these bountiful silences

4 // shock

WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS OF VIOLENCE. sorry.

"I can take so much, until I've had enough."

Chapter 4 // Shock

The world is a hue of blues and whites and perfect greens. Everything moves slowly, like everything's on bated breath. Gemma used to love days like this. 'Something's big coming,' she'd always breathe to him while hover boarding down the side walks. He never knew what she meant by that, but he knows the word that she wanted to give this feeling. Anticipation.

There are birds flying around, cooing to one another excitably. Grey clouds are rolling in from over the horizon. Rain, Harry frowns. He parks his hover board and waits under an awning, he'll have to ride public transport home, he should've thought to bring his waterproof cover for his board.

He settles onto the pristine, white bench. Watching as people flit about on their boards, some wave to one another, most don't.

A slight body plops down beside him. "I've been looking everywhere for you." the projection of a scribe presses in front of his face.

Harry startles and looks at the man. And he smiles. It's Zayn. With his stupid leather jacket and his stupid troublesome smirk.

Harry smiles. "Where've you been?"

Zayn shrugs, pulls down the collar of his jacket to show a white silencer embedded into his skin. Harry's eyes widen, and Zayn just shrugs.

"Shit," Harry uses his last word of the day.

Zayn shrugs, writes out "Don't worry," on his scribe.

They sit in silence after that. Harry's mind racing. If they released Zayn after silencing him, he thinks, then there's a possibility that they released Gemma too. She could still be out there. There could still be hope. And to Harry, that's something worth holding onto.

➳

Harry really wants to scratch at his temple, but he can't because there's a tight piece of some sort of steel seated on the crown of his head.

"This will release all of your thoughts to where we can hear them, okay?" His Superior says, tapping her long fingernail on the steel. "When we turn it on, just read from the script, and if the person answers it wrong, just press down on the dial. Be sure to read aloud in your mind how much voltage the shock has before you press it."

Harry nods.

"The shock hurts, but it's not dangerous. Don't worry about the person on the other side of the glass. We're trying to help them, save them from the Unconformist thoughts that have been seated into their feeble minds. You're helping The Movement, Harry. Remember that."

Right, Harry can do this. He can. The shock is not dangerous. The shock will just hurt a little, it won't be that bad. He's doing this for The Movement. And that's reason enough to do this, and do it right.

Harry reaches up to the band around his forehead and presses his fingertip to the sensor above his ear, shivering when the band vibrates to life.

"Okay," Harry says without opening his mouth. It feels really... weird. He knows that this is kind of the same thing as when they're injected with the mind readers for two weeks, but hearing everything he thinks being let out into the air without his permission just feels foreign.

Harry is steered to a large white chair that's settled in front of an even larger white machine with several dials, labels over each. The first one reads 'Slight shock', and it keeps building until it reads 'Warning: Dangerous shock', and then the last two dials are labelled with an ominous 'XXX'.