Sparks and a Girl (Rewritten to publish)

10. Hot soup on a cold night

"Oh good. You're awake." Cass groaned.

Jeisa woke up to find Cass by her side, supporting herself with her elbows as she looked with concern at Jeisa. Cass' eyes were also clouded in pain. She patted Jeisa's arm in satisfaction and then dropped back to the ground, laying down where Jeisa had left her before her heart had stopped. Jeisa jerked awake.

She was awake?

She was awake!

Jeisa had died enough times during sparking experiments with her father to know that coming back wasn't easy. To "reboot" her, as her father called it, he would use power sources that Jeisa usually destroyed. They'd gone through almost a dozen huge diesel generators in this way, enough to know that it wasn't worth continuing the experiments that pushed her to the limit. So, how was she awake now?

She slowly got up, a hand on her groggy head. Killer hangover – that's what this felt like. However, the feeling slowly started to fade away.

The rain had stopped. It was still grey outside. And it was freezing. There were cold water drops falling from the trees above them. She must have been dead for just a few minutes. What the hell was happening? Had she held back just enough of that lightning bolt to spark herself awake after falling off the edge?

"Do you know you just shocked me?" said Cass from the ground, sounding delirious.

"What?" wondered Jeisa, her voice hoarse and her throat in pain.

This was the final straw! She had to tell her father about her sparking. She was falling apart. He would know what to do to put her back together. He'd know what to do to return her to the person she was before all this shit. She should have listened to him. She shouldn't have started sparking again.

"Like when you rub your socked feet on the carpet then touch someone." Cass laughed, breaking through Jeisa's musings of regret, a touch of hysteria colouring that laugh. "You shocked me when I touched you. Just before you woke up."

"I did?" said Jeisa in surprise. Had she really sparked when Cass touched her? Cass should be dead right now.

Jeisa forced herself to focus on Cass.

"Yeah." Cass whispered, her voice fading out. "Now, if you're finished napping, can we please get out of here before I freeze to death?"

Confident that Cass wasn't dying, Jeisa pulled herself to her feet and looked around. They were alone, no sign of anyone shooting at them, even when she tentatively braved her way into the open clearing. Jeisa walked back into the trees and looked down at Cass again. She might not have been dying, but Cass was curled up in pain. Jeisa dropped and knelt next to her. Cass' eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow. Her skin pale in the dim light of the greying sky.

Jeisa, on the other hand, was feeling like she'd just chugged several kegs full of caffeine-laden energy drinks. She was also inexorably ecstatic! Jeisa was aware of the foreign threads running through her body. Her technopath nano threads. Each and every one of them. She could actually feel and flex each fibre. Like an extra limb. Millions of tiny little extra limbs. She was in control! After all this time, Jeisa was in control!

She turned to the sky, took a deep breath, and sent a pulse through every single one of the technopath tendrils, enjoying the tingle of energy that rushed over her in a wave.

She should have gotten herself struck by lightning years ago!

Jeisa took another deep breath, looked back down at Cass, lowered her hand to Cass' left knee, right below the gunshot wound, and closed her eyes as she let some of the threads find their way into Cass' wound.