"Do you mind if I sit here?"
The small café was packed, lacking any free tables whatsoever. She had spotted the single empty chair from across the room, and had fiercely beaten aside anyone else who tried to claim it. Clutched in her pale hand was a cup of café mocha, steaming quietly to itself.
"Don't worry, I'll just sit and be quiet, I won't disturb you. I even have a book to read, see? It's terribly boring though, one of those romances, which I hate. Or at least, I thought I'd hate, but figured I should try it anyways. Turns out I shouldn't have wasted my time. Or my money."
She bit her lip thoughtfully and slid into the chair as the rather large man nodded to her request. He was usually very tall, but his height was compromised by his sitting position. The girl nursed her drink, sipping at it hesitantly. It burned her tongue and she put it down hastily. She fidgeted with her coat, pulling it tightly around her tiny form, despite the warmth of the building.
When was he going to call?
The girl fidgeted with renewed vigour, both worried and annoyed. She needed to hear from her contact, a certain man named Flux. He had promised to call her with the next tip off, but had dropped silently into the city's crime life. She checked her phone. Nothing. She checked for messages, missed calls, battery life. Nothing, and a full charge. She sighed, and tried to read her book.
It might as well have been in Portuguese.
The man was staring at her politely, as if he were expecting something. There was a slight smile on his face, which baffled her deeply. She flicked her eyes back to her book. The words stared up at her, but she didn't make the effort to read any of them. She peeked at the man, who was dressed sharply in a finely tailored suit and sipping delicately at a cup of tea. His eyes had left her and were resting lightly on a painting.
She put down the book again.
As a rather slim and rather young girl, she was dressed oddly, even for this city. Her strangely hued hair – mostly red, but with extraordinary accents to it, - hung over her face, obscuring as much of it as possible. She wore no make up, and what was visible of her face was deathly pale. She was almost lost in a long orange coat that clashed angrily with her hair. Nothing else of her was visible because of the coat.
She peered intently at her oversized companion, who finally looked round at her. That queer smile was there again, and her brow furrowed in puzzlement. Yes, there was something familiar to his face, and his size; she was surprised that she hadn't noticed it earlier. Or, at least noticed that he was more familiar than the other familiar-looking people that she passed daily on the sidewalk.
"Are you expecting someone?" he asked softly, a slight English accent detectable.
"Well, yes, and I'm beginning to be worried. I really hope he's not in any danger."
The man seemed to understand her feelings completely, and he nodded consolingly. She had the impression that he really cared, which was odd. It magnified her feelings of recognition.
"It would be truly a terrible thing if your acquaintance fell to the bad side of fate, and we must hope beyond all doubt that he will be safe."
The girl pondered this, and then introduced herself.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself. My name's Chernoval, but you can call me –"
"-Cher. I know."
He sipped casually at his tea, and Chernoval closed her mouth, which had been hanging open. Who was he? How did she know him?
It was the tea that finally made it click.
"Oh, hello again, Max!" She reached across the circular table and grasped his finger, pumping it enthusiastically. Max Lufkin graciously inclined his head, patting her softly on the hand.
"I didn't recognise you at first, it must have been what, a few weeks? I didn't notice because, well, you weren't invisible, and you weren't wearing your hat. Or maybe I just hadn't gotten a good enough glance at you to begin with."
"It's good to see you again, Chernoval, I had been rather hoping that we'd meet once more. I just never expected to cross paths so soon. Or in such a manner." He gestured round at the tables, the tea, the café mocha, and the coffee house in general.
"However, you must share with me your concerns. You say someone – a contact? – might be in danger?"
"Yes, well, it's Flux. He was supposed to call me at noon today, and he's half an hour late, which has never happened. For an Outcast, he's very punctual."
Max took in the situation easily, and checked his watch.
"I regret to inform you, love, but last Sunday was daylight savings. It's currently twenty-five past eleven, A.M."
"Well," Cher blinked in surprise, "That would explain why this was a rough week for me. Never would've guessed. I really should invest in a radio."
Max chuckled softly, and Chernoval relaxed visibly. That was a large worry off her back, and she took the time to adjust her watch – which was an hour and five minutes fast. She also took the time to remember where she had met Max, and what they had done. It was all rather vague and hazy, but she thought she remembered.
It had been a temporary team-up with several other heroes. She and Max had both had low security clearances, and were being mentored by some friendly heroes, getting to know Paragon a bit better. Max had been there healing the others, and Cher had been fighting. It was hard, but the caves had been cleared and the bombs destroyed. The team had split up.
Max, however, had needed a hand against an Outcast base, and Cher, charmed by his manners, had agreed. It had all been rather confusing, trying to fight alongside someone you couldn't see, although they had talked a bit and she grew to like him even more.
But, as these pairings usually do, it had ended with her going one way, and Max going the other. She had shook his hand, muttered a truthful "It was great, I hope we do it again," and had sprinted off to find a toilet.
"I suppose, Chernoval, that now would be the best time for telling the long, silly story of your name. I have my tea, and you your cappuccino. Make it as long and silly as you want, my afternoon if completely free."
Cher thought briefly, collected her memories and things, and then swept the hair out of her face. Her face was a startling thing to see suddenly exposed, but Max didn't react. He had seen her before.
"I think that maybe you'd be more entertained if I told you what I know of my history, how I came to be this way, and then move onto why my name is Chernoval. It makes everything much clearer."
Lufkin shrugged and leaned delicately back in his chair, so as not to break it, and Cher considered where to begin.
"I'll start with waking up. Some of it's all muddled, but I'll tell it as simply as I can."
She groggily opened her eyes, staring at an immense white plain. Rather, she supposed it was a plain, because there were no noticeable features except the blinding whiteness. There were some strange noises, drifting and settling, from perhaps three different sources. Her throat was burning sensationally, and her ears hummed with a thousand small vibrations.
The white gradually dissolved into a circle, then even smaller into a dancing filament. It was a lamp, a very bright lamp, floating above her head. She half closed her eyes against it, and this provoked an excited flurry of movement. She could see the shapes of people beside her, and the lamp was finally turned away. She rasped, and they gave her an ice cube.
She heard unfamiliar syllables and strange words uttered. There was a question, but she couldn't answer it. Her thoughts were simple, jumbled. She realised that she didn't know who she was. Strange, that should be something that a person would know.
What if she wasn't a person?
That disturbed her deeply, and she flexed something on her body. Fingers. She raised her head, and saw that she had two legs, two arms, and a torso. Human. That was good. At least she looked like everyone around her, around her bed.
Three faces appeared, interested, concerned. One asked a question again, but the one on her right muttered something. This stopped the questions. They poked at her, prodded her, stuck a needle and a thermometer into her. She lay still, at least knowing that they were doctors, and that they were going to help.
Still, her throat burned.
Time passed, and she drifted into sleep, ultimately frustrated and physically exhausted.
"I found out much later that I was in England - London, to be exact. I didn't know any English; the only language I knew then was German, something that would be found out only after I began speaking again. That in itself was a problem."
"I don't quite follow. What was a problem?"
Chernoval smiled ruefully, continuing with her story. Her café mocha was half gone, and there was a packet of lozenges on the table beside it. She recalled the first time she tried to speak quite vividly.
She was sitting in bed, quietly contemplating her situation. No one had been to visit, other than the doctors and nurses. There was a large amount of equipment and monitors hooked to her, and they were beeping and clicking and making a large racket that was slowly driving the girl insane. A young, pretty nurse approached the bed, offering her some more ice on a spoon.
"No, thank you," Chernoval said, mildly surprising herself and the nurse. There was only a short moment of mild surprise before the nurse crumpled to the ground, clutching her ears and withering feebly. Alarmed, Cher pressed the button that called for a nurse, and two more women came rushing in.
"I do not know what happened, she just collapsed –"
And promptly, the other two nurses fell to the ground, as if they had been violently shoved. The poor girl panicked, leapt out of bed, ripped off the sensors, and sprinted down the hallway. A doctor was making his rounds, and she tugged urgently at his gown.
"Something-" she stopped, as he cringed at her voice. Instead she dragged him back to her room, where the three women were beginning to recover. They were pale and shaky, and eyed her with suspicion. She shook her head and placed a hand over her mouth, and the women relaxed slightly.
"You had mentioned earlier that you only spoke German. Yet, you make it seem as if your first words were in English?"
Chernoval indicated to the cashier that she wanted another mocha, and it arrived quickly.
"Well, I knew what the words meant, but to the others I was speaking gibberish. The doctor, luckily, recognised that I wasn't English, and had a few friends in to talk to me." She laughed softly, "They had me set up behind a big, thick window, and were talking through an intercom. Finally, they found out I was German, and they told me what they knew."
"Your parents, as far as we know, had immigrated to Russia from, we can guess, Germany, and had taken up residence quite close to the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. There was a disaster on April 25, 1986, and the radiation from the plant affected the young couple and their two year-old girl - you. There was nothing physically wrong with them, only that a small part of their genes were affected. You most of all, as you were still developing and very susceptible to changes."
The girl, no more than thirteen, listened with wide, unbelieving eyes. Her parents? Where were they? She tried to voice her concern, but the glass vibrated warningly. She closed her mouth. The translator gestured to the pen and pad of paper on the table, and she took a few moments to write out her question.
The man read it through the glass, thought for a bit on the words – they were mostly misspelled, as the girl had trouble remembering the written language - and then conferred with the other people present. A woman spoke to him, and he translated to Chernoval.
"They brought you here, but passed away shortly after, both suffering from severe stress. Your mother died of a heart attack, while your father simply expired from what we can assume was grief."
The girl tried to feel sad, but she couldn't muster the emotion. She couldn't remember her parents, and their death really meant nothing to her. She sighed heavily, and the people behind the glass backed up a few paces.
"It would seem that the effects of the mutation made themselves apparent when you reached puberty. You went under a physical change, as well as a slight physiological change. You see, your skin lost all of its pigment, that was the first stage. You then developed some strange splashes of pigmentation on your face and hands, which alarmed your parents. They had you committed here, where the top doctors and scientists examined you. It was around that time that your long-term memory suffered, and along with it, parts of your short-term memory.
"The rest of the changes were dramatic and fast-paced. We have reason to believe that your vocal chords have evolved beyond anything seen before, and that this was accompanied by a rapid change in your inner ear. You will find that you are extremely sensitive to noise."
The girl nodded, and remembered the three nurses she had almost rendered unconscious. Very strange. Very strange indeed.
"So, after several years, I moved to Paragon, where there were some of the most world renowned scientists. I wanted to see if they could reverse the effects of the mutation. Unfortunately, they couldn't, so I decided to embrace the problem. A few months later found me at the registration desk in City Hall."
She ate a lozenge as Max meditated over her story. She went on as soon at the lemon-flavoured drop had dissolved.
"It had taken me some eight years to learn fluent English, and to make the move to the United States. Even after careful tutoring and training, I had to talk with a bit of an impediment – there were still certain syllables that produced a violent wave of sonic energy, no matter how hard I tired to contain it. That has since been taken care of, but in the first year or so, it was very troublesome."
"And one of those sounds was probably the "B" sound, wasn't it?" Max caught on, recognising her problem effectively.
"Yes, that's exactly it. When I went to register at the Desk, I was unable to pronounce 'Chernobyl' without harming the clerk. And I didn't have a scrap of paper to write it on. And professionalism dictated that only the clerk could type on the forms."
Max didn't need to ask why she named herself after the terrible accident. He had talked to her enough to know what she was a bit odd, and naming herself after a life-changing event fit her personality perfectly. He ran a few quick calculations in his head.
"So now you're twenty-two, gifted with incredible power, and trying to make the world a better place? How very noble. To turn something like that around, for the better of humanity."
There was no sarcasm in his voice, only quiet approval. Chernoval nodded, and was about to reply when her phone rang. It was Flux, right on time, and he had a very hot tip.
"What do you say we bust a few Outcast hideouts? For old times' sake?" she smiled and winked, and got to her feet. The orange coat she left on the chair, planning to come back and get it later. Max agreed, put his hat on his head, and held the door for the superhero. They ran down the street together, racing to the 'Hollows' gateway. Max let the girl win. She flashed him a smile, showed the guard her ID, and trotted into the darkness.