Chereads / Baits / Chapter 41 - 41

Chapter 41 - 41

Tamru kicks his legs unevenly as he contemplates your words. "Exploit Flynn?" he says. "Maybe he does deserve to be at the bottom, but I think if I did that, I'd be just as bad as the rest of them. It's a very human thing, to see some little bit of power, a potential imbalance, and then claim it to your own advantage, instead of trying to even things out." He shakes his head. "I've been lucky to escape the worst of it," he says. "Beatings, intimidation arrests, attacks. But I've dealt with plenty of the mundane stuff: the glances, the slurs, the whispers. Dealing with that was exhausting enough. I couldn't do that to someone else. And I think—I hope—that turning down that opportunity is also a very human thing to do."

He treads water a little slower. "The thing that's making all this worse is not being able to even unwind, not being able to get ballast air in my lungs. They just yanked that away. I've been trying to tell them, but nobody's listening to me about how important it is. They just keep telling me that I don't need it to survive, so I can just do without." They did seem pretty strict there yesterday when you visited.