Chapter 17
1414 Words
I had made good progress on Carmichael’s memoirs. My reading was interrupted by the emergence of a red armchair in the hallway. A woman was pushing it, and the operation seemed complex as she wasn’t tall and lacked strength. She passed her hand over her sweaty forehead as soon as she managed to put it in the precise place she had chosen, just in front of my cell. Her red hair was in a plunging bob, and her blue eyes narrowed with the smile she gave me. She wore a floral dress under a beige cardigan. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her gaze then drifted towards my cell neighbour, and, turning towards me, she opened her eyes wide, letting me know that she wasn’t insensitive to his charm. He had stopped his exercise session to observe the young woman with suspicion. She went to the right side of the glass wall and switched on the microphone before sitting on the red wing chair she had brought.
“Hi!” she called out to me in a high-pitched voice.
“Uh... Hi,” I replied, still unable to recover from this strange appearance.
“My name is Pia Petersen. I’ve come to keep you company.”
I got up and went to meet her, close to the window. A cheerful dimple lit her features. Her freckled cheeks flushed under the intensity of my inspection. I found her pretty. I had noticed a slight Nordic accent, but her English was impeccable. Who was she?
“What do you want from me?” I asked suspiciously.
“Connor asked me to come to see you, at least if you agreed.”
“What purpose?”
“To pass the time, I guess.”
Her eyes roamed the interior of my cell. She crossed her freckled legs and then let out a sigh.
“You must be annoyed here.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing, except that we talk. Connor knows he put you in an awkward position, and everyone here thinks he should have done it differently.”
“Everyone?”
“The castes here on the surface,” she said as if it were obvious.
“On the surface?”
“Yeah, Connor asked them if he could keep you here. They accepted! They’re so angry with your mother and the king. But they won’t try anything. Don’t worry. They have no right to approach you.”
“But why?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you that, but our boss doesn’t like them at all.”
“Your boss? But he allows you. Why?”
“Because I’m the daughter of one of his closest friends. He trusts me like he trusts my mother.”
“And your mother, where is she?”
“In England, for the time being. She’s British, and my father is Danish.”
I fetched the chair from the desk and pulled it up to the bulletproof glass facing her. I sat down, responding to her smile. The young woman attracted my sympathy despite all the mistrust I put in this exchange. The effects of loneliness made me appreciate her, not because she seemed friendly, but because I sought social contact. So, whatever the consequences, I decided to be nice to Pia, curious to know more about her and why she was there.
“I study at the University of Greenwich,” she continued, “and my classes resume soon.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly disappointed.
“But I’ll come on weekends to see you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. My boyfriend isn’t going to be thrilled, but I don’t give a damn. He’ll follow me here.”
I let out a little laugh. Her disarming frankness was refreshing and so welcome in these surreal circumstances.
Her gaze fell on the stranger in the cell opposite.
She jumped up and went to the glass wall of his cell. She flipped a switch.
“Someone forgot to turn off his intercom!” she sighed.
“So what can it matter?”
“He mustn’t hear what we say to each other.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know, but it’s an order from Connor.”
“Perhaps you could make an exception. Poor guy hasn’t spoken to anyone since I’ve been here.”
“I know. It’s not that I don’t want to. But I can’t. We’re being watched.”
“Watched?”
“There are cameras everywhere.”
“You know a lot.”
“My mother designed the system.”
“It’s a shame,” I whispered, looking back at my bunker companion, “I would have liked to hear his voice.”
“Me too,” she sighed. “It must be frustrating to see him every day without being able to talk to him. I don’t understand Connor’s motives, but one thing is certain, if you and this guy are locked up here, you must be very powerful.”
“It seems so. But I’ve only been training so far. I never really used my powers.”
A hiss made me understand that the gas, blocking my telekinetic abilities and power, escaped from the ceiling. It was 12:01 p.m., the usual time.
“And I’m not about to use them,” I said, raising a finger to the ceiling.
“They thought of everything. Isabelle.”
“You can call me Izzy.”
“Oh, okay. Izzy, I’m so sorry about what happened to you. I didn’t expect this. My mother briefed me, but I wasn’t prepared for it. I only know it’s temporary. Connor loves you very much.”
“He has a funny way of showing it.”
“Listen,” she said, bringing her face closer to the window, “all I can tell you is that many people want him to take the king’s place. Many of them encourage it. My mother tried to reason with him, but he is constantly pushed by the others.”
“Who?”
“Those who don’t like the king and queen.”
“But why? What did they do?”
“I can’t tell you. But the others have serious grievances against them and push Connor to take their place. It’s no secret that he has ambition. And if you ask me, immortality drives castes with this power crazy.”
“Carmichael and Prisca are different.”
“I’m not sure everyone sees it that way. But, it must be great to read his memoirs, a real dive into history!”
A noise on the floor told me that my meal tray was coming.
“Well, I have to go. I’ll let you eat, but I’ll be back tomorrow at the same time. Does that work?”
“Yes, it works!”
She left a painful silence behind her. However, my mood had changed, I felt lighter, and this conversation had done me good. The man in front of me was sitting on the bed, his head in his hands. His situation wasn’t about to improve, and the thought saddened me. It pained me to see him in this state, so I gestured to get his attention. He looked up. I gave him a smile that I hoped was comforting. I realized how much this stranger fascinated me. Every second spent looking at him I tried to guess the sound of his voice, his story, and what he liked or hated. I had pictured him as a character in a novel. Because not knowing anything about him left me with the possibility of imagining everything and filled my loneliness. He seemed so unreal to me that I couldn’t go a minute without looking at him, and only Carmichael’s journals could keep me from feeling the urge to stare at him constantly. Did he feel the same for me? I had no idea, but the more the days passed, the more I felt connected to him, and this connection seemed to grow more solid and unchanging as time passed. For a brief moment, I imagined him ripped from me, and the pain coursing through my insides told me that I never wanted to be separated from him.
I had gone mad in this place. Because what sane person could feel such an extreme attachment to a simple stranger?
However, the sequence of events revealed to me that he was far from being a simple stranger.
- Writer
