Heartglass

By: Joshua Gardynik (falcon)

Chapter 2 - A Different World

 Pain. The taste of blood. The sound of a gun's safety being switched off.

“We're going to try this again. Where's the Heartglass?”

Where am I? Did I get caught? He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn't respond. He felt detached, although his other senses seemed to be working just fine. The cold floor pressed against his left side.

The blast from an energy rifle echoed through the room he was in. Intense pain lanced up his right leg, and he howled out in pain. My voice... what's happened? He moved to grasp his leg, but only succeeded in making the restraints around his wrists dig into his skin more. The pain was miniscule compared to the throbbing in his leg.

“Are you going to answer, Roethe, or do we have to keep doing this?” Roethe? Awareness crept in. The Delve. I'm inside it. This must be....

Another shot rang out, and his left leg felt like an inferno. He could do nothing to shield himself from the pain. I have to get out. Now. He focused his thoughts, mentally picturing himself out of the Delve, as if waking up from a dream. .

Nothing happened. His vision wavered, and then collapsed as waves of agony shot through his mind. He said they tortured him for months.

“I don't have any 'glass,” Roethe moaned. He had opened his eyes, and James saw his interrogators for the first time. The speaker, a human woman, wore a white lab coat. It had streaks of pink Aerendai blood spattered against it. Beside her stood a fully armored guard, his gun trained on Roethe. James guessed he was male, but could not tell what species.

“Shoot him again.” The woman looked over at the guard. “Somewhere more painful this time.” James watched as the guard toggled a switch on the side of his rifle before aiming it at Roethe again. Roethe closed his eyes and James lost his sight.

James had never felt anything so excruciating. The nerve pulse hit the right side of Roethe's chest. Waves of agony spread out from there as nerves sent mistaken signals back to the brain. Roethe, however, remained silent. James tried to focus through the pain, puzzling how someone could remain silent.

A trance. He took himself into the Heartglass. That cheap bastard. And he was stuck here, to experience everything Roethe never had. He wished the knife he'd stabbed Roethe with had been dull.

An idea crept into his head. If he couldn't get out, maybe he could go deeper. Follow Roethe. Surely he had gone to a more peaceful memory.

“Listen to me, Roethe. You're going to forget what sunlight looks like if you don't give me something. I need to know where the Heartglass is, that's all.”

James concentrated on where he was in the Heartglass, and on Roethe's thoughts. The images he picked up pushed him toward another memory.

“For Ada's sake, just give us the location!” The woman screamed as she lost her composure. James spared an internal smile—talking to someone who wouldn't answer you was very irritating. “I give up. Do as you please to him. Just don't kill him.”

“My pleasure,” the guard responded. James heard the door open and slam shut. He calmed his thoughts as best he could and moved with the push toward the other memory. He heard the trigger click....

The light of the midday sun washed across his skin. Mine? No, still Roethe. So much for their empty threats of no sun. Roethe was walking up a flight of stairs—carved from deep green colored rock—heading to the entrance of the building that towered overhead. James studied the building. Eight stories, he counted, the entire structure a mass of shaped bluish-gray crystal. Dimly he could make out shapes moving on every floor. He marveled at the architectural impossibility in front of him. Huge symbols affixed to the side of the building were unrecognizable, but Roethe's memory filled in their meaning. The Consulate building. Several other people, all Aerendai, walked purposefully to and from the building.

A wisp of sand to his left distracted him, and he instinctively turned to focus on it before realizing that he shouldn't be able to. Heartglass was only able to give you a picture of what its holder could see. Roethe continued to move toward the door while James carefully tracked a small slip of paper caught up in the gust as it blew farther behind him. Odd, was all that came to his head.

The interior of the building caught James off-guard again. The crystalline walls were much easier to see through from inside. The floors and ceilings themselves, however, were completely opaque. Giant pillars, situated throughout the main lobby, flooded the room with a soft light. James could only guess that the building collected the light from the roof and directed it through the pillars, but how it managed to do so was beyond him. A strange purple ivy crept up some of the pillars, their leaves casting odd shadows on the walls.

Roethe walked past the receptionist desk without hesitating. The woman at the desk greeted him cordially. He nodded in response, continuing toward a lift. James studied the receptionist, taking curious note of her red-orange hair, elaborately plaited and strung with crystal beads. It was an odd contrast to the gray skin of the Aerendai. The vividness of this memory, the fact that he could see individual wisps of her hair that had escaped their tight braids, astonished him. Never before had a piece of Heartglass been so clear to him.

Roethe stepped off the lift on the fifth floor. Why would someone who knows his way around the Aerendai Consulate be trapped and tortured on a backwater mining prison? A dull alarm cut through the quiet halls of the building, alerting James. He gazed around for the reason, but every Aerendai in the hall—a pair talked quietly to themselves, another sat patiently in a chair outside an office, a fourth passed Roethe—seemed cool and collected. Even Roethe didn't alter his pace any.

Realization dawned on James. The prison alarm. Since he hadn't put himself in a trance, he was more aware of external events, and for good reason. He knew he had to get out, and quickly. If any of the guards caught him with the Heartglass, the next torture chamber he lay in would be his own.

He ignored the environment, focusing this time on the alarm. It was real, so it would give him a better chance. He listened to the rhythmic buzzing, letting it pull him back to his cell.

His eyes opened, focusing on the crystal in his hand. More trouble than you're worth. Hiding it in his work clothes would have to do for now; obviously he couldn't get it surgically implanted into him, and any place in his cell could be searched at any time. His person could be, too, but generally the guards only checked if you set off one of the metal detectors near the mine entrances. James stood and slid his new knife back inside his boot. It too would have to be better hidden, later. At least you gave me something useful, old man.

A few prisoners were already shuffling past his cell door, which he guessed had opened itself when the alarm went off. The harsh shadows cast by a dark red light pulsing in time with the alarm bothered his eyes. He rubbed them vigorously as he shambled after the group of people. He wasn't too worried about anyone having seen him with the Heartglass; everyone else looked about as conscious as he was right now.

Two guards waved them single-file into the main commons area, confirming each person via a small personal screen. It was the first piece of real technology besides the guards' laser rifles he'd seen in this backward mine. He knew for a fact that their mining equipment was all several generations obsolete, but then again, having robots do the prisoners' work wouldn't be very much punishment. They joined a quickly growing crowd of prisoners, most just as sleepy-eyed as he. Only the third shift crew were wide awake, likely pleased that they got a small break from the day's labor.

Once all of the prisoners were accounted for, the alarm shut off. A few whispers amongst the group persisted until a sharp clang sounded from above. All heads turned to gaze up at a catwalk, where a man rapped his cane against the steel floor again.

“Now, listen up. I have no patience being awakened in the dead of night, and even less to deal with people who go missing. So let me make this quick: where is Roethe Marishonar?”

The prisoners immediately started talking amongst themselves again. James heard worried remarks from some questioning why someone would kill an old Aerendai, and more people wondered what this would mean to the way things were down here. He ignored them, instead gazing at the warden. He hadn't seen him when he'd been incarcerated, but he could tell just by his stance, his hard-set jaw, and the way his eyes scanned across the crowd below him, full of contempt, that he was used to controlling people. He got his way, or someone got hurt.

“Quiet!” he yelled out, grasping the catwalk railing to lean out over it. Everyone went silent, save for him. “I let you enjoy certain freedoms down here because you work hard, and you obey. I can just as easily take them away. Tell me where Roethe is, now.” The guards, as if on queue, trained their guns on the prisoners, many of whom shied away instinctively. James was jostled by several people as they huddled closer.

James considered his options. It wasn't fair of them to suffer for the old man's stupidity. James could just say Roethe had killed himself in the cave. It was pretty much the truth. Maybe I shouldn't have thrown the body in the river, then. Then again, drowning would be the easiest way to die down here.

“I killed 'im.” The prisoners all stepped away from Gorilla, suddenly afraid of him. James narrowed his eyes. Why in the world...?

“Where?”

“Cave with river. Near mine zone.”

“Why?”

Gorilla seemed to tense up a bit. “'ick of 'im bothing me around.”

The warden's eyes hardened. “Guards!” He signaled to them to open fire just as another man standing on the catwalk quickly moved over to whisper in his ear. “Wait,” the warden said, turning to converse quietly with the other man. The crowd continued to push away from Gorilla; James followed suit. He had no intention of becoming collateral damage.

“Seems the foreman here thinks you're worth more than Roethe was. You can go sit by yourself while I figure out what to do with you. Isolation.” Four guards surrounded Gorilla while another placed restraints on his hands and feet. He made no move to resist. Instead, he looked to be at peace. James could not comprehend why, and watched him as he was paraded out at gunpoint.

“As for the rest of you, get back to your posts. Too much of this shift has already been wasted.” The warden turned about and left; two guards up top trailed him. James immediately headed back toward his cell. He had too many things to think about and a gut feeling that he had no time to think about them.

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