Work Text:
Neon was in bad shape. And no one knew what to do with her.
After Cypher managed to rescue her from their brutal prison and get her to the Valorant base, no one could do anything with her. Not because they — or even herself — didn’t want to, but because it simply wasn’t possible. Her parents could have stood on their heads and filed one lawsuit after another against both Kingdom and Valorant, but it wouldn’t have gotten them anywhere.
Simply put, she had been overdosed with such a terrifying amount of synthetic radianite mixture that it was a miracle she was still alive, given the state she was currently in. Her abilities, comprising of electricity manipulation and accelerated movement, had been so violently amplified that she could barely control them at all. Electricity of lethal intensity constantly coursed through her; she was charged like a static field, and even the slightest emotional outburst resulted in electrical explosions so powerful that the entire infirmary was nearly burned to ashes. When Cypher touched her while on their run, he received such a horrible outburst as if he had reached straight into a power line, and he could only thank heavens it didn’t kill him.
They tried everything they could to help her, but after a few days, all healing Radiants gave up. Sage’s ice powers couldn’t do anything for her, Skye and Reyna had no way to reach her to actually use their abilities, and even Omen backed off, saying that with such a massive amount of that stimulant drug in her system, even he can‘t do anything. No matter what he was capable of, even his power was simply no match for this twisted and abused technology.
The only thing Sage could manage was to keep Neon alive — her internal organs were beginning to fail due to the constant crushing pressure, and her days were thus inexorably dwindling.
Neon was a friendly girl, sure — but in this state, and after what had happened to her behind the walls of Kingdom, she didn’t want to talk to anyone from Valorant any more than was necessary. The only one she could stand to be alone with, and with whom she felt truly safe, was Cypher. The one who had suffered alongside her for who knows how long, who had let her in on the whole disaster, and who had managed to save her. They shared a kind of connection, an invisible bond forged by the hell they’d gone through together.
Sure, Cypher wanted to help her too; it was eating him up to see the young girl suffer. But what could he, a mere human, possibly do about something like this? He wasn’t Radiant. He couldn’t possibly match her. He couldn’t help her, even if he wanted to.
~•<{}>•~
Cypher was sitting on a couch in Killjoy’s room, casually flipping through the manual for her combat boots, which the girl had written herself. He didn’t understand most of the text because it was scribbled in German and, on top of that, so illegibly that he could only guess whether a tiny little circle was an o or a zero. He paid more attention to Killjoy, who was sitting at her workbench, and the robot standing in front of her. At that moment, she was poking at it with a screwdriver so intently that her tongue was sticking out, and scattered around her were not only a vast array of tools and equipment, but also bags of chips and cans of energy drinks and beer.
After Valorant took control of Kay/O, Killjoy had barely left her room (more of a workshop at this point). She swore to Brimstone that she would modify the robot so that it would be helpful to them and wouldn’t want to wring the necks of everyone, especially the Radiants on their team. She was probably trying to atone for the fact that she herself had conceived and written the rough plans for his creation.
Sure, it was risky. Incredibly risky — he was a creation of the latest technology with artificial intelligence so complex that even Killjoy herself was sweating over it. If something went wrong — and something could so horrifyingly easily go wrong — Kay/O would be capable of wiping out the entire base in two minutes.
But for now, he was calm; Killjoy had already managed to clean his systems and reprogram him as best she could. Sure, it definitely wasn’t enough, it hadn’t changed practically anything, but surprisingly, it seemed to work. Because Kay/O gave the impression that he understood it all. He still knew that he was a machine designed primarily to hunt Radiants, but now he also understood that doing such a thing was wrong and that even though this was the purpose for which he was created, he now had the ability to act and make decisions freely.
Was he aware that he should kill them all? Certainly.
Did he want to do that now? Not at all.
And would he do it? Perhaps only if his systems failed and something took control over his body. His mind was his own; no one from Kingdom could take that away from him or implant any sinister plans into it anymore. But his body, heh... anyone could do whatever they wanted with that part.
He was just a thing.
It actually worried Cypher that Kay/O was behaving practically like a human. He had never encountered such an amazingly sophisticated and meticulously designed artificial intelligence before.
Killjoy grunted and straightened up, which snapped Cypher back to reality. He watched as the girl carefully removed a piece of dark iron from the robot’s arm — the outer layer of his forearm; beneath it lay another layer of a different material, now interwoven with various wires, components, and above all, something shiny and turquoise, shaped like a branching tube that burrowed into his metallic musculature like plant roots and was protected by a thin, transparent layer.
“You’ve got that raditynate practically everywhere,” Killjoy complained as soon as she saw it. She poked the deadly substance cautiously with a screwdriver and smacked her lips. “What on earth do you have that for?”
“Absorber,” Kay/O replied simply in his deep robotic voice, without even turning his head. Cypher watched him, not moving an inch, his gaze fixed on the purple screen of his display, where a complex triangular symbol was currently glowing calmly. When the robot spoke, it glowed faintly before fading again. An activation hologram.
“An absorber?” Killjoy asked, confused, as she carefully placed the piece of hardened molten alloy that served as Kay/O’s arm on the table, skillfully examining it from all sides.
“Yes. A suppressor, as you would probably call it. It consists of raditynate and a remelted layer of tanate and niobium.”
“Okay, but a suppressor for what?”
“For electrical current, primarily designed to absorb Radiants’ electrical discharges. Their team upgraded me with this after my failed mission, when I went to kill Neon and she took me out with her abilities. After this upgrade, her power is now ineffective against me.”
"Makes sense actually. And you completely block it out or…?"
"More like I dampen it to the point where it does not affect me. I am not sure how effective it would be if they sent a massive amount of electricity my way, it probably would not work 100%, but it could still deflect the vast majority of the power."
Block it out…?
Dampen it.
Cypher felt his gaze drift far away, and he stopped perceiving what was happening around him. Those words and the information about Kay/O’s mechanism he’d just learned kept replaying in his head. The individual pieces fell into place fairly quickly, and he blinked in surprise, not even realizing that his vision was already blurring. Killjoy’s handwritten manual slipped from his fingers, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He stood up hastily, nearly knocking one of the girl’s creations off the coffee table in front of him. He quickly walked over to the robot, which towered a good head taller than him, and breathlessly looked at the system that seemed to run throughout his entire body, resembling blood vessels weaving through muscles.
Killjoy looked at Cypher in surprise and closed her mouth; she’d been talking to Kay/O about something until just now. Cypher didn’t know what she had been telling him, but at that moment, he didn’t really care; he didn’t even notice Kay/O’s unreadable gaze, even though he could clearly feel it piercing his back.
“Amir?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, just examining the intricate metal system interwoven with a generous dose of shiny raditynate.
“Joy, sweetheart.” Cypher looked down at Killjoy; his turquoise indicator lights glowed with a soft artificial light, like a spotlight. “Properly processed raditynate isn’t harmful to Radiants, is it?”
Killjoy scratched her head with the screwdriver, nearly knocking her cap off, and then shrugged her shoulders, as if she wasn’t sure. “I don’t know, I only worked with radianite back at Kingdom, and I didn’t test our collected samples for this. Why do you ask?”
“I hope,” Cypher replied with half an ear, which Killjoy didn’t understand at all, and she would probably have demanded an explanation if Cypher hadn’t stepped back from her and hurried out of her room without a single word.
“What got into him?” the German asked, taken aback, of the robot in front of her, who knew about as much as she did.
“I do not know.”
Killjoy would have started talking again and perhaps even gotten back to work, examining the layered arrangement of Kay/O’s arms in detail if Cypher hadn’t burst back into the room, followed by Phoenix, who also looked completely clueless.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, there isn’t room for this many people in here!” Killjoy immediately raised her voice as Phoenix nearly tripped over a bundle of cables lying haphazardly on the floor, but before she could protest further, Cypher spoke up. He sounded almost urgent, as if something was going on.
“Peter, touch this here,” the Arab turned to Phoenix, who raised an eyebrow in question. He looked at what Cypher was pointing to on Kay/O’s arm and immediately looked as if he had been told he was being kicked out of the protocol.
“I‘m definitely not touching that blue bullshit,” Phoenix replied quickly when he realized what Cypher wanted him to do, first giving Kay/O an apologetic look for how he had referred to a rather large part of him, and then Killjoy for barging into her room without her invitation. “It almost killed me.”
“Yes, but that was a bullet. This will just burn you at most, won’t it?”
“Yea, probably. But why wou‘d I do that, then?”
Cypher would have loved to run his hands over his face in frustration, but he wasn’t capable of such a thing, so he just sighed and shook his head. “Peter, please. It’s important.”
Phoenix stared at him for a moment with a raised eyebrow, as if asking him if he was really serious, but finally agreed and, as carefully as if the protective glazed material might rip off his entire hand, touched the main part of the raditynate web with the tip of his finger, then placing the rest if them on the cold, smooth metal around it.
The room was completely silent when he did so. Perhaps not even because what was happening in Killjoy’s room was strange (they were used to strange things, after all, they worked for Valorant), but rather because they were afraid Phoenix would get hurt. Because yes, that substance could indeed be that dangerous.
But not this one.
Phoenix turned to Cypher and threw his other hand up in the air, a confused and perhaps even slightly suspicious look on his face. “This one doesn’t hurt.”
“Really?”
“Hm. 'Just feel a slight warmth, but that’s normal.”
Great. So far, so good.
“Alright. Try using your abilities.”
Phoenix didn’t even ask why, nor did he object, even though he was dying to say it wouldn’t work. After all, he’s a Raditant; it was obvious that his abilities wouldn’t work even with such a fleeting contact as this.
So it was no surprise at all when he held his hand out into the air and not a single spark flashed between his fingers.
“Nothing.”
“Great!”
“No, that really isn’t g—”
“Amir, why for god's sake are we even discussing this?! I have to work!” Killjoy howled in frustration, as if those five lost minutes would have some devastating impact on her long-term research, and she slapped Phoenix’s hand away so he wouldn’t touch Kay/O any more. “What good will this do you?”
“Me? It’s useless to me.” Cypher patted Phoenix on the shoulder as a sign of thanks and then quickly turned on his heel, ready to run out of the room and pitch that bold idea to Valorant’s leadership. “But it might be useful to Nikoll.”
And before anyone could even comment on it, one of the best hackers in the world was out of the room.
~•<{}>•~
All three agreed. And when Cypher cautiously presented the proposal to Neon, she was so overjoyed she almost threw her arms around his neck (but she didn't. She would kill him in an instant).
“We can make a some sort of suppresors out of raditynate and a mixture of non-conductive metals that will absorb some of your power,” Cypher explained the situation to her as he sat at the far end of the infirmary, far enough away that none of Neon’s uncontrolled electrical currents would kill him, yet close enough that the girl could hear him despite the constant static hum.
“They won’t be the smallest pieces; you really have a... lot of it inside you, and we’ll probably have to attach them to you permanently. We’re in a race against time here, sweetheart; your body won’t be able to handle this constant onslaught much longer. I’m really sorry, but we’re forced to resort to this solution.”
Neon, sitting on the bare bed at the other end of the half-demolished infirmary, nodded. She sat cross-legged, rocking back and forth like a small child who didn’t really know what to do at the moment. Her skin was steel-blue, her eyes glowed with a fiery electric turquoise, and her hair flew wildly around her head, shining brightly like turquoise and yellow neon lights. Streams of electricity and hot sparks constantly ran through her body, and the metal bed she sat on was already completely blackened in many places.
“Will it work, though…?” Neon asked in a quiet voice, tilting her head slightly to the side, her mesmerizingly bright eyes piercing right through Cypher.
That gaze hurt him.
“You’ve already tried a few of those dampening gadgets on me. Even that crap from Kingdom they were using in there. Nothing worked.”
Yes, that was true. But all the devices designed to suppress Radiants’ abilities were built for normal levels of ability. None of them could tame Neon’s power. And also, and this was the main point, all those devices were made of radianite, not raditynate. And as Kay/O had proven to them, his technology had successfully suppressed Neon’s abilities to nothing when he had kidnapped her.
“This will work,” Cypher replied reassuringly, and even though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure, he hoped so. Because if it didn’t work, then... He didn’t even want to think about it. Such a young, talented girl, whose life had been turned upside down in a single day, didn’t deserve to die such a hideous and cruel death at the hands of her own abilities.
“When we apply it on you, it might hurt,” Cypher admitted, while Neon bravely returned his gaze. Even from that distance, he could see the thin, jagged scars running down her cheeks from the corners of her mouth, and a terrible sense of shame and anxiety settled in his stomach at the sight.
“It hurts now,” Neon swallowed, her voice trembling slightly. A flash of light shone clearly between her fingers, and she immediately pulled her hands away. “So even if it will hurt like hell, I can handle it. It won’t be worse than it is now.”
They stared at each other for a moment, two people who had been complete strangers just a few weeks ago, yet now they shared a bond similar to the one Brimstone had formed with Killjoy.
Neon sobbed. The tears that glistened in her eyes evaporated under the relentless heat of the static before they could roll down her cheeks.
“Amir, please,” Neon whispered softly, and Cypher felt his heart tremble and his stomach clench. “I-I, I can’t go on like this anymore."
Blonde hair. Pale skin. Twisted scars from raging flames. And her voice, saying exactly the same words, with the same pain and terror, begging him to save her.
Cypher felt a tear roll down his scarred face, hidden by metal, as he clenched his hands into fists. His heart bled. It hurt.
“Please, don’t be scared. We'll make it end soon.”
Just as he had done once before. The only difference was that now he would not take a life, but save it.
~•<{}>•~
It took two days to manufacture the raditynate silencers from several different alloys. You could say it took just two days, but there was a ton of work involved, and practically none of the people working on it took a break.
Since Valorant had only a very limited supply of raditynate, they had to extract it from the only thing they had on hand: Kay/O. He certainly wasn’t thrilled about it, but he knew it would save the life of the girl he had once hurt so badly. And they didn’t even take that much from him. Kay/O was literally saturated with raditynate, so after a few hours of grueling work, Killjoy was able to announce that she had managed to gather the necessary amount.
Raze came from Brazil to pay them a visit; like Killjoy, she had an amazing understanding of technology, and together with Cypher, they got to work. They locked themselves in Killjoy’s room, which now truly looked more like a workshop than anything else, and toiled away for two days. Occasionally, Phoenix helped them with smelting metals, or Kay/O, whose knowledge of raditynate was invaluable, and with every passing hour, their progress became more and more apparent.
Killjoy calculated all the important proportions, equations and measurements and determined how much would be needed to successfully suppress Neon’s enhanced abilities. Although raditynate modified in this way couldn’t harm the girl, there was a risk of future health problems that could arise from its constant use, so Killjoy spent a long time thinking about what they would do. However, Cypher confided his idea to her, and the German promised him she would try it out.
Cypher knew she wouldn’t let him down. She was gifted, incredibly gifted and brilliant; she played with nanotechnology as easily and carefree as if she played with Legos. It wouldn’t be a problem for her.
And so, after more than forty hours of work over two days, they were done. They had created something that no one could be sure would actually work, but everyone hoped that Cypher’s idea was right and that Killjoy hadn’t miscalculated anything.
They couldn’t afford anything like that right now. They all had already more than enough blood on their hands.
~•<{}>•~
"That stupid tin can is not going to touch me!"
Bang! A bolt of electricity bit hungrily into the infirmary ceiling, and the fluorescent lights flickered wildly like fireworks for a moment before half of them overloaded and blew out. Not that this was the first time; Neon had already managed to accidentally destroy countless ones. No one blamed her for it, not by a long shot, after all, it wasn’t her fault. Chamber will sort out some savings for them if they ask.
“Nikoll, I can imagine how you must feel, but—”
"That thing kidnapped me!” Neon’s voice cut in, and she began wildly waving her arms. It was a miracle that the electrical discharge that shot through her arms and embedded itself in a nearby digital device that for some reason was still present didn’t take anyone else out along the way. “I won’t let him near me!”
“He’s the only one who can come close to you!” Sage ran a hand through her hair as she watched the Filipina demolish the infirmary further apart. “If we just touched you, you’d kill us!”
Neon puffed out her cheeks, and Sage sighed as if she didn’t have the patience for this. Cypher and Kay/O, standing beside her, remained silent.
It was understandable that Neon didn’t want Kay/O to even come near her, of course. But Kay/O hadn’t hurt just her. He had nearly killed Phoenix, managed to seriously injure Astra, and had been on Yoru’s trail for several weeks, breathing down his neck. And yet, after he was reprogrammed, the three Radiants were able to more or less forgive him; Phoenix even patted him on the shoulder and assured him he wouldn’t hold any grudge against him. Now they were on the same ship, in the same base, day and night. They had to get along, so why make things unnecessarily harder?
But Neon was young and inexperienced; before this tragedy that she had gone through because of Kingdom, there had been no major upheaval in her life.
But in this world, people had to learn to forgive; otherwise, they would have enemies at every turn and wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly at night without fearing for their lives. And Neon had to realize this fact as well.
“Nikoll,” Cypher said when he saw Sage opening her mouth again. “Kay/O is truly the only one capable of doing this. If you don’t let him, you’ll die.”
Neon’s gaze shifted from the Arab to the tall robot, whose silent digital expression terrified her to the very core, and then drifted down to what Kay/O was clutching in his hands. Thin, silver-shimmering patterned plates, some larger, some smaller, with a faint hint of turquoise spark.
“This,” Cypher pointed at it when he noticed where Neon was looking, “will save you. Nikoll, please trust me. I’ll be here with you to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
Neon bit her lip. “He scares me.”
“I know, but—”
“I can assure you that it is not in my interest to harm you in any way,” Kay/O said suddenly, having not spoken a single word until now. “I want to help you heal. The procedure will only take a few minutes. Cypher will be monitoring me the whole time.”
Neon frowned at the robot, but then the muscles in her face went somehow limp.
The state she was in was agonizing. Every single second tormented her, day and night; she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t calm her racing heart, it was hard for her to even breathe. Every muscle in her body burned and ached, she had migraines, and she could taste an unpleasant, warm metallic scent in her mouth. Her eyes stung, and even drinking hurt.
Even if that stupid metal contraption killed her, it would be doing her a favor.
Neon slumped her shoulders, dropped her gaze to the ground and took a deep breath. She didn’t trust him; he hadn’t convinced her. She would see what that tin will do to her, what it will try to do. However, she trusted Cypher, someone from a protocol that was almost completely foreign to her. More than the others.
He had saved her life once before. She owed him — that's something you never forget. Something that inspires a sense of trust and a strange kind of humility in person.
“... okay. Fine.”
Cypher smiled with relief and squeezed Sage's shoulder, who stood beside him and exhaled happily. She nodded briefly at him and stepped back, signaling that they could get to work. If anything went wrong (nothing was allowed to go wrong), she would stand there and watch over them. As the most knowledgeable healer in the protocol, it was practically her duty.
“Thank you, Nikoll. Now listen to me.” Cypher carefully picked up two random metal plates that lay motionless in Kay/O’s arms and held them up for Neon to see. One was short and narrow; the other resembled an elongated, geometrically cut figure eight.
“We’ll place this one on your face, across your nose between your eyes, and this one will go on your arms. Then we have some larger pieces here that we’ll attach to your back and shoulder blades, and some smaller ones whose placement you can choose.”
Neon stared at the pile of metal with blue reflections, half curious and half skeptical, as if trying to imagine how it would look on her.
“There's a lot,” she finally concluded.
“There is. But there could have been even more.”
"Is it safe?”
Who knows? Hopefully it is.
"Let’s hope so.”
Neon grimaced, but she honestly didn’t care what those conveniences would do to her. Every hour, minute, second she lived through was pure agony. She wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to endure it.
Probablynot much longer.
"Fine. So, what do I do?" No more questions, no more inquiries. Her parents’ consent wasn’t needed; she was already an adult and fully in control of her own life.
“Sit with your back to us and take off your shirt. I will apply it directly to your skin,” Kay/O began, taking the two metal samples back from Cypher. “It is probably goint to hurt a little, and it is going to leave scars — it will practically weld itself to your skin."
“Oh,” Neon muttered blankly, more troubled by the fact that the metal would practically grow into her skin than by having to undress. Sure, from what she had seen, it didn’t look bad; maybe it could be called a kind of tattoo, if that made her feel better…
But why should she care? It would, will save her life. And life is more valuable than beauty. She had seen that Jett and Skye both had all sorts of scars and scrapes, and they were both gorgeous; she had noticed the circular scars adorning Phoenix’s neck and wrists, which were deep and would likely never fade. She was well aware of the scars that covered Breach’s chest like a crust where his arms used to be, the layered white tissue across Sova's throat and she also took into account the chip she had glimpsed in Killjoy’s back.
It would simply be a part of her, her mark, and maybe it would even suit her, just as Reyna suited her intricate black tattoos and the wild flowers that adorned the hands of that shadow Radiant.
“Well… let’s get started."
Neon swung her legs to the other side, let them dangle off the bed, and pulled a well-burnt T-shirt made of a special fabric — one Phoenix had lent her — over her head. It might have been fireproof, but it probably wasn’t all that effective against electricity. Still, it served its purpose well enough.
Cypher and Kay/O exchanged glances, and Arab nodded as a signal that he could move forward. And so Kay/O slowly made his way over to Neon, who was clutching the edges of the bed tightly with her hands and trying not to move a muscle.
Kay/O reached her, stood behind her, and placed all the metal plates he was clutching in his hands onto the bed. Neon glanced at them before quickly looking forward again.
“Let’s start with something small so we know how you react to it, okay?” Kay/O asked her stiffly as he rummaged through the pile of metal. He pulled out a short, thin plate that resembled an arrow and held it up to Neon. “This. On your neck?
“Yeah, that could work.”
“Where exactly?”
Neon rubbed the soft skin on her neck and thought for a moment before feeling around for a spot. “Here.”
“Okay.”
Kay/O waited a few more seconds, not moving a millimeter and remaining silent. The power of Neon’s electricity, which sparkled around him like hot sparks and set his body ablaze, had no effect on him. It was an interesting sight.
"Can I?”
“Yeah.”
"It might hurt a bit."
“Hm.”
Kay/O took this as a signal to stop talking and get to work. So he gently grabbed Neon’s shoulder, ignoring how she stiffened, and brought his other hand closer to her. “Straighten your head.”
Without complaint, she straightened her posture, and Kay/O pressed the piece of iron against her bluish, charged skin. The metal hissed as it met her skin, and Kay/O applied force to it, bending it into the desired shape so it adhered to her skin. As the raditynat and Radiant power reacted, the alloys glowed a bright neon blue, but otherwise showed no reaction.
When Kay/O decided it should hold, he lowered his hand. And sure enough, the metal remained on her neck as if he had simply welded it there.
“Well?”
“It stung a little,” Neon admitted, though "a little” was an understatement. But she managed not to flinch even once, even though she couldn’t keep her feelings in check again, and sparks so hot they could burn a hole in someone’s skin were jumping wildly among the strands of her hair.
“Do you feel any change?”
Neon was silent for a moment and, completely focused, closed her eyes so nothing would distract her. Her heart was still pounding wildly, thump thump thump, seven beats per second, and her fingers were still tingling. But maybe, just a little unsure maybe, she did feel a little better after all.
“We have to try more,” Neon finally managed to say, and Kay/O silently followed her command. He took one of the largest pieces they had made and held it up to Neon like a model at a fashion show. It also resembled a geometric figure eight, but this one had a split tip, and additional thin strips were welded along the bottom edges.
“I am going to put this on your back, on your shoulder blades. After this, you probably should feel some kind of change. May I?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
It wasn’t that Neon was enjoying it, not by a long shot. But she had already practically stopped feeling the piece of metal that Kay/O had welded to her skin using her own body heat, and the fleeting sensation that she felt a tiny bit better delighted her immensely.
And so Kay/O got to work — and when Neon confirmed that yes, it was working, he continued. He welded an identical plate, only mirror-reversed, onto her other shoulder blade, and then moved on to her arms, where he installed the part they had shown her earlier. For a robot with such rough fingers, he worked with surprising gentleness, almost tenderly, and with perfect precision down to the millimeter.
With each new piece, Neon felt that searing, stirring force within her fade, and everything that had been so taxing over the last few days stopped hurting. The unpleasant sweet aftertaste vanished from her mouth, her eyes stopped stinging, and even her skin gradually returned to its normal shade of beige. There were fewer and fewer sparks and flashes flying around her, and Neon caught herself with tears welling up in her eyes. She blinked them away frantically and took a deep breath as Kay/O attached a decorative rhombus to the back of her hand and tiny pieces to her protruding knuckles.
“It will be done soon,” he instructed her as he adorned her other hand with shiny metal as well, then stood in front of her. Neon blushed slightly and fixed her gaze somewhere beyond his shoulder, but said nothing. He was a robot; she didn’t care if he saw her naked.
Kay/O didn’t care either; he devoted all his attention to the three tiny iron pieces in his palm while staring motionlessly at her face, especially her eyes, which no longer shone with that aggressive shade of neon turquoise, but whose irises were once again brown like warm cinnamon. Only now and then did a spark flicker in them, like a stray little star.
“How are you feeling?”
Neon had to clear her throat to get her voice to sound clear. She swallowed the saliva that had gathered in her mouth and smiled awkwardly, as if she couldn’t remember how to do it at first.
"Much… much better."
Kay/O nodded, probably to say that he was glad to hear that. Then he showed her the last pieces of metal so she would know what was coming.
"As Cypher said, this one goes across the nose, between the eyes. This one above the tips of the eyebrows. It is probably the best placement we could find on your face. Safest.”
Neon nodded politely, as if to say she understood, and then urged him to get to work so she could get it over with. And so Kay/O, with almost cautious tenderness, took hold of her chin, as if afraid to clench her jaw even a tiny bit tighter. Sure, if he used more of his strength, he could easily crush her entire face — but why would he do that? He’s supposed to help her.
He wants to help her.
Neon instinctively closed her eyes as Kay/O reached out his other hand toward her, those rough metal fingers with retractable claws and iron as cold as death which terrified her. She easily recalled how he had covered her mouth back then, and she had choked and cried until she passed out, while a pair of dark chocolate-colored eyes watched her mercilessly, without a single emotion, beneath the night sky.
She held her breath at the memory, almost pulling away—but managed to stop herself and clench her teeth tightly.
The past hurts. Let it go.
When she felt a stinging pinch at the bridge of her nose, which spread across her face like a tingling sensation, she didn’t even move. And she didn’t breathe until she felt him weld those two tiny pieces above her eyebrows as well, and then let her go.
She sat motionless for a moment longer, holding her breath, as if waiting for something to happen. As if she were afraid she would feel a stinging pain or burns or extreme heat or simply... anything, but the truth was that she felt almost nothing. Just that pleasant inner warmth that she carried within her as a warm-blooded Radiant.
And that was all. No new pain — and not even the old one. It was gone; her eyes didn’t sting, her skin didn’t itch, her heart had stopped pounding wildly.
Neon opened her eyes and blinked; Kay/O was no longer standing before her. As if in a trance, she pulled the T-shirt over her head, or at least what was left of it, and carefully hopped down from the bed onto the floor. She ran her fingers over the slightly warm metal alloy on her face, over the smooth edges where steel met skin. Then her gaze drifted down to her fingers, her wrists, her arms. The metal was silver and the skin was beige.
She was okay.
Neon turned around; her legs almost buckled from the immense relief that washed over her and filled her like a pleasant, warm sensation. Tears welled up in her eyes, and as they trickled down her cheeks, she took a ragged breath. She didn’t care, damn it, she didn’t care about any of it - her messy hair, her ruined clothes, or the fact that her body would forever be adorned with an alloy of precious metals and raditynate.
She was alive.
She could still feel her abilities, of course. Neon felt them much more clearly than before, before Kingdom had kidnapped her and they had overdosed her on radianite to the point of turning her into practically a human weapon; so sensitive she was capable of reacting to even the slightest breeze. She felt them much more clearly than before, when she had to literally let loose for electricity to surge through her hair and her eyes to glow. She felt them clearly — but now she was able to command them, to control them. At least partially, but it was enough.
She sobbed, softly; sparks ran through her hair, but that was all. No explosion, no hellishly hot flashes of lightning, no power capable of merciless destruction. Just that, and nothing else.
Neon stumbled with her next step but Cypher was already there, embracing her without hesitation, as carefully as if he feared she might shatter like porcelain. The girl, in turn, wrapped her slender arms around his body as tightly as she could, buried her face in his white leather cloak, and burst into full-blown tears.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay now,” Cypher soothed her in a quiet voice, running his fingers through her hair; the metal plates on his hands sparkled slightly as they came into contact with the unconsciously released electrical energy. But that didn’t matter; it didn’t matter at all. Neon was alive. He had saved her.
The Arab closed his eyes as the pale face of the woman he loved flashed before him once more. But now it wasn’t covered in scars, and her honey-gold eyes gazed at him as peacefully as the glow of the setting sun.
Sage and Kay/O left the room side by side, silently agreeing that they were now unnecessary here. They left the two of them alone in the infirmary, with their immense relief and tears and the warmth that filled their hearts. They left them standing there in the embrace they both needed so much. Like the gentle smile of the dead woman whom Cypher had saved by taking her away from this cruel, ruined world, back to their song.