****
WEDNESDAY
Someone up there hates me.
Just as I start to think I'm finally getting back on top of who – or should that be what - I am again, they hurl something else at me. Something more frightening, because it's completely beyond my control and, until it deigns to give me up, I'm at its mercy.
It was a lousy night – a night of 'if only's. If only Adam hadn't listened to that mystery contact of his, if only we'd been a few minutes earlier – or later – before trying to go in, if only we'd seen the guards before they saw us, if only my natural instinct hadn't been to phase through the hanger wall as a way of giving myself time to recover from that crack on the skull, if only... But it all happened, and I'm left with a killer headache, sore kidneys and a potential death sentence tangled up in my molecules.
I wasn't really joking when I said it would teach me to practice holding my breath. It's something I know I should do more of, given how much can depend on me keeping massed or phased a few extra seconds sometimes – particularly in recent months – and as Adam said, if I'd actually had to reform in there and inhaled that nerve gas, it could have been worse. Not that it feels that way right now. Because right now holding my breath is the last thing I should be doing, not if I want to avoid a repeat of what happened in the lab. And I so don't want to do that again.
It wasn't just one of the scariest experiences of my life – right up there on a par with when I discovered I was a mutant in the first place. It was so shockingly fast, so unexpected, so deep-rooted in its inception that it left me powerless to counter it initially. And after all the work I've put in learning to adjust and maintain my density in instant response to whatever threat rears its head, to protect myself and whoever else I'm responsible for, it hit hard to find that even when I'm in supposedly invulnerable mode I could be taken down by something I couldn't even see.
And it's just me. Not like when that virus was taking us all out, killing mutants indiscriminately. No, this one's all mine.
Adam says the nerve gas molecules bonding with mine should work their way out in due course, but he's giving no guarantees and no time frame on that. And given my spectacular display of at least one of those 'symptoms of contamination' he'd said we needed to be guarding against, I'm not really looking forward to the wait. I'm not sure if it's my imagination or not, but I've got this weird kind of itchy tingling feeling, sort of like having your skin crawling, only on the inside where you can't get at it to scratch. And the headache – did I mention the headache? It's like the worst hangover ever, without the fun of getting loaded in the first place.
I think Adam has a lead on the ones who stole that laser weapon out from under us, the ones who were responsible for the gas, and I for one am looking forward to getting some payback.
Tomorrow, though. First I need to sleep this off...
****
WEDNESDAY
Someone up there hates me.
Just as I start to think I'm finally getting back on top of who – or should that be what - I am again, they hurl something else at me. Something more frightening, because it's completely beyond my control and, until it deigns to give me up, I'm at its mercy.
It was a lousy night – a night of 'if only's. If only Adam hadn't listened to that mystery contact of his, if only we'd been a few minutes earlier – or later – before trying to go in, if only we'd seen the guards before they saw us, if only my natural instinct hadn't been to phase through the hanger wall as a way of giving myself time to recover from that crack on the skull, if only... But it all happened, and I'm left with a killer headache, sore kidneys and a potential death sentence tangled up in my molecules.
I wasn't really joking when I said it would teach me to practice holding my breath. It's something I know I should do more of, given how much can depend on me keeping massed or phased a few extra seconds sometimes – particularly in recent months – and as Adam said, if I'd actually had to reform in there and inhaled that nerve gas, it could have been worse. Not that it feels that way right now. Because right now holding my breath is the last thing I should be doing, not if I want to avoid a repeat of what happened in the lab. And I so don't want to do that again.
It wasn't just one of the scariest experiences of my life – right up there on a par with when I discovered I was a mutant in the first place. It was so shockingly fast, so unexpected, so deep-rooted in its inception that it left me powerless to counter it initially. And after all the work I've put in learning to adjust and maintain my density in instant response to whatever threat rears its head, to protect myself and whoever else I'm responsible for, it hit hard to find that even when I'm in supposedly invulnerable mode I could be taken down by something I couldn't even see.
And it's just me. Not like when that virus was taking us all out, killing mutants indiscriminately. No, this one's all mine.
Adam says the nerve gas molecules bonding with mine should work their way out in due course, but he's giving no guarantees and no time frame on that. And given my spectacular display of at least one of those 'symptoms of contamination' he'd said we needed to be guarding against, I'm not really looking forward to the wait. I'm not sure if it's my imagination or not, but I've got this weird kind of itchy tingling feeling, sort of like having your skin crawling, only on the inside where you can't get at it to scratch. And the headache – did I mention the headache? It's like the worst hangover ever, without the fun of getting loaded in the first place.
I think Adam has a lead on the ones who stole that laser weapon out from under us, the ones who were responsible for the gas, and I for one am looking forward to getting some payback.
Tomorrow, though. First I need to sleep this off...
****