Chương 89: Polaris Inverted (2) [August 1st, Age 15]

The bus worked its way into the heart of civilization, the open roadway condensing down into closer-knit ones. We went from an elephant in the herd crossing the plain to a single red blood cell creeping through a congested artery. I felt it through my open window: the cool shine of trees and grass by the roadside faded, replaced by empty dry brick and concrete, the soft red swirls of exhaled breath from pedestrians like a million whirlpools.

Every last sound imaginable—road noise beyond a thousand, the clatter of footsteps muted by the rumbling of the buses' idle engine, words in a dozen languages blurred together into a shapeless, nationless blur of noise devoid of meaning and muted feeling. I closed my eyes and took a breath. It was so much worse than I thought it'd be.

I hadn't accounted for the things I'd be aware of without actively looking for them—the breathing, the crying, the open water bottles and the dripping condensation from gutters and the warm undercurrent deep below the sewer grates. And beyond that I still had to hold droplets for all the things I couldn't feel: the fire hydrants, the road signs, the buildings themselves.

And even then, the buildings didn't necessarily match the shapes I'd memorized: these weren't two-and-a-half story brick blocks like those built by children: these were glass-woven irregular shaped concrete spires with overhangs and underpasses. They sat in regular order, in blocks like garden patches, but beyond that they were inscrutable. I knew I was overthinking this. I didn't need to know what the buildings looked like beyond their first floor.

I didn't need to know where the signs were as long as I stayed in the middle of the street and dodged the area just behind those warm red swirls in the air. I could get by. I was overthinking this. But—God—there was just so much to overthink.

By the time we got off the bus I was walking on eggshells, taking slow measured steps, remembering that even though I knew I was blind and the people I trusted knew I was blind, nobody else did, and if I was walking weirdly people would stare and then we wouldn't be undercover because I'd be drawing too much attention. So I tried to get off my tip-toes to no avail. Bell and Ava walked ahead, but Cygnus stayed behind, walking close next to me.

It was around a half-mile to the train, I was told, but it might as well have been across the universe. And I knew it was going to get so, so much worse. I swallowed and kept my head down and tried not to think too much about the whirlwind of things around me, screaming. Cygnus nudged me, gently, and asked low: "How're you doing?"

"I'm fine," I said, in the same way I always did. A completely pure reflex.

"That's obviously not true," Cygnus replied.

"C'mon, Erika, we've been over this before."

"I know," I said. Pausing.

"And I'm fine." He sighed.

"Look. You're not fooling anyone." This was the first actual exchange we'd shared since earlier, when I'd kicked him to the curb in a mad blind-rush toward certain oblivion. I rolled back the events—the bus, Ava's outburst, Loybol talking me down from the ledge—and then that. It'd only been maybe six or seven hours since then. It could've been days for all I knew.

The fact that he was still talking to me after the things I'd said to him— The entire conversation we'd had whipped through my head with a stark clarity I hadn't realized I was capable of, and it left me stunned, stumbling forward with empty movements just to keep in line, mouth slightly open without anything to say. Why would he talk to me after that? I told him his entire life was meaningless. I practically screamed it. I told him his entire existence was for nothing, and—God—he believed me.

The one time I'd ever managed to win an argument was the one time I absolutely, with the wisdom of hindsight, wish I'd lost. With the way things are now, I guess it doesn't matter. This is one of those things I recall hot-faced and I shove away as soon as it rises. Just another time I'd managed to make myself look stupid in front of someone I wanted to respect me. And still, Cygnus spoke to me. Still he stayed close and watched me walk, just in case. How? Why?

"I'm not mad," he said, softly.

"That's not true," I said, instantly. Quietly.

"You don't live in my head," Cygnus replied.

"I know what I feel."

"But—""We all say things we don't mean," he said.

"When things get bad. If you take everything everyone says as gospel all the time, you go nuts. We only have room for so many truths, you know?" I didn't know. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure what that means, and I didn't think to ask him to explain at the time, so it's gone. Gone like so many other little things. I wish I'd gathered them more tightly. Maybe written this stuff down. We were around halfway to the subway station and nothing had improved.

We were still surrounded on all sides by dozens upon dozens of dark shapes with red breath-swirls in front of their mouths. I couldn't devote the time to resolving their forms so they were just breathing, heaving lump-poles: misshapen human masses that shambled forward in indistinct ways. But their breath was clear—little red nebulas just in front of them. They weren't human because I didn't have the time to make them so. My focus, then, had to be on something.

I needed to pick out one shape and define it as far as definition could go: the pits of the eyes, the contours of the nose, the little depression at the base of the neck—down their arms, down their legs, until they stopped and examined themselves, wondering why everything felt so slimy. I didn't need to know all of that, even though it was my impulse to try. All I needed to know is that they were human-shaped, alive, and breathing. Face, gender, skin, shape—all of that was trivial.

Cygnus, however, was still there, and I knew exactly what he looked like. He was one of the few. I could still visualize him in color. That much, at least, I remembered. He was real even if nothing else was.

"It's a lot more to keep track of than normal, I guess," Cygnus said. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about me.

"Yeah. I—I guess."

"You'll get used to it," he replied.

"And then things'll go back to normal again." I pursed my lips. I didn't get to have many words when there was this much to pay attention to around me, so I had to make them count.

"It's not like that," I said.

"Then what is it?" he responded. It was a few seconds before I could speak again. I must have looked so scared. My mouth pursed into a thin tight line, eyes wide, stepping slowly and carefully like any hard step would shatter me. What did I really have to be afraid of? If there was a bullet coming for my brain in all that chaos, I'd be dead before I knew anything had happened, anyway. Really, then, there was no point in fear at all. What was I so damn afraid of? Failure? I'd be dead if I failed.

We were all going to die anyway, weren't we? I knew then that what we were told so many times wasn't a preparation—it wasn't a warning; it was a promise. This, like everything else, was foretold, and there were no other lives of me where I did not descend into the subway tunnel fully knowing what was going to become of us. To be completely honest, I was wrong.

With the wisdom of hindsight—and the way things are now—I can say that my conception of what was waiting for us through that hole in the concrete, those steps into the abyss, was not what I thought it was, and there is no possible way I could have truly grasped the enormity of what was waiting for me in my next years. Loybol and I saw eye-to-eye on that. Both of us knew, from a young age, that we were fated for something far above.

She knew when she emerged from an abyss much like this one knowing that she had to give her life, every ounce and fiber of her being, to making sure that what happened to her never happened to anyone again. I, on that August day, descended into one and knew that one way or another, this chapter of my life was closing, and that the Radiant I knew could never, ever be the Radiant I wanted to return to. What I'd give to turn back time. God. I'd give everything.

If there is one thing these past ten years or so have taught me, it's that no matter where I go, revolution follows me. Through no particular fault of my own, that special hysteria that drives people to destroy in the name of rebuilding bubbles and writhes in my wake. I walk and things are obliterated. I turn and they are rebuilt.

Somewhere out there there's a person trying to make sense of everything that happened after I walked into that subway tunnel via the lives of all the major players, and my name is circled in the center of a net of papers and clippings and tacks tied together with string.

Some sleep-deprived detective buried deep in a coffin-sized office stashed away in a Hinterland high-rise, brain-curdled and curled over a half-empty bottle of whiskey trapped knowing that if he could solve this, solve me, if he could just understand the what Erika Hanover did to these people— The joke here is that I really don't have much to do with these things. Revolution follows in my wake. I'm no lady liberty.

I've never given much thought to the lives of people outside my own, barring the parts of them I long to emulate. I hold the flag, I hold the gun. I hold the dreams that aren't my own. It was once asked of me what I wanted in life, and my response has never changed: all I ever looked for was a bed and a glass of water, a television and a friend, a beer and a window to watch the world slowly, ever so slowly, grind to a halt.

Sip my drink slowly as the passerby take their last slow steps and freeze, not through ice, not through death, but simply through a lack of time. I suppose that is truly what makes me a soldier, isn't it? Isn't the deepest-heart desire of everyone at war to just go home? Or is that just what I've been told? Please know this: barring the occasional passing intrusive thought, I've never wanted to destroy the world. God, I just wanted to be happy.

0 0 0 So we walked into the subway station, Bell and Ava at point, and Cygnus and I following behind. Faster than before, but still slower than them, distinctly so. I was a bit better off than I was when I got off the bus, but not by much. The enormity of the world here still staggered me, and the exertion—not from the actual magic usage keeping me usable, but from the mental effort of defining everything and placing it—had given me a mid-grade migraine.

It was my job to ignore nothing, and while I was more than capable of bouncing enough droplets to get the shape of every object in the near vicinity and just beyond for a couple of seconds—up to a minute, really—I was continuously let down by my own mind: something would make a weird noise and I'd get startled, lose hold of the gentle web of the world, and I'd have to start from scratch again. At least the subway station offered some peace.

Since it was indoors, mostly, I didn't have to worry about cars scattering my droplets wholescale as they passed through the clouds. It was far easier to keep track of everything, even if there were still so many people, so many sounds, and so many little places a sniper could hide. Not that we'd be attacked in a busy subway station, but ever since the bombing in White Plains I couldn't let myself rest on that idea. By the time we got to the bottom of the steps and caught up to Ava, Bell had disappeared somewhere.

In my haste to map out the subway station's atrium I hadn't kept track of Bell, even though she was taller than basically everyone else and tracking her would've been as close to trivial as anything was down here. Cygnus and I arrived at her and stopped, and it was only then that I allowed myself to breathe.

"Having fun?" Ava asked, turning away from me, toward the set of extra steps that led down to the trains themselves. This was a fairly major subway station—we'd planned it that way on purpose. It as big enough to have a chain coffee shop and a newspaper-stand-convenience-store sit alone and unused on a floor over the actual tracks. The more people there were, the less likely we'd get picked off before ever seeing Neville's building.

"No," was all I could manage through my fresh splitting headache. Ava squinted at me a bit.

"God, you look like hell."

"Thanks."

"That's not—whatever. Are you sick?"

"Headache," I managed to mumble. Ava turned to the convenience store.

"Just wait for a second. I'll get you an Advil." She walked off and returned a few minutes later with a little tube.

"The smallest size they had was ten tablets, so…I don't know, just take however many you need."

"Thanks," I repeated, a little stronger now. I squeezed the top of the tube—finding the right place to squeeze on my third try—and twisted it off, tapping out two tablets and slipping them between my lips, alongside enough water from the air to swallow them. Ava sighed, looking around again.

"Bell went to the bathroom," she said.

"I think she's changing."

"Did she bring a spare set of clothes?" Cygnus asked.

"I thought we were told to just buy something and not bring anything like that."

"Changing shape," Ava said, crossing her arms.

"Like that's gonna help us not get spotted." Cygnus shrugged, glancing up at a thick rectangular sign near the downward steps that I assumed was a train-arrival board.

"I mean, if we were in a crowd, Bell would be by far the easiest person to spot, so cutting off a foot or so would probably help." We were all reasonably distinctive-looking, as far as my memory served. Cygnus kept his propensity for silk shirts, and near as I could tell he was wearing one now.

Ava had a pretty set visual style last I recalled involving a lot of black and neon colors and a hard-bottom-line bob that I always used to find her whenever I needed to at a glance, but I figured that loads of people had that hairstyle, and black jeans and a favorite kind of graphic tee didn't really make her a beacon. She was pretty tall in her own right, only an inch or two shorter than Cygnus, who himself was somewhere around six feet.

I was too small to stand out in a crowd at barely above five and unlikely to get much taller. Bell being somewhere on the order of six-foot-five and looking the way she did was most certainly the weak link there. I stuffed the thought about my visual data on Unit 6 being almost year out of date away. I didn't have the mental real-estate to give that anything more than a cursory acknowledgment.

A few moments later, a figure emerged from the pair of openings in the wall off to our left and made a beeline towards us, waving—and while I didn't recognize any of her features I figured it had to be Bell, since neither Cygnus nor Ava made any sudden moves.

"You look so fucking weird," Ava said, once she was close enough.

"Like—dude, this just looks wrong. Like it's obviously you, but—it's so small." The figure there didn't seem to be all that small. It was still a touch taller than Ava, anyway. Bell snickered.

"Yeah, I took a look at myself in the mirror and had to stuff a laugh."

"Did you just make yourself shorter?" I asked. Bell nodded.

"Yep."

"Still taller than you, though," I said, pointing at Ava. Ava glanced at me, frowned, and then looked back at Bell.

"Really?"

"By like half an inch." Bell cracked a little smile and didn't add anything.

"God, you're so petty," Ava said back to Bell.

"If I knew it wouldn't bother you, I wouldn't have done it," Bell said. She set off toward the downward steps, saying, "We've got two minutes to get on the train. Let's go." Ava shrugged and followed, and then Cygnus and I went too.