Saint Joseph School

((Kara’s Story: Wonky time is in effect. This goes back to when she first got to Paragon))

Pain defined her world.

Long before she was able to open her eyes and look around, she knew what she would find. Somehow, the air around her and the things she could touch had been replaced with pain. It roared or it whispered, but it was everywhere.

Finally some things started to resolve. She heard things first, of course. First was a small, steady beeping that sounded a lot like her robots when everything was optimal. Low voices were at the edges of her perception, too low to be heard over the pain. She furrowed her brow and gasped when the motion brought a sharp sting. The voices stopped, and she felt someone leaning over her. “Miss Evans,” said a man. “Can you hear me? Go get the doctor.”

That last was addressed to someone else; she heard a door open and then close again. The man went on. “You’re in a hospital, Miss Evans. You’re going to be okay. The doctor will be here in just a few minutes. Sit tight.”

She realized that she couldn’t move. Her right arm seemed to be twitching, at least, but her legs and left arm didn’t even try to obey.

Whoever he was, he had lied. The doctor waited long enough for a major empire to rise and fall. During that time, she felt the pain in all its myriad forms. The initial red blanket wasn’t quite accurate; it was more varied than that, and had been waiting for her to wake up to tell her all about it.

She did manage to make one major breakthrough while waiting for the doctor: she opened her eyes. Her left eye, anyway. The right one was being held closed by something. She couldn’t see much, because the owner of the voice suddenly loomed in her vision. He was a pleasant-looking man dressed in hospital scrubs and wearing a nametag that was FAR beyond her ability to read. He said, “The doctor’s on her way.”

It was too much...she closed her eye and fell under the spell of the pain again.

That day of discovery was followed by others. Doctor Blevins was a rotund woman with an easy smile, but that smile wasn’t much in evidence during those days. She explained to Kara that there had been an accident in her lab. There had been an explosion, and Kara had been caught in the middle of it. The material holding her eye closed was a series of bandages that covered up some of the wounds that she’d received.

The worst day was the third one, when they finally let her sit up and see what had happened to her body. Her left arm was gone, nearly to the shoulder. Her left leg had been blown completely off, without even fragments left in the socket. Her right was gone to mid-thigh. And the rest of her lower body...well, Blevins told her, there was no way that Kara would ever be able to have children.

Kara healed quickly, out of sheer determination. But still the pain stayed with her, in spite of the drugs. On the fifth day, they brought in a temporary roommate, a man with burns over a large portion of his body. The pain spiked when he came in, and it went higher as he was brought closer to her, until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

Two things happened then. Kara suddenly realized that the pain she felt wasn’t just her own; it was his too. And in the moment of that shattering inspiration, she reached out with her mind to shut it off. The man screamed, and the pain started to drop. Kara bore down on the lessening agony, and it dropped further. Finally it faded to a dull throb and she collapsed back against the pillows. Blood poured from her nose, and she could feel her left arm flailing at the sheets while her legs tried to kick the covers off. Finally they relaxed along with her, and she fell into the abyss again.

Kara’s roommate was gone the next day. The doctors had misdiagnosed the man; thanks to all the soot and dirt, the burns had looked much worse than they really were, and he was on his way to a full recovery. Kara smiled in acknowledgement at the news, and she set about learning what she could about her new ability.

She had always been intelligent. It hadn’t seemed strange to her, but it either scared or awed everyone around her. Her intelligence had always driven her toward math and science, and she had quickly outstripped her teachers in ability. But people had remained a mystery to her. They were much harder to understand than machines, and didn’t operate on a simple “If-Then” system. But now...now she could look at someone and know how much pain they felt, and feel their fear. Sometimes she could delve into them and shut off the pain, but it always dragged her in until she was afraid that she would never get out. It took a supreme effort for her to stop, and it always hurt.

A little more experimenting led her to try something new. She felt at the pain around her, and gradually distinguished two sources. Then she carefully attempted to lessen the agony from both places. Both of them tried to pull her in, but they ended up working against each other. It still hurt, but she never lost herself as she did with just a single target. The effect wasn’t as strong, but she was able to try it several times before becoming tired.

The next day, the physical therapist arrived. He was shocked at how well she was healing, and explained to her what sort of options were available. The wheelchair was looking like her best bet until he said, “But this is Paragon City. We have access to some of the finest minds in the world here, and we have some experimental options. Some of them might even pay for your stay here at the hospital.”

Of course she wanted to hear about those. The best of the lot (in her mind) was a set of cybernetic prostheses based around some work that Crey Industries had done on powered armor. Custom-made, they would be fitted directly into her spinal cord so that they would (in theory) work like normal limbs once she got used to them. The therapist frowned and said, “I have to warn you...there will be some pain involved.”

She was still laughing when he finally left.

Two days later, and the cheerful nurse bustled in to Kara’s room to find her patient sitting upright in bed. Her good arm suspended her, and sweat had broken out all over her body. The nurse (Edith) squeaked and gently unwrapped Kara’s fingers from the bar on the side of her bed. She helped the girl lay back down and scolded her briefly before saying, “You just about made me forget why I came! I just got news that you have a visitor!”

A thrill of...something shot through Kara. Fear was a large part of it, and anticipation. “Who is it?”

Edith smiled as if she’d just won the lottery. “Your brother, dear!”

Anticipation gave way to fear. “How long until he is here?”

“About five minutes. Good thing we had that sponge bath earlier!”

Edith bustled out the door, her good deed done for the day. Kara loved the woman. She never complained about her duties, seeing them as a way to give to others. Kara had never felt any emotions but peaceful ones (and occasionally flashes of irritation) from Edith.

Kara didn’t want Mike to see her, but she couldn’t think of how she could tell him that. All she really wanted was for him to not be sad or scared, and she didn’t want his pity. She wanted to be well, dammit, well!

Sunk in her misery, she didn’t even notice him come in. Mike had always been fast, and this time he was like the wind. He just suddenly appeared next to her bed, all smiles. He surveyed her and said, “Hey Kara! I’ve been so worried, and they told me you were hurt, and I got more worried, but they’re crazy, you look great!”

Kara stared at him through the eye that wasn’t obscured by bandages. “Mike, the explosion...”

“I KNOW! I mean, how crazy IS that? They told me you were really lucky and LOOK at this! Some bandages on your face, and some on your arms and legs and you totally don’t want to hear about this because you already know. Um. So how long are you here?”

Kara looked around the otherwise unoccupied room. Her eye stopped at a large mirror on the far wall and stayed there. What Mike said was true. The girl in the bed was whole. Hurt, but with her full contingent of limbs. But it wasn’t true. She could FEEL the gap where her arm had been, and her legs. Mike was somehow seeing the girl in the mirror, and not the truth of the matter.

“Mike, I...I do not know how much longer. There are a few things I have to take care of.”

He was quiet for a second, which was a huge length of time for him. “Where are you going to go when you get out?”

A week ago, Kara would have been right on the next transport to the Isles. Now she wasn’t sure. “I do not know, Mike. It is one of the things I have to think about.”

He sat down in the chair next to the bed. “You should come with me, Kara. I don’t know why you were over there, but I figure it was a big mistake. Come to Saint Joe’s. There are so many cool people there. Kat, and this girl with wings (I think her name’s Shelly), and Val, and...well, there are just lots of people. And the teachers are helping me SO much. I mean, it’s just cool. You’d do real well there.”

She put her good hand (her REAL hand!) on his and said, “I will think about it, Mike. Really.”

His face lit up, and she felt the relief pour through him. Feeling emotions and sensations from others wasn’t all roses and song, but sometimes it was a nice thing to be able to do. “That’s awesome! And, um, don’t get mad, but you look kinda tired. I think I’ll go. See you tomorrow?”

“I should hope so. Thank you for coming, Mike.”

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and said, “I’ll let mom and dad know that you’re okay. They’ve been calling me. A LOT.”

She smiled and waved goodbye as he zipped off down the hall. Then she turned her head to look in the mirror again. The girl in the mirror didn’t look whole anymore. She looked ravaged by life and possibly a major fire. Kara concentrated on the vision that she’d seen before, and gradually the girl healed and regained her limbs. It wasn’t real, but it looked real. Kara unclenched her will and relaxed back into the pillow, deep in thought.

Later that day, she woke up to find that she had another visitor. A tall man in a cape and helmet, dressed in red and white, stood watching her. His face was unreadable. He said, “Kara Evans? I’m Captain Owens of Longbow. May I have a moment?”

She nodded wordlessly and tried to pick up some emotion from the man. Stoic unconcern for her, mixed with just a little disgust. Surprised, she listened to what he was saying.

“It has come to Longbow’s attention that you were engaged in possible illegal activities on Mercy Isle, miss.” He gestured to a stack of three small crates piled against the wall behind him. “We weren’t able to determine the source of the explosion, and these are the remains of the equipment we found there. Some of the equipment, miss, could easily be used in the creation of robots for illegal activities. Some of the parts found at the blast site were consistent with the design of dangerous robots. Can you explain that to me?”

Kara struggled to sit up, ignoring the control that would have shifted the bed for her. “Captain Owens, I am not sure what happened in my lab either. I was conducting experiments in robotic engineering, as I said in the statement I gave several days ago. Those same parts could easily be used in the construction of assembly-line robots, so I do not appreciate the implication that I might have been involved in something illegal. Now what are you actually saying here?”

He stared at her as if planning to draw her from memory later. Finally he said, “Nothing, Miss Evans. No accusations have been made here. But remember that the circumstances of your arrival in Paragon are...odd, to say the least. Longbow and I will be keeping an eye on your progress.”

He turned to go, and Kara said, “What about those crates, Captain?”

He said, “They’re your property, Miss Evans. The investigation is essentially over, so your belongings have been returned to you.”

The Captain strode out the door without another look.

It was a day for visitors. The physical therapist came and went after torturing her for quite a while. He came back just a few minutes later, leading a man rolling a large cabinet. The man said, “My name is Larry Smith, Miss Evans. I’m the one in charge of prosthetics at the hospital, and I was told that it was time to talk to you.” He smiled as if he’d told her a wonderful secret.

He opened the cabinet and started pointing out the pieces. Kara regarded her new body parts dully, not sure how to react. The therapist sat on one of the crates containing her...rubble?

The parts were impressive. A new left arm, a new set of legs, and even a prosthetic eye. She hadn’t thought much about her eye, but she knew that it being covered in gauze for nearly two weeks was probably a bad sign. Smith explained how everything worked, and how the operation would go. It was a quick one, designed to be performed in field hospitals on wounded soldiers and later adapted to civilian use. Kara would undergo the surgery tomorrow to implant the receptors, and then would start learning how to use her new limbs.

That night, she didn’t sleep much. The pain from her missing legs and arm was normal enough, and she was getting used to feeling pain from those around her, but she was distracted by thoughts of the next day. However much she liked and appreciated robotics, she didn’t want to BE a robot. Or a cyborg. She was glad that she had gone ahead with her parents and signed the papers that would allow her to make these decisions on her own...she didn’t want her family to know about this, not if she could cover herself with illusions. She didn’t want anyone to know about this.

Kara stared at the ceiling for a long time that night. Fear defined her world.