Page 38 of The Souls Harvest
“War.”
I open my mouth and close it, finding myself wordless.
How did we get from a video shared among students to war?
I can’t take my eyes off Popplewish, as if no one else is in here with us.
She reciprocates my questioning look before pushing against thetable to stand up and heading to the other end of the room. Her movements are fluid, almost staged. The way she meets the eyes of the other professors, the brief pause she takes to look back at me before sliding her fingers up the wall. “I’d like to show you something. Sometimes images are better than words.”
I hear the click of a switch, and the light begins to drip off the ceiling, like wax down a candle, before being sucked in by the floor.
When my eyes adjust, and the darkness makes space for a more subtle luminescence, I hear a rolling sound as a white screen unfolds behind Popplewish.
She folds her hands over her lap. “There is someone I’d like you to meet.”
Chapter 19 - Fair Exchange
July
February 12th - Sector 43 - 6.30 AM
§ Subject 0-Version 25 §
While the meaningless words flash on the screen, chairs move to face the white panel, accompanied by muffled comments that quickly fade into utter silence.
Pictures start rolling on the white fabric sheet, showing a woman giving birth with a man kneeling at her bedside. When I blink, the scene is gone, replaced by a reverse countdown from zero to five. The chubby face of a young boy pops up after the number five has flashed twice; tears mark his cheeks.
I look down, following the child's gaze to the cause of his pain—the broken toy resting in his little hands.
The scene starts shrinking into a black dot until it completely covers the sad face, and the number six appears in the middle.
A couple. Their pale features, like treetops in the mist, stare at the boy while he stands under a kitchen door frame. It’s hard to tell if his shoulders are shaking or if we are disturbing the fabric panel with our breath.
Is he scared?
Eight. This is not a countdown, but the boy’s age.
There’s an envelope on the kitchen table, and the woman from the previous picture is holding a cheque—big money, judging by the glass falling from her open hand towards the floor, already splattered with milk.
The woman’s eyes are wide, but what calls to me are her lips, tight, stretched against her teeth, trying to hold back a smile.
Then something else distracts me. Dark red letters are watermarked on the back of the cheque, the same as on Roden’s ring—RB.
I blink faster, hoping to speed up to the end because I can’t bear the pain slithering through those pictures. I don’t even know the child’s name, but he makes me feel uncomfortable, as if his pain projects off the pictures onto me.
The screen twitches, and the picture turns into a video of a room with walls covered in posters of galaxies and winged creatures. The little boy is asleep, one arm resting over his head. Whoever is recording him zooms in, and I press my back against my chair as if preparing for the drop of a roller coaster.
He moves in his sleep and turns over.
I reckon he is now a teenager. I squint and lean over to look closer at his face, the shape of his jaw shadowed by a young beard. His light brown hair is ruffled against the pillow. Underneath the lids, his eyes are moving fast, left and right. They’re not entirely shut, and a hint of light green, between the double line of darklashes, captures my attention.
“He’s having a nightmare,” I say between my teeth, but nobody seems to be paying attention to me. I clench my fingers into fists when a slight wince flashes across his face. We both hold our breaths momentarily, separated by many miles and years.
“Not again, please.” The boy jolts upright and screams; his face is pale and covered in sweat. As pale as I fear mine has suddenly become, the moment his eyes pierce the screen and meet mine. The hair on my arms stands up…
I shake my head…I must have imagined it.The echo of his pain lingers in the room, but nobody seems to care except for me. I quickly look around, and every face I meet is relaxed as if they’ve all watched this before.
The young man and his room fade to a black flashing dot on the screen, and light begins to spread all around me, forcing me to face the Chapter and its lies once again.
