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
The quiet around them soon took over as Gretel stayed silent to avoid embarrassing herself further while trying to figure out how her question had caused so much laughter.It did not make any sense to her at all how her exclamation of anger at how Yolanda was insulting her and selling her out was something so hilarious and worthy of Yolanda's reaction.Silver did not look like the type to begin speaking first and making the first move, and Gretel guessed that, under ordinary circumstances, he would be very stoic and direct without much of an appetite to instigate conversations about leisure or particularly engage with others on a personal level.And Yolanda was even worse.She sat there with her eyes closed completely serenely as if she didn't have a single care in the world, waiting for either Gretel or Silver to make a move, as if she were a schoolteacher waiting for two toddlers to make up after a petty argument or something other.She sat there
Everything about Yolanda seemed subtly wrong and there was something uncomfortable about how she constantly flickered between emotions and personalities as if she was simply substituting the people that she had simply met previously in her life in front of her actual person as it fit the situation and rise and fall in conversation.Gretel knew that Yolanda was borderline sociopathic and probably a psychopath with her master manipulation and use and control of herself, tugging Gretel and Silver in all sorts of directions, pulling answers out of them and having them dance to a tune that she alone was orchestrating, the two of them simply puppets on strings for her, but at the same time, what she was doing to them, how she was using them felt inexplicably kind.Gretel felt, deep down, that Yolanda, despite how uncomfortable that she was making Gretel and Silver feel with her flirting, her touching, and her general quickly changing attitude, she was preparing them somehow.
Gretel felt her face turn downwards, her eyes looking down at the grey of her trousers as she tried to work through the guilt of her reaction and attitude about Yolanda, after hearing about the circumstances of her life.No wonder she was so good at flitting between all her personalities, moulding and fitting herself for each and every situation that she was forced to deal with, either by her own hands, or again her will.A finger reached to Gretel's jaw and tilted her head upwards to face the other woman in question."Don't you dare pity me. I read your article, even if that one guy you met didn't. I don't need your pity. I need you to grow up and accept that there are bad things in the world and that all you can do is stick to your principles and do what you can to get through them, and that even if you abandoned your morals, at least your still alive," Yolanda called out, her voice demanding and strong.She brought her face closer to Gretel's own again
“So, what does she want us to make for her?” Emmet asked Jasper, leaning over the table to read the page full of notes.Almost immediately, his eyes fell back onto Jasper’s face, the other man holding an expression of deep concentration and a fervent passion that filled Emmet’s heart up with warmth and his stomach tingle.None of the notes were in any language that Emmet could read. He wanted to swoon at his multilingual and cultured partner.“She wants us to find a way to intercept the path of the time machine and alter the final destination. That first page that she gave us, here, is a transcript of a conversation that she’s allegedly had with someone in a more senior position about time machines in general. This next one is full of information about another device that can apparently communicate with the time machine that we both used to travel and alter its course, and the last sheet is just general information of her exac
“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