Missing Red Dot [Simon Arish & Dylan Faden]
“I heard you were expecting me tonight,” Arish calls out to the man sitting inside the containment cell, fiddling with his fingers. “Got anything to say?”
“Do you think I’ll say something different tonight?”
“Well, Dylan.” The Head of Security picks a chair and sits, relaxed. “I think you’re not that different from your sister. Which is, you’re gonna say anything straight away but not your exact point until eventually talking about Jesse because you have nothing left.”
Arish sees how Dylan eyes him in a way he’d see a little boy wounded; the sort of pain stretching through the years and hard to undo within two weeks or so. Glass mirrors stand between them and blurs what they should have been to each other. Dylan has been given comfortable clothes and proper distraction that does not trigger memories before and during the Hiss, yet all of it are only bare minimums of compensation and only because the other Faden is the director. And, above everything, it’s all because she is not there… as Dylan wished.
“However,” Arish turns it again, “it doesn’t mean I am annoyed with your company. I got excited knowing I’ll have to stay around instead of being at Logistics.”
Dylan looks at him again, this time with a frown. “You’re not being really honest, are you?”
Arish shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be there if I wasn’t.” And he leans over, crossing his arms over the chair’s back and resting his chin over it, giving a short but kind smile. “Now, go on. I’m all ears.”
The boy waits for a while as if to reckon the sincerity in Arish’s face, but as he finally understands it—no more than seconds later—he starts right at the recurring topic of their conversations.