Gretel, frozen still and consumed by a flood of dread, startled and flinched when a hand lightly tapped her shoulder.
She stumbled a few steps forwards and, in an attempt to keep her balance, threw her hands out to the wall to the side of her of prison box to try and steady herself as she tried to move.
Panting harshly, she forced herself to count the count the lengths of her breaths to calm herself down and keep her mind from fully tipping over into a panic attack.
Breathe in
one two three four fiveBreathe out
one two three four fiveThe expression of the spy from before came to the forefront, the sight of his crying, begging face materialising before her very eyes. She desperately dug the nails of her fingers into the palms of her hand, squeezing her eyes s
As the sun set, on the kitchen table, Emmet took a kitchen knife to the camera lens and carefully outlined the border between the plastic and glass, easily cutting off the skin of the device to peer underneath.He placed it under the big lamp of their “living room” and peered down into the eyes that had been spying on him.He could hear the catalogue being flipped through from behind him and a quiet sigh.Emmet couldn’t help but smirk to himself hearing Jasper’s sigh, before going to back to focussing on his self-imposed task at hand.A pair of tweezers were picked up next, and he attempted to pick up the inner organs of the machine, wiggling them around a little, before letting them down again, going back to pick up the knife and lightly saw through the plastic around the seam of the camera casings.The popped apart and Emmet found himself immediately cur
Gretel walked forwards, herded by the too many guards as one of the crowd of others from Gryaz.The hand wrapping around her own kept her from running away in terror, freezing up in fear, and just generally keeping her sanity from the stress related mania that pressed down on her brain.The world was too oppressive.The halls were absolutely silent.It was far too quiet.The lack of noise ringing her ears hurt more than the prior screeching of metal from before she went to sleep.The corridors were identical to the same ones that she saw the day before but, at least now, she found herself able to more easily track where she was going.Travelling in a completely straight line, missing one, two, and then, three crossroads, in favour of still marching on ahead, Gretel found herself being brought forwards into the same large hall that the exe
“Did you hurt yourself, Lila?” Jasper asked, reaching over to take his third slice of tuna pizza,” You’re not using your right hand.”“Hmm… oh yeah. My sleeve got caught up in between some stuff and the fell onto my wrist. It’s gonna heal up in a few weeks so everything’s fine,” she half mumbled out in reply, chewing on her food and talking at the same time.“That sounds way too long for how casual you’re being,” Emmet idly commented from between them both, pushing the cheese and tomato pizza box closed and lifting it over his head to sit behind them all.“That’s because I really fucked it up and broke it. I was trying not to worry you,” Lila answered him, scowling a little.“This feels purposeful,” Jasper assessed, arching an eyebrow before taking another bite.“Ehh
They were all quickly herded together, after breakfast was declared to be finished by absolutely no authority that Gretel could see, and taken down another corridor, through one of the doors, off to the side somewhere as soon as they had all apparently finished eating their meals.There had been no indication how much time had been spent at breakfast, nor any indication of how long they had been walking with not a single clock in sight anywhere for Gretel to read.She felt like that she had spent too much time waiting at her table. She had been a slow eater, if the Green-eyed man’s pace was anything to judge, but even she had still awkwardly sat around for others to presumably finish their meals – not that she really had any idea of knowing.The timings in this place could have been arbitrary for the simple reason of throwing people off of their schedules and force them into a more pliable state to be control
“Now that the warning about your behaviour is out of the way, we can proceed further on the front of the administrative side of things, then we'll all get to the fun and exciting parts, alright."Gretel did not say a word, hating the man in front of her and his overly cheerfully sadistic demeanour. Everyone here knew that this was all a ploy and a mockery of the lives that they once lived, the once grudging and boring familiarity of the sequence he had rattled off was now a terrifying and demeaning display of loss and pain.The guard knew that they had all witnessed an execution before this and knew exactly damn well what he was doing as well, putting on this flamboyant hate show."If you may all recall that when you were originally provided with this new employment opportunity, you were provided with your new identification cards. Well, to comply with the laws of this land, they are a necessary requirement, on the
"You're going to build us a time machine.".........Silence reigned the room for a second and, for a moment, Gretel wondered whether she was still asleep and was dreaming up some crazy situation to cope. She paused and blinked for a moment, feeling nothing in her surroundings change before she clenched her right fist shut and dug her fingernails into the soft palm of her hand, pain shooting up and down the limb.She wasn’t dreaming.It seemed like a better explanation than the truth that was being laid out in front of her. Anything was better than hearing that she had been kidnapped to create some impossible sci fi McGuffin.How would one even travel back in time?What was the true model of the universe?How would somebody go about transporting objects to the past?How would that affect their at
“Hey, I’m back.”Lila’s head snapped upwards towards the café entrance.Stood within the doorway, with a fresh tan and a new red shirt, Kai was stood awkwardly fiddling with his hands, eyes immediately zoning in on Lila’s arm in its sling.“Are you alright? What happened? I was only gone for a bit!” he exclaimed, immediately rushing forwards to fuss about Lila’s injury, hands hovering close to her arm but not quite making the final step to actually touch it.Lila couldn’t help but smile down on him.“You can hold it, if you like. Just let me…” she fiddled with the strap around her neck and loosened the clasp, lowering her wrist away from her body but still making sure that it was snug in its supports.Kai’s hands immediately latched onto the skin around the black cast, feeling around the seam, pressing down slightly here and there, before blinking to himsel
Most of the guards had then left the room, after the announcement was given, leaving only two behind to stand at the doors, locking all of their unwilling prisoners inside.All those from Gryaz attempted to form some sort of cohesive movement between them all.One of the group, clearly one of the oldest judging from his rapidly greying hair and who had stool alongside Gretel during their briefing, broke away from their ranks and stood in front of them all, taking charge.He was quiet for a few moments as he conjured up all the words that he wanted to say but couldn’t.Eventually, he decided to settle on the statement," We need to all calm down and try to come up with a cohesive plan for this new project. We're all here in this together, and I know that we've got a tough task to complete, but I'm sure that we'll all make it through this to the other side, so let's all introduce ourselves."
“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