The words on the forms were strange, and it had taken Jasper less than half a line of initial reading to understand why.
They had all been written in his mother tongue.
They had been written up in the official, government recognised language of Gryaz which looked so much more like the Greek letters in Lila’s history books, than the anglicised ones on the road signs outside.
He had read them all by instinct, understanding them and going on as usual.
Picking up the form that he had just signed, he recognised the language there as English. Jasper sighed and put it down once more, rubbing at his temples and hobbling to the sink to drink some water.
He was so tired.
He was so tired of the voices and words that were whispered to him in his mind and were left hanging in his brain for his mouth to say, the effects of the translator that had been fitted into him with the tracking chip still lingering in his psyche.
Wondering when the eff
“We’re back!”“I’m home!”Two voices called out from the front door as Jasper finished clearing away all the papers that they had, sealing them in an envelope which he placed underneath the sink to keep from Lila.His eyes widened slightly as he saw a stack of notes kept together with an elastic band. He looked up at the two people who were now stood at his island table who were smiling down at him, with Lila waving cheerily.“There’s money under the sink,” Jasper easily stated, staring pointedly at Lila.“There’s money under the sink,” Lila parroted back, dropping four plastic bags of her shopping onto the island table,” There’s shopping on the table.”“There’s money laundering happening,” Emmet also chimed in, glancing at Lila in what looked to be mock suspicion,” And there’s also something that she wants us to make. And
The worry and panic soon gave away to something much less turbulent with Gretel, as she tried her hardest to focus and understand the chicken scratch that somehow managed to pass as handwriting in the eyes of the Sýnnefan officials that had handed the work off to her.It was atrocious and tedious work to complete, especially when Gretel thought that she had managed to understand one particularly badly written word, before she read ahead and saw that no, she hadn't actually been able to decipher the random and eclectic scribbles in front of her.The frustration of it all was a simple, familiar and distracting one - a task that she had already spent hours doing previously when looking over her own old notes and served as a good enough distraction from the world around her.The simple, swooping mechanical movements of her hands gave off a quiet sort of delicacy that she hadn't particularly experienced in a while, the
"Alright! Get Out!"The loud yell forced another freeze into Gretel, as the loud words, from an unknown voice boomed loudly around her, stealing away her breath and inflicting upon her a harsh slap to her sanity.It took Green_One placing a hand on her own to help her return back to the world as thoughts of whether she had done something wrong or had violated some sort of code of conduct and committed some grievous and traitorous error, consumed her and left her empty with little else.The weight of the warm hand steadied her, and she found that she had needed to stare it for a few long, long seconds to even understand and full see that it was with her.He was with her.She hadn't done anything wrong.He did not leave her like the rest.Slowly, taking in a deep shuddering breath to steady herself, Gretel turned around to see the guards much closer to where they were before.No longer were they standing at the door, manning thei
Gretel had to stop and stare when she saw what awaited for her in the food hall.The same grey mush that she had been forced to consume for breakfast laid there on the tables as if there was nothing else that the facility could offer her, or more likely, was willing to offer her, considering that she was just a prisoner from Gryaz doing free labour for them, because they were incapable and unwilling to do the work themselves.Green_One yanked her along and brought her properly into the room with the rest of them to not hold up the line, as soon as his arm had straightened up, him walking in front of her and leading her to her meal.She let go of his hand and walked over to her own table, attempting to sit down while making the least amount of noise possible, cringing internally at the screeching sounds and the painful squeaking of the structure.Ducking her head down to eat her food, Gretel hesitated to even try and pick up her spoon, the metal shiny and
The hour of free time afterwards solidified the idea of her being in a prison, and that Gryaz would definitely never let her come back.After all, why would a place so hostile to those who had broken its own laws, putting them away in tiny compartments to stew for a while, hoping that they would simply die off with the inadequate food, inadequate space, inadequate healthcare, and inadequate funding that the people were to be exposed to.Gryaz didn't care about its own prisoners, so why would it care about another nation's prisoners, especially an enemy nation's prisoners?But then again, hypocrisy was the life blood of the system that they all lived under.She had no idea of what was on offer, what she could so, and more importantly, where she should go.Surely there had to be at least some sort of tiered system of activities with some more desirable and others less so, but Gretel had no idea of what was available to her and all the others.
"Your choices of entertainment for your one free hour, away from your work, are as follows," another stated at the front of the room.He stood in front of Gretel and the rest of all the others from Gryaz, who were still all sitting down and clueless and aimless, not knowing what was being expected from them and what they should be doing for the Empire that had kidnapped them and was using them as free labour."There is a library, you may use your shared office space as a common room, you may use the computers offered for your work service to play games that will be locked when the allotted hour for free time is complete, you may also play music from a list of certified songs and genres..."Gretel stopped listening as soon as she heard the word 'library' knowing immediately where she would be going to try and have some alone time, in complete isolation, away from everybody else, even if there was still a camera on her.Safety in numbers was certainly a val
Gretel, following behind the incarnation of madness in front of her, walked as slowly as and far as she was possibly willing to go to get away from the guard who was currently responsible for her, regretting each and every thought of rebellion that had occurred to her mind and wanting to almost fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness at her recent spike in anger spells and her mood swings.She wanted to leave.She wanted to go home.She wanted to get out of here.She needed to calm down.breathe inone two three four fivebreathe outone two three four fiveShe wanted to leave.She wanted to go home.She wanted to get out of here.She needed to calm down.breathe inone two three four fivebreathe outone two three four&nbs
Gretel remained in Yolanda's arms, even after she stopped crying, happy to stay there and stay warm.Silver looked away the entire time, sitting at his computer watching the screen without moving away from it, acting as if he wanted to look cool, calm, and unaffected but was in fact still quite awkward around the fact that Gretel had burst into tears and had received hugs,He hadn't moved the entire time, the computer still not turned on and the selection of sound stickers to listen to music privately, still remained untouched and undisturbed.He was just sitting there without doing anything, staring at a wall as if it was the most interesting thing in the world with his stiff shoulders and posture, actively looking in the opposite direction of Gretel and Yolanda."You sure you don't want to join the hug," Yolanda called out again, this time without any of the sarcasm of before, her voice perfectly sincere and polite, injected also with a layer of worry a
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi