Requiem (30 page)

'I should have
you prove yourself to me,' he said.

'What must I
do?' she almost sounded annoyed by the request, as if she could see
it for what they both knew it was.

'Wait outside
the door. I will join you in a moment to instruct you.'

She turned to
leave.

'First, tell
me, what is your name?' asked the Warlord, still staring into the
fountain.

She stopped.
'My name doesn't matter.'

'Then what
should I call you?'

She shrugged
then looked down at her cane. The number seventeen was carved into
its side.

'Call me
Seventeen,' she said and continued walking towards the door. The
doorman opened it begrudgingly and she stepped out into the light
with the door clanging shut behind her.

Donny rose from
his feet. His hands were at his front, his fingers shifting around
each other, unsure of what they should be doing.

The Warlord
turned to him.

'Where did you
find her?' he asked.

'I found her
hanging around the Liberry. I wanted to say goodbye to McCullum.
When I came back down the stairs I saw her walking around like she
was looking for something. I don't know what though. I didn't ask
her.'

'And what do
you think of her?'

Donny's heart
was pounding in his chest. The Warlord had actually asked
him
what he thought. He was actually asking
him
for
his opinion! He wanted to cry but he held it back and was proud of
himself for doing so.

'Well...' he
began. He needed to think this through carefully. This may well be
the most important moment of his life. 'I like her... I mean...
she's strong and she knows how to kill.' (Not that he knew that.
He'd only heard the Warlord say these words and so thought it must
be true). 'She's old but that means she's got experience don't
it?'

The Warlord
nodded at this.

Donny thought
about telling the Warlord that he saw tears in the old lady's eyes
when he first met her in the 'Liberry', but he decided against it.
Donny had cried many tears himself and it would be unfair to tell
on the old lady. If he mentioned that she'd been crying then she
might not be allowed to join and then she might tell on Donny and
he wouldn't be allowed in either.

The Warlord,
however, had already made up his mind anyway and had only asked the
boy as an idle sort of precaution. Maybe Donny had seen something
that he should know.

When the
Warlord looked back down at Donny he saw a sort of confused
expression on his face. Donny looked down at the floor. The Warlord
had never actually asked Donny what was bothering him before,
partly because he'd always wanted to keep his distance from the boy
and partly because Donny would usually blurt out his problems
without any prompting anyway.

Donny looked at
the ground and finally spoke, in a doleful, self pitying voice,
'Why didn't you tell me about your plan to save everyone?'

The Warlord
thought for a moment.
He means the failed serum.
'Because I
needed people who knew what they were doing and you're too
young.'

Donny's earlier
jubilation was whitewashed by these last three words. He stared
down at the floor, crestfallen.

McCullum saw
the boy simply as a tool for furthering the goals of the Downfall
Warlord and the followers of the mask, of the ideals that it
represented. But the Warlord looked at this boy and saw only the
antithesis of his own beliefs. A lost innocence and a kind of
softness but worst of all he saw a distant hope; hope that things
could be different, that things could change, that people could
reverse the damage they'd done to themselves and the world and live
in... what? Peace? Love? Understanding? The Warlord smiled to
himself but he didn't quite know what was so funny about those
things. He only knew that they were pipe dreams, that they were
unreachable, that Donny was a remarkable exception, a mutation,
something to be cherished but only from afar.

The Warlord
knelt down before Donny and placed a hand on his shoulder.

McCullum had
told the Warlord to hold on to that confusion, to not lose his
humanity like he himself had done. Maybe that was reason enough to
hold Donny close enough to him, in his sights but just out of
reach. Maybe that was just some kind of rationalisation, some kind
of denial of what this boy could mean to him if only he would let
him.

He told Donny
to go down to the vault and look in the food supplies. There was
some candy down there, some expired blocks of chocolate that he
could eat while the Warlord saw to Seventeen and her possible
(probable) admission as one of his followers.

Donny shook his
head and told him that he wanted to come. That he brought the woman
to him and that he deserved to see her sit her trial.

The Warlord
denied him at first but Donny persisted.

'How am I
s'posed to learn how to follow you if I don't see how it's
done?'

Maybe that's
what I'm afraid of,
thought the Warlord but he gave in to
Donny's demands. It was the boy's choice after all and if he pushed
him away too hard, he might end up losing him all together.

'But you'll
remain quiet throughout the trial. The moment we leave, you will
walk behind me, not talking or gesturing to anyone. No matter what,
you will not interfere with Seventeen's or my duty.'

'Yes, sir.'

'You will do as
I say, when I say it.'

'Yes, sir.'

The Warlord
said no more. He walked from the fountain, down the carpeted steps
to the hangar door. Sunlight bled through the widening slit as the
door rolled open.

A quiet comfort
had fallen over the room. Belameir lay back on Seline's bed,
casually reading through the messages in her inbox on the small,
hand held display screen. Seline sat on the floor. The white
singlet she wore was stained with black drops and smears from
applying oil to the joints in her elbow and wrist and fingers. She
wiped a finger tip of oil across her stomach and set to checking
for fractures or breaks in the carbon fibre with a small torch held
between her teeth.

'Jesus, Seline;
four hundred unchecked messages. Do you ever clear your inbox
out?'

She spoke with
the torch gritted between her teeth. 'I wait for it to tell me it's
full. It's just spam anyway. The filters don't even work.'

'You sure you
don't want Uncle John's 'Me Love You Long Time' clitoral implants?
There's a two for one special. Only 65 credits.'

She rubbed more
oil into one of the joints in her right wrist. 'Yes, I'm sure,' she
said.

'What about
this one? It says: “Hello, dear. Sorry for the cold shoulder but
I've been a bit busy lately. I'm not sure if this address is still
valid but I thought I still have to try it. In case you haven't
guessed, this is Abigail-”'

Seline pushed
herself from the floor, tipping the small canister of oil over in
the process. She pushed Belameir to the side and snatched the
reader from his hand. She read the message. It was short. She
finished reading it, then read it again. She stood up and
immediately left the room, almost stepping in the oil she'd
spilt.

'Sel!' said
Belameir. He pushed himself off the bed and followed her. 'Sel. You
have no idea if that message is real or not.'

Seline walked
down the main corridor glancing through the open doors of the
other's quarters. Empty. Empty. Therin. Empty. She saw Athene
appear from the mess hall. Athene paused and looked curiously at
Seline and then at Belameir almost jumping behind her, trying to
get her attention.

Seline walked
past Athene and found Sear seated at the table eating his
breakfast.

'I received a
message from Abigail,' she said. She found she was almost
breathless.

Sear looked up,
chewing his food slowly. 'What did it say?' he asked.

'That she's on
Sceril. That she's on the run from NeoCorp. We have to go and find
her.'

'Have you
attempted to reply to the message yet?'

'No not yet.
She said not to, that it might be too dangerous. How long will us
take to get back to Sceril?'

'Seline...
maybe it's best you speak to Tialus.'

'You, you don't
believe me do you?'

'I don't
believe you're lying in any way. I just believe that you're being
naïve.'

'Where's
Tialus?' she asked, unable to keep the anger from her voice.

'She's on the
bridge. But, Seline-' He turned to face her but she was already out
the room. He dropped his spoon and got up to follow her.

'But we aren't
that far past Sceril are we?' Seline said to Tialus. 'Surely we can
turn around and go back just to check it.'

'We have other
priorities, Seline. You would do well to remember that you are here
because Sear requested your presence. You are a guest. You are not
here to direct this ship as you please.' Tialus closed the
holo-display and walked over to the pilot's console beside
Therin.

Seline followed
her. 'I don't want to take control of the ship, I just-'

'The sender is
anonymous. They're hiding behind so many proxy servers it'd take a
week just to localise the system it was sent from. Even if we could
localise it, even if we could verify that it was Abigail who sent
it, and even if we could be certain that she wasn't being held at
gun point and being told what to say, we would not be going to
Sceril to find her. Our priority is the missing scouts, we can't
afford to waste any more time.'

'I need to get
in contact with her, to make sure she's okay.'

'You will not
reply to that message, Seline. It was sent to your old work address
which is being monitored by NeoCorp. They'll be able to trace
it.'

'She said that
she'd taken precautions.'

'Whatever that
means.'

'Well, what
other options would she have?' she said to Tialus, almost
exasperated by her dismissals.

'If she had any
concern for your safety she would not try to contact you, at least
not like this.'

'She told me
not to reply, that it's too dangerous-'

'Yet sending
that message in the first place wasn't?' said Tialus. 'If I were
Abigail I would have assumed that NeoCorp would be monitoring the
account.'

'But I can't
just leave her there! This is the only thing we have on her. Like
you said, every other trace has gone cold.'

Tialus sighed.
She stared at Seline for a moment, studying her. Her arms held
across her stomach. Her fists clenched around handfuls of her
singlet. The lines in her face told of the anger and frustration
she was trying to hide but failing to do so. 'Is there anything
specific in the letters?' Tialus finally asked.

'Specific?'

'As in
something only you and Abigail would know.'

She hesitated.
'She called me 'dear' when I met her. She uses the same word in the
letters.'

'That's
it?'

Seline said
nothing.

'You're placing
your belief in one word? In such a common human endearment? NeoCorp
took a simple gamble with that word and it paid off.'

'It's Abigail.
I can hear her voice in the words. I'm sure if I look for some
other clues I could find them.'

Tialus shook
her head. She looked Seline directly in the eyes. 'We are not
stopping to follow up such a thinly veiled ploy.'

'You don't know
th-'

'We are
not
stopping. Now leave. This discussion is over.' Tialus
turned back to the console.

Seline strode
past Belameir and Sear who were waiting by the lift. She stepped
into the lift alone and descended back down to her quarters.
Belameir waited for a moment before following her down.

He found her
lying face down on the bed when he walked through the door. He sat
on his bed across from her.

'Sel, you can't
take what Tialus says personally.'

Seline's face
remained buried in the pillow. Belameir continued.

'I know you
don't want to hear me say this but...'

'I know what
you're going to say,' came Seline's muffled voice. 'And I'd really
prefer that you say nothing.'

'If you know
that Tialus is right then-'

Seline forced
herself up from her pillow, grabbed it and threw it at
Belameir.

'It's guilt,
alright! What the fuck did you expect?' she screamed. '
I
led
NeoCorp to her front door.
I
set her up as a target.
I
turned her into a wanted terrorist.'

Belameir placed
the pillow gently on his bed. 'And
I
was the one who made
you go back in the first place so why not blame me? Actually, for
that matter,
Zackry
was the one who gave you the days off
work to go back to Earth so blame him. Or blame the pilot and the
ship that took you there.' He waited for Seline to make eye
contact. 'No one knew what was going to happen, Sel. Especially
you. You were in the dark more than anyone.'

'We could still
go back and save her.'

'Or you could
go back and get yourself killed; or worse, captured by NeoCorp.
They do some fucked up things to prisoners, Sel.'

'And they'll be
doing them to Abigail if we don't help her.'

'And they might
do them to you if the person sending these messages is an imposter.
Do you think Abigail would want that?'

Seline lay back
on the bed, her eyes closed. She couldn't keep her mind from
dragging her back down to the streets of the Insolvency, to the
alleyway where she'd almost been kidnapped by NeoCorp. Sear,
standing next to her, convincing her to follow him. She tried to
imagine choosing a different course, choosing to stay and find her
way back to Abigail but it offered no reprieve. All outcomes were
coloured with the same guilt, the same shade of black.