Dripping Away

Chapter 3: Manipulation of Water

          When I woke, my body was covered in the same liquid slime that kept my body clinging to the hardness of the plastic I was put on. It was keeping my eyes shut, so I had to rely on sounds around me. There was a whirring that vibrated against the machine I was in. Whatever I was in. I had to assume I was in a machine based on what I felt and heard, and my conclusion was that I was in the lab. Was Ranll stupid enough to take me to a hospital when the world was run by the Six?
           I pressed my hand against the circular tube that I was in, fingers sliding in the muck that I was drenched in. A tube. I decided my best course of action was to stay as still as possible until someone opened the tube. I had to be on the fourth floor, I thought. They had live subjects on the fourth floor that they analyzed and tested on for biological projects unrelated to Ranll's fever dream of an idea about stopping the rain. I enjoyed the bio projects. They were an attempt at stopping the disease, and I thought that maybe they would work.
            "...wake?"
            A voice had slowly come close to the tube, but it was muffled. I couldn't hear anything well, so I picked apart piece by piece.
             "...open... tube?"
             "...dead."
              I felt a release of pressure, and I felt the air in my lungs as my body fell forward. I landed on my feet, body still covered in that slime from the tube. With one swipe of my hand, I opened my eyes and looked up into the eyes of Ranll. He seemed to hold himself away from me with his fingers clutching his clipboard. I stood, realizing quickly that I was naked.
             "There's no way you should be alive," Ranll commented. "You were shot twice and electrocuted to death."
              Ranll had a scar across his eyes that had long healed, and his eye was missing. I started pushing the slime onto the ground.
              "How long was I asleep?" I asked.
              "Eighteen months." Ranll glared at his clipboard. "It was supposed to be forever, but you..."
              "Is it still raining?"
              "Of course. You broke my machine with your organic material. There's no hope to stop the rain now."
              I stared at my hands, which practically were glowing yellow. My vision was hazy, so maybe I was just seeing it that way, but that didn't make any of this less clear. Ranll wanted me dead. I was gone long enough for that to be apparent in his eyes, but I noticed the emblem dangling from his neck. A six.
             "Give me clothes," I demanded hastily. "I need to get out as as soon as possible."
Ranll glared. "You're not supposed to be alive. The Six promised me freedom if I just dissected you, and I did. You shouldn't have any organs left!"
             Another scientist handed me clothes, and I slipped them on swiftly. Ranll's face was becoming harder to look at by the second.
             "Do you know what happened after you sacrificed your life to the machine?" Ranll threw his clipboard to the ground.
             "For a second, i cried for you," Ranll continued. "I thought we were good friends, and I even mourned for you. I had a funeral for a no-name backstabber!" He picked up a scalpel and pointed it towards me. "i won't let you live twice."
             My body acted as if it was just waking so I barely dodged his lunge towards me. The other scientists began contacting people on the lower levels to get help. I had a strange feeling that they weren't going to come on time, so I tried my best at keeping myself straight. Ranll's wild eye was enough to spark the whole room on fire.
            "Ranll, it was an accident!" I shouted. "Do you think I wanted to die?"
            "You destroyed my reputation!" Ranll screeched. "The machine was going to work!"
He lunged forward again, but I did too. I was strong enough to reprimand him at leas, so I tried that. Except...
            Electricity came from the base of my palm and shot out in all directions like an uncontrolled gasp. I paused. So did Ranll. In the midst of our complete lack of movement, the room suddenly became black and without light, and one of the scientists shouted that all of the power had been shut off and drained. Even the reserves. My hands... they were glowing.
           "Leave," Ranll commanded with a wave of his hand. I barely saw it. "I'll come up with a story about how you were stolen or something, but that means the Six will be after you."
             I shuffled my clothes. "And what about that... lightning from my fingers?"
             "Leave, Lostin."
              For a second, I looked, but then I began walking to the exit. "You're going to regret working with the Six, you know."
              "I left my regrets at the door when you left."
               I walked away. I was beginning to think the same thing.

               No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get anything to come out of my hands the way I did. I had to think it was pure coincidence, but I felt it shoot through my veins like it always belonged there. With a black hoodie to call my own, I sulked through the wet streets without so much as a glance at anything around me. Except ads. Eighteen months was enough to create a whole different world, and I was right to believe so. Ads were shouting at me to turn in the local homeless into the Six to keep the sickness to a minimum, and I swear I passed only Six ads.
               Then a siren blared.
               "Lostin Rotsitt's body had been kidnapped. If anyone finds this body-"
               My face appeared on all of the high-tech screens. Lifeless. Scars on my cheeks that looked like lightning bolts. I was sure that was from falling into that machine. Whatever the cause, I ran into an alley to get away from all of the bright lights that seemed to make the rain illuminate into puddles of light. There was no reason to get caught in my first thirty minutes of freedom.
               The alley was filled with dry grime. They now had canopies that kept the water dripping somewhere else, and there was one or two people sitting under it with tobacco in their hands. I had thought cigarettes were a lost cause, but it seemed the Six brought them back. To tax people in the damn rain. I leaned against one of the walls to hide myself from any suspicion.
                "Considered highly dangerous..."
                A drone crawled across the sky despite the lightning's high chance of striking it down. Unless the Six managed to harness that too. A lot had changed in eighteen months. This city was becoming more and more of a bother to walk in than I had originally thought. Maybe it was time to find a route out.
               "Lostin, huh? The kid must be important enough for his corpse to be stolen, huh? one of the other people commented while blowing smoke into the air. Without really looking at them, I listened in.
                "Think it was the Sewer People?" the other asked.
                "Wouldn't surprise me. Everyone know that he stopped the rain for sixty seconds."
                Stopped the rain? Lekereianale said something about me being able to stop the rain, but I didn't think... No, I couldn't believe that. I turned away, walking back to the main street with my head low. I could hide in the streets all I wanted, but I knew that I would have to settle at some point. Settle where? A lot of the buildings were blocked up, and apparently any homeless were to be turned in. Turned in? Yeah, apparently we were now being hunted like rats. My body kept moving despite the urge to stop.
                People began staring at the sky the farther I walked. All of them were staring upwards into the clouds that growled out rain and lightning and thunder. Everything about them was... funny.
                "Excuse me," a voice called out.
                 I paused in a panic.
                "Citizens cannot travel out this far without a pass from the Church. Do you have a pass?" 
                 I shook my head. "No. I hadn't realized I traveled out this far."
                 "Are you new around here, then? There were signs on all of the abandoned buildings before here."
                 Shit. "I'm not new, but it's been almost two years since I've been here." There was a church now? I wished I had one of those when I was here before. The parking garage used to be this way...
               "What's your name? Are you registered as a citizen?"
               "I, uh-"
               Someone put their arm around me, dragging my hood down as I fumbled about their arm's grip.
               "Alevanderm, he's my friend," said the man dragging me down. "He's from a city over, so he's not registered yet."
               "Your friend nearly walked onto Church property. I'm just making sure he doesn't fall onto sacred ground."
              "Right. Well, I'll make sure he's capable of doing what he's told next time. C'mon, Relep."
              The man tugged on me, and I followed him despite the fact I had no idea who he was. There was nothing I could do but pretend that I was his friend. When we managed to get far enough away from Church grounds, the man pulled me down an empty alley and pushed me against a wall. His once friendly hand was against my neck, and I kept myself as still as I possibly could. This was more trouble than what it was worth.
              "Lostin Rotsitt, is it?" he asked hastily.
              I nodded.
             "Name's Abers. I'm one of Lekereianale's followers. She told me about you."
             "And? She has nothing to do with me."
             "Nothing?" Abers pulled away from me and laughed. "You were dead, your body just a test subject for some sick Six boss. If Lekereianale brought you back from the dead, I'd say she has something to do with you."
             "Why are you here, anyhow?" I asked. "You showed up to save me, so clearly you have a reason."
              Abers paused. He extended his hands outward, eyes closed and body erect. His hands were glowing, and they began to glow brighter until the electricity sparked out from his fingertips. Abers opened his eyes, and they were as grey as the sky.
              "I am like you," he said. "I came to help you discover what you have."