“I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve been here every morning.”
“No,” she says with a chuckle, turning her body so we’re face to face. “I mean, at night. You’re so…tired. What does he do to you all day that you get so tired?”
“Do to me?” I shrug. Mostly because I don’t recall. “I’m asleep for the procedures.”
She sits up a little. “You sleep all day and come home that tired? How’s that work?”
Again, I shrug. “Well… I’m asleep, so…” Yeah, she’s kinda right. WhyamI so tired? “I only vaguely remember coming home each night. I guess it’s the augmentation. And I don’t think that being unconscious on a threading table counts as sleep.’”
She places a hand on my cheek, her eyes narrowing.
“What?” I ask.
“There’s something on your pupils.”
“What?” Then I understand. “Oh, that. That’s just the data display Xi augmented me with.”
“What’s a data display?”
“It’s like… a screen. Over my eyes. With lots of switches that I can control by…” I blow out a breath. I don’t really know how to describe it. And no one described it to me, I just kinda… knew what to do when I woke up on the third day and found all thiscode splashed across my vision. “It’s just internal mechanisms,” I say. “Blinking, and a head nod here, an eye swipe there. Just gestures like that.”
She looks concerned. “Not a single thing of what you just said makes sense to me.”
“Well, then it’s a good thing that you don’t need it to make sense,” I joke. And then, before she can ask any more questions, I slip my hand under her lingerie top, eager to drop the subject and have a little fun before I have to get up and go back down to the Factory.
She arches her back and moans my name when I enter her.
And for a second… I don’t recognize it as mine.
36 - TYSE
Epsilon!Epsilon!Epsilon!
This is how the chant starts.
Epsilon!Epsilon!Epsilon!
They won’t shut up until I kill. Then, and only then, will it change toRise a God.
I’ve spent the last ten days trying to figure this shit out. In between killin’ mutants, stealing spark from other dimensions, and spoolin’ Clara back up, that is.
So, admittedly, these spare minutes haven’t added up to a lot of thinkin’ time. But I think I’ve worked it out now. The Epsilon chant is the swing. The frequency, in the analogy I told Clara all those years ago.
Weeks, Tyse.
It’s only been two weeks.
The swing. The frequency. That’s what the Epsilon chant is. A way tohoneit.
But Rise a God is the push. That little push you give the swing when in that one moment between up and down. Theresonance. A way to elevate it.
These mutants aren’t chantin’ for fun. They’re not wound up like a bunch of drunken sportsball fans.
It’s a process.
It’s part of theprocess.
