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To the Last Syllable (Mr. M & Bathos)

  • To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
    To the last syllable of recorded time
    [/list:u]

    The deli clerk yawned as he waited for the automat to spit out the customer goods. As they came off the conveyor belt, he read them off in a bored tone. "Two slabs Kosher vatbeef, one pound cheesefood, one package puri-drops, one head lettuce, two loaves multi-soy bread." The items dropped into the bag on their own, and the clerk jiggled the bag until they settled. "Anything else, sir?"

    The person across the counter was one of those Phobas, all cloaked in a full-face filter mask, big-brimmed droopy hat, long overcoat, and thick gloves. The gas-mask-like plates of smoked glass over the eyes just reflected the clerk's own sweaty face back at him, and the breathing filters hissed gently, badly in need of replacement. Silently, the Phoba reached out and plucked a stick of vacuum-sealed jerky out of the container by the register and dropped it into the bag. The store's computer ratcheted up the total another few decicredits, and read out the total while the clerk idly wiped his nose.

    The Phoba drew from its pocket a handful of plastic credit chits and credsticks with just a few ticks still left in them. The clerk sighed and started slotting them into the register, one at a time, each one clicking down the "amount due" total bit by bit, until it finally read zero. The Phoba nodded, collected what was left along with the bag, and glided out the door into the gloom of the street.

    It was high afternoon, but down on the actual surface road, it was dim and shadowed, and the patter of condensation dripping off the megascrapers that blotted out the sky in all directions rang as loudly as the whir of the hovercars in the travel lanes far overhead and the growling of surface bikes and the occasional truck that prowled between the piles of trash and shuffling transients that littered the whole area. It was the valley floor between the mountain peaks of the city, and as everyone knows, shit rolls downhill.

    The Phoba stepped lightly, his bag clutched tight in his glove. His place was several blocks away, but when blocks could be up to a mile long, it was a significant walk. The spaces near him, the bases of the megascrapers, had the solid central core that provided the strength to lift the mighty structures, and pumped up the water and baseblock feeds and pumped away the sewage. But ringing those industrial centers of the city blocks were the forgotten facades and fronts, the first few layers of buildings that the upper floors forgot entirely. Even the second-tier walkways and balcony struts were rusting and, in many cases, dangerously unsafe. But it was cheap and anonymous, and that's what many wanted.

    And no matter the quality and popularity of the buildings above, on the lower levels, pretty much anywhere below the start of the traffic pattern, the population and safety of each block varied widely. And suddenly. As the Phoba crossed one street, the block ahead was markedly darker, with fewer open businesses, more burnt-out storefronts, and several large piles of garbage and wreckage of cars obscuring the clear view down the street. The Phoba paused, considering, and then began to walk more slowly, down the darkened block. The rain pattered all the more loudly without other street noises to drown it out, but even beneath that, he could hear movement as he rounded one of the piles, and left the small circle of illumination cast by the barred windows of the liquor store.

    He heard footsteps, the creaking of leather, and even inside the mask, he could catch glimpses of movement. Young men, a couple of young women, in gang clothing, whatever outrageous they could steal or create, anything to identify themselves as different. He hurried a little, drawing away deeper into the dimness, but there were people ahead of him, too, cutting off his escape, encircling him.

    "Hey-hey-hey," came a mocking voice to the side. "Looks like a Phoba, huh? Phoba all scared of germs? Phoba sneaking around in our territory! Gots to pay the toll, Phoba-na-na!" The apparent leader of the gang came strutting over, hair teased up and frozen in classic punk liberty spikes, but flattened and spread to look like little more than a ridiculous cocatou display of some sort.

    The Phoba turned, circling to see his assailants. He carefully lowered the bag as his feet and faced the leader, who was coming up to him slowly, buoyed by the confidence that comes with outnumbering your opponent fifteen to one. The leader was tall, and barely more than sixteen; they got tough young in the lower levels. The Phoba was shorter, but stood straighter as the leader kid comes closer. The leader grinned and flicked open his shiv, thumbing the molecular motor that made it hum and vibrate, the kind of weapon that could cut flesh like butter. His head tilting just a little, the Phoba made a sound. It was soft, at first, almost drowned out by the hiss of the breathing filters, but it grew.

    It was... laughter. A deep-voiced, booming, full-belly laugh. The leader's face grew confused, at first, then angry. He flicked his knife hand at the fucker's face... and was blocked. The Phoba's gloved hand gripped his wrist, immovable as a wall. Then the Phoba's other hand moved, pain exploded in his chest, and the leader went flying backward onto the roof of a wrecked car, where he moaned and clutched at his chest.

    "Pathetic," laughed the Phoba, his voice only slightly muffled. He glanced around, moving a lot less hesitantly now. "If you were smart, you'd flee like little rabbits. I can't chase all of you."

    But of course, they were not smart.

    They fought like savages, milling in and swinging wildly. They did more damage to each other at first than he did to them. His purpose wasn't to kill; one didn't kill children if one could help it. But he wanted to send as many of them to the autodoc booths as he could. Knees, ribs, arms; all were fair game. And all shattered so nicely; the screams carried a particular flavor of terror when he scored a particularly solid strike.

    A lucky swing with a pipe caught the edge of his mask, ripping it and the hat off. He grabbed a thug and used him to block the next blow; his improvised shield had a moment to catch sight of his face, the feral yellow slitted eyes, the canine teeth, the general hairiness and pronounced mouth, a start of a muzzle, and he screamed "Throwback! It's a throwback!"

    "A throwback!" he snarled. "I'm THE throwback!" And he hurled the boy into a knot of his compatriots. Once his face was revealed, the fight was over quickly, and his time was now limited as those that fled in terror of his sub-human ferocity would likely bring back a lynch mob of well-meaning citizens intent on cleansing his taint from the gene-pool. And he wasn't really ready for that quite yet.

    He leapt from groaning body to suffering form, quickly rifling pockets for credit chits or credsticks. They didn't have much, but together, they had enough. Enough to keep him in groceries for the rest of the week, at least.

    Snatching up his bag and retrieving his hat and mask, he chuckled at them all again. "Thank you for your contribution, children," he said. "And try and be nicer, hm?"

    He was sure that was it for this block, so he scampered up a pile of trash and took to the walkways. Brachiating along the underside of a rotting catwalk was dangerous, but he was almost safer than if he'd been running on the walk itself. That was it for this area for a few months, but next time he had to go out for provisions, he could probably use a store closer to his home again; enough time had passed, and he'd changed out hats, the local gangs wouldn't recognize him any longer from the last beating he gave them. The few who still were there; turnover was high, as people moved, kids grew into the gangs and grew out of them. If not, if they still remembered him... well, his hunting grounds might have to migrate.

    It isn't much of a life, he thought yet again as he traversed into another, better lit block and sought out a good place to descend, fix his disguise, and resume his walk, but it beats dying.
 
She was more datacard than woman by the time she tottered out of the suite of offices, heaving two full boxes in her narrow arms, an additional bag slung over each shoulder. Her eyes, big and blue in a way that might have reminded her great grandparents of smogless sky, barely peeked over the top of her load.

The automatic doors parted to make way for her as she made her exit, which was more than could be said for just about everybody else. The docking platform was full to bursting with day workers just off from work, waiting with varying degrees of patience for the next available taxi, and nobody seemed at all concerned with the overburdened secretary being jostled and moved with the ebb of the crowd.

This was the story of Lyla's life, and since she didn't foresee a turning page in the near future, rather than fight against the weary mob, she dropped her pile of patient files right in the middle of the platform and took a seat on top of them. After all, she could afford to wait out the crowds. There wasn't much waiting for her back at her apartment.

Close to an hour had passed before she got her chance. The hordes had decreased to just a small handful of people, all of them too nice or too dumb to push or weasel their way to the front of the line, when a fairly dinged up yellow hovercar pulled up to the platform. The back window was busted out and the motor sputtered and coughed when it came to a halt. It idled for a moment and, understandably, no one moved to take it.

When the car began to pull away, Lyla hopped to her feet. "Wait!"

She gathered up her bags and boxes, nearly overbalancing and pitching forward in the process, and sprinted after the car.

"Wait!" she called again, as the car was still in motion. She looked quite a fright that way, running in tiny, shuffling steps, weaving right and left so she could see around the stacked boxes, shrieking at the taxi. Her hair, once smooth and hanging calmly down to her chin, now blew in all directions as she left the shelter of the building, giving the vague impression that her head was on fire with all the myriad shades of red illuminated under the artificial lights.

The hovercar stopped and Lyla struggled to get the door open, smiling breathlessly as she peered inside. The driver looked her over dispassionately and didn't bother smiling back.

"Level four?" Lyla asked through her smiling teeth. A lot of cabs didn't go that low, not even for an increased fee. It was a long way down, and there was essentially zero chance of picking up a return passenger. And besides all that, it was dangerous in the lower levels, full of surface punks and freaks on the lam. But that was where Lyla lived, and perhaps the major reason why she didn't bat an eye at the sorry state of the car.

"Get in," the driver said at length, and she did.

Their descent was slow at first, due to all the rush hour traffic, but the longer they traveled the more deserted the airways, until they were the only hovercar in the air.

"I'm in the Willow Building," Lyla told the driver when they were approaching her level. "East side, unit- Hey, why are we stopping?"

They were between levels four and five, not even in a designated parking space, and the driver twisted in his seat. That was when Lyla saw the glint of a blade.

"Credits," he said, and Lyla could now see a cold hardness in eyes where she had previously only noticed boredom. Fear prickled down her spine and her eyes went wide and horrified.

"Um, shouldn't we wait 'til my stop?"

The driver laughed. "Honey, this is your stop."

Lyla gulped. "In that case, if you just pull over a little further, I can walk the rest of the way, no problem."

"Don't play dumb, lady," the driver said, and as he was speaking her eyes slid slowly to the side, seeking an escape plan. The building to their right was abandoned, but there was still an old landing platform. It was anybody's guess how sturdy it was, but it beat getting shanked and thrown out of the car at four-and-a-half levels. The impact to the surface would leave her in pieces, and that was only if she was lucky enough to land on a hovercar.

Then there were all the files. If she lost her life over the files, sure, that'd be tragic. But if she lost her job over the files, that would be a step beyond heinous. She'd been working for Dr. Halford for two months now and already, due to no failings on her part, he thought her completely incompetent. If she lost all those patient files, she'd be out of a job and then even her level four apartment would look like a palace compared to the depths to which she'd descend.

"This is a pickle," she said under her breath.

"A pickle? Lady, this is a fuckin' robbery. Gimme your bags."

"No!" Lyla wailed when the driver reached for one of her overloaded bags, and she slapped his hand away. In the moment he took to be baffled, Lyla threw open the door and launched her bags out of the car. They sailed through the air and landed on the nearby platform, spilling out across the floor.

"You crazy bitch! What are you doing!" the man barked, reaching for her, catching Lyla by the hair. She kicked the boxes out the door, even as her head was wrenched painfully back. Her heart sank when seconds passed, ticking by like independent little eternities, and she never heard the boxes crash into the platform. She'd missed.

There went her job.

There was no time to consider that, however, because pain was blooming bright in the back of her head where the driver-cum-criminal had yanked it back against his headrest, twisting Lyla awkwardly in the small space.

"Let go!" she demanded, and flailed as much as she dared with the blade pressing ever closer to her throat. It was about that time she got the brilliant idea to bite the man's face, and though seconds later she would realize that it was possibly the weakest defense ever employed against a razor-sharp blade whilst several hundred feet above the ground, she was desperate, and not entirely sure whether she was going to be raped and killed or just killed, but it seemed like a good idea, at the time, to pull out all the stops.

For her troubles, she was shoved out of the hovercar.

There came a moment, between the fourth and third levels, when Lyla realized she was going to die. There was no life flashing before her eyes, nor was there the dead calm that was rumored to come over some people in their final moments. There was the thought, "oh, shit," and then there was the thought, fleeting as it was, of just how unfair it all was. Then the shock wore off, sometime between the second and third level, and there was only horror and a bright white pain right between her eyes, just before everything cut to black.

---------

The datacards rained from the upper levels in a sudden, tightly knit shower, clattering to the ground and busting into thousands of little pieces, must like hail. Back when the surface saw authentic precipitation, not that anyone remembered those days, anymore.

What came next wasn't all that uncommon. From accidents and suicides alike, bodies found their way to the lower level in various states of disrepair, some mangled by bumps along the way, some in perfect shape before they were destroyed on impact. The redhead who fell from the upper level wasn't all that different from those who had come before her, with one major exception.

The closer she got to the surface, the slower she fell.

There were other exceptions, too. Minor little details, like how the hovercars in the area all swerved toward her at sharp angles, even ones that were never running. How the signs all bent with the screech of protesting metal. One Plexiglas window even busted out. Everything was moving toward her, as if she were pulling at the very sky, scrabbling for purchase without aim or skill, and drawing everything along in her wake.

That was until she hit the ground, moving so slowly by that point that a mild concussion would qualify as an extreme worst case scenario. She landed on her back, in a heap in the road, unconscious. She looked as if she'd stopped there to take a nap.
 
The rain changed tone, is what he first thought, strolling down the block toward his home grounds, but then he realized, that wasn't the sound of rain. He spun to see datacards shattering on the pavement, the ones that weren't cushioned by garbage or by passerby. Things regularly fell down here from far above, but this was unusual; a rain of records. He glanced up, shaded lenses guarding against the actinic glare of the lower level streetlights, the ones that never shut themselves off (though they were frequently broken by gangs or vandals, and infrequently repaired).

So he got to witness the whole fall, the woman's manner of deforming the things around her, pulling it all toward her like she was a black hole, dragging at anything to slow herself down. Before she was even down past the lower catwalk, he was springing toward her, shoving past confused transients and gawking pedestrians. He skidded to a stop as she settled, so gently, against a convenient hillock of old newsflimsies and moldering bags of dessicated garbage. He took a moment to gaze at her. There was a fleeting moment of jealousy; she seemed utterly normal, pretty by the standards of topside, gorgeous amongst the likes of those who washed up down on the street. She was something he could never be: able to pass for human. And yet she was just as different from the humans as he was, he knew that with a certainty.

But she was in danger, here. Even if she hadn't drawn witnesses (admittedly, half of whom were hallucinatory through substances or mental illness), a girl like her, unconscious in the street? No, to far too many, that was an invitation of the entirely wrong sort. Plus, she was more like him than she was like them. That was more of a motivator than any sense of altruism.

So he did what he had to do. He squatted and slid his arms under her shoulders and knees, lifting her off the ground. Then he folded her gently over his left shoulder, letting her hang in a fireman's carry as he sprang into action, running down the block, a whirl of flapping gray coat with a flash of her blue dress for color. Some of the witnesses tried to stop him as he raced toward the wall to get past them; he accelerated toward them, then abruptly veered toward the surface of the building, springing up, his shoes catching enough traction that he was able to run up along the side of the wall, over their heads. His momentum ran out quickly, though, and he used the last of his contact to spring away, flipping over to land nimbly on his feet on the far side of the crowd and sprinting into the gloom.

He ran faster than any street-level dweller ought to be able to run, for two blocks, more than a mile, before he slowed and took a corner. This was one of the more dangerous blocks, but nobody messed with him here. He didn't hunt here, either, just defended himself well enough that the locals knew to leave him alone. That's because this was his home base; he didn't want to make too many enemies or draw too much attention around the place he slept. Of course, he wasn't going to take her to his lair, his sanctum sanctorum. Nobody visited there. Still, there were secondary hideouts he used, storage places, and one place he used had a spot for her to recover...

~~~~~

The first thing that filtered into her consciousness as she slowly woke up was the sound. It was odd, scratchy, like a lo-fi MP9 or something. It was also an unfamiliar song. It was just soft, background music, filling the mostly-quiet space. Somewhere behind it, the sounds of the city were muted, so she was clearly indoors somewhere, but somewhere without active sound dampening.

The light, as she opened her eyes, was cast from the side, but indirectly; she was shaded by something. It was a fairly standard cheap plastifoam mattress that supported her, a frayed but clean blanket separating her from the slick cushion. The light showed cracked and peeling paint on an ancient brick wall, a ceiling that had exposed beams and wiring, and, as she turned her head, piles of something. They were too large for datacards, too thick for newsflimsies; it took a few moments for her mind to recall them from old movies and school: books. She was walled off from the rest of whatever room she was in by a knee-high wall of stacked books.

At one end of the stack was a strange little box, seemingly electric but not electronic. It was open-sided, so she could see the odd, seemingly hand-made guts, wires leading to a simple speaker, more wires leading to a mechanical motor, which turned something on the top. There was some kind of disk on the top, and an armature of some kind resting on it, staying stationary while the disk turned beneath it. That's where the music was coming from. At the other end of the wall, some clothes were piled; an overcoat, it looked like from the dangling sleeve, with a hat on top of it, and propped against the crown of the hat, a face mask like the contamination-paranoid Phoba subculture tended to use. The glass of the eye covers glinted in the light from the other side of the wall.

Speaking of clothing, hers was rumpled, but intact. Nothing had been any more disturbed than she might have expected, and, given that her last conscious memory before waking up had been falling from several hundred feet toward the pavement, her clothes had held up quite well.

Soon the song came to an end, and the next song began to play.

When she finally peeped over the books, the first thing she would notice would be the light source, a simple battery-powered camping lantern, a ring of LEDs and a frosted plastic tube to scatter the light more evenly, just placed in the middle of the room. The next thing she might be interested in would be the exits; what looked like blanket-covered windows to the end of the room where the coat and hat were, a door in the corner of the opposite wall, and an open archway into a dark space placed in the wall in between.

Sitting casually on the floor in the archway, his back to the frame so he could use the lantern light, was a man. He was reading one of the books, casually turning pages, apparently not noticing her movements, for all he reacted. He was more intimidating for his unexplained presence than for anything in particular about him, although he did seem odd.

He was short, but what she could see of him was powerfully built. He was also hairy, not quite at the level of an actual pelt, but approaching that, hair swathing his light brown skin. The dark, crudely-trimmed hair of his head crowded his face, it seemed, and he was clearly several days worth of unshaven. In semi-profile, viewed partly from the rear as he angled himself to read by the lanternlight, it was particularly noticeable that there was something about his nose and mouth; they protruded a bit, just kind of a swelling, that made him look like a Cro-Magnon or, with all the hair, some kind of animal man, with a muzzle. If only his nose had been more upturned, it might have really sold the illusion.

All he was doing was reading, but he seemed coiled, in a way. As if ready to spring. Whether this was a bad thing or not, that remained to be seen.
 
The first thing Lyla noticed, upon awakening, was not, in fact, the unfamiliar surroundings in which she found herself. It took her brain a little warming up before she was in any shape to hear things, let alone register the soft music or the faraway sounds of city traffic. She was occupied with other things, like the wave of nausea that accompanied the agonizing pain that rattled her skull when she tried to lift her head from where it rested.

She sucked in a deep, hissing breath through clenched teeth and lay back down, still as a corpse.

On the heels of this discovery came the fuzzy, tentatively optimistic notion that she was still alive. The fall hadn't killed her, though it should have. Perhaps she'd landed the hood of a hovercar--head first, if the throbbing in her brain was any indication--and was rushed immediately to ...

Where the fuck am I?

It was then that the little details of her situation began to pierce through the haze of confusion and pain, and her mental gears switched shudderingly into a state of alarm.

It went like this: music, mattress, books, light. Then her awareness panned out a little, and it went like this: dilapidated hideout, perfect lair for a violent criminal, no one around to hear her beg for her life. Her pulse skittered and leaped in her throat, and for a moment, that was the only sound she could hear; the erratic little thump-rush-thump-rush of blood pumping past her own ears, the shallow, labored breath in her chest.

Gingerly, she sat up and took stock of her own body. She found herself mostly unharmed, aside from the invisible chisel and hammer going to work right between her eyes, but that was likely from the fall. She knew a moment of panic when she noticed a smattering of blood on her dress, just at the shoulder, but then she recalled biting a man's face and, after that, there was a moment of frenzied wiping at her mouth. Her shoes were still intact, little black flats that were hardly at the cutting edge of modern fashion but serviceable, and well suited to her line of work. She counted this as a good thing, as she might soon be placed in a situation where she'd be running for her life.

When she finally did peek over the stacks of books, she may have indulged in what her mother would have called an "over reaction." That is to say she flailed, lost balance on account of all the shock, dismay, and head trauma, and ended, after an elaborate and accidental flourish, as the promontory atop a small mountain of overturned books.

Her eyes never left the throwback.

She'd seen a few mild cases before; pronounced incisors, oddly formed eyes, etc. But she'd never seen the likes of this man before, with thick hair covering most of his visible skin, and the beginnings of an actual snout. She'd heard rumors, and always considered herself an egalitarian, but faced with the cold reality of the thing, she found she was absolutely terrified.

"Okay," she said, pausing before moving on in a rush, "I don't have any money and no one would listen to me even if I wanted to tell them about this - Which I wouldn't! I won't tell a soul, just please don't kill me and I'll ... I'll, uh, pick up these books, too."

Immediately, she started scrambling to re-stack the piles she'd toppled.
 
The man's voice was deep and resonant, but sounded bored, if anything. It certainly didn't sound upset, or angry, or any of that. There was a tiny bit of sibilance, due to the teeth he was carefully keeping behind his lips, but it was barely noticeable.

"What you should not do," he began, "are the following: panic, freak out, run for an exit, or start crying." He turned a page to let that sink in. "I assure you, you're perfectly safe, you can leave anytime you like, you shall not be harmed as long as I have anything to say about it. I shouldn't have to remind you it's not wise to run out into a strange neighborhood this far down."

He paused, reading, and let her compose herself a little. He could hear the faint thump of her pulse, smell the fear sluicing off her skin, and the hormones and chemicals made him a little edgy, but he clamped down control on his will, and stayed still. The novel helped; he'd always liked Poe.

When it seemed she'd gotten a little more control over herself, he continued before she had a chance to speak again, figuring it would be only babble, and he knew what she was going to ask, anyway.

"I witnessed you fall from the travel lanes above. You landed in the middle of the street, unconscious. While I'm sure you're disoriented by your whole experience, I am equally sure you wouldn't have wanted someone to leave you lying there. We know there's worse than me around, and your public landing would not have deterred them long."

"I had a safe place for you to recover, and despite my appearance, I clearly have not taken advantage." He turned another page, pausing to let that sink in. "You no doubt have questions, the first of which is likely to be how you get out of here. I'll take you, I'll even take you back to where you fell, if that's what you want, but let's have the rest of our discussion in privacy first, shall we?"

He reached the end of the poem and closed the book with an abrupt clap. "So, if we cut through the tiresome questions about your safety and your means to escape, and I offer all the usual assurances, et cetera, et cetera, so forth... can we find out what else you'd like to know?"

His eyes flicked to her, and she caught sight of them for the first time. Slitted like a cat's, and bright yellow like the wolves in the zoo she'd seen once. The face around them, while a little distorted, was as expressive as any human face, however, and the expression seemed... complex. A little exasperated, a little tired, but also a little excited, under all the bluster.

He didn't rise, he didn't even move the book much after he closed it, he just looked at her and waited for her to ask.
 
Lyla's hand paused mid-task when the - man - began to speak. She noted idly that it wasn't the feral growl she had expected. (It should also be noted that she was fully prepared to ignore it politely.) His voice was actually sort of pleasant, rumbling out surprisingly articulate speech like an upper level politico.

It was just too bad for him that he was sort of an ass.

Every time it seemed he might be finished speaking, Lyla would open her mouth to respond with such snappy rejoinders as, 'You actually think I'm going to cry?' And then, 'Now look here, you don't need to remind me of anything, asshole!' Only, she didn't get to say any of those things, because she was repeatedly interrupted by his lecture. As if she were a child.

And, all right, it was a little reassuring to hear him say she wasn't his captive; not that she was buying it 100%, and she certainly wasn't swallowing the whole chivalry angle he was trying to feed her, but it was ... nice.

Her pulse slowly normalized, her breathing evened, and she put down the book. She sat there on her knees, in relative silence, for a long time as she processed all he'd said, swishing it around in her head and examining it from every angle. He thought she'd have questions. Questions about what? She'd fallen, he'd scooped her up and dragged her back to his--she cast a dubious eye around the structure--lair, and now he'd take her home. Seemed pretty simple, except for the part where she was supposed to be dead.

Her blue eyes narrowed on his yellow ones, her expression gone suspicious. (And it wasn't that she needed to catch her breath when she met his eyes. Not exactly. It was just that they were a shock to her, the way they held both keen intellect and something primal and ferocious. It was unsettling and that was all.)

"Okay, buddy. You're saying I fell from level four to the surface, landed in the street, and all I have to show for it is a massively inconvenient migraine? That's ridiculous. I should be in, like, pieces now. Little, mushy pieces." She canted her head to the side, considering. "Did you catch me or something?"
 
He tilted his head and raised his monobrow. "Interesting. Yes, you should be in pieces, and no, I didn't catch you. I did witness your descent; there was a rain of datacards that drew my attention, mine and the rest of the street, So I can tell you what I saw. And I even have a theory. However, I don't know that you're going to believe me even then."

He proceeded to describe what he had seen, from the bending of signs and dragging on the hovercars, to the gentle touch-down. "It was an amazing thing to see... but I have to admit, it wasn't entirely unprecedented."

He had moved to face her more directly, sitting with his legs crossed on the floor, looking up at her. He steepled his fingers and gazed at her over the tops of them. "I used to know a man who could control his falls like that. And more, as time went on. He was unusual. And by that I mean he had a special power, a mutation. Not all mutations result in obvious deformities; more and more, they take the form of what they used to call psionics."

"I'm sure you've seen holos, maybe read stories where the characters had mental powers. That kind of thing has been around as long as there's been fiction, and it's because it's based on something real. Once upon a time, the possibility was thought to be the next stage of human evolution. But honestly, I think it's just another mutation."

He tipped his head forward, looking at her out of the tops of his eyes. "A mutation that saved your life, which manifested for the first time when it absolutely had to, when you had no other means of surviving. It was like flexing a muscle you never knew you had, causing a muscle strain from the first time it was ever used. Thus, your headache." He smiled without showing his teeth, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. "Welcome to the Freak Legion, young woman."
 
Lyla stared at the throwback for a long stretch of silence, scarcely blinking as she waited for him to give any indication that he was lying, or playing around, or generally messing with her head. She stared until she felt faintly ridiculous, and then she stared a little longer. An angry red blush spread like a stain across her pale cheeks, and her lips pressed down into a thin, pale line. Her jaw quivered, too, as she was clenching her teeth together painfully.

He was calling her a mutant. A freak. Like him, but in prettier packaging, was essentially what he was saying, and her blood ran a little colder at the very implication. She had mind powers, he said, like in the holos. She was a dark smudge on the human gene pool, bound to end up on the surface like him, scraping by on a meaningless existence, surrounded by dusty old books and stupid songs that were--

"Would you shut that crap off?" she suddenly bellowed and swung blindly at the record player. It jostled and skipped--she hadn't knocked it very hard--but the singer went on crooning, unaffected by her little outburst.

She got to her feet, clapping her hands together to rid them of filth. "You are either a liar, in which case I don't like you and wish for you to take me home. Or you're crazy and you have my deepest condolences and I want you to take me home. Right. Now."

To accentuate the likeness between herself and a small child in the the throes of a tantrum, she folded her arms and set her jaw stubbornly. She wasn't a mutant or a member of the Freak Legion or whatever this jackass wanted to call it, and she was going to prove it by moving on from this moment and never thinking of it again.
 
In the split second she looked away to swipe at the record player, he came to his feet, moving instantly from a relaxed inoffensiveness to a restrained explosive tension. As she continued, undeterred, playing out her tantrum, he fought his reflexive reaction back, forcing himself to relax. When she was done, he nodded, setting his jaw, and strode past her to the player.

"Have a care," he said, lifting away the needle then picking up the record and angling it to the lantern to check the vinyl for scratches. "This is hundreds of years old and the last of its kind. I haven't been able to find some of these songs on the net, so this may be the only recording. It would be a shame if your bad temper destroyed a piece of human history forever."

Satisfied the record wasn't damaged, he slipped it back into its sleeve and leaned it carefully against the wall with several others. Then he walked past her again to his outerwear. He stared at her while slipping on the coat, and the unblinking nature of his gaze would have made just about anyone feel like they were little more than prey, even though his face was otherwise impassive.

"I suppose I shouldn't have let my sentimentality rule the day," he finally said as he put on the hat and held the mask. "Serves me right for thinking you could have used a little help. Well. There's a public staircase over on the next block, but if you want a public elevator, the nearest working one is a good three blocks away, last I knew."

He went to the lantern, picked it up, and carried it toward the archway, gesturing to her to follow. "In either case, you ought to stick close to me until we get there; the entire reason this area is moderately safe for me is because it's completely dangerous for everyone else. It's night, now, not that you would normally notice down here, but it does mean the streets will be mostly deserted."

There had been a large number of books in the otherwise-empty room she had woken up in. As he went through the archway into the other chamber on his way to the front door, the lantern illuminated vast stacks of books, higher than either of them was tall, piled against the walls, their spines out for easy reference. A rickety table held more books and some albums, as well as some digging tools still gritty from their last use. Though he did not explain, this was his library storage place and staging area for his archeological explorations, digging into the landfill sites beneath the foundations of this and other blocks, finding treasures still remarkably preserved centuries after being discarded. It was not his home, though it was safe enough for habitation. But she didn't need to know that.

His mind turned to the task ahead; focus on getting her the hell out of here, he thought. If she wants to deny who she is, that's her problem; at least she has the choice. Get her out, get back to your life, move on and never think of it again.
 
Lyla pulled an irritated face, ignoring for now the tingle that took up brief residence at the base of her skull. Again, with the lecturing. She'd barely tapped the stupid whatever the hell he was so uptight about. And anyway, it looked primitive enough that a toddler could construct one out of play blocks. How precious could it really be?

And the condescension just kept coming. The voice she'd at first thought deep and not at all unpleasant was quickly starting to grate on her nerves. Shouldn't have let my sentimentality rule the day, he said. She couldn't figure out if the guy was a mutant or a robot. Even Dr. Halford knew when to dumb down the lingo for common folk.

She followed the throwback through the archway, an exasperated sigh on her lips before she caught sight of her surroundings. Her breath caught in her throat, shocked into momentary stillness by the sheer number of ancient tomes stacked all around her. Of course, it was only a second later that she remembered herself, and recalled that this guy was probably a little bit insane and had nothing better to do with his time than stack books, likely gibbering to himself as he bestowed manically tender care upon his useless artifacts.

He probably even thought they were his children or something. She almost indulged in a pang of sympathy for him, and would have if not for his priggishness.

She followed the throwback through his musty old lair and out onto the surface level, where she gave a moment's hesitation. It was dark and empty down here, war-torn and desolate and even the shadows were menacing. It wasn't exactly quiet--there were sounds from above as well as the echoes of activity several blocks away--but it was empty.

And she'd thought the crowds were unsettling.

She puffed up a little and shot the throwback a hard look, but found herself gawking dumbly at him instead. He was dressed like a Phoba, all buttoned up with gloves and one of those ridiculous masks with the internalized air filter. But she'd seen his home, seen the dust and the blankets over the windows instead of sealed plastic flaps. He wasn't afraid of germs and she knew it.

It was a disguise. Lyla was suddenly burning with curiosity. Were all Phobas actually mutants in disguise? Or, if not, was it at least common? Was there a mutant newsletter or something, so they could all bone up on the latest tricks for eluding the people who wanted them wiped off the map?

Her own curiosity annoyed her. She didn't want anything from this guy, and that went especially for more lectures. So instead, she squared her shoulders and said stiffly, "Get me to the stairs and I'll be fine from there."
 
The solitude of the night didn't bother him; he knew he was the top predator around, and so did everyone else in the area. But he didn't usually travel with someone to protect, either. If the dogs scented a helpless kitten, they might risk the ire of the angry wolf to get a nibble. So he had to be more cautious than usual.

He led her up the street, hugging the buildings. This is a situation where the catwalks would have been a safer transit, but the bridge over the cross-street had fallen out some years ago; the wreckage was still piled up on the corner, the bits too small to bother hauling to the recyclecenter for a few credits. So it would not have been worth the time to climb up and back down, just to walk to the end of the block.

He moved at a walking pace and paused at every louder sound until he could identify it. The whole street was pretty deserted, just rats and feral pets battling for scraps, but he wanted to be sure.

When they approached the cross-street, it was a little better; there was a holobooth emporium on the corner, and an all-night convenience store next to the broad, solid-girder winding stairs that led laboriously up the side of the building, up to the highest public platforms and walkways this block had. This was one of the major vertical arteries for those who didn't want to spend money on a cab or a float-bus or couldn't find a powered elevator. It got more activity between mid-level floors; this far down, at this time of night, there wasn't any reason for people to use it -- it's not like anybody was going anywhere.

He led her to the entrance, right to the periphery of the bright security lights and the cameras (the stairs were about the only place that got their lights replaced regularly), where he turned and regarded her, his plastic and glass face impassive as only a rigid mask can be.

"Here. I wish you luck. May your life be long and normal," he said quietly, trying to keep a note of bitterness out of his voice on that last part. He gestured to the stairs, waiting around to see her on her way safely. He was taking this seriously, as he'd promised to.
 
Lyla followed him up the street, and while she was not a girl who was naturally inclined to obedience for its own sake, she stuck as close to the throwback's side as she dared. On one occasion, she nearly knocked into the back of him when he stopped short--as he was wont to do--and turned his head sharply in all directions. She couldn't see his face through the mask, to tell what he was thinking, but she got the distinct impression that he was sensing something that she could not.

Well, if she were a mutant, she'd be able to sense it, too, right? She wrapped this thought around her like a security blanket, and it acted as a barrier between her and her encroaching paranoia.

When they reached the public stairs, she turned and looked him square in the mask. His voice was different now, muffled, nothing like the calm, steady baritone she'd come to know in their short acquaintance. Lyla didn't like it and found she couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic with his well wishes.

There was a moment, between her terse nod and her pivot away from him, when her expression softened for once, and her wide mouth parted as if she were about to offer him words of thanks. The moment was fleeting, however, and her eyes hardened with something like resolve, and when she dashed up the stairs toward her home she didn't spare a backward glance.

--------------

The week unfolded from that point, for Lyla, like an especially disturbing horror holo. It built momentum slowly, chugging to life with the meandering pace of a first act, and it wasn't until the third act, when all seemed hopeless and her fate utterly sealed, that she traced all of the many disturbing events back to their origins.

She couldn't have said why she chose to return to the surface level--this time with the presence of mind to use the stairs--except that it seemed she'd ultimately end up there, anyhow. The datacard fiasco had cost her a job and, subsequently, her apartment when she couldn't make rent. She didn't have many friends, and, considering her current state, those she did have couldn't possibly be expected to take her in.

She had hardly slept, and her typically fair complexion was marred by two purple marks of exhaustion beneath her weary blue eyes. Instead of the classic blue number she'd worn on her last trip to the surface, she now dressed a little more practically in thick, black, low-slung pants and heavy boots of the same shade. The peaks of her hipbones, along with a smooth strip of pale flesh, were visible between her waistband and the hem of her t-shirt and jacket. Over her shoulder, Lyla carried a duffel stuffed near to bursting with clothes and toiletries. It was everything she could gather before she was evicted from her place.

She took the same set of stairs she had the week previous, so she wouldn't be lost right away. She wasn't an ace navigator by any means, but the path the throwback had shown her was a simple one. The streets weren't quite as empty as they had been, and there remained at the base of Lyla's skull an incessant, changeable buzzing that, even after having a week to grow accustomed to it, made her dizzy. But for the most part, everyone left her alone.

Lyla had almost reached the throwback's lair--or at least she thought she had--when the buzzing in her skull flared into a blinding pain. It did this sometimes and she'd learned that when it happened her only option was to wait it out. But she was in the middle of nowhere on the surface and she couldn't afford to just sit around and wait for trouble to find her, so she stayed on her feet, staggering onward with her head in her hands.

There were five of them, strolling out of the alley with smiles on their faces like they'd just shared a zinger of a joke. Surface punks, dressed in drab, grime-covered clothes with their hair styled like geometric puzzles. And when they saw Lyla, they all stopped short, and the pain in her brain burned brighter.

Lyla whimpered and swayed, but kept walking. She was working under the theory that if she just put her head down and passed them quietly, they would leave her alone. She was wrong.

An arm halted her progress by wrapping like a steel band around her shoulders. "Hey, there, princess," the owner of the arm offered, and Lyla shivered. "Whatcha doin' out this way all alone?"

Lyla sighed and looked up at the punk through a grimace of pain. She only looked at him. She didn't struggle against him, couldn't even work up enough fear to make her pulse flutter. "Leave me alone," she said, words running seamlessly into one another as if she were drunk.

She was just so tired. Nothing felt real, as if she were watching it all on a busted holo player rather than living this nightmare.

"What fun would that be?" the punk asked, and his friends snickered from somewhere behind them, but Lyla didn't look at them.

"I don't have any credits," she explained and was answered with more laughter.

"That's okay," the punk whispered, right against her ear. She felt his rough lips and coarse stubble against her skin. "It's not your money I'm after, princess."

Lyla gave an ineffectual jerk at that. Somewhere in the recesses of her brain, she was aware that she was in trouble, that everything was not all right, and that she was about to suffer something terrible.

"Not my type," she mumbled.

The punk actually giggled. "You're not ours, either."

She was dragged out of the dim light of the street, pressed up against something cold and hard that she registered, many seconds later, was a wall. There were hands on her, pushing her jacket from her shoulders, fumbling at the fastening of her trousers, and still she could barely prop her eyelids open. Something like alarm was tingling up her spine, though, whispering at her to fight, and she brought up a knee instinctively.

She caught the punk right in the groin.

"Bitch!" he hissed, before crumpling to the ground with a solid thunk, and Lyla pushed forward, only to be shoved roughly back once again, now by three men, rather than one.

"Shit," she said, without much feeling behind it. She was going to be raped. She wasn't so far gone that this little detail had escaped her. After, she was going to be left to rot or actually deliberately killed. Once again, there came the thought of how unfair this was. She'd escaped death just to endure a week of hell?

She silently wished that the throwback had never found her in the first place. If she was going to die, anyway, then he could have saved her a lot of unnecessary hassle.
 
The cover over one of the high-up windows of a boarded-up second-level apartment space shifted, and a masked head poked out. Seeing no one about, a gray-coated form slipped out onto the windowsill and swiftly lowered himself to the rusting catwalk, athletic shoes and glove gripping tiny holds that a stranger might never perceive. He had a carryall pack strapped to his back, bulging with something blocky, but it didn't slow him down in the least.

Silently, he took to the catwalk and padded up the block, toward his primary library storage. There was a subbasement he could break into under the Brunner-Takhashi Corporation building that he thought would give him access to fresh landfill sites, based on the ancient survey maps he'd found. He just needed to pick up his digging tools...

"Bitch!" he heard beneath the growl and hum of the traffic pattern overhead. That sort of thing was never good. It was coming from the access passage up ahead; the megablocks that served as the foundation of the cities had a central spine of industrial pumps and filters, but that machinery needed to be accessed occasionally. Passages led from the street back to the central spine, and the along the side, behind most of the buildings, providing "back alley" access for the apartments. But, of course, alleys have always been places where n'er-do-wells congregate and do their dirty work. Normally, it was no concern of his, but lately, this past week or so, he was feeling more inquisitive. So he eased toward the alley.

And that's when he caught the scent. It took him a moment to recognize it, but once he did, he stopped, straightened, and flexed his arms behind him, letting the carryall pack slip smoothly off his shoulders. It hit the catwalk with a muted clank and a bounce, but before it had even settled, he was gone, flashing out to the overhang, where the catwalk crossed the alley space. Without pausing, he glanced below, took stock of the situation, and just reached out to snag the handrail, letting his iron grip redirect his momentum, letting his feet fly up until he was almost horizontal, and swinging him over the side.

"Did you hear something drop?" asked the man holding Lyla's left arm, glancing around. That's when he took the full brunt of a gray-clad figure's impact, which snapped bones as it drove him to the ground. Before the landing pad could even start screaming, a gray fist shot out to punch another man in the head, the impact sending him flying to the side to knock into the third. As those two went down, the throwback pivoted, one foot flashing out to kick the throat of the man clutching his genitals. That groin pain was suddenly forgotten as blood burbled out of his crushed trachea. He stomped on the man below him once, to launch himself forward, and the very start of his first scream stopped as if it had been shut off with a switch. He flashed to where the last two assailants were stumbling, grabbing them by their throats, and a quick twist with each hand elicited twin wet snaps.

He released the two bodies, and before they had even fully collapsed, he was gripping the throat of the fifth gang member, the youngest, who had stood to the side, unsure. In all the violence, he hadn't had time to do much more than widen his eyes, and now he was being throttled by the mad Phoba. The throwback lifted the young thug off the ground, gazing silently at him for a moment, and then tilted his head quizzically.

"This woman is under my protection. These friends of yours touched her without permission. And paid the price." His voice took on an innocently questioning tone. "You... weren't going to touch her, were you?"

The strangling man shook his head frantically, gripping wildly at his captor's wrist.

"You have other friends who might touch her, though, don't you." Again as vigorous a negative shake as the suspended man was able to make. "Then I suppose you'll tell your remaining friends she's under my care, won't you?" This time, he nodded weakly, turning nearly purple. The Phoba let him drop, and he fell to the alley floor, scrabbling away while gasping. "Go." The boy turned and crawled, then stumbled to his feet and took off back down the dark alley.

Finally, the Phoba turned to Lyla. "You should have called ahead," he said, but his jovial tone died when he saw her face. "Come on," he murmured, taking her gently by the elbow with one hand, picking up her duffel bag easily with his other. "Let's get you inside."
 
The chaos played out too quickly for Lyla to fully comprehend what had happened. There was a tussle--a violent, bloody tussle--and then all was quiet and it wasn't until the Phoba turned to her and actually cracked a joke that she dared to believe she'd actually been rescued. Her lips twitched once, as if she were biting back a sob, but she made no sound.

Wordlessly, she allowed herself to be pulled along, carefully picking her way past the carnage. It was the throwback under that mask, she knew. It was the second time he'd saved her from an unthinkable fate now, and the idea that without this mutant she'd now be dead two times over just broke something inside of her--something more vital than her rapidly eroding mind.

A tremor went through her, when they were making their way in from the street. The musty smell of ancient paper and binding filled her nostrils, the buzzing in her head settled into something low and manageable and almost pleasant, and suddenly, without a warning of any kind, her vision blurred.

It was a long time--not until moisture gathered at the corner of her mouth, pooled, and fell--before she realized that she was crying. There were no accompanying sobs or fits, just a slow, steady leak of tears from her bleary, bloodshot eyes.

She waited close to the throwback, silent, while he removed his outerwear, first the hat, then the mask and, finally, the coat. When he had hung them in their proper places, Lyla took him by the elbow, and led him past the records and books. She released him when they stood at the foot of the mattress where she'd awoken one week ago. Without bothering to kick off her shoes or shrug out of her jacket, she crawled on, curled in on herself, and sighed.

She closed her eyes, turned her face into her arm, and said in a small, muffled voice, "Stay right there. I'd like to sleep now, if you don't mind, and I don't think I can without ..." She trailed off, her breathing evened out, and then she was blissfully unconscious.
 
She was out like the proverbial light. And he was left standing there in his jeans and classic-style t-shirt, and all he could think was: well, THIS is awkward.

He crouched there, by the foot of the mattress (it was hard to call it a proper "bed" as much as it was just crash space, really), and listened to her breathing, So she'd found her way back, but now what? What had he really intended to do when he rescued her from the street in the first place? He'd never quite answered that question to his own satisfaction, but whatever the reason, it was the same one that motivated him now.

He let his attention wander around the room. He was going to have to go out and get his pack at some point; hardly anybody used the catwalks, as the regular access stairs were more dangerous than walking down the alleyways, but that didn't mean they were totally deserted. And she was probably going to be hungry when she woke up; from the looks of it, she hadn't been sleeping or eating well at all. But now she was catching up on one, which meant the rest of her body would want to catch up, too. He could feed her, that wasn't an issue, but it did move up the timetable for his next provision run...

His mind wandered into planning mode, recalculating what he would need to do to handle the extra resource drain, so he barely noticed when he moved from crouching beside to actually sitting on the edge of the mat. He only noticed what he was doing when he found himself patting her calf reassuringly, at which point he withdrew his hand, feeling very self-conscious.

~~~~~

Much later, the scene that greets her freshly-conscious awareness would be very much like the first time she woke up in this room. The light would be indirect, blocked by books, as before. There would be music playing, although the record player was nowhere to be seen from the bed this time. There was the sound of pages turning once again, from nearby, and indeed, the back of the throwback's head could be seen immediately on the other side of the book wall, his back to her as he read. But there was also a smell besides old paper and old building... the aroma of food permeated the air.
 
Lyla drifted back to consciousness slowly. Ultimately, it was the smell of food that finally pulled her from her dreams, teasing her senses awake so tantalizingly that she actually awoke with a smile. She rubbed at her eyes, crusted over with dry tears and sleep, until they remained open without resistance. She looked around at the books surrounding her sleeping place, registered for the first time the soft music, and her smile died instantly.

A peculiar sensation pulled at her chest, as if her heart were simultaneously sinking and jumping into overtime. She remembered foggily the way she had been rescued by him, how he hadn't been so much as winded after killing four people. How she'd cried, tugging him to her bedside like a snot-nosed toddler, and asked him, pathetically, not to leave her. And now, her pain was gone, nothing left of her bizarre affliction but this pleasant, soothing buzz in the back of her brain.

It was a long time before she finally sat up. First thing, she cast her gaze around the room for her duffel and saw it laying near her bedside. She pondered on this for only a few seconds before snatching it up, jumping to her feet--and then, briefly, waiting for the room to stop spinning--and stepping out from behind the wall of books.

She stopped directly in front of the throwback. Voice hoarse with sleep, she asked rather abruptly, "Point me to a facility?"
 
He had been monitoring her awakening silently, reading as he listened and scented her reactions. He had to reread a few pages, having reached the end with no memory of what he had just read, but that was never a hardship with Raymond Chandler. He was sitting cross-legged, leaning forward a bit to angle the book toward the lantern, which was just as well, because he was backed up against the free-standing wall of books, and they wouldn't support his weight if he leaned against them.

She exploded into motion (well, exploded in a relative sense), and came around one end of the makeshift barrier. She could have stepped over it with only a little effort, but given her recent condition, he didn't blame her for not risking it. "Point me to a facility?" she asked, coming directly in between him and his light.

He casually straightened his back and looked up at her. He pointed to the doorway in the corner of the room away from the windows. "Through there, far side of the kitchenette. Light's on." As she moved away, he called after her. "Toilet takes about half an hour to refill, and takes all the water flow; wash your hands before you flush."

As she left, he made a mental note of his page number and closed the book. Then he sprang up and began to prepare, gently lifting the arm off the record player, switching on the hotplate he'd brought over, and opening up the margarine. The bread, cheesefood, and thin-sliced vat-grown turkeyflesh were already handy, and everything would be nice and grilled by the time she got back.

~~~~~

The kitchenette certainly used to be a kitchenette when the apartment had been occupied, but every useful bit of equipment, from refrigerator to stove to the very pipes of the sink, had been ripped out long ago. Even the cabinet doors had been broken or had rotted off. Instead, the whole chamber was a storage place for old mechanical and electronic junk, devices a hundred, two hundred years or more out of date. Most were just shells, maybe with a few wires still attached, while others seemed nearly pristine. In any case, it was clearly the kitchenette he was talking about. It was illuminated with light cast from the only other open door of the several leading off the room; the bathroom.

Technically, it was a half-bath, as the ancient tub was filled with growing greenery, a type unfamiliar to her and not currently bearing any recognizable fruit of any sort. The fluorescent gro-lights, the same kind used in the upper levels above but far, far out of date, illuminated the whole room brightly. They were powered by a multiply-taped cable that led from a hole in the wall that looked sledgehammered in, a hole that also admitted a single copper pipe that angled along the wall and diverted a smaller pipe to the old-fashioned tank toilet before going to the sink. There was only one tap on the sink faucet, since there was only one water feed, but the sink basin was large and deep. The whole bathroom seemed a little decrepit, but clean; the surfaces were scrubbed, and the toilet seat was a reasonably new antibacterial model. It smelled of soap, earth, and growing things, a scent Lyla hadn't smelled all that often but which chimed deep within the human psyche, anyway.

Sitting on the edge of the sink were a toothbrush still in its blister pack, an unopened tube of toothpaste, a clean-looking washcloth, some hand soap in a pump bottle, and a fresh roll of toilet paper.
 
Lyla was a long time in the facility, but not because she was slow. On the contrary, when she actually got to the business of attending all her pesky mortal needs, she was fast and efficient. No, she was a long time gone because of the time devoted, upon first setting her duffel on the rickety old counter, to quietly dropping down onto the edge of the tub and indulging in quiet, relaxing anxiety-induced hyperventilation.

When she was able to pick herself up again, she noticed her surroundings, and took her time inspecting them carefully as she brushed her teeth with the brand new toothbrush that had been laid out for her. At least she hoped it was for her. Otherwise, she owed the throwback an apology on top of the two overdue thank-yous.

When she returned from the bathroom, clean, at least more balanced than she had been, and starving, she found the throwback in the final stages of grilling a hot sandwich that she dearly, dearly hoped was intended for her. It smelled like happiness.

She squared her shoulders, preparing to formally thank the man for all that he had done for her. It was a lot, really. Two life-saving encounters were nothing she could thumb her nose at, but when she did finally open her mouth, all that came out was,

"You know, you really should wear an apron when you do that. It'll round off the whole mom vibe you've got going on."
 
He didn't look up at her comment, just made an amused-sounding "Hrrr!" kind of dry chuckle and flipped the sandwich onto the little chipped plate he had brought for her. "Someone needs to take you under their wing. You were just born last week. Or reborn, as the case may be." He looked up at her and held out the plate to her. "Might as well be me."

Once she took the plate, he rose smoothly and went into the other room, the "main library" for lack of a better term. He went to a small bucket and plunged his hands into the cool water within. "It's perhaps a little sad that this counts as splurging, but it seemed a special occasion," he said as he withdrew two plastic bottles; flavored electrolyte-infused water, a common inexpensive brand. "Do you prefer watermelon flavor, or strawberry?"

He gave her the flavor she liked, opened the other one, and let her eat. He cut himself some slices of the cheesefood and made another grilled sandwich. The turkey, he ate straight, tearing the thin cold-cuts into small pieces with his fingers and popping them into his mouth while he waited for the bread to brown. Once she seemed to be reasonably calmer, he cleared his throat almost apologetically. "So, why don't you tell me what's been happening? What brought you back down here?"
 
Lyla took the strawberry water and the sandwich mechanically, eyes never leaving the throwback until he'd turned back to the business of cooking. Once he had his back turned, however, she dropped to the floor, found a comfortable sitting position, and inhaled her food. She never took her eyes off of him, not because she didn't trust him, but because she was trying to work out what made him tick. Why was he so special?

And then, after she'd sucked down half her water, he sprang the question. Why was she here? Lyla thought over the past week, the headaches, the sleeplessness, the brief foray into homelessness, and shrugged.

"My boss was a dick. He fired me over the whole, you know, confidential-patient-files-scattered-across-the-city thing. Which is completely unfair, by the way, because I was taking those files home to re-organize them. His last secretary was such a flake, she couldn't even figure out her own filing system. Was I getting paid for that? No. I did it because I, unlike she, am such a wonderful employee." She paused, pulled a face. "Ex-employee. Whatever. Long story short, you've got yourself a stray. I figure you saved my life, twice now, and that means you've invested in it for some reason I have yet to work out, so you don't want me starving to death or"--at this, she gestured vaguely in the air as if she were struggling to find the right word, but went on brightly--"worse."

She took a deep breath, smiled big for the first time in their acquaintance--and it was a nice smile, full of white teeth and punctuated by a single dimple on the left side--and sighed.

"I'm Lyla."
 
"And I am T.B.," he said solemnly, grinning without showing his teeth and nodding to her as he used a practiced wrist action to flip his cheese sandwich over to grill the other side. "Just the initials."

"And yes, that's horrible, and I agree, unfair, but, and I hope you'll forgive me for saying so, you were a wreck when you showed up. Even with the stress of losing your job and, presumably, your home, you were beyond exhausted." He looked at her very seriously. "If I'm to help you understand what you're going through, I need to know all the details."

He had dealt with many mutants, both physical and mental varieties (and some even stranger), and he knew that first coming to grips with one's power was almost universally a difficult experience. She could have taken the real-world stresses hard, but he was laying his bet on the possibility that her new powers had given her additional stress, forced her into the zombie-like state he found her in. And he was being honest when he said he needed to know the details to help her; his powers were of the purely physical sort, but he'd spent time with others, and he had a lot of experience to work with.
 
When T.B. looked at her with that serious expression on his odd face, Lyla was forced to look away. There was something in his eyes, it put her on edge. She didn't like the way it made her feel, vulnerable and small and, somehow, important. It was creepy.

She kept her head pointed in the other direction as she began to speak, a little less brightly now, but just as flippant. "I get these headaches. One headache, actually, that started when I got home that first time after I was here. It got worse sometimes, manageable others. Made it hard to sleep. But it's gone now, and there's this ..."

Lyla hesitated because it was just so weird and she didn't want to say it out loud. She wanted it to go away and she wanted never to speak of it again. But this guy said he could help, and he'd already shown that he genuinely wanted to, and there was a chance he could make it go away, so.

"Buzzing," she finally went on. "There's this sensation in the back of my head. It doesn't hurt or anything. It just doesn't feel like it belongs there. It's like this really gentle sort of ... presence? It started when--" Lyla flushed crimson and continued in a soft mutter, "When you showed up."
 
T.B. raised his monobrow at that. He's expected something akin to troubles with poltergeist activity, the usual issues of a telekinetic being "activated" and then not learning conscious control of the power. It was pretty clear from the way she fell last week that TK was one of her abilities, but he hadn't expected symptoms like this.

He stroked his chin and looked at the floor while he thought. Buzzing in the head, and pain before... mental sensations. She was sensitive to something, clearly, was detecting, but what could vary so widely between what's up a few levels and what's down here...

And then it struck him. He should have remembered it when she said "buzzing," for that's exactly how Tav used to describe it. "Lyla, let me ask: the headaches, they'd really kick into gear when people were around, like, in the next apartment, or in the hallway, wouldn't they? When they got worse, was that when more people were around? Worst in crowds, things like that? I have a theory, but I am not wholly certain."

Of course, it had to be something he couldn't do, that he was unable to even interface with. In a way, that made him the best person for her to be around safely, at this early, uncontrolled stage, but he hoped she'd be able to figure some things out for herself once he told her what he thought it might be.
 
Lyla's head whipped around so fast her neck audibly popped and she stared, wide-eyed at T.B., her forehead knitted into a series of wrinkles that clearly said, if one were willing to listen, 'You gotta be kiddin' me.' Because, yes, T.B. was kind of on the money with his theory, the same way she was only now beginning to suspect he was right about all kinds of things. But this?

This was just too much.

"So, what? Now I'm allergic to people?"

And just when the world population had hit an all-time high, Lyla mused. Well, that did seem to run with the theme of the week of complete worst case scenarios. Only, there was one little bug in T.B.'s rationale.

"Wait. Then why do you make it stop?" The words were spoken before she could rethink them, and once they were, she wanted desperately to snatch them back out of the air and pretend like they'd never existed. Lyla's fair, expressive skin, once again, turned pink at various points of interest--the apples of her cheeks, the tops of her ears, the column of her neck.

Lyla really hated being dependent upon anyone, worse if they actually knew about said dependency, and she'd just now all but told T.B. he was her personal sentinel against insanity and pain. She looked down at her hands, fidgeting with the half-full bottle of flavored water.

"I mean, I guess maybe you're not really even people," she grumbled. She knew it was an awful thing to say, that T.B. was the most human being she'd met in a long time, possibly ever, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. "After all, I'm not allergic to cats or dogs."
 
He was deadly silent for a long moment, just looking at her with an unreadable expression in his yellow eyes. The charred scent of his cheese sandwich beginning to overcook snapped him out of it, and he flipped his sandwich off the hot surface and onto his own chipped plate.

"Yes, indeed," he growled. "I'm sure you'll be just as happy with Spot or Fifi helping you figure out what's going on. By all means, go seek one of THEM out." He took a sip of his water, damping down his emotions; impetuous reactions wouldn't help the situation. "OR, perhaps, you can attempt to not be insulting to someone who only wishes to help, and listen for a moment."

"I believe that when your abilities activated last week, they included not only telekinesis -- which is the ability to move objects with only the power of your mind -- but also telepathy, which is the ability to read the thoughts of others." He shrugged. "I have known telepaths in the past, and they tell me that my mind operates on a different frequency than that of other humans. Apparently this happens very rarely in the case of mutants with extensive or multiple mutations."

"Since you don't understand the mental input you're receiving, and you have no means by which to defend yourself from it, your brain interprets the entirely new sensation as pain, is my guess. The more minds there are around you, the more thoughts you sense, the more pain you feel. Down here... well, this block is not very well populated, which is why it's dangerous; only the dregs come to squat here. This particular section of the block has very little access to basic services; there are no nearby feeds, and it took great effort to set up just the power and water siphons I've got, and you see how much I was able to manage. It's entirely likely there are no minds within your current range -- except mine."

"And mine, you see, doesn't work quite the same as everyone else's. Oh, my cognition may not be diminished, but it's FM when everyone else is AM." He paused, then shook his head. "You probably don't even understand that reference. Suffice to say, you can't read my thoughts. But you can still feel the presence, a niggling buzz in the back of your brain, is how it was described to me. I'm told you should be able to interpret my emotions, once you learn what sensation means what. But what you feel: that's my mind."

His sandwich had cooled enough, he took a discreet bite from it. "I'll let you come to grips, in your limited, closed-minded way."

All right, so he hadn't entirely let her slights pass him by; he still had work to do on his "forgiveness" reflex.
 
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