#SuperViral, Ch 13: Glowing Pains Pt. 2

There is a finite number of times a woman can watch a man's polite smile curdle into alarm before she decides that her biological emotional transparency is not a quirk, but a defect in need of a recall.

For Lena Petrova, that number had been reached with Mark, the handsome architect who had practically sprinted away from her on a cold Chicago sidewalk. Two days later, she sat in her studio—the one place that had always been sanctuary—and felt nothing but hollow hypocrisy. The dark grey walls, usually the perfect canvas for her art, now absorbed all light, mirroring the dull, depressive blue-grey glow emanating from her own skin. Her expensive art supplies lay untouched. What was the point of commanding light with such precision if she couldn't even manage a simple human connection without short-circuiting?

"I can't do this anymore, Maya." Her voice came flat, defeated. She paced in front of her laptop, where her best friend's concerned face watched from the screen. "I honestly can't. I spend half my life teaching people on BeamCast how to 'find their inner light,' how to be serene and centered, and the other half living in mortal terror of my own. What's the point of being able to create beautiful things if I can't even have a normal conversation with a guy without turning into a malfunctioning traffic light?"

Her frustration, simmering for years, finally boiled over into raw desperation. "I am fundamentally un-dateable. And it's not just the light show, it's the reason for it—the total, absolute lack of privacy. I can't have a secret crush. I can't be quietly annoyed. I can't feel a spark of attraction without my hands glowing like high beams. I am an open book that everyone is terrified to read, and honestly? I don't blame them."

She threw her hands up, the movement sending blue-grey light pulsing erratically. "They either get scared off, like Mark, who looked at me like I was about to spontaneously combust, or they get weird about it. They fetishize it. Think it's a 'cool party trick.' I went on three dates with that musician, Liam, and all he wanted was for me to 'make pretty colors' while he played his terrible indie songs. He didn't want to know how I was feeling—he just wanted to use my feelings as his personal light show. I'm not a person to them, Maya. I'm a novelty item. A beautiful, broken lamp."

She stopped pacing, stared at her own dim, miserable reflection in the dark screen of her monitor.

"I'm done." Her voice came low but infused with new, steely determination. "I am done letting this control me. For my entire adult life, I have tried to control it from the inside—meditation, breathing, discipline—and it's not enough. The moment I have a real, spontaneous emotion, the circuit breaks." She looked at Maya, her eyes blazing with desperate fire. "So if I can't control it from the inside, I'm going to find a way to control it from the outside. There has to be a way to just… turn it down. Install a dimmer switch."

Lena's search for that dimmer switch began where all modern quests for the forbidden and desperate do: in the shadier, more anonymous corners of the internet. For years, she had meticulously avoided these places, associating them with unstable Supers looking for illegal power-amps or dangerous fringe science. Now, she dove in headfirst. Using encrypted browsers and VPNs, she navigated a murky digital underworld of Super-tech forums, grey-market message boards, encrypted chat rooms.

The initial results were discouraging. Her searches for "power suppressors," "bio-dampeners," and "emotional regulators" led her down a rabbit hole of obvious quackery and outright danger. Ads for cheap, mass-produced "nullifier collars" from China came with terrifying warnings about nerve damage. Conspiracy theorists peddled "orgone energy accumulators" that promised to "realign her aura." Back-alley "bio-hackers" offered to perform "minor surgical procedures" to sever her connection to her powers—a suggestion that made her physically ill. For two days, she waded through a swamp of charlatans and predators, her hope beginning to dwindle.

Just as she was about to give up, she found a promising thread on a secure, heavily-vetted forum for powered individuals dealing with control issues. The thread was titled "Flares, Surges, and Involuntary Manifestations." It was full of stories like hers—pyrokinetics who accidentally set things on fire when angry, empaths overwhelmed by crowd anxiety, teleporters who would uncontrollably "jump" when startled. And in this thread, mentioned with a mixture of reverence and caution, was a name: Cassian.

He wasn't described as a back-alley dealer or bio-hacker. The consensus was that he was a discreet, brilliant, and obscenely expensive "bio-kinetic consultant." A genuine scientist, a technopath of the highest order, who worked outside the system not because he was a criminal, but because he found the regulations of government agencies and corporations like Pantheon Corp too restrictive for his experimental research. He didn't offer "cures"—he offered bespoke, technological "solutions." The warnings were clear: he was eccentric, demanding, and his work existed in a legal and ethical grey area. But he was, according to the forum, the best.

With a deep breath, Lena initiated contact. The process was clandestine and rigorous. She had to use a specific encrypted email service, answer a series of probing technical questions about the nature of her bioluminescence, even submit a short, time-stamped video of an involuntary flare to prove she wasn't law enforcement or a corporate spy. For forty-eight agonizing hours, she heard nothing. Then, a reply appeared in her encrypted inbox. A single line: an address in a gritty industrial sector of the city, a time for the following afternoon, and a code phrase—"I'm here to inquire about the faulty wiring."

The address was a small, unassuming electronics repair shop, its dusty window filled with antiquated televisions and disassembled radios. The last place in the world one would expect to find cutting-edge Super-tech. Heart pounding, her skin flickering with nervous blue light she was too anxious to suppress, Lena pushed open the door. A small bell chimed her arrival. A man looked up from a workbench, his eyes hidden behind magnifying goggles. "Can I help you?" Neutral tone.

Lena's throat felt dry. "Yes." Her voice barely a whisper. "I'm here to inquire about the faulty wiring."

The man, Cassian, pushed the magnifying goggles up onto his forehead. He wasn't what Lena had expected. No menacing air, no mad-scientist gleam. Late thirties, with tired, intelligent eyes, unruly dark hair, and an oil smudge on his cheek. He looked less like a grey-market Super-tech guru and more like a perpetually exhausted PhD student. He gestured with a screwdriver toward a door at the back of the shop, hidden behind a beaded curtain. "Through there."

The contrast was jarring. Lena stepped from a dusty, analog world of forgotten electronics into a high-tech, chaotic laboratory that pulsed with a low, ambient hum. Wires snaked across the floor like metallic vines. Holographic displays flickered with complex schematics and flowing data streams. Workbenches were cluttered with disassembled Super-tech: the focusing crystal of a hero's energy blaster, the gyroscopic stabilizer from a flight harness, a piece of what looked like Auracite ore held in a containment field. Cassian was clearly a genius, a scavenger, and an artist of a different sort.

"Sit." He pointed to a metal stool in the center of the room, surrounded by an array of scanners and sensors on articulated arms. He didn't ask about her dating life, her feelings, her years of humiliation. His interest was purely technical, almost clinical. "Show me the controlled manifestation first. Your artistic work."

Feeling strangely like a specimen, Lena took a calming breath and summoned her power as she did in her studio. She created a soft, swirling orb of silver and lavender light that danced in the palm of her hand. Cassian watched, his eyes narrowed in concentration, not at the beauty of the light, but at the data flooding his holographic displays. "Hmm. Precise wavelength control. Low-level quantum energy emission, stable and focused." He muttered to himself. "Now, show me the other thing. The involuntary one."

This was harder. He didn't need to do much. He started asking her questions, his tone neutral but the subject matter carefully chosen. "That last public relationship you had, the one that ended so spectacularly. Tell me about the initial moment you realized he was cheating." Lena flinched, the memory still raw, and her skin immediately responded with a flicker of angry, pulsing red.

"Fascinating." His eyes glued to the data. "Now, tell me about the most embarrassing moment of your teenage years." A wave of hot, luminous pink washed over her neck and face. "And now, think about the future. The possibility of this never getting better, of being alone forever." Cold, sickly blue pulsed from her hands.

After a few more minutes of this emotional vivisection, he stopped. "I see." He turned back to his displays. "It's as I suspected. Your conscious, artistic control operates on a neocortical pathway. It's practiced, disciplined. But the emotional response is limbic, a much deeper, more primitive circuit. It's essentially a fight-or-flight response, but your version is 'blush-or-beam'." He almost smiled. "It's beautifully inefficient."

He explained that a complete "off switch" would be dangerous, like trying to dam a river at its source. The pressure would build, and the eventual failure would be catastrophic, potentially damaging her connection to her power permanently. "But we don't need to stop the river." His eyes lit up with intellectual excitement. "We just need to divert the overflow."

He proposed his solution: a bio-kinetic regulator. A "dimmer switch." He showed her a schematic on a holographic display. A small, sleek device that would interface with her unique bio-signature. "It won't turn your powers off. You will still have full access to your conscious, artistic control. But this device will intercept and dampen the specific neural signals that spike from your limbic system. It will regulate the subconscious glow, keeping it at a steady, neutral, barely perceptible level. It will, in essence, give you emotional privacy."

Emotional privacy. The words were a lifeline. Everything she had ever wanted. "How much?" Her voice trembled slightly.

The price he named was exorbitant, enough to drain a significant portion of her savings. But to Lena, he wasn't selling a piece of technology. He was selling salvation.

He was selling her a chance at a normal life.

"I'll take it." Without a moment's hesitation.

A few days later, Lena walked out of Cassian's shop with a small, elegant silver bracelet on her wrist. Cool to the touch, minimalist in design, looking more like a piece of expensive Scandinavian jewelry than revolutionary Super-tech. When Cassian had clasped it on, she had felt a faint, cool tingle travel up her arm, and then… quiet. A profound, internal stillness she hadn't experienced since childhood.

Back in the safety of her apartment, she stood before her mirror and tested it. She thought about Mark, the architect, and the crushing weight of his rejection. She braced for the familiar, miserable blue-grey glow. Nothing. Her skin remained steady, neutral, faintly pearlescent. She thought about a moment of pure joy, a childhood memory of laughing with her mother. She waited for the golden flare. Nothing. Only the quiet, beautiful, wonderful nothing. For the first time since puberty, she felt normal.

A surge of confidence, bold and unfamiliar, washed through her. She grabbed her phone, her fingers flying across the screen, opening the dating app she had deleted in a fit of despair.

She created a new profile, her bio witty and self-assured. Within an hour, she had a match. David. A landscape designer with kind eyes and a profile full of beautiful gardens and his goofy golden retriever. He seemed nice. He seemed safe. When he messaged her, suggesting they meet for coffee the next day, she agreed without her usual week-long anxiety spiral. She felt a flicker of controlled excitement, not sheer terror.

The date was a revelation. They met at a bright, sun-drenched cafe, the kind of place Lena would have normally avoided like the plague. She ordered a latte, not just ice water. David was even better in person—funny, passionate about his work, and an excellent listener. He told a hilarious story about a client who insisted on planting a tropical garden in the middle of a Chicago winter. Lena laughed, a full, genuine, uninhibited laugh. She felt the familiar rush of joy, but she waited for the flash, the stares, the inevitable fallout. And… nothing happened. Her skin remained perfectly, beautifully opaque.

The freedom was intoxicating. She felt witty, mysterious, flirty—all the things she had only ever seen other women be on dates. She could lean in close to hear him better without worrying about her cheeks turning into pink lightbulbs. She felt a spark of real attraction as he talked about his dream of designing a public park, and her hands, resting on the table, remained perfectly, blessedly normal. The control was absolute.

The date lasted for three hours. At the end of the night, David walked her all the way to her apartment door. The streetlights cast a warm glow, but none of it was coming from her. "I had a really great time, Lena." His smile genuine, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I'd love to do this again."

"I'd like that too." Her own smile feeling real, unforced.

He leaned in and kissed her. It was a wonderful, promising kiss, full of warmth and the sweet potential of something new. Her heart soared, a feeling that would normally have sent a golden supernova through her entire body. But her skin, her beautiful, traitorous skin, remained perfectly, wonderfully neutral.

She felt a wave of triumphant, ecstatic joy. The device worked. The problem was solved.

She was finally, blessedly free.

***