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Equilibrium Fan Fiction
by Calico
Pater
Primus
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(This story
will be completed in a series of installments)
Prologue 1 | 2
Prologue - Part 2
A
small boy of about six years old sat on his bed, hands folded in his
lap, staring at the plain wall across from him. It had been just over
24 hours since he’d seen the woman dragged off by the Tetragrammaton.
She had been arrested for Sense Crime, and he knew with perfect logic
that it was for the best.
Sixth months ago
he’d started attending classes at the Monastery as a novitiate, to
follow in the footsteps of his father, who was generally considered to
be the most exceptional Cleric the Tetragrammaton had seen in a decade.
His instructors often spoke of the speed and accuracy of his father’s
final Kata lesson with as much reverence as was allowed by law.
The boy was well
aware of the dangers presented to a society that reveled in its
emotions. He could recite the long list of devastating wars that had
almost wiped humans off the face of the planet. And he had spent the
last five and a half years taking the dose as he had been taught,
without question, to maintain Father’s utopia, as all obedient Librians
must.
Then why now did
the injection unit sit on his bedside table untouched since last night?
A small figure
appeared in the doorway. She stared blankly at him, and Robbie was
acutely aware of the how wrong things were. It still seemed logical, but, maybe…maybe
logic wasn’t always the answer. His intuition – the very ability prized
in a good Cleric – wasn’t just whispering to him; it was screaming in
his ear and it sounded a lot like the woman’s voice. His mother’s.
“Come here,” he
told his sister. Obediently she walked over and hauled herself onto the
bed next to him. Lisa was small for her age and lacked the ability – or
the desire – to speak.
He’d overheard
discussions – calm and quiet, of course – between his parents debating
whether she was substandard. The Tetragrammaton had little use for
those that couldn’t pull their own weight. Robbie imagined that if she
hadn’t shown signs of improvement by her fifth birthday she would have
been taken away. Inexplicably, the thought caused a sharp contraction
in his chest and he frowned.
“Did you take your
interval this morning?” he asked her.
Her eyes flicked
to the left and she nodded briefly.
He glanced to his
own unused unit and he reached out and pulled it to him. Popping the
cover he showed her the intact vials. Lisa’s eyes widened.
Licking his lips,
Robbie said, “I’ve been thinking.” He drew a finger lightly down the
black case. It surprised him to realize how cold it was. “I think…I
think it might not be the best thing for us. I…” Robbie wasn’t sure
exactly what he was trying to say, or to whom he was trying to say it.
Surely his mute three-year-old sister wasn’t the best sounding board,
but he wasn’t going to do this without her, either, and logically she
should have a chance to decide on her own. “You may not realize it now,
but I’m not sure this is helping us…maybe all of Libria?” Confusion was
flustering him. This couldn’t be right, it would get him killed.
Lisa tugged at his
arm and glanced at the doorway. Shaking his head, he said
automatically, “He didn’t know about Viviana, did he?” She still looked
vaguely unsettled. Robbie regarded her for a moment and began to wonder
if her dose had never been properly adjusted, or if…. “Lisa, are you
feeling already?” he whispered into her ear.
After a moment’s
hesitation she shrugged. “Did Viviana know?” he asked. She shrugged
again and gnawed on her thumb. “It’s all right,” he told her. “I won’t
hurt you.”
She began to kick
her heels against the bed, making a soft, uneven rhythm while her tiny
hands twisted together in front of her face. Finally, he heard a
muffled voice say, “Frère
Jacques.”
“What?” he said in
surprise.
She turned to look
at him and he noticed just how wide her eyes were. Barely whispering
she started to sing, voice cracking intermittently:
“Frère Jacques
Frère Jacques
Dormez-vous?
Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines
Sonnez les matines
Ding, ding, dong
Ding, ding, dong”
As her soft voice
trailed off, Robbie couldn’t contain the look of surprise on his face.
Several questions jammed themselves into his brain at once. “You can
speak? What did that mean? Where did you learn it?”
Her mouth twisted
a bit and then she replied quietly, “It’s a song momma taught me to
help me talk.”
“Why haven’t you
spoken before?” She simply shrugged again. “But you would talk to
Viv…Mother?” She nodded shyly and picked at the hem of her dress.
Robbie sighed and
fell quiet, lost in his confused thoughts - so much was going on around
him he didn't understand. Absently he reached up and scratched his
head. He became absorbed in the feeling of the hair sliding between his
finger and the trail of his fingertips across his scalp. Then he
dropped his hand and ran it over the rough bed cover, feeling the
course fabric beneath his palm until it tingled. Even the dim grayness
of their room grabbed his attention for a moment.
“Okay. I don’t
know how we’re going to do this,” he told Lisa; she reached over and
clutched his hand between hers. They were surprisingly warm. “But we’ll
do it together, right?”
“Right,” she
whispered. And then, “Do you know when she’s going to be home?”
“I…don’t know,”
Robbie answered reluctantly, unable to reveal the truth to her.
They sat for a
while in silence until the sound of the front door opening made them
both jump.
“Careful,” Robbie
growled as much to himself as his sister. “You should get to bed,” he
told her.
With a nod, she
slid off the bed and walked over to her own and after a few moments her
soft breathing told him she had drifted off, completely unfettered by
the anxiety that was plaguing him. In the meantime he heard sounds
coming from the kitchen, the tapping of things being placed on the
table.
Robbie pushed
himself off the bed and walked quietly into the kitchen. John was
sitting at the table, guns spread out before him. One had been
completely stripped down and he was beginning to clean and oil it.
Almost instantly John’s eyes looked towards the darkened doorway.
“Want to help?” he
asked as he purposefully wiped the barrel. He had changed from the
Cleric uniform and sat in a plain dark t-shirt, hair slightly mussed.
According to John
it was never too early for a future Cleric to learn proper weapons
maintenance, and one of Robbie’s earliest memories was of listening to
his father’s instruction.
Robbie quietly
slipped into the chair next to his father’s and picked up the second
black pistol. It was heavy and cold in his hands. With a deft flick of
a thumb, he pressed the release and the slide popped loose. Out of the
corner of his eye he watched John for any signs of…what? Regret?
Suspicion?
“John?” he asked,
suppressing any hesitation.
“Yes?”
“Do you think it
would be possible if I could speak with Viviana?”
John’s hands
paused. “Why?”
Heart fluttering
in his chest, Robbie managed to say, “I thought it would be good
research into the mind of a Sense Offender. Docent Sommers tells us
never to miss an opportunity to learn about the enemy.” He could feel
sweat dripping down his back. John would know. He had to know. It was
his job to know.
After a terrifying
moment of thought, John nodded his head and resumed cleaning.
“Excellent idea. However there’s no time. The incineration is scheduled
for tomorrow.”
“Oh.” The air
suddenly froze around Robbie and he could only clench his jaw and force
his hands to continue working.
“I interviewed her
today,” John told him as he gently pushed a small wire brush into the
barrel. There was a loud clatter as the other gun slipped from Robbie’s
hands. John looked at him sharply. “Be careful with that.”
“Yes, sir,” Robbie
muttered as he silently wondered how – or why – John was able to
interrogate a prisoner considering it was a duty reserved for First
Class Clerics.
As if reading his
mind, John said, “The Council thought since she was obviously
sympathetic towards me she might be more willing to give up
information.”
Robbie shuddered
at the callous voice.
“Unfortunately,”
John continued, “she was uncooperative.” He turned to look directly at
Robbie. “Did you ever see her speaking to anyone suspicious? Visitors?
Phone calls?”
He concentrated on
the weapon in his hands, the smell of the gun oil, the smooth coolness
of the metal. Even as the words left his father’s mouth a face was
pushed forward from his memories. His recall was perfect, even if it
was only a brief moment in time. Viviana saying almost too loudly, “I’m
sorry, Cleric Partridge, he’s already left for the office.”
“No, sir,” he said
impassively. “I didn’t notice anything.”
John stared at him
a moment, and then with fluid, confident movements reassembled the gun
and pushed a clip home. “I hear you’re going to have your first Kata
lesson tomorrow.”
“Yes, we are,”
Robbie replied slightly nonplussed as he finished with the gun in his
hand. “In the afternoon.”
John nodded, stood
up, and gathered the guns together. “I think I’ll stop by
after…the…combustion,” he started with the barest hint of hesitation.
“I want to make sure the docents are giving your class the proper
instruction. If you start out with a lazy Kata, it could cost you your
life.”
“Yes, sir,” Robbie
said with a dry mouth.
John paused at the
doorway and they locked eyes. Stay calm, Robbie thought. Stay calm and
stay alive. But just as he was certain his father was going to raise
one of the guns towards him, John said, “Good night.”
To Be Continued
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