Different This Time

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

Marko shut the warehouse door and pressed a seal to the lock. A glow assured him that it was secured. No way out.

Now…

As he paced down the first shadowy aisle, nerves on edge and senses straining, the disembodied murmur started. “Why are you doing this?”

Marko snorted. “Shouldn’t that be my line?”

“No.” At this close range Brian’s sending carried emotion, his frustration and resentment tangible in the projected voice. “You know why I’m doing this. It’s been six fucking years, Marko, and you can’t pretend the problem isn’t getting worse. Why are you helping them hurt us?”

“Don’t try to lump me in with you.”

‘Keep him talking, keep him concentrating on this, but don’t pay heed to the words…’

“Oh for - we’re the same! Surely you don’t believe that amnesty ruse. As soon as you’re finished doing their dirty work they’ll dispose of you. You’re just as unclean in their eyes as I am. So why are you siding with them instead of your fellow Weavers?”

“We can’t beat them.”

Brian had to know that. Had to have seen the number of volunteers for the Purity Force. And the weapons they were being issued with.

“We can’t give up either!”

“You’re driving Weavers into hopeless slaughter.”

“You say while rounding us up for cattle pens!”

“Don’t be so dramatic. They’re not pens, they’re neighbourhoods. Places we can be safe.”

“Safe.” Brian’s voice was splintered, darting from a dozen sides. “Told where we can live, who we can talk to, what we can do. With goons surrounding us punishing any deviation from their crushing rules.”

“Non-Weavers want reassurance. Society needs order-”

“You know what happens once a people is trapped in ghettos, Mark.”

“It won’t be like that, because Weavers can be valuable to them.”

Etherial snorts echoed across the warehouse. “You should’ve spent less time playing with Threads and read more history.”

Marko’s lip curled. “Why, so both of us could be locked in the past and prisons woven of might-bes?”

“So you’d recognise the speeches they’re quoting.”

That sent goosebumps up Marko’s arms. But he brushed it aside. “Well, while you’re playing hero and feeding the newspapers anti-Weaver material, some of us are trying to build a future! You could’ve done with spending less time buried in your books and more of it in the real world.”

“The real world?” Brian scoffed. “How much time have you spent in those ‘neighbourhoods’ you’re building?”

“I live in one.”

“Yeah, the one in the middle of the capitol for their pet Weavers. How much time have you spent in others?”

Marko’s slow, deliberate footsteps echoed across the silent warehouse.

‘Ignore him. Stay focused.’

“Because I’ve been travelling, Mark.” Brian’s whisper was… sad. An aching sorrow which stabbed worse than the bitterness and anger. “And all that anti-Weaver material? Well, the stuff that’s true, I was asked to do. By our people.”

“Then they’re as foolish as-” a Purity baton cracked down on his skull and brought silence.

Prompt was “Write a dialogue scene in which two characters have an important conversation while playing hide and seek.”