[ Vasiliy registers it when his shoulders relaxβthe reaction he's been aiming for since the beginning. They're getting somewhere, especially considering how the rest of these people react to the presence of someone like him.
It's hard to imagine a child Dale Harding, but he has to wonder if this theoretical shrunken-down version of the man sitting beside him was the schoolyard bully. That tends to be the type of personality drawn into this, or at least those at the top of the childhood pecking order. It's easier to make people believe you have power over them when you already believe it yourself. ]
Your shifts, they are long, aren't they? Twelve hours, fourteen?
[ Residual fatigue sinks into his bones at the very thought of long shifts, the remembered exhaustion of fourteen-hour days and the vivid recollection of the way the early sunlight in the Red Square sliced into his retinas after more than half the day underground. He can, on some level, relate to the apparent exhaustion. ]
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It's hard to imagine a child Dale Harding, but he has to wonder if this theoretical shrunken-down version of the man sitting beside him was the schoolyard bully. That tends to be the type of personality drawn into this, or at least those at the top of the childhood pecking order. It's easier to make people believe you have power over them when you already believe it yourself. ]
Your shifts, they are long, aren't they? Twelve hours, fourteen?
[ Residual fatigue sinks into his bones at the very thought of long shifts, the remembered exhaustion of fourteen-hour days and the vivid recollection of the way the early sunlight in the Red Square sliced into his retinas after more than half the day underground. He can, on some level, relate to the apparent exhaustion. ]