With Rutger leading her over, she found the seat. Sitting down again felt so impossibly stupid, so pathetic, so… “I hate this.”
“Open your eyes. Let me look at them.”
She opened them, trying to be nonchalant yet knowing he was looking, and she still sawnothing.
“You can’t see me?”
“No. Nothing.”
Blind in the middle of this upside-down dangerous world. Lord. She had to fix this. Or she’d die, or end up being led around on a rope. Cyn pressed her fingers to her temple and massaged.
“Okay.” The seat creaked. “I’ll tell you what happened. Five stinkers came running in. None of us got a single wound. We killed three and two ran off. Which is unusual. They generally keep attacking for longer. Run off only after they’ve stabbed at a few of us or tried hard to.”
“Hmmm.” She strived to think this through but was too busy worrying about her eyes.
“Willow is talking to Vargr now. She was higher up the stairs than you, only just arrived.”
She knew this.
“It was pretty awesome,” he continued. “Those electric bolts whizzing about from Kiko’s gun as well as bullets, us taking them down like they were mosquitoes. Wing-soldiers taking off andfiring from above. Vincent grabbed one that was likely already a goner and smacked it into a wall, then someone blew more holes in it. Perfect pandemonium, but good skills. We killed it. Fucking killed it.”
The satisfaction in his voice was obvious.
“So don’t worry about being absent.”
She made a noise that she hoped showed some appreciation.
With the softest voice he added, almost as if to himself, “They know not the power in their hands. Are these the new gods we were looking for?”
She lowered her head as if to look at her hands. Rutger was Worshipper Quarter, but she’d never thought him serious about that Doctrine of Logical Gods. What he’d said was sacrilegious, surely, and presumptuous but also strangely… logical.
A few minutes later, a whole lot of people were assembling around her, discussing her, asking her questions then deferring to Rutger or Vargr or Willow.
“I’m not brainless!” she snapped after trying to not be affected by being turned into an object so readily. “I can’t see, that’s all. What can we do about it, and who is here?”
Rutger was still beside her. “There’s Willow, me, Vargr, and a few others like Maura, who are concerned about what has happened to you.” He clicked his fingers, and she heard movement. “Most are going to step away now to give you some privacy.” He waited a moment then continued, “Everyone else is off doing other things. Checking the perimeter and so on. This area is secure, Cyn. And so, people, what are we doing?”
“I am…” Willow spoke up, calmly, from very nearby, and she put her hand on Cyn’s arm, “I’m going to examine you again. I’ll sit on the other side of you. I want to see what those little red nanomachines of yours are up to.”
Nothing good, she guessed. “Sure.” She rested her back against the seat and told herself to calm down, to let Willow do her biotechie thing.
Willow’s cool hands and the close-to-inaudible whispering she did was oddly comforting, as was the settling of a heavy stillness about them, with the only other sounds being distant and in the background.
She said nothing and mentally counted out the seconds. The unbending precision of numbers helped her to stop worrying, and soon her heartbeat slowed and thudded less emphatically.
“Okay. I’m done,” Willow told her, lifting away her hands. “I’ve done as thorough an examination as I can. This time I wasreallycareful, and I found a few nanites in your head area. They might be new, even. Mostly in your eyes, but that’s to be expected with the red in them. The problem is, I’m not medically trained.”
“And?” That had not sounded as if Willow was sure of any diagnosis. “Can you see why I’ve lost my sight?”
She sighed. “No. Once again I can’t detect anything wrong, apart from the low nanites up top.”
Fuck.
“What I am going to do is talk to as many as I can who have some medical training.”
“There’s Vincent. The rockman. He was a paramedic or a nurse,” Vargr suggested.
She should’ve thought of him herself, although… “What could he tell us, when he doesn’t have anything to go on? No facts.”
