To the Cafeteria

The cafeteria is a welcome sight. You feel empty. Every part of you has been drained of energy, and you relish the idea of being filled up again. What's more, judging by the smell, they don't just plan to fill you up with that breakfast paste. You can't place the smell, exactly, but it smells really nice.

You get in line. It seems as though the imperials have been content to reuse the cafeteria as it was. The trays are even the same puke green plastic ones you remember. The tables are also still in place.

There are no signs of a battle here, and you've not seen that anywhere else either. That's a sign that Nick wasn't captured here. Those stun weapons they use leave scorch marks if they hit a wall or something, but there's nothing like that anywhere. Even if the students and faculty couldn't put up a fight, some of them would have ran. There would be evidence of a few missed shots. The fact that you've not seen any, here or anywhere else in the building, strongly suggests it was empty when they found it. What does that mean for Nick? If he had been here, it would mean he was almost certainly captured. If he wasn't here, and it's looking like he wasn't, that probably just means he evacuated and was captured somewhere else. However, there's an off chance it could mean he escaped somehow, and is hiding somewhere. Then again, there's another off chance it means he's dead, like mom.

The soldiers, it seems, are allowed to cut in front of the slaves and get their food right away, but there are fewer of them then there are of you, so it's not outrageously long before you make it to the front of the line. A group of older slaves are serving the food. Part of you feels bad for directly benefiting from their work. Part of you envies them. You were put to work a lot harder than they seem to have been.

The food is some kind of red soup. It smells faintly of tomatoes, and faintly of something savory-sweet that you can't place. The **** serving you places a ladlefull of the stuff into a bowl and gives that to you. You thank her. You also get a bit of bread, a nothian frostapple, and a large cup of water.

It seems no one is going to tell you where to sit. They probably don't have to. The room is well surveyed. There's a pair of soldiers by every exit, to say nothing of the dozens of soldiers eating at the tables. Their helmets are off, but they still have their weapons, and could quickly put down a revolt. The slaves and soldiers seem to have segregated themselves. There are some slaves sitting with soldiers, but most of those have tattoos, so they're not recent captures like you. You take a seat next to a group of older slaves. You've not seen this group before, which is part of why you pick it. You're trying to find information about your family. You already know everything that Carla, Ned and Jon know. If you want more answers, you'll have to ask different people.

"I hope it's okay if I sit here?" you say when you reach them.

"Sure," an old man says. You settle in, and start to work on your soup. It's actually really good. Thick, sweet-savory stuff. Your first real meal in more than twenty-four hours. You don't bother with the spoon. You just drink it from the bowl. You polish off half of it in just a few minutes. Your bread is gone pretty quick too, as is the water they gave you.

"Do you guys know what happened to the Securitech offices?" you ask.

From their perspective, the question is a bit out of nowhere. "Why do you ask?" the old man says.

"My mom would have been there," you say. "I'm trying to figure out what happened." Really what you're trying to do is hear something that gives you an excuse to doubt what Ned said. Something that could give you hope.

"Yes," he says. "I saw it a few hours before I got caught."

"And?"

"I'm afraid it was no longer there. That area had been bombed quite badly."

"Did it get evacuated?" you ask.

"I don't know," he says. "I saw it in the evening. When it fell or whether it was empty, I have no idea."

"Alright," you say.

"It might have been empty," he says. "I don't know otherwise."

"I hope it was," you say. You take a few sips of your soup before you ask more questions. None of them know anything about what happened at this school, or about the charging station where Hana worked. You ask them about your neighborhood.

"The one with the weird square statue?" a woman asks.

"Yeah," you say, "with all the colored lights."

"I can't speak to lights. The power was off when I saw it, but I drove through the neighborhood with the statue late last night. I didn't see anyone around. There were scorch marks and treat marks like soldiers had been through there, but nothing had been bombed."

So there were soldiers in your neighborhood. "This was in the evening?" you say.

"Yeah. After dark."

The soldiers had first landed downtown, then spread out. That was why you hadn't been able to make it back home. Your movements had been dictated by where you had to go to avoid them. The scorch marks indicated that your neighborhood hadn't been empty. Maybe your dad was there, and he was captured. But maybe he'd left. He would have, right? He must have. As soon as he realized what was happening, he would have driven straight here, looking for Nick. If he did, he would have either picked Nick up or followed him to wherever he was evacuating to. All communications were down, so there was no consensus regarding where to go, but most people were trying to get out of town. There were no bombs in the countryside, and fewer soldiers, especially early on. "Was there a big traffic jam?" you ask. "With people trying to leave the city?"

"Yeah," she says. "A whole bunch of empty cars right past the neighborhood. I suppose they'd already been through there." So that's another place your dad could have gotten caught. "There was no driving down the highway. If I'd been younger, I'd have left my car and fled north on foot, but that cold is too much for me now, so I stayed put until one of their searchdrones found me."

"This was north of town?"

"Yep."

Assuming dad stayed home for a while, or came back home after picking up Nick, he was probably in that jam. If not, he might have been trying to leave town somehow else, but there were probably similar traffic jams everywhere. Maybe he would have gotten out and fled on foot. He wasn't young anymore, but he wasn't elderly like this woman.

"Thanks," you say. "I've kind of been grilling you here. I was running through town for a few hours. I might be able to answer some questions for you guys." They do have a few questions. First, one of them had a granddaughter who worked at a different auto charging station. "I did pass it," you say. "It'd been bombed pretty bad, but I think it was empty. All the autos were gone, and I didn't see any bodies." They thank you.

"My niece was a firefighter," another woman says. Oh no. Oh gods, this must be how Jon felt when he told you about your mom. "Did you pass the fire station?

You did. You walked right by it while you were cutting through the middle of town. "It was basically gone," you say. "Bombed to nothing."

"Were the trucks there?" she asks, because if they hadn't been, it would mean the firefighters had left.

"Yeah," you say. Of course it would have been one of the first places the Empire would hit.

"Thank you," she says.

You all continue to compare notes while you finish your meal. Just as you finish, you realize someone is approaching you. You look over your shoulder. It's a soldier. Not just any soldier. The fucking nothian speaker. Why is he walking toward you? The others are tense too. They all stop eating, and watch him. He walks directly up to you. "Come," he says, in high imperial, perhaps just to test your comprehension of it. You stand.

"Yes, sir," you say, figuring you're meant to reply in the same language. This is too public a place. There's no point in resisting him. "May I ask where we're going?"

"Somewhere you won't have to move tables all afternoon," he says, which is substantially less reassuring than he seems to intend it to be.

"Is that all I'm allowed to know?" you ask.

"It's my bedchamber," he says.

Oh, hey, look at that, the room is spinning now. "May I ask why?" you say.

"Some new evaluations," he says. "A certain test of skill, if you will."

Oh fuck. "What kind of skill?"

"I think you know," he says. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.{If Virgin=1} "Don't worry, though. I'm not allowed to touch you myself."

{elseif Into Men=0}"But I'm not into me--"

"Not with me," he says.{endif}