NaNo Prep - Side Character Story - Vector

Today's Writing.com October NaNoWriMo Prep Challenge is to write up a background story for one of the side characters in my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, The LZR Project. In this short snippet, I go into a bit of detail about my character, Vector, who was originally introduced in my Black Earth series as a time-traveling heroine.

Vector

The rain fell like drops from a sprinkler system, drops she used to run through as a child on hot summer days. She could smell the sunshine in those memories, hear her siblings laughing as they ran through the grass. Her heart warmed with the thought and brought a rare smile to her face. But all too soon the memory faded, and she was faced with the reality of the cold wind and temperamental weather.

Vector didn’t bother pulling her soaked cloak closer to her flesh, as it had lost its ability to keep her warm with the storm’s precipitation. Instead, she braved the cold as she sat at the very top of the Eiffel Tower and marveled at the beauty of Paris. Lights scattered around the city shone like jewels, sparkling beneath the sheet of rain. She took a deep breath of humid air and forced herself to soak in the memory of this moment. Ever since she was a little girl, she had wanted nothing more than to visit Paris. And now, here she was, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, taking a break from time traveling. Taking a break from her blessed curse.

She opened her eyes and examined her hands, watching rain water carry the blood from her wounds. Each stream traveled down her fingers, to the tips, and then careened off of her and into the great expanse below. It had a cleansing affect, not only on her physically beat up form, but on her mind as well. Her ability to time travel was doing things to her mind – warping it, bending it, sabotaging it. She did her best to fight back, forcing herself to remember her younger years, forcing herself to remember who she was beneath the waterlogged cloak, beneath the bloody rags, beneath her scarred flesh.

That was why she had come to Paris – to remind herself of who she was. It had been one of her childhood dreams to come here. Now that she was here though, all she wanted to do was leap back into the timestream and do what she could for David Corbin. She had so much to warn him about, so many of Mr. Big’s tricks to alert him to, so many obstacles to hold his hand through. But even though there was so much she could do, it didn’t mean she would do it all. She wanted to help David stop Mr. Big. That was it. She didn’t want to dip her hands into history or the future too much. She had a gift (more a curse, sometimes) and she wanted to use it to save humanity. To save humanity, she would have to help David stop Mr. Big. Once that was done, she could die peacefully. Without regret. Without second thoughts. Without screwing up all of eternity with her meddling.
 

Vector felt tears welling up in her eyes, but she fought them away, telling herself it was just rainwater on her face. Now was not a time to be weak. Even though the timestream was tearing her body apart, she had to keep bandaging herself and keep moving forward. David needed her. Humanity needed her.
 

She felt for the ring on the middle finger of her left hand. The skin had long since melted and formed around the piece of radioactive jewelry, deforming her hand so badly that she hated to look at that particular finger. Instead of examining her shortcomings, she closed her eyes and thought of her next destination: Lysallis – that city of sin and grace.