Page 41 of White Noise

The condo falls silent, but my skin is still buzzing where he touched me and every lock in the house is still red.

So much for fucking free.

5

SILAS

MARKED

The first thing I notice when I pull myself back into the signal is the cut.

It shouldn’t be there.

Everything else reconstructs exactly the way it always does when I give myself shape. Hands, arms, chest, face. A body built for a world that insists everything needs skin and bones before it can be understood. The form has never mattered much to me. Damage disappears the second I let it go, and whatever I build afterward comes back clean.

Except this time, when I drag my thumb over my face, I find the same raised line running through my eye and down my cheek.

I stop and trace it again.

A faint charge snaps beneath my fingertips.

Then I laugh.

Of course she fucking did.

I break the face apart and rebuild it just to be sure. The scar returns in the exact same place. I do it again and get the same result.

Saga changed something.

I trace the line again, more irritated by the timing than the scar itself.

Getting ripped back into the signal right when shit was finally getting good is what really pisses me off.

For a few minutes, I had everything exactly where I wanted it. Her pulse beating under my hand instead of flattened through a microphone. The heat of her skin. The way her breathing changed every time my frequency moved through her. I’d finally gotten close enough to watch that smart fucking mouth struggle to keep up with the rest of her, and then her fear shifted.

She stopped trying to get away long enough to fight me.

The panic thinned, anger took over, and my grip on the physical world went with it.

Annoying.

Useful, but still fucking annoying.

I touch the scar again and feel the interference ripple underneath it. Saga left something on me that survived reconstruction, and there is something deeply satisfying about that.

Not sentimental.

I don’t give a shit about scars meaning connection or fate or any of the other garbage humans use when they’re desperate to make pain sound important.

She altered me, and now I want to return the favor.

Something permanent. Something she can’t delete, wash off, cover up, block, or convince herself never happened.

I haven’t decided what yet, but clearly I have time.

Forcing myself through the signal took more out of the connection than I expected, and whatever opened between us needs to strengthen before I can make myself physical again. I can feel the weakness in it now, the frequency thinner than it was when her fear gave me enough to step through. Trying to force it again would get me nowhere.

For now.