Brought Down

19. Insomnia.

Garrett

I open my eyes in complete darkness. After a momentary confusion, I remember that I'm in my room and that Angie has been here before I fell asleep.

She's not here now. Must have left for her place. My single bed could serve for sex, but it's inadequate for sleeping together. Or maybe it was me having been such an inattentive lover tonight that has caused her to leave. I should pull my act together next time and make it up to her.

I check the watch. It's 3 AM, which means I have only slept three or four hours. I turn to my other side, pull my blanket up to my chin, close my eyes. Then push the blanket away. Too hot. Damn, I'm not sleepy at all.

I get up and walk to the kitchen. On the counter, I find a cooking pot with soup, wrapped in layers of kitchen towels to keep it warm. That makes me smile. Angie and her thoughtfulness.

I pour some soup into a bowl, pull over a stool, grab a spoon and get busy.

It tastes nothing like the junk they serve in the common room. Some special ingredients, for sure. She knows where to get such stuff and what to do with it. She could be a great cook. I could imagine her as one of those happy looking women in old pictures, smiling in a sun-lit kitchen of her house, with a husband and a couple of kids in the background.

Instead of that, she's a fighter pilot. None of us will ever be those other things we could have been. From the start, we've been handed a ruined world. It would have been more merciful to not even know that things used to be different. Burn the books, destroy the old movies and just pretend that we have always lived underground like rats.

Somewhere, though, things are still different. I remember Julian saying how they allow their women to live a pleasant life, something we can't provide for ours. Just thinking about that makes me angry.

Before I know it, I'm getting dressed. Can't calm down, damn it. Julian is an unfinished business. There's a reason he's been popping up in my mind all the time. If I can't sleep, I can as well go talk to him.

The corridors are empty, the lights are dim. Somewhere in a control room, whoever is on duty probably sees me on one of the screens, checks my tag, and shrugs, wondering where I could be going at such an hour. I suppress an urge to wave at one of the cameras.

The cells are unoccupied, their doors standing open, except for the last one. There's a chair in the end of the corridor, and a guard sits on it, dozing. It's Kevin—not a close friend of mine, but we've talked a few times. He's got into the pilots training program lately and has been treating me as if I was some war hero, even though I'm only a couple of years older than him.

"Oh, hi." He raises his head when I get closer. "What's up?"

"Got to question the captive."

"At this hour?" He glances at his watch, then back at me. I only shrug, wondering if Rykar gave him any particular instructions regarding letting me in.

"Okay... if you say so." He hesitates. "But be careful. He bites."

I look at him questioningly, but he only grins and produces the key.

I step into the room. It's dark, but there's light enough from the corridor to see that Julian's sitting huddled on the bed. Looks like I'm not the only one who has trouble sleeping.

The lamp under the ceiling switches on, courtesy of Kevin, and Julian promptly shields his eyes from the light. The door shuts behind me.

I check the plate on the table next to his bed. The artificial omelet is still there, and is still mostly untouched, except for a little part of it missing.

"I see you've been trying our food."

"I haven't." His voice sounds tired and monotone. "Your friends tried to force-feed me." He lowers his hands, and I notice a new scrape on his left cheek.

Kevin's warning comes to mind. "So you bit them or something?"

"Kind of happened." He shrugs.

I grin. "Such a royal behavior."

"You find it funny?"

"Come on, loosen up. Not every joke is an offence."

"Easy for you to say," he says in same listless voice. "I'm starved, locked in a cell, and your guards treat me like I'm their punching bag. Making jokes at my expense is like kicking a person already down."

It feels like a slap in the face, more so because he's right. I say nothing, and he remains quiet, too, looking away. He's dressed in a grey prisoner robe again that hangs loose on his skinny frame. He looks even paler than before and the shadows under his eyes are more pronounced. 

The air of arrogance that I have felt about him before is gone, but there's still some dignity left, probably so essential that it could only die when he does. He really must be at the very rock bottom of his endurance, both from hunger and exhaustion.

"All right, get up," I say. "You're coming with me."

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