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CHAPTER SIXTEEN JUST A TASK
*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
Riley crashed to the padded mat below him, falling to his hands and knees as he gasped desperately for breath. Sweat was dripping down his face, coating the collar of his shirt. His hair was damp, and he felt like he was burning from the inside out, his muscles straining and stomach tossing and turning with all the water he'd swallowed that morning. He blinked his eyes and found that the mats below him were swaying, like the room was spinning. He felt himself start to tilt slightly sideways, fully prepared to fall on his side, but Steve was there, kneeling beside him as he patted his back. Riley was still straining for breath, so much so that he wasn't even aware light was still pouring out from his fingers and hands, like a flashlight pressed against a wall, the light pouring out sideways.
"You're forgetting to breathe again," Steve said as he kept patting Riley's back, easing his breaths with each pat, until Riley wasn't sucking them in too fast anymore. Riley shook his head, the room straightening out a little as he regained his bearings, and Steve sighed. "You know, after I was given the serum, it took me a while to adjust to my new body. I would forget that I no longer had asthma, and I would feel like I was struggling to breathe, even when I wasn't. Muscle memory, I think. Or something like phantom pains. Maybe that's what's happening to you?"
Suddenly frustrated, Riley shoved up off the mat and reared backwards, only to fall down again and sit properly. He brought his knees up and let his elbows rest on them, bowing his head as he swallowed all the frustration rising inside of him. For a solid week, he and Steve had been coming to the private gym Steve used in the mornings, the gym he paid to have all to himself for three hours. And every morning, Steve told Riley to bring light to his hands, turn it off, then repeat. That was the easy part. Then Steve would tell him to create the heat that comes with the sun and keep the heat there, in his hands, like he was holding a little ball of sunlight in his palms. Riley had thought it would be easy at first. He had manifested heat before, multiple times. He had done it to Miles Morales when cauterizing his wound two years earlier, and he'd done it when he was a child, over and over and over again. It shouldn't have been hard to do, and yet it was, because the longer Riley kept it up, the worse it became. His lungs would restrict, his muscles would tense, and then he'd lose it.
But this was the first time Riley had actually collapsed.
"What phantom pain could I possibly have?" Riley snapped. He didn't mean to snap at Steve, had never wanted to, but it came out like that anyway. "I used to do this all the time! I was thirteen the first time I did it, when I—" Riley cut off abruptly, pressing his lips together and squeezing his eyes shut. Suddenly, phantom screams were echoing in his head, all those people that he'd been forced to hurt just for information. His stomach jerked again, and he curled up tighter, his hands automatically coming up to clasp over his ears, like he could block the sounds echoing around in his head.
