Pest turned, revealing the silhouette of the figure behind him. A series of whoosh bombards Pest, but he holds his ground as he stares deeply into the abyss of red eyes contained by the creature. They radiate from the beast like LEDs through fog. Their glow is lifeless, almost mechanical. The eyes approached, but Pest could not tell where the creature began or ended. It was unnerving, so he focused on what he knew: the beast was approaching him quickly. However, his feet dismissed all his further commands. He tried moving them with his hands to no avail. Its eyes bobbed as it approached. There were only about ten or fifteen steps in between them. He had to hurry.
“What are you?” His voice cracked, yet it did not speak. Could it? It held no mouth, no tongue, no face. His breaths came quickly. He couldn’t hold back the fear. He needed to move. He had to. Yet, in desperation, his right foot steps forward toward the beast. It was the only direction they could carry. The eyes stopped for a moment out of curiosity. He closed his eyes momentarily and took a deep breath to still his ever-beating heart. When he opened it, he noticed the multiplication of the number of eyes on the beast, from two giant eyes to six small ones. It didn’t matter. As he charged forward toward the beast, he didn’t stop even as he passed through the beast. His feet wouldn’t let him. The beast surged into shadow as he barreled through it. He turned his head, trying to find the remnants of the monster he had so easily defeated, to no avail. There was nothing, not even a single glowing eye.
He ran until his legs hurt and continued running. The sensation was alarming to him, his adrenalin refusing to slow. He couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. He was exhausted and just wanted this nightmare to end.
* * *
As if on command, his head rose from the wooden desk. He grabbed the paper towels from the side of it, instinctively cleaning up the drool he had left behind. He felt his heart soon race from his chest. His breaths were shallow and brash. It took him a moment to return to his senses, acknowledging that he was home.
“Oh, how I’ve missed you, Tower.” He whispers aloud to the five- by seven-foot room. It was mainly unfurnished, minus the desk, the mirror, and the overhead light. Pest had always assumed that it was just an old, forgotten office. It lacked the camera the rest of the Tower held in each of its corridors.
He took some time to regain his composure, someone was sure to wonder where he was soon, and he couldn’t reveal his spot to anyone. He got up from the old wooden chair, amazed at how he could sleep so soundly on such an uncomfortable piece of furniture. However, he quickly dismissed it, instead walking towards the mirror before him. In clockwork, he pulls the brush from his inner jacket and straightens some of the curls that were crushed during his nap. He didn’t need a citation for non-conformity, after all. After a moment, he removed his tie and carefully readjusted it into a Windsor Knot. Once tightened, he smiled, revealing a row of glistening white teeth. It’s best to keep appearances up, after all.
Pest turns his head back towards the desk. His dreams and nightmares that had plagued him for most of his life were also his in isolation. None of the others in the Tower dreamed. None of them had been able to explain it. The people mentioned their void-filled blocks of time in their sleep. Pest had spent most of his life questioning why he was unique, to no avail. The only explanation offered was that all children born in the Tower were injected with a special enhancing liquid that promoted creativity and intelligence but stopped the production of dreams. The rich mahogany of the desk breaks his reverie just before a loud beeping comes from his wrist. As he brings his arm towards his face, it sparks to life. The blue background with a flashing red and white name Maedryn Maldova. He types in a small command and quickly moves to the door.
He had no choice but to follow the page from Lady Maldova, even if he would rather not. Lady Maldova was the closest thing that the tower contained to royalty. She made all the rules and regulations, however, it was also evident she was following orders given outside the Wastes. He never knew how far the messages came from, but he assumed that they have to have crossed Cryptis, the ocean adjacent to them.
Opening the door, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the bright artificial light that was beamed down using large industrial lights that produced more lumens than the small overhead could ever dream of. However, it didn’t take his eyes long to adjust, and he needed to make his way to the elevator. East, he noted to himself. The corridor felt long and didn’t help with the foreboding atmosphere. On his left were two exposed cubicles, offices separated from the hallway by a glass measuring no more than two inches thick. It was noted in the archives that this unique type of mono-synthetic glass was more than enough to withstand a cannonball at full force. However, he could help but add the addendum, ‘but only one.’ While it could spread the pressure out, a second one would have overpowered it so that the pressure would be too much and would barely defer the strength of the cannonball. Pest had noted that it had always been odd that such semantics were needed in language but was grateful for them.
He shook his thoughts away; he was too busy to get sidetracked. The elevator dinged as he approached it. Two bodies left the elevator dressed in full-suit attire. Their hair is both straight and ideally kept. They displayed like shining examples of textbook professional attire. He nodded to them, hoping to avoid interaction. It appeared successful as he entered the empty elevator and tapped the button indicating Floor Twelve. As he passed the sixth floor, he recalled to himself the tower structure: it was created in a way that allowed the floors to alternate between residential and commercial. However, the first floor mainly holds the agriculture that sustains the entire Tower.
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“So, what you do this time?” This voice spooked him momentarily, immediately regaining his composure.
“Nothing that I know of. Should I be worried?” He replied quickly. He knew who the voice was from. Trix, his best friend since childhood. The problem was that she wasn’t real, at least that is how it was explained to him. Despite numerous examinations on his psyche, which he passed flawlessly. Her blonde hair fell just past her shoulders in short waves. Her eyes as dark as Cryptis and her smile brighter than his own. His was forbidden to talk to her, but once he realized that they couldn’t enforce it he stopped caring.
The elevator hummed to life around them, as it ascended from its place Pest felt his stomach turn. Despite the continuous use, it always bothered him. Pest smiles, to hide it, then looks to Trix to see if she is going to respond to his question in return. She offers nothing. It was unclear if she blatantly ignored him, or just didn’t hear. He didn’t press. Instead, staying silent as the elevator rose.
“It’s big news, for sure.” It broke the silence, and when he looked up at her, she started to fade away. It was common for her departure and had never scared him. The comment, however, did raise his fears. What big news could she possibly want, and for him? Despite his rebellious attitude, he usually had good intentions. Usually. He took a deep breath, as the elevator dinged denoting that it just passed the tenth floor. It wasn’t much longer before a similar ding was followed by doors opening. As he stepped through the door, his palms began to sweat.
The hall was like the other residential floors, however, with one varying twist. There were two doors here. A double door on the left that displayed in golden letters MAEDRYN MALDOVA, Ladyship of TitanCorp Tower in Xenia. Pest always shivered when he passed, but never approached the subject the subject. He approached the door slowly, trying to calm his shaking hands. A deep breath calmed him as he knocked on the door, an “Enter” was called from inside the room. The circular knob turns with ease, the clicking of the pins echoing in his ears like gunshots. His eyes shot to the camera of the Hallway, he knew that she saw him and that sparked his rebellious nature. He flashed her a smile, and could see the steam coming from her ears as he pushed open the door.
“Sit, please, we have much to discuss,” Maedryn’s body language was composed, from the straightness of her shoulders to the tapping of her right hand on the desk. The room is simple: a huge window backdrop covered by the sands of the Bowl. He sometimes wondered about the architecture of the Tower. Mostly he wondered about why they had windows in a place like this, but he had more priorities for the time being. His eyes drift to the laptop then to the desk, watching the projection arrangement of documents into the air above her desk. She slides her hands through the air like an interface, and it responds fluidly. She closes her laptop at his approach, the projection faltering with it. His smile dropped yet he redirected his shock inwards. He was used to the scolding that he had gotten from her and had just started to begin to expect it. He notes its oddity but follows her command at face value. However, his eyes avoid hers for now. Instead taking in the various paintings around the room. Green meadows, Faun, animals of the forest. Something that Pest had longed to see for years. The APC, artificial projection chamber, was his closest substitution and it felt wrong. He knew it stood no chance against the real nature.
“Pestilence, pay attention. This is important, and here you are zoning out again, we—I need your focus.” He had to suppress a smile against the statement. The missing part of the arrangement was finally aloud. The ‘I’ had caught him off-guard as any statements given to her were given in the royal ‘we’, as if she only spoke the wishes of her employer. His face turned towards her, and she taps on her desk, revealing a screen of commands. Her fingers are fast, but given Pest’s technological ability, he keeps up. She presses ‘Blackout’ and then continues her speech. “Pest,” she drops the formality, “I’m risking so much more than you know telling you this. However, I couldn’t bear it if they were to hurt you. I thought we had more time—I thought you had more time. She slides up on the small projection on top of his desk, and a document slides up in from of Pest. ‘Project P.E.S.T’ churns his stomach, he felt his face drop multitudes of degrees.
“No…No!” Are the only words he musters before clicking it. A red box appears with the text, ‘invalid decryption code’. “You have to open it! I need to know what they’re going to do to me!”
“I can’t,” she shakes her head in defeat, “You don’t have the appropriate access level to view this type of file.” She holds a flash drive in her hand, a now archaic version of data transfer given the light-assisted data manipulation, then slides it into her desk. “I suggest you leave,” she says, after dragging the file from her desktop and into her private files once more.
“How can you call yourself my mother, if you can’t tell me what they want from me?!”
“To ask me that, you truly do not understand how much I have sacrificed for you. Now go!” Her final command has harshness behind it that she had never shown before. Pest’s vision began to get blurry, so he turned and wiped his eyes to clear them. A wetness lined his finger, that he didn’t bother to remove. He walked out of the room with all the dignity that he could muster, which was none. His breathing was shallow and irregular as he left the room, letting the door slam behind him. He sharply turned left, his vision blurred, letting instinct and muscle memory guide him to his room.