shiver (FEATURED) | ✓

o37

vance

I'VE BEEN NEGLECTING my medicine. I sit at the glass dining table of my apartment, three out of the five pills still in hand. They were supposed to last me for ten days, but it's been more than that. I pick up one of the azure, triangular tablets and run my index across the notch down the middle of it, letting out a sigh as I notice my hands are shaking. I shake the pills back into the little bag they'd come in, and without thinking twice, I toss them into the bin. I can't do it anymore. Every night, I dream about them, the two of them, and every dream always ends in the same way. I see their faces staring up at me, underneath my feet, underneath the blue, blue, paper-thin ice. They're always so close, but I can never reach them.

And every time, I wake up with a bead of sweat trickling down my temple. I can't do this anymore.

I don't want to forget them. Not ever.

The sweat dampens my collar and makes the hairs on my nape stand up as the cool breeze from outside passes over it. My hands are clammy as I swipe my pass against the door of the Governmental Bureau to get to work. I won't be able to say anything anymore: it's too risky. I'll be there to be used, simply, I know it, and there's nowhere I can go. I have no refuge.

I have only enemies, and only one friend, but I will not risk asking Adamík for help. He trusts in the Government too much, and yet he is my friend, and a dear one at that.

The Council Room feels alien as I walk in and sit down at my seat, setting my whip down on the table and setting it to the correct format to take notes on today's session. Jonathan sits nearly opposite me, now in the President's chair. There's no doubt this is pleasing him, this new change. He's getting old, but technologies have kept him looking young, too young to be my father, healthier-looking than he might truly be. It's all a facade, but with my father, it was never about what other people thought about him.

It was always a grapple for power. I remember it, still how he loathed being beaten in chess or being beaten in anything at all, how he enjoyed turning small comments into large arguments that he would then, with a degree of certainty, always win.

He ruled me when I was a child.

And now, he rules the most powerful city in the world. The Red Hand don't stand a chance against him, and surely they know so. But why should I care about them? I don't know them.

In the span of a morning, the new President has ordered the instalment of fifty thousand new security cameras. Three hundred more drones will be made equipped with even faster and more accurate flight patterns and with larger transmission capabilities, to get multiple streams of information to the Bureaus in Tetrahmon as quickly as possible. The President is watching. He is watching everything, omnisciently. He's everywhere, and not even I can escape him.

Displayed across every building facade is the projection of the 'wanted' notice, with a warning that the passing will be the punishment for anyone who withholds any information from us. From Jonathan. He believes that fear is the most true and effective weapon one can use to make others comply. But that is not a president's philosophy, it is a tyrant's. The drone of the speakers that issue out daily warnings, tasks, and announcements for the citizens of Tetrahmon to respect and get to wander up to the council room, loud enough to cause an irritating noise at the back of my mind. I can't focus. It's unusual, of course: people in the high council are trained to be focused, direct, but today, everything is more disconnected than it has ever been. Come on, Vance. Focus. You didn't get a seat at this table just because you're his son. That would have been laughable.

Nothing he says in the afternoon meeting aligns itself much with my own, internal philosophy, but I must contain myself. The needs of Tetrahmon are far more important than mine, and if he is to be the best President the Bureau has been able to choose, then so be it. Nothing can be done about it now.

Julie or Tetrahmon, I think, over and over and over. Julie or Tetrahmon. I think. I can hold it up without my pills. Now that dreaming as a concept in itself does not strike me as so odd nor does it come across=s as something to be so scared about anymore, I don't need to worry about going mad. I won't go mad. And everything has become easier to conceal.

Only a slight exhilaration crosses me every time I look out of the window and see the projection of Evanna's face, above the list of the crimes she's committed. I admit, it's slight, but her timely escape from prison was something I had been hoping for. The projections portray her as a monstrosity. They're right, I won't deny it. She once held a gun to my head, I remember that. Vividly. But perhaps monstrosities are needed to overcome a larger evil.

At least, now, the Red Hand will have another chance.

What am I thinking? I can't side with them, not only because of my position and because of my loyalty to Tetrahmon, but because I don't want to have to fear for my life. I don't see Jonathan as my father, and I don't think he would lift a finger to save me should I oppose him, even privately, son or not. The last visit I had to the scientific bureau was to approve the next stage of one of their projects, a micro-camera designed to analyse eye movement to formulate an accurate depiction of what a person is thinking about, for detection of hostile thoughts.

Naturally, such technology, no matter how advanced, in my opinion, is far from flawless: the twitch of an eye may be involuntary, or the result of a sudden epiphany. And for someone to be prosecuted for such things... But this is Tetrahmon's technology, and so it is faultless, it is quintessential, it is an epitome of mankind in the development of a sublime world.

I leave the office late, right after our last meeting, and when I step outside, the dark blue light of street lamps, it seems that the sun has, indeed, set in the west.

that beautiful fanart banner up there was made by the lovely CaroDelMonte! thank you so much, it's gorgeous!