Then
Bone cleats dig into plaster-dusted carpet, propelling Mitosis down the hallway. She sees in double, one head always looking forward, right and left sharing that duty as she glances into open doors or down side passages.
Behind her another hero tries to keep up the pace. A giant wearing a bulbous shell. It reminds her of a person-shaped pastry, each segment puffy and rounded. She slows slightly as she turns a corner, giving the overinflated tire mascot time to catch up.
A jingle tickles her ear, courtesy of her phone. Paragon’s ringtone.
“What up?” she answers with her left mouth, closest to the earbud mic.
“The basement’s clear, so far. I saw an alarm on one of the freight elevators, but the emergency phone wasn’t working. Can you check it out?”
“Um, lemme see…” She racks her brains, trying to recall her exact position. “Aight, gonna be a bit out of the way, but we can get it.”
“Thanks. Be careful.”
“‘Course,” she says, terminating the call.
Mitosis leans into a turn, keeping her speed.
“Hey Bubble boy!” she calls back, only to realize her mistake.
Fuck, I don’t know what’s under there.
“Or Bubble girl? Bubble… they?” she asks, feeling like she’s grasping at straws.
The hero’s name is, of course, not ‘Bubble’. But fuck if she’s going to try to pronounce Orrery.
Bubble rounds the corner after her, and speaks in a digitized voice.
“It suffices.”
“They? Okay, cool.”
“Not ‘they.’ It.”
“Aw, c’mon buddy, you’re selling yourself short.”
She looks behind herself with one head, her neck able to twist all the way around. Bubble’s domed ‘head’ is smiling.
“No. You are short.”
“Oh, hardy har,” Mitosis says with one head, laughing with the other. “So funny. Anyway, in case ya didn’t notice, we’ve got a change of plans.”
“Yes. The elevator.”
Instinctively, Mitosis tilts her rear-facing head to its right. It bumps its twin, hurting that head’s ear.
“Ow. Uh, I mean, what?”
“Your teammate informed me.”
“Right. Duh.”
Mitosis skids to a stop as they reach the floor’s center, dominated by the building’s elevator tubes. She darts over to the largest doors, digging her fingers into the gap, two hands on each door. Despite the effort of her four arms, they don’t budge.
“Urgh,” she grunts, trying again. Nothing.
She can see Bubble behind her, one hand grasping a column.
“Move,” the giant says.
She ducks to the side. Bubble pushes its free arm forward, palm open. A sphere of dim, silver light shoots forth, expanding as it travels. Bubble’s fist closes as the sphere envelops the elevator doors. The space seems to freeze, motes of dust suspended in midair.
Bubble pulls the fist back and the sphere follows, tearing the doors and part of the frame from the wall. Bubble slips forward with the action, its other hand leaving marks on the column.
Mitosis sticks her heads through the hole, peering down the elevator shaft. She can see the car, about a floor and a half down. An emergency hatch is cracked open, just a bit.
“Hello! Anyone in there?” she shouts.
The hatch swings up, and a man’s face pokes out.
“Oh, thank Christ,” he says. “Can you get us out of here?”
“Just hold on!” she answers, jumping onto a cable.
With four hands and two legs she can climb about three-fourths as well as a spider, and she reaches the car quickly. Mitosis leaps down through the open hatch, and surveys the car’s occupants.
Three men: one young, in a nice suit; two middle aged, wearing janitorial or maintenance uniforms. Two women: an older lady in a turtleneck, and a thirty-something in a striped suit with a black skirt. A pallet jack is in the corner, holding a fairly large safe.
“Okay, ladies and gents, who can’t climb through that hatch?”
The older woman raises her hand. Shortly after, one of the maintenance men does.
“Bad knee,” he says.
“Okie dokie. So, y’all three who can climb, you’re going to help get these two out of here first. You boost ‘em, I’ll lift ‘em.”
Mitosis leaps up, hauling herself through the hatch, getting into position.
She helps the old lady get out and on her feet, then helps the man do the same.
“Where are we going to go?” the woman asks, slightly panicked. “There’s no doors here!”
“I’m gonna climb each of you guys up the cables, and hand you off to Bubble, up there,” Mitosis explains, pointing up at the hole.
As the other three climb out onto the car’s roof, Mitosis draws on her power, modifying her feet. The bone cleats liquify, wicking into her flesh. Growing things is easier than modifying, and she draws on her reserves of material, lengthening her toes into finger-like digits, long enough to touch her heel. The muscles and tendons of her ankles shift, completing the transformation of her feet into makeshift claws, capable of gripping the lift cables.
“Okay,” she starts, addressing the group, “are we ready?”
No one steps forward. Typical.
Mitosis grabs the young man’s wrist, hoists him over her shoulder, and then uses her remaining limbs to start climbing the cable. Once at the top she hands him over.
“Can you stay here and help, if Bubble needs you to?”
He nods.
“Thanks.”
She descends, picks a person, then begins the next ascent.
Each trip feels slower than the last, as the building creaks around them. Debris falls down the shaft a few times, impacting the elevator car.
The thirty-something is the last to be rescued. She would have been third, but she had gone back into the car and only returned now, a briefcase stuffed with papers in her hands.
Typical bankers.
Halfway through their ascent the building begins to shake. She picks up her pace, scrambling up the cable. The shaking intensifies, and she can hear metal groaning, concrete cracking.
The top of the elevator shaft breaks apart and a chunk falls down, crashing through the elevator car. The thirty-something cries out, holding the briefcase over her head.
She throws the woman through the hole, preparing to jump after her. At that moment Bubble’s hands clap together, and a silver sphere envelops the area. The thirty-something stops in mid air, just above the carpet.
Mitosis finds herself embedded in the sphere, her upper right side sticking out of it. She struggles and tries to push herself deeper, only to find it impossible. It feels like she’s covered in clay and buried in concrete, the slightest movement a struggle, a constant pressure keeping her in place. She manages only the shallowest breaths.
She realizes she can’t save her right head: the process is too long, too tedious. She only has a minute, maybe even seconds.
Mitosis looks at the back of her left head, safe inside the sphere, and places her bet.
Her lower right arm is unnatural, letting her power dissolve it, reducing the flesh into a slurry of material and sucking it into her body. What reserves remain outside the sphere are drained as well.
The structure around them shifts, sunlight pouring down into the elevator shaft as more pieces come free. She wraps her right hand around the cable, clutching it tightly.
She hears an ear-splitting twang. A cable whips around the sphere’s surface. It cuts through her rib cage and she screams. Her peripheral vision catches the blood splatter, trailing upwards.
The building plummets into the earth, bringing her with it.
Her eyes open and take in darkness.
Am I dead?
The thought materializes in her mind, a product of neurons crossing signals as her brain transitions from sleep to wakefulness. She would hesitate to call it her thought. She merely owns it, in the way someone owns the dust under their bed.
Her legs quiver as she stands, doing her best to balance. Not the easiest task when she’s got two left arms weighing her down.
Today would be day… two? Three? Hard to be sure—being underground has certainly ruined her circadian clock.
White light floods her vision. After several blinks her eyes adjust: the man with a bad knee, Abe, holding his phone up, flashlight on.
“Hero girl, you up?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Wouldn’t happen to have any snacks, would you?”
Mitosis shakes her head.
“Nope, just the water bottle.”
“Shit.”
“Look, I’m hungry too, but it’s not been that long.”
“There’s something wrong with Janice. She’s been feeling light-headed. Liv’s keeping her company.”
Janice… right, turtleneck lady.
“Bring me to her.”
Abe nods and turns around, with Alyssa following the phone’s little cone of light. The office floor had remained surprisingly intact, thanks to Bubble’s quick thinking. Their first day had been spent trapped by Bubble’s power, waiting for the shaking to stop, for the ground to settle. That day had been hard for the civilians, but easy for her. Being a victim of decapitation wasn’t so bad when you had a spare, and she’d used her power to seal the wound then will herself to sleep. The towering hero remained standing in the center of their little corporate cavern, a raised fist projecting a sphere into the rubble above, keeping them safe.
The tiny torch sweeps over a doorway, illuminating a chunk of office space. Liv, the thirty-something, sits on a desk, Janice in the chair next to her.
“Jan, wake up. Hey?”
The older woman’s eyes flutter, not quite open all the way, and she manages to lift her head.
“Huh… yes?”
“Mitosis is awake. The hero. Tell her what’s wrong.”
The woman holds a hand to her forehead, rubbing at her eyes and face.
“I—Terribly sorry, I just need one thing to eat, a snack, a bit of candy maybe.”
“Sorry, lady.” Mitosis shakes her head. “I got nothing.”
“Oh dear. Oh, that’s really not good. Oh no.”
“What’s not good?”
“I’m diabetic,” Janice says, patting her abdomen with her free hand. “I got a pump implanted years ago, for insulin. I practically eat the same things every day, so I keep the control at home, half the time I forget it’s there.”
Fuck
“I take it your sugars ain’t doin’ too great?”
Liv nods, grimacing. “We managed to get my phone to talk to it and turn it off, about an hour ago. I think it said fifty, then.”
“Oh…”
“Is that bad?”
“Ye—let’s just stay calm, okay? I’ll think of something.”
Food, think, food…
She didn’t bring any; there’d been no reason to. Closest she has is the water bottle that’s already run dry.
Bubble?
No—Bubble is probably a robot, given that it hasn’t budged in what felt like days, and has rarely spoken.
Which leaves nothing. Unless…
There’s me.
Her body contains a reservoir of sorts. A hydraulic network she modeled on the lymph system, its vessels woven into the fascia underneath her skin. The network is densest on her thighs, hips, and stomach for convenience, but it extends beneath her entire surface. Smooth muscle lines it, allowing her to pressurize the contents. When she needs it she opens valves or grows them for the purpose, squeezing out proto-human goop that she can mold like living clay.
Okay, proto-human isn’t quite accurate. It’s more like a zygote, in source and composition, but she won’t tell anyone that much. Problem is, she’s got so little left, and they might be down here for a long time.
Not to mention, it’d be weird.
But…
Mitosis looks at Janice—she’s starting to shake, with beads of sweat on her face.
…But she’s gonna die if I don’t do something.
Mitosis focuses her power, sculpting out new channels. Easiest in her lower arm, the power-built flesh shifting almost effortlessly. Special cells take root along the edges of the channels, growing into glands that bridge into her network. The new paths coalesce on the back of her hand, a final route winding around her middle finger and opening up at its tip.
She unhooks the bottle from her belt, sticks her finger into it, and kicks the glands into action.
“Hey, Janice, you’re not lactose intolerant, right?” Mitosis asks as she holds up the bottle, white liquid sloshing within.
It’s hard to tell if the woman’s appalled, or if the insulin shock is making her that pale.
“Is that…?”
“You’ve got a choice between this, my best attempt at tartare, or going into a coma and dying. What’s it gonna be?”
Janice’s eyes settle on the floor, lids barely open, for several moments. Just as Mitosis starts to worry, the woman lifts her head up.
“Liv, could you hold the bottle? I don’t want to spill it.” Janice’s voice is shaky, but she sounds calm, now.
Mitosis hands the bottle off, and the older woman makes eye contact.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. Really.”
Mitosis monitors her body as she rouses. Breaths become deeper. Her heart beats faster. She tempers the process, optimizing for efficiency. She needs every bit of energy her body can provide, and she needs it to last.
Her reservoir is usually laden with slurry, forty-two pounds of it. Being forty-two pounds ‘overweight’ isn’t fun, but it’s a small price to pay to use her power at its fullest.
Normally she’d have enough to live off of, at least for a while. But she’d spent fourteen on the second head. Another fourteen on the extra arms. A pound here for more strength, a pound there to fit the task at hand. She’d been down to eight during the elevator rescue. Reclaiming one arm gave her about six back—some is always lost, burned to fuel growth. She spent four to heal from her partial decapitation.
And the past five days had seen her final ten pounds get used up, eaten, mostly by her. A few given out here and there, to those in need.
All she has left now is a single ounce, an ounce she won’t use. If she did, she’d have to grow a new cell line from scratch. She’d still have her power, and despite the empty reservoir she’d be able to regrow, but it would be costly. Six weeks of downtime to culture and nurture a new reserve, another two due to her injuries. Any power use would mean self-cannibalism in the meantime.
Mitosis rolls onto her stomach, crawling along the floor slowly and deliberately, one hand stretched outward. They have been in total darkness ever since the civilians had run out their phones’ batteries, not too long ago. Her own phone still has a charge, but she’s kept it off, saving it.
Her hand bumps something round, something metal. She raps on it lightly with her knuckles.
“Good afternoon, Mitosis,” Bubble whispers.
“Damn, guess I overslept, huh?”
“It is good to sleep. Uses less air.”
Mitosis nods. “How are our financier friends doing?”
“I have asked those who are awake to be quiet. I believe I heard something earlier, and I have been trying to listen.”
“What was it?”
“An explosion. Some sort of blasting, I think.”
“You, uh, sure it’s not another quake?”
She can hear a motor whine—Bubble shaking its head.
“This was too regular. But I haven’t heard it for some time.”
“Lift me up?” she asks, pointing at the ceiling. “I’ll have a listen.”
A hand wraps halfway around her torso, hoisting her into the air and onto Bubble’s shoulders. Even with the giant hero’s height, the ‘roof’ is too far away, her head brushing against the drop ceiling supports. She walks over Bubble’s head, her claw-like feet holding her steady, and climbs the giant’s other arm, her hand finding a grip on a clenched fist. Mitosis balances herself atop it, clutching a sprinkler pipe for stability, and presses her ear to the metal underside of the floor above. She focuses on the ear and mutes her other senses, amplifying this one.
A scream meets her ear, shrill, yet distant. A rumble just after. Then more rumbles. Impacts, of some kind.
“Digging, I think,” she says softly. “Sounds like they hit your orb and can’t crack it.”
“Hmm.” Bubble’s voice resonates in the room, even at a whisper. Mitosis can hear some movement, a yawn or two, as at least one of the civilians wakes up.
“You are certain?” Bubble asks.
“I mean, what else would it be?” Mitosis answers with a shrug—weird, when she only has one shoulder.
“‘Sides, it’s good news.”
“I hoped they would come from an angle. This is… complicated.”
“Can’t you just, I dunno, lift the sphere up?”
“No.” The motor whines, again. “It is too heavy. I would be moved instead. Even if I could lift it, the debris would cave in.”
“Right. Hm, well, how’s about you let that sphere drop, and freeze everyone again?”
“Risky. The structure might collapse, and our envelope would have to be smaller to let them dig us out.”
“Which they will.”
“Or, they will assume we have died.”
Mitosis shrugs.
“We’re going to start dropping dead in a few days, anyway. We need to do something, or our rescuers will move on to people they can save.”
“This is true. Agreed.”
Bubble claps its free hand against its chest with a bang. The sound evokes a gasp, panicked shuffling, and a groan from the darkness.
“Everyone, please listen carefully,” Bubble begins, having waited a moment. “Mitosis and I believe we are close to being rescued. I will have to stop using my power to keep the debris at bay, in order for us to be excavated. The floor might collapse when I let go, so everyone will have to be locked by my power again. Do you understand?”
The civilians say ‘yes’ or some variation. For her part, Mitosis nods.
“Please get as close to me as you can, and in a comfortable position. We may be stuck for some time.”
Mitosis climbs on top of Bubble again, anticipating a minor crush of bodies. Careful footsteps give way to the occasional bump or accidental grope. ‘Sorry’s and other apologies follow. A few expletives, too.
She tilts her head, keeping one ear pointed upwards.
“Brace yourselves,” Bubble warns.
Earth above her shifts. A wall blows out, rubble flowing in.
Bubble’s hands slam together with a deafening clap, locking them in place as the floor collapses around them.
Metal teeth drag at stone and concrete, breaking it, shoveling it away. On the second pass one such tooth grazes the sphere right above Mitosis’ ear, pushing them slightly deeper.
After five days underground even moonlight would be blinding. Spotlights worm through cracks as the excavator scoops rubble off of them, beams suspended in the dust burn purple lines across her vision. Darkness returns as the excavator bucket pushes through the rubble on both sides, closing around the sphere. It lifts them upwards, and nausea works its way to her throat as they move.
Mitosis screws her eyes shut as the bucket opens, the capillaries of her eyelids stand out as red webs against pink flesh in the glare of the lights. She can hear workers’ voices, muffled by the sphere’s boundary, joined by the rumble of engines.
Bubble drops the sphere. Mitosis stays still, holding on to the giant’s armored shoulders. She can hear a few of the civilians crying, others laughing, celebrating. She waits until the workers lead them out of earshot, then climbs down and finally opens her eyes, blinking as they adjust.
There’s a group of civilian workers in their work uniforms and reflective vests. Two of the normals are different—soldiers with hardhats. One of them approaches, an officer probably, with a castle patch on his sleeve.
“Aliases and organizations?” he says.
“Orrery,” Bubble volunteers. “Community Guard, Pacific division.”
The officer nods, then looks down at her.
“Mitosis. I’m with Conduit’s team.”
“You two did some great work, keeping these people alive. The air ambulance will be leaving soon, if either of you need transportation.”
“I will walk,” Bubble declares. The giant projects a sphere into the distance, and another into the ground. A shove and a pull is all it takes for Bubble to become airborne, bounding out of the ruins.
“I think I’ll find a truck or something, if that’s okay?” she asks.
The officer holds up a finger, motioning to the phone at his ear.
“Hold on a moment.”
Mitosis shrugs.
If he’s got signal, then… she thinks, reaching for her own phone. It’s a bit difficult, with both her hands on the other side. She nearly drops it, fumbling as she pulls it out of the small pocket sewn into her spandex costume.
“Conduit, this is Warrant Officer Brooks. We’ve found your missing teammate.”
She listens to the officer’s call as her own phone turns on. She can’t quite make out Conduit’s response, but she can tell he’s surprised.
Thanks for the confidence, buddy.
Her phone goes to the lock screen. Even with Conduit’s modifications it’s still a consumer model, and it doesn’t recognize the face she’s wearing. She dries the tip of her tongue with her costume and licks the fingerprint scanner instead, unlocking the phone. She dials Paragon’s number, and selects video call as it rings.
“Hey, it’s meeeee,” she says as the call connects, holding the phone out.
The image is bad. Closer to aliased blobs of color than an actual picture, though she can make out Paragon’s formal mask.
She uses her other left hand to poke a thumb at where her right head was.
“I’m guessing righty didn’t make it?”
The response is garbled. Or, it would be garbled, if Mitosis had been able to make out any words. It sounds more like static run through a blender.
“Hey, uh, the signal’s terrrrrrrrible here, so I’ll try to call again later, okay?”
More blender-static.
“Bye-bye!” she says, and slips the phone back into its pocket.
“Mitosis,” Brooks says, grabbing her attention, “there’s been a change of plan. You’re to be medevaced immediately.”
“Look, bu—uh, Sir, I know this”—she pats the skin covering the hole in her torso, where her shoulder was—“looks pretty bad, but it’s fine.”
“Conduit requested it. He said you’re needed at the hospital.”
Mitosis grimaces.
“Uh, yeah, I don’t need that. I take care of myself.”
“One of your teammates is dying, and she needs your help.”
Alyssa feels enslaved by her nerves as the helicopter approaches the hospital. Every time she quells them, stamping out signals with her power, another urge to fidget rises from her subconscious, another limb starts to tremble.
She steels herself as she steps onto the pavement and walks through the hospital doors. Pungent odors assault her nose, markers of disease and disinfectant. Her vision shifts, narrowing, letting her only see the hall ahead and distant walls.
Just keep walking forward. Just keep walking. Don’t look. Just walk.
Alyssa darts past the elevators and enters the stairwell, climbing three steps at a time despite her gait. She holds the floor and room number in her mind, focusing on them, shoving other thoughts aside.
This floor is busy, commandeered by the trauma center below. She does her best to slip past nurses, patients, and doctors without getting in their way. She doesn’t hesitate to shove her way through, either.
The room is in a quiet area, the isolation wing. Its blinds are shut, obscuring her view. A blast of warm air hits her face as she opens the door, and it resists her attempts to close the door behind her.
Conduit and Paragon are there, in costume—or at least Conduit is. Paragon is wearing her dress mask and a hospital gown, floating a foot above the floor, a metal frame around one leg.
Alyssa bounds over to Cindy and wraps her in a hug, or tries as best as she can with two left arms. It’s a bit awkward; usually her forehead would bump against Cindy’s collarbone. With Cindy floating in the air, Alyssa finds her face pressed against Cindy’s abs instead.
“Oh my god Cindy, I—” She chokes on her words, trying to speak past sobs as pent-up emotion overflows. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Cindy grabs her by the shoulder and gently pushes her away.
“I’m fine, but—”
“What?” Alyssa interrupts. “But—but, your leg, and—and they said you were dying…“
Alyssa shakes her head; it doesn’t make sense. She notices, now, the sound of a heartbeat monitor, beeping quietly, but Cindy doesn’t have any leads on her.
“Look,” Cindy says.
Cindy guides her to turn around, facing a bed occupying the center of the room. Several wires and lines run under the bed sheet, along with a tube. She approaches the bed slowly, cautiously, then folds the sheet back.
“Holy fuck,” Alyssa whispers, her eyes wide.
Her right head lays on the pillow, an oxygen mask on its face. What was her right arm is folded up beside her missing upper ribs, skin-wrapped bones cradling a naked heart. It beats, slower and weaker than it should, but it beats nonetheless.
“How?” she asks, looking at Cindy.
“I found her, and I helped her. She’s been fighting every day, but she’s getting worse. Can you, I don’t know, put the two of you back together? Will that help her?”
Does it matter? she wonders. But she knows that’s not what Cindy wants to hear.
“Yeah, um, gimme a minute.”
Alyssa reaches out and places her hand on what was her right shoulder. Her power makes contact, and she can tell something is wrong. Rampant infection, fever, buildup of waste. There’s something more, something that feels too… real. Her lower left arm, being a creation of her power, feels unreal, temporary. She could dissolve it right now, if she wanted to.
When she had been whole, the same was true of the inner halves of her two heads. Her power is finicky with her brain: it doesn’t let her change it as much as the rest of her, but she has learned to copy it. It was simple, really. Just split her head in two and use each half as a template, filling in what was missing from each. But now everything feels permanent.
It kind of made sense. She’d lost permanent parts before, and any replacements she grew became permanent. This was the same thing.
Maybe I need to hook-up first.
Alyssa draws on her power. The stub of spinal column that her right head sprouted from is still there, hidden under skin. Alongside the spinal cord is another neural bundle: corpus callosum. It is the structure that links each half of the brain, and to keep both of her heads in sync, she had modified it. Lengthening it when she had bisected herself from the sternum up, keeping the two halves in contact. When she had filled in each half to create two heads she expanded the structure, crossing the pathways to keep the heads in sync while preserving their independence.
With the final ounce of her reserves she pushes that specialized nerve bundle out slowly, layer by layer, wary of the pain. By the end she manages a foot and a half of neurons, more than a bit raw. Taking the end in her lower hand she leans over the bed, guiding it to the matching stump on her right half. Her power lets her draw the skin covering it away, and she connects the nerves together.
She can feel signals propagate. Thoughts enter her mind. Images, words, speech, distorted and dreamlike.
The lights in the room grow unbearably bright, smears with painfully white outlines. The beep of the monitor blurs into a piercing whine.
Alyssa feels her body spasm, and the world goes black.
Waking up is difficult.
Alyssa has dealt with the problem before, of her mind being awake while her body is still asleep. It happened a lot after she got her powers, the sensations of her body rousing her from sleep before the paralysis could fade. She was used to it, now.
It still fucking sucked, though.
By the time she has everything in order and her senses return to normal, or as close to normal as she can get, now, she can feel a large bump swelling up on the back of her head. The neural cord’s end is frayed, burning. She digests it quickly, before the pain becomes too much.
She opens her eyes, finding herself in a chair in the isolation room. Her right half is still in the bed, breathing raggedly through the mask. Cindy and Conduit are still in the room. Conduit is looking at the medical equipment. Cindy has her mask off, her face creased with concern.
“Hey, uhm, what happened? Why does my head hurt?”
They both look at her.
“You, um, you both had a seizure. You fell on the floor, and you dragged her with you,” Cindy says, and Conduit nods.
“You went into cardiac arrest immediately after,” he says, holding up one hand, a spark crossing from palm to thumb. “I revived you both, only for it to happen again. We had to sever your connection.”
“Oh,” Alyssa says. “Shit.”
She stands up, careful, and walks over to the bed.
“Don’t try it again. Please,” Cindy whispers.
Alyssa nods. She wasn’t planning on it, anyway.
She sits down on the edge of the bed, placing a hand on her former half. Like before it has that permanence, forbidding her from dissolving it. Through her power she can feel its thoughts, in a brain that doesn’t quite feel like hers anymore.
That’s why, she realizes. We’re different.
The thought weighs on her, for what it implies, and she follows some of its logic. If her other self’s brain were to die she could probably reabsorb it, unhindered by that separate will. Her power works on the other, and the other already sits so close to the edge. It wouldn’t be hard.
She wouldn’t want to be reduced to this. She would rather die, and they’d been one person, just a few days ago. It would be what her other wanted.
Cindy says something, breaking her from the thought. Alyssa turns to face her.
“What?”
“Um, I said: can you regrow her?” Cindy replies, fidgeting. “I know that everything would be too much, but, you have a reserve, right?”
Alyssa shakes her head.
“I’m out. Spent the last of it while trapped. It’s gonna be a month, maybe a month and a half, until I’m full again. Plus a week or two, to regrow my arm and shoulder,” she answers, looking back at her other.
It would be so easy. Her other wouldn’t suffer. She would be whole again.
But she can see the way Cindy looks at her other. The fear in her eyes. Whatever had happened, whatever Cindy did… It was important.
Recovering from this, though? Her other can’t do it alone. Alyssa would be stuck to her, playing the role of human life support.
“It’s gonna take months, if she even makes it that long. With how sick she is, maybe years…” Alyssa says.
At the same time she can feel that weak heartbeat, how she could stop it with a thought. No one would blame her. They wouldn’t even know.
She turns toward Cindy, and can see a mix of emotions on her best friend’s face. Relief and hope clash with worry, and yet, she wears a small smile.
“But I can help her.”
Now
Plastic discs rattle against plastic cases as Alyssa’s truck goes over a pothole, disturbing the bag of DVDs under her seat and reminding her of the growing knot in her stomach.
She looks up from Cindy’s phone for a moment. Cindy is, of course, driving the truck, gripping the wheel firmly. Left hand at nine o’clock, right at four, with her elbow hovering near the gear shift. The stick moves on its own as they return to speed, cycling to higher gears.
A handful of neurons fire as she watches, the signal cascading through her brain. Specific areas activate: one for language, the other for hearing.
Cheat day, huh?
The quip appears in Alyssa’s head and after brief consideration, she lets it fade away unspoken. The drive hasn’t been quite silent, but it’s been quiet. Another twenty minutes of letting Cindy focus on the road is all she needs to avoid what would be a very unpleasant conversation.
Five minutes of quiet come and go. Alyssa wiggles a bit in the passenger seat, finds it unfit to her liking, kicks off her flip-flops, leans it way, way back, and props her feet up onto the dashboard, sunlight glinting off her pink toenails.
Cindy glances over, first at her feet, and then at her face, frowning. Alyssa smiles and shrugs in response, just as Cindy’s focus returns to the road. Within moments the truck slows down, by about five miles below the speed limit.
A routine swallowing of saliva stimulates the thirty individual strips of tongue lining her esophagus, bombarding her sense of taste with as many flavors of ice cream in quick succession. Each one has had its nerves tweaked to reproduce the sensation of a given flavor, regardless of stimuli, copied from the tongue sitting in her mouth.
As it turns out, mixing thirty flavors together doesn’t really match up to thirty flavors individually, the end result being sweet, cold, and little else. She’ll have to fix that, which will take time. And, since operation ‘distract Cindy by forcing her to drive even safer’ has so resoundingly succeeded, Alyssa now has that time.
It’s an issue of presentation: her other half isn’t really going to get all the mouthfeels of texture or consistency, only a bit of temperature and raw taste. Manually activating each tongue one by one is the simplest solution, but it would be tedious, not to mention jarring for the intended recipient.
She activates the tongues at random, one by one, to remind herself which flavor is where. Cycling through, she gets an idea. A cascade of flavors, each one tapering off into the arrival of the next, some long, drawn out, even blending, with others spiking in suddenly. Like, like… music, really. Mouth music.
Alyssa starts weaving nerves together, stringing them from each strip of taste buds to the next. Working out the best ways to organize the flavors, to blend them. Growing loops of neurons to act as delays, or to sustain stimulus.
So wrapped up in her work, Alyssa only notices the truck leave the highway from the way her stomach shifts on the off-ramp, pulled against the turn by centrifugal force.
She gets more than a little nervous when Cindy apparently misses a turn and pulls into a gas station instead, stopping at a pump.
“I’m going to fill the tank and get a coffee. Do you want anything?”
Phew
“Uh, sure. Slushie?”
Cindy leaves. Alyssa goes back to her work, more or less done already, putting the final touches on and smoothing out any kinks or muscle spasms. She finishes by tying the whole thing to a dead-end nerve, one that can only be activated by her power.
There’s a knock on the window and Alyssa looks up to see Cindy holding her drink. She opens the door to grab it, slurping down a few ounces in the time Cindy takes to walk around the truck.
Cindy gets back into the driver’s seat with one step, where Alyssa would have to practically climb in. The truck starts up with a bit of a sputter, rolls forward through the lot and straight into a parking spot. Cindy engages the hand brake, shuts off the engine, and takes a sip of her coffee.
Drat
“Hey, uh, I think I gotta pee real quick.” Alyssa conjures up the easiest excuse, not a total lie after swallowing half a slushie, grabbing the door handle.
It moves, but the door doesn’t budge.
“Cindy… did you break my car?”
“I’ll fix it when we’re done,” Cindy says with a smile. “You’ve had nearly an hour to think. Now, we need to talk.”
Fuck
“I, uh, well, ya see…”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t. Please.”
“I tried, okay? This is just… it’s hard.”
“This isn’t about you.” Cindy’s voice rises, briefly. She pauses, shakes her head, and sighs. “I’m sorry, but you can’t avoid this, you’re not the one at risk.”
“I know she’s depressed, Cindy, alright? I can feel her brain. I fuckin’ get it. I tried to help her and she pushed me away, ‘cause of course she would, it’s what I would do. So how am I supposed to do anything about it?”
Cindy’s eyes close, and she takes a few sips of her coffee.
“Alyssa, she… she showed me everything. I know it’s hard, but it’s been a month since I last visited and there’s still so little of her, and—and I promised her that she’d be okay.”
Alyssa notices beads of moisture form around Cindy’s eyes. The knot in her stomach starts to subside.
“What happened?”
“We talked.” Cindy dries her eyes, looking Alyssa in the face. “She’s angry that you have everything she had, and she hates herself for being angry at you.”
“I, uh, I can understand that.”
“She feels like this is her fault, and that guilt has led her to a very dark place. Maybe not enough to want to die, but—she said it would be… better for us, if she hadn’t survived.”
Alyssa knows the mindset, or something close. Her reasons had been different, selfish—
No, not selfish. Self-focused.
It meant she could use her relationships as leverage, use the turmoil and loss she’d leave behind to talk herself away from the unthinkable. But if she saw herself as the burden…
A chill runs up her spine.
“The worst part was when she got mad at me. For visiting you more. I rationalized it, then, and she accepted that. Now I’m thinking about what wasn’t said, and I think she was right.”
“So…” Alyssa cocks her head. “She accused you of treating us as, I dunno, interchangeable?”
Cindy shakes her head.
“Not that. The same. I call you both ‘Alyssa’, and I know which of you is which, but I don’t always have a way to tell who is who. She picked up on that, and I’m worried I’ve somehow validated her darkest thoughts.”
Considering the perspective is… disturbingly easy, and the pieces fall into place.
“That if she dies, we’ll be happier. I’ll get to go home. You’ll still have me.”
“Yeah.” Cindy’s voice wavers, halfway to sobbing. “And I was careless. I led her to think that.”
“No.” Alyssa shakes her head. “You didn’t. I did.”
“But… you weren’t even going to talk to me about this; she wouldn’t have talked to you.”
“It’s, uh…” Alyssa looks down and fidgets as the knot reclaims her stomach. “It’s complicated. Um, Cindy, you’re going have to promise you won’t get mad at me, okay?”
“Okay,” Cindy says quietly.
“If you hadn’t been there, at the hospital, I think I would’ve killed her.”
Silence follows.
She looks up at Cindy’s face, expecting sadness, repressed anger, or something like that. Instead she is greeted by wide-eyed shock, and… fear?
“What?” The word is a rasped whisper, breathless.
“I was down two arms, a shoulder, half a lung, and all the gunk I’d need to grow them back. She had all I needed, and was kinda dead already. But you saw something in her that I didn’t, and I realized it’s the same thing you saw in me when I was at my worst.”
She pauses to let Cindy speak, and is met with a slow nod.
“And, um… I felt like, if I killed her, then all the bad things I’ve thought about myself would be true.”
Cindy takes a deep breath, releasing it slowly.
“Okay, that’s—that’s a relief. We have to figure out how to help her, with this.”
“I don’t think we can. Not until she gets better.”
“Will she?” Cindy says. “I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but from what she showed me… it’s like she hasn’t made any progress since last month. I know this is a, um, unique situation, but your power is usually pretty fast, I thought.”
“Well, yeah, if I could just grow her back to size she’d be up and walking around”—Alyssa draws on her power for a second, testing its response—“sometime last week. But it’s complicated.
“That’s what we tried to do during month one, but, it didn’t really work out that well. She didn’t have her own immune system until this week, so every bit of new growth just got infected, or went cancerous when I wasn’t watching. I got her to where she is now and then spent the rest of the month fighting to keep her from going septic, or worse. And as you can see―”
Alyssa gestures at herself, running her hands down her sides. At one hundred and five pounds, she’s fifteen short of her usual, sans-reservoir weight. Not exactly gaunt, given how short she is, but with her power it’s not a good margin.
“―that really did a number on my curves.”
Alyssa half-forces a laugh, and Cindy giggles a little.
“Anyway, um, after that it was just laying groundwork. Switching from a blood-based link to a placental one, making her more self-sufficient, that kinda stuff.”
“Can she get back on track, then?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t like it when I do things for her, like, growing things, but everything she does is slow, or she messes it up somehow and has to start over. I’ve had some ideas, but she doesn’t want to hear them. We tried some when it was too early, and now she thinks it’ll all get fucked up if we try again.”
She thinks for a moment, considering what was said earlier.
“She listens to you, Cindy. Maybe, uh, I come up with a plan, and you sell it to her?”
“No.” Cindy shakes her head. “I’ll help with the plan, if I can. I’ll give you advice. But you need to talk to her, alright?”
Alyssa resists the urge to squirm as her stomach feels like it’s trying to turn itself inside-out, channeling the desire into a drawn-out sigh instead.
“Ooooookay, fine.”
Nausea lingers in her gut; she manages to quell some of it, quieting nerves until only the psychic aspect remains. With the feeling diminished, a new nuisance presents itself—sputtering signals from a lower organ.
Suspicious, she shakes her slushie and finds it empty.
Guess I wasn’t lying.
“Uhhhh… Cindy, I really gotta pee.”
She pulls at the door handle to emphasize her point.
“Oh, right. Here.”
Alyssa leans back to let Cindy reach over. She can hear metal move within the door for a moment before Cindy pulls on the handle, only for nothing to happen. She gives Cindy an accusing look.
“I could swear I put that screw back,” Cindy mutters.
“Cindy…”
The door appears to pop open on its own as Cindy smiles nervously.
“It’ll work when you get back. Promise.”
“It better,” Alyssa growls as she hops out of the truck, “or you’re doing all the talking.”
