The City Of Death

Chapter Ten- Macy

I have to admit, the tent looks a lot bigger on the inside than it does on the outside. And somehow, at the same time, it seems so much smaller. It's a strange juxtaposition, both sides of the coin caused by the same thing. The tent is a hodge-podge of random supplies in every corner, but yet there's an intricate organization to the whole thing. What that organization system is, I'm not sure, but it must make sense to Gemma. With her lack of vision, everything has to have its place or she'd never find anything in here.

She's sitting on the ground of the tent with small pins in her mouth, lining up two pieces of fabric very carefully. She ran her fingers along the line carefully, the corners of her lips quirking up when she was satisfied. She pulled a single pin out of her mouth and carefully placed it into the fabric, securing them together. Without hesitation, she went right back to lining the fabric up carefully. I wait until she pulls her hands away to speak so as to not mess up her careful process.

"Gemma?" She jumps slightly, her eyes taking a moment to settle on me. She smiles as best as she can and tries to speak, but nothing intelligible comes out. There's no way for her to properly speak with the tight grip her lips have on the pins. She feels around on the ground until her fingers find a small bag, and she carefully spits the pins into it, placing it right back where she found it.

"Hey! Macy, right?" she asks, and I nod. I catch myself and start to verbally confirm, but she beats me to the punch. "How was the tour with Atlas?"

"Eye-opening," I answer. It's not a lie. It did show me just how difficult my mission is going to be. Not because I don't think I can get Atlas to open up. That'll be the easy part. The hard part is going to be determining fact from fiction. How much of Atlas, and the Renegades, is real? How much is just an act? But yet, that begs an even bigger, and more uncomfortable, question. What if it's not an act? What would that mean? The Cardinals would never lie to me, but is it possible they were mistaken? So far, everything I've seen out here is the opposite of what they told me. "What are you working on?"

"Ah, little Rosalie is growing up fast. She needs a new dress before she outgrows the old one," Gemma answers, picking up the piece she was working on and gently setting it to the side. "But right now, you are more important. Let's get you set up, shall we?"

"Yeah, let's do it," I respond, walking over to her and sitting on the ground beside her. "Where do we start?"

"Well, I see you brought some stuff with you. Do you mind if I see what you have so I'll know what you still need?" she asks, and my eyebrow raises when she says the word "see".

"Can you see what I have?" I wonder, and she looks over at me with a glare. Well, okay, I wasn't ready for that. Every interaction I've had with Gemma, however few of them there were, she was all smiles. A bubbly personality, through and through. So seeing this dark look on her face is unsettling. Especially when I look at her eyes. They're still unfocused, yes, but this close to her, I can finally see their color. They're so dark that they're almost black, and there's something swimming in them that unnerves me, something I can't place.

"Don't," she warns. "Don't do that."

"Okay, I'm sorry," I apologize, my hands thrown up in surrender.

"I get that from everyone else around here. I don't need it from you. I'm not blind. I can still see, just not very well, okay?" she says, and I nod. And just like the flick of a switch, that smile is back on her face, and she's once again bubbly. "Besides, you haven't been here nearly long enough to be giving me shit."

"Oh? How long do I have to be here before I can start giving people shit?" I ask, and Gemma's eyes glitter with mischief.

"About two weeks," she answers. "But when those two weeks are up, you come to me, and I'll give you the best lesson on how to give people shit."