On Our Own (gxg)

Chapter 15 - Selection

When the alarm goes off, I lie on my back, eyes open, staring into the dark. I tell my holo to silence the ringing tone. It is quiet, but my slow and calm heart beat carries me through my semiconsciousness. I listen to my blood streaming through my ears. I have lost any track of time and I can't even tell if I have been asleep or not. In the end it doesn't even matter.

I get up. One foot, the other. After a sharp and snapping command towards the holo of the quarter it slowly turns on the light. I breathe in and smell the absence of anything familiar. This room is even colder and more impersonal than my room in my father's quarter had been. My feet are cold on the ground. Shuddering I miss the adjusting floor temperature of that particular room that had been my home and my prison for so long time. Why are you missing it? You never had a home, Rayen. Home is where your haert belongs, where you are wanted and loved. That room stopped being your home when your mother died. You do certainly not miss it, you just miss the technical luxury of a temperature adjusting floor. I lift myself up and head over to the bathroom. I take a cold shower, washing the dizziness, emotion and thoughts away, I get ready.

I take a last look into the mirror. A green-eyed, freckled girl looks back. I know her. She isn't the Rayen sharing a dorm with Malone and the others, the Rayen that has at least some tiny little will to live. It is that girl who I had been for years. Dark circles beneath my eyes, a pale skin, emotionless, non-caring, internal dead. Great. I convince myself to build up a fassade again, I put on some mascara and cover the dark circles. Then I take off for the last test.

On my way I realize that lying awake and just thinking myself through the night has on the one hand prevented me from regainig much energy. But on the other hand I have decided to take the test. Just take it and see what it is. I don't have a choice anyway, but I decided to either pass it if the task does not destroy all of the freaking few principles I have, or to just do not do anything. Becuse right now, the death threat doesn't matter. The general was right, no one cares if I am alive. Not even I care.

I reach Sector D, I enter after my ID has been scanned, I return to the hallway I spent my first guarding shift ever in. And I have almost forgotten, at least my brain has forgotten it. Not my body. As I enter the hallway and approach the familiar point in the very middle of it, passing by all those glass walls, those cells, those wrecked persons inside, my heart rate fastens. I feel my knees getting shaky, chills running down my spine.

I reach the middle of the hallway. I want to suppress the urge to look at the cell opposite my position. I can't help it. I glance through the hallway again, check if any guards have appeared. There haven't. And then my head lifts itself, my eyes following.

There she is.

I look at her, I can't see anything else anymore. She sits there, on the floor, eyes open and awake. My glimpse wanders over her body - she has recovered a little, as far as I can tell, some wounds have actually begun to heal, she has gained a wisp of weight, still she is not more than a wreck from bones, skin and muscles. My eyes wander to her face and stick to it. The few freckles she has, the defined eyebrows and cheek bones, her lips that seem soft although they are dry. You can see her exhaustion, her pain, she is raddled. Her collar bones stick out, her blonde hair is messy.

But she still is so beautiful. I find the courage to meet her eyes only to find them attached to mine. Her eyes, those two oceans, look at me deeply. I cringe, her eyes are so intense, she touches me although there is a glass window between us.

I can see the development. There was a grey blur over her irises, at least it feels like there was. But as our gazes meet, her eyes return to their blue sparkling. The change is so intense that her whole face lights, her body tension decreases. She just looks at me and her eyes tell me "I knew you would come back." I can't help but smile sheepishly only to blush very hard as I notice what I am doing. You're such an idiot.