Sam's normally stony expression was taken by a moment of annoyance. Christian had assumed she could control what she did, when the truth was that she didn't even know how she did it. She hadn't bothered to tell him about the side effects yet, but after the comparison of inconveniences, she felt compelled to expand on earlier explanation. While she waited for him to finish, she considered how she would respond.

"Stable," she ventured, after the talk of money had concluded. "Is not a word I would use to describe myself. More like 'broken'."

The memory of the incident with the lamp came back with a vengeance, forcing her to relive some of the data she'd gathered. It was all disjointed images, abstract and hardly useful; except that she somehow knew what it meant. It was like those posters composed of hundreds of photographs, only she saw the completed image while the individual photos were too blurred to understand. She didn't know whether it was simply a matter of practice, or if she would never gain the full benefit of her ability.

"I don't even know what to do with it yet, or how to make it happen. The truth is that I haven't touched anything in the way of technology since I broke the lamp in my room. Wilson says it was my ability that did that. He also says I blacked out; had some kind of episode. I can remember a few other times when I woke up with a gap in my memory, during the week before the Reformers came for us. Every time, it was after I'd salvaged something or fixed something up. I don't know how I did it. I just know that, every time, it makes my brain go haywire."

"It sucks."