by T. C. Edge
He knew all about such people, of course. He took it as part of his job to know about all of that, even though he was nothing but a lowly caretaker himself. He travelled with soldiers of great power. He served men and women of great power. And down here, in this corridor, he was surrounded by prisoners of great power too.
He looked at the fire-headed girl again.
Haven…she must be from Haven, he thought.
A war was on-going there, one that had been brewing for some time. This girl had the look of a rebel, one of those fighting against the status quo. In Merk’s experience, rebellions usually fell somewhere between marginal failure and utter destruction. He assumed that the one in Haven would be just the same.
He nodded once more at his conclusion and smiled to himself.
And with the smile, came renewed thoughts of dinner. His stomach rumbled, and the lamplight faded as the guard turned and moved up the wooden stairs, through a wooden door, and down a wooden corridor that slowly gave way to metal.
2
The rattle of chains grew loud. Loud enough to wake a hibernating bear.
A sudden pitch to the left led to heavy grunts. In the darkness, the grunts and rattling chains joined into a din. And in that din, eyelids opened, and many sets of eyes stared into the darkness, confused.
Among those sets of eyes, one was of deep and alluring green. Kira wrenched her eyes open from a terrible dream, and felt for the first time her body fixed to the bed. Her wrists were bound to individual shackles, her ankles the same. She could move, but only just, a slow, panic-fuelled shaking overtaking her entire body as she continued to wake.
The noise down there in that dark, musty corridor grew louder. Kira could hear blunted voices beginning to call out. She couldn’t discern the words. Only mumblings came at first.
The world seemed to lurch again, rocking to the right. She blinked her eyes open and shut a dozen times, trying to see something, trying to draw herself into full consciousness.
She saw nothing. Just blackness.
Where am I? she thought weakly. What’s…going on?
On the final, twelfth blink, she kept her eyes shut tight. She searched her memory and hazy images were returned. Images of battle, of war. Streets on fire. Bodies in the dirt. Strange people coming from the alley…
Her eyes cranked open. Still, darkness.
A heavy breath hurled itself into her lungs. She rattled harder against her bonds, her muscles struggling. She felt weak, her strength subdued, her senses dulled.
She shut her eyes again, trying to block out the growing roars around her as the earth continued to rumble and shake. The last traces of memory were drawn up once more. The wind, the tornado, the strange, silver-armoured soldiers appearing as if from nowhere.
She’d never seen such men before. She’d never seen such powers. Hers were simple: heightened senses and speed. What she saw was beyond the limits she knew existed. What she saw was magic.
Kira knew herself well. She was a practical girl, not one to throw tantrums, not one for heavy bellows of emotion. She tried several more times to pull herself free of her shackles before coming to the swift realisation that such a thing was impossible.
Her panic remained, only now dulled and subdued and sent into her depths. She lay down, trying to get a feel for what else was around her. Fingers discovered the edge of a bed, topped with a thin, almost non-existent mattress. On one side, she could reach out and touch nothing but air before her chains held her back. On the other was a wall. It felt like rough wood, fitted with metal supports.
She stopped and went still, letting her senses gradually return. She listened, and tried to separate the sounds within the growing chorus of shouting and screaming and clinking metal. Some were near, over to her left or straight ahead. Others stretched further away. She imagined that the space she was in was fairly tight and narrow, perhaps calling home to about a dozen or so people, and certainly no more than twenty.
She knew immediately that she was in a cell.
That much was obvious, even though her ability to think clearly remained muddied and dull. Through a half-dream, she studied the past events she could remember and promptly concluded that she was now a captive of the enemy.
But something was off. Her enemy didn’t dress as the soldiers from the alley. Her enemy weren’t in the habit of taking prisoners. But above all, she’d lived in and near the city of Haven for all of her twenty-two years, and had never, ever felt the earth move as it was right now…
A sudden light appeared. It spread from her right, somewhere up above, painting the space around her in a faint yellow glow. She leaned her head up again and took it all in.
She was on a bed, fixed against the back wall of a cell. It was a small space, perhaps ten feet by ten, the front blocked off by a series of iron bars. Beyond, a corridor stretched right to left, and beyond that the dark silhouettes of more bars appeared. Behind them, all was dark and wreathed in shadow.
The light on her right moved left, coming closer towards her as if descending from a higher vantage. As it came, the roaring of voices began to settle a little, and cutting through the relative quiet, Kira heard the sounds of creaking boards and the dull thud of heavy boots.
“All right, all right, hush now.”
The voice creaked along with the boards. It was loud enough to meander down to the end of the corridor, cutting off several more voices.
“Hush!” it came again, a little more loudly.
The light continued to spread down and left, lighting more of Kira’s surroundings. Then, suddenly, it burst into full view as a lamp appeared around the edge of her cell. A body came with it, dressed in a short-sleeved, brown leather jacket, buttoned from collar to waist and ending in a worn looking cloth belt. Sprouting from the top was a gnarled and aged face that looked to be as leathery as the jacket it sat atop.
The guard was holding a lamp at chest height, casting him half in shadow and half in light. He turned the lamp towards her, causing her to lower her eyes.
“Good girl,” he said. “You keep quiet now.”
He smiled, displaying yellowing, crooked teeth, and continued on and out of sight, taking the light with him. Kira saw the mop of thinning brown hair on his head was sodden, and noticed the trail of wet prints being left behind by his boots. Then, the details faded as the guard stomped beyond her view to the left of the cell.
“You hush now,” she heard him say again. “Keep your tongues quiet. The master has no need for them. Wag them too much and you’ll lose them. Hush now.”
The voices quietened one by one, only a couple still bellowing out. Now, their wording became quite clear to Kira’s ears. They were just as confused as she was.
“Where am I!” shouted one man. He sounded quite young, though his tone was rushed and manic. “What is this place?!”
“Hush now,” said the guard. “You’ll know in time.”
A round of heavy rattling clattered down from the left, about midway along the corridor.
The footsteps of the guard stopped.
“I’m gonna rip your head clean off,” sounded a voice like thunder with a strange accent. “Soon as I get out! Soon as I get out!”
The old man’s retort came after a moment’s delay.
“You are a large one,” he mused. “I’m afraid you won’t be getting out, not for a little while anyway. And when you do, I can assure you you’ll have other people than me whose heads you want to ‘rip clean off.”
Another rattle of chains was followed by a puff like the grunt of a bull. Then, more gentle sounds of walking as the guard continued his rounds, speaking as he went.
“I know the ride is unpleasant,” he called out. “It seems most of you need another dose to settle you. Deep breaths now, suck it in…”
Kira heard him stop at the end of the corridor. A short silence followed before the stiff, hissing sound of some sort of canister going off. Then, the footsteps began again, and the guard came marching slowly by, his
face now covered in a gas mask, trailing a cloud of smoke as he went.
It quickly filled the space, seeping into each cell. Kira backed away on instinct and tried to reach to her mouth, but it was no use. The mist surrounded her, and after a brief show of defiance, her lungs gave up and drew in a long breath.
“Sleep now, girl,” said the guard with his crooked smile.
Kira glared at him with her emerald eyes, as her mind clouded and drifted away.
When Kira awoke, the rocking of the earth had subsided and the corridor had grown quiet and calm. She opened her eyes as weakly as before and still found only darkness staring back, an unusual sensation for a young woman who had, since she was just a little girl, been capable of seeing quite clearly in the dark.
It was one of the gifts her enhanced biology had given her, and one of several at that. Her other senses were all equally attuned as her eyesight, a fact that had fashioned her into a formidable spy, assassin, tracker, hunter and soldier.
But here, she was just a prisoner…
She lay there for a time, her mind dull, her thoughts blank and struggling to search. Her reverie began to slowly fade, a gap opening for her to step through. Bit by bit, she inched from the shroud in her mind and began to take stock of her surroundings once more.
Where was she?
Her mind tried to search for a solution. When none quickly came, she squeezed her fingers tight and felt a pinch of pain as her nails cut the skin of her palm. She loosened her grip a touch and her jaw followed suit. A few deep breaths entered her lungs and spilled out the other way, exercises that she’d utilised on many occasions to calm herself in the heat of battle.
She needed to think, and if she wanted do so clearly, anger and rage were unwelcome guests. All they did was cloud judgement and lead rational thoughts astray. Right now, she had to work with facts and not speculation.
She racked her brain and thought again of when and where she’d been taken. She thought of the words the guard had said before he’d put them all to sleep. She thought of the rocking of the floor, the creaking of the boards, the trail of water the guard brought in with him.
Then it came to her.
I’m at sea, she thought.
Kira had never seen the ocean. She’d never stepped foot upon a boat. Truth be told, she’d never done anything of much really, except fight and do battle. Yet the signs were clear, and they lit the truth like bright stars in the night sky.
When she last awoke, the rocking had been caused by a storm. The guard had trailed it in from outside, sodden through and through. He’d put them to sleep and now, waking, the weather had turned and the sea had calmed.
“I’m at sea,” she whispered, this time aloud.
And as she did, a tide of panic ripped through her, breaking apart her calm like water against rock. Her eyes blasted open as wide as they could, desperately trying to find their way through the dark. She saw splintered spots of light but nothing more, the blackness all consuming. Her voice began to mumble out mutterings, spilling from between heaving breaths.
“Can anyone…hear me?” came her voice. It sounded weird to her, like it hadn’t been used in days. “Is anyone…awake…”
No reply came.
She spoke again, though her words were small and muted. She coughed, trying to cast away the web that seemed to tangle her voice, but found her throat dry and lungs weak.
“Anyone…” she said again. “Does anyone know what’s happening?”
She called again in vain hope and let her voice whisper down the corridor. It hit the end and echoed back, and she heard just how pathetic it was.
She steadied herself, tried to muster her courage. It faltered and failed her, and she dropped her head to the thin mattress, and began pulling without hope at her chains. They rattled lightly, filling the chamber like a beggar shaking a tin pot for change.
Her legs and arms soon failed her too, just like her courage. They dropped down and went still, and her churning thoughts began to overtake her again.
The blackness beckoned. Her eyes slid shut.
And once more, she passed out.
3
It was a light slap to the cheek that brought Kira out of her nightmares.
The smack of pain was enough to blow away some of the shroud that clouded her mind, but not all of it. Her eyes flickered, letting in shards of light, before dropping shut again. Mumbled voices came, as though spoken through deep water, little more than a jumble of words forming inaudible sentences.
Another slap connected, and her mind cleared further. More words, this time legible. Just.
“Wake…up…”
She felt pressure on her eyelids, fingers drawing them open. The light poured in, brighter than she could ever remember, and she tried to recoil. There was nowhere for her head to go. Not back, not forward, not side to side. She was fixed in place, ankle to neck, not an inch of her able to move.
The yellow glare continued to come, waking her fast. She let out a grunt of pain and muttered, “I’m awake.”
The pressure from her eyelids held for a moment, and then withdrew. She cast them shut and, for once, felt relief in the darkness. Her lungs filled and emptied, and her cognition suddenly caught fire.
“I’m awake,” she repeated, this time with more assurance.
She opened her eyes, allowing a slow intake of light, like a starved man weaning himself back onto food. Slowly but surely, the room came into view.
There were three men before her. Two were close, to her right and left. The third was further back, standing nonchalantly against a wall. All wore strange clothes of dark maroon. They seemed to Kira to be robes of some sort, tied at the waist with fine brown leather belts.
The room itself was white, brightly lit and nothing like the cell she’d been in. A metal table lined with an assortment of tools was set to one side. There was little else that Kira could see, but there didn’t need to be. The assigned purpose of the tools quickly became apparent, and though Kira was no stranger to pain, her voice clotted with concern nonetheless.
“Are you going to torture me?” she croaked.
She directed the question at the man ahead, standing coolly by the wall. He leaned at an angle, presenting only the side profile of his face. It appeared young, perhaps her own age or a little older, his hair settled in glossy black curls on his head, his skin coloured golden and eyes a dark, startling brown.
The young man didn’t answer. He glanced at her with a brief disinterest before nodding at one of the guards. The man on her left retreated to the table of tools and began perusing them with the casual interest of a man choosing lunch. His finger went from one terrifying looking instrument to the next, fingering them, occasionally picking them up, examining them as if to consider which would administer the most pain.
The tension was too much for Kira to bear.
“What the hell is this?!” Her voice was strained, her eyes darting from the guard, where they’d been stuck, to the young man by the back wall, seemingly in charge. “Who are you?! What the hell am I doing here?!”
The young man in the red robes eyed her with a mixture of contempt and persistent disinterest. His eyes flung back to the guard, who continued his survey of the torture table.
Kira’s breathing had now grown sufficient to set a wind to the room. Her eyes shifted from man to man, looking at them with a blend of panic, confusion, and utter incredulousness.
“Can you people talk or not?!” she shouted again.
The tone of her voice suggested that there was anger mingled in there too. Her green eyes had started to flame, like a forest set alight. Over the years, she’d become quite aware that anger would often override fear when she set herself against an opponent. Should she ever suffer injury, it tended to aid in numbing the pain too.
She’d use it now.
“You take me…from my war! You…bring me here! You set me in this…contraption. And…now you won’t speak!”
Her words came out betw
een her heaving breaths; so fierce she thought they might catch light. Her eyes aimed squarely on the black haired man ahead, whose posture had barely changed and whose side profile hadn’t budged at all. It was as if he was hiding some grotesque feature on the other side of his face, determined to keep it in shadow.
The guards turned to the same man. His eyes flicked to each of them, before turning down to his hands, which he’d began to fiddle with casually in front of his chest.
Kira watched closely, the anger in her enough to completely dismiss any remaining fogginess in her head. She felt completely awake again, her mind alert, refusing to turn from the man until he’d granted an answer.
“I know I’m at sea…” she went on, unwilling to permit the silence any further dominion over the room.
As she said it, though, she looked around the room and had second thoughts. It wasn’t exactly like the cellblock. And, they didn’t seem to be moving anymore either.
“We are…still at sea, right?”
The man by the wall shifted slightly. The visible corner of his mouth decided to shift too, lifting a touch into something you might mistake for a smile.
Then his head dipped. It was a nod, sure as day.
“So, we’re at sea…” Kira continued, re-finding her feet. “What am I doing here? Where. Are. You. Taking. ME?!”
The final sentence was deliberately cut into specific words, rising in volume with each new delivery. Then, her rate of breathing exploded again, and her pulse went right along with it. Were she not so young and athletic, this would be prime heart-attack territory.
An answer wasn’t forthcoming, and a new silence fell. It didn’t last long, interrupted by a loud and sudden clang of metal. Kira’s green eyes swept quickly left and she saw that the guard had now chosen his favoured instrument.
