their main source of income.
Going by the conversation here the author has a gripe against not taking the whole alternate timeline thing seriously but at the same time the device of magic Reagan is used to make leaps of logic that seem much more far fetched than the Empire existing in a world where the Berlin wall is presumably still standing. Then again that's pretty much inline from what I'd expect from a WoD crossover since every iteration of that has assumed that the US federal government is in some way affiliated with eldritch horrors. On that note, canon Worm has this thing where people with powers can either be nice and use them to steal from banks or mean and cause the destruction of all electronics on the eastern seaboard thus the reason said government plays softball despite potential availablity of brute force solutions to a lot of canon problems. Imago seems to be ignoring that so that the first thought anybody had when they saw people who could wipe out major population centers on their lonesome wasn't "dear god let this not be the end" but "how do we aim these at the commies?" I won't hazard to guess which is more accurate to reality.
- Location
- Europe
I don't usually do this but I do like the story and I have some opinions about it, so here's some feedback. I hope it doesn't come off as too harsh, but I feel it's more useful to bring out the faults than to extol the virtues when it comes to giving critique.
My problem with the beginning of the fic is that it lacks proper conflict. Most of the tension is derived from the "am-I-crazy-or-not" -play and Taylor's warped mindset of seeing everyone as a threat. This would be perfectly fine if all of those conflict sources weren't resolved as non-issues in short order. She gets the power under safe control pretty fast and all the dangerous looking people turn out to be pretty nice, at least if you judge them by their actions.
All that leaves a void in the beginning and has me asking: "So what? Where is this all going? Why should I care about any of this?". All the world building is nice to see but if I wasn't already invested in Taylor thanks to Worm I probably would have dropped the story pretty early. Then again if this wasn't derivative fiction maybe the trio and school would have worked as an obstacle for Taylor to overcome. Hard to say. I have seen how those things play out in other wormfics so many times that by now they don't really evoke emotional response anymore.
Like odin lowe said, I think this fic would be better if there was a proper "hook" to drive the plot forward from the beginning. As it is now the beginning feels slow and heavy. On the plus side the slowness does contribute to the general eerie mood of uncertainty and foreboding. The problem is that all that can easily turn into boredom, which almost happened to me while reading this fic.
The general mentality of "Other fics are wrong, this is fic is right" does bleed through a bit and is abrasive. Then again I do like it when authors take a stance and put their own worldview out there. It's fun to chew on the different nuts and bolts of the setting even if you don't agree on how the author has put them together. It's not really a sin to think you are right and say as much, but don't be too surprised if people call you out on it.
As a whole I think the fic has been a positive reading experience so far. Definitely watching it and I have great hopes that things will pick up in the coming chapters.
My problem with the beginning of the fic is that it lacks proper conflict. Most of the tension is derived from the "am-I-crazy-or-not" -play and Taylor's warped mindset of seeing everyone as a threat. This would be perfectly fine if all of those conflict sources weren't resolved as non-issues in short order. She gets the power under safe control pretty fast and all the dangerous looking people turn out to be pretty nice, at least if you judge them by their actions.
All that leaves a void in the beginning and has me asking: "So what? Where is this all going? Why should I care about any of this?". All the world building is nice to see but if I wasn't already invested in Taylor thanks to Worm I probably would have dropped the story pretty early. Then again if this wasn't derivative fiction maybe the trio and school would have worked as an obstacle for Taylor to overcome. Hard to say. I have seen how those things play out in other wormfics so many times that by now they don't really evoke emotional response anymore.
Like odin lowe said, I think this fic would be better if there was a proper "hook" to drive the plot forward from the beginning. As it is now the beginning feels slow and heavy. On the plus side the slowness does contribute to the general eerie mood of uncertainty and foreboding. The problem is that all that can easily turn into boredom, which almost happened to me while reading this fic.
The general mentality of "Other fics are wrong, this is fic is right" does bleed through a bit and is abrasive. Then again I do like it when authors take a stance and put their own worldview out there. It's fun to chew on the different nuts and bolts of the setting even if you don't agree on how the author has put them together. It's not really a sin to think you are right and say as much, but don't be too surprised if people call you out on it.
As a whole I think the fic has been a positive reading experience so far. Definitely watching it and I have great hopes that things will pick up in the coming chapters.
Am I the only one who thought "Taylor at the insane asylum" was the best part?
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
4.01
An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Arc 4 – Masks
Chapter 4.01
"God."
It came out flatly, not quite a question. I stared at Kirsty, trying to see if she was really serious. She stared back placidly, her reddened eyes brimming with honesty. The little angelic form above us cast a soft golden glow, quite unlike the pale light of the bulb.
"Yes," Kirsty said. "He used to speak to me when I was a little girl. Then when I got older, he showed me heaven." She kept smiling her watery, wincing smile. "He's God. I love him."
Uh. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. After a long moment, I decided on "I see".
"Yes," said Kirsty with an earnest nod. "You do. God says he'd chosen you too. He leaves me messages s-sometimes. He tells me things and warns me of bad things that might happen – and how to make good things happen. That's how I knew you were coming back." She leaned forwards, crossing her legs on her bed. Even under the golden light her skin looked waxy and pale, and there was a faint sheen of sweat around her temples. Her fingernails were bitten and there were scars on her fingers and wrists. Not on the insides of her wrists – on the outside. I didn't think they were self-inflicted. "God never lies to me. I'm just not strong enough to do what he wants me to, s-sometimes. B-but I always try to do my best!"
What do you say to someone who starts talking like this? Faith is… well, it was a complicated thing with me, okay? Mum never believed. Dad did, in the sort of not-really-questioned, solidly Catholic way that just sort of takes it for granted. He'd used to take me to church, just me and him, which sort of made it our special time together. Then, after Mum died, we just… stopped. He stayed at home the Sunday after the funeral, and the week after that. He just… drifted away, and we stopped going to church. I think it might've been because that's where her gravestone was. He still goes sometimes on his own, but it's not a regular thing and it used to be like clockwork. I'd never talked to him about it, but I had a certain suspicion that Mum wouldn't have wanted to be buried there.
So I was left with mixed feelings. I think it'd be great if there really was an all-loving God who'd punish wrongdoers and help people. With the Endbringers out there, we need someone on our side. And as soon as he actually does anything to help, I'd be more than willing to start going to church again. But I still prayed back when the bullying started. It didn't help. I guess, if I had to fill out a census sheet, I'm broadly lapsed Catholic. I want to believe in God. I'm just not sure if I do.
But even when I was younger, God never spoke to me. He was a distant figure. Church was just something I did with Dad, where we went to a fancy building and listened to people talk and sang songs and heard Bible stories. No-one I knew ever spoke about God with the kind of absolute certainty that Kirsty did.
"Um," I said.
"I saw your cherubs come looking for me," Kirsty said. Her legs were bouncing up and down with nervous tension, and she hugged herself tight. "God told me, a long time ago he told me how to return angels to his light. So I told your angels to return to you without finding me. And yesterday he…" she reached under her pillow, and pulled out a torn out scrap of paper. "Look!" she said, with sudden confidence, catching my eye.
I looked. It was a torn out advert from one of the papers this place had delivered.
STARTING TOMORROW
TAILORING FOR YOU, AT AFFORDABLE PRICES
AT HERBERT'S HOUSE OF FABRIC
DON'T DELAY!
"It's h-how God told me you were coming," she said. "It was written that you would return. And you did."
Uh. Um. It was… a newspaper advert. You can't just say 'it was written' about adverts. And sure, it talked about 'tailoring', but… look, my surname isn't 'Herbert' no matter what a succession of new teachers might think. I checked the paper in the Other Place. It was scorched and burned and the spelling was warped, but there was no secret message saying 'Bi tHE whey TAYlor is COMiNG baK' or however the Other Place would put it. It was just a perfectly normal 'PLeas BUy oUr CLothEs wE NeeD muney.' That was the sort of thing it did to adverts.
"So. Do you see things?" I asked. "Things that… aren't there?"
"No," Kirsty said placidly. "I see the things that are really there. That only those God has blessed can see. Like me. And you." She clasped her hands in front of her, almost in prayer. "You can see heaven, too. Can't you?"
"Heaven? You… you mean the Other Place?"
Kirsty nodded. "You open your eyes again and then you see the perfect world God has made," she said. She wasn't stammering, now, and her watery eyes weren't focussed on me. She was staring right through me, at something else, a thousand yards away. "A world where there are no lies. It is Heaven. We once had Eden but now it is lost. Now only those who God has chosen are the Elect. We know Eden."
I was left speechless. The Other Place wasn't heaven. Far from it. It was true that there weren't any lies there, but it seemed to take a silent delight in cutting people open and showing off all their dirty little secrets. Kirsty clearly wasn't mentally well - but more importantly, I thought, the damp Other Place had been scarred with burns when she'd got involved. Were we even seeing the same place?
"What does heaven look like to you?" I asked her, as gently as I could manage. I didn't want to scare her. I wasn't sure I had it in me to force her to calm down again. If I slipped, I'd be letting Phobia loose, bloated and fattened on all her frantic, trapped fear.
She gave me a sunny smile, the scars on her face wrinkling. "Heaven is filled with grace." She hugged one knee up to her chest, resting her chin on it. "Love is brighter than the sun. It's all around. The smoke whispers to me – tells me things. I tried to tell people how the world b-burns with God's love, but no one believes me. They say I'm crazy. I've stopped trying t-to tell them I'm not." There was an odd look in her eyes. "It hurts when they don't believe m-me."
I leant back against the wall, folding my arms. It was different. I had a lot to think about. Still, I didn't think she was quite sane. Sure, I thought I was going crazy when I started to find my powers, but she thought God talked to her. I tried not to frown as I thought about the strange writing in the Other Place. If I was religious, maybe I'd have thought that was God talking to me, too. Or worse, the Devil. She certainly lived in a world surrounded by fire and smoke.
So, for the sake of her tattered sanity, she'd decided that it was God talking to her and that fire was holy fire. I supposed it was better than thinking that she was in Hell. Though… why hadn't I seen all of this the last time I was here? Was it just because I was still getting used to my powers? The Other Place seemed to have layers, each hiding different things until you peeled them back like mouldy wallpaper. How much more was still lurking beneath the surface of what I could see? It wasn't a comforting question..
"So," I said, "the S-I-X thing? You were… you got very scared, when I brought it up before. Is it linked to…" I tried to phrase it in her terms, so I wouldn't set her off, "… to the Devil?"
Kirsty swallowed. "They're v-very bad people," she said softly, eyes flicking away from me. "They d-didn't start off bad, but demons got into their heads and they pl-played off all their bad bits." She looked back at me, then away. "One bad day, and they listened to the Devil and now they say his words. They've gone to hell, where everything is cold and black and dark."
"Isn't… like, hell meant to be hot?" I said. I couldn't stop myself.
Fortunately she didn't take it badly. "That's what they told me in church when I was little, but God told me that they were wrong," Kirsty said, nodding along. "God says Hell is n-nothing. It is outside his l-love. 'When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless'. That is Hell – existence without God. Or perhaps non-existence. I don't think you can really exist unless God loves you." She smiled. "I wish I was as good as God. He even l-loves very bad people. I'm… I'm too wicked to love bad people. I just want them to die. Bad people like the… the S-I-X people. They take God's earth and make it into a slaughterhouse. They w-want to fill the oceans with blood." She swallowed. "I w-won't let them."
"And you're saying God told you that… that demons took over these S-I-X people and now they're… in hell?" I asked. That wasn't what I'd been looking to hear.
Once again, she seemed to give this serious thought. "Well, n-no," she said, brow wrinkling. "God didn't tell me that." An unusual, steely glint entered her eyes. "But no one who is still good and c-can be saved would do what they do. Only people who listen to the devil would do that s-sort of thing."
Okay, this was dangerous territory. Fear of S-I-X, whoever they were, had left her basically non-functional, and she was only this coherent because I'd drawn off her mindless terror… but even like this, in her mind she felt able to speak on behalf of God. Phobia twitched in the corner, and I decided to steer the conversation well away.
"Do you know that your records are… weird?" I tried. "Like, what this place knows about you? They don't know everything they should." I tried to think like she did. "Does God hide you?"
"Yes." She swallowed. "He makes sure that no one asks questions about why I am here. S-so the angels keep me safe and stop me from being left with no place to stay. I am not as strong as Mary and I don't think there's a stable for me. There aren't any horses, anymore, so there aren't stables."
Um. Right. "So… you're the reason that all the paper is faded? Did you send an angel to do it?"
"No, no." There was a momentary flash of irritation on her face. It was the first time I'd seen her show that emotion. "God is the one who does it. Not me. He makes provision for me, because I trust in him." And like that, the anger was gone and she was smiling again. "I think you could do it too, if you grew sick of the sins of the world. You could come live here with me."
I tried very hard to keep my expression the same. On the scale of people I'd never want to live with less, the crazy religious girl who'd tucked herself away in a mental asylum was still ranked only slightly lower than crashing on Sophia's couch. "How old are you?" I asked her.
Kirsty blinked. "I am twenty nine," she said, sounding confused. "Why?"
"What." It was so unexpected that I completely lost my chain of thought. She looked… well, she looked younger than me, actually. Sure, I look old for my age, but I wouldn't have pinned her as more than sixteen or seventeen. That she was nearly thirty…
"I d-don't look it. But I have been here since I was s-seventeen. I have lived in this place for a l-long time."
I rubbed my temples. Okay. Right. "So… you don't age."
"I do age," she contradicted me. "But the angels remember me as I was when they first met me. When God's light descends on me, I become as I was then." Her shoulders slumped. "I have looked like I am f-fourteen for a very long time. It is God's will, but…" her voice softened, "I have often wished that he had chosen otherwise. The s-sin of Eve is h-heavy on me."
"Uh huh."
"I don't want to be like Methuselah, but the angels say I must be like this. I don't understand why. But he says that this must be s-so and so I will not question him."
Okay. This girl? She really didn't want to take any credit for anything her powers did. It was getting on my nerves more than a little bit. I bet she hadn't even tried pushing the limits of what she could ask her angels to do. If she ever really asked them to do anything. I rubbed my hands together and glanced out at the greying sky, trying to work out where I could safely go from here.
"God wouldn't have sent you to me if you s-served the faithless men who rule America," Kirsty assured me out of the blue.
"Uh…" I paused, trying to translate that from what I knew of her world-view. "Do… you mean the PPD? Because I haven't told them, no."
She nodded. "They do not obey God's laws. They serve only themselves."
Well, yeah. We've got the whole 'Division of Church and State' thing for a reason, right? And then a thought occurred to me. "Wait. Do you mean the grey men? The ones who… they were investigating the S-I… that place I told you about. They covered everything in black letters, and… and they had black oil on their hands?"
"You've met them too," Kirsty said sadly. "The grey men have no souls. They're just clay, like Adam was before God gave him a soul. The owls lead them."
"There's more than one owl lady?" I asked, shocked. I hadn't even mentioned it to her.
"I didn't see an owl lady. But there were two men who had souls and listened to the birds. The grey men did what they said. They put me in the first hospital, but they didn't forget about me. Not until the hospital forgot about me and gave my room to another girl. I tried going home but there wasn't a home for me anymore, and even our church was gone. The grey men had knocked it d-down and built a new one, and no one there remembered me at all."
I cleared my throat, and tried desperately to think of something else to say, but I was coming up blanks.
"That was my time in the w-wilderness," she continued, reciting as if she was reading from a book. "The angels kept me warm and showed me where to go, and hid me from the eyes of those who looked for me. I hid and watched and waited until God told me that I had suffered enough and sent me to this place. He told me that someone would come in time. You are that person." There was desperation in her eyes. I couldn't say no.
"I suppose I am. It's… it's a shock," I said weakly. "I thought I was going crazy when I started to see the Other Place."
Kirsty smiled at me. "God knew that you'd be thought mad," she said, softly. "H-he was kind to send you to me. Thank you for b-being here. I… I had doubted him." She seemed pained by the admission, and stared resolutely at her bedcovers as the stammer returned full-force. "I've been here for s-such a long time. H-his grace hides me from others, but it is l-l-lonely when no one r-remembers you properly. And when they remember you, they t-tell you that you're n-not right in the head." She glanced back up, ashamed of something. "Sometimes, when times are bad, I… I have thought they might be right. That's when the angels escape, and things burn when they're not meant to. Only f-faith keeps them under control. I m-m-must honour God, or he'll take them away from me."
"Oh?" I asked. "Um. I find that… um, I can't let the emotions my angels represent take over." They weren't all strictly angels, but I thought it'd be safer to stick with own Kirsty's lexicon. I didn't have any real problem with the angels or the cherubs, either. They were very dependable. It was the emotion-things which were a struggle.
She reached out with sudden speed, clasping my hands in her own. Her skin was baby-soft despite the scars, I noticed in surprise, and her grip was surprisingly strong. I wasn't sure if I could worm out from it easily. She might have looked soft and flabby, but there must have been surprising amounts of muscle under there. "But now you're here. Just like God promised," Kirsty said earnestly.
"That's good, right?" I asked.
"Yes. I h-haven't had any friends in years," she said. "Since I was little. And even b-before Mother sold her soul, she didn't want me playing with the other children. I only got to play with them after church."
She wasn't an easy girl to talk to, even now I had a sort of translation going. The thing about speaking with Kirsty, I was finding, was that it was like picking at a scab. You knew you weren't going to like what you found when you broke the surface, but it was still hard to resist digging deeper.
"When you say 'sold her soul'?" I began, really really not wanting to go down this path.
Kirsty wrapped her arms around her legs and gave me another one of the watery, wincing smiles that twisted the scars on her face. It didn't reach her eyes, though. "She hurt me. A lot," she said. "Because the demons ate her from the inside out. She said it was my fault that she had to do this, but that was a lie. She said God had told her to do it, b-b-but God told me she was lying and that he loved me even if she didn't and and and h-he'd never spoken to her. He showed me Heaven. And then the angels made things right again."
"They… they did, huh?" Images came to mind of how my angels would 'make things right'.
"Yes," she said, unblinking. And now her smile reached her eyes. "They did. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."
I had a lot to think about on the car ride back with Sam. A lot to think about, and a lot to try my very best to avoid thinking about. Once I'd left Kirsty behind, I'd just sat there as the other two talked, trying my best to look interested. I don't think my best was very good.
The afternoon sun was behind us as we headed back to the city, moving out of the forests and back into the urban sprawl. The neon-lit bulk of out-of-town shopping malls and abandoned warehouses converted into hoovervilles formed an invisible gateway to the Bay. The chauffeur had the radio on loud, blaring some shock-jockey.
"-of course the establishment told you it was a 'humanitarian' thing. That they 'needed' it. That it was the 'right thing to do'. Right thing for them, more like! All the time they sat back and rubbed their fingers together, knowing that they were getting cheap labour. Do you know how many Japs have come swarming into America? Ten million! These so-called 'refugees' are taking advantage of us – encouraged, I might add, by the UN and the liberal sell-outs in Big Business and Washin-"
"Oh, turn that crap off," Sam said wearily to the chauffeur. She shook her head at me. "Honestly," she said, voice lowered. "I find it horrid that people are saying that sort of thing. They're just preying on the stupid."
"Mmm hmm." I was still thinking about Kirsty.
"They want people to be angry at the immigrants while they keep making money from the hate they generate. It makes me literally sick."
Sam was talking like there was no way I could disagree with her on this. It came as a bit of a surprise, because her parents were rich and she went around with tinkerfab gadgets. I wouldn't have pinned her mother as a liberal. Of course, maybe Sam took up the cause to annoy her, but I got the feeling she really did believe in it. I took a peek into the Other Place, but I couldn't tell for sure.
Me, I was sort of in two minds about it all. Because, yeah, the kind of DJ who talked like this wasn't someone I'd want to sit down and talk to, and… well, Japan had been devastated. They needed somewhere to live. And, yeah, Dad's dad had come over from France, so I really had no place to frown at immigrants. Nor did anyone who wasn't pure Native American, really.
On the other hand, walking through bits of Little Tokyo was scary even when I was with Dad. Everyone knew about how the Boumei were one of the most dangerous gangs in town, even before you took their parahumans into account. They'd been fighting with the White Lion Association, and it was normal at this point to hear news of people getting caught in the crossfire. A few months back, there had been headless bodies found dumped in a locked cargo container down by the Docks. And their leader could turn into a dragon. Kind of a big deal.
It wasn't like I just heard about this on the radio, it affected me in my day-to-day life! There were Japanese gangs at school, after all. There were bathrooms you didn't dare to go in if you weren't one of them, because that's where the Japanese girls hung out and smoked. Most of them didn't have great English, so they just talked among themselves and glared at anyone who came near. Sure, there were some in my classes who didn't seem so bad, but before Christmas there'd been some stabbings outside the school gates and everyone knew it had been some Japanese boys who did it, even if they didn't know exactly who.
It was like… sure, we had a duty to look after refugees. But didn't they have some kind of responsibility to not form gangs?
"Anyway," Sam continued, "most of the things they say are just lies, anyway. Like the stuff about Japanese immigrants taking jobs." But they did take jobs. Dad told me as much, that companies which didn't like unions were using migrants for minimum wage labour. "It's pretty funny that they claim they're both welfare parasites and takin' our dang jobs," she said, affecting a mocking accent. "But then again consistency has never been a virtue held by those sorts of people."
"It's complicated," I said. There was no way I wanted to get into an argument with her. Not now. Not today. And not when she said 'those sorts' in such a… a contemptuous way. I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, but I knew I didn't want her to group me with them. "I'm sure they have a reason to be scared."
"Oh, sure," she countered, sarcasm heavy in her voice. "Mum says that a lot of the refugees she's taken on are really over-qualified for what they were doing before – if they could even find jobs – and it's really helped her expand. So, really they're literally helping the economy. And it's the right thing to do to take in migrants, anyway. Where are they going to go otherwise?"
"Yeah. You're right," I said, to end the argument. Well. It was certainly helping her mother's bit of the economy, I thought darkly.
There was an awkward silence.
"Um," Sam said, running her hands through her hair. It was annoying how good she managed to make her short puckish haircut look, I thought. She wasn't quite as pretty as Emma, but it was closer than it had any right to be when she had bags under her eyes and looked tired. "So. Uh. Do you want to go and get something to eat?" She massaged the back of her neck. "Look, I'm sorry about how that turned out, y'know, I spent most of the time talking with Leah and… uh… sorry about going all political on you. I just miss her already and I'm worried and… sorry. Sorry."
"I came along because I wanted to," I told her, and considered what to say next. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I hadn't enjoyed this, any part of it, but I needed to have an excuse to see Kirsty more. She wasn't right in the head, but she was a parahuman, with powers like mine. I could do things to people's heads, so maybe I could help her? I could try and make sure she wouldn't lose control when she got scared.
After all, there was no way she'd go to the PPD. She was too scared of the people who'd put her in the psychiatric hospital in the first place – and then forgotten about her. Just like everyone seemed to, apart from me. She scared me, but… I knew how awful it was to be lonely. And even if her powers seemed stronger in some ways, I actually used mine. I could be stronger than her.
"I wouldn't want to do this too often, but I don't mind coming along occasionally," I conceded. "At least on weekends I don't have too much homework," I added ruefully, trying to get a smile out of Sam. "Sorry, but that comes first."
I managed to get a laugh. "Yeah." The laugh turned into a sigh as her watch bleeped. "Sorry," she said, pulling a capsule out of a jacket pocket and popping out a pill. She winced as she swallowed it. "I just wish they tasted better."
"You seem better," I said cautiously.
"I feel better," she said. "Are you on anything?"
I shook my head. "Occasional sedatives to help me sleep, nothing more. They said it was basically a psychotic episode or something caused by… by what happened." She knew in general terms what'd happened, but I didn't like talking about it with others. 'Got locked in a locker filled with used tampons, had psychotic break' was bad enough to explain.
"Oh. Yeah, well, you wouldn't believe how much of a difference this stuff makes," she said. "Mum got me into a pre-market run for it, and it's way better than the lithium was. It doesn't have any of the side effects. Well, apart sometimes waking up feeling sick, but that's nothing."
"Morning sickness?" I asked wryly.
She sniggered. "Don't call it that. People'll misunderstand." Her expression turned sour again as we passed the big yellow arches of a McDonalds. "But… it's just not fair. They put me on drugs and I have therapy and the yoga and tai chi and… I am actually feeling much better. Like, they work. I haven't felt like I used to at all. Even when I was feeling horrid, on the lithium, it wasn't the same, like, kind of bad." She wrapped her bomber jacket around herself. "There's nothing like that for Leah. No easy cure. And… and she… she just looks so thin! She was worrying about Christmas and then…" Sam stared at me, eyes haunted. "Sorry, I shouldn't be… it's just…"
"It's nothing," I said. I wasn't quite sure how to react. She sort of looked like she wanted a hug, but I didn't think that was appropriate. Anyway we were belted in. I settled for patting her hand in a vaguely ineffectual manner. "There, there."
She shot a stare at me. "You're really not very good with… like, touchy stuff, are you?" she asked bluntly. "Like, literally, that was a Dad-level of reassurance."
I spluttered. "Well, I don't… I wasn't sure if I knew you well enough and… um…"
"Look, Taylor," Sam said. "We spent… like, two weeks together in a psych hospital. We know each other plenty well enough for that." She nudged me. "Remember the group bonding sessions? If they weren't working, then they were just a stupid waste of time, eh?"
It was a pretty awkward one-armed hug. I'm not really sure how reassuring it was. Also, I wasn't certain of her logic. "They were a stupid waste of time," I grumbled.
"I didn't think they were."
"They were."
Any further argument was interrupted by her stomach growling. "Oops. Look, I know a pretty good place on the edge of Little Tokyo that does just fabulous noodles and stuff like that," Sam said. "Come on. I bet you're hungry too." She glanced at me. "I'll pay. It's the least I can do when today can't have been much fun for you."
I was hungry. "I'll need to tell my Dad I'll be back later," I began.
She pulled out her ultra-sleek flatphone and swiped along the screen. "Your home number, right?" she asked, passing it to me. It was already dialling.
Dad, of course, was totally fine with me going out to have dinner with a girl my own age. He just told me to tell him if we wanted to go catch a movie afterwards or something. It sounded a lot like a suggestion to me.
Sam had her chauffeur drive us to the south side of Little Tokyo. That was the safe bit. It had the most restaurants, which meant it had the most tourists and visitors, which meant it had the most police. There were new buildings standing alongside the early twentieth century redbricks, and the neon shop-signs were bilingual.
We were dropped off on the corner next to the restaurant. Looking inside, I could see long tables running the entire length of the room. They were old stained oak and looked out of place surrounded by the Japanese décor – maybe they'd come with the place. It was early, so the place was half empty. Good. I didn't want to be crammed up next to other people.
"Two," Sam said perfunctorily to the woman at the entrance.
We were shown to one of the benches. Looking out the window, I could see the sea through a gap between two former warehouses. One was now a nightclub, while the other looked like it'd been converted to shops on the ground floor, with housing above. I did my customary sweep in the Other Place. No murder-oil anywhere, though there were strange vines growing over the nightclub. They were fleshy, and veiny, and I wasn't sure what they meant, though I guessed they looked a bit like… oh I flushed and hastily shed the Other Place. Never mind that.
"This place is good, and the service is super-fast. It's sort of like fast food, except it isn't greasy or anything. Oh, and the green tea here is free – and it's actually good tea. They do it with loose leaves in these cute little cups," Sam advised. "Have you had this sort of stuff before?"
I looked down the list. Not much was familiar. "Not really," I said. "We tend to have more Chinese at home when Dad doesn't feel like cooking."
"'Kay, sure. Okay… well, how are you with hot stuff?"
"As in spicy?"
"Yeah, like chilli-hot."
"Not great," I admitted. "I mean, sure, like a mild Mexican thing is okay, but even then I'm not much of a fan."
"Hmm. Well, okay, maybe you'd like the miso ramen soup? It's sort of spicy, but not too spicy – well, unless you put on more chilli oil. Which I do, 'cause I like my miso hot. Otherwise, you can't go wrong with a beef or chicken ramen."
I looked that the prices. The chicken was cheaper than the beef. "Chicken sounds good," I said.
"Okay, that for you, and then… hmm, maybe a side of Edamame to share."
"What's that?" I said flatly.
"Oh, they're just green beans all covered in salt. They're great. I think they're soy beans. Or maybe broad beans."
I didn't believe her. Salty beans didn't sound nice. "Okay," I said.
"And… hmm, I think I'll have the seafood ramen, actually. And then two green teas and… they do pretty good fruit juices here? Like, made here."
"I think I'll just have a tap water," I said quickly. I was either going to have to pay for this, or Sam would volunteer. Even if she was paying, I didn't want to feel bad about taking advantage of her.
I sighed, resting my head in my hands. Look at me.
An hour ago I was dealing with a crazy girl who talked to God, commanded angels and saw a burning Heaven – and who had powers sort of like mine. Now I was almost being a normal teenage girl, going to have a meal with a sort-of friend and worrying about my allowance… and it was almost as nerve-wracking.
Fuck it. I might as well take advantage of better moments like this. It wasn't like I couldn't afford a drink, when it came down to it. I'd just have a cherub bring me twenty bucks and insist she take some money to cover it. Maybe I'd even be lavish and have a dessert.
"Actually, you know what," I said, pouring over the menu. "I think I will have something nice. Do they do… uh, elderflower?"
"Yeah," Sam said, flipping through the menu.
"So elderflower, then."
"Okay, well…" Sam's watch chimed. "Oh, sorry," she said, reaching for a pocket and pulling out an injector.
I looked away as she casually placed it against her wrist, and heard the faint grunt of pain. I looked back as she put it away. "I thought you had pills," I said. "Something else?"
She blinked. "Oh, no, that's not for the bipolar disorder," she said slightly wearily. "That's a separate health thing. I've been on one kind of medication or another since I was a baby," she started ticking off her fingers. "They had to give me a new heart when I was one. New liver when I was five. That got rejected when I was ten so I had to get another liver. I had problems with fits until they found a para doctor who managed to stick little electrodes in my brain which stopped the epilepsy. My body's a piece of patched-together crap." Her shoulders slumped in a sort of shrug. "Winding up bipolar on top of everything else is just another thing, you know?"
"So… uh, you're basically held together with pills?" I asked. Hmm. So the Other Place had been trying to tell me the drugs were doing more than just stabilising her mood. Score another one for it, I guess.
"Hah! Yeah, pretty much. Drugs and surgery, although I haven't had an organ transplant in five years and Mum's making me go to the clinic more to make sure that the new drugs I'm on aren't causing any more damage." She tucked her injector away, running her hands through her dark hair. "I really hate my body sometimes," she said darkly. "Why couldn't I have had another? My parents really screwed up making me."
I shook my head. I had some inkling of how much those kinds of medical treatments must cost, and they only reaffirmed my knowledge that her family was incredibly rich. Cloned organs, experimental drugs and parahuman surgeons curing epilepsy wasn't the sort of thing you got if you were a normal person, unless you volunteered for clinical trials. "I didn't know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"I mean, don't patronise me," Sam said, a strange tension in her voice. In the Other Place, there were flames flickering over her patches of burned skin. I could feel the heat suddenly radiating off her. "I didn't tell you before, so what've you got to feel sorry about? I don't tell people exactly because I don't want people making a fuss!"
"It's just…"
"I know, I know. Yeah, yeah. Just being nice." Her Other Self leant in, its shrivelled shrunken eyes glaring. Anger-flames flickered over it in a banked fire. "It just gets on my nerves, the way people go every time I tell someone. It's like… I just wanted you to know so you'd know why I'm constantly taking meds. That's all. I'm lucky to be alive! I get it already! I've had people telling me this as long as I can remember! At least you didn't tell me to my face that I'd be dead if my parents were poor." She sighed, looking around the restaurant guiltily. "Sorry. Sore spot. Not your fault. Just don't get all patronising and treat me like I'm made of glass. I get enough of that from… never mind."
"Okay, I get it," I said. "Not made of glass. Got it. So. Um. How do we order here?"
Of course I knew she wasn't made of glass. The Other Place would have told me if she was.
Arc 4 – Masks
Chapter 4.01
"God."
It came out flatly, not quite a question. I stared at Kirsty, trying to see if she was really serious. She stared back placidly, her reddened eyes brimming with honesty. The little angelic form above us cast a soft golden glow, quite unlike the pale light of the bulb.
"Yes," Kirsty said. "He used to speak to me when I was a little girl. Then when I got older, he showed me heaven." She kept smiling her watery, wincing smile. "He's God. I love him."
Uh. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. After a long moment, I decided on "I see".
"Yes," said Kirsty with an earnest nod. "You do. God says he'd chosen you too. He leaves me messages s-sometimes. He tells me things and warns me of bad things that might happen – and how to make good things happen. That's how I knew you were coming back." She leaned forwards, crossing her legs on her bed. Even under the golden light her skin looked waxy and pale, and there was a faint sheen of sweat around her temples. Her fingernails were bitten and there were scars on her fingers and wrists. Not on the insides of her wrists – on the outside. I didn't think they were self-inflicted. "God never lies to me. I'm just not strong enough to do what he wants me to, s-sometimes. B-but I always try to do my best!"
What do you say to someone who starts talking like this? Faith is… well, it was a complicated thing with me, okay? Mum never believed. Dad did, in the sort of not-really-questioned, solidly Catholic way that just sort of takes it for granted. He'd used to take me to church, just me and him, which sort of made it our special time together. Then, after Mum died, we just… stopped. He stayed at home the Sunday after the funeral, and the week after that. He just… drifted away, and we stopped going to church. I think it might've been because that's where her gravestone was. He still goes sometimes on his own, but it's not a regular thing and it used to be like clockwork. I'd never talked to him about it, but I had a certain suspicion that Mum wouldn't have wanted to be buried there.
So I was left with mixed feelings. I think it'd be great if there really was an all-loving God who'd punish wrongdoers and help people. With the Endbringers out there, we need someone on our side. And as soon as he actually does anything to help, I'd be more than willing to start going to church again. But I still prayed back when the bullying started. It didn't help. I guess, if I had to fill out a census sheet, I'm broadly lapsed Catholic. I want to believe in God. I'm just not sure if I do.
But even when I was younger, God never spoke to me. He was a distant figure. Church was just something I did with Dad, where we went to a fancy building and listened to people talk and sang songs and heard Bible stories. No-one I knew ever spoke about God with the kind of absolute certainty that Kirsty did.
"Um," I said.
"I saw your cherubs come looking for me," Kirsty said. Her legs were bouncing up and down with nervous tension, and she hugged herself tight. "God told me, a long time ago he told me how to return angels to his light. So I told your angels to return to you without finding me. And yesterday he…" she reached under her pillow, and pulled out a torn out scrap of paper. "Look!" she said, with sudden confidence, catching my eye.
I looked. It was a torn out advert from one of the papers this place had delivered.
STARTING TOMORROW
TAILORING FOR YOU, AT AFFORDABLE PRICES
AT HERBERT'S HOUSE OF FABRIC
DON'T DELAY!
"It's h-how God told me you were coming," she said. "It was written that you would return. And you did."
Uh. Um. It was… a newspaper advert. You can't just say 'it was written' about adverts. And sure, it talked about 'tailoring', but… look, my surname isn't 'Herbert' no matter what a succession of new teachers might think. I checked the paper in the Other Place. It was scorched and burned and the spelling was warped, but there was no secret message saying 'Bi tHE whey TAYlor is COMiNG baK' or however the Other Place would put it. It was just a perfectly normal 'PLeas BUy oUr CLothEs wE NeeD muney.' That was the sort of thing it did to adverts.
"So. Do you see things?" I asked. "Things that… aren't there?"
"No," Kirsty said placidly. "I see the things that are really there. That only those God has blessed can see. Like me. And you." She clasped her hands in front of her, almost in prayer. "You can see heaven, too. Can't you?"
"Heaven? You… you mean the Other Place?"
Kirsty nodded. "You open your eyes again and then you see the perfect world God has made," she said. She wasn't stammering, now, and her watery eyes weren't focussed on me. She was staring right through me, at something else, a thousand yards away. "A world where there are no lies. It is Heaven. We once had Eden but now it is lost. Now only those who God has chosen are the Elect. We know Eden."
I was left speechless. The Other Place wasn't heaven. Far from it. It was true that there weren't any lies there, but it seemed to take a silent delight in cutting people open and showing off all their dirty little secrets. Kirsty clearly wasn't mentally well - but more importantly, I thought, the damp Other Place had been scarred with burns when she'd got involved. Were we even seeing the same place?
"What does heaven look like to you?" I asked her, as gently as I could manage. I didn't want to scare her. I wasn't sure I had it in me to force her to calm down again. If I slipped, I'd be letting Phobia loose, bloated and fattened on all her frantic, trapped fear.
She gave me a sunny smile, the scars on her face wrinkling. "Heaven is filled with grace." She hugged one knee up to her chest, resting her chin on it. "Love is brighter than the sun. It's all around. The smoke whispers to me – tells me things. I tried to tell people how the world b-burns with God's love, but no one believes me. They say I'm crazy. I've stopped trying t-to tell them I'm not." There was an odd look in her eyes. "It hurts when they don't believe m-me."
I leant back against the wall, folding my arms. It was different. I had a lot to think about. Still, I didn't think she was quite sane. Sure, I thought I was going crazy when I started to find my powers, but she thought God talked to her. I tried not to frown as I thought about the strange writing in the Other Place. If I was religious, maybe I'd have thought that was God talking to me, too. Or worse, the Devil. She certainly lived in a world surrounded by fire and smoke.
So, for the sake of her tattered sanity, she'd decided that it was God talking to her and that fire was holy fire. I supposed it was better than thinking that she was in Hell. Though… why hadn't I seen all of this the last time I was here? Was it just because I was still getting used to my powers? The Other Place seemed to have layers, each hiding different things until you peeled them back like mouldy wallpaper. How much more was still lurking beneath the surface of what I could see? It wasn't a comforting question..
"So," I said, "the S-I-X thing? You were… you got very scared, when I brought it up before. Is it linked to…" I tried to phrase it in her terms, so I wouldn't set her off, "… to the Devil?"
Kirsty swallowed. "They're v-very bad people," she said softly, eyes flicking away from me. "They d-didn't start off bad, but demons got into their heads and they pl-played off all their bad bits." She looked back at me, then away. "One bad day, and they listened to the Devil and now they say his words. They've gone to hell, where everything is cold and black and dark."
"Isn't… like, hell meant to be hot?" I said. I couldn't stop myself.
Fortunately she didn't take it badly. "That's what they told me in church when I was little, but God told me that they were wrong," Kirsty said, nodding along. "God says Hell is n-nothing. It is outside his l-love. 'When in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was untamed and shapeless'. That is Hell – existence without God. Or perhaps non-existence. I don't think you can really exist unless God loves you." She smiled. "I wish I was as good as God. He even l-loves very bad people. I'm… I'm too wicked to love bad people. I just want them to die. Bad people like the… the S-I-X people. They take God's earth and make it into a slaughterhouse. They w-want to fill the oceans with blood." She swallowed. "I w-won't let them."
"And you're saying God told you that… that demons took over these S-I-X people and now they're… in hell?" I asked. That wasn't what I'd been looking to hear.
Once again, she seemed to give this serious thought. "Well, n-no," she said, brow wrinkling. "God didn't tell me that." An unusual, steely glint entered her eyes. "But no one who is still good and c-can be saved would do what they do. Only people who listen to the devil would do that s-sort of thing."
Okay, this was dangerous territory. Fear of S-I-X, whoever they were, had left her basically non-functional, and she was only this coherent because I'd drawn off her mindless terror… but even like this, in her mind she felt able to speak on behalf of God. Phobia twitched in the corner, and I decided to steer the conversation well away.
"Do you know that your records are… weird?" I tried. "Like, what this place knows about you? They don't know everything they should." I tried to think like she did. "Does God hide you?"
"Yes." She swallowed. "He makes sure that no one asks questions about why I am here. S-so the angels keep me safe and stop me from being left with no place to stay. I am not as strong as Mary and I don't think there's a stable for me. There aren't any horses, anymore, so there aren't stables."
Um. Right. "So… you're the reason that all the paper is faded? Did you send an angel to do it?"
"No, no." There was a momentary flash of irritation on her face. It was the first time I'd seen her show that emotion. "God is the one who does it. Not me. He makes provision for me, because I trust in him." And like that, the anger was gone and she was smiling again. "I think you could do it too, if you grew sick of the sins of the world. You could come live here with me."
I tried very hard to keep my expression the same. On the scale of people I'd never want to live with less, the crazy religious girl who'd tucked herself away in a mental asylum was still ranked only slightly lower than crashing on Sophia's couch. "How old are you?" I asked her.
Kirsty blinked. "I am twenty nine," she said, sounding confused. "Why?"
"What." It was so unexpected that I completely lost my chain of thought. She looked… well, she looked younger than me, actually. Sure, I look old for my age, but I wouldn't have pinned her as more than sixteen or seventeen. That she was nearly thirty…
"I d-don't look it. But I have been here since I was s-seventeen. I have lived in this place for a l-long time."
I rubbed my temples. Okay. Right. "So… you don't age."
"I do age," she contradicted me. "But the angels remember me as I was when they first met me. When God's light descends on me, I become as I was then." Her shoulders slumped. "I have looked like I am f-fourteen for a very long time. It is God's will, but…" her voice softened, "I have often wished that he had chosen otherwise. The s-sin of Eve is h-heavy on me."
"Uh huh."
"I don't want to be like Methuselah, but the angels say I must be like this. I don't understand why. But he says that this must be s-so and so I will not question him."
Okay. This girl? She really didn't want to take any credit for anything her powers did. It was getting on my nerves more than a little bit. I bet she hadn't even tried pushing the limits of what she could ask her angels to do. If she ever really asked them to do anything. I rubbed my hands together and glanced out at the greying sky, trying to work out where I could safely go from here.
"God wouldn't have sent you to me if you s-served the faithless men who rule America," Kirsty assured me out of the blue.
"Uh…" I paused, trying to translate that from what I knew of her world-view. "Do… you mean the PPD? Because I haven't told them, no."
She nodded. "They do not obey God's laws. They serve only themselves."
Well, yeah. We've got the whole 'Division of Church and State' thing for a reason, right? And then a thought occurred to me. "Wait. Do you mean the grey men? The ones who… they were investigating the S-I… that place I told you about. They covered everything in black letters, and… and they had black oil on their hands?"
"You've met them too," Kirsty said sadly. "The grey men have no souls. They're just clay, like Adam was before God gave him a soul. The owls lead them."
"There's more than one owl lady?" I asked, shocked. I hadn't even mentioned it to her.
"I didn't see an owl lady. But there were two men who had souls and listened to the birds. The grey men did what they said. They put me in the first hospital, but they didn't forget about me. Not until the hospital forgot about me and gave my room to another girl. I tried going home but there wasn't a home for me anymore, and even our church was gone. The grey men had knocked it d-down and built a new one, and no one there remembered me at all."
I cleared my throat, and tried desperately to think of something else to say, but I was coming up blanks.
"That was my time in the w-wilderness," she continued, reciting as if she was reading from a book. "The angels kept me warm and showed me where to go, and hid me from the eyes of those who looked for me. I hid and watched and waited until God told me that I had suffered enough and sent me to this place. He told me that someone would come in time. You are that person." There was desperation in her eyes. I couldn't say no.
"I suppose I am. It's… it's a shock," I said weakly. "I thought I was going crazy when I started to see the Other Place."
Kirsty smiled at me. "God knew that you'd be thought mad," she said, softly. "H-he was kind to send you to me. Thank you for b-being here. I… I had doubted him." She seemed pained by the admission, and stared resolutely at her bedcovers as the stammer returned full-force. "I've been here for s-such a long time. H-his grace hides me from others, but it is l-l-lonely when no one r-remembers you properly. And when they remember you, they t-tell you that you're n-not right in the head." She glanced back up, ashamed of something. "Sometimes, when times are bad, I… I have thought they might be right. That's when the angels escape, and things burn when they're not meant to. Only f-faith keeps them under control. I m-m-must honour God, or he'll take them away from me."
"Oh?" I asked. "Um. I find that… um, I can't let the emotions my angels represent take over." They weren't all strictly angels, but I thought it'd be safer to stick with own Kirsty's lexicon. I didn't have any real problem with the angels or the cherubs, either. They were very dependable. It was the emotion-things which were a struggle.
She reached out with sudden speed, clasping my hands in her own. Her skin was baby-soft despite the scars, I noticed in surprise, and her grip was surprisingly strong. I wasn't sure if I could worm out from it easily. She might have looked soft and flabby, but there must have been surprising amounts of muscle under there. "But now you're here. Just like God promised," Kirsty said earnestly.
"That's good, right?" I asked.
"Yes. I h-haven't had any friends in years," she said. "Since I was little. And even b-before Mother sold her soul, she didn't want me playing with the other children. I only got to play with them after church."
She wasn't an easy girl to talk to, even now I had a sort of translation going. The thing about speaking with Kirsty, I was finding, was that it was like picking at a scab. You knew you weren't going to like what you found when you broke the surface, but it was still hard to resist digging deeper.
"When you say 'sold her soul'?" I began, really really not wanting to go down this path.
Kirsty wrapped her arms around her legs and gave me another one of the watery, wincing smiles that twisted the scars on her face. It didn't reach her eyes, though. "She hurt me. A lot," she said. "Because the demons ate her from the inside out. She said it was my fault that she had to do this, but that was a lie. She said God had told her to do it, b-b-but God told me she was lying and that he loved me even if she didn't and and and h-he'd never spoken to her. He showed me Heaven. And then the angels made things right again."
"They… they did, huh?" Images came to mind of how my angels would 'make things right'.
"Yes," she said, unblinking. And now her smile reached her eyes. "They did. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."
I had a lot to think about on the car ride back with Sam. A lot to think about, and a lot to try my very best to avoid thinking about. Once I'd left Kirsty behind, I'd just sat there as the other two talked, trying my best to look interested. I don't think my best was very good.
The afternoon sun was behind us as we headed back to the city, moving out of the forests and back into the urban sprawl. The neon-lit bulk of out-of-town shopping malls and abandoned warehouses converted into hoovervilles formed an invisible gateway to the Bay. The chauffeur had the radio on loud, blaring some shock-jockey.
"-of course the establishment told you it was a 'humanitarian' thing. That they 'needed' it. That it was the 'right thing to do'. Right thing for them, more like! All the time they sat back and rubbed their fingers together, knowing that they were getting cheap labour. Do you know how many Japs have come swarming into America? Ten million! These so-called 'refugees' are taking advantage of us – encouraged, I might add, by the UN and the liberal sell-outs in Big Business and Washin-"
"Oh, turn that crap off," Sam said wearily to the chauffeur. She shook her head at me. "Honestly," she said, voice lowered. "I find it horrid that people are saying that sort of thing. They're just preying on the stupid."
"Mmm hmm." I was still thinking about Kirsty.
"They want people to be angry at the immigrants while they keep making money from the hate they generate. It makes me literally sick."
Sam was talking like there was no way I could disagree with her on this. It came as a bit of a surprise, because her parents were rich and she went around with tinkerfab gadgets. I wouldn't have pinned her mother as a liberal. Of course, maybe Sam took up the cause to annoy her, but I got the feeling she really did believe in it. I took a peek into the Other Place, but I couldn't tell for sure.
Me, I was sort of in two minds about it all. Because, yeah, the kind of DJ who talked like this wasn't someone I'd want to sit down and talk to, and… well, Japan had been devastated. They needed somewhere to live. And, yeah, Dad's dad had come over from France, so I really had no place to frown at immigrants. Nor did anyone who wasn't pure Native American, really.
On the other hand, walking through bits of Little Tokyo was scary even when I was with Dad. Everyone knew about how the Boumei were one of the most dangerous gangs in town, even before you took their parahumans into account. They'd been fighting with the White Lion Association, and it was normal at this point to hear news of people getting caught in the crossfire. A few months back, there had been headless bodies found dumped in a locked cargo container down by the Docks. And their leader could turn into a dragon. Kind of a big deal.
It wasn't like I just heard about this on the radio, it affected me in my day-to-day life! There were Japanese gangs at school, after all. There were bathrooms you didn't dare to go in if you weren't one of them, because that's where the Japanese girls hung out and smoked. Most of them didn't have great English, so they just talked among themselves and glared at anyone who came near. Sure, there were some in my classes who didn't seem so bad, but before Christmas there'd been some stabbings outside the school gates and everyone knew it had been some Japanese boys who did it, even if they didn't know exactly who.
It was like… sure, we had a duty to look after refugees. But didn't they have some kind of responsibility to not form gangs?
"Anyway," Sam continued, "most of the things they say are just lies, anyway. Like the stuff about Japanese immigrants taking jobs." But they did take jobs. Dad told me as much, that companies which didn't like unions were using migrants for minimum wage labour. "It's pretty funny that they claim they're both welfare parasites and takin' our dang jobs," she said, affecting a mocking accent. "But then again consistency has never been a virtue held by those sorts of people."
"It's complicated," I said. There was no way I wanted to get into an argument with her. Not now. Not today. And not when she said 'those sorts' in such a… a contemptuous way. I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that, but I knew I didn't want her to group me with them. "I'm sure they have a reason to be scared."
"Oh, sure," she countered, sarcasm heavy in her voice. "Mum says that a lot of the refugees she's taken on are really over-qualified for what they were doing before – if they could even find jobs – and it's really helped her expand. So, really they're literally helping the economy. And it's the right thing to do to take in migrants, anyway. Where are they going to go otherwise?"
"Yeah. You're right," I said, to end the argument. Well. It was certainly helping her mother's bit of the economy, I thought darkly.
There was an awkward silence.
"Um," Sam said, running her hands through her hair. It was annoying how good she managed to make her short puckish haircut look, I thought. She wasn't quite as pretty as Emma, but it was closer than it had any right to be when she had bags under her eyes and looked tired. "So. Uh. Do you want to go and get something to eat?" She massaged the back of her neck. "Look, I'm sorry about how that turned out, y'know, I spent most of the time talking with Leah and… uh… sorry about going all political on you. I just miss her already and I'm worried and… sorry. Sorry."
"I came along because I wanted to," I told her, and considered what to say next. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I hadn't enjoyed this, any part of it, but I needed to have an excuse to see Kirsty more. She wasn't right in the head, but she was a parahuman, with powers like mine. I could do things to people's heads, so maybe I could help her? I could try and make sure she wouldn't lose control when she got scared.
After all, there was no way she'd go to the PPD. She was too scared of the people who'd put her in the psychiatric hospital in the first place – and then forgotten about her. Just like everyone seemed to, apart from me. She scared me, but… I knew how awful it was to be lonely. And even if her powers seemed stronger in some ways, I actually used mine. I could be stronger than her.
"I wouldn't want to do this too often, but I don't mind coming along occasionally," I conceded. "At least on weekends I don't have too much homework," I added ruefully, trying to get a smile out of Sam. "Sorry, but that comes first."
I managed to get a laugh. "Yeah." The laugh turned into a sigh as her watch bleeped. "Sorry," she said, pulling a capsule out of a jacket pocket and popping out a pill. She winced as she swallowed it. "I just wish they tasted better."
"You seem better," I said cautiously.
"I feel better," she said. "Are you on anything?"
I shook my head. "Occasional sedatives to help me sleep, nothing more. They said it was basically a psychotic episode or something caused by… by what happened." She knew in general terms what'd happened, but I didn't like talking about it with others. 'Got locked in a locker filled with used tampons, had psychotic break' was bad enough to explain.
"Oh. Yeah, well, you wouldn't believe how much of a difference this stuff makes," she said. "Mum got me into a pre-market run for it, and it's way better than the lithium was. It doesn't have any of the side effects. Well, apart sometimes waking up feeling sick, but that's nothing."
"Morning sickness?" I asked wryly.
She sniggered. "Don't call it that. People'll misunderstand." Her expression turned sour again as we passed the big yellow arches of a McDonalds. "But… it's just not fair. They put me on drugs and I have therapy and the yoga and tai chi and… I am actually feeling much better. Like, they work. I haven't felt like I used to at all. Even when I was feeling horrid, on the lithium, it wasn't the same, like, kind of bad." She wrapped her bomber jacket around herself. "There's nothing like that for Leah. No easy cure. And… and she… she just looks so thin! She was worrying about Christmas and then…" Sam stared at me, eyes haunted. "Sorry, I shouldn't be… it's just…"
"It's nothing," I said. I wasn't quite sure how to react. She sort of looked like she wanted a hug, but I didn't think that was appropriate. Anyway we were belted in. I settled for patting her hand in a vaguely ineffectual manner. "There, there."
She shot a stare at me. "You're really not very good with… like, touchy stuff, are you?" she asked bluntly. "Like, literally, that was a Dad-level of reassurance."
I spluttered. "Well, I don't… I wasn't sure if I knew you well enough and… um…"
"Look, Taylor," Sam said. "We spent… like, two weeks together in a psych hospital. We know each other plenty well enough for that." She nudged me. "Remember the group bonding sessions? If they weren't working, then they were just a stupid waste of time, eh?"
It was a pretty awkward one-armed hug. I'm not really sure how reassuring it was. Also, I wasn't certain of her logic. "They were a stupid waste of time," I grumbled.
"I didn't think they were."
"They were."
Any further argument was interrupted by her stomach growling. "Oops. Look, I know a pretty good place on the edge of Little Tokyo that does just fabulous noodles and stuff like that," Sam said. "Come on. I bet you're hungry too." She glanced at me. "I'll pay. It's the least I can do when today can't have been much fun for you."
I was hungry. "I'll need to tell my Dad I'll be back later," I began.
She pulled out her ultra-sleek flatphone and swiped along the screen. "Your home number, right?" she asked, passing it to me. It was already dialling.
Dad, of course, was totally fine with me going out to have dinner with a girl my own age. He just told me to tell him if we wanted to go catch a movie afterwards or something. It sounded a lot like a suggestion to me.
Sam had her chauffeur drive us to the south side of Little Tokyo. That was the safe bit. It had the most restaurants, which meant it had the most tourists and visitors, which meant it had the most police. There were new buildings standing alongside the early twentieth century redbricks, and the neon shop-signs were bilingual.
We were dropped off on the corner next to the restaurant. Looking inside, I could see long tables running the entire length of the room. They were old stained oak and looked out of place surrounded by the Japanese décor – maybe they'd come with the place. It was early, so the place was half empty. Good. I didn't want to be crammed up next to other people.
"Two," Sam said perfunctorily to the woman at the entrance.
We were shown to one of the benches. Looking out the window, I could see the sea through a gap between two former warehouses. One was now a nightclub, while the other looked like it'd been converted to shops on the ground floor, with housing above. I did my customary sweep in the Other Place. No murder-oil anywhere, though there were strange vines growing over the nightclub. They were fleshy, and veiny, and I wasn't sure what they meant, though I guessed they looked a bit like… oh I flushed and hastily shed the Other Place. Never mind that.
"This place is good, and the service is super-fast. It's sort of like fast food, except it isn't greasy or anything. Oh, and the green tea here is free – and it's actually good tea. They do it with loose leaves in these cute little cups," Sam advised. "Have you had this sort of stuff before?"
I looked down the list. Not much was familiar. "Not really," I said. "We tend to have more Chinese at home when Dad doesn't feel like cooking."
"'Kay, sure. Okay… well, how are you with hot stuff?"
"As in spicy?"
"Yeah, like chilli-hot."
"Not great," I admitted. "I mean, sure, like a mild Mexican thing is okay, but even then I'm not much of a fan."
"Hmm. Well, okay, maybe you'd like the miso ramen soup? It's sort of spicy, but not too spicy – well, unless you put on more chilli oil. Which I do, 'cause I like my miso hot. Otherwise, you can't go wrong with a beef or chicken ramen."
I looked that the prices. The chicken was cheaper than the beef. "Chicken sounds good," I said.
"Okay, that for you, and then… hmm, maybe a side of Edamame to share."
"What's that?" I said flatly.
"Oh, they're just green beans all covered in salt. They're great. I think they're soy beans. Or maybe broad beans."
I didn't believe her. Salty beans didn't sound nice. "Okay," I said.
"And… hmm, I think I'll have the seafood ramen, actually. And then two green teas and… they do pretty good fruit juices here? Like, made here."
"I think I'll just have a tap water," I said quickly. I was either going to have to pay for this, or Sam would volunteer. Even if she was paying, I didn't want to feel bad about taking advantage of her.
I sighed, resting my head in my hands. Look at me.
An hour ago I was dealing with a crazy girl who talked to God, commanded angels and saw a burning Heaven – and who had powers sort of like mine. Now I was almost being a normal teenage girl, going to have a meal with a sort-of friend and worrying about my allowance… and it was almost as nerve-wracking.
Fuck it. I might as well take advantage of better moments like this. It wasn't like I couldn't afford a drink, when it came down to it. I'd just have a cherub bring me twenty bucks and insist she take some money to cover it. Maybe I'd even be lavish and have a dessert.
"Actually, you know what," I said, pouring over the menu. "I think I will have something nice. Do they do… uh, elderflower?"
"Yeah," Sam said, flipping through the menu.
"So elderflower, then."
"Okay, well…" Sam's watch chimed. "Oh, sorry," she said, reaching for a pocket and pulling out an injector.
I looked away as she casually placed it against her wrist, and heard the faint grunt of pain. I looked back as she put it away. "I thought you had pills," I said. "Something else?"
She blinked. "Oh, no, that's not for the bipolar disorder," she said slightly wearily. "That's a separate health thing. I've been on one kind of medication or another since I was a baby," she started ticking off her fingers. "They had to give me a new heart when I was one. New liver when I was five. That got rejected when I was ten so I had to get another liver. I had problems with fits until they found a para doctor who managed to stick little electrodes in my brain which stopped the epilepsy. My body's a piece of patched-together crap." Her shoulders slumped in a sort of shrug. "Winding up bipolar on top of everything else is just another thing, you know?"
"So… uh, you're basically held together with pills?" I asked. Hmm. So the Other Place had been trying to tell me the drugs were doing more than just stabilising her mood. Score another one for it, I guess.
"Hah! Yeah, pretty much. Drugs and surgery, although I haven't had an organ transplant in five years and Mum's making me go to the clinic more to make sure that the new drugs I'm on aren't causing any more damage." She tucked her injector away, running her hands through her dark hair. "I really hate my body sometimes," she said darkly. "Why couldn't I have had another? My parents really screwed up making me."
I shook my head. I had some inkling of how much those kinds of medical treatments must cost, and they only reaffirmed my knowledge that her family was incredibly rich. Cloned organs, experimental drugs and parahuman surgeons curing epilepsy wasn't the sort of thing you got if you were a normal person, unless you volunteered for clinical trials. "I didn't know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"Huh?"
"I mean, don't patronise me," Sam said, a strange tension in her voice. In the Other Place, there were flames flickering over her patches of burned skin. I could feel the heat suddenly radiating off her. "I didn't tell you before, so what've you got to feel sorry about? I don't tell people exactly because I don't want people making a fuss!"
"It's just…"
"I know, I know. Yeah, yeah. Just being nice." Her Other Self leant in, its shrivelled shrunken eyes glaring. Anger-flames flickered over it in a banked fire. "It just gets on my nerves, the way people go every time I tell someone. It's like… I just wanted you to know so you'd know why I'm constantly taking meds. That's all. I'm lucky to be alive! I get it already! I've had people telling me this as long as I can remember! At least you didn't tell me to my face that I'd be dead if my parents were poor." She sighed, looking around the restaurant guiltily. "Sorry. Sore spot. Not your fault. Just don't get all patronising and treat me like I'm made of glass. I get enough of that from… never mind."
"Okay, I get it," I said. "Not made of glass. Got it. So. Um. How do we order here?"
Of course I knew she wasn't made of glass. The Other Place would have told me if she was.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Huh, we got a Seer. Neat.
At least, I think that's what the message thing was? It sounds like the roundabout bullshit they'd pull. That or dreams.
I admit I'm guessing.
At least, I think that's what the message thing was? It sounds like the roundabout bullshit they'd pull. That or dreams.
I admit I'm guessing.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, we know that she's blaming god for things she herself does, like commanding the angels, so there might be no actual entity on the other end.