Checkmate

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

 

“How do you keep the Genetics away from the tracks?”  My curious voice is abrupt in the overall silence, aside from the furious snarl of the train rumbling along and the ferocious whirl of gears. 

My periphery detects Nathiel looking up from his letters, turning his eyes to the pellucid window of my focus.  A paragon of a man, Nathiel holds royal dignity from his seating.  Even the swift movement of his head lifting maintains a certain grace.  The relaxed position of his legs tense, betraying his intention to stand before the Prince moves from his padded chair.  The thud of his soles against the metal flooring is recorded by my ears, the breath of his lungs sensed by the skin along my nape.  Over his dark skin flies the blemishing light, dappling his face with the passing shadows and shafts of the sun's dance over the plain.

“What do you mean?” Nathiel questions, eyes trained on the blur of pacifying colors outside of the window.  One of his hands flies down to rest on my own hands where they sit lifelessly in my lap.  The other arm is used to prop himself up against the window.  Light flickers over his collarbones, haloing his  pupils in gold and orange.

A shrug rolls my shoulders blades.  I scrutinize the situation, eyeing the walls of Nathiel’s train car.  “This machine is absurdly loud.  When you arrived, I heard you coming from miles away.  Genetics are attracted to sound.  This place should be a feeding frenzy, and yet, I haven’t seen one.”

“Ah.”  His smile is wry, and his dark eyes curious.  “You seem to have an impressive allot of information regarding the Genetics.”

Once more I shrug.  The train rolls over an unsteady rail, throwing me into Nathiel.  The wild bucking does not seem to faze him.  “It’s my job to know about Genetics,” I explain sagaciously, brushing a strand of hair from my eyes.  It tucks behind my ear, kept from hindering my gaze any more.  

Nathiel nods, but the dearth of comprehension in his eyes reveals his true lost mind.  “Well, there’s an electric fence running parallel to the train” – he lifts a hand, panning it over the horizon to illustrate his words – “that shocks anything that comes near.  In case there’s a breach and something slips through, there’s a backup line running closer to the tracks.  When we run through another of the old crops, you should be able to see it, against the horizon.  If anything gets past that… well, we’ll find out sooner or later.”

“Sounds like a trustworthy system.”  The venomous edge to my sarcasm causes me to flinch; the Prince requires a prop to walk alongside him at social gatherings, not a girl with a tongue. 

However, Nathiel does not seem fazed by this.  The sybarite’s eyes, focused on the forested valley beyond the tracks, are clouded by his personal thoughts, as though his mind is far from this lonely train car. 

The silence blankets the air in muggy awkwardness.  My eyes trail the cabin lazily in the moment of speechlessness, grazing the relatively empty room.  All the furniture is lush and padded, the wood polished and gleaming as dark as a panther’s pupil.  Yellow lights line the nooks where the ceiling brushes the walls, their glow put to shame by the gold of the sunlight.  His bed is a mess of sheets, tousled together like a nest.  The outlines of where each of us had lain, side by side, is still imprinted in the bed’s disarray. 

On a normal day with the sour scent of manure in the air and the sweltering sun kissing my forehead, silence would’ve been comforting.  Silence means that all is well, all is calm, all is peaceful for one more day.  Silence means that the predators cannot find you, human or not.  Silence means stealth.  Silence means But in this car, with the growl of the train as it prowls steadfastly over the tracks, the silence seems as though it is awaiting my response.