They all sat there for a while, doing nothing but seeking comfort from all the others around them, but even that was for a limited, pre decided time period.
Soon enough, they were all yanked up, hands gripping their shoulders, arms, and the backs of their necks, the people around Gretel hauled up as if they were misbehaving pets, rather than the grieving and terrified human beings that they truly were.
She found herself helping the man who had been carrying her before, keeping one arm under his shoulders, barely reaching around to the other side of his body, as she half carried him, having his heavily lean on her, and her shoulders and upper back, as she dragged them both reluctantly to where they needed to go.
Her knees buckled and shook as she tried her best to muster up the strength for both of them, not at all minding when another part of her grey shirt became soaked with even more tears.
It was for the best. If he didn't get his feelings out here
The next morning, Emmet took the groceries that he had bought the previous night and finally placed them inside the kitchen. There had been a note left on the kitchen table. It had been left on several different pairs of perfectly folded up clothing and shoes. Next to them, there was little book full of different recipes and cooking ideas, all done in atrocious and illegible handwriting, with a cartoon girl with wide, giant eyes on second to last page of the book. Emmet stared at it for a moment, turned his head to the side to the little, and wondered who the drawing was of. If he went by the uniform, he could reasonably say that it was Lila, but she really didn’t have the face that was in the drawing. Her hair wasn’t nearly as perfectly styled, or as curly and puffy, and she had quite clear acne scars running all the way down both sides of her face. The eyes were also far too happy to fit her. He flipped the page and then perfectly understood that he had jus
They were all led to another, different hallway, lined with what seemed to metal boxes, not identical to the storage carriers that Gretel had seen when prisoners were transported different jails, or when you generally wanted to protect a person by any means possible by placing them in those almost completely impenetrable boxes. She tried to summon a more cheery application of their usage in her mind, to try and stave off the lurking and growing feelings of dread that were gradually beginning to consume her. She remembered once seeing a one of those arrive, attached to the bottom of helicopter, arrive within the central courtyard of her university, bringing along a semi prestigious doctor of sorts in a little show to rally up the students' enthusiasm and lift their spirits. It didn't work. Only a few students had actually recognised him and even fewer found it within themselves to properly engage with the display with any proper sort of enthusiasm that
“There were no mind altering substances, data recording devices, spyware, encoded negative mechanisms or any other failsafe technologies inside the nanobots, unless they somehow managed to utilise technologies that we are not aware of,” Tweedle Dum recited out to Lila. He sat in her office chair, reading out of a manilla folder, and faced Lila after making his statement, sunglasses concealing his eyes from her and expressing no emotion on his face. “What about the cameras and mics in Jasper and Emmet’s flat?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the desk. “They have all been removed. We anticipated the situation and knew that we were going to lose money, but protocols needed to be followed, so the actions were taken, as ordered,” Tweedle Dum answered her, his voice giving away his disappointment and annoyance. “How do I know that you’re not lying to me?” Lila shot back at him, dropping her head down into her arms on the desk, her mouth stretching out int
Inside her little prison, Gretel immediately fell onto the floor and curled up into a ball, sobbing into her arms as she tried to hide her face away from the world around her and all the greys that she was seeing. She didn't want to see anything right now. She didn't want to even exist. She desperately wished that she was dreaming and that any moment now, she would just wake up and her mother would be leaning over her, one hand holding a warm mug of tea, ready to sooth her and provide a shoulder to cry on and an ear to listen to. But no. She would never see her mother again. Gretel had spent her last few moments on a commute reading about a distant war and trying on outfits, and if she had know that those were her final stretch of freedom, she would have spent the entirety of it talking to the woman who had brought her into this world and then raised her. With a sinking, guilty, feeling, she realised, then and there, that she w
“Yeah.. that’s fucked up, y’know?” Lila quickly cut Tweedle Dum short, unable to take more of what he was saying. She definitely did not want his job and refused to acknowledge how close she was to getting his career. If she had actually co operated with him the first time that they met, then she might have been his office colleague, instead of someone that was supposed to be kept at arms length for all of her perceived faults and issues. “Alright then, we can discuss what you’re going to be doing, from now on, to ensure that the timeline is going to be straightened out and everything will work out fine,” Tweedle Dum segued into,” First things first, we need to bring Emmet to the specific time that he arrives in the future. Do we have a date?” “No,” Lila answered him bluntly,” and I don’t think that even he has a date either. Half his limbs were broken and he spent an unspecified time there unconscious and needing to be taken care of.” “That’s alright
“Fine, hypothetically, and only hypothetically, if I do stay behind, how do I do the thing that you want me to do? I don’t have a floorplan. I don’t know how their computers work. I don’t know their language, and I have no way of combating whatever security implements are there,” Lila cried out, firing question after question in complaint and argument and throwing her arms up. “All those things would be valid counter arguments, if we didn’t have someone who manage to beat all those odds in our custody,” Tweedle Dum grinned back at her. “Do any of his methods not involve murder? Answer me that,” Lila hissed back at him, pulling her hands down below the desk. “Emmet’s not dead,” Tweedle Dee laughed at her. “Not on the outside,” Lila darkly muttered,” That man’s obsessed with Jasper. If Jasper wanted to burn down a building, Emmet’d be there cheering him on and helping him pour oil everywhere.” “And you’re not, Miss ‘He is the only reason that I
Gretel found that her prison was somehow even greyer and bleaker than what she had seen of the world just outside those sliding metal doors.The bed took up most of the space in the tiny room of her compartment, and she quickly noticed that was for a good reason too.The layout looked to be standard issue enough for almost anyone and everyone of any size and weight to sleep on comfortably if they crossed their arms over their chest and slept as if they were never going to wake up ever again.It took up the entirety of the width of the room, and, from where she was curled up on the floor against the door, there was only one scant inch worth of space left between her feet and the end of its metal, boxy frame.The bed itself was comprised of multiple layers of thin fabric that she could see would definitely not keep a person warm.Slowly, and on her still shaking legs, Gretel stood
Emmet spent most of the day sat at the corner of the living room with a heap of catalogues that Lila had dropped by with at lunch time. She had smashed her fists into the front door so hard that it had been a minor miracle that the wood hadn’t been damaged, shoved all the books into Emmet’s face that she was going back to the café now, before running off again, giving Emmet barely a glance at her face. He still saw the trail of bandages that sailed behind her, wrapped around her neck and travelling below her shirt, and had moved to go towards her, his fears only assuaged when she had popped her head around the corner once more and had smiled at him. She flashed him what looked to be the old peace sign, before she had scampered off once more. If he hadn’t been in charge of keeping an eye on the oven, he would have followed her. Jasper had spent most of the day muttering to himself as he combed the house further for any other surveillance devices throug
“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