Well, at least now I don't have to worry anymore about doing the wrong thing and getting myself damned, Julie thought to herself. I just went and damned myself, openly and knowingly. There's no coming back from this.
Maybe I can just be done with the whole thing...
Julie watched with something like religious awe as Harbinger strolled off to deal with the soldiers ahead of them. The lights overhead flickered and went out, and she switched her eyes over to what she thought of as Deviant Vision, where she could see in the dark and also spot Anomalies. "It's okay," she said to the small crowd of recently-freed prisoners behind her. "I can still see."
"Nobody's coming," Dastan said, beside her. He was around her own age, for all that she looked a half-decade younger. He was also what she'd been taught to believe was Deviant and Damned, but... his power was just that he could sense the lives around him, and he seemed... nice. "Harbinger is... taking care of things."
Everybody fell silent. There were screams coming from around the corner ahead, then silence there as well. Julie considered taking a look, but then somebody in front of them was talking, the specifics muffled by echoes. Harbinger had been nice too, in his way, but he was also... this.
"Dastan?" she asked, softly.
He shook his head. "There's another Anomaly confronting him, but it's... weirdly incomplete?"
Then there were gunshots, echoing and nearly deafening in the concrete-walled corridors. "The other one is gone, and Harbinger is moving forward. We should just wait here."
Julie nodded. After a moment, she asked: "How did you end up with a name like Dastan?"
He shot her a grin, which should have been invisible in the blackness. She still would have heard it in his voice, though: "So, you have to know two things about my parents," he said. "One, they're huge nerds. And two, they really love the whole Prince of Persia franchise, including the movie. So when I came along, well... Dastan."
"Art and Computer Science, was it?" Julie mused quietly.
He nodded. "I come by it honestly."
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