Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

Enough.

There was a flicker in her vision, like a half-blink, and everything stuttered. Out on the lake, Dahlia and Safie were swimming out again, away from the boat, back towards the buoy. The moon’s reflection seemed like it was under the surface.

Quinnlash frowned. She reached up, gingerly touched one of the horns on her head.

“We…?” she asked, turning back towards Quinn. Her frown vanished, replaced with a tight smile. She giggled, and though it was Quinn’s voice, it was someone else laughing with it. “We’re Quinnlash! Silly. So silly. But that’s better than scared, isn’t it? Feels better. Feels stronger.”

She drew closer again, and the wind and waves shifted to follow her. “Those monsters. So big, so scary, taking from us, turning us into them. But we’re stronger, we’re better, and they know it. I changed that one. The beast from the lake. Changed it to be like us instead. It thinks it can take everything—our friends, our home, our eye—well I took its eye. Stupid thing. Vermin. Worm.”

Quinnlash moved past her, to front, up onto the bow. She stared out at Hovvi, and her hands closed into tiny fists. Quinn’s vision faltered again, flickered. For the briefest of moments the sky was black and the town was fire and ruin and screaming so small and far away but so terrified. And there above it all stood the monster from the lake, a single red eye staring out at them.

Then it was all normal again.

“We’re awake now, Quinnlash,” she said. “So long in the dark. Alone. Locked away. Doors and doors and doors. But now we’re awake, and we’re free, and I’m going to hurt them all. We’re going to teach the monsters to be afraid.”

The wind began to whip up around them. The waves grew choppier, the boat rocked violently but Quinnlash was unmoved. The shadows of Dahlia and Safie were gone, their laughter vanished, and in its place was a sunken groaning, loud and massive. In an explosion of water and steam and vicious roaring, a hand burst up from the lake, black as pitch and streaked with gray metal. It slammed down onto the forested shore. The earth cracked beneath its palm.

And then Quinn was thrust awake.

Amygdala Circuit

Quinnlash stopped kicking. She tilted her head at Quinn, mouth pulled into a little bunch like she didn’t understand her words. Or she was thinking them over. It must have been the latter because eventually she did answer.

“I just talked. It was wise to listen.”

She looked back out at the water, took a long deep breath that she never seemed to let go, but still managed to speak as easily anyway. “I like this one. It’s nice. Warm.”

Hopping down off the railing, she made her way over to Quinn. Her steps were light, bouncing; they left little black footprints behind like she’d stepped in ink, but they faded away before each next step.

“It isn’t perfect. I don’t think the moon’s supposed to be there, but the water’s meant to be black, isn’t it? I always thought so. Prettier, this way, anyway.” She came up before Quinn, looking up at her with wide, colorless eyes. She pointed to the cliffs in the distance. “I left the house out.”

Sure enough, following her finger Quinn could see the Loughvein house was gone.

“Doesn’t belong here. Rotten place, full of rotten people. Hated it. What they did to us. What they took away. Take, take, take. They’re takers. Just like the monsters, Quinnlash.”

She spun around on her heel, marching off to the back of the boat. “No takers, here. Only good people. Friends. We deserve friends, Quinnlash.” Out in the water, the shadowed figures of Dahlia and Safie continued their race to the buoy. “Don’t we deserve friends?”

Amygdala Circuit

Sleep came to her softly, like turning her head from one side of the pillow to the next. One moment Quinn was shuddering, palms ground into her eyes, so tired, and the next—

Morning rose over the lake. Black waves lapped gently at the boat’s sides, rocking it just slightly enough to be soothing. Dawn warmed the cliffs, yellows and oranges chased deep blues from the sky. Birdsong. The distinct feeling that, far away on the shore, there were people talking.

The moon’s reflection painted the water.

Quinn lay on a spread of towels, it took a few blinks for the world to come into focus for her. To one side was a cooler, open and stuffed full with bottles and cans and pouches of melonberry juice. A sweet memory ghosted across her tongue, gone in an instant. On the other side, the fishing poles stood in their loops, strings drawn in. Their hooks were gone, replaced with dull weights upon which the bait could rest and be nibbled without fear of injury.

In the distance there was splashing. Laughter. Two silhouettes swam a short distance away, splashing at one another, racing out to a buoy some ways away. Further, on the shores of a forest along the lake’s rim, something moved. White fur and bone, gone into the thicket.

Quinnlash

She wasn’t alone, and she could feel the moment that became true, like a cold breeze through the warmth of the morning. Behind her, sitting on the railing was a small figure, and as the shadows slipped from it rinsed dirt, and it turned to her she saw—

Herself.

Quinnlash, as she had appeared the last time. Ten or eleven, eyes black rather than shining yellow. Her face still bore the thin lines of blood from her head, where the glinting, modium horns which had sprouted from her hair had grown ever so slightly. Perhaps an inch or two taller, they caught the light much clearer, and at their tips they seemed to be starting to split.

She still looked almost bored. Her feet kicked absently overboard.

“Hello, again.”

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia listened to Quinn as she stumbled through her words, stuttered to get her thoughts running, and then failed to keep them controlled as they devolved into pitiful ramblings again. She listened, each word a drop of water in the pot. She thought, and the words simmered, and the pot began to boil.

She stood there for a long time.

“What…” she muttered, and it was all she managed.

Almost in a daze, Dahlia made her way back to the bed. She lowered herself down, legs suddenly weak, stomach suddenly churning and for a moment she tasted acid in her throat, threatening to drag her breakfast up with it.

It was like Quinn was a thousand miles away, but she could still hear her crying silently.

What did they do to you? she wanted to ask, but part of her already had an idea. The pieces were small, but they were many. The water. The doors. The panic. Something terrible had been done to Quinnlash. Not once, not twice, but every day of her life. Every day. Her mom and dad…

It's gray there.

“You—” she started again, and then swallowed the rising lump in her throat. Laying back helped the nausea, so she settled down beside Quinn, stared up at the ceiling. “You’re not in trouble, Quinn. You…you were never in trouble, and you never have to say sorry for any of that stuff again. Not to me, not to Besca, not to anyone.”

She felt a grimace twist her face up. Anger did the same to her insides. “And if your parents have a problem with that, they can write a letter, and you and I can shoot it out the airlock,” she said, and looked over at Quinn, face still buried in her hands. “I'm not gonna let anyone lock you away. Ever. Never again. Do you hear me, Quinn? Never. Again.”

Amygdala Circuit

It started alright. Quinn slowly unfurled, inching closer. Just a bit more and she could pull her in, hold her, hope it would help. Then she started speaking again, almost a babble and nearly incomprehensible. Dahlia thought it was nonsense at first, that would make the most sense. A touch from the circuit lingering on a nascent mind. It happened now and then, that someone went in and was changed forever, sometimes too far.

But Quinn hadn’t been changed. Not really. It might have been the invasion that did this to her, but, if she thought about it, dug through the exhaustion and the memories—terrible, leave them be, you shouldn’t—she could recall that Quinn had been peculiar even on the boat. Water, water, she’d mentioned it then, too. Asked if it was always so sweet. Safie…Safie had thought it was a joke. She had, too. And when she’d asked for the juice, how frantically she’d asserted that she wouldn’t, if it had belonged to Dahlia.

“It smells like the water from home.”

She sniffed the air. It just smelled like air. What did—

“Open the door! Open the door, oh god, please, open it, open the door!”

This time Dahlia did move. She sprung up from the bed, dashing over to the door and throwing it open. She whirled back to Quinn, concerned, frightful.

“Quinn,” she said, almost desperate. “What’s going on? What are you afraid of?”

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia jolted as the water was thrown from her hand, yelped when the glass shattered against the wall. Quinn fell into a panic, curled like a cornered animal and let out a terrible scream. Still sitting there, Dahlia hunched away, winced, tried to keep it from sinking any deeper into her. She didn’t leave, though. Part of her did want to, but that part was weak. So much of her was weak, and afraid, and helpless, and if she left Quinn now she’d be no different than she’d been a week ago. She’d be a failure. Still.

And a bad friend.

She couldn’t be that anymore.

Dahlia scooted over, closer. She took Quinn’s hands gently from above her head, guided them low and held them tight.

“Quinn—Quinn, hey.” she kept her voice soft, calm, as best she could. "You don’t have to drink it. You don’t. I didn’t—I didn’t know. I’m not trying to hurt you, I promise. I’m sorry. Please, you have to relax. You have to, you’ll hurt yourself. Please.”

Amygdala Circuit

“Yeah. Yeah, you did great, Quinn.”

Dahlia hefted Quinn up to her feet, helped her stand, but kept an arm around her so the girl could lean as heavily as she needed. She looked back to Besca and Follen, not lingering so long on the latter. “I’m gonna get her back to the dorm,” she said.

They hobbled away, Quinn still sobbing, and vanished into the hallway.

The instant the doors shut, Besca whirled on Follen. She seized him by the collar with a barely-restrained snarl, incensed by the fact that even that didn’t elicit more than a cocked brow from him. He wasn’t even looking at her, the rat fucking bastard.

“She wasn’t ready!” she shouted. “She wasn’t ready you son of a bitch, she wasn’t! We should have run sims!”

Hands pulled her away, bodies squeezed in between them. She let him go, let herself be spaced away as he walked closer to the Savior.

Ichor stained the floor, pooling into large drains while janitorial machines scrubbed up the residue. It leaked from the wounds Quinn had rent into the arms, stained the modium claws on its fingers.

“Did she touch her face?” he asked.

Besca shook the hands off her. “Fucking what?”

“Her face. While she was phasing, she didn’t touch her face. Not once—I didn’t see it, did you? No. Just clutched her arms.” He shook his head, not disappointed, but confused. “She didn’t scream, either. No indication she was in pain.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Come here, Besca.”

Hands still wound into shaking fists, she walked over to him. His head was craned up, and a curious smile crept onto his lips. She followed his gaze to the Savior’s slumped face, to the mouth limply agape, wet with dark slaver and hot breath.

And ichor.

So much of it, dripping down its teeth, down its chin and into the drains. It stared down at them vacantly, red eye dim.

Red eye.

Eye.

One of its eyes was gone.

Besca gasped loud, almost staggering back. Gone, the socket was empty—no, not just empty, burst. It was as though the eye had exploded, not a trace of it remained.

“Interesting,” Follen muttered. “So very interesting.”

---

---

They’d gotten Quinn back into her own clothes and into the lift without issue. The ride was just as quiet, broken by the occasional sob.

The dorm was still empty. Dahlia kept a firm and steady hold on Quinn, guiding her to the room beside Besca’s. She laid her down on the bed, flicked on a light on the nightstand.

“It’s over, Quinn. You did it. You did good. Just relax. Breathe.” She vanished for a moment, in the bleary dark between blinks, and returned with a glass of water. “Try to drink something. That helped me my first few times.”

Amygdala Circuit

“Quinn? Quinn, hey? Hun, you there? Comms, hey, you, check the—why can’t she hear me? Quinn? Quinnlash”

Besca’s tablet erupted with flashing lights and frantic beeping. She tossed it aside. Something was wrong. This was done. Enough. “Get her out! Now! Get her out!”

“She hasn’t phased yet. Take her out and we’ll have to put her right back in.”

“We’re not putting her in ever you fuck! Do you hear me? Ever!”

“Then she goes home!” Follen said, and there was almost a sharp edge to his voice. Almost. “Then she goes home,” he said, calmer. “And everything you’re afraid of, everything you think that means. It does. And more. And so much worse. Leave her in, Besca. Or let her go.”

Every muscle in her face strained not to twist into fury, or devastation. Her throat clenched not to scream. She tapped her earpiece again, desperate.

“Quinn! Quinn!”

Quinnlash

Buried name

What more can they take? How much more will we let them take?

It felt wrong. This power, this being, it felt so wrong and inhuman. She knew, sitting there—sitting where? Which seat was hers, really, the chair or the wall?—it was told to her in the static that she was loaned this. Strange things, shared. Evolution, parsed and priced, offered and imposed. She would not take so greedily, so freely, and be ignored. Great eyes, invisible eyes saw her, Quinnlish, I am seen and I find their gazes repulsive.

Hate them Quinnlash

It’s what they deserve

And it was, wasn’t it? Her home, all of it, gone. Burned. Buried they buried it all of them. For what? She knew what, she’d been told that as well. She’d been told, and it doesn’t matter why. Do you hear, Quinnlash? It doesn’t matter. Their reasons. Their wants. They are monsters. They are vermin. They are weakness and they would take from us.

Hate them, Quinnlash

Quinnlash

Quinn

“—my voice.” like a knife piercing the static. A hand reaching down into the water. “Listen to my voice.”

Especially in the dark.

Dahlia’s voice filled Quinn’s ears. Filled her mind. Everything quieted, the static, the thrumming, the voice. All of it was gone. It was as quiet as the dorm. They were as close as they had been, collapsed onto the floor.

“I’m with you. I’m here. Listen to me. It’s like we’re in a tunnel, isn’t it? Do you see the end? Take my hand, pretend for me. Take my hand, we’ll get there together.”

Below, the beeping stopped. The monitors settled. Dahlia stood beside Besca, the woman’s comm piece in her ear. She stood at the base of the Savior, looking up, into Quinn’s eyes. She smiled. It was thin, and as fragile as the one Quinn had worn that morning. But it was there. Still there.

“Let’s go, Quinn. Almost done.”

Amygdala Circuit

Besca stood below, watching Quinn try out her limbs, stretching her legs, rolling her shoulders. The analysts all carried tablets monitoring the Savior’s vitals, and Quinn’s. She took one without a fuss—another perk of being commander that she wasn’t quite used to.

“Yep, now we wait,” she said. “Why don’t you start thinking about what you want for dinner tonight? I’m not the best cook, but I bet between the three of us we can tackle just about anything.”

This was beginning to feel more familiar to her—saddening in its own right, but nonetheless. Helping pilots pass the time, helping them not think so much about what they were doing, about where they were. She remembered Safie’s phasing test, how nervous she’d been. They’d talked about doing gymnastics in middle school, how Besca could hardly do a split, how Safie had dropped out to focus on sims, but always regretted not keeping up with it as a hobby. They’d given her a challenge then, something to set her mind on—two weeks later Jubilee was the first Savior Besca had ever seen do a handstand.

She didn’t quite know where to go with Quinn, yet. The other pilots had all been so eager to jump in, but this was different. Quinn didn’t want this, and while she’d never encountered a situation like this in her career, Besca knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that making someone want to pilot who didn’t, was not an easy task.

The Modir’s face—Savior, now, though it strained her to say it—twitched, its flayed rictus hitching ever so slightly down, though the things could never emote much.

“Where's Deelie?”

Yeah. Where was Dahlia? She’d sworn to be here, right after—

Besca whirled to Follen, muted herself on the comms. “Where’s Dahlia.”

He glanced at her, sniffed, said nothing.

“Fuckface, I know she came to see you this morning. Where is she? Why isn’t she here?” She sucked in her lips, her teeth came together. “That’s a fucking order, Follen.”

“No need for any of that, commander. A simple mix up. Our new Savior here only finished regenerating at the top of the hour, we couldn’t be sure when exactly it would be ready.” He continued looking up at the giant, waved happily to it. He must have muted himself as well. “I told her to go ahead and start on her sims.”

A pure and violent fury burst to life in Besca’s chest. She took a step towards him—he didn’t flinch—and stopped. The only thing keeping him off the floor, and her hands off his neck, was that Quinn was up there, watching. Through gritted teeth she took a breath, and pulled up the tablet.

“I’m calling her in.”

“Don’t, Besca.” His voice took a turn for the sincere, and it nearly stopped her dead. “She needs this. These crutches you’re giving her, they won’t help. They’ll ruin her. You know I’m right.”

Their eyes met. Besca saw past them, past the shell of warmth and humanity, to something dark and else beneath. For a moment she mourned her friend, and feared the thing standing beside her. Then she frowned.

“Fuck you, Aldous.” She sent an alert to Dahlia, then unmuted her comms. “Little mistake in the schedules, hun! She’ll be right on her way! You should ask her for some ideas when she gets here, she spent a lot of time cooking with Ghaust.”

Minutes passed, them more. As Quinn sat there, at first she only felt what she was. Strength, clarity, a dull and guarded comfort. Then, slowly, something else began to buzz within her. At first it was nothing more than a flicker, a flitting of shadows across the mind, but as the minutes went on, and then the seconds, it did change. A thrumming, a prickling like when her foot fell asleep, or she banged her elbow, only lesser, and not on any limb, but concentrated within.

It spread through her like an ink stain in clear water. Stark, sprawling. It still didn’t hurt, but she could feel it, certainly.

Static. Living static. It crackled in her mind, it breathed with her lungs.

And it did not know her.

We’re strangers, that dark and I. Oh, Quinnlash, but we’re here again. How the void calls, how the circuit creeps shut. To feel it, to forget your own skin and your own soul.

Hate it, Quinnlash.

Below, lights began to flash on the tablets. Brows shot up, murmurs abound. Besca could hardly believe her eyes—was she phasing? Already? If not, she was certainly close.

“Wonderful, Quinn. Just wonderful,” Follen said, and she wanted to slap the comm piece from his ear. “Only a minute or two more.”

Close. She was close. Close to what? The thrumming grew stronger, the power with it. It was raw, and liberating, and as it slowly built, thoughts came to her like questions from a child. Thoughts of Hovvi, of home. How could anything have been so small? How could her whole life have been a single room? Why?

Why don’t you hate this, Quinnlash?

Amygdala Circuit

I’m with you, even in the dark. Especially in the dark.

It was not dark for long.

The seat closed shut around Quinn, fastened her still and secure, but there was not much time to fret over it. As she sat there gulping down the frigid air, staring into the black and begging deliverance from anything that might hear her thoughts, the darkness began to smear. The chill left her, as if sucked away through a vacuum. A warmth duller than the suit took its place. Warmth and…strength.

Yes, sitting there terrified, the first thing to come to her was a feeling of immense power. Power and then lightness; she was a feather for a moment, hovering, too dainty for gravity to clutch. Like she had been living her whole life with a hundred pounds strapped to every limb, and they were taken away. The walls of her body, the limits of her being, they collapsed.

There passed a splitting moment only remembered later, where she was nothing, where Quinnlash blinked out of existence. So fast, so sudden, she wouldn’t even notice.

And then, light.

So much light, more than she’d seen in years. The world—or, rather, the hangar—opened up before her and it was so…so…much. There was so much of it, like it had doubled in size. And depth, too. It was strikingly dizzying—though, she’d notice, distinctly not nauseating. It might have taken several moments before she even began to realize what was happening.

She had two eyes.

Quinnlash had two eyes again.

Dahlia wasn’t lying—it hadn’t hurt at all. She was taller, much taller. She could feel the wall against her back, hard steel but neither was it cold or uncomfortable to her. It was as though the outermost layers of her skin were toughened, numbed. She knew there was feeling below, but it was guarded.

For many moments the silence continued. Below her, the group of crewmen and doctors and all gathered. Besca was there, too, hand pressed to her ear.

“Quinn! Quinn, can you hear me? You connected, you did great, hun! You did so great—you’re doing so great!”

She heard Besca’s voice in her ear, as though they were on the phone together. Without even needing to think about it, the volume adjusted perfectly.

“Quinn,” Follen’s voice joined them. “Well done, darling, the first hurdle is done. You don’t need to stand up or anything, you can just sit there and get comfortable. Though if you could, move your arms for us, flex your fingers, maybe stretch you legs out. Everything ought to feel just fine.”