Timothy's Fury

The air in Lykos’ Lambda was thick with a silence that screamed. It was a silence born not of peace, but of terror, a suffocating blanket woven from the screams of the recently departed and the choked sobs of those left behind. Melissa was gone. My Melissa. Ripped from me, from this dust-choked existence, by my own hands, or rather, by my own desperate, clumsy pull on her legs. The image was seared behind my eyelids, a brand hotter than any frysuit burn. And then, the chilling finality of my own sentence, the brutal efficiency of the hangman’s noose, and the subsequent, confounding warmth of CID’s swill.

Now, the silence was broken by the shuffling of boots, the metallic clang of tools, and the low, guttural curses of the overseers. Timothy ‘Cu’ Podginus, his face a mask of thunder, prowled the cavernous mining floors. His usual sneer was contorted into a rictus of pure, unadulterated fury. The disruption, the unthinkable act of defiance that had culminated in the public execution of a slave, had not just ruffled his feathers; it had ignited a wildfire of rage within him.

“Useless worms!” his voice, amplified by the cavern’s acoustics, boomed through the tunnels. “You think this is a game? You think you can sing your pathetic dirges and spit in the face of the Colors? You are property! Nothing more!”