My Pleasure, Darling

34: Relief

I was right when I told Felix that we were not placed in the only container holding life. I don't know just how right I was until we are the last one open, filed out in broad daylight, off the ship and into a warehouse, a huge one built on the wharf. It smells brand new, sawdust, no paint. Nobody bothered with paint.

Neither would I.

Vampires are set in long lines, queued up, most of them single-file, up and down long rows, cordoned off to prevent stampeding. We are all slowly trudging up towards one of five wooden booths.

There's quite a bit of security. All of them wear red and green, Metran colours. I guess they are here to keep the peace.

Inside this windowless warehouse, it's hard to get a sense of time, but it seems to stretch on forever. He holds her, and then I hold her, but I don't manage as long as he does, and then she stands by herself.

I don't let on how much my leg is bothering me. I am now at a point where my apathy is greater than my self-preservation, where my desire to simply finish my task has overwhelmed my ability to feel pain. We are so close. We are, officially, on Metran soil. I only have to get her as far as her aunt's palace. That's all I have to do. Then it will be over. Then I can rest, or die, whichever comes first.

It feels like it's the middle of the night by the time we get close enough to see what is actually happening at these booths. That's how many people there are here, how many a single Captain managed to smuggle away, hundreds of bodies in a small space, barely room to breathe. There are screens. People press their hands against them. Fingerprints are taken. Identities are swapped, checked, corrected, and people are filed out through a back door. For some of them, it's a longer process than others.

I wonder what could possibly be coming up in background checks that are shared between Metran an Lamyra that would slow things down so much.

The last three people that are ahead of us take at least five years to go through. At least. And there's another hundred or so behind us.

We go as a group. Up to the third booth.

"Please put your hands on the screen."

"You first, sweetheart." I help Andrea to reach up to the screen, and she presses her hand firmly against it. Then Felix does the same, then me.

"Names, gender, age?" He barely looks at us, lazy, so very bored. I try to find a little bit of patience for him in the depths of my being. I'm sure this is not the coolest gig he's ever been on.

Granted, I've just escaped nomad territory with a bullet lodged in my thigh bone, but he doesn't know this.

"Lois Darling, female, human, twenty. Felix Bruge, male, vampire, twenty-four. Queen Alexandria the third, female, vampire, six."

I'm sure Felix can't help how exhausted he sounds. It simply is. Me and him both.

He turns to us, now giving me his undivided attention. The sneer on his face, as he looks away from his computer screen to me, is so filled with self-satisfaction, so much self-importance, that I want to punch him in his pretty little nose before he even speaks. "That, young man, isn't funny. Those people died. Children, even. Don't think you'll get away with that kind of lazy Lamyrian attitude here."

I don't know if it would have happened, had Felix reacted any other way. But he is at the end of his tether. He has run for his life, hidden under floorboards, safeguarded a child. He is done. He is wrecked. The pain and the burnout are painted on his face. He looks like he's about to give in, accept the chastisement.