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Hello there! So I actually meant to upload this about two months ago, but it still needed revisions and I just got hired at a summer job so this unfortunately never got finished. Well now it’s finished, there was so much I was going to put in this chapter that I had to break it into two separate chapters. And to make up for my scheduling ineptitude, I will try and post the next chapter by the end of this month. So sorry for the long break and please enjoy this chapter, and if you liked(or didn’t like) what you read I’m always looking to improve.
RENI
Reni sat in her small private room, inside there was a desk with a large digital display and a data pad for work, with a curved polymer chair tucked underneath. In the corner, a sleek minimalist bed frame held up a small white mattress, thinly veiled in silky gray sheets. Dark gray floors met featureless white walls at an eighty degree angle, bending slightly inwards, giving the space a cramped feeling. The walls extended upward to around twice Reni’s height and connected to an embedded LED light fixture that emitted a bright white light and took the shape of a square with rounded corners.
She sat at the edge of the bed, her legs hanging over the side. She was slumped over, twiddling the knife Jack had given her. The officers aboard let her keep it as a trophy for ‘fending off the Human.’ At first she had no idea what they were talking about until she relived the last few moments she had with him. She recalled how he smeared his blood over the blade and forced the knife into her hand. To the soldiers that breached their ship, it must have looked like she was fighting for her life. Jack had given her a way out.
She fidgeted with the blade, turning it over in her palm, inspecting its silvery gray surface. She thought about how different this weapon was compared to one from her own military. Avali knives were built to break, to shatter and have the remaining material become sharper and more effective. But ultimately their service knives were cheap and replaceable, unlike this. This tool was not meant to be replaced or discarded, it was meant to endure, to be taken care of so it could last long after the battle was over. Reni stared down at the blade… just looking at it.
A knock rapped on her door. Realizing she had lost track of the time she scrambled to the door and opened it. “Lieutenant!” She said while taking the position of attention.
“At ease, private.” He said. The bright green Avali with turquoise and light blue secondary colors wore a kilt and shirt that sported the black and white digital camo of the Avali military. The Lieutenant’s belt was equipped with a sword on one side and a holstered handgun on the other. He also wore two pauldrons that were strapped across his chest, one denoted his rank and the other his name. “We have gathered some of your personal effects from Tormoshi.” He gestured for someone to come in. Another Avali walked into her room and dropped a box onto her desk.
“Take a look through the items inside and get them sorted. Do it quickly, I have to take you down to communications within the next couple of minutes.” The lieutenant said while shooing the other soldier away.
“What for?” Reni asked while rummaging through the container.
“You have a communication request.”
“Who is asking for me?”
“How should I know?” He asked unamused with her question. “Are you done yet? We have to be there at a certain time or else your spot is going to get cycled through for more important things.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yes actually.” She said while holding up a bandana. The bandana was made of a thin dark brown, almost black, cloth and the front side was laced with silver thread in an intricate organic design. It was given to her by one of her mentors when she graduated from school. She hadn’t worn it since she was deployed to Tormoshi.
“You cannot wear that.”
Reni shook her head as she was snapped out of thought. “Huh?”
“I know you have been gone for a few weeks but we still have a dress code.”
Reni tilted her head slightly. “Weeks?” she asked.
“Weeks.” He said. “You cannot break uniform.”
Reni placed the cloth back into the box. “R-right.”
“Are you done then?”
“Yes.”
He turned and gestured to her. “Follow me.”
Reni followed the lieutenant through the interiors of the ship. Everywhere they went, heads turned to look at her, she waited for one of them to say something, but they never did. Finally they reached a lift and she watched as he pressed a button which was immediately followed by a drop. They came to a sudden halt and the doors slid open, about a dozen comms personnel were on station all of whom paid no attention to the newcomers except for one.
“Lieutenant.” He greeted them.
Without returning the greeting, he gestured over to her. “This is Reni, take her where she needs to be.”
“Yes sir.” The officer responded. “Please follow me.”
Reni turned back just in time to see the doors slide shut on the lift, covering the lieutenant’s face. She turned and hastily followed the other officer to an open door.
“So this is a comms room.” He said while walking through the doorway. “If you have never used one of these before it is quite simple.” He stopped at a round console in the center of the completely black room.
She followed in after him and immediately noticed that the room was extremely cold.
“Just take your chip and insert it here, and then push this red button.” He demonstrated by placing a chip that was tied around his neck into the slot.
“What chip?” Reni asked.
“Oh right.” He said as he reached into a pouch on his belt and produced another identical chip. “There.” He said while placing it in her palm.
Reni inspected the device. The chip was white with black and orange interlocking parts, in the middle of the chip a hole was cut out and suspended in the middle was a small pink crystal. “Thank you.” Reni said.
The officer nodded and said. “Due to the power consumption of this type of communication you will only have a few minutes to talk.”
“Thank you, again.”
The officer just nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. Reni turned to the round console and inserted her chip into the machine. She sat down on one of the available chairs before pressing the large red button. The lights dimmed and a pale blue light emanated from the console. At first nothing happened, but before long a pale opaque image started to form. In a short matter of time another Avali was now staring back at her, she didn’t need color to know who she was looking at.
“Nahdi?”
“Reni!” Nahdi answered back. “You are alive!”
“Yes!” She smiled. “Yes, I am!”
Nahdi heaved a sigh of relief. “When they told me they had found you alive, I thought that they were making a cruel joke. I cannot believe you lived that whole ordeal, and you are okay right? You are not hurt?”
“I am fine, completely unscathed!” Reni thought back to the day they had separated. “Oh! What about you? How are your ribs?”
Nahdi smiled and knocked on his chest. “The doctors put some titanium in me, and I am stronger now than I was before. I understand why people get augments now.”
“Metal bracing is not exactly an augment.”
“Maybe not.” He said. “It is still so amazing to see you again, I thought for sure after all the time that had passed you would have been killed.”
“H-how much time has passed?”
Nahdi looked at her a little confused. “Well today is the twelfth day since you went missing.”
“Twelve days? That cannot be right, I only counted seven on that planet.”
“It must have had a slow rotation.”
“Still, it just does not feel right.”
“Technically it would have been eleven days seeing as you got back yesterday.”
“It does not matter, thank you.” She said. “How have you been since it all happened?”
“Like I said, the doctors fixed me and I got to take a short leave. What about you though? I know you said you are okay, but how are you feeling?”
Reni stopped to think about what she should say next. Obviously she couldn’t tell him the truth for multiple reasons. One of which being he might fail to understand why she did it, or worse yet he might understand but still but not accept the way she felt.
“I feel good.” She lied. “Happy to be back with my people.”
He looked at her, clearly not buying her story. “I have known you for too long, you cannot lie to me.”
She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, trying to formulate something to say.
“You do not have to tell me everything.” He reassured her. “But it is clear to me that something is upsetting you.”
He was right, he knew her too well. “I do not really know how to put it into words…”
Nahdi cocked his head. “What is it?”
“I have a private room on the ship but something feels… wrong.”
“Are you lonely?”
“No… Maybe… it just feels like… like an empty feeling?”
“I think you need to spend more time with some Avali. Who put you in a private room anyway?”
“No one put me in a private room, I requested it.”
“Why? I really do not think you should be alone after all that happened.”
Reni looked away. “People act weird around me now. I just do not want to talk about what happened.”
“You are talking to me.”
“You are different. These people, they do not understand what Humans are capable of, they are arrogant like we were.”
Nahdi drew his limbs a little closer to his body like he was trying to get smaller. “It was like waking from a dream and finding myself in a nightmare. And we used to complain about how we were not on the front lines.”
Reni shook her head. “I do not think I-we were meant for this. Especially now after coming back, nothing seems the same anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Reni tensed up. “It uh, uhm. It was like I was saying before, I just feel different now.”
There was a knock at the door before it slid open. The same Avali from before poked his head in and said. “Your time is almost up.”
Reni turned back to him and said. “I think I have to go now.”
Nahdi frowned. “We have only been talking for a little while, why are they cutting us off?”
“Something about power constraints I believe.”
“Well that is sad.” He stated. “Please go talk to somebody about this, we are social creatures, we need to talk to people.”
“I already said I do not want to talk about it.”
“If that is what you think is best, I just want what is best for you Reni, you know that.”
“I do.” She said. Suddenly the blue hologram in front of her began to fade away. “Oh, I-I will talk to you again soon.” Nahdi didn’t say anything in return, he just smiled and the image turned off completely.
Reni sat in the darkness for a few moments as that feeling crept into her chest.
The door slid open. In the doorway stood an older Avali
“Captain!” She stated with some confusion.
“Hello Reni.” He said casually. “Walk with me, I would like to talk with you.”
Reni slowly stood up and followed him through the doorway. “Ugh.” A wave of heat smashed into her like a freight train as soon as she stepped back into the main room. “I forgot how hot it was out here.”
The captain smiled. “I believe it would be more appropriate to say that it is cold in there, a pleasant by-product of the reactor coolant ducts underneath the floor.” The doors on the lift she had arrived in opened and he stepped inside. “Come, I am sure you have some questions.”
Reni nodded and stepped in after him. The doors closed again and they began to rise. “Where are we? Where have I been all this time?”
“Well we are currently on patrol near the border, we just happened to be nearby when a civilian contractor contacted FOC stating that he had found a Human fugitive.”
“What about the planet?”
“Oh, just an infant Human colony world before we captured it.”
Reni looked down at the floor, wondering why they hadn’t picked up any Human signals. Were the Human signals being jammed? Or maybe there was no one left to send signals? Maybe they had all left, was it possible to evacuate an entire planet? Too many questions she would probably never have answered.
“I hope Lieutenant Khaa did not act too inappropriately?” The captain asked, breaking her from her thoughts.
“The Lieutenant?” Reni asked. “He, uh, was not very patient with me.”
The lift came to a stop and the doors opened. Reni followed as the captain walked down one of the hallways. “That would be his jealousy of your prestige. He is a brilliant leader but he can be far too rash sometimes.”
“Well you can tell Lieutenant Khaa that fighting Humans is not as glorious as he imagines.”
The captain glanced at her and nodded slightly. “Since we are on the topic of Humans I wanted to congratulate you, you took a fine prize.”
She looked at him and saw him gesture to her belt. She looked down and realized that she had unconsciously slipped Jack’s knife into a loop around her waist. “Oh, y-yeah thanks.” She said lacklusterly.
“You are extremely brave for taking action against that animal, I cannot imagine what it must have been like witnessing that massacre.”
She brushed the handle of the blade with her fingers, recalling the words he said to her, he would have no second chances.
“What is going to happen to him?” She blurted out.
The captain glanced back at her. “Well tomorrow he will be shipped to Avalon for a tribunal with the Illuminate at 0400.”
She wrung her hands together and thought about this answer, the reality seemed bleak. “But… What will happen to him.”
“The beast will get what it deserves, do not worry.”
The captain stopped at a sealed door and said. “This is the armory, you are going to need new equipment so take this.” He reached out his hand and presented a cylinder etched with seemingly random edges and grooves.
“What is this?” Reni asked.
“A physical key, because you do not have a visor or a neural implant yet, I cannot give you an electronic key.”
“So you are just giving me the key?”
“The door automatically closes and locks once it is opened. And I swear if I take so much as a ten minute break the whole ship starts to fall apart, so I cannot stay and hold the door for you.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” The captain said. “Get yourself a new HUD visor, and a sword, and whatever else you may need. You will report in to Transfers tomorrow at 0800 so we can get you back where you belong. Oh and do not forget to return that key to me.” The captain started backing away from the door. “It was pleasant to meet you.”
“W-wait.” The captain halted his retreat. “I-is it possible for me to talk to him?”
The captain tilted his head. “Who?”
Reni struggled to get the words out. “The, uh…”
“Oh… you are talking about the Human.” The captain sighed and shook his head. “No, I do not think that would be wise.”
Reni didn’t say anything back in fear of revealing her emotions.
“Just think, by tomorrow at this time you will be back with your old unit and old friends. It will be like it never happened.”
Reni nodded. “Right.” The muscles in her neck squeezing too tight to let any other words out.
Without waiting for the captain to respond she inserted the ket and twisted it hard to the left. The door split in half horizontally with the top half retreating into the ceiling and the bottom half disappearing into the floor. She walked into the room, the door shutting immediately behind her. Reni took in a few shaky breaths while fighting back tears, she pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind and tried to compose herself.
She looked around bright white lights shined down from the ceiling illuminating racks of guns, swords, spears, explosives, and every sort of ammunition. Reni looked around to find that the room was empty so she walked down one of the aisles admiring the amount of weaponry on display, eventually she reached a rack of new HUD visors. She picked up one of the glassy orange devices and placed it in front of her eyes, the end pieces comfortably attached to the base of her ears holding the visor steady. She pressed the power button, orange light flashed on the screen, calibrating to her eyes, it was a little disorientating at first but she quickly got used to it.Reni continued to explore the armory, collecting an over the shoulder bag, a sword, and a few other things that would have raised suspicion if she hadn’t been alone.
Reni returned to her room, set her items down on the desk and flopped onto the bed, not even bothering to turn on the light. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She checked the time, eight hours until the day resets… ‘I should get some sleep,’ she thought, ‘I am tired. ‘
Reni shook her head to keep the sleep away and turned to her desk, grabbing the data pad that was on it. She turned on the device and pulled off her visor (looking at both at once gave her a headache). She scrolled aimlessly through the device looking at the latest data stream that came in through the Nexus.
‘Twelve hours… are you really going to let it happen?’
Reni ignored herself and kept scrolling.
‘After his kindness, his forgiveness?’
Reni stopped scrolling, trying to focus on a news article.
‘You barely thought of him as a person and he still spared your life twice.’
Reni put the data pad down, ‘He asked me to remember, and that is all I can do.’
‘You cannot lie to yourself.’
‘I am not lying.’
‘Then what are all of those extra supplies for?’
‘…’
‘The captain said a visor and a sword.’
‘…’
‘Twelve hours.’
Reni took a deep breath, she knew what needed to be done.
Hello there! If you actually read the entire chapter then I thank you for giving my crappy little story the time! If you liked what you read feel free to share your thoughts. Anyways, thanks for reading!
P.S. sorry again for the delay
RENI
Reni sat in her small private room, inside there was a desk with a large digital display and a data pad for work, with a curved polymer chair tucked underneath. In the corner, a sleek minimalist bed frame held up a small white mattress, thinly veiled in silky gray sheets. Dark gray floors met featureless white walls at an eighty degree angle, bending slightly inwards, giving the space a cramped feeling. The walls extended upward to around twice Reni’s height and connected to an embedded LED light fixture that emitted a bright white light and took the shape of a square with rounded corners.
She sat at the edge of the bed, her legs hanging over the side. She was slumped over, twiddling the knife Jack had given her. The officers aboard let her keep it as a trophy for ‘fending off the Human.’ At first she had no idea what they were talking about until she relived the last few moments she had with him. She recalled how he smeared his blood over the blade and forced the knife into her hand. To the soldiers that breached their ship, it must have looked like she was fighting for her life. Jack had given her a way out.
She fidgeted with the blade, turning it over in her palm, inspecting its silvery gray surface. She thought about how different this weapon was compared to one from her own military. Avali knives were built to break, to shatter and have the remaining material become sharper and more effective. But ultimately their service knives were cheap and replaceable, unlike this. This tool was not meant to be replaced or discarded, it was meant to endure, to be taken care of so it could last long after the battle was over. Reni stared down at the blade… just looking at it.
A knock rapped on her door. Realizing she had lost track of the time she scrambled to the door and opened it. “Lieutenant!” She said while taking the position of attention.
“At ease, private.” He said. The bright green Avali with turquoise and light blue secondary colors wore a kilt and shirt that sported the black and white digital camo of the Avali military. The Lieutenant’s belt was equipped with a sword on one side and a holstered handgun on the other. He also wore two pauldrons that were strapped across his chest, one denoted his rank and the other his name. “We have gathered some of your personal effects from Tormoshi.” He gestured for someone to come in. Another Avali walked into her room and dropped a box onto her desk.
“Take a look through the items inside and get them sorted. Do it quickly, I have to take you down to communications within the next couple of minutes.” The lieutenant said while shooing the other soldier away.
“What for?” Reni asked while rummaging through the container.
“You have a communication request.”
“Who is asking for me?”
“How should I know?” He asked unamused with her question. “Are you done yet? We have to be there at a certain time or else your spot is going to get cycled through for more important things.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Yes actually.” She said while holding up a bandana. The bandana was made of a thin dark brown, almost black, cloth and the front side was laced with silver thread in an intricate organic design. It was given to her by one of her mentors when she graduated from school. She hadn’t worn it since she was deployed to Tormoshi.
“You cannot wear that.”
Reni shook her head as she was snapped out of thought. “Huh?”
“I know you have been gone for a few weeks but we still have a dress code.”
Reni tilted her head slightly. “Weeks?” she asked.
“Weeks.” He said. “You cannot break uniform.”
Reni placed the cloth back into the box. “R-right.”
“Are you done then?”
“Yes.”
He turned and gestured to her. “Follow me.”
Reni followed the lieutenant through the interiors of the ship. Everywhere they went, heads turned to look at her, she waited for one of them to say something, but they never did. Finally they reached a lift and she watched as he pressed a button which was immediately followed by a drop. They came to a sudden halt and the doors slid open, about a dozen comms personnel were on station all of whom paid no attention to the newcomers except for one.
“Lieutenant.” He greeted them.
Without returning the greeting, he gestured over to her. “This is Reni, take her where she needs to be.”
“Yes sir.” The officer responded. “Please follow me.”
Reni turned back just in time to see the doors slide shut on the lift, covering the lieutenant’s face. She turned and hastily followed the other officer to an open door.
“So this is a comms room.” He said while walking through the doorway. “If you have never used one of these before it is quite simple.” He stopped at a round console in the center of the completely black room.
She followed in after him and immediately noticed that the room was extremely cold.
“Just take your chip and insert it here, and then push this red button.” He demonstrated by placing a chip that was tied around his neck into the slot.
“What chip?” Reni asked.
“Oh right.” He said as he reached into a pouch on his belt and produced another identical chip. “There.” He said while placing it in her palm.
Reni inspected the device. The chip was white with black and orange interlocking parts, in the middle of the chip a hole was cut out and suspended in the middle was a small pink crystal. “Thank you.” Reni said.
The officer nodded and said. “Due to the power consumption of this type of communication you will only have a few minutes to talk.”
“Thank you, again.”
The officer just nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him. Reni turned to the round console and inserted her chip into the machine. She sat down on one of the available chairs before pressing the large red button. The lights dimmed and a pale blue light emanated from the console. At first nothing happened, but before long a pale opaque image started to form. In a short matter of time another Avali was now staring back at her, she didn’t need color to know who she was looking at.
“Nahdi?”
“Reni!” Nahdi answered back. “You are alive!”
“Yes!” She smiled. “Yes, I am!”
Nahdi heaved a sigh of relief. “When they told me they had found you alive, I thought that they were making a cruel joke. I cannot believe you lived that whole ordeal, and you are okay right? You are not hurt?”
“I am fine, completely unscathed!” Reni thought back to the day they had separated. “Oh! What about you? How are your ribs?”
Nahdi smiled and knocked on his chest. “The doctors put some titanium in me, and I am stronger now than I was before. I understand why people get augments now.”
“Metal bracing is not exactly an augment.”
“Maybe not.” He said. “It is still so amazing to see you again, I thought for sure after all the time that had passed you would have been killed.”
“H-how much time has passed?”
Nahdi looked at her a little confused. “Well today is the twelfth day since you went missing.”
“Twelve days? That cannot be right, I only counted seven on that planet.”
“It must have had a slow rotation.”
“Still, it just does not feel right.”
“Technically it would have been eleven days seeing as you got back yesterday.”
“It does not matter, thank you.” She said. “How have you been since it all happened?”
“Like I said, the doctors fixed me and I got to take a short leave. What about you though? I know you said you are okay, but how are you feeling?”
Reni stopped to think about what she should say next. Obviously she couldn’t tell him the truth for multiple reasons. One of which being he might fail to understand why she did it, or worse yet he might understand but still but not accept the way she felt.
“I feel good.” She lied. “Happy to be back with my people.”
He looked at her, clearly not buying her story. “I have known you for too long, you cannot lie to me.”
She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, trying to formulate something to say.
“You do not have to tell me everything.” He reassured her. “But it is clear to me that something is upsetting you.”
He was right, he knew her too well. “I do not really know how to put it into words…”
Nahdi cocked his head. “What is it?”
“I have a private room on the ship but something feels… wrong.”
“Are you lonely?”
“No… Maybe… it just feels like… like an empty feeling?”
“I think you need to spend more time with some Avali. Who put you in a private room anyway?”
“No one put me in a private room, I requested it.”
“Why? I really do not think you should be alone after all that happened.”
Reni looked away. “People act weird around me now. I just do not want to talk about what happened.”
“You are talking to me.”
“You are different. These people, they do not understand what Humans are capable of, they are arrogant like we were.”
Nahdi drew his limbs a little closer to his body like he was trying to get smaller. “It was like waking from a dream and finding myself in a nightmare. And we used to complain about how we were not on the front lines.”
Reni shook her head. “I do not think I-we were meant for this. Especially now after coming back, nothing seems the same anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
Reni tensed up. “It uh, uhm. It was like I was saying before, I just feel different now.”
There was a knock at the door before it slid open. The same Avali from before poked his head in and said. “Your time is almost up.”
Reni turned back to him and said. “I think I have to go now.”
Nahdi frowned. “We have only been talking for a little while, why are they cutting us off?”
“Something about power constraints I believe.”
“Well that is sad.” He stated. “Please go talk to somebody about this, we are social creatures, we need to talk to people.”
“I already said I do not want to talk about it.”
“If that is what you think is best, I just want what is best for you Reni, you know that.”
“I do.” She said. Suddenly the blue hologram in front of her began to fade away. “Oh, I-I will talk to you again soon.” Nahdi didn’t say anything in return, he just smiled and the image turned off completely.
Reni sat in the darkness for a few moments as that feeling crept into her chest.
The door slid open. In the doorway stood an older Avali
“Captain!” She stated with some confusion.
“Hello Reni.” He said casually. “Walk with me, I would like to talk with you.”
Reni slowly stood up and followed him through the doorway. “Ugh.” A wave of heat smashed into her like a freight train as soon as she stepped back into the main room. “I forgot how hot it was out here.”
The captain smiled. “I believe it would be more appropriate to say that it is cold in there, a pleasant by-product of the reactor coolant ducts underneath the floor.” The doors on the lift she had arrived in opened and he stepped inside. “Come, I am sure you have some questions.”
Reni nodded and stepped in after him. The doors closed again and they began to rise. “Where are we? Where have I been all this time?”
“Well we are currently on patrol near the border, we just happened to be nearby when a civilian contractor contacted FOC stating that he had found a Human fugitive.”
“What about the planet?”
“Oh, just an infant Human colony world before we captured it.”
Reni looked down at the floor, wondering why they hadn’t picked up any Human signals. Were the Human signals being jammed? Or maybe there was no one left to send signals? Maybe they had all left, was it possible to evacuate an entire planet? Too many questions she would probably never have answered.
“I hope Lieutenant Khaa did not act too inappropriately?” The captain asked, breaking her from her thoughts.
“The Lieutenant?” Reni asked. “He, uh, was not very patient with me.”
The lift came to a stop and the doors opened. Reni followed as the captain walked down one of the hallways. “That would be his jealousy of your prestige. He is a brilliant leader but he can be far too rash sometimes.”
“Well you can tell Lieutenant Khaa that fighting Humans is not as glorious as he imagines.”
The captain glanced at her and nodded slightly. “Since we are on the topic of Humans I wanted to congratulate you, you took a fine prize.”
She looked at him and saw him gesture to her belt. She looked down and realized that she had unconsciously slipped Jack’s knife into a loop around her waist. “Oh, y-yeah thanks.” She said lacklusterly.
“You are extremely brave for taking action against that animal, I cannot imagine what it must have been like witnessing that massacre.”
She brushed the handle of the blade with her fingers, recalling the words he said to her, he would have no second chances.
“What is going to happen to him?” She blurted out.
The captain glanced back at her. “Well tomorrow he will be shipped to Avalon for a tribunal with the Illuminate at 0400.”
She wrung her hands together and thought about this answer, the reality seemed bleak. “But… What will happen to him.”
“The beast will get what it deserves, do not worry.”
The captain stopped at a sealed door and said. “This is the armory, you are going to need new equipment so take this.” He reached out his hand and presented a cylinder etched with seemingly random edges and grooves.
“What is this?” Reni asked.
“A physical key, because you do not have a visor or a neural implant yet, I cannot give you an electronic key.”
“So you are just giving me the key?”
“The door automatically closes and locks once it is opened. And I swear if I take so much as a ten minute break the whole ship starts to fall apart, so I cannot stay and hold the door for you.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” The captain said. “Get yourself a new HUD visor, and a sword, and whatever else you may need. You will report in to Transfers tomorrow at 0800 so we can get you back where you belong. Oh and do not forget to return that key to me.” The captain started backing away from the door. “It was pleasant to meet you.”
“W-wait.” The captain halted his retreat. “I-is it possible for me to talk to him?”
The captain tilted his head. “Who?”
Reni struggled to get the words out. “The, uh…”
“Oh… you are talking about the Human.” The captain sighed and shook his head. “No, I do not think that would be wise.”
Reni didn’t say anything back in fear of revealing her emotions.
“Just think, by tomorrow at this time you will be back with your old unit and old friends. It will be like it never happened.”
Reni nodded. “Right.” The muscles in her neck squeezing too tight to let any other words out.
Without waiting for the captain to respond she inserted the ket and twisted it hard to the left. The door split in half horizontally with the top half retreating into the ceiling and the bottom half disappearing into the floor. She walked into the room, the door shutting immediately behind her. Reni took in a few shaky breaths while fighting back tears, she pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind and tried to compose herself.
She looked around bright white lights shined down from the ceiling illuminating racks of guns, swords, spears, explosives, and every sort of ammunition. Reni looked around to find that the room was empty so she walked down one of the aisles admiring the amount of weaponry on display, eventually she reached a rack of new HUD visors. She picked up one of the glassy orange devices and placed it in front of her eyes, the end pieces comfortably attached to the base of her ears holding the visor steady. She pressed the power button, orange light flashed on the screen, calibrating to her eyes, it was a little disorientating at first but she quickly got used to it.Reni continued to explore the armory, collecting an over the shoulder bag, a sword, and a few other things that would have raised suspicion if she hadn’t been alone.
Reni returned to her room, set her items down on the desk and flopped onto the bed, not even bothering to turn on the light. She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She checked the time, eight hours until the day resets… ‘I should get some sleep,’ she thought, ‘I am tired. ‘
Reni shook her head to keep the sleep away and turned to her desk, grabbing the data pad that was on it. She turned on the device and pulled off her visor (looking at both at once gave her a headache). She scrolled aimlessly through the device looking at the latest data stream that came in through the Nexus.
‘Twelve hours… are you really going to let it happen?’
Reni ignored herself and kept scrolling.
‘After his kindness, his forgiveness?’
Reni stopped scrolling, trying to focus on a news article.
‘You barely thought of him as a person and he still spared your life twice.’
Reni put the data pad down, ‘He asked me to remember, and that is all I can do.’
‘You cannot lie to yourself.’
‘I am not lying.’
‘Then what are all of those extra supplies for?’
‘…’
‘The captain said a visor and a sword.’
‘…’
‘Twelve hours.’
Reni took a deep breath, she knew what needed to be done.
Hello there! If you actually read the entire chapter then I thank you for giving my crappy little story the time! If you liked what you read feel free to share your thoughts. Anyways, thanks for reading!
P.S. sorry again for the delay
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