By Amber Michelle
Chapter Six
The man had been...... cranky today.
At least, that's what Emeralda thought the word meant. The man -- Krelian -- had altered her speech patterns somehow, she thought, so that she could speak and think in her own language, and the one he was trying to teach her. It was odd, thinking in her native Zebonese, while using the other...... thankfully she wasn't required to think in the dialect the called 'Solarian'. It was too harsh, even when she just thought about it.
That's what he told her, anyway.
What happened to Kim......? What happened to Elly......? He knew something about Elly...... Whenever she said the name, Krelian would become cold, harsh...... Almost like he missed her too and he didn't want to say anything, but that was impossible. There was no way he could have known her Elly.
The bed creaked as Emeralda sat up, oblivious to the wild strands of hair falling over her face. Footsteps...... footsteps meant either people coming to take her to the lab or the gear docks, or food...... even though she didn't need solid substances for nutrition. Emeralda ate because he wanted her to eat, so she would be normal. And she didn't really care; if that was what he really wanted, fine......
She just wanted to find a way to get Kim back...... to get Elly back......
The door opened, and Emeralda raised her head, still sitting up in the bed with her legs streched out in front of her, slightly bent. Her skin seemed so dark when compared to the bed linens, and the oversized, white shirt and skirt she was wearing...... For the first time, it struck her as...... odd. She looked much different than the man standing in the doorway of her room.
Funny that she had never noticed it before. Was it something bad? Or good? Krelian didn't really seem to care, and she hardly ever saw anyone else except for the rabbit girl who came to see her occasionally -- Seraphita.
"Is everything satisfactory...... Emeralda?"
She blinked, looking up at him again. Krelian's face was smooth and expressionless, no matter how she searched; his voice was as smooth and cold as the soldiers that had threatened Kim the last night she remembered seeing him......
Those soldiers that shot her Elly......
"I require your presence in the lab for a time. Are you up to it?" Krelian leveled his gaze on her, making it clear that he meant 'Shall I drag you, or will you come peacefully?'
Emeralda sighed, swinging her feet over the edge of her bed and sliding to the floor. "I..... help?" She padded over to him, craning her neck to keep her eyes locked on his face. She liked looking at him...... even if he was cold, and distant. Sometimes she thought he understood something about her that she couldn't figure out.
It gave her, oddly enough, a strange sense of security.
She knew he wouldn't keep her forever. Something about him...... she knew he would refuse to allow himself any room to become attached; but sometimes...... sometimes, she caught a strange look on his face.
Like the one he was giving her now. What was it?
He turned his back on her and stepped into the hallway, glancing back only once to make sure she was following him.
Why doesn't he ever say anything? Emeralda rubbed her left hand, flexing her fingers and willing them to morph into long claws, just for a moment. They slipped back into their original form as soon as she lost her focus, though, and she flexed it again, only keeping part of her attention on the hallway, and Krelian's back.
He had taught her this. She didn't know if it was something natural, or if he had created it, and changed her...... It wasn't a bad thing; she thought it was interesting. But she still didn't understand it. He said, he said...... he always told her something, in his quiet voice that almost reminded her of Kim, while he was working. But she hadn't believed him until recently.
"Elly. You want her back, don't you?"
Emeralda stared, nodding before she thought. His cobalt eyes demanded it of her.
"If you want to get Elly back, you must learn how to use your talents. They will not give her back to us without a fight."
Learn, learn......
He knew Elly? How could he know her? She didn't remember him. And Emeralda knew that this time, and this place, were far from the home she remembered.
Was he the same? Was he like her?
His hair looked familiar...... like a man she had seen in Kim's lab one day, wounded in a terrorist attack. From what she heard, she knew that he was one of the soldiers enhanced by early nanomachines...... but he had not lived through Kim's efforts to save him.
Maybe Krelian was like her.
She had never met someone like that -- only normal children, and Kim and Elly. It was like that song she had always heard, the few times she had the chance to walk through the streets of the city Kim lived in. Always in children's voices...... because they were the only ones left alive.
Like her.
"Iro kime ade toh
So no mira te.
Magatena shi sojo
mi ya ganare."
(The souls of the dead march on,
casting the world away.
Through our pain they rise to leave
while here in hell we stay.)
-- Zebonese child's rhyme, derived
from the "March of Death".
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