Cindy
*sigh* ud know this if u read the silmarillion...
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- Feb 28, 2018
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11:07 PM, COMBINE CENTRALIZED TIME
SECTOR 338-C
THE TRANS-ATLANTIC RAILWAY
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Greta's finger drums idly against the side of the wine glass as scenes beyond the threshold of the VIP car trade with one another. The shallow remains of the red wine in the glass sloshes with each bump along the tracks, and her eyes trace its dance back and forth, to and fro. On occasion, another train would pass them by as it headed back to America, and she would, if only momentarily, raise her gaze to meet the passing flashes of lights from the opposite railcar windows. She couldn't help but feel another drop of guilt splash into an ever-growing puddle in her gut, knowing just exactly what awaits the poor souls barreling at 200 kilometers per hour in that direction: A kind of hell only special privilege could narrowly escape. And Greta's gray, pinstripe three-piece suit adorned with a golden claw pin affixed to her coat's lapel, illustrated an individual who had been spared the worst of the occupation. On the contrary, she aided in its process.
On other occasions, she turns her head around to aim an eye out the window just behind her. Watching the slopes of the emerged sea floor, littered with dead sea life and recently migrated scavengers who, in lieu of their natural habitats being overwhelmed with predatory xenofauna, have taken to the newly evaporated pockets of ocean in search of food. Wolves, coyotes, birds, even bears. Were the circumstances less overcome with dreadful implication, Greta might find a bear scrounging for food in the Atlantic rather amusing as an ironic contrast to a fish out of water. But it all it did was make the hollow, gaunt expression glaring back at her through the window's reflection all the more difficult to ignore. To make eye contact with herself after all she has done in favor of the new world would disturb her greatly. The only fish out of water, it seems, was her.
Flustered, Greta overturns her wrist, uncovering her timepiece. 11:43. The duration of her journey to the capital was beginning to wear her thin with fatigue and drawn-out lengths of seemingly identical naked seabeds was not helping. Liminal spaces, idle hands, forced Greta to slow down and acknowledge her surroundings, something she could not morally stomach. But as the night begins to drag out further, weighing her role in the regime of North America was all her mind could dwell upon. Like depriving her brain of oxygen in portioned increments, dread began to swallow her, the echoes of a once god-fearing woman threatening a reckoning. She remains idle in her seat in the railcar, yet her heart races. She—
Click. Chthunk.
The backdoor to the railcar opens. Greta's consciousness rips to the surface as if she were a fish with her lip pierced by reality's hook, emerging from the shallows as the sound of the train ripping through the barren Atlantic filled the cabin. Confusion is the first to greet her to the waking world, jolting out of reflex and causing what remained of the red wine to splash her coat. Agitation was the second to greet her as she attempts to rub out the stain from her fine attire. The third to greet her was a man, dressed not unlike herself. His suit reads of someone who also relished in the privilege he was afforded, yet his visage: wilted skin, sharp features and discolored eyes, imparted a discomforting sensation. Her mouth opens to dispatch a question, but her new arrival is first to introduce himself.
"Pardon my intrusion, Ms. Withnail," the man spoke, his voice having been wrung out and deprived of vigor. "I hope you don't mind me joining you in your car."
The tone of his entrance, contrary to his words, did not indicate any courtesy nor consideration for whether he was allowed to join Greta. She did not get this far without reading between the lines. Rather than dismiss him or play along with the bit, Greta chooses to bypass any potential for unnecessary wordplay.
"...Who are you?"
"An associate," he snips, offering his rejoinder as he sat opposite of Greta. "In truth, I'm little different than you are."
"And that is?"
The newcomer grins. "Why, a pretty marionette to exact the earthly will of our orchestrators, of course."
Greta's nose flinches. Unnecessary wordplay was still on the menu. Characteristic of a bureaucrat. The specific nature of this one, however, eludes her. She continues to fixate on him as he seats himself, offput by minuscule details that decorate him from head to toe. He props up a leg over the other, grasping his shin with thin, almost skeletal fingers.
"You've had an interesting part to play in all this," he gestures broadly with a slow wave of his hand. "Not a particularly visible one, but influential all the same. In the final analysis, you've held the program in America together more than anyone else. That much alone is worthy of congratulation."
The feeling of her gut sinking rips through Greta. As if a reflex out of sheer psychological agony, she does little else but repeat her initial question in a shrewd, nearly hostile manner.
"Who are you?"
"Who decides that the rations to the outlying sectors are cut as a result of supply shortages?" he answers, leaning forward to sharpen his posture. "Who decides whether the Combine succeed in snuffing out all retaliation to their machinations? Who decides who, or what, swallows this world whole? Who decided how this would begin? Who decides how this will end?"
Greta pauses in mildly overwhelmed contemplation. She chews on her words.
"I... I don't know."
"...Ah. You see," he extends a lone finger towards her, adjusting in his seat to return to a more comfortable position. "I'm with them. Who I am specifically, whether in isolation to that fact or not, matters little in the grand scheme of things."
Discomfort settles around Greta as his answer to each question seemed to only provide further questions. Her eyes attempt to distance themselves from him, only to notice that what she thought was the coming of nightfall was in fact an abyss that had, in the moments she had briefly spoken with the man, encompassed everything past the railcar. The train continues to run, yet everything beyond the threshold of the cabin fell into nowhere and nothing. Her first grasp towards reason and rationality finds herself looking into the now emptied wine glass that had dangled between her fingertips. The question of what could have possibly been placed into her drink begins to bounce throughout her head. She could not have had that much to drink.
"Naturally, that is in stark contrast to your position," he began again, flexing his fingers together over his knee. "Your presence in the west has had a profound impact on a variety of different agendas squabbling to make the most of the chaos. To leave that behind you is... well. Curious is as good a word as any."
"If you know so much, then you'd know very well why anyone in their right mind would want to get away from that."
"Maybe. But find it difficult to believe you're simply running away from the portal storms, Ms. Withnail. The rift at Black Mesa may be getting larger, and certainly poses considerable threat to the region and its inhabitants, but I don't see that in particular as a character motive for your transfer to City 17. I think it's more than storms you're running from."
Greta doesn't treat him with a response. She doesn't need to confirm his suspicions for him, and he doesn't need to spell it out to her. Being an instrument to a genocidal alien occupation has a way of revealing its own skeletons, and she knew that. It was easy for her to simply pass it off as playing along for survival, but her contributions in the interest of her continued well-being spoke for itself. The orders to sterilize entire cities was signed in her name.
"Allow me to be forward with you, Ms. Withnail: I cannot allow you to arrive at City 17 no more than I can allow you to resign from your role in the west. It's a little late for backing out now, don't you think?"
Her eyes lock with his. Her frustration with this entity of a 'man' begins to boil over her own guilt.
"I'd sooner die," she states. The response is met with some manner of frown.
"All to escape that which you have already done? You cannot convince me that you can run from that, nor can you convince yourself. No, that is an unacceptable answer I'm afraid."
"Tough shit. I'm not going back."
The wicked grin that begins to shape upon the stranger's face sends a cold shiver through Greta, as if her words had curled the monkey's paw. He clasps his hands together and leans forward yet again.
"Perhaps not. Perhaps..." he ponders briefly, before his eyes shift back to Greta with a startling glow. "Perhaps you can provide an equal if not greater contribution... from the opposite side of the fence."
The implication of that statement alone washes through Greta's mind like a fierce typhoon, engulfing what little reality remained within the cabin of the railcar. Then, briefly, she feels the train quiet. Its perpetual jostling, the chugging of its trek across the Atlantic, falls silent. Darkness briefly clutches Greta before a waking sensation waxes over her, like the moments preceding a swimmer breaching the surface of a pool. Instinct sees Greta snap awake to free herself from the grip of this man, this thing.
And awake, she does.
2:35 AM, COMBINE CENTRALIZED TIME
SECTOR 124
CITY 743, RELOCATION TERMINAL 4
The blinding light of the sun pierces through the railcar window. Greta raises her hand to shield its rays from her eyes and, curiously, catches a glimpse of blue on her collar. Her fine attire had given way to a common citizen's jumpsuit, and as she lowers her hand, she comes to find the entire railcar has changed. The cabin is packed full of other citizens, each of which in varying states of sleep and fatigue as the train begins to slow down. The grinding stirs much of the citizens from their slumber, each one of them attempting to navigate through the sardine tin that was the cabin as they rose to their feet. The drastic juxtaposition continues to sink in as Greta searches the cabin for any manner of plausible explanation, so much so that she doesn't notice her grip onto a suitcase wedged between her feet as she comes to a stand.
The sound of metrocops chattering beyond the threshold of the railcar rattle the ears as the train comes to a complete stop. The subtly chilled autumn air seeps into the cabin as the doors open, the first citizen out met with a scanner flashing the group as a whole. The rumble of Breen's broadcasted mandates mutter just beyond earshot of the train. Greta moves along with the crowd, and combs the station for a sense of her surroundings only to recognize that she had been to this station before, in a private terminal for administrative personnel. This was far from City 17, far from the promise of escape. Fate, it seems, has made great use of its sense of irony, and tossed Greta back into the belly of the beast once more.
Greta overturns her wrist to fine an aged, rustic timepiece and squints to make out the time through a cracked glass, as though knowledge of the time would do her any good anymore. Everything she knew and leaned on ripped from beneath her, leaving her in the very world she helped sculpt. Uncertain of what the future held, Greta takes in a deep breath and presses forward into the crowd of blue and dissipates into the masses...
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