Chapter 20: White Elephants, Sitting Ducks

Aster braced for the technicolor waves that had heralded her first arrival to Peppermint Plains— to be taken in by that body-shuddering ecstasy of a universe melting, but was instead met with an intense, nearly unbearable sense of nostalgia. A young child, a boy, was screaming in her face. Like scattering pearls fell tears from his eyes as he shouted her name. Her shirt bunched up around his hands as he grabbed on to her, seemingly for dear life.

An intense, painful grip on her forearm followed, and Aster looked up to see the towering, emotionless countenance of a middle-aged man. The boy's grasp was suddenly broken as another tore him away, hoisting him upon his shoulder, though he fought back with remarkable tenacity. Aster was struck at how the young boy seemed to be no smaller than herself. She had shrunk, she realized.

The group of them proceeded down a hallway, almost identical to the ones in her tower, as the boy continued to scream. Aster, her little legs stumbling, struggled to keep up with the men's hurried gait as they dragged her down a series of twisting turns and stairwells. In contrast to the young boy's desperate attempt to break free, Aster did not protest. She had not a clue of what was happening, and the strong urge to weep which she felt well up within herself only added to her great confusion.

The men exchanged varying expressions of anger and aloofness as they hurried, mouthing sentences that Aster did not understand. One of them appeared particularly incensed by the boy's incessant fits and struck him. The boy's screaming ceased.

Aster felt her breath leave as she glanced at the man following his strike. His face was unsightly, contorted in a wicked caricature of rage. The other men screamed at him, gesturing to the motionless boy. The man who had struck him waved them off.

He turned to Aster and looked down upon her as they continued to walk. She locked eyes with the ground as if it was all her eyes were ever meant to do, trying her best to stymie her tears. With no warning one of the men scooped her up, and they picked up their pace.

Before long they had arrived at a nondescript, dark room. The boy was thrown onto a couch as Aster was sat down on a bare, wooden chair and instructed to remain there. She shivered and complied, grasping at her sore forearm.

The man who had struck the boy paced the room back and forth on a smartphone, the antiquity of which caught Aster's attention, though she couldn't place why. She was still unable to understand what they spoke of, though she tried intently to listen. The only indication of anything was the continued glances at her.

The man suddenly took the smartphone and pressed it against her ear.

“Aster?!” cried a voice through the receiver. Her heart seized.

It was the voice of her father.

She spoke with great fervor, relieved to hear her father, though automatically and subconsciously— she had no awareness of what she was saying. The only thing certain was the immense woe that overcame her as the phone was ripped away in the middle of her father's reply. For the first time in her abduction, Aster screamed in defiance. She howled, rising up from the chair to grab the phone. The man struck her, and she spiraled to the floor.

Time seemed to lurch as her leaden body thudded against the dirty surface. The concrete floor, covered with grime, alternated between a total blur and clarity in rhythm with her heartbeat as she struggled to pick herself up.

The man who had struck Aster and the boy was thrown to the floor by the other men, who began to attack him. Though his defense was vicious, soon he too became still.

The faces of the two other men wore unrelenting shades of panic as they turned from their unconscious cohort. They moved towards the boy, lifting him up.

One screamed the first words Aster could clearly understand.

“He's not moving! He's not fucking moving!” he yelled.

The tone of his voice carried such an absolute helplessness that it seemed as though all warmth left the world in that moment.

The men huddled around the boy, screaming at one another. Aster moved to get a better look, and felt herself go numb. The boy's face, white as porcelain, held a horrid expression of fear that did not waver, no matter how hard they shook him.

 

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At once, Aster's eyes opened and a fit of violent shaking coursed throughout her body. A shuddering, invasive loneliness took hold of her— a frigid chill on the soul that felt as though it had no hope of ever being warmed. Her eyes darted around, and she realized that she still remained in the alcove beside the hallway. She rushed to bring up her AR menu to check the time. The clock read 3:33 A.M.— she had only been out for an hour.

“What— what the fuck was that?” she whispered, staggering to her feet. Her body would not halt its shaking. Her heart raced uncontrollably and a cold sweat broke upon her.

Was that scene not the result of using the Eden device? Or was it proof that each journey within it was random as she had so deeply feared? Aster lurched in horror of this conclusion, and vomited, falling to her knees.

Her mind at that point ceased to contain any rational thought— a total, thoughtless expanse of unending pain and misery. She remained hunched over a great while, hyperventilating as vomit and saliva ebbed from her mouth.

At some point, her eye was drawn to a piece of folded paper, which rested on the table before her. It was of a different color paper than the original note of instructions, which she felt still tucked away in her tights.

She grabbed it and rushed to open it.

“There's no safe place for flowers in your field. Apologies,” it read simply.

Aster could not comprehend what was happening.

“What—?” she choked, dropping the note as horrible shudders continued to wrack her body.

“Does that mean they're not going to help me?”

Among every low point in Aster's life up to that moment— every suicidal urge, every horrific, insidious pang of loneliness filling nights of pointless, never ending thought— this single moment was the worst of them all.

It came upon her not as an intense sadness, or as anger born of pain and heartbreak, but as a vacuum in which all feeling within her, good and bad, was jettisoned.

Aster felt nothing but the chill of the ghost within her crawl up her spine as she realized it was over— all options had been exhausted. She had put herself and her family on the line, engaging in something as illegal as contacting the Vanguard, for nothing.

Perhaps they would raid her home in a day or two, and if she were lucky, they would execute her. If she were not, her life was to become a never-ending plain of quiet, mute desperation. A life stripped of all signifiers of being an individual existence, left to bounce around some labor camp with others who had attempted the same.

With an arctic heart and dead eyes, Aster rose, and shambled home. The world had ceased to matter. Marienne would have Aster's freedom even if they didn't catch her.

She arrived home after some minutes and fell to the floor. She sat there a moment, still silent and numb, and then began howling. She wept and screamed and thrashed with not a care in the world for who heard. Her family arose from their rooms in great hurry at the ungodly howl that emanated from the dark of their living room.

“Aster!” her father exclaimed, running over to her aid. Her mother, at first sharing in the great confusion and concern of her husband, shrieked and screamed with hyper-dramatic flair once she realized who was at the source of the commotion. She lunged at Aster, forcing her husband to hold her back as she threatened her, screaming somehow louder than even Aster was.

Dahlia watched in terror from her bedroom. The sight of the huddled, shameless mass of her sister, usually so self-righteous and affected with little care, disturbed her greatly.

She covered her ears as Aster continued to howl, and began weeping as well.

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