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“What is with you?” Taina threw back, following Nadia into the lab. “You’re acting like you’ve completely forgotten what friends or morals are. Like a tech CEO, actually.”
“Always with the jabs.” Nadia marched into the kitchen and turned on the electric kettle with more force than was probably necessary. “I get it; you don’t like Margaret and you don’t like my project. Are we done?”
“Listen to yourself!” Taina said incredulously. “You don’t sound like Nadia. You don’t even sound like manic Nadia.” Taina dropped into a plastic chair and punctuated her statement by setting her crutches down against the table. “No one here is being unreasonable! You’re a secret Super Hero who works for a public Super Hero fighting off attacks from Super Villains while you develop a quantum-realm spy network! It is not weird for your friends to say ‘Maybe pump the brakes on this total stranger’ or ‘Why are you making something completely illegal and probably evil?’ I’ve been trying to get Ying and Shay and Priya back in here for weeks. Have you even noticed?”
Nadia whipped around, an empty mug in her hand. It had the words BECAUSE SCIENCE on it in big, bold letters, and it was Nadia’s favorite. “I’ve been a little busy, Taina! And I don’t appreciate that you don’t seem to have any faith in my abilities and I’m tired of you talking to me like I don’t know what I’m doing and everyone is trying to get me to hate Margaret and I don’t know why—” Nadia stopped herself. She didn’t want to say something she would regret. She just wanted to get back to work.
“Nadia,” Taina said, interrupting the silence. She didn’t sound angry anymore. She sounded…scared. “Nadia, what’s going on with your eyes?”
Nadia squinted. “Nothing? I can see you fine. It’s just bright in here.”
“It’s really not.” Taina swallowed. She cocked her head toward the cupboard door with a mirror on it. “I’m serious. Are you okay?”
Am I okay? Am I okay? Nadia slammed her mug down on the counter and stomped over to the mirror. She wasn’t made of porcelain. She was a flier and a fighter. She was a scientist. She had bipolar. It wasn’t who she was; it was a thing she had. And she was managing it. Responsibly. “I’m fine,” Nadia said, “and I wish people would stop asking me that question—”
Nadia looked into the mirror, and she froze. Nadia recognized herself; she looked like she’d been crying a bit today, red-eyed and puffy-faced, but otherwise she looked…normal. Healthy. Rested. Sad, but normal.
Except for one thing. Nadia leaned closer to the mirror. With her index fingers, she tugged down the skin under her eyes. There was no denying it.
The brown of Nadia’s eyes had disappeared. The irises were gone. And in their place, she saw giant, blown-out pupils.
Nadia could hear them, out in the lab. Taina had been on her phone for the last half hour, getting in touch with everyone she could: Priya, Shay, Ying, Bobbi, Janet, Jarvis, even Alexis. They’d all been caught up in their own lives, but this time, when Taina called, they all came. For the first time in weeks, the whole squad was assembling in the lab—no arguments, no misunderstandings. They were here to work.
Nadia knew that was a good thing. Logically. And she would leave her room in a minute. In just a minute.
But first, Nadia needed a moment to herself.
She couldn’t stop seeing that image of herself, her eyes an unnerving wall of black. Just like Crédit France. Just like Times Square.
Nadia filtered through the different possibilities in her mind. She was relatively certain she wasn’t on any sort of illegal substance; typically there were more symptoms than “big eyes” that came along with being drugged against your will. She wasn’t scared (well, until a couple of minutes ago, anyways) and she wasn’t excited (definitely not after a couple of minutes ago).
“VERA?” Nadia asked. “Unusual causes of mydriasis.”
“Unusual as in least common?” VERA queried.
“Yes.” Nadia squeezed her eyes shut. She hated that something was happening to her body she couldn’t control. She spent so much time attempting to stay in command of herself—training her body wi
th ballet, shifting her size with Pym Particles, organizing her brain with medication and therapy and meditation and self-reflection…That there was something happening to her body now that she didn’t understand and couldn’t bring under her own control was infuriating and terrifying in equal measure. She couldn’t even punch it to make it stop. It was her own face. That was a terrible idea. What was she even thinking?!
“Acetylcholine blockers,” VERA began to list. “Hallucinogens. Anesthetic. Stroke. Epilepsy. Traumatic head or eye injury. Impending brain herniation.”
“Oh, good,” Nadia said to herself. “So probably best-case scenario, it is just an impending brain hernia. This is why people say not to search your symptoms online, isn’t it?”
“Would you like me to phone an ambulance, Nadia?” VERA asked, not unkindly.
“No.” Nadia shook her head. “No. I can figure this out on my own. I just need to think. I just need to—”
Nadia reached for the chain around her neck—but there was nothing there. Her crystal—
“Looking for this?” Taina leaned against Nadia’s doorframe, same as she had earlier. The Crystal Lab necklace dangled from her fingers. Behind her, Nadia could see Shay, Ying, and Priya, all looking different varieties of concerned. “Absolutely not.”
“I just need time to think,” Nadia explained desperately. “If it’s not drugs, and I haven’t hit my head, then it can only be…”
“VERA?” Taina asked loudly. “Turn yourself off.”
“I only respond to commands from my primary user,” VERA responded. “If Nadia would like—”
“You’re fine, VERA.” Nadia waved at the gold block. “VERA’s helping me figure this out so that I can get back to work on our project,” Nadia explained to the other G.I.R.L.s. “Can you think of any other search queries—”
