progresso from todayo

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.