Titans

Unknown Temporal Region [387:40]

Location: The Hermes Starship

If I were to describe Atara, I would liken her to a portrait. Hair painted golden with precise strokes. Her skin smooth and lacking impurity. Most of all though, it’s her eyes – blue, but something absent about them. Like you could stare at them for hours and still know nothing about what they contain – or hide.

When I look at her now, I see nothing of her secrets. She tells me, “Merc, we’re not going to make it.” And it’s not sad. It’s not fearful. It’s a fact of warning, blandly stated, revealing nothing. She looks away, removing her hand from mine.

“We are,” I reply. “We will.” And you can hear everything in my voice – all my thoughts and emotions laid bare. I can’t keep secrets like she can. I don’t know how.

Atara’s silent, eyes on the darkness. I can tell I’ve lost her to her own mind, so I pull back and take a seat in the nearest available chair.

Then in the darkness, something sparks – a pinprick of light so fleeting I’m tempted to pretend it never happened. It doesn’t return and when I look over at Atara, she remains unchanged.

A hallucination then. My mind showing me what I want to see. I sink back down into my chair and try to ignore the growing sense of unease, the sudden throbbing at the base of my skull. There’s nothing to do here but wait.