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Requiem for a Life

Posted April 17, 2021, 11:49 a.m. by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) (Lindsay B)

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Requiem for a Life

(snip)

Her gaze flicked upwards and Kodell saw the depth of angry, fury really, present. “Everything is not alright! This might be some game to you, but it’s not to me.” She fully expected him to hit her but she jutted out her chin ever so slightly in defiance. Let him hit her, she didn’t care anymore. it was like a switch had gone off inside and whatever game was afoot was of no interest to her.

Kodell’s green eyes stared deeply at her- uncomfortably so. He reached out and almost hesitated as two fingers barely touched the side of her chin, not quite a caress but something similarly tender. “I’m not playing any games. But you’re right, and… I’m sorry.”

Faye stood there shocked into stillness and silence. Kodell simply turned and headed back down the stairs but said as he went, “The bookcases are in a public space and therefore anyone is allowed to borrow the books.” And then he was gone.

She looked down at the book of verse in her hand and then back at the stairs. Here was a man who lived in ostentatious luxury and owned sentient beings. it made her want to vomit! And yet there was more to him then it seemed, and much to her chagrin Faye Calloway was intrigued.

Life fell into a strange sort of rhythm. And as they worked diligently, Kodell expanded her and Cam’s access to the manor and the grounds. She found herself working about half the time in the kitchen with Linella, a Trill woman in her forties who apparently had once been a mercenary, got herself into trouble and “found” herself in Kodell’s household. Faye could imagine numerous scenarios that had allowed that to happen. Linella was a quirky woman with a good sense of humour though and she seemed to take a motherly sort of watch over her and Cam. No one had said anything that she knew of but still gossip seemed to float through the manor and Faye was certain Linella knew they had been the children of Maquis and had an inkling of the circumstances that landed the teens here.

Faye had had no further interactions with Kodell, but at least once a week she found a new book sitting on her bed. It had to have been his doing, nothing else made sense. And Faye took to reading (or attempting to) with fervour. After two months here, her mind had grown tired of the mundane routines of the house and it craved new things. Kodell had unexpectedly become a source of that newness. He seemed to understand something about her and as they had interacted so little it was a surprising detail. She wasn’t sure what she had expected but Kodell being intuitive about and sensitive to others had not been high on her list of options.

As for Cameron, things had become strained between them. She understood it, even if it hurt. He was fighting his existence here and Faye had accepted it for the time being. It was simply a survival method for them both. And though they had grown up together and he was her best friend, any sort of teenage romance between them had evaporated since they fled Tracken. They weren’t quite in it on their own, but they were no longer in it together either.

As the three month mark hit, Cam slipped into her room after they had been dismissed for the night. A bag was slung over his shoulder. “Come on, let’s go. If we go now we can escape the property perimeter before they notice.”

Faye got up off her bed, setting the latest book she was reading on her side table. “Escape?” she exclaimed in a whisper. “Are you insane? They’ll kill you!”

Cam shook his head. “Better than living here.”

“You don’t mean that,” Faye said, her eyes blurring.

“I do.” Cam stepped closer and took her hand. “We can go and get away from here. Start our lives somewhere else. Be whomever we want to be. But we don’t have a lot of time.”

Faye stood there, mouth open. He really meant to escape! Despite the warnings, despite the intense and well hidden security around the property. Faye had only an inkling of it but she knew it was advanced and difficult to bypass. “We’ll be killed. And what then? I promised my father, Cam! I can’t keep that promise if I’m dead.”

He took her in and shook his head again. “Wow. I knew he had some sort of weird hold on you, but I didn’t think it was this bad,” Cameron said sadly.

Faye grimaced. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” he muttered and began to turn away.

Faye reached out and pulled him back towards her. “No. Tell me what you meant.”

Cam exhaled with frustration and stepped around her towards the table. Picking up the book, he shook it in her face. “This! This, Faye! You don’t even see it, do you? He owns you. You are his property! Get with the program Faye! He’s wormed his way into your good graces but he cares nothing about you. And you are letting him for reasons I can’t fathom.”

“That’s not how it is,” she said flatly, her anger slowly growing.

“Bullsh**.” He tossed the book on the bed. “We didn’t survive what happened on Tracken just to rot in this gilded prison. Come with me!”

Tears slipped down her face. He didn’t get it. She knew too much. She knew how futile an escape attempt was and that even trying would be a death sentence. She didn’t want to die. Faye went to say something but found herself without words.

“Come with me. I won’t ask again,” Cam said, his own eyes welling with tears.

She watched him and suddenly it was like she was standing beside herself watching the exchange. Bizarre. She heard herself speak, “I can’t.”

Cam closed the distance and kissed her cheek. “Goodbye, Faye.”

And then he was gone.

A few seconds later Faye seemed to get a grip of reality and she dashed out of her room into the dim corridor. She went off in one direction knowing it was the most likely way he’d try to go. There were only so many quiet ways out of the manor.

Later, Faye would not be able to recall the exact details. Which was strange given her encyclopedic mind. But she remembered shouting. She remembered a scream and at one point she was knelt beside Cam, who was prone on the ground with an ugly charred mark across his chest from a disruptor. There were no tears. Just emptiness and that strange out of body experience returned. It was like floating. There were words, people. Someone must have picked her up at one point, but Faye wasn’t actively aware of any of it.

{To be continued…}

~Faye Calloway


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