FRAGMENT NOTES:

This one was actually designed as a direct follow up to that last one. Woo, continuity!


Rinzler


I don't want to be, but I'm shaking.

I have never—

I don't ever—

My head is echoing, resounding with the echo of my own screaming.

Never mind. I don't like having a voice.

Someone take it away . . . someone silence me before I can ever, ever do that again.

The circuit on my head feels like it's burning, still, even though he patched it when he was done with me. Done doing exactly what I did to every one of them . . .

The shaking gets worse when I think about that, turns to a kind of heaving quake that wracks my entire body, my cycling suddenly irregular, air coming in in long gasps and escaping in shuddering bursts. I have to cover the sound of it with my hand, trying to regain control and failing. I can't get enough air, can't get the pain to subside because I can't even tell whether it's coming from my head or this empty feeling in my chest.

I can't shake the feeling that I have been tightened down, tied to the floor, broken at the waist so my head can drag the hard ground, maybe tied there forever.

I can't move.

I want to straighten up. Pull my helmet down over my staring eyes and shivering lips and stand with my own feet under me, stand in perfect unreadable stillness. But I can't.

He took that from me. My shield. My filters.

Took my ability to control my own energy usage, making the world hazier even as I huddle here on the cold floor in my agony.

And I—I—am helpless.

Just like them.

I can't escape. I can't make it stop. I have become my victims, and I deserve it . . . I deserve it all.

Regret hurts almost as much as weakness. Hurts almost as much as my head. Almost—

Almost as much as grief.