The Intruders

Chapter Twelve

"So, there has been more than one Intruder who is not extinct?" I ask Veronica at dinner. She hasn't changed out of her tight dress; yet is managing to spoon mash into her mouth at an impressive rate. She eats quickly, something my father would've slapped me for. Not eating like a lady would be a quick back hand to the face.

I shake that thought from my head. He's not that man anymore. He's the only parent I have left.

I have barely touched the meal on my plate. She swallows her food, sitting up and back, taking a break from the meal at hand. She looks at my plate. I grab the fork, shoving some mash into my mouth.

"Yes." She simply says, before returning to her meal.

"Yes?" I ask, "is that it?"

"What else do you want me to say?" She cuts the sausage on her plate.

"I don't know, explain more?" I say. "How? When? Where?"

"I don't know the how, José was walking through Saxet and was attacked, it happened," she breathes out, "years ago, I had just come into power. There was an uncertainty in Saxet during that time."

Veronica came into power when I was eight years old, I think. I don't remember this uncertainty that she talks about, I don't even know what happened to her father Dorian. I wonder if he is still alive, and where in this massive building he is hiding. I know R says that his sister killed his mother, but he's never said anything about his father.

"That's the story, my father didn't tell me much about Intruders, all I knew was what I learnt in school." She says. I can't imagine Veronica going to school. I can however imagine her getting top marks, being top of the list, a proper kiss arse.

"What happened to your father?" I ask her. She raises an eyebrow. "Why did he step down?"

"Because I was ready to step up." She replies, quickly. Like she's hiding something. I see the portrait of him on the wall in the corridor; he is celebrated, but I never have seen Dorian Blanchard for as long as I lived.

"Why was there uncertainty in Saxet?" I ask her.

"Do you not remember?" She asks. I shake my head; I almost catch a smile from her. "The Resistance has always been run by men. My father, and his father and his father and his father and his father, when it was all created. Blanchard men have sat in the seat of the Leader and its always been accepted. But Ronan was too young to step up, and my father had a daughter first. By birth right, it was mine." She sips her glass of wine. Screw the one glass of red on your birthday rule. "People were unsure of the havoc that would be caused by a woman stepping up, but I think, I did a pretty good job. I shook this city up, started nailing down on these Survivors-"

I cough loudly. She ignores it.

"And now I'm celebrated. And until the day I die I will be sat on that chair."

"What happens when you just don't die? And people start questioning why you're living forever?" I ask her.

She laughs. "Eternal youth my darling,"

"You won't be youthful though, you'll be a wrinkly old lady, who somehow has just celebrated her one-hundredth and twenty-seventh birthday." I comment.

"I will cross that bridge, when I come to it." She comments, climbing to her feet, and placing her plate on the counter.

She struts off back towards her office.

"I'll be working if you need me." She says, and the dining room door slams closed.

I finish what I want of my dinner and place my plate on top of Veronica's full one. There is no bin to scrape my leftovers into, and I don't know who gets rid of the plates but they're gone in the morning.