Love Lost Good Eye

“They’re not there,” Samuel said.

“What?” I asked.

He pointed into the room.  “Nothing there, emotion-wise.”

“You have friends,” Roman told Juliette.

She shrugged.

“I mean… I don’t think there’s anything there, even outside of emotions.”

“Yeah.  I’m not getting a buzz telling me my power is working,” Imp said, which startled me a bit.  She was standing in the open doorway.

Then, not using her power, she walked out into the space where hundreds of people sat on benches and on, for lack of a better word, shelves.  Ambulatory people walked between them, stiff and joyless, and gave each water, then food.  One was collecting people, taking them away in groups.

None were aware enough to see us.

Hundreds of people, in an area as long as a soccer field.

Hostages for Teacher, or people he could potentially wake up to send after us.  We couldn’t move forward with this behind us.

Love Lost’s claws clicked as she walked on the floor.  Fume Hood followed a few steps behind, as we fanned out a bit, staying within arm’s reach of one another.

There were kids, dressed in white, staring off into space, opening their mouths as someone spooned food in or offered water.

“What the fuck are we supposed to do with all of this?” Fume Hood asked, voicing my thoughts exactly.

- Dying 15.1

*

“I can’t allow it,” the doctor said.  “These people are my responsibility.”

“You can’t stop us,” Swansong said.  “It’s the best compromise.  Accept it.”

I saw the doctor’s expression change, concern, almost mortal alarm.

“Don’t,” Samuel said.

The doctor twisted around, drawing in a breath.

“Defense-”

He didn’t get any further.  Whatever command he was about to shout, whatever cry for help he was about to make, it was drowned out by Love Lost screaming.

The scream had collateral damage.  Other people on the bench.  People across the hangar.  They stirred awake, emotions taking over, and rose to their feet, their emotions and their energy level swiftly accelerating from zero to one hundred.  Raw anger.

*

Love Lost had the doctor in a headlock, and the man seemed to be winding down.

“Maybe, uh, watch your aim?” Precipice asked.  “That was messy.”

Love Lost gave him a death glare.  Extricating herself from the two-armed headlock to maintain a one-armed headlock instead, she pointed a claw at the rows of people on the ‘shelves’ at the one wall.  She seemed to be counting, pointing once a second as she moved her arm.

The doctor struggled, and she resumed the two-arm headlock.

“She did actually,” Samuel said.

“What?”

“When this guy shouted out the first word, about… twenty-five or thirty people suddenly started paying attention,” Samuel said, indicating the assembled people.  “This one guy on the bench included.”

“Waking up the warrior drones,” Precipice said.

“Yeah,” Samuel said.  “How many of those guys do you think are capes?”

“All of ’em,” Imp said.  She stuck her stick into the doctor, made a hand-motion for Love Lost to let him go, and then turned it on.

He collapsed.

“Was good, then,” Rain said, looking at Love Lost.  “Thank you.”

She gave him another dark glare.

“Okay.  Shutting up.”

She nodded.

- Dying 15.2