Iteration no. 13 [Logan Anderson & Warlin Door]
Logan recollects her awareness as if she was stuck in a static TV without someone to switch the channel. She blinks, and looks at the friendly host she just met.
“Are we in the Dark Place now, Mr. Door?”
Warlin leans against the sophisticated table with papers in hand, lining the stack properly, and says: “If this is the door you sought to open, then it might be.”
“I have opened too many and some weren’t what I was looking for.”
He gives Logan a glance that makes her want to smile back if the circumstances weren’t poor.
“And if I say yes, how will you find your way out of it?”
She shrugs like any confident and reckless teenager would. Such a thing ignites a different sparkle in Warlin’s eyes which he purposefully leaves for interpretation; a little curious prying, a little guess for a brilliant mind.
“Isn’t this a bitter coincidence?” He asks her, and for a moment, Logan ponders how much Warlin knows that she doesn’t. She once thought it was an annoying fact: everyone has a piece of life knowledge she can’t quite achieve no matter how old she becomes; yet with Mr. Door, this fact amuses, and her understanding of reality shifts gently. “Repeating the same steps your mother did years ago, stuck in a rule someone else created for you both?”
“Yes.” Logan plays along so perhaps she can catch a possible clue. Rubbing her forearms, she adds: “I don’t think I could’ve done anything but take risks. She made the same decisions before. It’s fair to return the sacrifice.”
Warlin comes closer, and he has a distant and briefly emotional glare this time. “It impresses me how you two are very similar.”