Vision in Red by Sajjad Rasool - HTML preview

Vision in Red

The floor was concrete. But it was covered in a fine, gray dust.

"Dust?" Yasmin asked.

"No," Amal crouched down. She touched the gray powder. It smeared on her finger like ink.

"It's words," Amal whispered. "It's letters."

She looked closely at the dust. It wasn't random particles. It was millions of tiny, microscopic Arabic letters. Alif. Ba. Ta. intertwined and pulverized.

"The books are disintegrating," Yasmin said.

"No," Amal stood up, wiping her hand. "They're being digested."

She looked down the aisle.

At the far end, in the deep shadow, something moved.

It wasn't a person. It was a silhouette. But it wasn't tall and wavering like the Watchers in the camp.

It was short. Compact. And it was moving with a jerky, staccato rhythm.

Click. Step. Click. Step.

"Hide," Amal hissed.

They ducked into an aisle—Sector 7: Water Resources.

They pressed their backs against the cold metal shelves.

Amal peered through the gap between the boxes.

The figure walked into the light.

It looked like a man. It wore a gray suit—a generic, ill-fitting bureaucrat's suit. It wore a tie. It had a pen in its breast pocket.

But it had no face.

Where the face should have been, there was just... a smudge. Like a thumb had wiped across wet clay. No eyes. No nose.

And no mouth.

But it had hands. The hands were huge, ink-stained, and frantic.

It was holding a file. It opened the file, pulled out a document, and brought it to its face.

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