Fic: Arc, Part 7

[jeriendhal]

The three days passed with agonizing slowness for Lili. She didn’t dare risk eating the food from the auto-kitchen at first, through experimentation showed that the water from the bathtub faucet was safe to drink. At the beginning of the fifth shift period however, her intense hunger finally broke through her resolve and she punched up another meal for herself. She ate it in the bathroom, the door locked, and waited for the waves of intense want to finish wracking her body. It took over an hour before she trusted herself to open the door again to where Marty waited, calm as ever.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said, when she trusted herself to speak. “This whole damned station is monitored. Surely they’re keeping track of how much food is being used by the auto-kitchen.” She tried not to think about whether there were video monitors hidden in the walls, dispassionately watching couples make desperate, drug fueled love in this strange oasis. If there were, then their strange behavior surely had to be attracting attention they didn’t want. “Why hasn’t it raised red flags somewhere?”

“I don’t know, Lili. Though perhaps given that the vulpine here are trusted to monitor the entryway, as others mind the machinery in the docking bay, it’s entirely possible they’re being made responsible for low level security matters.”

“Wouldn’t that be ironic, vulpine being made their own jailers in this place.” She frowned. “That’s the real goal, isn’t it? Make the system self-perpetuating, requiring no outside intervention. Make this the new vulpine culture. No Holy Den Mother, no families. Just a mass of drones to do the work required of them. They’re turning us into a hive mind, like the Ardactavians.”

“It would seem so,” Marty said. Then he added. “It’s an abomination. The cycle must be broken, now, before any more souls are lost.” Something happened to him when he made that last statement, his eyes hardening with an intensity that she couldn’t recall seeing in him.

“Is that you talking or the Holy Den Mother, Marty?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Somehow that failed to reassure her.

Comments

[aynne-witch.livejournal.com]

I'd be less than reassured m'self

hmmmmmmm