Super•Villainess

Chapter V: Lily

Tragically awake, when the door to my room buzzed open and no one entered, I took that as my cue to rejoin our little micro-society and hope it was time for breakfast.

It wasn't.

I wobbled on unsteady legs after the sound of chatter, pointedly ignoring the bug-eyed surveillance cameras leering down at me. In the common area, I spotted Yazyk, Felipe, and Namazzi seated together at a gleaming silver table mostly ignoring one another. Yazyk was playing a fierce game of chess against himself, if his furrowed brow was anything to judge by, while Namazzi continued her campaign to teach a bored-looking Felipe needlework using sharp corrective hands and the few words shared between them.

I slumped down heavily into the open space opposite to Yazyk, who, not once peering up at me, began resetting the board.

"Did I miss anything exciting?" I asked, clearing my throat after an awkward first start. How long had it been since I last had use of my vocal chords, I wondered.

Yazyk took white and made the first move, nudging a pawn forward two spaces. "No," he said in short, gruff.

Felipe, in his excitement to be reunited with someone not fifteen years over his age range, rapid-fired a long string of words that I caught maybe half of.

I glanced beseechingly to Yazyk, who refused to tear himself away from the budding game even for a moment, clearly not intending to translate. His power was a peculiar one. He understood anyone in any tongue without once being forced to pick up a book. Clearly a thaumaturge, right? No human was naturally so gifted - and yet his was the only ability not canceled out by the implants in our arms. The best guess he came up with was that his power intersected too thoroughly with his brain. What his ability taught him remained imbedded in his head forever.

Lucky. What I wouldn't give to heal right now. Was this how normal people always felt? Heavy limbs and tender - everything.

Folding my arms, I stared at Yazyk long and hard without moving my piece until at last he rolled his eyes.

"He says you were gone for ten days. They took one more in the meantime - Fern - and replaced her with that traumatized woman there." He speared a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the only person I didn't recognize, sitting apart from the others in an almost catatonic state. Some people screamed for days after being caught, others cried. This was always somehow worse. "Word going around is that she was a mindreader." He sniffed. "Don't know where they got that idea. I haven't seen her talk to anybody."

If that was true, it explained her reaction to being cut off from her power. Hearing voices all her life, unable to turn them off, and then suddenly - silence. No idea who to trust in this strange place after never before having any doubt about others intentions.

"Only ten days?" I scoffed, mock-disappointed, rewarding Yazyk for his compliance by nudging inching my left-most pawn. "Pitiful work on their end. Clearly they still haven't figured me out if they think that's a fitting punishment. Woe is me; I got to catch up on some sleep. How ever shall I recover from this deadly blow?"

Ten measly days? I spent three weeks stranded in the woods with a lunatic! (Or so I thought at the time). Plus, I'd been largely awake during that miserable outing. This was childs-play.

The others spared me a convoluted mix of doubtful and pitying expressions, imagining my irreverence to be facetious, a brave face put on for their benefit. Save for the linger notion of being violated when I predictably noticed fresh track marks along my arm where the lab assistants drew more blood, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Yazyk, on the other hand, wasted no energy on pity, as he decisively scooted forth yet another pawn, and I followed suit. Back and forth.

I made idle conversation with Felipe throughout the next several minutes of the match, occasionally utilizing Yazyk as my personal Google Translate when I struggled to come up with the right phrase. My thoughts still chugged on sluggishly from whatever unholy cocktail of drugs had been keeping under, making the discourse all the more challenging, but I enjoyed Felipe's company most. He reminded me of Alexia.