No time for words, no time for communicating a message, that message being received, the understanding.

Only the understanding.

Tristan became Byron. All of the rock he’d placed throughout the room, on the server switches and on Sveta became a rush of water, swirling and flooding the underground space. Her prosthetic body was shoved, twisted around, and the tendrils pulled away from the button.

Given the choice between every single one of the prisoners being executed and every single one of the prisoners living and being free, we’d made a call, because some of those prisoners were important to us. The server flooded with frigid water that quickly extended from floor to ceiling, and blinking lights went black. As connections were disrupted, lights all around us went out, leaving the space as dark and cold as death.

Gleaming 9.14

I tumbled through darkness, and this time there was no frame of reference, even a wrong one. The water was numbing, the darkness all-consuming, and the water around me was moving, more akin to being in an undertow in a fast-moving river than a pool.

Was that only foreshadowing for what was to come?

The thought was eerily calm, disconnected from the danger and the chaos around me.

Fear was contagious, and the fear of the dark was something I’d inherited. There was something about having a mom who often slept with the lights on that made a small child insist on her night-light. When a first sleepover fell to pieces because of the night-light issue, that little girl’s parents had provided explanations. They were superheroes, their powers used light. That was why.

It would be a few years before that little girl would start to feel she’d been told a lie. Not a realization, but a feeling.

Fear paralyzed like cold water did. It shackled, limiting action, like debris stirred up by water, computer components and bits of metal hooking on clothing.

Two ways to deal. One could bend to it, succumb. It wasn’t a bad option, despite what one might think. Because the alternative was to fight, to push through, and any movement that followed from shackles and paralysis was liable to be rushed, to get other people hurt. I’d learned both of those things from my mother. I’d seen her on her patrols, heading into dark alleys with only her weapon for lighting. I’d seen her bend to the fear to the point it was an integral part of how she lived.

If I acted now, if I used the Wretch in a confined space when I didn’t know where my team was, if I flew, I could do a horrendous degree of harm. I flew in one direction, found a flat surface, and pressed myself hard against it, until I was grounded enough to have a sense of gravity. The water roared, someone was trying to shout underwater, but the sound was lost, dulled and muffled beyond recognition.