#0 - Duality: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

On hindsight, while it seemed like the only recourse available to her, being remanded as a long-term patient in a psychiatric ward was a future Holly Shepard did not care to have. On further hindsight, running away without a home to safely return to, and without money or any other resources meant Holly had had to live by her wits. Her options were few, and she was fresh out of ideas. She knew Capitol City like the back of her hand, at least the districts where good sensible middle-class American families worked and lived, but she couldn't return to any of these places for fear of the repercussions that might ensue.

That left the voice in her head as a suggestive force on what to do next, which was a problematic prospect in many ways. Occasionally lost to the imagined dialogue within her, a couple of experiences stood out in her memories as occasions of significance. Furthest back was a birthday celebration at the Mystery Mountain amusement park when she was a child. She hadn't returned since, and the park had since closed down and abandoned for years, but the happiness of that memory still lingered. Another bittersweet memory was a staycation at a fancy hotel on her 21st, with her then partner, which was also the same trip where they had broken up. The thread of these memories seem to descend from happy to tragic, culminating in the last few years on campus at Waid University, where the incident happened.

Holly was that close to winning the research grant from the Ordinal Foundation when her spectrometer malfunctioned. She found out later that all signs pointed to sabotage, but they didn't have concrete proof on who the perpetrators were. David Jensen, her classmate, had fed her all the wild speculations he had read about, pointing to the Nova Liberation Front. The Ordinals themselves were investigating, but that's all Holly had heard about.

Today was yet another of those days where she needed to feed herself and find a place to stay, while remaining hidden from those who knew her. Perhaps she would be desperate enough to finally call up someone she knew. Or perhaps it was time for her to seek help from those who could either help her condition, or cause her to become this way.

What do you do?

Holly pulls the hood of her sweatshirt up, jams her hands into her pockets. She's been out here long enough, finding her way as best she can, to know that staying inconspicuous is staying safe. Don't make eye contact, don't give anyone a reason to look your way. Capitol City streets had enough people that she could hide in plain sight, just another nondescript body in the crowd, as long as she just stayed out of notice.

Keep other people keep you other you other people safe... echoes the voice in her head, the words shifting from ear to ear like some sort of studio trick playing only in her mind.

"Yeah. Keep other people safe," she mutters, before she can stop herself. A middle-aged woman done up all severe with her hair pulled back tight and her makeup just so, with her pencil skirt and power suit jacket, startles at hearing her speak. As Holly's words sink in, she edges a few steps farther away.

It was just a couple days ago that something new had happened. Guy grabbed her wrist. One of those faceless, generic finance-bots that seemed to breed like cockroaches around here, some guy thinks that because he traded a couple stocks or bundled some debt certificates into a junk whatchamacallit, he owns everything around him.

All she did was think it. You need a taser to the crotch, asshole. It was more than a taser, it was a damned lightning strike. One moment he was touching her, next he was twitching on the ground like he'd had electrodes jacked up to Danger: High Voltage clamped to his dangly parts. Holly didn't stick around to see what became of him, who came to save his life. Who would come to take her away.

Don't talk to anyone, don't touch anyone, don't hurt anyone.

That was her own voice, not The Voice. She'd started thinking of it in capital letters lately. It had been getting worse and worse every day.

She stopped by each of the usual places, hoping to find a bite to eat. Sal's was closed. Health violations, the door said. Damn right there were health violations. Who knows where he was getting those hot dogs, but Sal was usually good for some leftovers from the day before. Good guy, Sal. Too bad he had such a rocky relationship with cleaning supplies. She thought about the soup kitchen down on 7th, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to push the needier folks aside so she could have a bite too. She wasn't there yet, even if she hadn't eaten since... yesterday morning? The days were all running together, but it seemed like it was yesterday morning.

Time time, what is time, here there, yesterday today tomorrow

Holly gritted her teeth and leaned her back against the wall, crouching down with her head bowed. I'm not going to, so you can stop trying to trick me into doing it! she said to The Voice.

Just a little bit? Chaos into order this time? Everything lined up so neat and shiny and perrrrrrrfect...

"I'm not going to!" yells Holly, a more ragged edge on her voice than she likes to hear, which scatters the pedestrians nearby like a flock of quail, panicked and ready to be anywhere but here.

"Hey, are you okay?" comes a voice above her. An actual voice. She's half-convinced that it won't be a real person when she looks up through her sunglasses, which she wears even though it's an overcast day.

"...David?" she says, shocked on multiple fronts: that he's real, and that it's someone she knows. Or knew. A friend. David Jensen was the physics major she used to work with on the project, a grad student supervising her, the precocious undergrad. "Is that you?"

Sure enough, David Jensen, a tall, lanky man in his late twenties, dark floppy hair and long crooked nose, freckles everywhere, practically a physics major out of Central Casting, stared down at her at first in total lack of recognition, and then in total disbelief.

"Holly? Holly! You're alive and safe!" The man who spoke to her was indeed real and tone in his voice, concern laced with urgency, was likewise genuine. David Jensen's hand reached out to hustle her by the shoulder right off the street where they stood, ducking somewhat into the little alley behind them. "How is it you're here? They've been looking everywhere for you. Your parents, the police, the doc-" He stopped short at finishing the word 'doctors', suddenly mindful of how triggering the word might be. He didn't also mention that J.A:N.U.S. agents also paid him, and everyone else involved, a visit. "'Are you okay? You don't look too good." Holly hadn't had a proper place to sleep or a decent meal for days, and her clothes were fast resembling how the Queen's Park hobos smelled.

"They had shut down the lab since the accident, but just last night I was told something else happened there. Another nova-related incident or something." David looked at Holly with further worry, "You didn't have any part in that did you?"

Holly flinches away from David's hand when he goes to touch her shoulder, but he doesn't seem to notice, since he's looking for a way through the crowd and into the alley. Behind her sunglasses -- thank goodness for the sunglasses -- she's already looking for a route to run away if she has to. Random jerk on the street, yeah, maybe it's bad to zap people but she's not going to feel guilty for too long.

Electrocute maybe her only remaining friend? Not going there. Nope, no way.

But he's already dead, don't you remember? He died in the accident. You left him behind when you ran away, you coward...

The Voice brings her up short, and she jerks a look up at David. He... flickers in her field of vision for a moment. So quickly that if she hadn't been focusing so sharply on him she'd have missed it for sure. Even still, she's not entirely sure she's not imagining it.

He's not dead, he's right there.

She repeats this to herself like a mantra, as though it would fix him in space and time here in front of her. The Voice giggles at the back of her head, a brief flash of David lying sprawled on the floor of the lab, sparks flying everywhere, his body jerking with electricity.

"No! That didn't happen!" she says aloud, clapping her hands atop her head.

David starts to protest, but Holly cuts him off. "Sorry... I'm fine. Just tired. Not getting a lot of sleep these days, you know," she says, and attempts a chuckle. It comes out half-hearted and weak. "I mostly just keep moving. Stay out of sight, blend in."

Holly turns away, looks at the ground. "In fact, it's probably not great for you to be here, David. I didn't have anything to do with the lab--"

A shiver passes through her, goosebumps on her arms. The lab last night? No, she slept in the doorway of the church on 10th and Lincoln. All night. Didn't she? The Voice starts humming in her head, sudden throbbing of a vein in her temple providing the bass line.

"What... happened in the lab?"

"Um, you really don't sound or look okay at all, sheesh you're shaking, have you even eaten anything today? Let's get you a bite and some coffee. JJ's just around the block. We can sit behind in the alley if you don't want to be seen inside." Jackjack's, or JJ's, was one of the 24-hour delis a couple of streets down from Waid University which Holly, David and their coursemates used to frequent when they were pulling all-nighters to rush their research projects. There'd be familiar faces there, including the service staff and owner, but if David was suggesting a non-threatening and safe place to catch her breath, that was a sensible choice.

As they cut through the back lanes to get to Jackjack's, David filled her in, his tone more trusting than doubtful. Holly was an old friend after all, and she sounded more bewildered at what was happening than involved. "I think the police think you're somehow involved with the NLF, and that explains your disappearance. I was told the NLF turned up at the lab again last night, just glad you weren't part of them. They didn't get to blow up anything this time, because one of the Ordinals, the Fourth, was there to fend them off. Even so, Chancellor Davis is up to her ears in this crisis. She's been ordered to shut down the entire physics department and facilities to make sure the campus is fully safe again.

No idea why the NLF returned though. I don't think you were doing any research related to them. Or were you?" It was more a rhetorical question which David instinctively dismissed. He was the smartest one in the class, but much more for academic knowledge than for figuring out the motivations behind terrorist organisations. That was essentially the label given to the Nova Liberation Front, a ragtag remnant of those who opposed the Powers Registration Act. Governor Caldwell had recently voiced his public displeasure at the presence of NLF activity in Capitol City, which prompted a swift rebuttal from Solaris himself. The Super Sept had yet to step in, but the Ordinals were on the ground in dealing with this.

"David, I... you..."

Holly tries to protest that she doesn't need charity, but she's hungry and tired and confused enough that she can't seem to form the words. By the time she can get her thoughts straight, he's already got his hand on her elbow and she's stumbling along with him.

"Just... let's not go inside. I don't want to see anyone."

A tiny part of her, the tiny part that's a little bit vain that she usually manages to stomp into submission, suggests that she also doesn't want anyone to see her like this: dirty, run down, and heavens forbid someone saw her eyes when she wasn't able to control The Voice.

Still, that tiny part of her had to admit that just being near a friend again made her feel a little bit more like herself. Like her old self.

"I have no idea what the NLF would even want, David," she says, her voice ragged and frayed around the edges. "I mean, that research wasn't even Nova-related. You can study quantum theory without it being Nova-related, right?" She sighs as she hears the words coming out of her mouth. "Yeah, it sounds like a stretch to me too. The NLF didn't make a statement or leave a note or anything? Isn't that what terrorists are supposed to do? Manifestos and that?"

Her head still throbbing and The Voice still humming its discordant melody, she adds, "Are you okay? You're not caught up in all this, are you?"

"I'm clueless too." David flopped back down next to her with a reuben, a falafel roll, and two orders of fries and coke. "Look, we've been doing Professor Cane's quantum mechanics module for the last two years, it's right there on the syllabus, no issues." Holly's friend scratched the stubble on his chin, "Wild guess. It's either one of these two reasons: we were working on measuring the differentials that occur during quantum teleportation, that's why -" David continued to speak, but Holly couldn't hear what he was saying. The word 'teleportation' triggered a momentary sense of panic within her. She was sure that happened to her, but then again she could be deluded; it could've been just that inner Voice making her doubt her memory of what had occurred recently. "- maybe its the Ordinal Foundation grant for the project. The NLF could be hitting out at anything related to them, and we were caught in the middle." The Ordinal Foundation was the paramount think-tank in the area of theoretical physics as applied to cosmic phenomena, alternate unvierse theory, quantum bleed and incursion, helmed by a hyper-brilliant team of researchers who were also family.

David is talking, but the only thing really getting through is the wah-wah adults-in-Peanuts trombone noise. All Holly can think about is the food. Actually, think implies a certain higher-order mental process. Her animal brain just directs her to feed, so feed she does, and that's about all she does for a few minutes, to the point that David has to clap her on the back when she tries to directly inhale fries.

"God, I'm sorry," she says weakly, coughing out mostly-chewed bits of french fries. "I'm such a mess, I don't... I... I'm just so tired, David. Everything is all entangled and I just..."

She scrubs at her eyes with the back of one hand, leaving a smudge of dirt across her cheek and a streak of wet across her hand.

"Thank you. For the food. I really needed something," she says, and chuckles. "Bet you couldn't tell."

The idea of teleportation continues bouncing around in her head. Now that there's some food in her stomach, it rises higher in her consciousness. She can still remember that disorientation, blinking her eyes and being in a completely different place. No... better not to think about that. She nearly lost her breakfast then, and it's not like her stomach is all that settled now.

It happened, it happened, it happened, you're going to end up lost in the spaces between electrons, a puff of probability, a wash of wavefunctions, a dance of duality...

Holly swallows a retort. She's already half-freaked David out, and it might just be the end of her if she drove him away too.

"I don't know... it's possible. Maybe we were really on to something. You know, the Ordinal Foundation could've just given us the money rather than using the lab as a battleground against the NLF. Not sure why we got put in so much danger..."

Thinking about it, something twinges at Holly's senses, a nervous tension that gets her attention. She lifts her head and casts a slow look around the alley, wondering what's brought it on.

"Well you know they do. They sponsor the annual spectographic waveform research lab budget and Wilkins scholarship awards. Not to mention the internships and work attachments. One of the Ordinals was guest-of-honour at last year's university gala. If you ask me, they aren't the problem here." What David described about the Foundation and their involvement in higher education wasn't untrue, though that still didn't explain why Holly's project was even remotely interesting to them, being simply one of many that the post-grad students undertake each year.

But that what suddenly not the most puzzling thing in Holly's mind just then. It was something else altogether, a headache, not quite in the scale of the delusions she'd been having. More like a sharp migraine like pain shooting upmthe back of her head. She felt something was off, but she couldn't be sure why she felt that way, or what it was. It felt, it felt like something was about to happen, and it felt like Holly could get a bearing on where and when. It felt like something below her: they were in the alley behind JJ's, between two buildings, beneath her were the alley drains leading to the sewers, and a couple of feet away was the nearest manhole cover.

"Shit," Holly mutters under her breath. David's voice becomes a drone in her head, words going indistinct. She scrubs at her face with both hands, shifting her shoulders in discomfort.

Coming coming coming something's coming run away little girl run away

She speaks, but even her own voice echoes and resonates in her head like she's yelling into a metal bin. "David, you have to go... something's coming, and I don't think it's going to be good. In the sewers? Whatever it is, it's near. You have to go!"

Holly grabs David by the arm and starts pushing him back toward the street and away from the manhole cover, all the while trying to keep an eye out for whatever it might be.

That's all? You could do so much more! The power's there, USE IT

The voice in her head is a shout, and she whimpers in response as her head throbs. "I don't want to hurt anyone else!"

David's bewildered face said it all; he must have thought Holly had gone bonkers, but he scrambled to his feet as she shoved him along and out towards the street. He didn't completely exit the alley, his overriding concern for his colleague and friend outweighing his sense of self-preservation, but stood a few steps away, confused at what she was going to do next.

The manhole cover blew upwards with what seemed to be some sort of concussive blast, and flew a distance before landing back down with a loud clang. A figure burst forth through the now open hole, a blond-haired young man, clad in practical tactical gear for travelling through the sewers. He hovered a few meters just above the hole, staring directly at Holly, his entire body seeming to be emanating a slight glow. From the hole below, faint sounds of movement could still be heard.

What do you do next?

Oh, this can't be good. Can't be good at all. Hovering glowing novas coming through the sewers, and Holly can only assume he's -- they're, from the sounds of it -- here for her.

Somewhere behind her, David is making noises of protest and confusion, but they fade into the background as she feels power build inside her.

The Voice cackles in maddening glee at the sensation, and it's all Holly can do to shove it into a corner of her head and turn down the volume.

She begins moving backward away from Blondie, crouched and ready on the balls of her feet, hands loose and held in front of her. Without really even thinking about it, her awareness expands out toward the new arrival, reaching toward him, her curiosity and concern taking over to try and glean what she can of his power.

Holly did not even know she could do such a thing, but the memory loss, the delusions, the blitzes and bursts of energy her body generated, all seemed to be connected to a certain hyperawareness of the quantum energies all around her. On hindsight, she knew that the premonition she had sensed a moment ago was prompted by the sense of some superhuman source nearing her. Even now, she found that she could perceive the energies this nova possessed. The slight taint was unmistakeable, the young man, whom Holly now noticed as being rather handsome with his boyish smile and electric blue eyes, gave off a glow of power, as if he was sheathed with a personal energy field. In her mind it was a blue glow, to match the colour of those beautiful eyes which thankfully he did not hide behind the pair of goggles perched on his head ...

But Holly couldn't let herself be distracted, for the blond nova in front of her seemed to be in perfect control of his powers. Holly had no doubt he could easily channel those energies to blast her, or David, or anyone else for that matter.

"David, you have to go. We have to go now," says Holly, and she continues to back away from the blond-haired nova. She can feel a tingling in her limbs, the Voice gibbering gleefully at the back of her head. Images of the alleyway flash before her eyes at a speed that she can barely perceive:

A blast of energy bursts from the nova's hands, immolating David to ash where he stands

blip

Holly spreads her hands, a shield of energy surrounding her and David, quantum energies splattering harmlessly against it

flip

She reaches a hand to touch the nova's, electrical impulses flooding from her nerves to fry the blue from his eyes

thwip

It's the nova that throws up a shield, as she throws misshapen balls of pure chaos at him, useless in the end

A thousand possibilities flit before her eyes in the span of microseconds, until her head is fit to explode with them. "RUN, David!" she shouts, holding her hands to the sides of her head as she follows her own advice, fleeing the alleyway and whoever else is about to arrive. She turns the corner out to the street, the sidewalk filled with people. In a panic, she looks this way and that for a safe escape route. She grabs David by the arm and pulls him along with her, running against the flow of people in hopes of losing herself and her friend in the chaos.

chaos chaos chaos it tastes so sweet

David needed no further urging as he scrambled to his feet after Holly. Holly's perception were all imagined possibilities, but somehow she intuitively knew that they could all be potential realities as well. The glowing nova in front of her could, or even would, take action in one of those ways. She also decided for herself that escape would be her best option as well, with the nagging fear at the back of her head that all the recent nova activity involving the campus could all be because of her!

With a multitude of thoughts in her head, she almost didn't pick up on the other danger sense until she was literally right on top of it. As David and her darted away through the alley, intending to reach the open street just steps away, someone emerged from the very ground they were running on. A young woman, seemingly insubstantial and transculent at first, interpersed herself between David and Holly. And even in that split second in which the woman did so, she materialised to become more solid flesh, breaking the hold Holly had around David's wrist. "Not so fast girl!"

"No. You're not going to hurt him! I won't let you!" Holly shouts. Her logical brain has given up, survival instinct in full control of her actions. Even the Voice is a dull whisper at the back of her head.

"Just GO AWAY!"

There's a tiny part of her awareness that feels a relief. No more hiding, no more questioning, no more worry. Just... power.

"Tell her to calm the hell down, there's no time for her antics again!" The young woman who had interspersed herself between Holly and David had now fully laid a hand on David's wrist instead, pulling him further away from Holly in a bid to separate them. It was hard to way whether it was Holly's imagination, or whether the fact that the young woman dragging David away a few steps also seemed to cause David to appear a tad more ... immaterial, much as she was earlier.

While this was happening, the young man floated towards Holly with greater sense of urgency. Holly could see his hands 'charge' up by his sides, as if he was able to generate some sort of energy. "Hey hey stop shouting! You have to come with us, now," by which Holly understood to mean to go with them into the sewers from where they both came.

Her rational mind shunted to a corner of her head, Holly can hardly understand what it is that's going on, what it is that she's doing. If it weren't for the Voice giggling in another corner of her head, she'd think she was lost to its influence, but it's no more rational than the power-thirsty part of her -- a part she hadn't even known existed -- that's driving her actions right now.

"I don't have to go anywhere I don't want to go, especially if you're not asking, Blondie. What, no one ever taught you about asking for consent?" she says, her voice dropping in register, a purr that threatens to turn into a growl.

Hey, at least she's not shouting, that's half of what he wanted, right?

She flicks her hands as though trying to rid them of water, but instead they glow with crackling balls of energy, and she jumps forward to grab him and discharge the electricity into his body.

Neither of the pair expected Duality's sudden move. A violent crackle emanated from Duality's hands, causing even the unlit lights in the surrounding buildings to pop and the metal fixtures of the alley to sizzle with electricity. Most of it though was directed at the glowing nova, bu almost instantaneously, even as Duality grabbed him, his body seemed to erect some sort of blast field of energy. That, coupled with his own defensive discharge of a seemingly powered-down return blast from his hands, pushed Duality back and sent her reeling to the ground ...

... enough for her to look back and see that the female nova with the curly ringlets and tough-cookie accent had all but 'vanished' in the ground with David, as if she phased through it and enabled David's struggling body to do the same.

All this was a lot to take in for Duality, but she had no time to consider her options, as something else happened that surprised both her and the handsome blond nova. A burst of white fire came from above them to land right in front of the nova. Duality could feel the heat wash over her as she was temporarily blinded by the glare of the fire. She could visually make out that while the nova's personal blast field held up against the white fire bolt, it did dissipate under its onslaught. Perhaps this was her chance to get through his defences? Or perhaps she ought to pursue David? Or, troublingly, perhaps she ought to figure out who this newcomer was?

"They sent you this time, Jetstream," the nova in the sky seemed to project his voice down to the alley loud enough for Duality to hear him addressing Jetstream, evidently the nova hovering in front of him. "No getting away."

Duality could almost intuit another blast discharge building up from above her...