pentagrahams
He was there on his knees, shaking with fear and loss, maybe anger. He was never more emotional than he had been right then, when he just lost everything. I glanced at his sword, within his grasp. It was my fault he was here and if he was angry, my blood would mix with the blood of his old team.
We stood there, staring them down though it was like looking in a mirror. A fight was in the air, on my knuckles, tingled in the soles of my feet. With an unknown trigger, everyone pounced at once, but never made contact. Instead we ran into an invisible barrier set exactly between us.
It was right there on his face, laid out easy and simple like cards on a table. But this wasn't easy or simple, and he's better than me at cards.
Adolescent. That's all he was, all he would ever be. He didn't want to get caught, to get stuck in the Program, but he did. It was completely his fault. He had no one to blame. That was the worst part. He was caught while helping a couple of kids. He couldn't even blame them.
It was the color of his eyes. It was ugly. It wasn't a beautiful gold of fiction, but it was the sickly gold, ugly yellow of the disease that had already killed a quarter of human population on earth. And I was in love with him. This hideous eyed man who would die within a year as his body faded away, wasted down to a sack of skin with bones and shriveled organs inside. I know this, I can already see his cheekbones beginning to stand out more, his ribs when we swim, he tires quickly. But his voice hasn't changed since it got worse. It's deep and silky, a bit like an old scarf, a bit frayed. It's beautiful.
The library is huge. It's always been huge, but I get the feeling that it grows larger with time. Imagine the biggest room you can. It's way bigger than that. It would take lifetimes to read it all. I would know, I've been working on it since the moment I was born. It's in my head, and I've always been reading. I just knew from the start what I was doing.