This drabble's prompt is from EBB with 'peace, then pandemonium', giving us a return to the city of shadows and the life of another of its inhabitants. Enjoy!
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In a Blink:
It was amazing how fast your world could change, Maya thought. Only a few months ago, she’d been at an outdoor theater for a horror movie marathon with Rafael and then... then she wasn’t. She still had nightmares about that moment, more of them than anything else in this place.
It had been what she’d thought was a nearly perfect moment. The cool summer night around them, the movies on the screen ahead, Rafe’s arm around her and her head on his shoulders and then... then it came and with it, the screaming and the chaos. The dreams didn’t always end the way things had happened in reality, with blind pandemonium flashing to blackness and then waking up in the cells with all the rest.
Most of the time that was how the dreams did end, but they were fluid enough to incorporate all the horrors she’d witnessed her in the City. Sometimes they ended with her losing track of Rafe in the crowd again, but this time she fell or was knocked down, getting trampled by blindly fleeing moviegoers. She couldn’t stand, couldn’t rise, pinned under the bodies, her ribs breaking, spine fracturing as the weight piled on and on, like she was being stomped to death by an enraged animal.
Sometimes just as it arrived, she’d turn to Rafe, just like she had when it first happened to ask him what was going on, only to see him start to dissolve, like the Master had done to Lewkins. Rafe was big into sports; that was the only reason she’d known who the man was. Sometimes, alighting upon the screen were Watchers that swept down on them. Maya had lost track of how many outcomes unfurled in her recurring nightmare, but one thing was always the same. Just before the end, she’d realize that she was dreaming. In the moment before she was knocked to the ground, in the instant before everything went black and she was on the ship, in the seconds before the Watchers descended on her with knives and claws unsheathed...
People said that when you knew were you were dreaming, that was when you were able to take control of the dream. You could change how things played out, but that had never worked. She became a passenger in her own body, knowing what was about to happen, helpless to stop it and knowing that when she woke up, she would be here and Rafael would be gone.
The slaves were quartered in large barracks; some were segregated by sex, others weren’t. Maya’s was. She slept on the middle bunk of a three-level bed surrounded by several dozen other women. She was always one of the last to fall asleep; there’d be snoring from the other beds, whimpers and the sounds of crying from others. The occasionally creek and scuff as a sleeper got out of bed to use the head. The slow, steady footsteps of the guards making their patrols through the barracks. Occasionally those footsteps would pause. There’d be the click of a button and a soft white glow would shine through the bunks as the guard stopped to investigate whatever had caught his or her attention.
This time, the footsteps passed by Maya’s bunk without stopping, reaching the head at the end of the room and going inside to check for anyone hiding in the stalls or showers. A few moments later, the footsteps came back out, moving towards the doors at this end of the barracks. A soft beep of an accepted authorization code, then the swoosh of the doors opening and closing, and the guard was gone for now.
Some of the tension left Maya and she settled into her mattress. Tess was above her; an older woman about twice Maya’s size, she was one of the cooks. Below Maya was Giselle; she’d been taken at the outdoor theater too. She’d just turned eighteen, and she and her friends had been going out to celebrate graduation. She was on Kepper’s crew, same as Maya.
Maya kept her head down these days. She did what she was told and never talked back. She’d flinch whenever Kepper, the crew boss, walked by. She hated him, but she was even more afraid of him. He ran a tight ship, with a sixth sense for what his slaves were doing and thinking. At first, she’d thought he was just a thuggish brute, but underestimating him had cost her Rafael.
Some of the other slaves, those that worked on other crews, told her and the other newcomers that they were lucky. Kepper usually handled the new slaves, the ‘cattle’ who needed to be broken in, and he was fair-minded. Maya didn’t know about that. One of the first things she’d seen the slave boss do was cut out a man’s tongue.
And he’d killed Rafael. Or at least, he’d let him run – let both of them run – knowing full well that Rafe wasn’t going to come back. I tried to tell you, he said as he pushed Maya into the box as she’d screamed, spat and cursed at him. You don’t get to play games with me.
Kepper had been right, too; she and the rest of the new slaves hadn’t really understood where they were, or the rules of their new home. She and Rafael had been going to escape. They’d thought they could get away and get somewhere safe. She now knew that was pointless, but at the time anything other than slavery had seemed better.
She watched those things, the ‘Watchers’ take her fiance apart piece by piece. They’d eaten him, digging into his body like he was an animal. That vision and the last look in his eyes before they’d killed him had tortured her more than the two days she’d spent in a hot box. One for setting up that guard for Rafe to shiv and the other for costing the crew a worker with Rafe. That guard survived. He wasn’t friendly any more. Maya, like the rest of the ‘cattle’, understood the rules now and she didn’t make waves.
The Masters had things they needed slaves to do. She didn’t know why anyone who could do the things the Masters could do needed slaves, but she didn’t question it. Most of the slaves like Maya, were kept in the pens and barracks, brought out for whatever work needed to be done that the strange aliens didn’t or couldn’t deign to do themselves. If you had useful technical skills, you were usually sorted out during processing or picked out from the pens. Maya had been making friends with another girl, Anna. She had electrical expertise and had been selected for other tasks.
Maya wished she could do something like that, but she was also afraid of getting noticed again. Kepper had his eye on her and that other guard had it in for her now. Even worse, there was the chance that one of the Masters might find her interesting. She’d only been here a few months, but she’d learned that that was rarely what you wanted. She’d been told by the other slaves that Kepper had been elevated by the Masters for his ruthlessness, but a lot of the time, if you caught their eye, they just took you. She didn’t know what happened then. No one did, but it couldn’t be anything good.
She’d seen one of people come back. A woman, just about Maya’s age. Maya hadn’t known her well. She’d been on the on another crew, but the Masters saw something intriguing in her, something they’d missed during processing. She’d been taken away. A week ago, Maya saw her again in the pens, only she wasn’t wearing a slave’s tunic. She’d been dressed in the uniform of the Masters’ elite household guards, the highest rank a human could attain. She’d been there on some business of the Masters. None of her former companions had approached her. The consequences for starting trouble with the slave pen guards could be severe enough. Household guards were something else, and one of the Masters’ elite was another thing entirely. You didn’t approach the Masters unless they summoned you. You didn’t speak to them, you didn’t do anything but what they said, and that went for those they’d elevated like the former slave, too.
More than that, though... there’d been something off about the woman. Something that made Maya’s skin crawl, like she wasn’t looking at another human, but something pretending to be a human... or something that had had all trace of humanity, all trace of its soul, removed. Whatever happened to those the Masters took, Maya didn’t want to find out, and she didn’t want to give the crew boss or any of the other guards a reason to notice her again.
Rafe was gone. She was alone. All she could do was try and survive. Maybe she would. Maybe, just like had happened to her once, her world would change again in the blink of an eye.
Wouldn’t that be something?
Her heavy eyes closing at last, Maya slipped from wakefulness and into sleep. Tonight, at least, would be dreamless. That was something too, another small victory in life on Horrak-Sarn.