Timepieces

Newcomer

This... took a while. Originally I didn't intend for Outsider to have a sequel at all, but when I started to explore the characters more in fall of 2021, I realized there was so much more to them than what I'd shown in the first story. Welcome back to the incomprehensible world of SICK.

--NEWCOMER-- (Published Mar 16, 2022)

We stand in desolation. The ground around us is coated in a thick layer of wreckage, any signs of civilization left at the mercy of a fading world. A two-by-four as long as my armspan juts out of the earth at an uneven, sagging angle. Dying fires crackle, half-hidden by unidentifiable bits of twisted metal and scattered wood. This is the only building still standing, the last survivor of a world that should have crumbled long ago. An impossibility. But, then again, so are we.

The huge, dusty letters arch smooth and reliable across the once-white poster, narrow rips and uniform fades standing out proudly against the dull fabric. The word that defines us, mounted high and confident across the facade, ready for everyone and no one to see.

And then she says, "Why does the sign say Sick?"

I asked the same question. Those same words, that same naively curious tone, with that innocuous, half-bewildered expression sketched across my face. Cassia Fayne, outsider, neophyte, newcomer, has to look up in order to meet my eyes. Her own are clouded with realization, the understanding that this is so much bigger than her alone.

"It's an acronym." I open the door.

The air at once clears and muddies as we step inside, the empty, hopeless smell of the outside fading into cleanliness, touched with a tinge of floral perfume. The almost ethereal silence has been replaced by the bustling of voices and the clicking of feet. No one takes any notice of us as we step inside, a blissful relief, a reminder that we are meant to be here. This is where we belong.

"Austin!" I can hear the familiar double-clicks of Cosima's emerald-green high heels even before she becomes visible, weaving around an intent discussion in the front of the crowd. "How was the assignment?" she queries, really more a matter of perfunctory disinterest than curiosity.

"Fine. Boring," I admit. Expecting Cassia Fayne to argue, I slip a glance down towards her face- only to discover that, like Cosima, she's completely detached from the conversation.

Of course.

"Why are you up here, Cosima?"

"I'm just getting a glass of water." She dismisses the question with a wave of her hand, pushing it aside and into obscurity. A familiar mannerism, at least to me, but I don't fail to notice my companion's flinch.

"Who sent you up here?" I edge my way into understanding, one question at a time, ready to explore every possible way that this could have gone so disastrously wrong.

She shrugs. "Chekov." Then, cocking her head, she adds, "Why exactly is that important?"

I can feel my arms raising half-involuntarily in a wide, frustrated shrug. When I speak, my voice echoes sharply across the entry hall, snappish and surly and entirely too loud. "Because of the neophyte!"

At the sound of my shout, footsteps shuffle to a stop, casual conversation disintegrating into the mysterious murmurs of tomorrow's gossip. Cosima cocks her head uncomprehendingly as, impossibly, Cassia Fayne lets out a small, nervous whimper.

Automatically, my hand reaches up to drag across my forehead in reflexive exasperation. "Chekov, that execrable-"

Cosima finishes my sentence with what is by now an all-too-familiar foreign expletive. "Are you serious? They sent me up here because..."