The Wrong Side

Chapter 17

The room Kadiya assigned me was small. There were two beds, two dressers with a mirror, two desks and a bathroom off to the side. It was carpeted with a soft deep blue plush and the walls were white. The beds were a light wood, and the sheets were the green of the grass. One of the beds were messy wrinkled. It looked homey and inviting.

"You're gonna be sharing the room with Matthew," says Kadiya as I walk the perimeter of the room.

"Matthew?" I ask.

"Yeah. My brother doesn't want to share his room with anyone, so I thought I'd mess with him a bit."

"Oh."

Something on Kadiya beeps and she checks her watch. She scowls and rolls her eyes dramatically.

"Goddammit. How stupid can idiots get?" she exclaims and kicks the doorway angrily.

"What?" I ask and she shakes her head.

"Just some people. Whenever my mom's away, things fall apart and Matthew and I have to deal with it. I gotta go. Why don't you stay here? Take a nap or something. Lunch is gonna be in a few hours and there's a mini fridge underneath Matthew's bed in case you get hungry."

"Okay," I say and I look at my feet. I hear Kadiya laugh and she leaves.

The door to the room slides shut with a little thump and the lights come on automatically. There's a window to the room but the blinds are drawn. I walk up to the window and raise the blinds. I stick my head out the window and I give a little gasp at the view.

The room is on the top floor: the seventh, so from up here, I can see almost everything. The room is facing away from the HQ and I can see the world stretching out in front of me for endless kilometers. There's a little dirt road at first, but then there's a large expanse of grassy fields with an occasional tree sticking up out of the ground. Past that, there's a small forest that stands majestically, looking down on the world. Behind that, there are snow-capped mountains which rise hundreds of meters high and curve at the top, indicating that they are old mountains. The sky is an icy blue with a few wisps of clouds floating above the world.

The drive that it took to get here was long. We were in the car for almost an entire day. We had to stop a few times in smaller towns for gas and food and so that Kadiya could sleep. There weren't any pee breaks. If I ever told Kadiya I had to go, she just handed me a bottle and told me to do my business in there. I ended up holding in my pee until we reached another gas stop or food break.

We must have gone north because of the mountains and because the air was a little crisper here. I close the window and back away a half-step. I feel a pang of lonlieness. I wish Kadiya was here. I place my artificial hand on the glass and I feel my stomach jump a little bit. My hand... something's not right about it. The colour of the carbon fibre is a greyish cobalt-blue. Wasn't it a soft gold before? I blink, trying to remember, but then another headache splits through my forehead and I stop thinking. I'm almost certain that it was gold and not blue, but I don't want to risk another painful headache.

I touch the arm. It's smooth and feels almost scaly. It looks like a glove that reaches all the way up my arm. The palm of my hand and the finger tips have a leathery, rubbery sensation. I know those have always been there, but the rest of my arm seems different.

I sit down on the bed that isn't messy, which happens to be the bed closest to the door. I run my hands through my hair and lie down on the bed. The mattress has springs in it and it bounces a little from my weight. It's a little hard, but it's a comfortable sort of hard. I close my eyes slowly and I drift off into a sleep.

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When I wake up, the sun is glaring through the window and there's a face above me. Wait. Why is there a face above me?