A picture
says a thousand words. Write them.
Mission:
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about this picture. Write something about this picture.
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http://writeworld.org/post/107309835476/writers-block-a-picture-says-a-thousand-words
sci-fi - with old style leanings
Shobal Nenni
Andriel Sear
Tikva Dymond
******
He didn’t need the epaulettes on his
shoulders to demonstrate his rank. It was obvious from both the way he held
himself and the way everyone else in the room seemed too aware of him. He was
the hub and they wheeled around him; trapped, held in his orbit. Unable or
unwilling to break away.
The security team entered with the
dishevelled woman held securely between them. Her hair covered her face and she
refused to look up. She had walked here but only because she knew they were
quite capable of dragging her and that would have hurt.
He heard them enter but took no notice.
She watched him carefully and surreptitiously as he leaned over the strategy
table. He looked the same as he did when he was a young man.
The man standing with him, his second
in command, cleared his throat. A quick glance over his shoulder turned into a
longer look and then he straightened up and took a step towards the group. He
stood, hip pushed out, head tilted a touch and he scanned from her feet to the
top of her head. Actually scanned her with the piece attached to his right eye.
“Face,” he ordered.
It wasn’t said to her and she would not
have given him the pleasure. One guard pulled her hair back hard enough to lift
her chin. She tried to close her eyes.
A clap from him opened them again. He
made a noise of delight. “Shobal,” he said, “I knew you would not forget
my birthday.”
Shobal, the deputy, blinked. “And here
was me thinking it was in October,” he deadpanned. He gave the woman a second
look. Recognition dawned. He nodded his head in a small bow at her. “Ah. Thank
the stars the guards recognised her.”
They hadn’t. They had a short argument
about tossing her out the airlock before the one not holding her hair won. She
knew it, they knew it. She wondered if they would turn on each other or wait
for her to tell him. One pulled her hair harder as a warning, and she grunted.
Andriel noticed. He never missed
anything, especially where it related to her. “Tik?” he asked. The guard
flinched as he said her name. He didn’t let go of her hair and he probably
should have.
She lifted her bound hands to point
left. “This one wanted to space me.” Now to the right. “This one won the
argument.”
He didn’t seem to react. At least until
he moved, too quickly, and his arm shot out to grab the guard holding her hair.
His hand closed around the man’s throat. He crushed his windpipe before he had
a chance to say anything in his defense.
No one else moved.
Andriel had been scary before the
augmentation; now, he was terrifying.
Silence.
A hand under her chin forced her to
look at him. “I missed you,” he breathed at her.
“I hate you,” she spat back.
“Things change.”
“Don’t call yourself a thing.” No one
spoke to him like she did.
He laughed. That was almost more
terrifying than the murder he had just committed.
“You recognised her?” Andriel asked the
remaining guard.
“No, sir.”
“Huh.” His honesty was unexpected. “You
did, didn’t you, Shobal?”
“She’s lost weight,” he suggested, with
a glance at the guard.
Attention back on the man still holding
her by the top of the arm, Andriel asked, “But you didn’t want her spaced?”
“Had a... feeling, sir.”
“A feeling,” he repeated. “Good. Take
her to my quarters. And then report to the lab.”
“Yes, sir.”
*******
“The lab,” she muttered as he marched
her along the hallway. “He’ll find out what makes you different and he’ll
change you. You’ll be like him.”
“Good.”
“Ugh.” She had tried, thinking he cared
about her fate. He didn’t. Merely concerned with his own. Augmentation was
expensive. They didn’t waste it on talentless candidates.
He locked her in.
*****
Shobal knew his leader’s attention was
not on the display. He was almost twitching. Too aware of the woman’s presence.
“She has lost weight,” Andriel
said as he studied the strategy maps. “Perhaps I should look after her for a
day or so.”
“She will blossom under your
attention.” Or bleed, Shobal didn’t say. There were good reasons why he was his
second. “You might be able to discover why she is here ... and now?”
“True.” He spun on his heel, his coat
hem flared and he strode out of the room.
After a longish pause, another officer
checked, “Sir, who is she?”
“Tikva Dymond. With a ‘y’. I’d advise
you to memorise her face.”
“Yes, Sir.” The junior started checking
his handheld for her file.
Another pause. “He still loves her,”
Shobal added to no one in particular. “Has since they were teenagers.” These
days, you could change almost anything about yourself if you had the funds.
Shobal wondered if Andriel would ever find the way to change his heart. He
hated her because he couldn’t stop loving her. And she hated him because he
literally wasn’t the man she loved but looked enough like him for it to hurt.
“She’s part of AA.” The anti-augmentation
group.
“Yes.”
“Why is she here?”
“He’ll find out.”
The officer looked pale.
******
She explored; her hands held awkwardly
in front of her. Minutes, might be all she got alone. Her clothes were still
there. Everything was still there. As if she had just stepped out for a
day. Any thoughts of searching went out of her head and she collapsed on the
floor in front of her perfectly preserved dressing room.
The door clicked open and he walked in.
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