evanna

Burning the photograph had been more of an obligation rather than a personal necessity or a result of true will- but I had to prove to Julian that I was beyond material shows of sentimentality, and that my mundane, former life was no longer something anybody needed to be concerned with. If my purpose is to become the catalyst for the revolution, then it will be so, no matter what.

Half an hour after having watched the paper curl into smoke, their smiling faces are already beginning to slip from the confines of my mind, and I let them go without concern. Perhaps they were not so important after all. They're dead and were once alive: those are the facts.

Julian and I find the bodies of doctors as we walk through the facility. At one point, Julian tells me to stay in one spot whilst they go and investigate down a corridor full of laboratories.

Anything interesting?

No.

I know it's a lie. As we walk back, I catch the glimpse of a child's hand hanging off a laboratory table, the wrist, the fingers, stuck in with needles, tubes. That could have been me, I think.

Julian can't stop swearing as we get back into the wall, and they shove the gun into the waistband of their trousers, their loose grey vest and scarf hiding the form of the weapon.

Shut up.

Fuck. Damn this fucking construction- crap, a guard. Get over here.

The walk back to the Red Hand through the sterile snow around us is slow, arduous, tedious. I don't bother asking for the handgun back. Julian falls uncharacteristically quiet as we near the centre of Tetrahmon, keeping the pace brisk, even, unaltered. There's something laboured about the way Julian's walking, though- perhaps it was that walk through the corridor, although I doubt it. Julian's always come across as... well. Someone who welcomes death.

Perhaps dead science experiments are something different.

I take in deep breaths of the fresh air, contemplating things; my parents, what I can remember from before. It's all still- still fragmented, still floating around my mind, but there's something that that photo opened up- I still don't know quite what it is. I try to dismiss it as a trivial matter, but thoughts will nag, as will unanswered questions; and my loss of memory is something that troubles me deeply.

"Hey. Evanna." Julian's voice is hurried, frantic, perhaps, but there's also an element of surprise-

"Hm?"

"Look. Up there." I'd been so engrossed in my petty thoughts about my past that some things had just flown right over my head without me noticing them. And that, I mean quite literally. The sky is almost teeming with them. From a distance, they look like birds, but everyone knows that birds are creatures from the past. Automated birds, then.

It's the same drones from a few days ago. Exactly the same; the same black metal, the same imprint of cutting-edge technology, wired into all of them; the dexterity of their flight patterns, the ritual movement up and down every cobblestoned street, the way the snow is almost repelled by an invisible force field around each of them. These are not things that are easily destroyed. But they're just machines, and machines are dumb, controlled by people. Controlled by the government.

"But I thought-"

"I know."

The last we'd seen of them, they'd been flying out across the horizons, and to do what? Create a diversion from the new Project, the new saviour? A backup plan? And yet, they're back, drawn into this hub of dull, grey life with skyscrapers reflected in one-another's glass panes like distorted, beautiful images. The buildings look silver on a clear day.

All citizens report to the Square immediately.

My eyes shift from the buildings to the drone flying above us. As it reaches the end of the street segment, it makes a detour and comes whirring by, repeating the same thing.

Order one: All citizens report to the Square immediately.

Order one: All citizens report to the Square immediately.

Order one: All...

The rest of its third repeat is drowned out by Julian's voice in my ear. "Come on. Let's go. Hurry up."

Julian breaks into a half-run down the street, the drone trailing behind us, still crackling out its orders.

▿

Good evening, citizens of Tetrahmon. Today marks another successful stage of our Unity. The second stage of Project Chrysalis has gone through splendidly.

She stands there on the podium, regal, dressed in a blue that's the colour of the sky at dusk. She stands there, poised, like a statue made of marble, every shadow thrown to the side by the late afternoon sun. There are clouds above us, great looming expanses of white, blotting out the sun like ink, engulfing it.

Those that did not pass the preliminary tests of the second stage have been led to a better purpose.

The crowd is stoic, listens raptly, but without emotion: whether anyone can paraphrase her words into 'my friend is dead' is unclear. Everything she says is poison, and that poison snakes itself into the people surrounding us, acting like a paralytic, like a hallucinogen, creating this vision of a beautiful society, of this beautiful, perfect city, with straight lines that never touch oblivion.

And yet here she stands, arms open as if to embrace us. Arms open as if to help us envision this dome of protection her words have placed around us.

No more disease, no more famine. No more discomfort.

Too many dead.

I stop walking, then, stop pushing my way through the crowd, stop elbowing people, grab Julian's prise, pull them close beside me without causing too much ruckus.

I analyse the situation carefully: fifty guards, surrounding the town square. Fifty guards, armed with pistols. Over a hundred thousand people. One president, high up, far away, the only shield of protection the words she says, the words that smother all other means of thought.

And there she stands, arms open.

Oh, it's too easy. 

I slip my hand underneath Julian's jacket, find the cold, hard metal- I wrap my hands around the handle and pull the pistol out from where they've been hiding it. A soft click is heard as I turn the safety off- Julian has gripped my upper arm, but I answer the gesture and the look of panic with a simple smirk as I pull away.

"No, Evanna, no-! Fuck."

Those are the last words I hear as I plunge into the crowd, the gun pressed to my side.

The world is about to change, and whether it will do so for the better, or for the worse- well. I suppose we'll just have to find out.