The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier

Author:Chris Panatier [Panatier, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780857668622
Google: sLH1DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0857668617
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2020-09-07T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

Willa lay on one of the children’s mats staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Or maybe she was able but didn’t have the want. Of course she didn’t have the want. Even the idea of wanting to sleep disgusted her. She ran through the past twenty-four hours, her body feeling as if it’d borne the toil of two lifetimes: soreness and aches making themselves known in the quiet and stillness. The muscles of her arm burned. The lacerated skin of her bicep stung. She massaged it some, feeling guilty for allowing herself to feel any pain beyond the hole that had been stabbed through her heart.

She wanted to know things, to do research on Central City and Patriot and the Gray Zone lies, but without a touchstone, even with its censored content, she was entirely in the dark.

Helplessness was a punishment worse than failure. On this precipice where her life now teetered, all she had left to grasp was their long-shot half-plan that sat drawn out on scraps at the card table. It wasn’t much, and if she was being honest with herself – it was riddled with contingencies and reliant on the predictability of an entire swath of people fueled by desperation. There was no way to know how they would react when shown the truth. Even assuming the plan got off without a hitch and they were able to broadcast, there was always a chance they’d be completely ignored. Nothing like this had ever happened before, as far as she knew, and there was no way to guess the odds. Certainly, they were against. But it was, as Lindon had said, something to give them hope, at least for now. Hope. A foothold that kept you from falling, even in the worst of times. Until it gave, of course, as all footholds eventually must.

And she remembered the old saying that she’d heard repeated by her parents, who were probably repeating theirs. Hope dies last.

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