by K. C. Finn
He looks at her in the centre of the image. Her face is much the same as it is now, that same proud smile beams up at him in the sharp, glossy image. She wears a slate grey uniform almost the same shade as her suits are at the station, with various coloured additions marking her as representative of the base. The contents of the Special Brigade gather around her, about two thirds of which are male, wearing the same slate colour, but with fewer adornments to their fatigues. Cae wonders idly how many of them too have had machinery grafted to their insides. Perhaps all of them have.
At the right hand end of the crowd of soldiers stands the rotund form of Doctor Howard Fowler, looking a little younger than when Cae met him, but no less red in the face. And flanking the left side of the group is a second man. Cae’s gloved thumb tightens on the picture, creasing it at the corner. He holds it closer to his sharp blue eyes, desperately searching the features of the unknown man.
His hair is a brown shade dusted with grey, some lines crease around his eyes where he is smiling at the camera, but Cae knows that handsome, bearded face. He is dressed in a sharp navy suit with some kind of security badge in his pocket, his silver-rimmed glasses folded over the neckline of his shirt. Cae can imagine his hands, the strong, long-fingered hands of a pianist, flipping those square-rimmed lenses into position to rest on his chest. The man’s eyes sparkle into the camera, shining with a cobalt blue shade.
“Who is this Kendra?” Cae asks, turning the photo. “The man in the blue suit?”
Kendra’s proud grin falters a little at the look on his face.
“Well that’s Julius,” she explains, “Julius Cadinsky, the Professor.”
“No it isn’t,” Cae answers, taking back the picture.
And now he knows that Lachrymosa must be his destination, for better or worse. He stares at the handsome, smiling face on the glossy photo, a bitter taste forming in his mouth at the man’s carefree grin.
“Kendra, this is my father.”
