Chapter 32: Echoes of Despair
The subtle disruptions I'd orchestrated at Non's warehouse were working, pushing his timeline back, creating friction. My sense of grim determination grew stronger, but the Burden of Foresight remained a heavy, isolating weight. The chilling premonition of Kara's despair, her hope flickering, was a constant, raw nerve. And that was the problem.
Through Cosmic Empathy, I suddenly felt it. A profound, aching wave of melancholy. A deep, unsettling sense of loss, almost a phantom pain from a future wound. It wasn't my grief; it was Kara's. My internal focus on Myriad, my constant dwelling on that future devastation, was bleeding through the empathic link, inadvertently transmitting amplified echoes of the premonition directly to her. My deepest fear of corrupting her pure hope, of infecting her with my own anxieties, flared with terrifying intensity.
"No, no, no! Pull back, Adam! Control it!" I mentally screamed, clutching my head. It was like trying to contain a supernova in a teacup. The raw emotional data of the future, combined with my own fear, was overwhelming the subtle filters I usually maintained. Kara was feeling it. I could sense her sudden, inexplicable sadness, her confusion, her attempts to logically process a feeling that defied all reason.
I watched her through my feeds. She was at her desk at CatCo, but her eyes were vacant, staring at nothing. Her posture slumped, a deep, unsettling sigh escaping her lips. She shook her head, as if trying to dislodge a persistent, unseen shadow. "It's like… a weight," I felt her ponder, the thought echoing through the link. "Like something incredibly sad is about to happen, but I don't know why. A deep, cold dread."
My heart clenched. This was exactly what I feared. My very attempt to protect her was causing her distress. I needed to build a mental dam, a more sophisticated empathic shield. It was a painstaking, difficult process, like trying to knit water.
[SKILL: COSMIC EMPATHY (LVL 1). APPLICATION: EMOTIONAL FILTRATION (SUBTLE). FOCUS: MYRIAD PREMONITION CONTAINMENT.]
I focused, envisioning a mental buffer between my consciousness and hers, a gentle barrier that would allow my guidance to pass through, but filter out the raw, overwhelming despair of the future. It was a delicate balance, requiring immense concentration and further energy drain.
Meanwhile, Kara tried to shake off the inexplicable gloom. She stood, walked to the window, gazing out at National City as if searching for a visible source of her sorrow. Her silent plea to the Glitch, which I now received more clearly than ever, pulsed with a new urgency: "Are you sending me a warning? What is this feeling? Please, I need to understand." She instinctively placed a hand over her heart, a gesture of profound vulnerability and subconscious longing for reassurance from her unseen ally.
Alex Danvers, entering Kara's office, immediately noticed the change. Her brow furrowed with concern. "Kara? Are you feeling alright? You look… pale. And your emotional readings are elevated. Any stress factors I should know about? Are you sleeping properly?" She tried to analyze it from a purely physiological perspective, her pragmatic mind struggling to reconcile Kara's unexplained despondency with any logical cause. "Is it… is it the Glitch again? Are these those 'ripple effects' manifesting as… mood swings?" The logical part of her brain couldn't accept the true, empathic source. She was seeing the symptom, not the cause. Alex's concern deepened, a subtle undercurrent of suspicion about the Glitch's influence now coloring her protectiveness. She was torn between wanting to understand the Glitch and fearing its unpredictable impact on her sister.
"Oh, Alex," I thought, my struggle to maintain the empathic filter consuming me. "If you only knew the true source of her sadness, and the lengths I'm going to protect her from it." The irony was almost unbearable. I was fighting a future of despair, and in doing so, I was inadvertently causing a fraction of that very despair to manifest in the present. The Looming Shadow was not just external; it was now an internal, shared burden.
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