Maze, Zee and Mara – all of First Squad – are relaxed and friendly, though, which helps. They talked me through some of the implications of the fact that I’m not just enhancing some of their powers, but changing them. It really increases the danger. The accident with Nenna was an example of that – it’s possible that I didn’t simply increase her strength, but changed the coordinates of her jump as well. They were thinking of it only in terms of an overshoot before, but now they think it was a distortion, and that means that anyone trying to teleport me anywhere would be at huge risk.
I don’t seem to distort everything though. Or, at least, it’s not noticeable if I am. But Mara’s Light whip has a more melting effect when I enhance her, and Alay’s Illusion casting goes totally weird. Ketzaren felt dizzy when she tried to make me levitate and Lohn – who gives a good imitation of a Star Wars blaster shooting beams of Light – made a burning wall instead. There was a big pause after that, where First Squad stood about looking disconcerted and listening to someone I couldn’t hear, who I guess was having conniptions.
The one thing they did establish is that I consistently distort. So Lohn’s beams always became a wall, and Mara’s Light whip was always the same. They cheered up after that. They’re still going to have to go carefully working out just what effect I have, but consistently weird is a lot better than randomly weird.
And now I’m back in my box waiting for the next test. I think it’s the fact that the door won’t open to me that bothers me most.
Monday, January 21
Still alive still
I spent the beginning of the day translating song lyrics for Nenna. I am improving. My grammar is terrible, and I had to write a huge amount of explanatory notes to make half the concepts remotely understandable, but it showed me how far I’d come in being able to communicate. Talking to First Squad between testing sessions has been helping. I was feeling very proud of myself, even if I could tell it was a botched job, and had just mailed it off to her when I was brought down for another testing session.
This was more of the same, just working on the limits of me enhancing people. So they had two, then three of the Setari touching me at the same time to see how many people I could enhance at once.
And down I went. I never used to pass out on frequent occasions. I’m not epileptic, and I never had a fit till I came to this planet. Until now they weren’t sure if I was being physically stressed by whatever I’m doing to enhance people. And, well, now they know.
They’re getting more anxious about killing me, I think. The greysuits, that is, and whoever it is giving orders over the interface. I don’t see these at all, just First Squad and greysuits.
First Squad were very upset, and Zee and Maze came to the infirmary after I’d woken up again and we all apologised to each other for nothing which was our own fault. They don’t seem bothered by the tests, they just think they should have somehow predicted what was going to happen and prevented it.
Change of pace
Sa Lents came to see me for the first time since Nenna’s accident. He didn’t act like he blamed me or anything, but it was still uncomfortable. No experiments today, just talking with Sa Lents, trying to describe Earth’s history.
My sleep schedule is totally messed up. The lack of proper day and night, and the way the people I’ve been working with all seem to be on different shifts, really messes with me. Their breakfast is my dinner and so forth.
Tuesday, January 22
Zan
Today I was assigned to a girl called Zan. She’s from Twelfth Squad and is another telekinetic. She’s short and very serious and has blonde-brown hair which is very fine and cut into a soft and wispy bob. Quite pretty golden-brown eyes.
They’ve decided to postpone further experiments with me because they think I’m too worn down. Being half-starved on Muina and then that bad cold and then the broken collarbone and all these bad reactions I’ve had are adding up. Even though I’ve had regular meals and not really done anything since I was rescued, I’ve not put on much weight and certainly aren’t fit. They want me to get healthy and they’re going to confine the tests purely to Zan’s Telekinesis for a while. She only has the one psychic talent, with no secondary talents at all.
She’s also going to train me. In some kind of judo, which is not exactly something I’m keen on. Hitting people is…just not me. They want to study the effect of prolonged exposure to Zan, and at the same time make me a bit more capable of surviving, should they ever decide it’s a good idea to use me in combat. I really am a potential weapon to these people.
It’s hard to tell what Zan thinks of all this. She’s what Mum would call scrrrrupulously correct and even though she’s trained all her life to be an incredibly deadly monster fighter, she didn’t act as if there was anything odd about teaching some unco beginner how to stand and how to step back and forward over and over again. Must be dull as hell for her.
She did do the wide-eyed thing when they tested how I enhanced her. By herself she’s a lot stronger than Maze. With me, she can lift all the test blocks at once.
Wednesday, January 23
Lab Rat One
I spent all of today having test after test in the medical labs. Ista Tremmar is polite and all, but she’s still inclined to leave me sitting on an examining table for an hour while they talk about me. If I didn’t have the interface kindergarten to keep me occupied I’d go mad.
Maybe that’s what Zan does during our exercises – zones out and reads her email. If I ask her questions, she answers in the briefest possible way, and she never asks me anything. I miss Nenna’s chatter so much. I miss that she treated me as a person as well as an exciting curiosity.
When I was delivered back to my box today I drew a rat on all my clothes, and wrote Lab Rat One underneath it, making a little logo for my official designation on this world.
Today I particularly miss Alyssa. I’ve only known Alyssa a few years, but she’s the only person I really tell things to. I hadn’t realised how important that was to me.
Thursday, January 24
Attitude adjustment
Strange how going around wearing my lab rat logo makes me feel so much better. This morning’s session with Zan went well because I felt less like I was helplessly doing what I was told, and was, well, doing what I was told while wearing an ironic comment about it.
We’re still working on stances. Step forward, step backward, over and over again, very controlled. I concentrated more on it this time, deciding I at least may as well do the best I can, even if I know that I’m never going to be really good at this kind of stuff, and will only be laughable in comparison to athletic people who have been training since they were five. I’m going to have a go at cracking Zan, too – at least get her to treat me a little less like an assignment. I don’t care if she takes a teacher/student attitude, even though she can’t be more than a year older than me, but I want some kind of interaction, some kind of response.