diff --git a/book-1/13.tex b/book-1/13.tex index 7731570..d849607 100644 --- a/book-1/13.tex +++ b/book-1/13.tex @@ -5,3 +5,91 @@ bewildered disbelief, and anger. Ten days? Apparently he laid there in a fever for \textit{ten days} without noticing it? +Other than that it was hard for him to believe it, +he just didn't \textit{want} to. +The consequences would have been too frightening. + +Just like before, +Andrew was convinced that his father would try anything to find him. +Surely he had already started the largest manhunt the country had ever seen, +and he wouldn't rest until his people had overturned every stone, +searched every lake, +looked in every well, +and grilled every applicable previously arrested wannabe-criminal for any information. + +But ten days was an unbelievably long time. +Of course Andrew had never been the subject of a manhunt, +but he wasn't the first person to disappear, +and he had followed other manhunts on the news: +Hundreds of policemen and thousands of volunteers that searched woods and marshes, +supported by airplanes, +helicopters, +and sometimes even fighter jets that would scan the ground below them with thermal cameras and all sorts of other technical equipment. +Regrettably, he also knew that the longer the undertaking took, +the less likely it was that they would be successful. +Missing people were mostly found quickly +--- or not at all. +Most of the missing people that weren't found within the first couple of hours or days would only be found after weeks or sometimes months; +Buried in the woods and found by people walking by or in a plastic bag that got caught in the dam of a sewage treatment plant. + +It took some effort for Andrew to reign in his rampaging fantasy. +In the end he was still alive, +and with some luck it could stay that way. +But not here. +He just couldn't imagine that his father would give up before he hadn't found him +--- or held the definitive proof that he was dead in his hands. + +Andrew didn't want it, +but the thought created a reality in his head that he would have loved to deny: +The men in the black outfits that had collected the wreckage of the Cessna and loaded it into the helicopters that had landed on the plaza. +Maybe they \textit{had} convinced his father of his death a long time ago, +and instead of a search party he was standing in front of an open grave with an empty coffin in it, +just like they did in some symbolic burials. +Maybe he was already dead and this was hell, +or at least the purgatory where he would spend the next six hundred thousand years or at least until Judgement Day. + +Just that as far as he knew he had not done anything bad enough to deserve this. + +The sound of naked feet on a hard stone floor tore him out of his sullen contemplations. +He looked up and noticed that Katt had come in and was slowly approaching him with an almost shy smile. +He returned it, +even though it was more out of relief that it wasn't her sister, +but not \textit{just} for that reason. +Ratt had come in two or three times and he was happy when she left every time. +He didn't have anything against the rat-girl; +It was quite the opposite. +Once you got used to the way she looked she was kinda cute in her own way. +But she was also a complete pain in the neck: +Her character had inherited a healthy amount of the non-human parts of her heritage. + +``How are you doing?", asked Katt. + +Andrew shrugged. +Katt wasn't just making conversation, he knew that much. +She was actually worried about him. +``How am I supposed to be doing?'' + +Katt slowly got closer and stood still two steps away from him. +Andrew could see how hard she was debating what to say. +Eventually she shrugged her shoulders and made an awkward hand movement behind her, +towards the exit. + +``I have water duty'', she said hesitantly. +``Do you want to come with?'' + +What ever \textit{water duty} was. +Andrew shrugged, +letting the motion seamlessly transform into a nod and standing up. +He had sat here half a day and felt bad for himself; +maybe it would be good if he got some fresh air and let the bleak thoughts blow away with the wind. +``Why not?'' + +Katt looked at him questioning for another moment, +but then she nodded and went outside, +Andrew following close behind her. + +The sun was shining down so brightly from the cloudless sky that he was forced to close his eyes and raised his hand over his face. +It was very warm, almost hot, +and there was not even the slightest breeze. +Andrew let a moment pass for his eyes to adjust to the change in light conditions, +then motioned to Katt with a nod that she should keep going.