the alive

Terra

"It's stupid, Garret! You're going to get everyone killed including yourself!"

The haunting memory of the Grand Ghost's massive war room is filled with Ghosts who once cast double shadows from bright white lights. Past becomes present in the moments of Terra's memory. The lights shine down from the ornate serpentine column scale cement ceiling. Everyone has two dark doppelgängers flanking them. The room is an overcrowded hum. Every face a fly caught in a spiderweb and at the same time, each a spider watching its dinner struggle.

The air pours humid and sweaty like wool socks on marinating feet in a sauna. Like tap water pouring upon the coals of each mind. Everyone's pissed off. Terra is at the centre of this burning steam of anger.

The raven girl of the past stands in front of her lover. Her Garret. Her mind and in the memory of ten years ago. Remembrance scourges her brain like a Legio X Fretensis Roman soldier in love with his job upon Jesus's flayed backside. This is the moment that Garret will lose her forever. Any love that he has for her prior to this moment vanishes like a cloud of ashes falling from an open urn in the falling hands of mourning, like flying high above a city upon a terrifying zip line. His anger is the wind that kills her.

"We don't know enough about the Leonards intention for creating the concentration camp. It could be a trap. We shouldn't react to this information. Not yet."

Terra stands firm with her words. Crosses her prickly blonde hair raven branch tattoo arms. Watches Garret's rage glazing azure eyes swirl into violent simmers of anxious animosity.

"What do you think's going to happen to all those people, Terra? What's the purpose of a concentration camp?"

Terra's gaze becomes as harridan as the coiling cement xenomorphic walls around her. Emerald eyes sharpen with the cursed knowledge that her lover's turning on her. He doesn't have her back. He doesn't trust her.

"Internment. We don't know if it's a death camp. So again, I think it's a trap to flush us out. I can't let you do it. Not yet. I'm close to figuring out what's going on. You know this, Garret!"

"Oh, you can't "let" me do it? Look around. Everyone else wants to go. They're desperate because they have missing family members who've probably been rounded up and stuffed behind that barb wire electrocution fence. My brother has to be there. I don't think you understand where our minds are right now. You don't have anyone left alive who could be in that place, Terra!"

"Oh, Garret. You think because my entire family's dead that I don't understand what you're feeling right now?"

Garret nods. Only once. How could he think this? When did he stop loving her and begin hating her?

"Every one of us has missing family members who're probably in that place. So yeah. You don't get it. We're going to do our jobs and liberate that place and fuck your orders to the contrary. I'm done, Grand Ghost."

Terra breaks her stare and looked around at the room. He never calls her "Grand Ghost." Notices everyone watches and listens. Sixty people who were her friends and subordinates. Knows in this moment they hate her and will follow Garret. She's not really the Grand Ghost anymore. Certain they will all go to their deaths. She can't stop them. Won't stop them.

"Garret, it's a trap! I don't think that "you" get it! I'm close to ending this war. Making a mistake now, like this, is going to destroy the entire city. Everyone who they want dead will be exposed in the same place at the same time without the depths and the hills and armour of the Factory for protection. It's obvious what this concentration camp is. Bait!"

"This situation isn't a game of chess, Terra. It's my brother's life that's in danger and I'm going to rescue him."

"So you're going to disobey me?"