Anybody in there/Someone outside
He remembered passing out initially, a proximity alarm blaring alongside Lucy's cries as to his wellbeing. He remembered the looming black shape coming upon him and, for a split second, thought it was red.
But something blocked it. He didn't know what, but there was a vague sense that he dearly loved whatever had done so.
He'd woken at some point - he remembered seeing the lights and hearing shouts and that his throat hurt, but nothing else. He'd fallen back asleep.
His head felt very tight.
His dreams were troubling - echoing screams and cries from dying minds in their last seconds. Hundreds of voices swirling endlessly, pleading, crying, and praying. -- It was an honor to--- Oh God, JULI--- HARD TO STARBO---Sieg Zeon---Kill that Mobile Su---Where did he g---Jesus Ch---Does that thing even have a pilot?--Everything froze, and a man appeared. He was older, hair and beard having faded to white. He completely occupied Dani's vision, his face set in a grim line. Dani was afraid. The pressure from the battle flared up in his mind again, and he suddenly knew that this was the face of the man he'd killed. He recoiled, his mind trembling.
He suddenly felt trapped in his own mind. He wanted out but there was no way. He thrashed and twisted, but still the face of the Zeon pilot would not leave him and suddenly he could not move. A few errant tears leaked down his eyes. He was terrified.
Everything went white.
"Take care of her. Sorry I can't stick around."
That voice. Oh no. No. No no no no no....
"See you around, Gimpy..."
NO!
~~
Danyan's eyes snapped open with a gasp of air. He struggled to sit, not noticing the bands across his chest that held them against the bed. Beside him, monitors screamed as he struggled and for a moment longer as he finally gave up and let himself fall back to the bed, panting.
Everything suddenly felt empty. No pressures, no voices, no visions. He felt very alone for a moment before the usual ebb and flow of life resumed, and he found himself able to feel nearby life again. Auva, Chan and his girls, Cherish, Candice, Da--no. Where was David?
The battle flashed before his eyes again - Something red...or was it black? - rushing at him, then something in front of it. Something he loved...
His breath hitched in his throat, and he stopped thinking. David was dead. And it had been because of him. He'd killed his best friend.
On the bedside table, unnoticed, was a distinctive display screen. It blinked to life after a moment, emitting a beep of surprise that caught the Newtypes attention.
(.O.) Good Morning! Are you functioning yet?
(._.) You had to be tied down because you kept moving while being repaired.
(>.>) Your optical units leaked a lot of fluid too. Are they broken?
(._.) And that monitor over there says your programming is glitchy! Maybe you need a reboot!
He blinked at the monitor. It took him a moment to remember who exactly was on the other end.
"Hi Lucy," he croaked. His voice was almost completely shot. "did you make it out alright?"
('_') Damage minimal, she replied. At least someone was alright.
"Good. Is Candace Ro on board?"
\(^O^) Yes! I will tell Schweister to call her!
He nodded his thanks, not trusting his own voice to carry to her any more, then rolled back to look at the ceiling. His heart was heavy. His eyes traveled to where Lucy had pointed out. Sure enough, a monitor stood, measuring what looked to be brainwaves. He watched them awhile, but grew bored and closed his eyes again, waiting for someone to walk through the door.
His head still felt very tight.
~
It felt so surreal when Candice saw David’s GM E explode. She herself had been off dealing with the enemy suits and the Gwazine, and only caught the last moments of her colleague’s life, feeling as though time had slowed down for that small instant. The sights before her continued to replay themselves in her head, each time becoming a little bit foggier, a little bit unclear. The last thing she remembered seeing explode, ironically, was his first cyclops - the one he’d been applying to his GM E’s shoulder when she met him on the Sleipner.
The pain was beginning to form in her stomach, and she wished it could go away. Wished her heart could harden up the way it did during her Cadet years - but she knew better now. She knew that hardening the heart meant running away, and she wasn’t planning on doing that anymore.
So, with tears streaking down her face, she looked dead on at her screen and watched the last bits of her friend’s suit combusted into a ball of smoke, and saluted. She remembered to look at each piece to have it ingrained into her mind; It wasn’t something she was planning on forgetting, that was for sure. She’d carry David Renault with her wherever she went, especially since… well, they’d been drunk. Perhaps it was for the better that they decided to keep it as colleagues.
As enemy forces retreated and as her own signal to retreat flashed on her screen, she looked over once more time at the area where the two suits had exploded. Most of the parts had sped off in different directions, but some of the chunkier pieces had stayed around one another… and oh god, why was she thinking this? It sounded crazy, but the longer her eyes lingered on the intact shoulder plate, the longer the idea seemed better to her. David’s first cyclops was still intact.
Gingerly, she ebbed her mobile suit towards it. While severely damaged and probably of no use, she still wanted to bring back a piece of David with her, regardless of what state it was in. The piece fit perfectly into her GM E’s hands, and with it secured she flew back to the estranged ships that she once called her home.
***
Candice slept surprisingly well during the night - she didn’t even need to take her sleeping pills, for she was knocked out the moment she was shown her quarters. When she awoke several hours later, she wondered where she was. Bleary memories, some of Francisca and some of David, fluttered over here eyelids but weren’t registered fully. Her fingers twitched in their strangling grip of the pillow beneath her head, but she didn’t wake up.
Slowly, things began to click. David was dead, and she brought his cyclops back with her. Francisca had been gone for a while, and the enemy had retreated. The Gwazine had been dealt with. Danyan…
Oh god, Dani! Where’s Dani?! DA-
Immediately she botled upright and felt her heart stop. He’d made it out because David had saved him. But his condition, and especially as a… Newtype… oh god.
Her fingers immediately went into her hair, running her clipped nails through shaggy blond bangs in a ritualistic motion she’d been performing since she couldn’t remember. He should be stable by now, better go check on him. She rose from her bed, still stroking her hair, and proceeded to get dressed sans the coat. She didn’t care what her attire was; her mind was in a constant loop of Dani - Alright - I need him - Cyclops - Dad - Where did I put my socks?
Candice doubted the crew would care if she went out in her tank top, but she lugged her coat along just in case - heaven forbid - she was asked to put it on in the infirmary. She was reminded vaguely of the words her instructor had drilled into her head during the first year of her Cadet years: “Always wear your uniform with pride!”
She casted a doubtful look at the creases and rumples in her coat, and laughed softly. What a model soldier she had turned out to be.
***
The blinding white walls combined with the blinding white bedsheets made for a doubled pain-induced setting as Candice grimaced and let out a yelp as she entered the infirmary. She was used to dimmed lights and dark places, but managed after several seconds to move into the room., deliberately slow
Immediately her eyes were stuck on Dani. It felt so good to see him alive, abeit a bit battered but looking in good condition on the outside. The inside was where he’d been hit, she knew. She approached him, almost scared to come within close proximity, but she couldn’t stop her legs. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she looked him over, lieing in his bed tied down like some lunatic.
“Hey,” she whispered, brushing her bangs out of her eyes, “How’re you faring?”
~
He was surprised she was so fast. A glance over at Lucy told him that the AI didn't even have time to inform her handler.
But his eyes went back to Candice and he smiled. "Hard to say..." he managed to croak out. It occurred to him then that he hadn't spoken properly to either her or David since Nasr had fallen. He felt a pang in his heart. He should have made the effort.
He pulled against the ties a bit and half-smiled. "Apparently I was thrashing earlier. Maybe seizureing. Lucy can't tell the difference, so I don't know." He stopped at that and swallowed hard - his voice was little more than a whisper at this point.
"How did we do?"
~
A smile almost reached her face as she listened to Dani - almost - but the excited shine in her eyes quickly faded back to that of something dead and desolate. She spoke low, but steady, wanting to fidget but held back by the rotten feeling in her chest.
"We won for now. There might be orders in the future, but for now we're heading into safe territory to regroup, so don't push yourself too much." She quickly reached out her hand and meant to grab Dani's, which was held down by the binding at his side, but she retracted as if she was scorched by a heat rod. She placed it down on top instead and wrapped her fingers around his thumb.
"Just rest, alright? The ceremony for the deceased will be coming up soon, and you should be in good shape for it. Oh," she could feel something hammering in her head as a completely irrational idea sprung up. Not now. Now was not the place, she kept telling herself. But her heart told her otherwise. "If you need to talk - anytime at all - just page me. I'll most likely either be napping or in the hangar, since I got pretty banged up and she needs a good fixin'."
After she finished speaking, she moved. It was slow and nervous, similar to how a teenage girl's would attempt her to showing affection for the first time. Her fingers felt jumpy as she placed her right hand on Dani's shoulder, careful to not put too much pressure on it. She leaned forward, keeping her eyes locked with his. They shine such a brilliant shade of grey, she marveled quietly, but was focused and intent on completing what she sent herself out to do. The poor man must be so confused right now.
With that thought out of the way, she leaned forward even more, feeling the front of her thighs pinching against the metal frame of the bed. She didn't care. She brushed her lips along Dani's brow and placed a kiss on his forehead, catching a few hairs under her bottom lip. His skin tastes of sweat, but she didn't let it affect her.
Candice pulled back and observed his face. She had been careful to not move him much, but she wanted to make sure Dani was alright. Her face was probably a mess right now; with a blush staining her cheeks or something embarrassing like that, but for once, she didn't think. She thought too much on the job and off and she'll be damned that she wasn't going to let her brain get the better of her here.
~
Asri sat terrified; her arms hugging her knees to her chest as she panted in darkness. It hadn't been the dream that had awoken her; that much she knew; nor had it been the act of sitting up--it had been the horrified, horrifying gasp that had left her own lips. Her lungs hurt, felt like they were going to burst, as if they'd been overfilled like a carnival balloon.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins, rapidly souring; joining the already sick, sunken feeling at the pit of her stomach. Her muscles quaked; she didn't want to hold out her hand to see. So she sat terrified in darkness, afraid to admit to herself that the sense of loss she felt; that horrible, sickening terror--wasn't hers. It was coming from somewhere outside.
She allowed herself a few moments to fear for Leon, for Adrien, for Dessler, for Cook, hell, even--she mentally cursed--for Grif and Val; but it wasn't any of them. It was somewhere else--impossibly distant, yet close enough to spit on. Her hands shook against her bare skin, clasped over her heart, she tried to slow her panicked breathing.
She couldn't even remember the dream now--just flashes, images; as if she'd been inside one of those damned mobile suits. Seeing through the eyes of one of the monsters that'd killed her family--and she felt grief as one of those monsters died; and knew the grief wasn't hers.
Sobbing quietly in the near-total darkness of her quarters, Asri tried desperately to quell emotions that weren't her own.
~
Everything ground to a halt when Candice's lips connected with his forehead, probably knocking aside whatever was monitoring his brainwaves. He felt a heat rise in his face, somehow getting the impression that she was in much the same boat there, though her ample cleavage pressing against his collarbone as she stretched to meet his face certainly wasn't helping him.
But she pulled away and he suddenly found that he could breathe again, though the heat did not drain from his face. He met her eyes briefly, but glanced away as she did - What does one say to that, after all?
But he shifted his hand to better grab hers, and whistled to call her attention back to him. He frowned as he finally got a closer look at her face. "You haven't been sleeping, have you?"
It wasn't so much a question, but a fact that demanded confirmation. It was all over her face, in her posture and evident in her unkempt uniform. She was exhausted.
He opened his mouth to chide her further, but something caught his mind, and his head turned to the window in the direction of the disturbance. It wasn't like his distant, echo-laden dreams. This was real. Almost tangible. On the monitor, his brainwaves spiked. He frowned again.
"There's someone out there..." he whispered. He didn't know if Candice heard him. This feeling - sad and scared - someone else was feeling those. But who? He was calm now, and he tried to spread that feeling out, hopefully reassuring whoever was on the other end.
His head still felt very tight.
~
The ache in Asri's mind faded slowly, as if its source was slowly becoming further and further distant. That grief, that sense of utter loss; nausiating horror; utter helplessness had finally started to pass and even, to Asri's surprise, be replaced by feelings of hope. Those emotions, bright as a distant lighthouse in her mind, waivered; flickered, then seemed to dim. It was an apology, or something close to one. Asri didn't know how she knew; something about the way those emotions changed so suddenly... she just knew, whoever was out there hadn't ment to disturb her.
She stared into darkness for a second; then let her own fears and insecurities well up, let them mingle with her own hopes for the future--a future she couldn't imagine herself participating in; let them form into a 'footprint' of her psyche--like a beacon of her own, saying "This is who I am; I'm sorry you're in such anguish; I know you didn't mean to hurt me." At least... she hoped that was how she'd come across.
It took her a few moments of quiet silence, listening to the fading echos of that alien presence rebounding from her psyche, to start to wonder if this was what being a Newtype was really like.
But something blocked it. He didn't know what, but there was a vague sense that he dearly loved whatever had done so.
He'd woken at some point - he remembered seeing the lights and hearing shouts and that his throat hurt, but nothing else. He'd fallen back asleep.
His head felt very tight.
His dreams were troubling - echoing screams and cries from dying minds in their last seconds. Hundreds of voices swirling endlessly, pleading, crying, and praying. -- It was an honor to--- Oh God, JULI--- HARD TO STARBO---Sieg Zeon---Kill that Mobile Su---Where did he g---Jesus Ch---Does that thing even have a pilot?--Everything froze, and a man appeared. He was older, hair and beard having faded to white. He completely occupied Dani's vision, his face set in a grim line. Dani was afraid. The pressure from the battle flared up in his mind again, and he suddenly knew that this was the face of the man he'd killed. He recoiled, his mind trembling.
He suddenly felt trapped in his own mind. He wanted out but there was no way. He thrashed and twisted, but still the face of the Zeon pilot would not leave him and suddenly he could not move. A few errant tears leaked down his eyes. He was terrified.
Everything went white.
"Take care of her. Sorry I can't stick around."
That voice. Oh no. No. No no no no no....
"See you around, Gimpy..."
NO!
~~
Danyan's eyes snapped open with a gasp of air. He struggled to sit, not noticing the bands across his chest that held them against the bed. Beside him, monitors screamed as he struggled and for a moment longer as he finally gave up and let himself fall back to the bed, panting.
Everything suddenly felt empty. No pressures, no voices, no visions. He felt very alone for a moment before the usual ebb and flow of life resumed, and he found himself able to feel nearby life again. Auva, Chan and his girls, Cherish, Candice, Da--no. Where was David?
The battle flashed before his eyes again - Something red...or was it black? - rushing at him, then something in front of it. Something he loved...
His breath hitched in his throat, and he stopped thinking. David was dead. And it had been because of him. He'd killed his best friend.
On the bedside table, unnoticed, was a distinctive display screen. It blinked to life after a moment, emitting a beep of surprise that caught the Newtypes attention.
(.O.) Good Morning! Are you functioning yet?
(._.) You had to be tied down because you kept moving while being repaired.
(>.>) Your optical units leaked a lot of fluid too. Are they broken?
(._.) And that monitor over there says your programming is glitchy! Maybe you need a reboot!
He blinked at the monitor. It took him a moment to remember who exactly was on the other end.
"Hi Lucy," he croaked. His voice was almost completely shot. "did you make it out alright?"
('_') Damage minimal, she replied. At least someone was alright.
"Good. Is Candace Ro on board?"
\(^O^) Yes! I will tell Schweister to call her!
He nodded his thanks, not trusting his own voice to carry to her any more, then rolled back to look at the ceiling. His heart was heavy. His eyes traveled to where Lucy had pointed out. Sure enough, a monitor stood, measuring what looked to be brainwaves. He watched them awhile, but grew bored and closed his eyes again, waiting for someone to walk through the door.
His head still felt very tight.
~
It felt so surreal when Candice saw David’s GM E explode. She herself had been off dealing with the enemy suits and the Gwazine, and only caught the last moments of her colleague’s life, feeling as though time had slowed down for that small instant. The sights before her continued to replay themselves in her head, each time becoming a little bit foggier, a little bit unclear. The last thing she remembered seeing explode, ironically, was his first cyclops - the one he’d been applying to his GM E’s shoulder when she met him on the Sleipner.
The pain was beginning to form in her stomach, and she wished it could go away. Wished her heart could harden up the way it did during her Cadet years - but she knew better now. She knew that hardening the heart meant running away, and she wasn’t planning on doing that anymore.
So, with tears streaking down her face, she looked dead on at her screen and watched the last bits of her friend’s suit combusted into a ball of smoke, and saluted. She remembered to look at each piece to have it ingrained into her mind; It wasn’t something she was planning on forgetting, that was for sure. She’d carry David Renault with her wherever she went, especially since… well, they’d been drunk. Perhaps it was for the better that they decided to keep it as colleagues.
As enemy forces retreated and as her own signal to retreat flashed on her screen, she looked over once more time at the area where the two suits had exploded. Most of the parts had sped off in different directions, but some of the chunkier pieces had stayed around one another… and oh god, why was she thinking this? It sounded crazy, but the longer her eyes lingered on the intact shoulder plate, the longer the idea seemed better to her. David’s first cyclops was still intact.
Gingerly, she ebbed her mobile suit towards it. While severely damaged and probably of no use, she still wanted to bring back a piece of David with her, regardless of what state it was in. The piece fit perfectly into her GM E’s hands, and with it secured she flew back to the estranged ships that she once called her home.
***
Candice slept surprisingly well during the night - she didn’t even need to take her sleeping pills, for she was knocked out the moment she was shown her quarters. When she awoke several hours later, she wondered where she was. Bleary memories, some of Francisca and some of David, fluttered over here eyelids but weren’t registered fully. Her fingers twitched in their strangling grip of the pillow beneath her head, but she didn’t wake up.
Slowly, things began to click. David was dead, and she brought his cyclops back with her. Francisca had been gone for a while, and the enemy had retreated. The Gwazine had been dealt with. Danyan…
Oh god, Dani! Where’s Dani?! DA-
Immediately she botled upright and felt her heart stop. He’d made it out because David had saved him. But his condition, and especially as a… Newtype… oh god.
Her fingers immediately went into her hair, running her clipped nails through shaggy blond bangs in a ritualistic motion she’d been performing since she couldn’t remember. He should be stable by now, better go check on him. She rose from her bed, still stroking her hair, and proceeded to get dressed sans the coat. She didn’t care what her attire was; her mind was in a constant loop of Dani - Alright - I need him - Cyclops - Dad - Where did I put my socks?
Candice doubted the crew would care if she went out in her tank top, but she lugged her coat along just in case - heaven forbid - she was asked to put it on in the infirmary. She was reminded vaguely of the words her instructor had drilled into her head during the first year of her Cadet years: “Always wear your uniform with pride!”
She casted a doubtful look at the creases and rumples in her coat, and laughed softly. What a model soldier she had turned out to be.
***
The blinding white walls combined with the blinding white bedsheets made for a doubled pain-induced setting as Candice grimaced and let out a yelp as she entered the infirmary. She was used to dimmed lights and dark places, but managed after several seconds to move into the room., deliberately slow
Immediately her eyes were stuck on Dani. It felt so good to see him alive, abeit a bit battered but looking in good condition on the outside. The inside was where he’d been hit, she knew. She approached him, almost scared to come within close proximity, but she couldn’t stop her legs. Her heart was hammering in her chest as she looked him over, lieing in his bed tied down like some lunatic.
“Hey,” she whispered, brushing her bangs out of her eyes, “How’re you faring?”
~
He was surprised she was so fast. A glance over at Lucy told him that the AI didn't even have time to inform her handler.
But his eyes went back to Candice and he smiled. "Hard to say..." he managed to croak out. It occurred to him then that he hadn't spoken properly to either her or David since Nasr had fallen. He felt a pang in his heart. He should have made the effort.
He pulled against the ties a bit and half-smiled. "Apparently I was thrashing earlier. Maybe seizureing. Lucy can't tell the difference, so I don't know." He stopped at that and swallowed hard - his voice was little more than a whisper at this point.
"How did we do?"
~
A smile almost reached her face as she listened to Dani - almost - but the excited shine in her eyes quickly faded back to that of something dead and desolate. She spoke low, but steady, wanting to fidget but held back by the rotten feeling in her chest.
"We won for now. There might be orders in the future, but for now we're heading into safe territory to regroup, so don't push yourself too much." She quickly reached out her hand and meant to grab Dani's, which was held down by the binding at his side, but she retracted as if she was scorched by a heat rod. She placed it down on top instead and wrapped her fingers around his thumb.
"Just rest, alright? The ceremony for the deceased will be coming up soon, and you should be in good shape for it. Oh," she could feel something hammering in her head as a completely irrational idea sprung up. Not now. Now was not the place, she kept telling herself. But her heart told her otherwise. "If you need to talk - anytime at all - just page me. I'll most likely either be napping or in the hangar, since I got pretty banged up and she needs a good fixin'."
After she finished speaking, she moved. It was slow and nervous, similar to how a teenage girl's would attempt her to showing affection for the first time. Her fingers felt jumpy as she placed her right hand on Dani's shoulder, careful to not put too much pressure on it. She leaned forward, keeping her eyes locked with his. They shine such a brilliant shade of grey, she marveled quietly, but was focused and intent on completing what she sent herself out to do. The poor man must be so confused right now.
With that thought out of the way, she leaned forward even more, feeling the front of her thighs pinching against the metal frame of the bed. She didn't care. She brushed her lips along Dani's brow and placed a kiss on his forehead, catching a few hairs under her bottom lip. His skin tastes of sweat, but she didn't let it affect her.
Candice pulled back and observed his face. She had been careful to not move him much, but she wanted to make sure Dani was alright. Her face was probably a mess right now; with a blush staining her cheeks or something embarrassing like that, but for once, she didn't think. She thought too much on the job and off and she'll be damned that she wasn't going to let her brain get the better of her here.
~
Asri sat terrified; her arms hugging her knees to her chest as she panted in darkness. It hadn't been the dream that had awoken her; that much she knew; nor had it been the act of sitting up--it had been the horrified, horrifying gasp that had left her own lips. Her lungs hurt, felt like they were going to burst, as if they'd been overfilled like a carnival balloon.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins, rapidly souring; joining the already sick, sunken feeling at the pit of her stomach. Her muscles quaked; she didn't want to hold out her hand to see. So she sat terrified in darkness, afraid to admit to herself that the sense of loss she felt; that horrible, sickening terror--wasn't hers. It was coming from somewhere outside.
She allowed herself a few moments to fear for Leon, for Adrien, for Dessler, for Cook, hell, even--she mentally cursed--for Grif and Val; but it wasn't any of them. It was somewhere else--impossibly distant, yet close enough to spit on. Her hands shook against her bare skin, clasped over her heart, she tried to slow her panicked breathing.
She couldn't even remember the dream now--just flashes, images; as if she'd been inside one of those damned mobile suits. Seeing through the eyes of one of the monsters that'd killed her family--and she felt grief as one of those monsters died; and knew the grief wasn't hers.
Sobbing quietly in the near-total darkness of her quarters, Asri tried desperately to quell emotions that weren't her own.
~
Everything ground to a halt when Candice's lips connected with his forehead, probably knocking aside whatever was monitoring his brainwaves. He felt a heat rise in his face, somehow getting the impression that she was in much the same boat there, though her ample cleavage pressing against his collarbone as she stretched to meet his face certainly wasn't helping him.
But she pulled away and he suddenly found that he could breathe again, though the heat did not drain from his face. He met her eyes briefly, but glanced away as she did - What does one say to that, after all?
But he shifted his hand to better grab hers, and whistled to call her attention back to him. He frowned as he finally got a closer look at her face. "You haven't been sleeping, have you?"
It wasn't so much a question, but a fact that demanded confirmation. It was all over her face, in her posture and evident in her unkempt uniform. She was exhausted.
He opened his mouth to chide her further, but something caught his mind, and his head turned to the window in the direction of the disturbance. It wasn't like his distant, echo-laden dreams. This was real. Almost tangible. On the monitor, his brainwaves spiked. He frowned again.
"There's someone out there..." he whispered. He didn't know if Candice heard him. This feeling - sad and scared - someone else was feeling those. But who? He was calm now, and he tried to spread that feeling out, hopefully reassuring whoever was on the other end.
His head still felt very tight.
~
The ache in Asri's mind faded slowly, as if its source was slowly becoming further and further distant. That grief, that sense of utter loss; nausiating horror; utter helplessness had finally started to pass and even, to Asri's surprise, be replaced by feelings of hope. Those emotions, bright as a distant lighthouse in her mind, waivered; flickered, then seemed to dim. It was an apology, or something close to one. Asri didn't know how she knew; something about the way those emotions changed so suddenly... she just knew, whoever was out there hadn't ment to disturb her.
She stared into darkness for a second; then let her own fears and insecurities well up, let them mingle with her own hopes for the future--a future she couldn't imagine herself participating in; let them form into a 'footprint' of her psyche--like a beacon of her own, saying "This is who I am; I'm sorry you're in such anguish; I know you didn't mean to hurt me." At least... she hoped that was how she'd come across.
It took her a few moments of quiet silence, listening to the fading echos of that alien presence rebounding from her psyche, to start to wonder if this was what being a Newtype was really like.