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The Buddy System : Joanna

"Finding your way does not require the need for sight. Become the footsteps in the dark."

The testing session had not gone as planned.

After watching the events that had transpired in the cutting room with Thomas, I had refused to allow myself to be spared the treatment. If that was truly the way things needed to be done to test my healing abilities... I needed to be tested as well.

What should have been a mostly dermal test to see how fast a gash or cut would heal on my body, turning into a chopping fest. The pain had been more than I had previously thought even at the start, the simple slicing away of skin had felt excruciatingly painful. When the gouging started, it was all I could do to try not to fight myself free.

But my eyes...

They had explicitly told me that my eyes were not to be touched, because though the pain was already supposed to be as bad as it had seemed with the others, I couldn't imagine the express pain of having an eye removed.

It had been unbearable. I remembered screaming, the searing pressure and stinging of blood reaching my tear ducts, then the sound my orb made when it... popped. That had been the final threshold my body allowed me before I blacked out, screaming in agony.

It had been days, I believe, since I had lost my sight. Every day since was just a collection of minutes and hours of throbbing and aching pain. Lying on a bed that needed new sheets every 5 to six hours, as well as needing gauze and wrappings to be changed around the same time. I took the time in between the cleanings to touch my stomach, to feel my progress. My sight had not returned, and the feeling of despair only crept in and circled my inert body like a feral dog from the darkness around me.

My mind had stopped processing things as they had when the initial serum had been asministered. The clear thoughts and steady mindset had been clouded with thoughts and perceptions of the dark world around me. Unable to move, and now unable to see, I felt as if I were back in the tube. But this time, I couldn't see who was staring or taking notes. I couldn't see my body in the acrillic mirror, I just couldn't.... see.

The first few times that my dressings had been changed, I had felt the skin on my freshly peeled body. It was indeed... growing back. I could only imagine that they were beaming down ultra-violet light on my exposed muscle to force my body to try to protect itself. It would explain the thin bandages that they used.

I felt... baby new. But unlike the time when I had emerged from my tube, my body's muscle was toning, even without flesh, my body was still working to re-create this thin and now flayed body into the perfect human... W.A.S.P.

The darkness was dreary.

I found myself thinking about the others I had met while out in the Yard. So many different looking people, and a few oddball ones. Some of them looked like clear singularly potentially viable to the project, at least according to K-80's knowledge of the S's. Some looked only strong. Some only stealthy. But I had yet to find anyone who looked to be capable of... sight? I wondered what the skill of Sight had to offer. Clairvoyance? Eagle-like vision enhancements? It was unclear.

I had to talk to K-80 again, to find out more about what he knew. I had come here of my own volition, of course... But after what I had just experienced, I really wanted to know what I was suffering for. If not the exact purpose for Goverment use, I needed to know what was happening to my body so I could use it to its full potential.  They didn't have to tell me precisely what the puzzle was supposed to be, but I'd be damned if they didn't let me take the blindfold off and see the pieces.