Chapter 8: Catatonia and Exposition

"You see," Jumba began, "White-haired girl possesses very strange trait, one she is using right now without realizing," He looked at Amy as he rooted through his papers. "Are you, by chance, often the target of isolation and much teasing from peers?"

Amy turned her head to face the ground and nodded. Teasing, isolation, hair-pulling, name-calling… abandonment… that last one made her bite her lip. I don't understand… Dad… I cared about you… After everything that had happened at once, Amy had almost forgotten… he said I was a disappointment… Dad…

Amy tried to shake herself out of it as Jumba continued. "Now, if Jumba is correct, as this is still just a theory, white-haired girl possesses some suppressed mental-communication ability which is mostly suppressed by our strange nano-objects. However, not all of power is suppressed, and ends up radiated around to peers. Energy is weak, and takes form of thoughts about white-haired girl – very distracting," Jumba continued, and Amy nodded. She was listening to him, now, if only to keep her mind off of what had happened earlier that day. "Theory is that peers have gained some of bullying behavior from subconscious desire to drive white-haired girl away so that brain can re-focus attention on what it was thinking about before. Behavior becomes habit, and before long white-haired girl is primary target of the negative impulses of peers – target of frustration and dislike. Considering fact that white-haired girl is also very shy and awkward, bullying comes as no surprise. Unfortunate, yes, but there you go." He continued talking as he started picking up his papers. "Coupled with white-haired girl's status as unregistered experiment and fact that all record of her existence on Earth being destroyed, is fairly obvious that -"

"Wait," Amy cut in, "what was that last part?"

"He said," the Grand Councilwoman said, and Amy turned to face her with a furrowed brow, "that we have had to remove any trace of your existence from Earth's records. As of a few hours ago, you never existed. We have gone through with this procedure in order to ensure that no complications arise from the fact that you have quite literally vanished off of the face of the planet. I'm sure you understa- " Thud. "Doctor Jumba, what is she doing?"

"Looks like blue-screening, as little girl and 626 call it. Very common in humans when receiving unexpected information, but I have never seen one just fall to knees like that."

Amy didn't respond, but simply sat there, staring at nothing with a blank expression in her eyes, mouth shut. Their continued conversation blurred into incoherence to her ears, and the words you never existed echoed numbly inside her mind. Everything seemed far away and empty, and the world around her seemed to blur into incoherence. Nothing was real – nothing could touch her, reach out to her, and pull her out of it. She was trapped…

Amy felt a hand on her shoulder, and the world instantly snapped back into place. Nobody was in front of her, and she turned to see whose hand had pulled her back into reality, and saw Reuben kneeling down next to her, a concerned expression on his face.

Reuben glanced at Jumba. "Hey, either of you got any more-life shattering information left? 'Cuz I don't think she can handle much more."

"No," Jumba said, "not much else has been found in test results. Until source of bizarre objects can be identified, I cannot conclude anything else."

"Good," Reuben responded, and turned back to Amy. "Hey, are you alright?" Amy stared at him for a moment before slowly shaking her head, the blank expression remaining plastered on her face "Ah, blitznak. You guys broke her."

"She will have to recover," the Grand Councilwoman said. "If we are to figure out what should be done about her. An unregistered genetic experiment is a complicated problem, and we do not know what the safest course of action is yet."

"All due respect, you talk about her like she's not sitting right here." Reuben looked back at Amy. "Not that she seems to really care right now…" He stood up, offering Amy his hand. She looked at it, and blinked before shaking her head a bit. That seemed to help a little – she took his hand and stood up, but she still looked a little shocked.

The Grand Councilwoman was about to say something when there was another knock on the door. "Enter."

Agent Crystal Venom walked into the room with a calm, serious expression, and quickly approached the desk. "Grand Councilwoman, we have finished deleting the files on the girl, as you requested. Amy Johnson no longer officially exists on Earth."

"She's right here!" Reuben protested. Venom ignored him.

"There is another matter to attend to."