33. Rozálie

Rozálie


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When they say the danger's over but you see the sunset red,
And the glow upon the gloaming fills your warning heart with dread,
Look upon the faces dearest to you in that dark'ning hour —
Know that they are brilliant also, gleaming with such lambent power.

Depression wasn't blue. It was a misty grey, like welling tears.

She saw that grey setting in all over, though it was only one shade among many. The Site was going through every stage of grief at once, every possible emotional trauma response, and the auras reflected that diversity of experience.

Everyone was angry, but the security guards more so. Their honour had been slighted, their fortress breached, their wards attacked and killed. Everyone was confused, but the HR and logistics people were baffled; they rarely came into contact with the wider Veiled world, and this devastating assault must have seemed like it had materialized from thin air and nightmares. Everyone was afraid, but the best-informed were terrified.

They knew this wasn't over.

The Site itself gave off hints of Udo's aura throughout. Not only because there were grains of her vim harenae in most cracks and crevices, gluing the place together, but because of what she was building down below. Del's aura was so bright it could be seen through walls. The facility's dark underbelly was glowing with the complex spectrum of Wynn Rydderech's fantastical feelings.

A plume of despair like a funeral pyre rose up from the telekill sump.

The ghosts in the graveyard were like walking auras. Echoes in light of the people they had been. They could only manifest for brief moments at a time, and some refused to manifest at all. Or else couldn't. The very earth around them had a vital glow that reminded her of flowers in springtime. But flowers never lasted very long; already Ilse Reynders had made the pilgrimage, and her long-dead sister had failed to appear for a reunion. The grey, the grey, the grey.

But a curious thing was happening as the dour mood settled over all and sundry. Something she'd only seen once before. Something marvellous.

One by one, her colleagues' auras were reaching out. Thin tendrils extending from field to field, linking each member of personnel to the others. It was faint, it was subtle, but she was not imagining it.

She didn't know what it meant, but she felt it must mean something good. It tinged the grey to blue wherever the tendrils met. It didn't erase the sadness and anger and confusion and fear, but it did… colour them. The flavours of pain became more complicated. Perhaps more bearable.

It was even starting to affect the former passengers and crew of the Giant, whose psychological reviews she was helping to hurriedly prepare. The rows on rows of fictional Victorians had bright, simplistic fields, like the caricatures they were. One emotion each, for the most part. Some of the main characters had more, but not much more. Robertson hadn't meant to imply depth, quite the opposite. But there were faint tinctures, inflections, suggestions that the unreal were becoming… well, at best, surreal. It was a start, and even if much of the modification was in the way of sinking feelings, they could sense the flush of camaraderie rising around them. And it buoyed them up.

She was still getting used to how fictional auras looked. It seemed a miracle that they even existed.

She was still trying to work out what the ghosts were feeling.

She was sure she would never understand the emanations of a god.

But one thing was certain, in the midst of all her contradictory data. Irrespective of all the hurt and loss.

Like the Severed of Zevala, the denizens of Site-43 were becoming inextricably linked. A distinct population.

A people apart.

A people together.

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