Chương 11: Ch 9b - Reality

And so it starts again. Until this time it doesn't.

"Quarantine is finished now," a voice says as the fog clears, and the reality train again jumps its tracks and smashes into her. It is a voice she has heard before, talking around her time after time. Now it talks to her.

"Time for you to get up and out of this room. There are people who want to meet you," the voice encourages her. The voice comes from the woman who eases her upright and is busying herself about Cara's body. Removing. Adjusting. Examining.

"I'm going to give you something to perk you up, help you get back into the world." The voice eases her mouth open and places something on her tongue.

"Drink this water," the voice instructs, thrusting a cup into her hand. The something crumbles and fizzes on her tongue, it makes the water taste sour as she swallows it down.

"Now steam, wash, and dress," the voice instructs her, nudging her into the small bathroom.

"I will leave clean clothes for you." Cara stands in the steam filled room, unaware if she is crying or if the wetness on her face is vapour settling on her skin. It is a paralysis she has felt before in her life and had thought would never be repeated. When Mum died just before her eighth birthday, Cara's life had split into two; life before the numbness and life after the numbness.

Life before the numbness hadn't been perfect, but Mum had always chased away her worries with a hug or a pat on the head or an extra kiss goodnight. After Mum's death, Dad had continued to deny the family he had abandoned before Cara could learn his face. Gran, Jenny, and Cara had helped each other heal, but for Cara the wound had never fully closed. A nothingness had replaced the part of her that life had stolen before she had had a chance to understand its value.

"Finished?" the woman's voice calls out as the door opens. The voice is owned by Doctor Gask, a no-nonsense woman. Wrinkles have started to gather in the corners of her eyes and etched lines stroke her forehead, but her cheekbones glow with stretched skin and her eyes shine with intelligence. She is dressed head to toe in black, as are Wyndeer and Joss who have come to escort Cara.

Where Gask wears simple black trousers and a black half sleeve top with an orange stripe running down from the shoulder, Wyndeer and Joss wear smarter uniforms. Their collarless jackets sit stiffly on their shoulders, their elbow length sleeves expose brushed-brass cuffs on both their forearms. Wyndeer has an orange stripe running from the top of his right shoulder, down over his chest, descending the full length of his jacket. Joss's stripe is blue.

The same emblem overlays the stripes of all three, a grey circle containing three triangles and three lines. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. She assumes this to be the uniform of Trisec. Gask's briefing after Cara dressed included the explanation that she was now on the Wixam, a Trisec transport vessel destined for their home planet of Feilan.

Gask had continued with further details but the phrase their home planet had triggered such a sense of vertigo in Cara that she could process nothing else. She had sat, knuckles white from gripping the chair tightly, focusing on the thick toe caps of the heavy black boots Gask had helped her into, repeating to herself over and over that she could see her foot planted on the floor and that the world surrounding her was not spinning out of control. Joss stands rigid by the double doors.

Her shoulders square, her hands tucked behind her back, her feet firmly planted hip width apart. She has not spoken, has not even attempted to make eye contact with either Gask or Cara. Her hair is scraped back tightly; her skin stretches taut over her sharp cheekbones making them appear like plates of armour embedded on her face. Wyndeer finishes his murmured conversation with Gask, he eyes Cara who has remained, unmoving, in her chair.

"Cara," his acknowledgement of her carries a clear domineering message. He waits. It is not so much that she chooses to remain silent but that she cannot think what to say, how to react. His hair is combed neatly away from his face. He is clean shaven; his cleft chin is balanced out by the strong line of his jaw. As he continues his hand flexes into a loose fist at his side, "Gask has explained to you where you are. You will be supervised at all times. You will not attempt to evade your handlers." He waits again.

She is torn between the desire for a return to the fog of Gask's drugs and pursuing a chance to uncover why they have brought her here and the hope of them sending her home. She mumbles her compliance. He looks displeased. Their route along the mostly deserted corridors is a confusion of turns that she would be unable to retrace. Each corridor is a long stretch of dual tone grey broken up by unmarked doors and branching corridors. Wyndeer's long strides make short work of each corridor.

Cara finds comfort in focusing on her own strides, slipping into a familiar fast paced commuter walk to keep up. When she falls too far behind Joss prods her fingers into her back and hisses. There is an absence of smell in the corridors, made noticeable when they pass an open door. The strong scent of sweat and an overcrowding of people in an enclosed space escapes forming a pocket of humid odour through which Cara walks.

Glancing through the doorway she manages to make out little more than a huddle of figures all dressed in black before Joss's jab reminds her that curiosity is not allowed.