Chapter 6: Blackout

03/29/2025 - Wendy

From simple, unclear, a mess of my own making, to the complex simple understanding of the lifetime of a night.

Loyalty bloomed like a flower in my mind, its colorful petals, green, red, yellow, blue, unfurling to reveal a shining diamond of submission. HIS happiness was a multi-dimensional world of layers and textures wrapping and unwrapping me until I realized the happiness was me, like a cocoon that I'd spun around myself from the inside out, a womb made of HIS desires.

Geometrical shapes of multi-colored human faces unfolded like fractals. Gabriel's kind eyes, Cedric's warm smile, my father's stern eyebrows, my doctor's hands, pieces of men I knew and didn't, men I loved, men I liked, men I didn't care about just as much as men I despised, all equally insignificant and of vital importance, all drops in an ocean of potent potential I was now swimming through waiting for the single molecule that would satiate my newfound thirst of complicity.

It didn't matter who the man who mattered was, only that he would. I could see it in the unfolding fractal of liquid faces, all the men, the one man, merging in a wave of colors and shapes, a universe of man, a universe of me for HIM, whoever he'd be.

My mind's eye was turning upside down as I looked at myself from the bright outside, a collection of big and small round and square gestures forming a heterogeneous shared secret. I was the agent of a claim loudly collapsing into a purpose, a tool for a mission that mattered more than the tool because the mission was to be the perfect tool.

Enlightenment was as simple as a key in a keyhole and I was both. I was unlocking myself for the one who would come, and that truth was singular and absolute.

I blinked, my eyes feeling dry and strange. My back ached fiercely, a deep throbbing pain that radiated up my spine and across my shoulders. I was sitting on our couch, though I had no memory of getting there. Wasn't I just making tea? The water was boiling and—

A movement beside me made me turn. Gabriel was there, slumped awkwardly in a sitting position, his head tilted at an uncomfortable angle against the back of the couch. As I shifted, his eyes snapped open, instantly alert in a way that startled me. He stared at me with such intensity, relief and worry and something like fear all mingled in his expression.

"Wendy?" His voice was hoarse. "Are you alright? How do you feel?"

I frowned, trying to make sense of his reaction and the situation. "I'm fine, just... stiff. What am I doing here? Wasn't I just making tea?"

Gabriel sat up straight, fully alert now, watching me with a strange wariness, like I might suddenly do something unpredictable. "Wendy, that was almost six hours ago. It's four in the morning."

"What?" I laughed nervously, certain he was joking. "That's ridiculous. I was just in the kitchen. I had just—"

"Six hours," he repeated firmly. "You've been… unresponsive. Just sitting there, staring at nothing. Not speaking, not moving unless we moved you." He ran a hand through his disheveled hair.

My stomach lurched. "That's not possible. I don't remember—" But the stiffness in my muscles told a different story. My body remembered standing still for hours, even if my mind didn't.

"It happened to women everywhere," Gabriel continued, gesturing to the television where footage showed emergency workers helping dazed-looking women. "It started about six hours ago..."

"They were in my head." The words came out as a whisper. "Something was in my head, controlling me, and I don't even remember it." Bile rose in my throat. The violation of it, my brain, my thoughts, the very essence of who I was, manipulated without my knowledge or consent. "What did they do to me?"

Gabriel's hands finally settled on my shoulders, gentle but grounding. "I don't know. But you're back now. You're you."

"Am I?" The question burst out before I could stop it. "How do I know they haven't changed something? Altered how I think or feel?" The horror of it made my skin crawl. "What if I'm still being controlled and just don't know it?"

"Do you feel different?" Gabriel asked, studying my face. "Any strange compulsions? Altered emotions? Unusual thoughts?"

I closed my eyes, turning my attention inward, searching for anything foreign or changed. My disgust and fear felt normal—appropriate, even. My love for Gabriel, my concern for our friends, my passion for my work, all seemed intact. "I don't think so. I feel like myself. Scared, confused, angry... but those all make sense, don't they?"

"Yes," Gabriel nodded, relief visible in his expression. "They do."

"Maybe it didn't work," I suggested, though the words sounded hollow even to me. "Whatever they were trying to do with our brains."

"Maybe," Gabriel agreed, but I could see the skepticism in his eyes that mirrored my own. Something had happened. I'd lost six hours of my life, and women worldwide had done the same. That wasn't nothing.

"Where's Cedric?" I asked again, suddenly remembering he'd been here.

Gabriel's expression tightened. "He went to find Olivia. When we realized what was happening, he was worried about her."

"Oh God, Olivia." My heart clenched for our friend's daughter. "Have you heard from him?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Not yet."

I leaned into him, suddenly exhausted despite having apparently been in some kind of stasis for hours. "What happens now?"

Gabriel's face hardened with determination, a look I'd seen before when he was faced with seemingly insurmountable problems. "I'm going to make sure Ramona and Phoebe have everything they need to carry on with their work." He ran his hand through his disheveled hair. "I just hope they were in the MRI room when it happened. If they were shielded, they might be the only female scientists on the planet who weren't affected."

The television flickered with chaotic scenes: emergency workers guiding disoriented women from hospital beds, others being helped from makeshift cots in school gymnasiums and community centers. Some footage, mostly from social media, showed women who had been driving when it happened, their cars now pulled safely to roadsides, the women themselves just beginning to stir in the passenger seats where good Samaritans had moved them.

I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume as a reporter approached a young woman sitting on the edge of an ambulance, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

"Ma'am, can you tell us what you remember? What was it like during those six hours?" the reporter asked, thrusting a microphone toward her.

The woman's eyes were wide, unfocused. She kept blinking rapidly as if trying to clear her vision. "I… I don't…" She shook her head, her voice trembling. "I was working late, filing papers, and then… then I was here. They told me it's been six hours but that's not… that can't be right."

"You don't remember anything at all from that time?" the reporter pressed.

"No," she whispered, looking increasingly distressed. "Nothing. It's like… like someone just pressed pause and then play again. Like... I blinked and I was somewhere else. They said I was just standing there the whole time, not moving, I don't understand what's happening." Her voice cracked on the last word, and a paramedic stepped between her and the camera, ending the interview.

I felt a chill run through me. Her experience mirrored my own exactly: that disorienting snap from one moment to another with nothing in between. At least, nothing I could remember.

Gabriel's phone rang, startling us both. He grabbed it, checking the screen before answering. "Cedric? Is Olivia—"

Even from where I sat, I could hear Cedric's voice blaring through the speaker, loud enough that Gabriel winced and held the phone slightly away from his ear.

"She just woke up! She's okay, but she fell when it happened! She was on that damn balance beam thing she practices yoga on in her dorm room. Hit her head pretty bad, Gabriel. There's blood everywhere but the campus medic says it looks worse than it is. Head wounds bleed like crazy, right?"

His words tumbled out in a rush, relief and panic battling for dominance. I'd never heard Cedric sound so frantic. He was always our rock, the steady one.

"The streets were insane," he continued without waiting for Gabriel to respond. "Accidents everywhere. I nearly got T-boned twice getting to campus. There were people just wandering around looking for their wives, their daughters. Some asshole was trying to drag an **** woman into his car when I passed 5th Street. I stopped and—" He cut himself off. "What the hell are we supposed to do, Gabriel? What's the plan here? There has to be a goddamn plan!"

The aggression in his tone surprised me. Cedric was the gentlest man I knew, always careful with his considerable strength, always kind. But I understood his fear. If something had happened to Olivia—

"Cedric, listen to me," Gabriel said, his voice deliberately calm. "I've got two of the brightest minds on the planet working on this. Ramona and Phoebe are going to figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again."

"And if they don't?" Cedric demanded. "If whoever did this decides to do it again tomorrow? Or in an hour?"

"Then we'll deal with that too," Gabriel said firmly. "For now, get Olivia checked out properly. Make sure she's really okay. Then bring her to our place if you can. I need to go see the girls at Echelon, find out if they're alright and on the case. I can't leave Wendy alone, Ced..."

There was a long pause before Cedric responded, his voice quieter now. "Yeah. Okay. I'll call you when we're on our way."

After they hung up, Gabriel set his phone down and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted, the weight of everything pressing down on his shoulders. I moved closer to him on the couch, seeking his warmth, his solidity. He wrapped an arm around me automatically, pulling me against his side.

"What if it happens again?" I whispered, voicing the fear that was surely in everyone's mind now. "What if it really did something to our brain?"

Gabriel tightened his hold on me. "We'll figure this out," he said, but I could hear the uncertainty beneath his words. "Ramona will figure it out."

I nestled closer, my head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The world had suddenly become terrifying in a way I couldn't have imagined yesterday.