[ameliaovc | chairwomanplatt]
It was raining. The glass was a cool press against her fingertips; when she took them away, the residual heat left a perfect imprint of her hand on the surface.
She wiped it away. Royce wouldn't have minded, but it was a mark that should not have been there; removable, an unnatural blemish on a building utterly devoid of human comfort.
Sybil stepped away from the windows. The stark, gray light that filtered in through the great floor-length panels of glass followed her as she crossed the polished-chrome of the perforated walkways, her shadow grown impossibly tall and dark as she walked farther away.
Royce's studio had always been dark-- relief on his eyes, though he did on occasion venture outside when she bade him to. When.
The frenetic, destructive aftermath of what camaraderie they shared-- of their being colleagues-- was not lost on her, of course; but it was all she knew, all she knew after the rest of Cloudbank had fallen to the Process, and in it Sybil Reisz took a particular sort of comfort, and penance as well. The disastrous attempt she made at reconnecting with Cloudbank's citizens, more than halved since their rescue from Aelland, had prompted a sort of bitter, resentful hatred from the refugees, citizens that she had plotted and conspired against-- and it was decided that she would relocate until it was deemed safe for her to walk along her fellow Cloudbankers again.
So Royce's studio it was. Isolated, still the bastion of lonely solitude it was, she could work safely from there.
The floor here catered to her flats. Quiet. If she stayed perfectly still, stood in the midst of the humming terminals, bathed only in the cool blue and orange of the Transistor and the dull interior lights of the studio, she fancied that she could hear the roar of blood coursing through her veins.
Amelia came to visit as often as she could. Far as Fairview was, and despite what little progress Sybil had made in restoring as much of Cloudbank as possible, the former reporter still made it her personal prerogative to check up on her. How could she not? Sybil reasoned, coming to a stop in front of the great sword, a weapon and a brush, destroyer and creator. What they shared was the death of a city; the responsibility of nurturing and caring for a newborn society. If anything, it would be just as hard on Amelia as it was on her.
She reached one hand out. The Transistor responded in kind; a slight flare from its Eye and the abrupt flash of the Access Point brought the Functions up for her to survey.
Then she saw it-- a new icon, outlined in gold as if to catch her attention. She hadn't read through any of them yet, only realized them for their offensive purposes in Aelland, but this one...
Amelia Garbur's Function. Her breath caught in her chest.
