Page 77 of Homebound
After they all cleared out, she got the chair ready. Turning, she bumped into Simon who had stood up without making a sound.
“You scared me.”
“You aren’t scared,” he commented, off-hand.
“Startled, then. You move too quietly.”
“You’re not yourself today. That’s all.” He slowly shuffled over and settled into the chair.
“There’s that,” Gemma conceded.
They rode the elevator down and went outside.
The thick mist enveloped them the minute they set foot out of the door. The visibility was null, so much so that if Gemma hadn’t by now memorized the way to the old church, she’d be hard-pressed to guide them there.
Reaching their usual spot where Simon liked to stay facing the docks, they stopped. Seeing the docks today was impossible. Seeing the old church’s wall ten feet away was impossible. The dense fog obscured all but the most immediate objects.
“Do you want to stay here or ride around?” Gemma asked.
“Ride around.”
She pushed the heavy chair down a misty path to get them moving. The City was very quiet today.
“We shouldn’t go too far. I can’t tell where your boundary is in the mist. I don’t want you to get zapped.”
“I know where the boundary is.”
She squinted with sudden suspicion. “How? Because it shocks you?”
He said nothing.
She checked their direction, but the mist rolled in thick and gauging the exact line of Simon’s invisible confinement was difficult.
“Do the shocks hurt?”
Again, he said nothing.
She gave up asking. Why bother? He wouldn't communicate. He didn’t want her concern.
“I can feel them but they don’t hurt,” he said, surprising her.
“The guard made it sound like they should,” Gemma mused. “Maybe you got lucky and the tracker doesn’t work.”
“It works,” he said flatly. “But I can tolerate high doses of electricity. All Rix can if put to test. Dr. Delano applied himself to testing me. He wanted to see if there was a limit to how much voltage I could take, andthathurt. He would keep me plugged in and increased the voltage until I passed out.”
Gemma halted with the chair in the middle of the deserted street, sick to her stomach, her mind frozen in shock at the images his confession conjured.
Unaware or oblivious to her distress, Simon grinned, his smile terrifying with its display of blue gums and pointy dark teeth emerging from them.
“Thanks to him, I’ve built tolerance. Now it takes a step-up transformer to make me twitch.”
“I’m sorry,” Gemma whispered brokenly. “You didn’t deserve any of it.”
He shrugged, and it was all the reaction he showed toward his ordeal and her compassion.
All around them, the mist bunched and flowed. At the street delta, it wavered funnily, solidifying, and taking a humanoid shape. Then two. Three. Their legs were bent backwards, a distinct feature of Perali.
Gemma went on high alert.
