Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 8 • Honor [NB]

AUTHOR GAMES: THE ABSENT EMPRESS - SEMIFINALS

Rock and roll, the bitter girl. Heart beat. 

Rock and roll, the shifting gears, the mechanical break and screech of start and stop; they rode a train partway to their destination, and, for once, they knew exactly where they were headed. Nora knew where she was headed. She was headed to a means to an end. Reward me, finally, she thought, reward me and let me go. Baby, don't go. What if she didn't? I'm going. No doubt.

She leaned back against the seat, picking at the tight uniform she'd worn to the fight with Horde, picking at it and letting it snap back against the bandaged scrapes on her legs just to see how much she'd have to pull back to make herself flinch. It was a mighty fine distraction, in her advanced opinion. She'd already finished checking and double checking the state of her pistol. Nothing else to do. So flick, and flick, and flick.

But the fortune teller, she'd been a nasty one with that last question, oh, ho, and - flick, flick, flick - she just couldn't help but think of it. Intrusive thoughts and all. "What did your brother do to you?" Flick, flick, flick. "The night of your graduation?" Flick, flick, flick. It'd been like that the whole twenty-four hours that'd passed. The last word always lingered: graduation. She'd worn yellow. She hated yellow now, but loved it then. What happened? She knew. She knew why yellow was less like the sun and more like acidic bile.

Nora clutched her head in her hands and sighed roughly against her wrists. "My mind is fucking everywhere tonight. Can't I just...enjoy? Enjoy the train ride? There, Nora. Be quiet and listen."

But rock and roll, the shifting gears. Familiarity of sound. It felt like the subway train, this did, and Nora couldn't help that the rattling of the vehicle lulled her into something old. Say, ten years prior. The day before her graduation, with the cap, the gown, the hallelujah, the mazel tov. She sat on that train and felt like an adult, growing old and growing wise. She'd met an old man dying on that train. All skin and bones, rattling skeletally in tune with the speeding vessel. He'd been weak, that man, head lolled back and eyes lolled back and limbs lolled back, pressed sharply against the coldness of the seats. Nobody touched him but everyone looked at him.

Until Nora, young girl that she was (and not yet tainted by the curse of indifference), stepped over and shook him by the shoulder. The man's eyes were so big, then, and his chin was bladelike in how he shot forward. Nora'd shrieked, and the other passengers stood at the sound, but never took her by the arm. It was strange to touch a stranger, and she ought to have known that. But the man saw her sudden fear, and he gave a real tight smile, and nodded. "Never let your fear decide your fate." And then he fell back and continued on dying like before.

The memory put a stiffness in Nora's back, in her shoulders, in the entirety of her being, egged on by the constant flick, flick, flick of the black fabric. It's nothing. "It's nothing. Chugga chugga." She inhaled. "Choo choo."

There wasn't even any need to worry, the more she thought of it - everybody would die anyways, eventually.

When the train met its last stop, they - the remaining six and then some - packed into two helicopters, rented out and meant to take them to the base of the Empire (what the fortune teller(s) told a more successful client). It wasn't meant to be impossible to find, and it wasn't meant to appear criminal. It blended in, but far from the city, and the whirring of their blades above nearly missed the building - dark as the sky was - when they came to it. So easy to overlook.

As they slowed and the wind lashed blue hair into her face, Nora got strange urges, urges she typically didn't feel so strongly in her gut. Like calling Aiyana and finally making sure everything was okay. Like seeing if Nancy from next door wanted a cigarette or if the man with the flowers wanted to deck those lousy kids by now. Like answering the fortune teller's last question, direct and genuine. "Gah," she muttered, squeezing the bridge of her nose. "Gah, gah, gah." Flick, flick, flick.