"Sveta." "Garotte. I know you've heard the instructions about the protective safeguards a thousand times-" Jessica sighed. "-But I have to go over them anyways. There are regulations, Jessica, as you well know. You'll be wearing a type-C reinforced protective suit. The suits include both an inner and outer layer, the inner layer-" "Has a button in the palm. I can withdraw my fingers from the outer glove and press the button. At random intervals, you'll buzz me surreptitiously…" "And we expect you to press the button to verify that you're okay. You can press it twice in the event of an emergency." "The damn thing has malfunctioned and interrupted three of my last seven sessions with her." "It's what we have for the time being. If you don't verify your own safety or if you signal an emergency, we'll employ containment foam through the sprinkler system." "And I'll be stuck here for another hour, with another four pages of paperwork after the fact." ***** They'd reached the changing room, and Jessica pulled on the protective inner-suit. The suit fit close to her body, smelled faintly of someone else's sweat, and consisted of a stretching mesh covered in fine chain link. The entire thing was reinforced by a grid of metal bars, complete with oiled hinges at each joint, so she had a near-full range of motion. Zipping it up, it went straight up her neck, the bars running vertically down her throat. She couldn't look down without getting jabbed in the soft flesh beneath her jaw. It made it harder to get the outer suit on. The entire thing was one piece, like footie-pajamas, and the fabric was heavy, with alternating layers of insulated fabric and more chain mesh. ****** The heavy fabric exterior suit fit her like hazardous materials gear, bulky, broad, leaving a great deal of empty space between her body and the fabric. Protective airbags of more reinforced cloth inflated to fill that space. She stepped into the dock, and the door behind her shut. The next door opened. The room was empty. The wall had a mural painted on it, ocean waves and beautiful architecture that Jessica couldn't place as belonging to any particular era or culture. There was a short, translucent table littered with painting and drawing supplies, and what looked like a cat's tiered scratching post, extending floor to ceiling, securely bolted to both. Mirrors were fixed to the wall, to show that the room's resident wasn't hiding behind it. "Come on out, Sveta," she said. She clenched her teeth and braced herself for the ambush. Sveta had been waiting above the door. Tendrils snaked around the neck of the protective suit, and cinched tight in a moment. Even with her full knowledge of the suit's protective qualities, Jessica felt her heartbeat quicken. Deep breath. Her breath caught in her chest as she heard the faintest, almost inaudible sound of metal creaking. More tendrils had caught her legs and arms, and even lashed across the room to catch the only points available to hold, the two-inch diameter bolts that held the scratching post 'bed' to the ground. "So sorry," Sveta whispered. "Sorry." Jessica felt her arm jolt as one set of tendrils lashed up the length of her right arm to catch her gloved fingers. Each finger was pulled in a different direction, but the metal reinforcement in the outer glove held, and her hand wasn't crumpled like tissue paper. "Relaxation exercises, Sveta. Don't try to fight the instincts all at once, don't worry about me…" Sveta convulsed, contorted, and every part of her drew tighter. Jessica heard something metal give way, felt a small component tap her shoulder, bouncing around the interior of the outer suit before settling in her boot. Calm. Sound calm. "…Just focus on your extremities. Flex them, release them, repeat." Another contortion. Jessica forced herself to take a deep breath, simultaneously cursing whoever had let this defective equipment go back in the changing room. "I'm so sorry," Sveta said. "I'm trying, but it's making it worse." "Take your time," she replied, defying every instinct that was telling her to get out of this dangerous situation: to press the button, fight or panic. Like Sveta's, her instincts weren't serving her best interests here. Unlike Sveta, she could fight them. Sveta contorted, and an airbag gave way in the suit's midsection. "Oh!" Sveta said. She'd noticed, and the realization coincided with further constriction. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Yamada! No, no!" "It's fine," Jessica lied. Too many things were going wrong with the suit, all at once. Why? There had to have been an altercation between another staff member and a violent patient. The only reason this many safeguards would be giving way would be if the suit had sustained recent damage. Except it had gone unreported, and the suit had gone back on the shelf. "Should have- we should have done this through the glass," Sveta moaned. "I'm sorry. I like you. I don't want you to die." "We're striving to socialize you, right? That's our goal? We can't do that without regular human contact." "I'm going to kill you. I don't want to but I'm going to. I'll-" "Hush," Jessica said, sounding far, far calmer than she felt. "Take-" She nearly said take a deep breath. She corrected herself. "-a few seconds and keep doing your relaxation exercises. Flex your extremities, relax them. Flex, relax, steadily work your way up, inch by inch. Look at me. I'm not worried. I'm in this suit. I feel safe. Okay?" "O-okay." "I want you to think of all the progress we've made since the start of the year." "But something popped in the suit just now." "We wear the same suits for multiple patients. That was a safeguard to protect any patients that might collide with us. It's not meant for you. Don't worry." Jessica hated lying to her patients. "It's not- it's okay?" "It's okay," Jessica soothed. "You remember our goal, right?" "Christmas?" "I think you're well on your way to your goal. That's what you think of when you're trying to be positive, right? You can celebrate Christmas with a few other patients, people who you can't hurt. I just met one of them, I think. A new patient of mine. She's someone who could use some friends." Like a dozen frog's tongues, tendrils snapped across the length of the room to the 'bed', encircling it. In another second, as though each tendril were elastic bands stretched to their limits, Sveta had shifted there, her tendrils gripping the post as she hung from it. Jessica was free. Sveta was little more than a very pale face with thin tendrils streaming around it like hair. Small organs dangled from the largest of the tendrils that extended from the back of her face. A small symbol marked the girl's cheekbone: a stylized 'c', in black. It took Sveta a second before she relaxed enough to let the tendrils uncoil from the post. The tendrils settled in the air, in a rough facsimile of where a person's limbs might be. She'd positioned herself so that the organs could rest on the 'shelves' on the post. "I'm sorry," Sveta said, eyes downcast. "I'm fine. I understand," Jessica soothed. She shifted position, and one tendril snapped out to catch her leg, gripping her around the knee, squeezing and twisting with a strength that could have torn every ligament in her knee and wrenched Jessica's calf from her upper leg. Sveta flinched, closed her eyes for a second, and the tendril moved back to the post. The suit had held. No damage done. - Interlude 18.3 _________ "I'm not playing," Sveta said, and the anger was gone, just as fast as it had appeared. "I'm- I'm telling you that if you'd asked, at any point along the way, I'd probably have told you I'd rather be dead. I'd rather be dead than live this new life you gave me, where I spent years killing people by accident, unable to sleep, killing stray animals for food because my body decides when I eat, not my mind…" - Venom 29.7 _________ "Don't move, don't talk. You're not there," she murmured, barely audible. My eyes moved to the stairwell and the scene below. My teammates were there. Lung and Canary were as well. "The only ones here are me and my thoughts," Sveta said. Her eyes were shut. "I am in control of my mind and my feelings, and I am focused. I am confident, and I am building towards a better future for myself. Every success is a component in building that up, a brick on a building in construction, but my mistakes do not tear it down." The stand she was wrapped around creaked. "My mistakes do not tear it down. They are a part of me, but they are not the most important part of me." * Sveta let go of the table. Her tendrils extended into the air around her, like a sea anemone's fronds. Here and there, they touched things and snapped into place with a destructive power: the refrigerator that had held the Balance sample, a shelving unit, a countertop with drawers in front.. They caught on the bugs in the area, and they extinguished my swarm with an almost ruthless efficiency. Too many tendrils for my bugs to navigate between them, the movements too unpredictable as they drifted in the air, responding to air currents. The tendrils were severing steel handles on the drawers, a bug's flesh was nothing. * My bugs reached Sveta. She was pulling herself free of rubble. "Sveta." She looked around, confused. "The bugs." Her tendrils killed maybe sixty bugs as she focused her attention on them. "It's Taylor. Skitter, or Weaver. Whatever you know me as." She killed more before she got herself firmly secured to a large piece of concrete. ________ Sveta's head turned my way, by a rotation and flexibility that a normal neck didn't have. Her face was streaked in blood, her eyes were wide, and she was lost in herself in a way that broke my heart to see. That heartbreak stopped when I saw a grouping of tendrils move, but it wasn't a good stopping. It was sudden, numbing shock that stopped all other feelings, thoughts and processes. The grouping of tendrils all grasped the same thing- a lump of a shape in black fabric. Blood streaked the smooth ground where the fabric touched it. "What are you doing out of costume, Sveta?" I asked. I sounded so normal. There was no response. "Where's Swansong?" I asked. Still normal. She dropped her eyes to the ground. Tentacles flailed madly. "Crystalclear?" I asked. More tentacles bunched around the fabric. I stepped forward. I felt the buzz of ambient electricity in the air. I moved my hand and felt it intensify by multiple factors. Something told me that if I reached the threshold where this invisible electric fence divided the room, the electricity would converge on a single point, aiming to repel me. Tristan, Lookout, Rain and the others caught up. They stopped a few paces behind me, looking over and under my shoulder at the scene. "Where's Ratcatcher?" I asked. Tendrils twisted at the black fabric. Something crunched inside. She flicked it at me, limb snapping out like a whip. I activated the Wretch by raw instinct, and the Wretch intersected the electric field. An invisible hand caught the cloth, and the nimbus of electricity briefly drew an outline around the Wretch. Better at dealing with sustained onslaughts. Something crashed behind me. I turned to look, still tense as the Wretch held out against electricity and held the black cloth. Rain had kicked the tinker's tech-upgraded chair. Another kick, and the electricity went away. Rain and Capricorn both hauled the guy out of his chair, back and away. I let the Wretch drop away. The fabric hit the ground, and immediately, tendrils began reaching for it. Unrecognizable bits of flesh rolled out. "You did that on purpose," I said. She looked at me, and I saw nothing of Sveta in that face. "Kingdom Come," I said. The black cloth- none of the others had been wearing black. They'd been wearing prison uniforms. The cloth was Kingdom Come's own costume. "He's controlling her?" Lookout asked. "He's trying," I said, my voice shaky with the relief. "But the thing about Tress is that she's worked ridiculously hard to get to where she is. It takes a kind of strength, and that asshole doesn't have it." Kingdom Come opened Sveta's mouth, worked her jaw. No words came out. She doesn't have full lungs, Kingdom Come, I thought. For her first year or so, she couldn't talk or explain herself, not that she even knew the language. - Gleaming 9.13