Never let me go

6

"Iris..."

As she opened her eyes she was greeted by a world that seemed steeped in a grey hue. Before her a tall steel wire gate that must be at least 15 feet tall towered. Beyond it people were milling about in the streets. They all seemed to have had all the color washed out of them. Grey clothes, grey hair, grey eyes. Even the sun had tucked away behind huge, grey clouds. The world was dark, dank and miserable. Thin figures with gaunt faces turned her way only to look straight through her.

"I'm not really here."

She heard the thundering of distant gunfire. Bullets were being fired in such rapid succession she had never heard anything like it. The sound was too regular, like clockwork. No gun or gunman in the world could fire that fast or for that long without reloading. It was impossible yet her ears heard the hammering of bullets fired through a barrel all the same.

She closed her eyes and wished to leave this place.

When she opened them again the world around her was almost completely dark. The moon overhead was but a thin sliver of pale silver in the sky. Below her feet the ground was hard, dry and bare. She moved forward, drawn towards a deep hollow in the ground ahead of her, stretching across the landscape like the moat of a castle. Except there was no castle beyond it that she could see. She reached the edge of the dark ditch and peered over it into the darkness. She could see the still and quiet shapes of people on the ground down below. They were all clad in the same cloth uniform dyed in some muted color she could not make out. A ladder leaned against the edge of the deep moat to her side and she descended it. She moved over to the person sitting on the ground nearby, soundly asleep. She wanted to know where they were, what this place was. She reached out to his shoulder and tried to wake him. The man's head tilted over backwards, and his eyes stared unseeing towards the sky.

He was dead.

They were all dead.

Their bodies littered the long dug out corridor in front of her. Most of them appeared to have been sleeping as they drew their last breaths. They were all smiling from ear to ear.

Red smiles.

She looked down at her hand and saw she was holding a long curved blade, black as night. She raised the blade to her face to inspect it, and saw her reflection in the steel. Except it wasn't her face she saw. There was no face at all to see, no mouth, no nose, nothing that resembled human features. Just jet black skin with huge, empty dark caverns where her eyes should be.

"Forgive me."

Fire flared up and crackled beyond the corridor of death. Huge pillars of flame and smoke rose towards the sky. The fire roared deafeningly, but mixed in with the thundering flames were the screams of the people burning. The entire world stank of burning flesh, blood and decomposing bodies.

"Forgive me."

She awoke in the dark with tears in her eyes. She shuffled closer to Reiner's sleeping form next to her, quivering. With her face pressed into the pillow, she tried to purge the faces of the dead men from her mind. But she kept seeing their glazed over eyes stare up at her accusingly. She wept silently while she waited for her hands to stop shaking.

Trost District Year 850 - Military headquarters - Eve of graduation:

Iris made her way across the small lobby outside of the festive hall. She heard the voices of soldiers and civilians, some louder than others, some singing, some arguing. Emotions were running high, fuelled by mead and ale and spirits. Their acrid smell made her feel slightly queasy, but she was in the mind to have a drink tonight.