The Light On Your Face For The First Time

Agony was the lungs in a vacuum, empty. Agony coaxed her to gasp in, rattling her ribcage, filling her lungs with air as Lotusfoil shook back to life.

The pavement under her back was cold. Her face was strangely cold, too. Her skin sipped on the fresh night as wind fingered through her hair, lacking the protection of a tunic's hood. Lotusfoil's heavy hands were thrown clumsily at her face in search of explanation. There was no mask. What happened?

Sitting up, Lotusfoil took in the dark shapes that loomed over her. Stars trekked across the sky and disappeared behind silhouettes of towers, the moon inching impatiently along. The city was darker than she expected, and she realized why when noticing the streetlights were unlit. No lights were on in the skyscrapers, when before, from a distance, she could see offices illuminated as if in wait of their missing occupants. Now, there was a complete absence that drove home the emptiness of the city. She heard no pigeons, no insects, no rats or scavengers of any kind. Just silence and stillness.

Her gaze traveled to the bodega at the corner of the nearest building. The sight of the newspaper stand through the window stirred her memory. She'd appeared here once before, not as Lotusfoil, but someone else. Touching her face again, she wondered who she was right now. Lotusfoil? Or...

No. She was Lotusfoil. And she had to find her way back to the Sanctum.

Scrambling to her feet, Lotusfoil's most recent memories came rushing back. She clutched her stomach, expecting pain and wetness, or at the very least a gaping hole, but she was intact. There was no sensation of a broken rib or mangled shoulder. Cupping her throat, she remembered choking. The blinding pain of her windpipe severed. She remembered Redmaw bent over her, reassuring her that death was only temporary, before he slit her throat without any hesitation or remorse. He knew she would return, and she desperately tried to remind him where she first woke, and yet it wasn't his tender embrace that stayed with her. It was how easily he killed her, just as easily as he had beaten her and hurt her, obliterating what small affections she'd been cultivating in spite of it all.

Remembering how he killed her just reminded her of who he truly was. No amount of soft touches could justify his merciless brutality, especially if even she wasn't safe.

Lotusfoil approached the bodega window, scanning her reflection just to know what she was working with. The face peering back at her was almost unfamiliar—she hadn't seen herself in weeks—but her straight, dark hair brushing her shoulders, her tired brown eyes, and the scar above her left eyebrow were artifacts of her defenseless self. The abrasion on her right temple was fresh, despite it having healed during her time with the Knives. Grey sweater. Black jeans. White sneakers. All identical to her first awakening. She scrunched her nose, furrowed her eyebrows, and faked a smile, just to remember what those expressions looked like. It felt illegal to possess such memories—she discarded the vision quickly. Past her reflection, she spotted a stretchy neck warmer, a baseball cap, and pairs of sunglasses: the solution to her masklessness.

When she next emerged from the bodega, Lotusfoil was once more herself, her sacred and forbidden face clad in black.

It wouldn't take long to get to the Sanctum, if she remembered correctly the route she took last time, but therein lay the problem: Lotusfoil couldn't remember exactly how many blocks she ran or what corners she turned. A few minutes were added to her journey by climbing the floors of a nearby tower, and a few more when she found the elevator out of order, forced to use the stairs. From the fifth floor in an empty office, Lotusfoil searched for the hill of the Sanctum. It was much further away than last time. The more she looked, the more she realized that the entire layout of the city had changed. Most of the changes were subtle, but there were entire neighborhoods she hadn't seen before. An industrial park to the southwest had pushed the Sanctum further east. Back outside, she checked the sign above the bodega's front door: 'NEUMAN'S NEWSMART'.