Lorna sighed as she looked out the window of the taxi. NYC certainly hadn't got any less... crowded in the time she'd been away.
[...]
Eventually, simultaneously, the two released one another.
Cos broke the silence. "I missed you," he said gently, brushing a strand of her hair back.
"I missed you too," she smiled.
[...]
Neutral noticed a strange blob in Cos' pocket. "What's that?" she asked, pointing at it.
"Stress ball thing. Apparently, it was sent to me a couple of months back, but it only filtered down through the parcel-checking systems not long after you left. ."
He moved to hand it to her, but as it came in contact with her hand, before he released it, something happened...
He felt a wave of dizziness hit him...
She felt her 'sisters' rushing towards her in a forced merger...
And both of them felt the world burn to white...
Welcome Back? Level 2 - Desolation
Trinity awoke to a sea, not of white but of black. A seemingly endless, lightless expanse.
"Cos? Cos!? COS!!??" She got no answer. "...anybody?" she asked, in a low voice...
Remembering her day alone in McCauley's Black Room before her brainwashing, she struggled to control her panic, and instinctively split into her three trifurcated selves. Then she heard screaming. Three loud screams. It took a moment to filter through the pain which had suddenly assailed her that the screams were hers.
They fell to the ground, teeth clenched, as Orange continued to scream before it faded to a whimper. As if from far away, they heard Cos' shout, and Purple just managed to raise her head to call out to him before falling again. They heard footsteps, and suddenly felt a foot kicking into Orange's leg and the sound of a fall.
He said something they couldn't hear, then felt along until he found their heads. He said something that might have included "happened". Purple just moaned in pain that the split hurt. He asked if they could remerge, getting louder, more frantic as he asked again. Purple strained to say that they would try, and to get back.
They heard him step back, and tried to focus past the pain until they felt themselves begin to flow, three bodies rejoining to one.
She managed to call out that she was alright before she fainted. _____________
The foul smell under her nose woke her up. She squirmed, and it was withdrawn as the hand underneath her pushed her forward to a sitting position.
"What happened?"
Cos' voice came from above her head "You fainted after you remerged - I hope, I felt around for more of you, but in this pitch black... you did merge, didn't you?"
She paused for a moment, "Yeah, just me. I'm all in here." A longer moment. "That's never happened before. It felt like my heads were going to explode."
"You're okay now though - I mean, as just the one of you?"
"I think so. Are your powers working okay? Where are we?"
"I'm not sure - they seem to be working normally, but with no sight and nothing at distance to latch onto, I can't be 100% sure. Where? No idea where we are, but it's certainly not LHQ."
"That stress ball thing was a teleporter?"
"Looks like it. It must have been set to trigger when two people touched it at once, because I've had it for weeks and half the team's touched it at one point or another. It's not exactly standard tech. Someone went to a lot of trouble to set a booby-trap like that."
"It doesn't have to be tech - the elf-girl McCauley used to catch me - Clarice? - was a teleporter, but she used spears to open her portals. Someone else might be able to do the same thing with more control."
"Maybe..." Cos' voice trailed off, and he took her hand. "Right now though, unless you've got it, I don't think it makes much difference how it works."
"You don't have it."
"I didn't wake up with it in my hand anyway. In this black, there's not much chance of finding it even if it came with us."
"Lovely." She sat down, and tugged his hand to indicate that he should too. He felt her hand shiver, and clasped it tight.
"N-no, it's ok-kay Cos. I'm just c-cold." Trinity stuttered, teeth chattering. He remembered that she'd just been wearing a T-shirt before they'd been whisked away, while he'd been wearing his insulated costume, minus the gauntlets.
"Lu..." Cos pulled his short cloak off and put it round her shoulders. "Are you sure that's all it is?"
"S-sure. What el-lse would it be?"
"You tell me."
"N-nothing."
"Are you sure?"
She set her jaw and focused, trying not to think about the Black Room. "Yeah, I'm sure."
"It's not connected to anything that happened when... you know?"
"Not everything's about that Cos. You're not trying to pull a Gene, are y-"
"Lu, I'm the one who spent hours arguing to and with Gene after what happened to STOP you getting kicked off the team! Do you have any idea how much scrutiny we're under these days?"
"Huh"?
"Well, firstly, Luthor, obviously. Technically, he's got no power over us, but he's got 'influence' and that's nearly as bad. It took him months to get out from under the pile of dung we dropped him in in Columbia, and he STILL got elected within a year - what does that tell you?"
"Red States vote blindly?"
"You know what I mean. I've met him twice with Gene - trust me, he's not forgiven us for that. Plus, we've weakened our own position - half the team disappeared off on their own private missions; including us, and we marked our cards even if we technically got away with it because of the sheer volume of evidence. And then there's Tina's group. If they're lucky, they'll "only" get formal reprimands - final warnings - and if there were ready replacements, they WOULD be kicked out.
That's one of the main reasons for the Academy - out of a hundred or so students, at most five, plus Gates and the other two powered teachers, a Ms. Moonstar and a Ms. Lonestar, might be ready to join now. And four of those eight were asked and said no, two were decided to be too borderline, and Moonstar's tutoring experience was decided to be too valuable if they wanted it to work out. Just one even said "maybe" - she asked until the New Year to think it over - and it'll be at least a year before there'll be anybody else.
And even WITH that, as I say, if Tina's group ever decide to show their faces again, they'll be lucky to stay members. I'm not even sure Irma could save them."
"And here's me with a 'marked card', words like 'compromised', 'split personality' and 'low-powered' on my file."
"Right. I don't want you to be the scapegoat if anything happens. Plus, I don't want anything happening to YOU - any of you."
"...what do I need to do?"
"You're sure y..."
"Like you said, if I don't come back now, what are the odds I'll get back on that bike again? What do I need to do to prove I can hack it?"
"Two things - as soon as your leave of absence is officially over, you'll be sent for mandatory counselling, the same way Paul and Ella were - and are - after they were unbrainwashed. If Dr Ryker's report gives you a basic all-clear, you'll be readded to the formal "Active" roster - and in the meantime, you'll just be training & so on After that, you'll just need to show you can, as you put it, 'hack it' like you did before."
She fell silent for a minute. Cos then added, with a smile in his voice, "Oh, and not scream in pain when you split."
"HEY!" She glared through the obsidian air at him for a minute, then relented. "It's this place, it's interfering with my powers somehow. You saw me split back at HQ before this happened, remember."
"I know." After a moment, his tone lightened a little, "I still had to say it though, Lu." He felt for her hand again, and clasped it tightly, then stood up with her hand still in his.
She smiled. A pause. "Why do you always call me that?"
"What, Lu?"
"Yeah. You've called me it since the first time I spoke to you. How come?"
"It's a bit embarrassing... are you sure you want to know?"
"I asked, didn't I?"
"Just remember - you're the one that stuck me with 'Cosmic Boy', so you don't have a leg to stand on..."
"Tell me!"
"Back on that first day, I didn't catch your name, and you reminded me of my Aunt Lu. You didn't react, and I kept calling you it. That's all."
"No great plan, huh?"
"No great secret. I'm surprised you never asked before." He smiled and said, "We need to start moving, to try and find a way out of here."
"Shouldn't we stay here? If they get Gates in, or Clarice, and they find our trail, shouldn't we stay here so that they can reach us without needing to search through this?"
"I'd say yes, but for one thing."
"What's that?"
"Starboy was talking to Gates in the rec room when you arrived. It's been nearly an hour and a half by my reckoning, and if he could see a trail, they'd have got it by now. And, as for Clarice, she isn't ready to have any pressure of any sort put on her yet - they're terrified that she'll shut down to the point they can't reach her., throwing her into a life-or-death situation probably isn't a risk they'd want to take, especially when she only might be able to help.
Basically, we've got no food, no water, and nobody's got any means of tracing us."
"When you p-put it like that..." she shivered again as she pulled herself up against Cos.
They started walking. ________________
At first, they talked, but after the first hour that tailed off, and they walked hand-in-hand in silence but for the tapping of their feet on the rough ground. Occasionally, they tripped, but usually caught each other before they hit the ground.
It was hours before Cos realised that he didn't feel hungry, or thirsty, or tired. He stopped abruptly, leading Trinity to almost fall again.
"How long have we been walking, Lu?"
"I don't know. An hour?"
"It's a lot longer than that. It has to be. Didn't you have a watch?"
"It doesn't light up. Are you sure - my feet would be getting sore by now from all this walking, surely?"
"That's what's worrying me. Surely we should be getting hungry, or needing the toilet or something. I have to think to realise how long it's been. Something's very wrong here."
"But..."
"But?"
"But there isn't anything we can do, is there?"
"We can stop. Check your feet - are they okay?"
They sat down and felt. "Cos... can you feel yours? I'm touching my feet, but I can't feel anything." A note of panic began to creep into Lorna's voice.
"...no. And I can move my toes, but my feet should be sweaty after that walk, and they're not."
"There's something about this place, isn't there?"
"Lu, calm down. The last thing you want to do here is split, remember."
She breathed harder. "But it's eating away at us. I can't split properly. We don't feel warnings we should. Our feet are going numb. What next?"
"Just focus. Count to one hundred..."
He heard the whistle of breathing through clenched teeth. "Lu..."
"I-I can't hold it..."
She split.
The three Lornas screamed at the top of their voices again, but this time they did not fall to the ground, but stood, sweat suddenly pouring down their faces and eyes watering from the pain, holding each other on their feet in the pitch blackness.
"Lu, you've got to remerge." He felt at one of her foreheads, and waited a moment. "LORNA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? MERGE!"
"R-R-R-Re-x-x-x-x... I..." Three voices stuttered in unison, unable to finish the sentence.
"TRINITY. MERGE. NOW."
Three sets of bloodshot eyes looked in the direction of his voice, then pulled their eyes to each other. Then T-Orange and T-Purple, the outer two, felt a hand on their outer shoulders."
"Please. For me."
Their bodies started to flow together, until the merged Trinity stood momentarily, then fell to the ground. ___________
The foul smell under her nose woke her up. She squirmed, feeling the cold ground underneath her, and tried to push herself up.
"Sorry Cos, I-" she stopped when she realised the smell was still there. Not wanting to open her eyes, she felt the broken smelling salts bottle on the ground. Listening, she couldn't hear anything except her own breathing. Opening her eyes, she looked around and saw no-one on the brown, rocky ground.
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