My
best friend Lem fights like a wrecking ball: she slams into
whatever's in her way and throws a temper tantrum until someone's
down, completely forgetting she has a human
body,
with vulnerabilities.
She seems immune to fear. You'd never know blades, fruit juices, and
empty rooms horrify her. I'm not even supposed to know.
I only know because when I walk into an empty room, I want to hug
the walls and whimper. You learn to recognize that feeling in other
people; it helps that we both picked up our neuroses in the same
torture camps.
People say we connect too well--that we should quit playing around
and start making babies already or something like that. They don't
get it. We're soldiers. We've been soldiers since she could lift a
flayer-gun. We connect because we don't have a choice. Because the
lives of our families and friends--our freedom to exist, even--depend
on our synchrony.
I'll miss her when I'm gone.
#
Lem knew there was something wrong the moment they refused to kill
her.
She
slammed her elbow into soft, crunchy neck-flesh; her attacker let go
and collapsed to his knees. Three
more uniformed men encircled her, shrubbery cracking around them. Lem
lowered her stance and spread her fingers, licking her lips.
Blitzers.
Their
ghostly gray armor blurred in the light of the three moons. Their
orb-helmets, expressionless round globes of silver, reflected the
trees around them. At an angle, in the darkness of the perfect
reflections, it almost looked like they didn't have heads--like their
faces held portals into evil parallel dimensions. I
gotta get outta here.
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