by Eli Ingle
The light over the door went out and Rigel relaxed when he finally realised that he was alone. He could find no comfortable position whilst shackled to the walls, so he had to slump against the floor. At the right angle he could just about lie down.
Later, the attendants came around and left the room, muttering darkly to each other. Rigel did not hear any of their cutting remarks, however, as he had fallen asleep about ten minutes before.
Swimming before him was the girl who had broken into his cell. A scream pierced his head as he saw her lying prone on the floor while a figure in black advanced towards her. His view shifted and he saw that it was Frivlok; a curved knife clutched in his hand. His eyes were shining a bright purple. Turning the blade until it curved towards her chest, he drove it down, exactly over the spot Rigel had seen her bleeding from. Her back arched and she screamed as light began to flood out of her chest. The note she had left in Rigel’s pocked was clutched in her hand. Rigel’s eyes snapped open, her screams still echoing in his mind.
Rigel shifted, unsuccessfully trying to shake off the dream. It reminded him how short his time was and that he would not have long to get away.
A buzzer interrupted his thoughts just before the attendants entered the room again, carrying four large mirrors apiece. The light above the door was re-engaged and Rigel felt the same sense of hopeless stress and panic rising again.
He watched as the attendants hung the mirrors in the room at various angles and heights – almost like the angles of a homemade periscope – before retiring to their corners again.
“You must conjure a beam of light and direct it at the first mirror here. Then alter the angle until it successfully reflects off all the mirrors in the room and lands here.” He pointed to a dot that had been painted on the wall. “You may proceed when ready.”
Rigel was holding onto the feelings of stress and anxiety as they had helped him to conjure the magic last time. But other thoughts about escaping were creeping in. The only time he could possibly do it would be when the task had ended. The Minister would leave (thereby not seeing the escape) and Rigel would have a chance to hold the door whilst the attendants were opening it.
Yes, that would be the only way … .
But first he had the task here to do. Conjure light … who on earth could do that?! Well, he could apparently, but it was not something he had ever done before. How? Best not to think about it. Hold onto the stress, anxiety, fear. Think about light: what did it look like?
Light, stupid.
Shut up.
Well it’s true.
Shut up! Shut up!
White. Bright. Fills the room. A beam of light? Lighthouse. He tried to remember the one that had been at home.
Not when the nursing home day trip was swept out to sea there. That would not be the most helpful thing to think about now.
No. How it looked on a dark, stormy night. How the light shone in a strong beam out towards the sea, sweeping across the horizon. A beam of light.
Closing his eyes tightly he tried to mix the feelings of stress with the thoughts of the beam of light. He imagined it coming from his mind in a straight line towards the mirror that he knew was in front of him.
Opening his eyes to see if it was working, he was so surprised to see a beam of light radiating from him that he lost concentration and the light faded.
“The beam must touch the dot on the wall,” the attendant reminded him.
“I know, I know!” he snapped. “You’ll touch the dot in a minute,” he muttered, before closing his eyes again.
Stress, lighthouse, beam of light.
Knowing that it would be there this time, he was prepared for it. Opening his eyes, he remained focused as the beam of light danced across the mirror in front of him. Manipulating it, he directed it at the mirror to his right. Immediately it danced across the others there and landed somewhere to the right of the dot on the wall. Focusing harder, he shifted the beam until it crept across the wall. Closer and closer, it was almost touching when it suddenly disappeared.
Looking around he realised that it had fallen off the mirror and was shining on the wall in front of him instead. Shifting back to the proper position, he moved it nearer and realised that it could go no closer because it would bounce off the mirror at the wrong angle again. He would have to bend the light.
This is stupid.
No, you can do it. Just focus.
He thought about how the light beam should bend just as little and was pleased to see it twist in the air until the beam was focusing directly on the dot on the wall. He grinned and saw that the attendants were looking at him with some level of respect now.
“Very good,” said the Minister’s voice over the speaker. “I will return to see the rest of your tasks later today. I have some important business to attend to now. Goodbye.”
The light went off and the speaker crackled before falling silent. This was the time; Rigel knew he was alone now.
Watching the guards innocently as they pulled the mirrors off the wall, Rigel’s mind was elsewhere. It was searching around the mechanisms of the lock, probing and twisting. Silently, it found how to work it and pressed. With a tiny click the shackles released themselves from his wrists. The attendants had collected all the mirrors and were walking to the door and opening it.
Showtime.
The door slid open just as Rigel focused the full fury of his mind on the mirrors in their hands. They exploded and send shards sinking into faces and bodies. The men fell screaming to the floor but Rigel barely noticed; he was already up and running across the cell towards the door. Leaping over their writhing bodies, he slid into the corridor and looked left and right.
Picking right, he hurried down the corridor, trying to ignore the unpleasant twinging in his legs. They had been unmoving for so long that this sudden bout of running was doing them no good.
He continued on his way until he reached the more richly decorated hallways that he was used to. He ran towards the central staircase and stopped.
Carved on a little brass plate was the number seven. The lady had told him that the crew were in the holding cells on the third floor. He wondered briefly whether he should take a more concealed staircase – he was likely to meet more officials on this one after all – but decided against it. It would not take long for the alarm to be raised so it would be better to take these stairs than to waste time finding some other ones. Besides, he could always blast the officials out of the way.
Grinning as he dived down the stairs, he raced around and down, around and down, checking the brass number plate on each level. Fortunately the stairs were clear and he was able to make a clean run down to the third floor. It was there that problems arose.
Landing in the hallway, he raced across to a sign that he saw on the wall. Arrows directed people to different parts of the building. Behind him was marked as the holding cells.
Racing around the stairs, he saw a plain door with iron fixtures on, quite different to the sumptuous brass and velvet furnishings that he had come to expect in the rest of the building. Pulling the door open, he was hit by an icy wind that blew from the room.
Shutting the door behind him, he hurried forwards, cautious of being seen. The corridor was in the shape of a cross. Cells lined each wall and were marked by letters. There were four corridors with one guard for each.
Rigel’s first plan was to slip past the guards but he quickly realised that making a return journey with a group of prisoners would not go unnoticed. He would have to think of another plan. He considered blasting the guards to pieces, but he was also uncomfortable with this idea. In the end he saw an empty cell half-way up cell block B, and when he remembered the ease with which he had unlocked his own shackles, he decided to lock all the guards up in there instead.
Walking a little further down the corridor, he began shouting wildly, making any noise he could to attract the guards’ attention.
Very soon all four
of them were running towards him, rifles raised. With a sweep of his hand the guns were pulled from their owners and flew towards Rigel. He landed the guns on the floor. His left hand twisted in the direction of the locked cell, making it to burst open before making a sweeping gesture with his right hand. The guards were thrown into the cell. With a final hand movement the door banged shut and locked itself. Rigel smiled at the ease with which he had done it all. All the magic must have been still coursing through him from earlier.
Running down the corridors, he shouted out for Laurie, Tink, and the other pilots, ignoring the shouting of the guards and other prisoners who had watched the spectacle.
Eventually he found them in cell block D. They had been separated into single holding cells, although these were all adjoining one another.
“Rigel!” cried Laurie. “I’m so pleased to see you.”
“How do I open the doors?” Rigel asked, examining the mechanism.
“There’s a spinning crank over there,” Spanner said, pointing at the end of the corridor. “Do that to open them all. It’s what they use to let us out for exercise.”
“You don’t look like the exercising type,” commented Rigel, grinning.
“No,” sniffed Laurie, examining his fingers, “but I deemed it fit to appear as though I conformed.”
“Er, yes,” said Rigel, not understanding but choosing to run over to the crank instead.
It was stiff to move and his light weight and lack of strength made it very difficult to pull. However, putting all his effort into it, he managed to pull it down, opening the cell doors. The pilots cheered. Tink came over and thanked Rigel, ruffling his hair.
They ran to the entrance, ignoring the louder shouts from the prisoners and guards. Rigel stopped the crew before they left, picking up the guards’ rifles. Laurie handed them out to the best shots and after taking a moment to load the guns, they moved out into the hallway again.
It was unusually quiet and they could not suppress the feeling that they were being watched. Feeling on edge, they hurried down the hall, trusting Laurie’s sense of direction to get them away from the Minister and all the attendants.
“Please can we stop?” panted L’aroche.
Laurie agreed, before pulling them into an empty room. He moved over to a table and sat down, his legs swinging over the edge. “I don’t know what to do,” the captain admitted, looking more defeated than Rigel had ever seen him. “We’re stranded here and look what’s happened to Kozenia! Our past lives are gone.. The Minister’s a tyrant and we’re three years further into the Shadow than we expected. What’s the point in running? Where are we even running to? We have no friends, family. We’re not safe.”
“I have an idea,” said Rigel, pulling out the folded paper from his pocket. He relayed the tale of what happened to him in the white cell and then what happened when the mysterious girl came to visit him. They pricked up their ears and listened with interest. Tink and Quimby came to look over his shoulder at the piece of paper.
“So she said we had to steal a ship and go and find this other Light One?” repeated Laurie.
“That’s right.”
They were silent, lost in their own thoughts. Tink was shifting around, becoming excited.
“Can’t you see?” Tink asked everyone. “This gives us the perfect solution! Do this, get another Light One on our side and get back home again!”
“I don’t know how you can even think about such an idea!” snapped L’aroche, much to Rigel’s surprise. “Considering going back on one of those airships – look what happened last time! To think that you would risk doing that again! What would happen if we turned up five years further into the future … or more? Shadow run over everything, nothing left. Then what? It was happy accident that we turned up three years late; there’s still a chance at a life here, I suppose. But if it were more? I don’t think so. How can you think like that?”
“Listen for a minute, will you?” said Tink, looking furious at what L’aroche was suggesting. “Rigel’s just said it himself, because that’s what the girl said: We’ll arrive back here again when we’ve completed the mission but we’ll have gone back in time. Do you know what that means? We’ll get to see our families again! We’ll have the lives we knew. This Minister won’t be a tyrant because the kings will be back. The civil war won’t have happened! We’ll be going back before the time when we set off.”
“Empty words coming from a stranger,” spat L’aroche, looking down at Tink with contempt. “How do we know this isn’t another trap?” she asked. “We have no proof that what that person said is true.”
“We don’t have anything else left to hope for,” said Laurie, quietly.
His words were left to sink in. Rigel nodded to back up what was being said.
L’aroche sighed. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. It’s all set. If anything, not doing it would be more disastrous,” said Rigel.
“You’re right,” said Laurie, suddenly standing up. “Form a line! Ready to storm from the building to the landing docks! We sail at dawn!”
“It is dawn,” said Tink, looking out of the window.
“We sail when we get there!” amended Laurie.
The crew cheered and ran from the room, only to walk into a group of soldiers.
There was a horrible moment of confusion when neither group quite knew what was happening. Then the first shot was fired. The crew had no wish to fight or even kill the whole group, but the fighting in such close quarters was dirty and several of the soldiers fell with stab wounds in their chests and torsos. There seemed no great opportunity to escape so Rigel aimed his hand at the roof and blasted it. The explosion was made up more of light and heat than anything that could actually cause any damage, but it was enough to confuse the soldiers and give Laurie and the crew time to escape.
It was not quite good enough, though; after recovering, the soldiers stood up and ran after them, leaving one behind to set off an alarm that wailed through the whole building.
“We’ll have to be quick!” panted Laurie, “or they’ll shut down the whole city until they’ve found us.”
“Where are we going?” asked Rigel, trying (but failing) to keep up with them.
“To the landing docks. They have more airships there.”
“I thought you said airships were a bad idea? That it was better to teleport there?”
“Old habits die hard,” Laurie admitted, “and it is more interesting. You wouldn’t remember us half as well if we’d just teleported into your kitchen, would you?”
“Maybe not,” confessed Rigel, thinking of the Persefoni ripping through the sky with cannons firing and landing beacons falling and then crashing magnificently into the field.
“Come on then,” grinned Laurie, looking much like his old self again.
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Tink shouted, attempting to be heard over the siren. “Why aren’t we using a government machine? It will be fancier and will probably have a better navigation system.”
“True,” said Laurie, stopping running. “Maybe that’s why the Persefoni crashed – it was not exactly the most robust and up to date ship … and a cruise liner is not actually best suited to the purpose. Yes, I think a Ministry airship will be much better suited to the job. Good thinking, Tink! You can remember the way?”
“I can,” confirmed the little mechanic.
“Then let’s go!” said Laurie, pointing ahead.
The crew turned down another corridor, following Tink as he led them down more rich hallways until they arrived in a more clinical corridor with an air dock at the end. Quimby and Opal scouted inside before giving the all clear. They waved the rest of the crew inside.
Quite different from the rest of the building, the dock was outfitted in grey. It was plain and smooth. Painted white stripes marked out certain areas of the dock whilst huge numbers indicated the different bays. Boxes and ropes were scattered around the c
orners and several other areas were dedicated to maintenance and repair of the ships. At the far end of the hangar were many ships, either under construction or in the process of being stripped down for repair. Laurie was looking over all the aircraft with a greedy look in his eye.
“I want that one,” he said, pointing to the largest one. “The Royal – or Minister’s now, I suppose – personal convoy ship. That would amuse me.”
“It would be good, sir,” said Tink, “but remember the Persefoni? We picked the largest, most elaborate end expensive ship and look what happened to that – it couldn’t handle the strain and broke into pieces. We need a small but sturdy ship.”
“Alright,” said Laurie, clearly sulking. “But I want that one.” He pointed at a ship that was slightly larger than average but looked minuscule in comparison to the Persefoni.
“Not robust enough,” said Tink.
“I know,” said Laurie, pointing, “that one.”
It was a small but sleek military ship made of dark brass and copper. Several guns lined the side and the whole ship looked as if it could withstand heavy damage. The ship’s name, Kolya, was stamped into its side.
“Excellent choice,” Tink said. “Everybody on board!”
“Hey, hey, hey! I give the orders around here,” said Laurie. “Everybody on board!”
Hurrying over to the Kolya, they disengaged the ladder and climbed aboard. In no time the pilots were firing up the engines and making themselves at home. The setup was similar to that of their previous ship, just smaller. The engineers directed steam towards the engines to start bringing the temperature up. An alarm beeped on the dashboard, making Laurie and Rigel hurry over to it.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’re taking damage to the back of the ship,” replied Laurie, punching several buttons at once. “The soldiers have found us. We’ve got about three minutes to get away before they board the ship.”
“How long does it take to get away?”
“About twenty minutes … ten if we rush it.”
