/Let us go then, you and I/

1200 means it’s lunch time - time to eat but more importantly time to see Electra again.

Electra is at the mess already, radiant. They sit next to each other again. Arkady looks around, sees the guards noticing their friendship, their alarmingly quick friendship.

It’s just a friendship I swear

They don’t talk. They eat silently. There’s a sort of warmth in another person’s company, even if you don’t speak to them. There are slight smiles on both their faces, despite the shitty goop they’re shoveling into their mouth.

42A6X looks at the two. Fucking lovebirds. It makes a note to bug one of them in the future.

Gotta make sure no one’s planning to break out or anything.

As Arkady gets up to leave, Electra looks up at him. He stops. Freezes.

Looks back down at her. Sees the warmth in her eyes.

Knows he’s fallen for her, even as he denies it again and again and again to himself.

And as the green light, ethereal, changes above her, morphs into a thirty, then a thirty five, he knows she’s falling for him too.

arkady

n/a

sorta in love?

facets unavailable, earn some monetary units first!

the girl

35

hopeful

facets unavailable, relationship score is not >50!

_

Arkady is in his room, reading, at peace.

He hears footsteps, gradually increasing in volume. Someone’s walking towards him.

Fucking guards.

They pass his cell, then stop, then he hears the door open.

Couldn’t they leave me alone today of all days?

“Can I… come in?” she says.

Electra.

Electra.

She’s here.

He doesn’t know if this was allowed. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t even care. What matters is her, her eyes, her face, her hair, her aura.

Her hand. He walks up to the door, where she is, waiting, demure, halting, unsure of herself. He takes her hand and guides her in to the rug-covered floor, sits her down, holds her hand some more. It’s a bit warm, delicate. Smallish honestly. Smooth, white, soft, beautiful. It’s a light, casual hold, but it fills him with warmth. It’s right.

42A6X sees them holding hands from the camera in the corner of the room. If an artificial intelligence could sneer, it certainly does.

“Fucking lovebirds,” it says, out loud this time. No one else is in the security room to give him a weird look as he does this. He smirks a bit.

Time to see where this goes.

Their relationship has been mostly a silent one until now, one of looks, touches, thoughts, not words. That is going to change, thinks Electra.

I want to know who he is, who this boy is, who thinks he can come into my life and basically sweep me off of my feet.

Well, I kinda came into his life.

Whatever.

She’s a little shy at first, but she knows what she wants to know (known unknowns, I guess) and she’s pretty upfront about it when she musters up the courage to ask.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” words coming from her mouth with a little sting to them, bitterness, as he flinches a bit.

He takes it in stride. Yesterday, he wouldn’t be able to do this. She has righted his gradually-taking-on-water mind.

“I’m… Arkady” he jokes.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m no one.”

“No one?”

“Yeah.”

“No one is no one.”

“Except me.”

“Why?”

“I was born here, or so they say.”

“Here? This building? This… prison?”

“Yeah. The Inside, I’ve always called it.”

“Bullshit.”

She elongates the word a bit. It sounds weird, coming from a person he’s barely even talked to. She’s already let down her guard, comfortable in his presence. She’s not the demure, shy, hesitant girl waiting at the door, looking down at the ground, hands clasped in front of her loose dress. She's something else now.

“That’s what I said too.”

The words flow freely from his mouth. He’s no longer afraid of worrying her, of the red, the ugly red scar, coming back. He’s bantering effortlessly, though he’s never done so with a human before. It comes naturally to him, the words, no mental barrier holding him back. He feels free.

“So you’ve lived here your entire life? Same routine, same everything?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck…” she trails off sympathetically. “Must be hell.”

“One gets… acclimated.”

“Do you really speak like that?”

“What?”

“You know, ‘One,’ ‘acclimated,’ book words. Not part of the spoken English language.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Oh fuck imsosorry!” She slurs the last three words together in the cutest way possible, her face full of sincere remorse.

She’s even cuter when she looks like that.

“You’re okay, it’s not really… a sore topic… for me… I guess…”

“...sorry…” she whispers.

A little awkward pause, a reminder that no matter how close Arkady and Electra are, they’re still completely different creatures, almost different species. Arkady, the bird born in captivity, and Electra, the one captured in the wild. Both with their wings clipped. One who has never flown.

“Well, anyways,” her face brightens, clears, the radiance, sheer joy, sheer enthusiasm returning to her, “my turn, I guess.”

“It seems so.” Arkady is intrigued. Who is Electra?

“It’s a bit of a story.”

Gonna be interesting, thinks 42A6X. They didn’t tell me this either. He grabs a tub of popcorn from under the table. It’s stale, been there for a few weeks. Not like he’s gonna eat it anyways. He's a fucking AI. AIs don't eat food. It’s just for a bit of a joke when the guards are people watching.

The other prisoners tend to be a lot more dramatic, but this might change that.

Quick note: should have added this earlier, but yes, Electra is 18. Just clearing this up per the rules of the site.

Also I’m going to try to write and upload a chapter a week. Hopefully this will happen. Thanks for all the likes, kind words, all of that.

And yes, there will not be only two people in this branch. This should be made clear in about 5-10 more chapters.

Note #2: There seems to be some sort of bug placing a line break right after italicized text. I'll see if I can work around this, but for now, if you see a line that starts with an underscore and ends with multiple (6 or so) dashes, that's an italicized line after which a line break occurs. Sorry!

Editor’s note regarding the second point: we can fix it in post! ~W