firstcylon | (no subject)

"Are you sure we're ready?" Zoe asked, wringing her hands together before she realized she was doing it, and stopped.

"We're ready," her father assured her, nodding, as her mother came and put her hands on her shoulders.

"We're ready, Zoe," she echoed, looking into her eyes. "We've triple-checked everything. This is it."

Zoe nodded slowly, and took a deep breath. "Okay." A small, slightly tight smile. "Let's get it done."

It was only normal, she told herself as her parents derezzed to get things ready in the real world, for her to feel slightly anxious. People got cold feet about getting married, of course she would get cold feet about being born again. If something went wrong, she might be deleted and lost forever. Double up or nothing.

She looked around the room of her old home, walked to the window and looked out at the lake. The water was real now, as real as it could get in V-World. She had programmed everything here better than her father could have, but now it was time to enter the real world.

"We're ready for you, Zo," her father's voice sounded in the otherwise empty house.

She clenched her fist, programming the sun to rise. A dawn seemed appropriate, right then, and she watched the first rays come over the horizon. "I'm ready," she answered, and for an instant, there was nothing.

There was nothing, and then she took a loud, gasping breath, oxygen forcing its way into brand new lungs, and she sat up, panting, before she scrambled in panic when she found herself on a cot, clothed, and very dry, three things that should not have happened. Her back hit the wall, and that was when she noticed the other person in the room. The other person she had never seen before, and she could only stare at him now, not even sure whether her vocal chords would work properly.

Threaded | Flat

Logan clenches his jaw and presses the trigger.

CLICK!

There's a white light, and with it that vacuum of the world inverting itself inside the explosion,and the deafening quiet as the whole damn mess disintegrates around him.

...

After that, Red. The whole world swimming in it; all he can see is red. Might be the back of his eyelids, except he doesn't have eyelids, or his optic nerves creaking back online. It would be red, then blur, then whatever came next. Just like last time, and the time before that.

It hurts like hell.

What a gift, to be able to put yourself together again, not to slip into death like a placid lake. He's never tried to explain how it feels to anyone; the tissues of his body knitting back into place. It's a lot like a mess of worms squirming, knotting their bodies into the shapes they need to be. He can feel them pulling, and stretching. Every new nerve ending screams until it's cloaked by new flesh, and even then they ache like hell, and when the ache dies down they itch like hell. Nobody needs to hear about that. Some gift.

New skin is always so goddamn cold. Being wrapped around muscle that's wrapped around freakin steak knives, probably doesn't help. Shivering ain't something Canadians do without shame, but Logan shivers for a while just the same. An hour, a year, or fifty pass and finally he finds he's got fingers to flex, lungs to suck in a fresh stab of air, and eyelids to open.

He wishes instantly that he hadn't.

Not this shit again. Because what he's looking at can only be some kind of S.H.I.E.L.D. holding cell; only North American Feds got taste this bad, and only Fury would want to talk to him bad enough to snatch him out of an Iraqi morgue.

Logan sits up, and sees the girl. Nose must still be offline if he didn't smell her right away.

"Hey, kid. Any chance you got some aspirin or a beer on you?"