Fic: Arc, Part Fourteen

[jeriendhal]

The Varn Lord Social Shaper called on his comm and a few moments later the door opened again to admit a team of medics to place Marty on a float stretcher and a pair of guards to escort Marty and her both to the Medical Section. This was a gleaming white sector of the station, cordoned off into two sections, one where patients received standard treatment for injuries or regular checkups, and the more secure section, which was marked simply “Mental Conditioning.” It was to the latter that they were brought, placed in side-by-side cells, the walls and doors transparent armored plastic, the only furniture a medical monitoring bed and a hygiene station. Whitepelt was finally uncuffed and placed in her cell, while Marty was stripped, restrained to his bed, a saline drip and monitors attached to his body.

She sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, not daring to say anything to Marty, not sure even if he could even hear her right now. As it turned out, he was the first one to speak.

“I’m sorry.”

Whitepelt’s ears turned towards the sound a moment before her head and brain caught up with what she head. “Are you talking to your goddess, Marty?” she asked carefully.

“No, to you. I’m sorry, Whitepelt.” He turned his head, the only part he could move at that moment, to look at her.

“Why… why are you apologizing to me? I killed your sister! You should hate me!”

“You killed her because you thought you had to kill her, because you were so trapped by this station and its horrors that you were desperate to do anything to be free of it. That’s a reason to pity you, not to hate you. No, I’m sorry that there was no way to rescue you from this place. You should be free, so you can have the family you deserve.”

“I don’t deserve a family, I don’t deserve anything. I’m a traitor.” But a traitor to whom, she wondered. To Marty, his dead sister, and her soon to be dead crèche mates, almost certainly. To the Varn Social Shaper? Perhaps she was, for despite having done everything she’d been ordered to do, the fact that she had been denied her promised reward still stung. I am a tool of the Wise Masters. That was one of the first lessons you learned in the crèche. Give all to the Wise Masters, leave nothing for yourself. Except she hadn’t, had she? She’d clung to her dreams of leaving the station, even in the face of her current imprisonment. I want to leave. I want to leave.

“First things first, though. You’ll have to escape your cell and rescue all of the other vulpine that were arrested,” Marty said mildly.

“Oh, certainly,” she replied sarcastically. “I’ll just overpower a guard by myself when they come to take me away, snatch his code keys, then rescue everyone and steal a spaceship. I don’t even know how to fly a spaceship!”

“I do,” Marty replied. If there was a hint of humor in his replied, she had definitely missed it. “I won’t deny my skills are very rusty, but I think I could manage it for a short journey.”

Comments

[aynne-witch.livejournal.com]

ahhhhhhh

you do this just to torture us - I know you do!

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

I agree :)

mjkj

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

I think there might be a typo in the last paragraph...

"If there was a hint of humor in his replied,"

I think it should either read reply or replying ... or you could even use response :)

mjkj