Mission Abort

Please note that this is the second part of the Mission Log series and therefore retreads some familiar ground from the previous installment. Originally, these were posted in two seperate stories but since AFF.net does not allow series creation and for convenience I'll be posting the entire series in one place. 

You wake in a chair.

There is screaming.

Lots and lots of screaming.

It doesn’t stop.

It never stops.

*

“Longing. Rusted. Sixteen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”

*

You wake in a chair.

Your hands, they’re shaking.

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

“…sted. Sixteen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”

*

You wake in a chair.

Your body, it’s burning.

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

“ – teen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”

*

You wake in a chair.

Your head, it’s aching.  

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

“…break. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”

*

You wake in a chair.

Your heart is racing. Your skin is clammy. Your mouth tastes of – blood and rust and hot metal – and your head feels – it feels –

The screaming doesn’t stop.

*

“…coming. Seven. Build.”

*

You wake in a chair.

You hear a voice. It says – it says –

*

“…Build.”

*

The screaming –

It stops.

*

A man in a uniform walks around you. Inspects you. Tells you slowly, purposefully: “Longing. Rusted. Sixteen. Engine. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Homecoming. Seven. Build.”

You look up at him as he closes a book. It’s slightly battered, the edges of the pages are worn, and the cover is smudged and cracked and there is a large fading black star on the front. He looks at you, says: “Good morning, Mechanic.”

You blink, open your mouth, and say in perfect gravelly submission: “Ready to comply.”

The man in uniform nods, a perfunctory move that he seems to have done a hundred times before. He says, “We have something we wish for you to build.”

He holds out a folder with a small stack of papers inside. Blueprints, you think. Various blueprints, some half-finished.

You take them. You stand. You wait.

The man in uniform’s nods again.

He says, “get to work.”

So you do.

*

The room they put you in is not large and is not small.

It is simple and efficient, with gray concrete walls and floors. There is a bed in one corner and a chair and drafting table in the other. All three are bolted to the floor, but you think of things like stress and strain and pressure points and something inside you coils up tight, like a venomous snake waiting for its prey to come close enough, and you –

Blink.

Once, then twice, because on the wall beside the bed, there is a row of jaggedly scratched in marks. You don’t bother to count them, though you think there might be at least seven or eight dozen of them. You wonder how they got there.

Wonder who put them there. Wonder –

You blink again. Hand lifting away from the wall where you’ve made another mark. Jagged and sharp, it sits in line with all the others; small and unobtrusive and unnoticeable unless you’re looking for them.

*

The work they give you is simple and then again not.

It is half-finished blueprints and decades old schematics and you hunch over them with a single-minded focus that feels – old – and then again new. Like you’ve been doing this forever and yet only started yesterday. Your thoughts and ideas sometimes stumbling and tripping over one another like overeager children all wanting your attention.

It is – satisfying. Doing this work. Satisfying and then again…

Terrifying.

Why, you’re not sure. You just know that it is both, all at the same time, and sometimes hesitate in your work. Draw it out even though you know it would only take a matter of moments to finish because somehow, all of this – it is satisfying, but also – wrong.

It is wrong.

You’re just not sure why.