Surface R: Reunion

Part 05.2

::CODY::

I don't like the noise, I mean it.

There's a loud, constant buzzing, machine-y sound that's all around us, and I can't escape it no matter what I do. I try to put my hands over my ears, but I can still feel it.

How do people sleep in this place? It's not like the crickets chirping we have up there.

"Are you okay, Cody?" Nina asked me, looking concerned.

I shook my head. "No, not really." I made a face. "The noise bugs me, how do you get used to it? It's like—a million Rabid bees getting ready to attack! I'd never be able to relax, you see."

"Rabid bees," The quiet guy—Sean—who's walking ahead with Thomas makes a kind of delicate noise. "This place sounds more charming every passing a minute..." He's looking at Thomas, not me. "Is every human up there like him?"

That's not nice at all.

"Do you want everyone up there to be like you?" Thomas shoots back, trying to sound just as insulting.

Sean looks at Thomas with my cold eyes—I say my because that's what they look like, a smaller, much squinted, less roundish version though. It was the same blue anyway.

"Humankind could only be so lucky. If every human were more like me, we wouldn't be wasting time with foolish expeditions like this."

Thomas scowled at him. "And everything would be a bundle of laugh, wouldn't it?" Like Trey, he seemed nice, but scary when in a bad mood.

"Stop fighting please," I frowned. "it's not nice."

Thomas looked at me. "But he's insulting you..."

"He's just scared, like the new kids that come," I told him. "and Trey always said if you had the choice not to hate anyone, why should you?"

Thomas blinked, rubbing the back of his head. "Wow, getting schooled by a kid..."

But there is one thing that bothered me. Why is Sean so mean, particularly to me? Maybe not the same way those guards and that man were but still. He doesn't seem to like me a lot. Maybe it's the way I smell... The way I talked? Why does he hate me? I don't hate him, even though he's said some mean things. I still think he's really neat. His eyes are really nice, slanted and deep and a really pretty color. I mean, it's also my eye color but it looked better on him. And I think his hair would be like the one piece of silk Corrin said he had used back when I was a baby, that he had wrapped me in it. It's a little worn now, but the smoothness is still there. I never got tired of running my hands through it, over and over. It felt so smooth and soft and neat. It's not as smooth as when I was five, though. Looking at Sean's hair, I bet it feels the same.

And for some reason, I feel nostalgic—Uh, I think that means something like you missed a memory very much. I don't know why I'd feel that though, it's not like I've seen Sean before, since I've been living on Surface R my whole life so I couldn't have—

"Cody?"

Nina moves closer to take my hand and talk to me, my train of thoughts lost, "Yes?"

"You're going to lead us to our brothers, right? Once we get to the surface?"

I rubbed the back of my head. "Uh, yeah, sure. No problem."