An Obsidian Sky

  *

  ‘Julian

  ‘My dearest sister something has gone wrong.

  ‘I hurt everywhere. It’s just like that time we ate the fish at the Danville stand and I couldn’t move for days. It wasn’t so bad the first day, but now I am in so much pain. The nurses have told me to stay in bed. They say its just my body getting used to the mediation. It happens to everyone in the trial at some point.

  ‘I’m not sure if you are even receiving these letters. The boatswain Master Taun says that he’ll take the letter but he isn’t sure when the next tug will arrive from the colonies. I almost thought he’d said if the next tug arrives from the colonies, but he departed before I could ask.

  ‘I turned on the news today and heard of the most awful events. We are at war. My God, it never ends. The reports are fragmented and we only get bits and pieces when the uplinks are briefly back in range. They say that they have dropped bombs on the colonies. My God I hope that they have not fallen near you. We have even heard that the colonies were lost in an instant, that all the fleets have been destroyed, that the communication satellites are almost gone. We haven’t heard anything since. The net’s completely down. Carvelle’s sent light-ships to every corner of the United World for more news. Not a single ship has returned.

  ‘There is panic everywhere here. Whole sections have been cordoned off on account of the rioting. We keep hearing more and more reports of looting. People haven’t take the news of well. It’s like all the old division between us have reasserted themselves. Even Ascensions media-net is down.

  ‘I don’t know what they have done to me but it isn’t good. All a feel is pain. My head hurt so much today that I did not stop screaming until I was sedated. I heard some of the nurses saying that something is going wrong, that all is not as it should be. They say that the Equinox project has gone wrong, that we were losing something.

  ‘Julian I do not feel myself. I see things that simply should not be. I see a world between worlds, a world that does not exist. There is something draining me of who I am. I know that I should be afraid that the world is at war, but I struggle to care. I am just so drained. What the hell is wrong with me? It is like I am losing some part of me, some part of me that regulated what I used to think. It is like I am being imprinted with something else.

  ‘I was watching the station from my window some time ago and I started to watch the lights go out far away. The darkness is getting closer now. How long before there is nothing to see but oblivion?

  ‘They say it is a technical difficulty but I know that they did it. The ones that want me, but I am not ready for them yet. Some of the Equinox subject’s who were ahead of us in the cycle say that they have been assaulted. It is the people that do this to their bodies. The modifications, they tell me, are doing it to their souls.

  ‘The Equinox project, the drugs, the gene plasma, it is so wrong. We are to be vessels. We are like cows to be milked and when we are no longer useful, to be killed. There will be a revolution - there can be no doubt.

  ‘I will not let it be his

  ‘Until the next letter.

  ‘Persephone’