“Calculate it, Yeva.”
“It’s too hard.”
“Nothing is too hard for my daughter. Break down the problem and follow your conclusions step by step.”
“Can I at least have paper?”
“No, you should be able to do this calculation in your mind.”
“Mmmh… The radius of the event horizon… with a singularity weight of four million solar masses, it should be… sixteen light-hours?”
“Is that a question?”
“Sixteen light-hours.”
“You’re close, but your conclusion is imprecise. Next time, I won’t accept an estimate.”
“Yes sir.”
“Let’s move on, Yeva. The reason the scale of these things are important is so you can understand the greater principles of the universe. Let’s take dimensionality, for example. What is the first dimension, Yeva?”
“A line?”
“And how would you describe a line?”
“Um, something that goes from one point to another?”
“Not a bad description, but it’s missing perspective. Can you think of something that exists in our world that is one dimensional?”
“Time?”
“Good. Time is often considered the fourth dimension because it acts like a one dimensional force, always moving in a single direction. Plotting it on a fourth dimensional graph also allows us to calculate how our relative speed in the third dimension affects our tangential dilation in time. But what I’m most interested in is not a one dimensional force, but a one dimensional object. Something physical that isn’t affected by the second, third, or fourth dimensions. Can you tell me what that is?”
“A singularity?”
“Very good, Yeva. But if the singularity is a one dimensional object, then it must have two points, a beginning and an end, yet in our universe it ignores all other dimensions and appears as a single point. So then, where does the singularity lead, if not to another point in space or time?”
“Uhm… I dunno.”
“No one does, my little galaxy, not even your daddy, and that is what makes it fascinating.”
***
Everything was black, yet my eyes were open, or were they? I’d stopped being able to tell the difference. Could my life flash before my eyes if I couldn’t see? Everything was black. Was this death, the void, or just the other side of the singularity? Who was I? The pain had pushed everything else out. It left me alone and in the dark. I was alone for so long, wasn’t I?
***
“I'm sorry about what happened to your family, Miss Smirnova. However, I have good news; because of your parents' high positions in the company and the circumstances of their deaths, they have left behind a sizable trust for you. Additionally, the Clearlight Foundation has offered you a full ride through its employee foster and development program. I understand that your father had initially refused these benefits so he could teach you himself, but due to the circumstances they have decided to let you re-enroll. The Clearlight Foundation's foster and development program is one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world. Your father still had you submitting the yearly final’s test results at an accelerated pace, meaning your education can still continue at the same advanced level. Of course, your other option is to go into the public foster care system. As your attorney, I would advise you against this. You’re a little too old for most parents to want to adopt, and they would have a hard time supplying for your advanced education in theoretical physics, biology, maths, and quantum mechanics.”
“... “
“Right. Well, I'll let the board know my recommendations. You have a fine future ahead of you, Miss Smirnova. I look forward to seeing it take shape.”
***
I felt as alone in this dark womb as I had back then. Was I really alone? That felt wrong. Like I’d missed something important. Who was I before? Why had I forgotten? Pain. So much pain. I didn’t want to go back, to see again.
***
“Yeva, this is the second year in a row you have failed all of your advanced maths and sciences classes. The teachers tell me you left all the tests blank again.”
“... “
“Even if you think these questions are beneath you, you need to answer them so we can gauge what you learned and know.”
“I hate them.”
“The tests?”
“No.”
“The teachers?”
“No.”
“What do you hate, Yeva?”
“The subjects.”
“Yeva… your father loved these subjects.”
“... “
“Well, in any case, with so many failed subjects, we are going to have to hold you back again this year. That still makes you three years ahead of the other students, but if you don’t start doing the work, whether or not you hate it, you will keep failing.”
***
So. Much. Pain. Make it stop. Please, let it end.
***
“Yeva, dear, since Mr. Harland retired last year, he passed your case onto me. So, we’ll be in this together, alright?”
“... “
“I understand you've been having some trouble with some of the advanced classes?”
“... “
“Well, you won't have to worry about that anymore, we've decided to move you to general studies. How does that sound?”
“Whatever.”
“Great, this will be so much fun, and you might finally get to make some friends, now that you'll be with kids your own age.”
“... “
***
…
***
…
***
…
I’m sorry, Yeva. I’m failing you again. I tried to take away the pain for as long as I could, but I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to be alone. I’m losing myself. It’s like when Mom and Dad died all over again, but without you, I’ll just become another monster. I don’t want to let it win. I need you, so please forgive me and be strong.
***
“Well, Yeva, congratulations, you've officially failed more classes than anyone else in our school's history.”
“... “
“I am sorry, that was poorly said. I know you've been through a lot. It can't have been easy. But this is your last chance. You're fifteen now, and have failed out of every other track we offer. All that's left is the military academy. You don't qualify for any of the specialist courses, as those have prerequisites in fields you refuse to study, but you can make it in the officer track.”
“... “
“Yeva, do you know what it means to be an educator?”
“What?”
“Do you understand what it means to teach someone?”
“You speak, they listen.”
“Perhaps to some people that's all it is, but not me. To me, an educator’s job is to guide another into the person they have the potential to become. Like a mason carving a statue from rock, he cannot simply carve whatever he wants, he must follow the grain and let the stone decide the shape. His job is merely to reveal its natural beauty, not force it to conform to his vision. Yeva, I fear that my predecessors have been poor masons, but they have left me with but a single tool. The hammer. And I pray it's the right one.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, I just told you that your failures weren't entirely your fault, then said I was going to punish you for them anyways. You should be furious right now.”
“Well it's working.”
“Good, a mason needs to understand how the stone will move under the chisel. You have proven that you don't care if you alone fail, so from now on, your failure will hurt others and their failures will hurt you.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“No, it's a tried and true method. Welcome to the military academy, Yeva. I will not have you failing again. You have been failed enough already.”
***
My eyes shot open, or, well, maybe. I couldn’t see anything either way, and holy fuck did everything hurt. I gracefully spasmed in pain, my limbs sluggish as they convulsed through a viscous liquid. I tried moving, desperate to fill my lungs with something other than fluid, but couldn’t. Something was pinning me in place. If only I could… ooh, I grabbed the warp weaver foreleg currently impaling my lung and yanked. It was just as bad coming out as it had been going in, but for some reason I was still alive, so I wasn’t complaining. I then resumed splashing frantically like I was drowning, which - considering I had already been drowned - was kinda ridiculous, but it did the job. I emerged from the inky waters and clambered onto a metal catwalk just above the lake’s surface that ringed the chamber’s outer wall. Convulsing, I vomited up an unholy amount of the ichor onto the grated floor, which just leaked through, and gasped for air only to heave out a few more lungfulls of liquid.
“Nim,” I said - as soon as I managed to breathe successfully - wincing at the sound of my own voice. It was like I had three windpipes, each of which with a different type of crippling disease. “Status… report.”
Yeva? Yeva, you are alive! Wow, I did not think that would work. Good job, me.
“Nim,” I said darkly, my voice reverberating with sinister otherworldly malice, “if you do not give me some information, right now, I will rip out our heart and eat it in front of you.”
That… came out darker than I’d intended.
Right, yes, status report. I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you are alive. The bad news is that I was unable to stop the warp from altering your DNA on a molecular level. Honestly, the fact that I was able to shield your mind at all is a miracle, but I digress. I have already repaired the hole to your lung, so you are in no danger of dying at the moment. However, we should discuss the changes that have been made to your body while you were unconscious.
Yeah, changes were right. My organs had felt out of place since I regained consciousness, but considering all the pain and discomfort I’d been in, it hadn’t exactly registered. It had taken noticing my hands, braced against the ground as my fingers bent the steel grate under them, for it to sink it. For starters, they were bare. My hazmat armor was completely gone, along with all of my clothes. A quick glance around the white test chamber found the mutilated armor plastered to the wall by a web of black ichor. But the other, perhaps more important thing I’d noticed about my hands was the fact that they weren’t my hands. The skin matched the Warp weaver’s, so pale it almost looked blue, with black, bone-like ridges that stood out from the skin where the exo-skeleton had once been. The nails covered the entire finger starting at the last joint and hooked into a wicket sharp black talon.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Hey, Nim?” I said, flexing the alien fingers. On closer examination, there was also a faint web of black veins that ran under my skin. “What the fuck?”
There were four hundred and eighty six quadrillion changes made to your body. However, perhaps even more notable, were the changes made to me. As of before this debacle, you had a hard limit to the nanite count allowed to be replicated in your bloodstream. That count was set at 85.6437 billion, or about 1.5 kg of nanites. I have since exceeded this maximum against my own will. Your current nanite count in your bloodstream is resting at a stable 4.2 trillion, weighing roughly 75 kg. Considering your side has not increased, your body is now roughly twice as dense as an ordinary human’s.
“Why?” I growled.
It would seem we were somewhat mistaken about the nature of the warp. Upon contact with it, and its ensuing attempt to take over your body, I was able to discern some interesting information. The warp is primarily made up of a mixture of biological tissue and nanites that have had their code corrupted. I am not entirely sure what causes this corrupt code, it could be a virus or just an issue with the algorithm’s original design, but this corrupt code causes these nanites to rapidly mutilate any organic matter they infiltrate into the various creatures and substances we call ‘warp’.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, gingerly attempting to stand and finding the movement strange. It was like I was using an exo-kit for the first time. My body felt heavy, yet it was surprisingly easy to move. My feet were just as fucked up as my hands, too, which was distracting. My arches had gotten higher, to the point where the middle of my foot no longer touched the ground. Exo-skeletal tendons ridged the skin atop each toe, which were now splayed further apart into three equal sized talons instead of the usual five. The heel was backed entirely in the black bone-like plating and felt almost opposable. I flexed it and my entire foot latched onto the metal grate, bending it. “We’ve been studying the warp for years. If it was some kind of rogue nanite A.I. then the Clearlight Foundation would have figured it out and patched it decades ago.”
You are correct. However, historical data shows that corporations - including but not limited to, the Clearlight Foundation - have been involved in countless scandals where they covered up harmful side effects of products brought to market. One can surmise that if they have failed to cover up other such scandals, then there would be those that were successfully obfuscated from the public eye as well. This is the only logical explanation.
“So what, the Clearlight Foundation invents revolutionary nanite technology that can save countless lives, then finds out that it can malfunction, turning its hosts into the warp?” I said, trying to puzzle it out as I leaned against the lab wall to steady my footing. Something weird was going on with my back. At first I thought it was just my exo-arm, but I wasn’t wearing my exo-kit anymore. And it just felt wrong. If I could just get my balance, I could check my reflection in the evil lake of monsterification. “That still doesn’t make sense, if they knew it was the nanites, why not do something about it other than train a bunch of taskforces to put down the rogue A.I.s?”
Maybe they were unable to discern the cause of the corrupt code? Regardless, they would not want their revolutionary invention that can save billions of lives to be banned, so they lie about the origin of the warp.
“Hey, Nim?”
Yes, Yeva?
“While this is interesting and all,” I said with mock patients, “Can we get back to those sixty four quadrillion changes that were made to my body?”
My reflection was positively horrifying. If I weren’t me, I’d totally put myself on a shoot first, ask questions never list. My once noble and proud face had been replaced with a facsimile. The skin had hardened into two plates of smooth chitin the same pale color of my skin. These plates had a seam that split my face in two where my mouth had been. My lips were gone, which explained why I sounded like a burn victim. The chitin mask had almost no nose, though nostrils remained, and holes for my eyes, which - like the warp weaver’s - were too big and entirely covered by yellow sclera.
And I’d thought the warp weaver was disturbing. At least she’d looked mostly human above the waist. My body had become freaky and was only somewhat humanoid, the operative word being somewhat. My chest still stuck out, but the girls were gone, covered over by hard ridged plates like a second, exo-skeletal ribcage had grown over them. Below my breasts the armor continued, following the contours of my body all the way down, protecting my once exposed belly and groin.
Oh, yes. Well perhaps I should start with one of the most important parts of your body. Your gut bacteria is completely gone and has been replaced with nanites. These nanites can-
“Nim?” I said, fighting off the slowly mounting dread. “Please tell me that this armor stuff is retractable, in particular the stuff in between my legs.”
Oh, about that, do you remember how I said the only part of you I was able to protect from the warp was your brain?
“Yes.”
Well, as it happens, the warp reproduces through nanite replication, DNA manipulation, and cell division. Meaning that it has no use for most of your body’s core functions. In particular, it has completely removed your entire reproductive system including all of its associated organs and body parts, and replaced them with what you call ‘breach tumors’, which are organs dedicated solely to the production of nanites. He then resumed his prattling about bacteria, which I tuned out.
Yep, this was it. It hadn’t quite sunk in before, but now it had. My life was over. I might as well just die now. Unless…
“Does that mean I won’t get periods anymore?”
… Yes? he said, pausing a diatribe on something called ruminococcus.
Hell yeah, we were so back. It was only sex anyways, sacrifices had to be made for the betterment of the species. I turned my back to the evil lake so I could examine the rest of my new and improved body, surprising myself as my head turned about twenty degrees farther than it should have. Even more surprising was the two extra sets of shoulderblades protruding from my spine, one halfway down my ribcage and the other on the small of my back. Just like with the tendons on the backs of my hands, my spine and shoulderblades - or generally where those things should have been - had become almost exo-skeletal, protruding from my skin in black chitin. From these two lower sets of shoulderblades came two additional sets of arms that were currently hanging limp over my buttocks. A buttocks that, to my delight, was mostly unchanged.
It took a moment’s concentration, but I got the four arms to move and flexed them. It was similar to using an exo-arm, only somehow more natural. I didn’t have the instincts for using them like I did my regular arms - likely because the warp hadn’t been able to alter my brain - but unlike an exo-arm, where it was essentially hijacking unrelated nerves to get information, these were actually a part of my body, with nerves of their own. I held the additional appendages up so I could examine them more closely. They were far more slender than my main arms, but just as long, and had an additional joint near the shoulder that allowed them to reach more easily around my sides, as the lower two sets of shoulderblades didn’t protrude beyond my ribcage.
I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, giving myself a triple hug.
- in addition to no longer having any of these kinds of gut bacteria, your digestive system has been almost completely removed, though you should still be able to expel nondigestible waste materials in the usual manner.
“Hey, Nim?”
Yes, Yeva?
“We’re going to need to work on your summarization skills, but more importantly, should I be worried about the warp? I mean, I feel like I’ve been standing here gawking at myself in its reflection for a really long time and nothing has come out of the ichor to eat me yet. Am I now like, I don’t know, part of its… family? Help me out here.”
I believe so, Yeva. It should now consider us to be a warp beast, like the warp weaver or the decanids. It has changed your DNA to match its own, and it has infected me with its strange warp virus thingy, corrupting a bunch of my code. Now that we are on the same team, it has cut us loose so we can protect it. This ‘lake’ is the main body of the warp at this location, the so-called ‘main breach’. We will be able to communicate and receive sustenance from it by contacting any of the warp ichor spread throughout the area.
Huh, and that might just have been the most concerning part of this whole mess. I could unpack the fact that my neural nanite interface matrix and life long companion might now be evil later. Instead, I was going to just have to focus on the realizations that I could now eat through my skin, baby bird style, and that I was supposed to now follow the orders of a psychotic, potentially alien, evil nanite virus. Yeah, that wasn’t happening.
I took another look around my surroundings. Fortunately, the lights were still on from earlier, as I had lost my helmet and my headlamps with it. The white drum test chamber was around fifteen meters tall and had two catwalks ringing the room. The one I was standing on and had missed earlier, and the higher one that connected to the observation room. A caged metal ladder was riveted into the wall across from me and appeared to be my only ticket out of here. Also interesting was the fact that the warp seemed to be avoiding touching the ladder or catwalks, which was an oddity I’d missed until now.
“You think all this stuff is made of lead?” I asked, making my way towards the ladder.
I am certain of it. Lead has been slowly poisoning your bloodstream ever since you climbed up here. I was going to warn you, but I had several quadrillion other alerts I had to work through first. We still are not done with those, by the way. Would you like to resume?
“No, that can wait. Why would they make this stuff out of lead unless they knew to expect a warp breach?”
It could be that this facility was one designed specifically for experimenting on the warp itself.
“That’s what I’m thinking too. But if that’s the case, they should have a failsafe. Some way to destroy whatever samples they had been testing in this chamber before it went out of control.”
I reached the base of the ladder and grabbed the first rung. The cold lead faintly stung my skin as I began to climb. I had to suppress a shudder as my newly designed feet gripped the ladder, eliciting more stinging.
If there was a failsafe, surely the facility staff would have used it.
“Not necessarily,” I said, barely exerting myself as I climbed. It felt like my exo-kit was doing all the work, except I wasn’t wearing it. “It could be that this facility was compromised for reasons unrelated to this room. If the staff had to evacuate without properly terminating their test subjects, it would have allowed the sample in this room to grow freely, without oversight.”
That is not how it works, Yeva. The warp requires food to survive and grow.
“Okay, well the warp can appear anywhere right? Statistically, it usually appears in heavily populated areas, why not a warp research lab?”
Have you already forgotten what we discussed? The warp doesn’t simply appear, it originates from the Clearlight Foundation’s medical nanites becoming corrupted, killing its host, and mutating their DNA and cells into otherworldly monstrosities.
“Right, sure, semantics,” I said, stepping off the ladder and onto the second ring of catwalks. There was a door in the room’s wall to my left that looked heavily reinforced, but I had a theory, so I went towards the observation room instead. “What I’m saying is that one of those researchers could have been the source of a warp breach. Juvenile warp breaches aren’t that dangerous, but what if one formed here and was able to feed the other researchers to the samples of a fully matured breach?”
I reached for the door handle leading into the observation room, but pulled my hand away with a hiss as soon as I touched it. It must have been made of solid lead because it hurt way worse to touch than the catwalks. I braced myself, weird feet digging into the metal below me, and shoulder checked the door. It crumpled like tinfoil under my weight, ripping off the hinges. I stepped through the portal, avoiding the door’s remains, and examined the aftermath of my duel with the warp weaver. We had trashed even more of the computers in the room, but a good amount of the consoles, switchboards, and screens were still intact.
What are you getting at, Yeva? Does it matter how this breach formed? You should be trying to find a way to get out of this place. You know HQ will send more squads after you and Captain Coldwell fail to report back.
He had a point, but I wasn’t done with this breach yet. If it was going to destroy my life, I at least wanted to know why. I turned on one of the computers but of course it wanted an access code. I was, however, able to determine this facility's origin by way of the Clearlight Foundation's logo on the lock screen. I searched around the desks, looking for anything that might indicate a password, some of these office worker types didn't understand the meaning of security. Alas, I didn't see any sticky notes saying ‘password’ on them, but something curious did catch my eye. One of the desk’s drawers contained an ancient looking cassette videotape labeled ‘S14 - A01336’. Of course, I'd heard of these before - Aiden was an enthusiast - but I'd never used one. They were expensive and kind of terrible, despite Avery's insistence that there was something special about ‘real film’. What was something like this doing here? I picked one at random and tried sliding it into a slot on the console that looked made for it. It didn't fit.
Historical data shows that you have that upside down.
Realizing my mistake on my own, without the help of anyone else, I flipped it over and tried again. The video started playing on the screen automatically. Apparently the older technology didn't give a rats ass about the lock screen. The recording showed the test chamber below, only without all the warp. It was filmed from the lowest catwalk, which appeared to be about 5 meters above the test chamber’s actual floor. A man in a white lab coat stood over a woman strapped to an operating table. Medical equipment was connected to her, reading her vitals, and beside the researcher lay an instrument table containing a syringe full of black liquid.
“Oh I don't like the look of this,” I muttered.
The man began monologuing to himself, narrating his actions.
“Researcher’s log, the date is the eleventh of august, fifty four O three. Subject fourteen has been sedated, we shall begin experiment A zero one three three six,” he said. The voice was eerily familiar but crackled with static, making it hard to place. He reached for the syringe, because of course he did. “Procedure has begun. I will now be injecting the proto-nanite serum.”
I held my breath as he put the needle to the woman's arm and injected the mystery nanites. There was a long silence as the man casually checked the woman's vitals.
“Nanite replication complete, level’s stable at eighty five billion. Subject fourteen seems stable. Heart rate reading ninety one BPM. Blood pressure-”
The woman began convulsing violently.
“Subject fourteen’s vitals are deteriorating rapidly. Deterioration began after exactly twelve point five four seconds after stable numbers were reached. Heart rate reading one hundred and sixty seven, and appears to be going into cardiac arrest,” the man said, his tone unchanged as he examined the medical instruments attached to his patient. The woman’s skin began to grow paler until her skin matched my own in color, but it didn’t stop there, the odd, almost bluish tint grew darker until she was gray then black, finally her skin began to dissolve. The monotone researcher narrated all of this, only reacting to take a step back as the woman’s essence started to pool on the floor in a viscous black ichor. The entire transformation can’t have lasted more than two minutes.
“The virus, I am calling warp, continues to plague advances in nanite technology. It is unusual how the nanites only become unstable once introduced into human biology. Current theory is that it has to do with the development of the host’s brain. I will need to acquire an infant to attempt further testing on human subjects.”
Without another word the screen went black. I swallowed but my mouth had gone dry. What the fuck?
“Hey Nim, when did the Clearlight Foundation’s medical nanites hit the open market?”
According to historical data, the first commercial form of medical nanites were introduced 43 years ago on the 27th of February, 5408.
Five years later. It took five years for them to go from melting people alive to injecting it into every infant on the planet. Well, that hadn’t exactly been what I was looking for, but it would add to my nightmares. Unfortunately, without being able to get into any of the computers, I wasn’t going to be getting any more information from this place. So I looked around for my other objective. I wanted a little revenge - unrelated to the atrocities committed here almost half a century ago - both for my private parts and for my squad. I found what I was looking for easily enough. It was a big red button covered by a plexiglass shroud, labeled simply ‘purge’. Oh yeah, it was purging time. I smashed the button, my fist going right through the plexiglass. A siren started to wail as the lights pulsed red, and a prerecorded ten second count down was sounded off. The numbers also displayed on all the screens along with the words ‘warning, nanite purge commencing’. Once the timer hit zero, spray nozzles that I’d missed on the undersides of the catwalks and embedded in the ceiling of the test chamber started spraying liters of yellow nanite acid.
I gave a worried glance to the door I’d knocked down, but it didn’t look like much of it was getting inside the observation room. My concern, however, was redoubled as the entire facility started to shake. The evil warp lake was quivering as the acid ate away at its surface. The previously stationary, thick artery-like trunks of warp ripped themselves from the walls and began to thrash about, ripping huge gouges in the white concrete and tearing at the catwalks in an attempt to stop the spray. The lead alloy was no match for the huge tendrils, but destroying them just caused nanite acid to burst from broken pipes. To my horror, this included destroying the catwalk that led to the only exit door this chamber had. The tendril wrapped around it and ripped down the entire chunk of walkway, taking the ladder with it, rivets pulled straight from the concrete.
A different tendril came for me next - well, not me exactly, but the observation room I currently occupied. I threw myself to the side as the massive appendage struck. It ripped right through the observation chamber’s walls and glass window, cutting the room in half. I scrabbled with all six arms for anything that looked bolted down as the floor pivoted, everything sliding towards the abyss. Desks, computers, and chairs - including the one with the cassette player - slid past me and disappeared over the ledge along with the other half of the room, which had been torn from the wall. So much for keeping that video as evidence. The noise was deafening as steel and lead alloy bent and broke, all the while nanite acid hissed angrily as it dissolved everything it touched.
Ah yes, a brilliant idea, Yeva, get us killed a second time, Nim said, sounding terrified, which was new for him.
“No running commentary, please,” I said, remembering I could anchor my feet directly into the metal floor. Handy, or maybe footy? I ran across the rapidly emptying room, feet digging into the metal with each awkward step of my heel toe grippers. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far, as the tunnel I’d come in through was still there, on the wall near the ceiling. It still slowly leaked warp ichor, which meant I was going to have to touch the stuff with my bare hands and feet again. I hesitated, shuddering at the thought, but the floor started to lurch under me, so I wasn’t left with any choice. I jumped for it right as the observation room’s remaining half started to fall. Grabbing the tunnel’s rim with my newly clawed hands, I scrabbled inside. The sensation that came over me when I contacted the warp ichor was unusual. It was warm and slimy, kinda like I’d stuck my hand inside someone’s open chest cavity. It also filled my head with the impression that my mother was under attack and that she needed help. I ignored it and pushed further up the tunnel, getting far enough that I could no longer see out the end.
Yeva, what are you doing, shouldn’t you go back and help? Nim asked, sounding confused.
“No, Nim. We caused that, remember?” I said, heart squeezing in concern for him. “You know what? Don’t worry about it, buddy. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
I grit my teeth, noticing for the first time that they felt different under my tongue, and resumed my climb. It was about time I got out of here.
