Blood Obsidian

Issue 40

A brief sense of respite ... - Part 4

It was her third time visiting the Bastion satellite and Principle's words still struck her. It never got old. She could look down at the Earth below and feel nothing but wonder and a sense of her own insignificance. Not that she felt insignificant, the Earth was plenty big enough to fill her life. Even New Hastings had more than enough within it still to discover. And she was far from insignificant to Aunt Mary.

The sense, then, was perhaps not of insignificance, but of how much greater the world was, the universe. Whatever it was that filled her with awe, she felt it every time she came here. Drone's drone had escorted her from the transporter platform, through the maze-like corridors, down elevators, along further corridors until the drone deposited her outside a room that did not look at all like a medical facility.

Here, she found Kyle, moving around in a motorised wheelchair, organising yet more of Drone's drones as they moved some equipment. It looked, for all it was worth, like a warehouse on Earth, with a wide, open space and things that looked like crates along the walls. She felt certain she could hear growling from at least one of those crates.

"Hey, Dewey? Dewey! Lift it up, man. No, the other side. No. The other side!" Kyle flapped his uninjured arm toward one of the drones. "Look, Huey? Help Dewey with that. Louie, I need you to get the projector."

"Having movie night?" That twisted in her gut. She was supposed to have gone to the movies with Rayna. Though now she knew she had misunderstood the girl's intentions. "And do you think Drone will be happy you're naming his robots?"

"What'll he do? Break my leg?" He rapped his knuckles on the cast on his leg. She could tell he couldn't wait to get back on his feet. "No. Well, kind of a movie. Not really a movie. More of a presentation. First, this ..."

He clicked his fingers, sitting back in the wheelchair and looking forward with a look of expectation. He shuffled his shoulders against the back of the chair, linked his fingers, resting them on his chest and shuffled again, trying to look over his shoulder.

"Impressive. You know, I never was one for these arty movies." She found a set of boxes around the correct height and sat upon them, trying to hide the grin on her face as Kyle whipped his head one way and then the other. "Is it French? Their disdain for everything coming out by making a movie without actually making a movie?"

"Ha ha. No. Dewey? Dewey! When I click my fingers like this ..." He clicked his fingers again, several times to make a point. "It means start the presentation. I swear, you'll be demoted. Do you want to be Curly? Larry? Moe? No? Well do your damned job!"

The lights within the large warehouse-type room switched off, leaving them all in complete darkness for several seconds before one incredibly bright light came on in a flash, causing Caitlyn to blink until her eyes adjusted. Then she saw what Kyle had created and, she had to admit, it looked extremely impressive. And she didn't even use that word sarcastically. This time.

All around her, she saw a very familiar scene. So familiar it had burned into her memory. A scene she would never, ever forget. Kyle had pulled together footage from so many different sources, he had managed to recreate an almost perfect, three-dimensional representation of the very last moments of her fight with AlleyGator.

She saw herself, taking note of the fact the suit really did smooth out any sign of her gender. No-one could look at her, in that mostly black, partly red suit that looked like armour and think she was male or female. It did make her look taller, though. Which she appreciated. What she needed to see was not herself, though, but AlleyGator. Or, at least, the man that the monster reverted to. As Kyle showed the footage over-and-over, she saw his lips moving, as Kyle had said, but she couldn't confirm what Kyle thought he had said.