Ekos 3.1 - Arbeit macht frei

Posted on Sunday, 11 April 2021 - 2:04pm by Lieutenant JG Adrianna Eberhardt

Adrianna had been listening to the conversation downstairs. She understood the majority, but some colloquialisms were beyond her level of understanding. They also spoke quickly and even the parts in standard, she struggled with. Her struggle with language became more apparent as her eyelids suddenly became heavy. The Italian was unable to comprehend the awake world.

REM seemed to run the second her eyes shut without the need to ease into with a gentle snooze. A series of images struck her mind's eye rather rudely. The visuals were of Earth's textbooks on European history. Concentration camps being prominent. She saw skin, bones and tortured souls being innocently forced to "Arbeit macht frei", working to make them free, but freedom would only come in the form of grim mortality.

It was one thing she had not read about when it came to Ekos, and yet her images brought her to a full nightmare of being put there for not being arian.

She was alone.

Hungry.

"Leopold, where are you?"

A familiar voice replied, "Seig Heil!"

Turning she saw a nazi uniformed Leopold with an old fashioned rifle.

Words from another voice, someone she could not pinpoint started echoing around her, "one of you will die. Knowing your luck in life, you may gain a Tally or worse. One of you will die."

Adrianna awoke with a start. She breathed heavily and looked around. It was now dark outside, but Leopold was still conversing with his sister downstairs, or at least with someone. She was not focused enough to tell which, Adrianna only assumed.

The woman shuffled to the edge of the bed, grabbing her PaDD. She needed distraction but instead, found herself researching Ekos once more, to triple check that not every atrocity that Earth's version of devastating slaughter was not present here. Her eyes moved quickly through the equivalent of pages upon pages that she had saved to her PaDD, pleading to not see anything close to 'concentration camp'.

Her attention was soon distracted by the sound of Leopold saying 'I've got the papers to visit mother', or something along those lines.

Now her anxiety was heightened for other reasons. Sitting back, resting her back on the bed's headboard she sighed and comforted herself, "you'll be fine. He'll be with you. You'll be fine."