anna.is

The door opened and Hope's frightful expression changed to a joyous one when she saw David: "Oh.. David", she said and threw herself in his arms, "I'm so glad to see you're all right, I was afraid you were hurt" but then she pushed away and her eyes widened with shock: "What happened to your face?"

"Oh.. eh.. ", David stuttered. He wasn't all that keen on telling Hope how Rink had beat him up for no reason and that he himself had done nothing to stop him. As it turned out, Rink wasn't all that keen on her knowing this either.

"He fell..", Rink said, "down the hatch!" He gave David a tiny nod to indicate he was all out of ideas.

"Yes... yes! I fell.. because... a Virate... was chasing me", David said hesitantly.

As he approached the main deck he heard it. They did scream - the Virates. Their screams were even worse in real life than in the horror movies he'd seen - high pitched and ghoulish. Sent chills down his spine. The screams of the officers were not any less disturbing. Crap. Crap.

"This is so cool", the young officer said enthusiastically, "what's it like up there? - Isn't it awesome?" He didn't give David time to reply: "Is everybody up there like - super smart?"

"Hardly", David heard Rink say from a nearby table, "If those two are so smart - how did they end up in here?" he laughed.

"It was an honest mistake and has nothing to do with intellect", David replied resentfully. He couldn't figure out why Rink disliked him so much but it was starting to annoy the hell out of him.

The young officer went on: "I hear they get electric storms there all the time, do they really?"

Rink walked over to David and brushed the young officer off.

"I find it very interesting all the same", he stated provocatively and loud enough for everyone to hear, "I was under the impression we had cells up there that actually knew what the hell they were doing," he leaned in towards David and whispered in a threatening tone, "guess I was wrong." He pulled up a chair, sat down and turned towards the young officer: "Go get two drinks for me and this amazing intellectual over here".

"No David," she said, "worse. Broken. Maybe it's just broken beyond repair." she looked away.

"No, no. No it isn't", David said quickly, "I don't think it's broken beyond repair - I've never said that."

David was lying. In fact, he had used these exact words to describe the universe countless of times in his conversations with Ed. But David knew there was no way Hope could know that.

All right. They would go and have a look in the Remembrance warehouse - find nothing, go home and everything would go back to normal. Well.. hopefully not everything.. but.. almost.

As the minutes passed, David began to feel drowsy but fought hard to keep his eyes open. In the end sleep got the better of him and he sat there with his head leaning towards Hope - fast asleep.

David got a rude awakening when a loud disturbing noise ripped through the air as the vehicle crashed violently into something and sent him flying right across the vPOd along with the other passengers. The brightest light David had ever seen flooded the vPOd forcing his eyes shut but only for a moment since it dimmed rapidly. Almost instantly the vPOd filled with bacbarians, armed to the teeth, attacking and executing the unarmed red collar carriers before his eyes. David's left foot was caught in something, pinning him down. There was panic all around. The vein had obviously erupted and he watched the carriers closest to the rupture fall to their death, the bacbarians viciously slaughtering the remaining ones but all David could think of was; where is Hope?