The matches afterward were canceled. All recruits aside from Alek were to return back to the dorms. Instead of heading back to the dorm Alek was escorted to the medical center. A few medical staff also came to treat Clancy, Mira and Luca.
They began treating them with the same viscous gel that they had used before when Clancy had his ribs broken by Garrick.
It seemed very effective, healing all of the cuts and internal injuries the three had in a matter of minutes.
Finally, towards the end of treatment the nurses injected each of them with painkillers and they were on their way.
Clancy, Luca and Mira walked into the dorm in silence. Not a single word was spoken on the way there. They were shocked, not only by how they won, but by the amount of power that Alek had displayed. And how he had lost control.
Clancy took off his shirt to reveal dried blood where his cuts had been. He walked over to Mariana and sat down. She was silently looking at a picture of her as a child, holding a baby in her arms. Tears were falling down her cheeks.
"You, uh… you okay?"
She looked up at Clancy next to her and quickly wiped her face.
"Y-yeah. Thank you for today."
"Nah I should thank you. If not for your intervening I might've been turned into a kebab."
Mariana chuckled a little bit, and then became silent.
They sat there for a bit until she spoke.
"My brother… He's all I have. He means everything to me. He… does not mean to be so… distant. It's just… the way he grew up is all."
Clancy was silent for a little bit. As much as he wanted to retort that it was possible to grow up without being a prick, he knew that right now was not the time to point that out to someone that was grieving. Mariana took a breath and continued.
"My brother and I, we were orphans. He does not remember our father and mother. They were killed in a car accident when I was just 10 and he was barely 1.
We grew up on the slums of Riga in Latvia. We foraged for food as best as we could. Until we were found by the OTA. The OTA only uses orphans to join the lucent program."
This was news to Clancy. He felt this was cruel and unusual, and Mariana understood his feelings so she quickly added.
"We were given a choice, not kidnapped. Don't join. and we could continue our lives forvever hunting for the next meal, not knowing when it would come. Or join the OTA at a chance at a better life. And so we did.
And while I showed no aptitude for the Lucent exam, my brother scored the highest ratings ever recorded in the entire organization since the establishment of Project: Lucent."
Mariana began choking on her breath, forcing her words to come out.
"But peering into the void of time, it-it changed him.
He used to be my boy."
Her tears turned into full sobs.
"He used to be so kind, but now… *hick* … Now he's in so much pain. So much..sorrow."
In the middle of hiccups and gasping for air, she mustered the courage to contunue her story to Clancy, as a way to mitigate the fear that Alek might have caused him, or perhaps because Mariana just needed an outlet to talk to.
"I trained as hard as I could, in order to become a recruit. He had tried to enlist before, but he never fit in with other teams. Always disagreeing and always getting into fights. I just thought that this time, I could help him if I was part of his team. But it seems it's still the same. It seems I am incapable of helping my brother. I just wish…I could take away this pain from him…"
They sat in silence after that for a while. Then Clancy spoke up.
"I'm sorry. But for one, this isn't your fault. None of this is your fault. I see how you care for your brother. And I'm sure deep down he knows you care."
Clancy put his hand on Mariana's back, comforting her through the sobs of pain.
"And listen, I may not be able to speak for everyone here, but I'm here for you. And Alek. Perhaps the problem before was you shouldering too much of the pain. It's okay to rely on others. It's not just you and Alek."
Those words seemed to help, if just a little. Mariana sniffled and nodded.
"Thank you, Clancy. Thank you."
Clancy stood up but he didn't return to his bed. He instead walked over to Evelyn, with several questions and hoping for at least some answers.
"Hey."
Evelyn was reading a book with headphones on. Her phone was next to her, screen on her music playlist. She was listening to SZA. This was a good sign. Good music taste must mean the two of them should get along, right?
Clancy sat down at the foot of Evelyn's bed. She noticed and put her book down, sitting up.
"What do you want?"
Evelyn had been one of the recruits Clancy hardly saw. She was a lucent after all, so she tended to naturally distance herself on account of not seeing the blue accented uniforms as much either.
But even from a distance, there was one thing Clancy couldn't help but notice about her: she looked utterly drained. Not just tired—wrung out, like someone teetering on the edge of collapse. While the other Lucents returned from training sessions with weary eyes and aching limbs, Evelyn came back looking like a ghost.
For the past two weeks, it had become a pattern—she'd barely make it through the door before crumpling onto her bed, eyes hollow, skin pale, and breath shallow. She didn't so much lie down as fall apart, piece by piece, night after night.
"Uh, well, hi, first off. I don't think we've ever spoken much. I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Clancy."
"Yeah, I remember you. You're cute."
'Cool, she likes me, that's gonna make this much easier. Wait. WHAT?'
Clancy, by all intents and purposes, was not a very 'cool' guy. And he certainly did not exude an aura of someone that had been with many women. In fact, he had only ever had one girlfriend. And that barely counted, considering they never held hands and Clancy was so shy to talk to her they actually stopped speaking throughout the entire relationship on account of him not knowing what to say.
His mind was reeling that Evelyn even knew she existed, and even thought he was cute.
"Who was your girlfriend's name?"
"Uh, her name was Laura, and she was-."
Clancy stopped for a moment. He didn't say that he had a girlfriend outloud just now. How did she know?
"I know because I can read your thoughts."
"Wh-what?"
Evelyn smiled.
"Don't you listen to your lectures? They don't talk about that stuff?"
To be perfectly honest, Clancy stopped paying attention in the morning. He felt it was much better use of his time to just finish this Steam game he found on his laptop.
"They…mighta glossed over it. But anyways, if you can read my mind what was the point of asking what I wanted when I came up to you?"
Evelyn sighed, and leaned in a little closer to Clancy.
'Too close.'
Evelyn laughed.
"Okay, my bad 'Mr. Personal Space.'"
Clancy chuckled nervously.
"I wasn't reading your thoughts and I don't read your thoughts unless I want to. It takes a bit of effort so I try not to use it in unecessary situations."
Clancy sighed. Well, that was a relief to Clancy. He felt kind of paranoid that people around him could just know what he was saying at all times. Although it was strange that Evelyn felt it was necessary to humiliate him.
"I wanted to ask about Alek."
"Ah, the little turd monster?"
Clancy raised an eyebrow. It seemed this woman was not only cool and pretty, but also extremely based.
"Yeah what about him?"
"Well, I wanted to know more about Lucents in general too I guess. Is…what happened today…normal?"
"Normal? Of course not. The kid nearly turned into a nuclear reactor."
Clancy cleared his throat.
"Okay, so then, what happened?"
Evelyn was silent for a moment, and then spoke.
"Becoming a lucent is very tough. When you're subjected to the void of time, you…change. You think differently, you feel differently."
Clancy thought for a second.
"So… I know Mariana told me that Alek had a tough childhood, and she told me that once he took the Lucent initiation and stared into the void he…changed. For the worse. Apparently his personality got way worse."
"Yeah…it's not uncommon for it to happen. A lot of my friends also changed personality when they became lucents. Not necessarily for the worse either. Some people got kinder and some got more quiet. But for Alek, I don't know. He was a cute kid. I remember him before he took the initiation."
Evelyn spoke softly, as if reminscing about a better time.
"He took it about 3 years ago. But ever since, his temperament has just been absolute dog water."
Clancy took a moment to grasp the situation.
"Wait, I'm sorry he took it 3 years ago? But isn't he 11? So he took it when he was 8??"
"Yeah, well he was a little younger than when I took it but yeah. You see, Lucents are trained from a very young age to do a very specific thing. The reason children around the age of 9 or 10 peer into the temporal realm and not adults is because their minds are much more malleable. Because it hasn't been fully developed yet, it can stretch in ways that adult brains can't. It's much harder to break through that barrier to become a Lucent when you're older. "
Clancy soaked in the new information but soon a new question arrived at his mental doorway. And this time Evelyn was reading his thoughts, so she knew what he was about to ask.
"You're going to ask why I was initiated to a team so late right?"
Clancy nodded.
Evelyn sighed, then picked up her phone, spinning it around.
"I was made a lucent when I was just 9, but… I failed to meet the requirements necessary to become a field agent. I was too weak. Every time I tried to use my powers my nose would bleed. I could barely handle the strain of tapping into the temporal realm, and so I was cast aside. I trained as hard as I could. It's been 13 years since I first became a Lucent, and I barely scrape by with the psychic requirements needed to be a Lucent field agent, and even then I'm the weakest Lucent that's been enlisted by far."
Evelyn finished her speech, but there were tears that were trailing down her face as she spoke. No break in her voice, and Clancy wasn't even sure if Evelyn herself knew she was crying. A few seconds later she seemed to take notice and wiped it away quickly, before clearing her throat and looking up at Clancy.
Clancy didn't speak. Neither of them did for a few seconds.
"Man…I'm sorry Evelyn."
"Pfft. Yeah, well. It is what it is. I'm much treated like a nobody when I train. When you're a lucent you develop a bit of a prideful personality. Even those that I was friends with before initiation weren't friendly anymore after we all became lucents."
Evelyn rose to her feet with quiet grace, reaching up to loosen the band in her hair. As it slipped free, her black hair spilled down past her shoulders like a curtain of silk, catching the dim light in soft waves. She didn't wear makeup—Clancy was pretty sure she didn't care to—but it didn't matter. There was something effortlessly striking about her, a kind of unbothered elegance that made it hard to look away. Her beauty wasn't loud—it didn't need to be. It simply was, like something the room had to adjust around.
Evelyn smiled and looked at Clancy, who happend to be staring at her.
"Okay with all the oggling and thoughts of how beautiful you think I am, do you happen to have any other questions?"
Clancy's face turned beet red but he still mustered out one last question.
"Uh… yeah. So what about Lena? Why is she just as old as we are? What's her story?"
"I don't know, you're just gonna have to ask her that yourself."
Clancy took a look behind him. Lena was rolled over asleep, her body hugging a pillow tightly, as if she was in a nightmare.
"Strange."
This was all Clancy could come up with for his assessment.