While Mark had been making a name for himself within the Empire, acquiring medals that felt more like innocent blood on his hands than anything honorary, Jungwoo seemed to have been doing the same, gravity bound.
He’d dyed his hair a platinum blonde now. Boyish features sharpened almost deathly in the angle he was frozen in, blown out wide before Mark’s train as it broke through the center of the city. Swapping his Flywheel Aerocarrier hover car and baggy second hand clothes for seven story tall holographic fashion advertisements that swayed onlookers from tiny square screens flashing news reports of the bloodbath outside their planet’s atmosphere.
It was clear Mark hadn’t been the only one who was torn apart and reassembled into something unrecognizable over the past six years under the heavy hand of oppression. And in the absence of time, a cosmic void now seemed to exist between them. Noxious and impenetrable.
Meeting Jungwoo again suddenly felt more like a childish dream he couldn’t grow out of than something obtainable.
Mark sighed as a dull ache set into his left shoulder while the train announcements finally surged through the intercoms. Announcing the approaching arrivals as the neon city was cut back to darkness by the tunnel. Instinctively, he reached to smooth out the pain. But rather than the softness of skin, Mark hand met the hard casing of his bionic arm.
And much like the explosion that took it, shame siphoned his perception of the world around him in seconds and exploded in a blinding flash of nausea.
Goosebumps surfaced over his remaining human skin. Black dots thriving at the edges of his vision. Mark quickly steadies himself on the seat before him, leaning his forehead against the cool metal for support. Willing the surge of anxiety to back down from the memory of fear, the gunfire, and fleet of rebels as they destroyed the Death Star.
Breathe, Mark. Just breathe.
When he lifts his head, once the screams settle back into the whine of a train rolling across its tracks, blue fluorescent retinal scanners that mimic the shape of human eyes stare back.
A little girl who couldn’t be older than six peeks over her chair. The harsh light above reflects off the metal of her right cheek and down the column of her neck as she rises to fully face Mark. And despite most of her face exposed to the elements, she still manages smiles. Even if only half of her face moves with it.
“You’ll get used to it,” she murmurs over her knuckles. Words uncharacteristically mature for someone so young as they scratch through her throat. More robotic than human. “Eventually.”
Now approaching 156 South Junction. Please step away from the sliding doors.
