Aren’t You All Aglow In Your Thousand Yard Stare
Chapter Three
Part One
Rand is jarred from her sleep by a consuming, deathly
cold. She bolts upright in her bed,
pulling the flimsy covers up around her shoulders. The plexiglass walls were blanketed in frost, obscuring her
view of the rows of cells that held the other cadets. It had only been one goddamn day in this fucking program and
she’d already had enough!
But, she wanted Starfleet, and wanted it badly.
She didn’t go through four years of classes, drills, and
training to stop now. She’d simply
have to get through this. Rand
felt a panic rise in her when she thought about the sheer length of this ordeal-this
program, as they call it.
It was more like Starfleet sanctioned misery.
“Shit. What to
do,” she thought.
She had to calm herself down, clear her head, get herself
together.
Then, it came to her.
Rand promptly threw the sheet off of her body and situated
herself upright, crossing her legs in a lotus position with her hands placed
limply on her lap. She closed her
eyes and elongated her spine. The cold
proved to be a bit too punishing, however, so she leaned over, retrieved the
sheet and shrouded it around her shoulders like a meditation shawl. When Rand was fully covered, she again
closed her eyes.
“This had better work, or those survival classes aren’t
worth a damn,” she thought.
She counted to twenty until her mind and body were still. Then, Rand conjured up an image of a
red, effervescent ball in the middle of her belly and watched it expand and
whip around various parts of her body, bringing rescuing heat with each
diaphragmatic breath. Her corporal
interior radiated warmth outwards onto her skin, the cold no longer a
discomfort.
“I’ve outsmarted you, assholes!” she thought smugly.
Rand sat with glee on her bed, basking in the glow of her
ingenuity.
But then, she began to feel strange.
She felt a heat from outside of herself clashing with the
self-induced heat of her body, making her feel almost like she was being
baked. Rand looked at the walls in
her cell and noticed beads of water swelling and rolling down, and she realized
that the heat had been turned on.
Rand yanked the sheet from her body in disgust and looked up at the
ceiling of her cell in utter desperation.
“Really?!”
A wall of cool air hit Rand like a sledgehammer and she
turned in the direction where it was coming from. An Amazonian sized female guard with short-cropped hair and
severe features had entered her cell.
Rand started to say something, but before she could the guard reached
over and grabbed her unceremoniously by the neckline of her prison garb and
pulled her off the cot and out of her cell like a ragdoll.
“The fuck…?!
Rand was escorted through the black-tinted halls into an
interrogation room with walls and floors painted so white they were almost
blinding, making the waiting room where she was at yesterday seem muted and
pacifying by comparison.
The only furniture in the room were two iron chairs on
either side of an iron table, all three of these items being Spartan in style
and painted in the darkest of black.
For Rand, the whole setting had the effect of seeing stars
after a head injury, or an unfortunate examination by a gynecologist in a big
hurry. The woman guard pulled Rand
into the room and guided her not too gently to the desk and chairs, pulling out
the front chair from under the table.
“Sit,” the guard said.
Rand simply looked at the chair, then turned to the guard.
“What am I, a cockerspaniel?”
With that, the guard tightened her grip on Rand’s forearm
and forced her down on the chair.
Rand struggled, her teeth gritting from the pain of the guard’s fingers
digging into her.
“Jesus Christ, what’s your problem?!”
The guard propped her arm on the table and leaned into Rand
menacingly.
“Listen, you want things hard, I can make them as hard as
you force my hand. Want things easy,
I can do that too.”
Rand looked up at the guard and smirked.
“In what category would you place this treatment thus far?”
asked Rand with sarcasm dripping from her voice.
God, she was tired.
She needed sleep.
And food…
When the hell did they feed you around here? And what did they feed you…
Rand could hear the familiar sound of a sliding door, but it
didn’t come from the same direction where she and the guard had entered. It came from behind the wall a few feet
away from the desk from where she sat, echoes of footsteps getting louder with
each step. Then, a small part of
the wall opened up from the bottom and revealed a very formidable figure; a
Vulcan male dressed in the same style of black fatigues as the female
guard. He was tall, which was a
common trait among Vulcan men. What
really struck Rand about this man was his dark red hair, a trait that was not
only uncommon among Vulcans, it was unheard of. The modern Vulcan was not known to artificially ornament
their physical appearance in any way, unlike their ancient ancestors who donned
themselves with war paint, jewelry, and body mutations like piercings and
tattoos in order to appear warlike to their foes. The Vulcan’s hair was cut in prickly formation at the crown
of his head while the sides were shaved nearly clean off. Rand noted how the green undertone of
his skin, along with the whitewash interior and the harsh fluorescent lighting,
clashed in a most uncomplimentary way to the pigment of his hair. The image that popped into her mind was
that of a Frankenstein monster, replete with narrow slits for eyes, hollow
plains under high cheekbones, a reed-thin mouth and nose shaped like a hawk’s
beak. He is followed by a male
guard who positions himself at the Vulcan’s side, close enough to be of needed assistance
but far enough to avoid being intrusive to the superior’s personal space.
When the Vulcan reaches the desk, he pulls the chair back
from under the table and sits down right across from Rand. He looks squarely at her, in that
unwavering gaze that Vulcans look at people, before addressing her in a deep,
startling voice.
“My name is Commander Glok,” he said.
Rand barely stifled a snicker, but it escaped her.
“Glok?! Talk
about appropriate!” she thought.
Feeling like a target was like a running theme in this fucking program for
her.
The Commander’s gaze sharpened, but only slightly. “Is there anything that you find
particularly amusing, prisoner?” he asked as a document was handed to him by
his male guard.
Rand discreetly positioned her fingers over her mouth and
audibly cleared her throat. She
shook her head for the benefit of the Vulcan.
“That is good.
It is encouraging to know that you are interested in assisting us so
that business can run as smoothly as possible. He paused as a slight smile formed on his lips.
“Easy does it, as they say,” he said seemingly proud of
himself for coming up with such a witty line.
Rand sighed.
There goes that word again.
Easy.
Fuck easy.
“Let’s just get this crap over and done with,” she thought.
Commander Glok positions the document in front of him and
flips it open. He eyes Rand before
lowering his head to read the information before him.
CHAPTER THREE TO BE CONTINUED….
