Personal Original Fiction Space
Lost (and Found) - Arc
100
- Three of them, round and bright, hanging on the wall and ticking away like they had nothing better to do with their time than mock all comers with the passing seconds, minutes, hours.
- Sometimes, Ice Queen stopped and stared at them. "Your mother has unique taste," she told Arc dubiously. Who needed three clocks all in a row?
- Arc glanced toward the clocks and shrugged. "My father put them up, said he'd take them down when I was found."
- Ice Queen stared back soberly, taking in this new information.
- Arc shrugged again. It didn't surprise Ice Queen. "He's still looking."
90
- Really, what was the story with the clocks? Ice Queen didn't ask again, but Arc could see Math's eyes when they ran over them, the way his eyes narrowed and he frowned, tongue out in concentration to see them, but he could see what she could.
- Counting up the weeks, months, years. Her father, the gadget man, who'd made millions off of selling his own inventions and those of others. He could make a clock count up something other than minutes and hours.
- How long she'd been missing. In clocks.
80
- She'd been a daddy's little girl. She remembered sitting on his lap while he worked, working her own fingers around the wrench.
- He'd been looking for Lyssa ever since she disappeared. He'd been looking for his little girl. He found her, and she was furious with the investigator he'd hired. She'd ruined him and she hadn't even cared.
- Because her daddy was looking into furious bright blue eyes, shining with an unnatural spark, looking for the little girl inside her.
70
- "You don't have to stay here," Wolf said slowly. Hesitant in a way she almost never was. But Arc had made it clear how she felt about Wolf poking her nose in when she wouldn't deal with her own family past.
- "There's always Mother," Arc said bitterly. Bitter in a way she only was about family. She'd loved her mother, remembered still the soft lullabies. But having Mother meant Father.
60
- She still remembered lightning born out of her clenched fists as she cried because her own father had been one of them. He'd made her like one of his gadgets and never even known it.
- Was it okay, Father, just because it wasn't supposed to be your child in the program, because it wasn't supposed to have been your daughter?
50
- She grew older. She punched electricity from her fisted knuckles, set off sparks in mechanical equipment, learned to kick and fight and kill and make a man's head spin with those bright blue eyes and a smile no one knew was a lie. She wasn't his daughter anymore—but Wolf's.
40
- "Really, Father? Really?" The little girl inside her stared at him in disappointment. She'd been feeling that ache ever since she'd learned what programs he'd been involved in, the 'gadgets' he'd made for the Department that made her. "She's dead."
30
- Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Lyssa. She loved her mother and father very much. She even called him Daddy.
- She never finished living that story.
20
- "Really?" Ice Queen squinted up at the clocks. She didn't say anything really, just looked at them, all puzzled frowns.
10
- Arc sparked lightning from her fingers and ended them all.



