There was a knock on the door and everybody froze for a moment before Sandy ventured, "Come in?"
The door opened and a girl stood framed in the entrance. She seemed about Jonathan's age with dark hair pulled back tightly into a braid down the back of her head and startlingly blue eyes. She wore that white uniform with a silver insignia on the collar.
She was hauntingly, achingly familiar. This was no half-felt suggestion of recognition that Jonathan had felt looking at Nigs. This was solid, clear, immutable. He knew this girl.
"Sir," she saluted him, nodded to the others. "I am to show you to your cells."
"Cells?" Carmen said, sharply. "We're being locked up?"
The girl blinked. "Sleeping cells. The rooms...where you sleep...you know?"
"Who are you?" Jonathan demanded.
She looked at him slowly. "My name is Natalia Armstrong. You left the command of the youth corps to me when you went to sleep."
Jonathan felt as though his ears were ringing. Natalia...was this the Natalia he had meant?
"Yes, of course," he took a deep breath. "Lead on, please."
Natalia led the way silently, guiding them down identical white-painted corridors studded with unlabelled doors. They passed nobody else on the way.
"It's the middle of the night," Natalia explained. "Everyone is sleeping."
They said nothing else. Jonathan could feel his own heartbeat pounding as he made his way through this alien place, following a girl who made no sense to him.
"Here," she stopped, gesturing down a corridor to the right. "The rooms along here are yours. Your names are on the doors."
"Our old names," Nigs growled.
The girl said nothing for a second and then, "Sir, your room is this way."
"I'm not near them?" Jonathan worried. "Why not?"
"Because you are a commander," Natalia said, patiently. "You sleep elsewhere. Follow me, please?"
Casting a backwards glance to the other five, Jonathan followed Natalia away from them and down another corridor, already hopelessly lost.
"Do you remember me?" she asked, once they were out of earshot.
Jonathan didn't know how to answer. "I think I knew you once."
She laughed a little. "You don't sound certain."
YOU ARE READING
Awake
Science FictionWhen Jonathan Sand died one night trying to save the girl he loved, he did not expect to wake up the next morning and find that everything he had ever known was a figment of his imagination. Rising from a simulated dream, six members of the Junior...
