Show Me Yours - Blogfest

Okay, so I am supposed to be finishing off the Reverb10 stuff, but I saw this instead (thanks nindogs!) and felt compelled to sign up!

So this is my "500 words or under" NaNo 2010 excerpt, and keep in mind that I have not edited this at all, and don't intend to for quite some time.

Oops, sorry. Forgot the 'details', so I am editing with them now:

Title: Nausicaa

Genre: Sci-fi/fantasy

Characters in this scene: Delphyne is not the main character, but is the best friend of said main character, who has already fled the compound by this point and is currently at large (except we the reader knows where she is).

Minutes passed and the gathered agents grew restless. The last arrivals trickled in, and then Aegiale and Juturna stepped up to the podium, turning to face the rest. Delphyne and Ramnes exchanged confused looks, then waited expectantly.

“Thank you for attending,” Aegiale spoke, surveying her fellow agents with an unreadable expression. “Especially on such short notice. We have a few messages to impart on behalf of your true Founders.” She looked beyond the crowd at the entrance doors and said in a tone of ringing command, “Open the doors.”

True Founders? Delphyne had time to think in confusion before armed soldiers poured in through the doors and took up positions around the perimeter of the room. She looked again at Ramnes and saw that he was frowning fiercely. I’m thinking I should have ignored this summons, Delphyne thought, and believed from what she saw that Ramnes was probably thinking the same thing. He never would have done it, though—he was an excellent soldier, always the quickest to follow orders.

When she looked back at the podium she saw that Juturna was now armed as well. “Please hear your new orders, and heed them.” She looked to one of the armed soldiers, seemingly the leader, and nodded once. Then the soldiers opened fire.

In the madness that followed, Delphyne felt quite sure that she had lost her mind. The world turned black and red, and white for the flash of gunfire. The noise was unbelievable, and she clamped her hands over her ears desperately wishing to escape. After mere moments that felt like centuries, the world grew silent, and Delphyne found herself face down in darkness, some sort of weight pinning her legs while another lay across her back. She realised that she was breathing heavily, a sound that surely could be heard even Above Ground, and tried to make herself stop. But no…she had to breathe. You couldn’t just stop breathing. Bodies stopped working if their owners stopped breathing.

She heard sounds, but in the wake of the thunderous madness that had brought her to this dark place they had been undetectable at first. She heard them now as her hearing equalised, and tried to figure out what they were. Ticks and groans, as when you stepped on old floorboards—Ganza had no floorboards though; she remembered that much—faint shuffling sounds, and the nearby sound of ragged breathing. That wasn’t hers, surely—she’d got herself under control.

Slowly her mind cleared, and she remembered the last things she’d seen before ending up in darkness. The soldiers, shooting into the crowd of agents…shooting to kill. Juturna, turning her gun on Aegiale and ordering her down into the seething. Aegiale’s horrified look, a look that spoke of betrayal. And Juturna’s face, cold and emotionless and indicative of just how much this was a business transaction to her. Cutting down her own people clearly hadn’t worried her all that much.

© Trisha W.F.