[If this were her world... how could she explain it? Most people had been kept by their government so ignorant of what Contractors were that they would be shocked to hear of such things, to learn there might be holes in their memories extracted in a lab or people simply eliminated for having seen too much. But this... No, this had to be a whole other world, like the woman who had picked her off the floor of that crystal cavern had said.
And if she explained... If she could explain...
Hei had understood. But Hei had been human once. Still was all too human, despite somehow being a Contractor. This man... If it truly was a foreign land and she couldn't rely on terms like Hell's Gate, Contractor, Regressor...]
My power...
[The Kenoma feeds the images into her mind more amplified than they'd ever been. The memory of blood on her hands and hot on her face when she released the destructive vacuum field she was capable of summoning with a look and a will, dropping the mangled and swollen corpse of a would-be attacker to the ground. The feel of rubble beneath her feet where she stood on the edge of sheer destruction, dust and screams in the air where a crowded building had once stood before she'd opened up her abilities in the parking garage below the surface.]
I don't want it back...
[The woman who had brought her here had told her there was no Hell's Gate, and she had been so relieved... but ever since she'd swallowed that black sludge...]
The price is- The price is too high...
[She remembers it, just enough to be terrified; What the blood of children had tasted like on her tongue. The same sort of children she'd learned to care for, as a Regressor, to smile at and crouch down to listen, to cook for... She remembers just enough that she suddenly chokes, struggling to swallow and failing as she turns weakly to the side and retches, black Kenoma dribbling out of her throat and gagging her.]
Why...
[Even that, though, was better than her obeisance.]
no subject
And if she explained... If she could explain...
Hei had understood. But Hei had been human once. Still was all too human, despite somehow being a Contractor. This man... If it truly was a foreign land and she couldn't rely on terms like Hell's Gate, Contractor, Regressor...]
My power...
[The Kenoma feeds the images into her mind more amplified than they'd ever been. The memory of blood on her hands and hot on her face when she released the destructive vacuum field she was capable of summoning with a look and a will, dropping the mangled and swollen corpse of a would-be attacker to the ground. The feel of rubble beneath her feet where she stood on the edge of sheer destruction, dust and screams in the air where a crowded building had once stood before she'd opened up her abilities in the parking garage below the surface.]
I don't want it back...
[The woman who had brought her here had told her there was no Hell's Gate, and she had been so relieved... but ever since she'd swallowed that black sludge...]
The price is- The price is too high...
[She remembers it, just enough to be terrified; What the blood of children had tasted like on her tongue. The same sort of children she'd learned to care for, as a Regressor, to smile at and crouch down to listen, to cook for... She remembers just enough that she suddenly chokes, struggling to swallow and failing as she turns weakly to the side and retches, black Kenoma dribbling out of her throat and gagging her.]
Why...
[Even that, though, was better than her obeisance.]
Why is it back... ?