Track 020: Questions

  Neon

  His voice was the first thing I heard. Echoed through my head with authority. And in that authority there was a kindness, like a parent waking a sleeping child. Further down, there was a nervousness and eagerness to it. Like a fawn walking on knobby knees, fighting to stay up on newborn legs. I instantly was warmed to the voice. Like a warm hearth in a winter cottage. I was drawn to that voice from the very beginning, and that’s because it was the first thing I’d ever heard.

  I didn’t pick the name Neon. It was written everywhere in the dorm room, even on their running shoes. Written in pinks and greens and blues. I know now that it was a tag. The paints were vibrant, and the works made me feel something in my core. That feeling led to my changing colors and the light I produce. That happened before I even touched the gauntlets.

  Who was Neon? When will those memories come back? When will I feel like a person and not just a sham walking around?

  Getting to be away from Kohl now feels good. I feel guilty about that, but I think we’d spend way too much time together in the same space sucking in each other’s air. He doesn’t smother me. I just feel like the more I push all of this down, the louder the questions get.

  That’s not fair… I just feel stymied. Trapped. And when I’m running, when I’m fighting, I don’t have to think about…not being real.

  I’m noticing as I careen through the city that there’s no trash anywhere. Cities are filthy. Even cities of the future. Especially abandoned cities of the future. What possibly could be cleaning up the trash?

  Reaching the Rock burrow, the entire city looks a bit different. A lot less neon and color pop, but the architecture is a bit more like brownstones and concrete jungle. This is for people who don’t want to live in a city of the future and for just want to pretend this place is like the rest of the world. I don’t get it personally but to each their own.

  I’m about a few minutes out from where things went badly for Bhati. I look over the area with the fancy supped up binoculars. No heat signatures stood out in the buildings. Overlaying her map data with mine and what I’m observing right now. I can see where she fell back and there’s no sign of a struggle. No upturned cars or scraps of clothing or spent shell casings, nothing material. Like something cleaned the scene afterwards. It was less than a day since things went down. The whole thing makes my skin crawl.

  I activate my Hide ability by bending and shifting the light around me and dimming my own. I quietly approach the place where the attack happens. There are a lot of marks on the ground I can’t place. Dark brown and slightly fewer black, having Gabrielle’s Scan ability would have come in really handy here. Luckily, there’s a red brown that I don’t really need any gear or special abilities to figure out. Blood.

  Click Click Click. I jump and spin, making a corkscrew in the air. The first flechette hit the pavement, the second passes under my shoulder, and the last flew wide. The moment I touch the ground, I back flip, avoiding the second volley. How are they hitting me while I’m still using hide?

  Evading the third volley makes it clear they’re firing from inside the laundromat on the left. Super-speed is lovely. Taking in so much information, as faster than the blink of an eye. I followed the rounds of and it all led there. Zooming in with my contacts on the location, I see a torn up storefront with knocked over industrial washers and dryer making a wall.

  Using a serpentine maneuver, I charge the makeshift redoubt. The fire this time becoming sporadic and desperate. I reach the wall, put my hand out and slide over it, both legs out to land on the person behind the wall, shooting me.

  I slam into them, releasing my Hide ability, my light reveals them. A Dominance grunt wriggles beneath me. Their scaly face promises unspoken revenge. Pale, sickly scales and film leaks from his iguana-like mouth. Glassy cataract eyes roll in its head. Wearing a dark cloth tunic.

  Ordinarily, he should be able to push me off, but he must be too weak. He’s a Putolu, not the strongest of the aliens we fought, but none of them have been sick like this.

  The thought isn’t mine. I can tell. It comes from the coral earring. It has whispered strange things before but, this is the first time the words have become this clear. This insistent. A kind voice that says the most destructive things, as if they’re as simple as saying, we should have waffles today.

  “Fuck that.” I draw a light dagger from my gauntlet. “One less asshole here means one less one to attack our friends.”

  “No, he dies, now.” I plunge the blade down and before it strikes. I hesitate. My hand shakes. He makes eye contact and somehow shakes me out of it. Reaffirming my need to end the threat.

  “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.” I repeat it, over and over again as drive my blade into the hilt of his body. The anger of my situation, The Dominance, the voice, myself. It all mixes into each of my strikes.

  Congratulations, you have defeated Ill Dominance Sentry!

  8 XP

  I sat in the room opposite of the body for a while. No one came to check on him, or look for him, not that I would have been ready for it. No patrols and he didn’t even have a communication device on him. They would have caught me down and out.

  Why would the voices of my ancestors ask me not to kill my oppressor? Why not kill The Dominace they’re trying to take over the world? If this thing didn’t give me access to Mirage abilities, I’d rip it out of my ear now. I don’t know that’s true. I don’t know that anything is true.

  I chuckle. This is my least favorite trope and now I’m living it. The main character gets gifted a cursed item and won’t destroy it immediately. Which leads to a long drawn out storyline where they fight the influence while it they could have saved themselves so much pain and trouble destroying it that first night. Amnesia and cursed item.

  It’s not true that I have forgotten everything. The only things that stick around are the media. I don’t remember my highschool graduation, but I remember who Luke’s father is. It’s really annoying because I know what things are and who all the digital monsters are. Neon prior has watched, read, and streamed so many pieces of media that I don’t know how it all fits into one lifetime.

  This life feels like monkey bars. I must struggle from one wrung to the next, but there is a new wrung there which allows me to swing closer to the next part. My life feels like a story so far and I’m not the author. There’s a railroad and I’m not the conductor. It’s been out of my hands since the beginning. My head is stuck on repeat, like I can’t move past my helplessness.

  Okay, okay, so maybe I can figure this out. Slumping down against the wall. Bending light into a tablet with my right gauntlet and a pen in my left. I need to figure out what’s going on and away from Kohl. Something about all this feels unnatural, like this isn’t the way things are supposed to work out. If I don’t figure this out now, I’ll be wheedling over it and he’ll just find out about this, just like my memories. Mix already told me he isn’t exactly as honest as he should be about how much he receives from our connections. But that’s not important now.

  - No memories before being awakened.

  The fact I don’t remember my life before I awakened is not only odd, it means something. There’s a reason that I was reborn five days ago. I was fated to be awakened. Whoever took my memories meant for that.

  Why does amnesia happen in stories? Either the villain causes it to further the plot or the good guys do it just because their lack of memories is important. I hope it’s not overbearing overlords pretending to be good guys. If I can’t even trust The Minority to have humanity’s best interest at heart, we’re kind of fucked. Either way, it’s usually the fulcrum of the story that the main character doesn’t remember. Which means looking for my memories isn’t likely to help me, just make me question at a crucial moment.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  - Light Generation.

  My body creates light. It comes from eyes and hair and my fingertips. It’s an odd thing. I don’t know why this happens. I questioned myself a lot when I first woke up and seeing the art past me produced; it touched me. My light is emotion based. I reacted to the art. When I’m happy or sad or even pensive. I glow. I can’t really do anything to stop unless I use an ability. These things don’t happen to any of the DreamRunners I’ve seen. From what Kohl says, it’s more likely to happen to DreamCrafters. It started even before I got the Light Gauntlets, which lead me to the next things to place on the list.

  -Alien Weaponry Knowledge

  -Light Gauntlets & Bound Weapons

  The perfect weapon and the perfect ability, compliments that would allow me to use it. Not only that, it would hide my light generation as if it was part of the use of the weapons. And The Bound Weapon means it will get better as I level up and it can be anything for me from a knife, a sword, or a gun. The optimal weapon for any range and I don’t have to worry about ammunition and upgrades.

  Now Mix got some choice powers. However, that’s different. They seem like someone who was going to make something of whatever they got. I don’t think anyone gets exactly what they’re going for. All of this to say, it’s ingenious. No one has caught on. If this isn’t intelligent design, I don’t know what is.

  -Wasn’t part of the workforce.

  There’s nothing on me that makes it seem like I could have been part of the workforce. My hair isn’t unkept. Even looks like I had a fresh cut last week. Where I got it while the world was under lock and key? I don’t know. After what happened to Mix’ hair, I doubt anyone would say I had the same thing happen.

  -I wasn’t chosen before Kohl

  The fact they killed every DreamCrafter they found before taking a break that would cost them one of their triad. Someone made sure it would be possible for us to save him and that we would exist. I don’t know what happened to those that were chosen by DreamCrafters before us. And that thought scares me.

  -Kohl

  I have been drawn to Kohl since the moment he entered my head. It scares me on multiple levels. One because I think I’m falling for someone who’s in the body of a cat. And two, it doesn’t bother me as much as it should. Three, he’s the most calm, attentive, intelligent, and sweet person I’ve ever met and I can’t help but be drawn in allover again. How is this not a setup?

  Maybe I’m supposed to have him lower his guard around me. He can’t read my thoughts or discern what needs to happen if I don’t have any memories or motives. Was it to protect me from him or vice versa?

  - Mix & Gabrielle

  Mix is probably the most determined person to change the world. I think if I was teamed up with someone like Omni we’d study the change or just run dungeons cause it’s fun. But Mix dreams of a new world and I can’t imagine that anything less than defeating The Dominance would make them happy.

  Firewall dreams of a world where science is the rising tide to raise any person out of the holes they’ve been placed in by the world or circumstance. She might even have a bigger dream than Mix, but if anyone could do that, it would be her. She’s got a mind like a spear. It’s as much her weapon as any. With dreams like this and a power to make it a reality, am I here to stop them or help them? What is my dream?

  - Cursed Item

  And now the earring, which is supposed to call long-dead ancestors but now whispers to me of saving them. It makes so much sense. I am an instrument of humanity’s defeat. I must be a weapon turned toward them. I won’t. I won’t be the thing that undoes Mix’ world. They’re going to do something brilliant and I will do everything to make sure I don’t screw it up for them.

  The second Dominance guard, I came across was in hiding on the sixth floor. It was some kind of sniper’s nest. The long gun was parked next to the wall. A sleeping nook crafted with trash and the guts of upholstery. Hand-sized bones littered the floor along with half-filled tubes of paste.

  I only figured out it was gun was because of the placement. Three fleshy chambers were at the top along the barrel. The barrel itself is a long white cylinder resting on rifle stock, with pitch black veins intertwining like ivy connecting through the entire apparatus. It was definitely Cronenburgian, like the anatomy of a particular protuberance.

  Flaking flesh from the burbling rifle litters the floor and next to it an iguanid Putolu forced itself from its legs and a reached out for the gun. He misses a few times. Before his hand grasps the gun, he falls dead, a light Dart stuck in his chest.

  Congratulations, you have defeated Weakened Dominance Sentry!

  6 XP

  “Why’d he give less XP than the other one?” Probably because this one was worse off than the others. I sling the living rifle on my back. Maybe someone could heal the flaking skin on the bladders. Rummaging around in the pockets, I find a nano and a pick-me-up.

  Congratulations, you have defeated Terminal Dominance Sentry!

  4 XP

  Congratulations, you have defeated Decaying Dominance Sentry!

  2 XP

  The last one was almost broke me. Asthmatic rasps came from an open mouth. The Putolu body rotted away before me while she was still alive. Scales falling away, black lightning veins scatter into under flesh, ooze streams out the mouth and ear holes. She might have been beautiful with her cobra’s hood and red-speckled white scales.

  I stumble away from her body. Wipe the vomit from my mouth. There were no voices this time. No pleas to heal them. Even the whispers were quiet. I knew it was a mercy, but I looked in her eyes as I did it. And she thanked me. Nothing should die like that. What did all of this?

  She had a wand on her, and I took it with us as well. Three talons splayed from the edges of a bronze like metal rod. Scales were carved into weapon like a lizard’s foreleg. It was designed beautifully and there was a way I was going to leave it here.

  I probably look ridiculous making way down towards the dead end where Vintage assumed this squad was held up. Some cars were turned over to act as barricades, and a few were just burned out. Splotches of old blood in various colors were painted over the asphalt. Scorch marks ringing pot holes dot the ground on the side of the barricade. It hadn’t rained in days, so the remnants of the battle were there on full display.

  I approach slowly, arms raised. Light pulled inside. I may be strapped but, I didn’t want them to think I was a threat. Heel to toe, heel to toe. I walk so slowly it felt like walking through cement. It’s not always like this but, when I have to be the most careful, it feels unbearable to be slow now.

  When I pull my light in. It’s like grabbing the light in me and pulling it back inside. Forcing down what makes me, me. Making myself smaller.

  It’s different when using hide. I’m just bending the surrounding light. I make sure none of the light I make or reflects off me hit the eyes of the people I want. That doesn’t mean I’m not noticeable. You could probably track the shadows or detect me another way, using your senses.

  “Who are you?” A gruff voice calls from the from behind the barricade.

  “I’m Neon,” I call back over. “I’ve come from The Resistance and I’m here to add you to their number.”

  “Are you one of them?”

  “The Dominance, of course not. I-”

  “No, the ones with the powers!” What? Have they had problems with human enemies? “We won’t let you in if you’re one of them… Not again.”

  The voice isn’t just scared. They’re terrified. Another mystery? Is this really happening to me?