Turned World (On Hiatus)

14 - Lin Corey

Hana sat at a desk, staring blankly at the wall before her. On the desk were three hologram projectors and a tablet. She absentmindedly tapped a rhythm on the desk with her fingers.

There was a knock on a door and a voice called her name, jolting her out of her trance.

"Ms. Smiths? Are you ok?"

"Huh? Y-yeah. I just dozed off."

"Oh, you've been in there for a while now so I was worried."

"Heh, I'll be out soon, no worries."

Hana listens as the footsteps get further and further away until she can no longer hear them. She pushes back her chair and gets up.

She paces around her round slowly, taking deep breaths as she does so.

"How long has it been since I've been here for so long I wonder?" She asks out loud, not expecting an answer.

Hana stops and looks back at her desk. She glances over everything that is on the desk and her eyes land on the tablet. She walks over to it and picks it up and opens an image viewing app on it and starts scrolling. She finds an image and stops and stares at it for a bit then scrolls again before finding another picture. This time she stops and stares at the image longer, and sits down again on her chair,

This image is one with a large object in the background; the object is covered with what seems to be a terpaulin of sorts that covers the entire object. In the foreground are three people, two females and a male. They were hard to make out but their body shapes were discernible enough.

Hana then connects the tablet to her wrist computer and opens the image on it. She zooms in on the image until it becomes pixelated, where the faces are barely recognisable.

"How long's it been? Twelve years? We were so innocent and energetic back then, weren't we?"

"Yeah, we were."

Hana spins around quickly, surprised by the voice behind her.

Standing in the middle of the room, hands behind his back, was Luthur Spear.

"Oh, Luthur. You surprised me. How'd you get in here?"

"I have the passcode, have you forgotten?" He asked, raising an eyebrow as Hana snapped her fingers and a part of the wall shifted, revealing a chair for him.

"Ah, I forgot."

"What are you doing down here though?" He asked, sitting down and crossing his right leg over his left knee, placing both hands on his lap. His formal demeanor seemed to be a force of habit.

"Working on the plasma beam cannon." Hana says, turning her face away and scowling.

"Are you angry?" Luthur questions.

"No. Just annoyed."

"At?"

"You. Asking me for the impossible."

"Oh? Am I really?" He leans forward a bit.

"Y-yes."

"Am I really?" He leans closer.

Hana doesn't respond this time and decides not to face him, her eyes flit about the room looking for something to change the conversation.

"This is the first time you've been down here since you joined Assault, right?", Luthur asks, noticing the dusty state of the room.

"Yeah. You too, I assume?"

Luthur nods. "You know, just because you failed the last time doesn't mean that you have lost the ability to make projects like that. You just need to see it as a mistake to learn from."