She waved farewell to the others and headed for her apartment.










Chapter Three

Arcady sat and blinkedwhen Cadence was gone. “I can’t believe I forgot that.”

Tycho smiled. “What, bunny?”

“She hates people. Hates being in public situations. She was renting a small house in a poor but sparsely populated part of town. She went home. No people. When we were growing up, she was always getting in trouble for being antisocial. Like a lot of trouble. Like our parents and siblings hit her kind of trouble.”

Kritz blinked. “What kind of antisocial?”

“She didn’t let anyone hug her or touch her.”

He thought and then said, “Arcady, what happens to you when you are too close to a sonar array?”

“It aches. Hurts. The new implants don’t like it; I don’t care how close to living tissue you made them.”

Corianne chuckled and seemed to catch on to something. “How would it feel if the sonar bombardment was really fast and at close range?”

Arcady shivered. “It would really hurt... oh. Oh, god.”

“She started acting odd around twelve or thirteen?” Tycho smiled kindly.

“Six. There was a bus accident, and she was strange after that.”

“And knowing that your family were members of Humans First, she did not mention that she had activated.”

“She always stayed at least a foot away from anyone and ate apart from everyone at dinner.”

Kritz said, “The sound of chewing is frequently nauseating for them. It echoes.”

“We all thought it was just ADHD.”

“That may have played a part.”

Arcady was sitting in dawning understanding, and when the rest of her quad took her upstairs so they could have their meal, she cuddled against them, feeling stupid. She had gotten so used to turning to the taller folk around her for comfort that she had forgotten her family and the dynamics that had been purged from her mind.