Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [32]
She knew how to follow orders now. Oh yes. She was an expert at doing exactly as she was told. All of her senses were finely tuned to detecting what her captors required of her. To do whatever was necessary to avoid another beating.
One of her captors was walking towards her now and she stepped away from the wall she was working at before it reached her. When she had first started to work in the chamber, her captors had physically pushed her away from the ancient machinery to inform her that her work shift was at an end. Now they only had to take a few steps in her direction and Kitzinger would abandon whatever she was working on. Head bowed, eyes averted; ever the obedient slave.
She hated herself. No, she hated what she had become. They had made her into something less than a person. Something pitiful and ugly.
She carefully packed away her tools and shuffled quietly across the huge white chamber to the pressurized quarters which were tucked away in the corner of the room. The reflective metal structure was little more than a foil-covered box, ten metres square.
Her captors did not use respirators or pressurized environments. They appeared to require less oxygen than she or Aric did. It occurred to her that they might not be flesh and blood at all but some kind of human-shaped machine.
She could see her fellow prisoner now. Aric had stepped out from behind one of the giant shell-shaped Blooms where he had been working. The young man was slightly bent over and kept his arms tightly at his sides, as if he were trying to make himself smaller. Perhaps trying to make himself so small that he might disappear altogether.
They stepped into the airlock of the small cabin together and stood in silence as the cubicle slowly pressurized. Aric peeled off his respirator and chucked it carelessly into the locker. She managed to stop herself from berating him for not looking after his equipment – but not before she had ruefully noted that she had started to give the young man instructions just as their captors gave them to her.
It was as if oppression was a contagious disease. Maybe it was. She certainly felt infected by it.
Corrupted. On her homeworld, Ursu, it was widely believed that free people had by nature an instinct, an incentive, which always encouraged them towards virtuous acts. Well Kitzinger was no longer free and her imprisonment was a cancer eating into the cells of her body. Changing them.
Changing her. Permanently.
The inner door hissed and opened slightly – the magnet lock was automatically released when the pressure in the airlock equalized with the interior of the little metal hut. Aric caught her eye and smiled, a little uncertainly, before pushing his way inside.
They had not been getting on at all well recently. She knew that she had been taking out her feelings of frustration and helplessness on him. And now he was having to negotiate her moods just as she had to negotiate their captors’ violence. He was having to placate her.
Aric began to prepare what little food they had. Their captors hadn’t brought them food for several weeks now and there was enough for only two more meals, three if they reduced their rations again.
She watched Aric for a few moments as he carefully, sorrowfully, divided up the food. He was a thin, good-looking man in his late twenties. His face had been pleasantly angular, but a year under the rule of their captors had made him gaunt. He wore a hunted expression. His hair was short, dark curls, his eyes a sad brown. She had known him on Ursu, although that seemed like a lifetime ago now. He had been studying at the university, part of a group of friends conducting research into the crystalline structure of the Blooms. He was bright, although terribly insecure with it. One moment arrogantly proclaiming the radical nature and importance