Flashes Of Light

Past - Sveta

Kneeling over his body in the hospital bed, I found myself thinking that Logar Iris was really handsome, in an alien way.

He was handsome if you didn't like manly things, things that could break you. Because Logar wouldn't. Logar couldn't.

With his sharp and wide cheekbones, his best feature, and all the hollows and planes of his pale, sickly face, he had some kind of beauty that had to be known and cherished. With his cupid's bow lips and his heavy lidded eyes, his handsomeness was a well-kept secret.

I couldn't help but feel that, ever since I'd been told this secret, life couldn't exactly go on the way it had before. I'd always found the Visionary good-looking, but the way he annoyed me clouded my perceptions.

It was Jonath's fault if I was suddenly attracted to Logar. Jonath was a clean slate. I had the chance to know Logar as a stranger, and I felt immediately drawn to him.

In the meantime, the Anti was pacing up and down the room.

"Goodness gracious," he said. "Oh holy day. The President is finally dead. And what has changed, exactly?"

"Nothing," Ane Dioretsa replied. I flinched. For a moment, I'd been under the impression that only I and Logar were in this room.

"What do you mean nothing?" the Anti smiled like a shark. "You haven't even left the hospital bed. I say, let blood-soaked cheerleader rest for a while. It is her own blood, not yours."

For some reason, I couldn't laugh anymore at the jabs the Anti made about Logar. They seemed so distasteful, and so clearly personal.

"That's exactly what worries us," I spoke up. "He lost too much blood."

"Do not contradict me, favourite son," the Anti replied. "Or I might decide to declare Sveta was killed and have you dress up as Jonath Cincinnati. At least, when you were him, you acted like the idiot you really are."

I flinched, but I just asked, "Would you really make me disappear?"

The Anti passed his hands through his curly black hair, in desperation, and then again to comb the wayward curls.

"I swear, all of those months and you still think with your own head!" he exclaimed. "That's good. I taught you that. But you have to follow the leader. His master's voice. You do not see the world as I see it! Not yet!"

"Mister," Percie said, almost begging. "We do not understand half of your references."

"But this is so beside the point!" the Anti replied. "Do not worry about things outside your narrow comprehension. You have done so well. Politics are a game. Everyone knows you work for me, you won't go to prison for that one. Scarecrow got a knife stuck between his ribs, but that is beside the point too. Anyone who ever knew Logar Iris must have itched their whole lives to do it. You certainly cannot blame me for the obvious."

"That is true," Percie replied, but I decided not to get angry at him, because he looked scared. We were all afraid, and I was willing to bet Logar would have been too. When and if he was going to wake and leave the hospital bed, we would see for ourselves how the tragedy had changed him.

I didn't know if I could trust any of them not to bring me with them if they broke down. The captain goes down with the ship, like the Anti would have said. And I was starting to make up mottos of my own. One of those -- the ship goes down with the captain, too.

 I couldn't tell who was piloting the ship, Logar or the Anti, but both sides seemed necessarily unstable. My only wish, before, was to leave the Dormitory. But this wasn't a life either.

When Logar did wake up, I took a shaky breath. Ane shed a few tears. Percie wiped his eyes and said, "I couldn't have done it, man. Not after Lix."

The Anti had left us to go and buy something. I thought it was cigarettes, or some kind of pill, but he returned with pastries, croissant and cups of coffee.