Ion's Questionnaire

Ion looks at one wall of her tiny enclosure. Her face is tired. The side of the enclosure is lit only by the light she gives off.

The wall is made of concrete. Tough, sturdy. Explosion resistant.  It is deep underground.  Several hundreds of feet at least

Her fingernails are a mess. Bleeding a little. The blood makes up more of the last few tally marks than the scraped pavement. 

33 tally marks. 2 off to the side. 

2 people who tried to kill her.

31 one that where too close to her.

She looks around her cell.

"I belong here. This is right. I am a monster."

She thinks back to all the other contractors she has met.

"Some of them belong in here too."

Ion waits.

Her flesh bubbles and boils, warm to the touch. 

Is it time yet? 

Her stomach aches.

The room is green with the glow she is giving off. She taps her feet. 

Hungry.

Food was supposed to be given a little after the lights turned on, and a little before the lights turned off. 

Not good food. And not enough for Ion to be full. But enough to sustain her.

They had forgotten yesterday. Or maybe they were just trying to kill her.

The light she is was emanating dimmed. Turning down to a dim flicker.

If they were trying to kill me, I would deserve it

Then her light came back. Blazing, a heat to her skin.

If they want me to die, they should fucking shoot me. Not drag it out! Fuck them. Fuck this.

There is clank as the metal on her cell door shifts. Opening, then a few seconds later closing.

Then the automated process shifts a heavy bit of metal open on Ion's side. 

Her food.

Extra today.

She looks at it.

They don't want to starve her. Even though she deserves it.

Fuck me most of all

Ion dreams. Flickering images. 

----
She is in a crowded street. She can feel something inside her bubbling. Her anxiety? Maybe. So many people. All staring.

But no.

This was her power. They were connected.

Her powers and her emotions had always been connected. She puts a lid on her emotions, and on her power. Keeping the constant energy under control.

It's getting harder. The Harbinger's said she could get control.

That she could get her life back.

What a fucking joke. 

There is a pain. The second worse she has ever felt. A man stabbing at her with a machete.

She panics. She removes the lid, trying to force the energy inside her out.

---- 

Ion sits at a table. People talk. People like her. Monsters. They talk of murder. The bubbling gets harder to keep a lid on. Her power feeding on her anger.


Monsters.

I'm a monster.

They are monsters.

Monsters wearing a thin veneer of human skins.

She understands now what her dad had always talked about. Why the Sons were so animate.

She explodes.

----
Ion walks along a walkway, running ahead of her tour group. 

She knows all the things being pointed out, and she thought she saw something. 

"Miss Newman get back here!" 

She was right. There was someone clinging to one of the walls on the containment building. Near the steam pipes.

They press something on a device in their hand, then disappear in a flash of darkness

What the?

There is a boom. 

Her walkway crumbles.

She falls and is hit by a bit of debris. 

Her vision goes black. 

When she comes to, she feels sick. There are alarms in the distance. 

She can feel an energy under her skin.

She is trapped. The only light coming... from her.

It takes them 2 days to rescue her.
----

Ion wakes. For a moment she is back there. Trapped. Feeling her body change in ways she doesn't understand

She screams, her energy boiling over, and blasting out from her, smashing the cell around her. 

Then she sobs. Allowing herself to feel the sorrow she had been holding a bay.

Her glow reduces to a flickering. And then turns off as she is overwhelmed by sadness.

Ion waits.

It has been a week since she learned to reduce her glow. Her hair is still green. Her skin is still not quite the same color it was. 

But she is getting better. Officer Martinez noticed. 

She didn't think anyone was watching her. 

But apparently, they were.

After 2 days of keeping her glow suppressed, he came, and he talked to her.

Ion had forgotten how nice it was to talk to a person, instead of concrete walls. 

She talked about the incident. She talked about her family. She talked about what got her here.

And now she is here. Waiting.

Thick glass in front of her. A phone next to her to let her call.

Guards watch her. 

Officer Martinez gives her a thumbs up.

Ion swallows.

The door opens. 

Mom

Ion's Mom enters first. She looks nervous, but seeing her daughter, she runs to the glass.

Ion's Dad enters next. He wears a scowl.

Drip.

Ion glances town to find a slightly glowing drop of water on her side. Bringing a hand to her face, she feels the tears running down her face.

She puts the phone receiver to her face, and presses her hand against the glass, where her mom's hand is already pressed

"Hey baby. Are you okay? I heard what happened. "

Hearing her mom's voice makes her nearly cry. 

Ion feels the bubbling. She closes her eyes, and in her sobbing focuses on keeping the glow down.

"Oh. Isabella. I'm so sorry this happened to you. It's okay. Mommy's here."


The guards had agreed to 15 minutes of visitation. Ion spent the entire time focused on controlling her glow and listening to her mom's sweet lies.

That she was going to be okay.

That they both loved them and were here for here.

That this wasn't her fault. 

Her Dad didn't say anything. 

Ion knew why.

She would hate her too.

It is another few days before Ion can get another visitation. 

Just her mom this time. 

She thought after the first time that she would be done crying. She wasn't. 

But her Mom is patient. 

She is always patient, dealing with all of my fucking bullshit.

"My darling girl. We are going to figure something out. I'll be here every step of the way."

Don't glow, don't glow, don't.

Ion starts to softly glow. The guards. Raise their weapons.

"Hey. Hey. Isabella. Look at me." Ion's Mom taps on the glass.

"Breath honey just breath."

Not helping. But she's trying

Ion closes her eyes. She remembers the feeling of being alone. Giving up. Depression. 

The glow subsides. 

"Good job. See. You are getting control of this. I talked to some lawyers today. We're going to figure something out. The talked about a lot of ..."

Ion lets the information wash over her. She doesn't care enough that this will be determining if she will live or die. 

Throughout her life, her mother was always there to love her. When the boys she liked didn't like her, when she got an B on a science test, when she fell playing on the playground.

She wasn't the best kid. And now she was the worst. And her mom loved her all the same.

Ion tries to keep her thoughts from moving to her father, whose absence is strongly felt.

"I love you mommy." Ion whispers. 

It takes a lot of focus to keep from glowing after that. 

Ion dreams.

-------
She is on a white table. Monsters surround. Pale faces, strange limbs. Long knives.

She is tied down.

They move around her.

She struggles, but it is useless. Her limbs are too weak. 

They cut along her chest. Through her clothes and into her skin.

They reach in, prying her ribs apart. 

She screams. They looks at her with hunger.

She glows brighter, energy flowing through her.

She looks down.

Inside her chest, where her heart should be, there is just light. Roiling light. 

There isn't flesh inside her, just a convincing facsimile, protecting the bomb that she is.

The light grows. Blinding.

It explodes out of her chest
-------
Ions stumbles through the aftermath of the explosion.

She is in so much pain.

She trips over something, and hits the ground hard. Her leg doesn't work right.

She falls face to face with a child. Still. Glassy eyes. Blood leaking out of their mouth, and several holes in their chest.


Ion screams again
--------

Ion wakes up. She is hyperventilating, and glowing as bright as she ever has. As bright as she glows after an explosion.

Looking around, she can see why that is.

Her bed is wreaked.

The walls have new cracks. 

Fuck I hate nights like that.

She flips over on the mush that was once her matress and tries to go back to sleep.

Ion wakes again.

Her bed is destroyed. She doesn't have much hope that she will get another one anytime soon. 

The walls are bleached some by the blast. She looks over at her Tally.

Ruined. 

She lets out a long sigh. She'll have to remake that.

Well, it's not like I have anything else to do. 

Ion rolls carefully out of bed. She'll have to find a way to remove the jagged metal from the fluff of what used to be her bed. 

She walks over to a corner of the room.

Furthest from her.

There, there is a small stone. Black and shaped like a heart. A worry stone. Her mom gave it on her last visit. Something for her to hold on to. To know that she is loved.

There is a large crack down it's center.

Ion runs her thumb over the shape. The rest of the stone is still smooth. The crack has a sharpness to it.

She wraps her hand around it. Rubs her thumb over it a few times.

Her glow slowly fades, and for a moment, she is a regular teenage girl.

Oleg would help her.

That was good. 

She would need it.

If she didn't ... 

Ion stands at the phone.

Plugged into the wall, physical buttons for the numbers.

Fuck I miss tik tok. Never thought I'd say that. Hell, I'd settle for chess

Guards watch her. Making sure her glow stays down.

Not that they could stop me from killing them. I can go from 0 to bomb faster than they can draw their guns. 

She has been getting better. Hard work. Long hours, and nothing else to do, and she looks almost normal. 

I wonder if I'll stop glowing after they kill me... Fuck.

A slight flicker of light. Quickly repressed.

That was what had been scheduled for her. International terrorism and mass murder wasn't usually something you got community service for.

I didn't mean to... well. I did mean to hurt that guys, but...

Ion stops thinking. Reminiscing leads to feelings. Feelings leads to glowing. Glowing leads to the guards pointing their weapons at her. Maybe tranquilizing her.

She has gotten very good at not feeling.

At avoiding thinking.

That she only has a few months left before she is sentenced to death.

That if something doesn't change, she will die before she turns 18.

Ion wakes up.

Bleary.

Her back hurts.

She had given up on removing the metal from the fluff of what used to be her bed and had decided to instead remove the fluff from the metal.

She was... making progress.

She had a pillow at least.

Little mounds she could rest on instead of the concrete. Not nearly as good without the springs, but those are not recoverable. She shifts off it, her bare feet warming the concrete.

At least I don't need to fucking worry about cold.

Ion looks back at her shattered and partially burned bed.

Yeah... I have the exact opposite problem.

Ion sighs.

She gets up. Stretching out her sore muscles.

She looks at the slot in the door.

No food yet.

She goes back to her former bed. Scoops up an armful of fluff and destroyed mattress. 

Carries it back her mound of fluff. Drops it.

It sticks to her a bit. The sweat on her skin making her sticky.

Fuck I miss my bed