Majgen Ch. 006

Majgen was looking at Harriet same as the others, even after a year at the Mentariata she was still disturbed by having her memories and feelings put on display by others.

'What did she see?' Majgen wondered,'what kind of game is she going to start?' In the beginning of her fourteenth year of life Majgen's empathic perception of her surroundings was still very sporadic.

Harriet's friend was the first to take the bait.

"What did you see?" she asked with two parts curiosity and one part concern for her friend.

Theatrically Harriet delayed her reply, with a sense of drama she turned her eyes to Majgen - before serving the sentence she had prepared.

"Student Majgen is a Hawlun orphan."

All the students turned their eyes to Majgen, some of them almost gaping with morbid fascination. Majgen started shaking. This was not visible through the long outer cloak of her uniform. However, the panicked movements of her head, as she started glancing all around her for escape routes was.

"Hold her, she is going to make a run for it," Harriet yelled.

Her words were like a start signal for Majgen - who began a sprint towards the open end of the hallway. If corporal punishment for disobedience was the price she had to pay to avoid reliving her memories of Hawlun again, then Majgen was willing to pay it.

She did not make it past the group of students. One of them kicked her shin when she tried to run past him. Very efficiently making her trip over his leg. Majgen did not give herself time to recover from the impact with the floor, before scurrying to her feet. She was too slow though. The student who had made her trip grabbed the hood hanging down her back and pulled with force. Hence Majgen fell again, before she had even gotten on her feet, this time on her back.

"Where do you think, you are going tenth ranked Student?" he asked with a grin.

Majgen stared at him. She was not in a state of panic, but she was very, very afraid.

'They are not acting under the affect of my emanations.' Majgen was sure of it, but she knew how cruel students could be, even without primal rage effects.

She was caught, she was outnumbered, and she was terrified.

The student had a tight grip on her hood. There was only one means of escape left to her. If she used that, she would regret it later; Mentariata staff would see to that. Students could be cruel, but nothing students did to other students compared to the punishments angry Femarons could resort to.

Majgen reached her arms above her head, a futile attempt to wrestle his hands loose from her hood. Rather than just holding on to the hood, he repositioned himself to sit on her stomach.

"This really is no way for a tenth ranked Student to behave amongst superiors," he said while letting go of her hood and grabbing hold of her wrists instead. Pinning her down completely.

"I need a subject for training my mentarion skills too," he claimed.

Majgen raised a mind shield in desperation.

"Now that really is no way to behave amongst superiors," he stated, referring to her mind shield, "Are you going to lower that mind shield yourself, or do you want me to tear it down?"

"I shared apples with a baker yesterday," Majgen said.

"What?"

"I shared apples with a baker yesterday," Majgen repeated with a shaky voice, and again with desperation evident in her voice. "I shared apples with a baker yesterday!"

"What is she..." someone began a question, but it was interrupted by a three-tone alarm from loudspeakers in the hallway.

All the rank 6 students went quiet to listen. Majgen closed her eyes and kept her mind shield up, she was shaking with fear. She had taken the last resort, there was no way back now.

"Emergency in Everbloom hallway. Emergency code 45D. Emergency in Everbloom hallway. Emergency code 45D."

The loudspeakers kept repeating the message with a calm and gentle female voice emulation. Each time the message had been repeated twice, the security program played the three note alarm sound before repeating the message twice again.

The students looked at each other with puzzlement, one of them realized something of importance to the group:

"We are in Everbloom hallway."

These words caused some of them to look around, half expecting to see an emergency in progress, somewhere in the hallway, but they and Majgen were the only ones in the hallway.

"It was her!" Student Otto Bandera exclaimed pointing at Majgen, "The freaking whore just voice activated a security protocol." He glanced around nervously.

"I didn't do anything wrong. Im out of here," Otto said and started running to the hallway's open exit.

A couple others followed his example, not all of them running though.

"None of us did anything wrong," Student Sput Krano said and stood his ground. "She is the one who is going to get in trouble for this. Not us."

Student Harriet Cowl nodded, she stood her ground too. Several who had not participated directly, stayed for reasons of curiosity of what would happen next.

Sixth ranked Student Otto Bandera was the first to reach the exit of hallway Everbloom, but he didn't get much farther. A security personnel staff member had been close by when the alarm sounded, and arrived in time to see Otto speeding out of the hallway.

Without hesitation the security guard shot Student Otto with an electric pulse. He shot the next student speeding out of the hallway too. This one fell in plain view of the other students. At first the remaining rank 6 students assumed he had tripped in his hurry to get away.

The security staff member rounded the corner and began shooting every student he saw, starting with the ones closest to him; a panic broke out in the remaining students.

His gun was set to stun, not kill. That distinction, however, was not clearly visible to those watching the shooter in work. With less than a second between each shot the single shooter managed to stun all sixteen students present, including Majgen, before more personnel arrived to the scene. The alarm was not cancelled until a Femaron, one of the teachers, arrived and searched the hallway with empathic senses, to be sure no one was hiding from plain sight.

Two of the students had received hard blows to their head from the impact with the floor, when they were shot unconscious. One had broken an arm. The rest got away from their meetings with the floor with minor bruises.

Before Majgen was given a new voice activation code, she was severely punished for her abuse of her voice activation code. She had only been meant to say: 'I shared apples with a baker yesterday' if she had found herself in a situation where her emanations had triggered primal rage in persons around her. She was not meant to use the alarm-activating code when being harassed by students. Especially not when the harassment was not in breach with Mentariata rule sets.

----=(A matter of not being sure)=----

Baglian did not spare his student long moments to dwell on memories.

"Be more specific, Student. Explain what caused your doubt in the understanding, the Femarons had achieved."

"My apologies, Femaron Baglian," Majgen said, both for letting her mind trail off somewhat and for having been unable to be more specific sooner. "The matter is hard to specify."

"That is often the case with impressions and believes," Baglian informed her dispassionately, "Keep trying, and try harder."

"I came to the understanding that one person believed that another person believed that; Femaron Braygen had not been entirely blameless." Majgen felt a bit nervous about expressing herself with such primitive wording in front of a Femaron. "I am sorry, I cannot express the matter more clearly, Femaron Baglian."

Baglian leaned back and considered her words, before speaking again.

"This other person who supposedly believed Femaron Braygen was not blameless. You found yourself unable to perceive the information from him?"

"I have never been within sensing range of him after the incident with Femaron Braygen, Femaron."

Baglian sensed a brief flash of a feeling of loss in her emanations.

"Was it someone you were close to?" Baglian asked.

"No, Femaron," Majgen said, she was almost surprised to sense Baglian perceiving that she regretted that circumstance, she had barely noticed that feeling herself.

"Who was it?"

"It was Ottearon Weissme," Majgen said, "He was my personal student counsellor, since I was first enrolled at the Mentariata, Femaron. I saw him as late as a few days prior to what happened with Femaron Braygen. But two days after that incident, I received word that he no longer had time to act as a student counsellor."

Majgen caught herself sighing, when she perceived Baglian noticing her reaction to her own words.

"I never saw him in person after that," Majgen continued. "His workload must have truly changed. During my first year at the Mentariata I often saw him in hallways and parks. After he assigned me to another counsellor I never saw him again."

After completing that sentence Majgen reached for her drink and silently admitted to herself that it had been a loss. She had been scared of Ottearon Weissme, like she had been scared of all mentarions of higher rank than her. However, she had gotten the impression that Ottearon Weissme liked her, an impression she did not usually get from mentarions.

'Did she never suspect a connection between those two events?' Baglian wondered.

Majgen returned her eyes and attention to him as if he had spoken his contemplation out loud.

'Femaron Baglian is convinced that Ottearon Weissme was avoiding me on purpose.' Majgen realized.'Why would he..'

The full extent of Baglian's considerations came to her faster than she could think the question to herself. She averted her eyes from him again, focusing on what she sensed.

'Politics, knowledge not meant to be shared with any random mentarion. Especially students too young to understand the finer details of society,' Majgen thought to herself in understanding of the contemplations Baglian made after her words.

'Not a coincidence. Why did I never understand that? Why did no one in my vicinity think of that? A man of such influence, such power, of course he could not allow a mere student to see his memories.'

Majgen did not know she was about to cry until she felt a tear run down her cheek.

'He abandoned me for politics, he lied to me. He was the only one who cared about me, and he lied to me.'

Majgen turned her face back to Baglian, she could see herself through his eyes. She could see the single tear moving down her cheek slowly, and she could feel Baglian's reaction to it.

'He doesn't care about my sadness. He is analyzing it, but he feels no compassion for me. To him I am only an unused resource, like Krawiec was - a wreck that needs to be salvaged.'

Majgen blinked freeing the water still in her eyes to two fresh tears, one for each cheek.

'Have you no heart, Femaron Baglian? Are you a machine? Is that what I should be too? Will that make me happy? Will that take away my loneliness and pain?'

"May I go to bed now, Femaron Baglian?" she asked.

"Yes. Student Majgen." He watched her as she went to the smaller bedroom, without needing to ask for directions.

*

Copyright of Nanna Marker (lit ID Ellynei)

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