Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

"No," Quinn sighed, readjusting the strap of her patch. "I was just a kid when I lost it, don't really know how." Which, even if she didn't tell the whole truth, was true enough.

She broke off eye contact, letting her eye roam across the Parlay. The Helburke flag, the crest of the Tormonts, the massive trays of food on the Helburkan side. On the Runan side, the board members—who she was none to happy with—and then...

Dahlia looked so incredibly nervous. She hadn't eaten anything, Quinn could tell. She...Quinn breathed in heavily. It wouldn't be apparent to most, but she could tell: Dahlia was terrified.

Terrified for her.

Terrified of her. Of her Savior. Of her weapon. And of what she'd do if—

Wonder what they’ll do once you’re dead, if, y’know, another one pops up.

She sat up straight again, then turned her head back to Roaki like it weighed a hundred pounds. Her eye flashed, glinted like a chip of yellow ice. Her voice suddenly went hard and sharp as broken glass. "I guess I'll never find out what they'll do." She cut a piece of meat, brought it to her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, never once looking away. "I don't intend to die anytime soon."

Amygdala Circuit

The silence grated against her ears, and she suddenly realized that everybody was staring. She managed to resist shrinking back and away, but only barely. Her finger twisted into the hem of the long black shirt that hung from her and held it tight.

Then the fork slamming down split through the silence, and she jumped enough to knock her head on the backrest of her seat with a bonk. She hissed in a breath with a wince as Roaki continued talking. And the more she said, the more bile spat from her mouth, the deeper Quinn's brow creased. Her teeth clenched, and Quinnlash's anger tore through her like a purgative, setting her veins alight before collecting in her eye, a cinder ready to catch fire.

"So why the fuck is Runa here? Didn’t you guys just get mulched?" The fire flared once more, white hot and brilliant.

But before it could ignite, the image of blood turned black by night running through streets lit with firelight and a boiling moon sheared down through it. A wave of dull grief sloughed over her, and the ember dimmed, then died. She slumped back into her seat.

"Mhmm," she droned, voice steady now, but dull and dead. "A whole town. Which was my home, I guess." She knuckled at her eye, pushing the tears back before they had any chance to glimmer. "I'm the only one left."

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn wasn't hungry.

As much as she'd thought she was ready—at least as ready as she really could be—on the Aerie, she'd realized when she'd seen Blotklau, when she'd heard those mournful strings, when she was served what was in all likelihood her last meal—she'd realized with a flash of nausea that she wasn't ready. Wasn't anywhere near ready. Wasn't even close. The food smelled delicious, and from the faces of those around her, it seemed like it tasted delicious too. In any other situation Quinn would have been experimenting with everything there, trying to find what she liked best. But now? She picked at it, too nervous to put any of it in her gut in fear that it would come right back up again.

Then that door opened. And through it walked Roaki. Quinn wasn't sure how she knew her so assuredly, even before she saw the pilot's suit underneath her clothes, but she knew as soon as she laid eye on her that this was the girl that she—

That she—

A wave of revulsion bore up her throat and she swallowed it down. At the same time, that spike of desire, of hunger, punched through her brain.

—That she was going to—

She kept her eye locked to the ghost-white girl, almost afraid to look away, as she (even younger than Quinn herself was, she'd read from her dossier with horror) stumped closer, the wood of her leg thumping sharply against the Parlay's floor, and finally sat down right across from her.

"So, I guess you're next."

Quinn jolted, she couldn't stop herself. Thoughts raced through her head. Whoever she'd expected her opponent to be, she was sure it wasn't this. A child whose arm and leg had been shorn from her body. And such vitriol in her voice. She found a distant part of herself wondering; had she lost her limbs like she had lost her eye? Or had they been taken by her Savior?

But most of her still felt like she was going to be sick. And not only did she feel sick, she obvioiusly looked like she felt sick. Her mouth was twisted in discomfort, and she dropped the fork that she wasn't really using onto the nearly untouched plate with a gentle clatter.

—that she had to kill.

It took her a moment to find her voice, and there was a noticeable shake to it when she responded that she desperately wished she could keep out, at least for the moment. How did she talk to this girl, this creature who fought literally tooth and nail? What could she say to her, knowing that no matter what happened, one of them wouldn't going be going back home?

"...I—"

There was nothing she could say to make this easier on her. Nothing to make it easier on Roaki either (though she seemed like she wasn't in short supply of confidence). So she averted her eye, stared at her plate, and muttered quietly as she ignored both Quinnlash's needles of feeling and the horrible familiar twisting in her gut as best she could.

"...Yeah. That's me."

Amygdala Circuit

She let her eye close. She didn't know why she always did; it just felt right.

Then, just like always, that smear. Like someone fingerpainting onto a black canvas with a paint that was also black, but so much more. That moment of splitting—

And there she was. She looked down. Dahlia was a tiny matchstick beneath her, barely coming up to her ankles. Life really was easier with only one eye, wasn't it?

She shook her mammoth head. No. No time for that. She tried to remember what her sister had told her on the way down. They knew what to do with them, and so should she? She tried to remember how she'd seen it happen in recordings or in—no. In recordings only. They'd reached out their hand, just like this—

Nothing happened.

What hadn't she done right?

She tried again, this time concentrating on it. Focusing on pulling out whatever weapon she'd get. And still, nothing. She groaned, and the Savior's voice—like gravel and boulders—echoed over the empty space. There was something she wasn't doing that she needed to. The press of time crushed down on her, and she tried again. The attempt was equally as fruitless. She resisted the urge to reach up and rub her finger over her eye. Last time she'd done that she'd punched a hole in it with the claw, and as much as she appreciated the eyepatch, being blind was not as fun.

Don't think too hard.

She took a deep breath and tried to stop thinking so much. Let her thoughts go quiet, and just for a moment, let the Savior's thoughts breathe too.

Then slowly—a certainty in her movements that hadn't been there before—she reached out and closed her hand again. And this time it caught.

It felt like...like pulling a sheet. A huge sheet. Dragging it backwards, bending it towards her. And as she pulled, it stretched. She knew instinctively that it was about to break.

Then the space bunched up between her fist tore, and she ripped out a massive object. Blunt, rectangular. As long as she was tall, or maybe even longer. She hefted it in front of her, marveling at its lightness—

In her ear, she heard a horrified choking gasp from Dahlia.

And then she looked at it.

It didn't make any sense. The weapon was supposed to be her. It wasn't—it was supposed to come from her and not the Savior, right? So then why was what rested in her hands a very familiar cannon?

Her eye slammed shut, a black membrane falling for a moment in front of the red orb in her face. She felt her breaths seething through her body, faster and faster. The fire all around her the SUN looming in front of her she was RUNNING she needed to RUN—

NO. STOP.

She could not panic. Panicking was a luxury, and she didn't have any time for luxuries.

So instead, she gritted her teeth and opened her eye again. There it was, a great block of modium running with burning white lines. And where was—there, there was the trigger. She hefted it onto her shoulder, and a part of her screamed. She hated this. So why did it feel so natural as she pointed it downrange?

Click.

A moment later the cannon kicked against her, and a searing, blazing ball of smokeless white flame raced away from her. And where it struck on the lakebed, there was a thoom that echoed for miles. When the dust cleared, a crater fifty feet across—at least—was carved into the hard-packed, sun-baked dirt.

Another click, and another shot seared its way through the sky. She closed her eye again, but her voice over the comms displayed only a grim acceptance.

"It'll do."

Amygdala Circuit

The sudden bellows-blast of rage didn't last long, and Quinn slumped back down into a chair, looking vaguely sick.

"...You don’t have to do this. I…we don’t want you to have to do this."

Quinn laughed then, a thin flat thing totally devoid of humor or joy. A death rattle. "You think I'm thrilled about it?" She looked at her feet, and her voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. "But there's...there's nothing we can do about it, right?"

She wasn't particularly savvy in politics, but she'd picked up a thing or two from Besca. "Fine, I get out of it. What then?" She left no time for responses before continuing: "We lose Casoban, right? And then what happens to the Aerie?"

She shook her head and looked down at her hands. They were trembling again, but her mind was clear as it could reasonably be, under the circumstances. That bolt of pride—unexpected, but not unwelcome—that had punched through her mind from Quinnlash stabilized her some. Enough to keep her together, at least. "I'm terrified. You have no idea how terrified I am. I have no idea how I'm even speaking right now, when all I want to do is run back to my dorm, curl up under my covers, and cry until I wake up from this bad dream."

A deep, shaky breath. Another. A third. Three deep breaths, in and out. "...But I—I can't. So..." she dropped her head into her hands. No. NO. She absolutely could not. There wasn't anything she could do, or anyone else. She turned to Besca. "...I'm drawing today." She blinked, and for just that moment she was that terrified child again. The one who'd woken up screaming. The one who'd latched onto Besca in a death grip, and begged her not to leave. The one who'd cried her eyes out into Dahlia's shoulder, apologizing for killing her father. Who'd barely made it through her first phase.

Then she blinked again, and—at least for the moment—that child was gone.

Amygdala Circuit

Everything was falling apart. It was all falling apart, and so quickly. She closed her eye, bowed her head. Her whole body was quaking. She had just found a family, after sixteen years of a fake one. Sixteen goddamn years. And now because of the board, and Helburke, and Eusero, and ESPECIALLY Casoban, that family was falling apart before it could even really form. She was not going to be thrown away.

Besca's voice reached her, and her head jerked up without warning, staring at the door where Dahlia'd just left.

No. No. NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Her own shaking was starting to settle, and her chattering teeth finally stilled. The fear, the terror, was alloying with something else, something that turned her stronger. Her blood no longer ran cold. No. It was boiling. Her teeth stopped chattering because they were clenched so tightly together the jaw creaked. Her hands no longer clawed at her arms, balled as they were into tight white-knuckled fists.

It was an unfamiliar sensation to her, half-remembered and only barely at that. A handful of brilliant red blooms in the endless night sky. But at that moment—with all this—everything falling apart—her sister and Besca suddenly at each other's throats—it felt so very right.

Quinnlash was still afraid.

But she was also furious.

She shot up, pacing back and forth with a sudden blaze of seething energy. Besca didn't deserve this. Dahlia didn't deserve this. None of them deserved this...and she didn't deserve this. She'd run through hell on earth a month ago and come out on the other side. She refused to let this rip her away from them, and she refused to let them fall apart over this before it even happened! A growl built in the back of her throat as she reached into her pocket and yanked out her phone. Three contacts listed on the screen. She tapped on St. Senn.

She answered on the second ring, and Quinn exploded.

"Get the fuck back up here RIGHT GODDAMN NOW!"

She hung up, then slapped it down on the table, a fierce and piercing eye like that of a bird of prey looking straight at Besca. Her voice was a snarl, bit out through clenched teeth. She had NOT come this far, through this much, to die to something like THIS.

"How long have we got."

Amygdala Circuit

"Quinn…Quinn I’m so sorry…"

Quinn sucked in a pained breath. She had never heard Besca sound like that. She had never seen her act like that. She was acting like...like...her. But why would she be—

He talked to the board, got them to agree to let us step in as their proxy.

Toussaint had let them step in as a proxy. Duel proxy. But...RISC only had one pilot, right? And from what she knew, Helburke had tried and failed to beat Dragon on multiple occasions. So why would they agree to—

Then that pained breath left her in a mangled half-noise. Because...

Quinn…Quinn I’m so sorry…

Because RISC had two pilots.

She staggered backwards, falling almost limp into a chair herself. No. No, they wouldn't. The board wouldn't—

Suddenly that deep fear she felt all made sense. Because they would.

She'd seen footage of duels in the past month. Well, only in the past two weeks really, so her knowledge of them was pretty limited. But there were a few things that she knew very well.

One, once a duel had been agreed to? There was no pulling out.

Two, they were always unrelentingly brutal and painful for everyone involved.

And three...someone always died in the end.

"B-but..." Her teeth were chattering like they hadn't since that first horrible week. She clenched her jaw to try and force them still, but they just wouldn't stop. Her eye was wide and disbelieving. "But I...I haven't even d-drawn my weapon yet." Her voice grew frantic. "H-how am I supposed to—to fight a duel!?"

It had to be some kind of terrible mistake. A terrible mistake, or a cruel joke of fate. Helburke...they had pilots prepared specifically for dueling, she knew that much.

She had maybe a little more than one month of training. And she HADN'T. DRAWN. HER. WEAPON. YET.

She was hyperventilating crazily and couldn't stop herself, and she hugged herself tight, digging her fingernails into her arms. Her eye was staring out at something she couldn't see in the distance. Just like that, she was right back where she'd started.

Casoban was...

"They're sending me out to die!"

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn tried not to show her discomfort when Doctor Follen asked her to...write down her dreams, and try to converse. That disgusted feeling had fallen into the background a bit, but it still lurked just underneath the surface. She took a deep breath and nodded, then—

It wasn't time for another reminder—

She bolted up, staring at her phone with confusion and concern writ across her face, all thoughts of dreaming forgotten. She'd only been to the war room one or two times. It really was important if she was headed there.

"Sorry. Something important just came up. We'll catch up later, okay?" She curved out of his office, this time keeping a quick jog through the halls of the medical wing, earning her a few irritated looks that she did her best to ignore. There was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that she knew, and she recognized it with dread. Just like in Hovvi: a crushing certainty that something terrible was about to happen.

Cutting across the plaza and weaving back and forth between people, she darted into the stairwell. It'd take too long to grab an elevator right now and that Quinnlash fear was still coursing through her. Taking the steps two, then three at a time, she blazed a path up the flights. By the time she arrived at the solid metal door she was out of breath again.

Taking a moment to catch it, she heaved the door open and strode in, still breathing hard. Besca was standing there, a look on her face that did nothing to assuage Quinn's anxiety. Dahlia was there too—maybe she hadn't gotten into the sims yet when she'd gotten called—and her expression wasn't any better.

Her voice only shook the tiniest bit when she spoke. She was pretty proud of that. "What's going on?

Amygdala Circuit

"Chasing? I...wouldn't say that, not really. It's not threatening me either. I guess I don't really feel the need to escape. It's...how do I put it..." She swallowed. Doctor Follen didn't usually stop the pen unless something was happening that was of particular import. She hoped he'd take what she said at face value.

It was such an instinctual feeling in her dreams, even when Quinnlash wasn't there, that it was difficult to explain once she got down to it. "It's more like...there's something else in my head with me. And it wants to push its feelings and emotions into mine. Sometimes it bleeds a little too, and it's hard to tell where it ends and I start. But I don't know if it really wants something. It feels like she's just...studying me."

"I've been sleeping well, though," she added hastily. "The last time I woke up screaming was almost two and a half weeks ago now."

She wasn't sure whether that was because she was beginning to settle into RISC proper, or because of the hauntingly beautiful dreams that she could never quite remember.

She could feel a sudden surge of disgust for Doctor Follen bubble out from nowhere and she stiffened. No, she begged, please not now. And besides...she liked Doctor Follen. What reason did Quinnlash possibly have to tear through the front of her head so suddenly? She shook her head. She was probably being skittish. She did have a tendency to overreact to things a lot.

Don't worry, he's a friend. We can trust him!

She didn't know if Quinnlash could hear her. She hoped she could.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn slung herself down in one of the comfy padded chairs, enjoying the warmth—both literal and metaphorical. She had quite the file. She'd asked him what was in it once, but he'd just said "notes." She was okay with that. It made her feel...seen, that might have been the word.

How had she been the past week? It was a bit of a loaded question; so much had happened in the last month that each week felt like it dragged for a year.

Kicking back, she half laid down. The chair was so comfy, god. It was her favorite.

"Well...the cockpit's been alright, I guess. I feel like I've made a lot of progress for sure, so that's nice." A brief pause. "...The tug-of-war is still there, though."

She'd described her first phase in detail last session. Mostly the "you love this/you hate this" dichotomy that she'd been slammed with. Or the tug-of-war, as she'd started calling it. "It's not as bad, obviously, I feel like I've mostly gotten a handle on it, but it's still happening, and the voice is still there."

And here, she paused again. This time for a much longer time.

She'd been exceedingly reticent about her dreams, and Doctor Follen had definitely noticed. She didn't want to talk much about them. She was ashamed. Incredibly ashamed. She didn't remember much, but she remembered them being treasured memories at the time, each and every one. And it made her ashamed.

"And, um..." And she didn't want to mention Quinnlash either. She wasn't sure why, but she didn't. "You remember that voice that I've been hearing? Outside of the cockpit, I mean?" She took a deep breath.

Still. She wanted to talk about it, at least a little.

"It's been following me into my dreams now too. It's harder to escape it."

She didn't mention that it had been in her dreams since the beginning, or that it wasn't just "the voice." Doctor Follen didn't need to know that, right? And she didn't want to say it.