Chapter 21 #3
The woman laughs, harsh and cruel. “Oh? I’m quaking in my boots.” I will not be dragged into some hissing contest. It is pointless, and also, I will lose. I’m not good at the hissing, I’m better at the bite. She steps closer. “I’m Captain Finley, who are you?”
“I’m Eos.”
Apparently, I made a joke, as her harsh laughter devolves into genuine chuckles. “If that’s your real name, I feel bad for you.”
I roll my eyes. “It is real enough for you. Get on your knees with your hands behind your head. I am calling a medic for my soldiers and we will take you into custody. Are you alone?”
Captain Finley clasps her hands behind her head and kneels down in the grass. “Is that a proposition?”
You wish, she says in my head. That would work for Lucy, with her beauty and accompanying confidence, but not for me. “It is not.”
She clicks her tongue. “That’s a shame.”
“Captain Finley, are you alone?”
“Ah, sure.”
I narrow my eyes. “That is not a yes or a no.”
“You’re right, it’s not.”
Pain radiates across my head as I’m smacked with what I think is the butt of a gun. I’m forced to my knees, a knife swiftly held to my throat, barely nicking the skin. “Move and we’ll kill your friends.”
Out of my periphery, a rebel with a gun in each hand has them both aimed at Cassie and Mason’s unconscious bodies. So sloppy, letting a miscreant to sneak up on me. I am rusty.
But not that rusty.
My assailant gets an elbow in the groin, then I reach back and grab him by the hips, and use as much strength as I can to roll him over my back and into the person holding the gun on Frank.
Slipping his pistol from him, I also grab Frank’s gun from her hand and get to my feet, holding both sets of soldiers at gunpoint.
They brandish guns on me, and we stand at a stalemate.
“Holy shit, that was impressive.” Captain Finley holsters her pistol. “All right, look, the boss didn’t tell us there’d be Greens on this train.”
“You thought a ten-car-long supply train would do interstate travel without a guard?” It did, of course, but it is a reckless assumption to make. “Not a very bright ‘boss’ you have, though I suppose that is to be expected.”
Captain Finley smirks, both predatory and inviting at once. “Down, kitty. Usually there’s only a couple rookies traveling up front. Most of them scatter like roaches and then we take what’s left. But you’re no roach, are you?”
A short wave of nausea hits me as the pain in my body rages against my resolve to keep standing. “Look, I need a medic for my soldiers. I don’t want to kill all of you for no reason.”
“Cocky bitch,” one of the men says.
Sighing, I will away the burning pain in my palms and focus. Quick-firing twice, both soldiers find themselves unarmed, with their guns shot out of their hands. “Not cocky.”
“Is anyone else turned on?” Captain Finley looks around. “Just me?”
I roll my eyes. “Seeing as how your amateurish effort to derail the train resulted in the destruction of the entire supply and possibly started an ecosystem-disrupting forest fire—”
“Excessively critical, but not untrue. Numb-nuts over there got heavy-handed with the dynamite.”
“—I see two choices here: either I kill you, then call for a medic, or I let you leave, and I call for a medic. Which would you prefer?”
Captain Finley smirks and laces the hands she’s had up behind her neck. “It is a damn shame about the side you’re on, Greenie. I like your spunk.” She gestures to the others. “Let’s go. See you later, gorgeous.”
With their tails between their legs, she and the other soldiers scamper off into the woods.
I wait for two minutes with my guns ready in case it’s a feint, then use my watch to call the nearest Order outpost for a medic and backup.
Exhausted, I kneel in the grass and try to block out the pain radiating through my body.
An unseen assailant throws a bag over my head from behind. I struggle, but my kneeling position puts me at a disadvantage. Before I can gain leverage, there is a sharp pain in my neck. Within seconds, the drug races through my bloodstream and renders me unconscious.
When I awaken, I’m no longer in a field.
Sluggish and disoriented, I struggle to place myself in my surroundings.
I’m dressed, but it appears whoever dressed me also wrapped chains around my wrists and bound me to a bed in an unknown room.
It’s a large room with one wall full of windows letting in a diagonal stream of light across a tile floor.
The view is a picturesque blue sky and the tops of trees, so I must be on the second or third level of this building.
Arranged in neat rows sit several other beds on simple metal frames—all of them thin, white mattresses but none of them have chains on them. Some kind of medical room, I guess, or a triage.
Evidently, I have been captured. What a truly annoying turn of events.
And, of course, it’s Captain Finley who comes into view on the other side of the room. What an even more annoying turn of events.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
Reluctantly planting my gaze on her, I see she’s very much the same. Smug, dressed in a rumpled soldier’s uniform, shirt untucked and unbuttoned.
“Hello, Captain Finley.”
Captain Finley is an objectively attractive woman around my age, with amber-colored hair and brown eyes so dark they’re nearly black.
Muscular, tall, with a thick athlete’s physique.
Both arms are covered shoulder to wrist in tattoos, various tribal designs and depictions of nature.
Her flirtations are a waste with me, but I can see why she has the confidence to continue.
Captain Finley grins, stretching her face wide. She tousles her hair and props one foot on the seat of a chair. “How are you?”
“Been better.” I barely hold back an eye roll at her posturing. “What am I doing here?”
Captain Finley raises her eyebrows. “Shit if I know. Boss says to keep an eye on you.”
“Right. This elusive ‘boss.’ Which I am not entirely convinced isn’t a magic eight ball you shake for advice.”
The captain snickers and wags her finger at me. “That’s a good one.”
Impatiently, I sigh. “Am I the only one captured?”
“Worried about your little blond friend? She’s a cutie.” It is only through rigorous training I am able to keep my expression neutral. “You might wanna consider letting the paint dry on that one, eh?”
My patience has never been legendary, and it thins rapidly with her stupid riddles. “What paint? Are you telling me Private Frank is here?”
“Her and your other friend, the big one.”
“I want to see them.”
She snorts. “Well, that’s too bad. You’re a prisoner and you don’t call the shots.”
“I cannot imagine you do, either. How do I speak to someone that matters?”
Captain Finley swings her leg over the back of the chair and saunters to my bedside. “You are fucking bold, you know that? Here you are, chained to a cot without any idea of where you are, in the clutches of the enemy, making demands. The audacity. The sheer impertinence.”
“What would you have me do? Beg? I would genuflect, but as you can see, I am a little tied up.”
The hardness in Captain Finley’s face relaxes and she genuinely chuckles. “Something tells me you’re not the begging type.”
“No, and I am sure you are not, either.”
“I don’t think so, but to be honest, I’ve never had the opportunity to test it.”
“You might surprise yourself.”
On a chair a few feet away my rucksack is open, obviously having been pilfered. Captain Finley follows my gaze and strolls over to my bag. “Not a whole lot in here. You pack light.”
I look down at my bare wrist. “Did you take my watch?”
Captain Finley rummages in the bag and pulls out my watch.
Its official name is the DT44, but I’m not certain it stands for something.
Sounds like Javier made it up so Theia would think it did more than it does.
However, it did survive battles and explosions, so it’s worth the considerable weight it hangs on my wrist. “This guy? Why, this important to you?”
“I would not ask if it wasn’t.”
“None of us could figure out how to turn it on, so, it’s safe.
Inwardly, I sigh in relief. “That is for the best. If you turned it on, it would ping my location to Theia.”
Captain Finley makes a cartoonishly exaggerated grimace and pitches the watch into my bag.
Availing herself of my things, she slides her hand in and out of pockets and slots but comes up with very little other than pedestrian survival supplies: flashlight, water, compass, dehydrated ration, and a miniature first aid kit.
“Jesus. Not even a tampon. The hell do you do when you get your period?”
“I don’t get a period,” I reply curtly. “Are my soldiers okay?”
Captain Finley frowns and tilts her head. “Yeah, they’re fine. Banged up, but alive. But wait, what do you mean you don’t get a period? I thought only rich folks had access to the fancy birth controls.”
“My uterus was removed.”
“Removed? Wh—” Captain Finley raises her hands in defeat. “Never mind, I don’t want to know the kinds of sick shit your cult does. Anyway, your friends are fine. Everyone has explicit instructions not to fuck with any of you.”
“That is not protocol, as far as I had heard.”
“Oh, right. Big bad rebels slaughtering innocents, bathing the country in their blood.” This is obviously sarcasm, though from the reports I read, not far off. Then again, how accurate are the reports? “Should sound familiar to you.”
“The Order never indiscriminately killed civilians.”
“That sure is a pretty fairy tale, gorgeous. Must be nice to believe you’re a hero and that you know who the monsters are.” She winks at me on the way out. “Sleep tight.”
Guards come and go. I feign sleep for most of it but never fully succumb.
Around sunset, the same guard from dusk returns.
He glares at me the whole time, so he’ll be the easiest to manipulate.
Men are so bad at controlling their emotions; it was one of the reasons Theia refused to promote many of them.
Too unpredictable in the field, too leashed to their hormones.
This man is, unfortunately, proving her correct.
“When am I getting out of here?” I say, loud and petulant. “I’m sick of this.”
“Shut up, prisoner.”
“I want to speak to someone that matters. I’m tired of seeing you lackeys coming in and out of here. I swear, you’re all starting to look the same. Which one are you? Harry? Larry? Gary?”
The soldier grips his rifle tightly. “I said, shut up.”
“Or what?” I chuckle. “You can’t touch me. I’m a prisoner and I still rank higher than you. What a loser.”
There we go. The soldier storms over to me, trembling in unspent rage.
Having slipped the restraints almost immediately upon waking, I easily slide my arm out and nab him by the neck.
My fingers press on his arteries, and he falls to his knees in a panic.
He paws at my hand but it’s too late. Another couple of seconds and he’s out cold, slumped to the ground like a corpse.
Quietly, I get out of my bed and reach down to pluck the soldier’s sidearm.
They didn’t re-dress me, so I’m conspicuous in my United Regions uniform.
A few steps into the hallway make it obvious this place used to be a school.
A college, maybe, or an Upperclass high school.
Rows of navy lockers line each side, broken up by wooden doors with square window panes.
I peek into many as I pass, but find most of them are dark.
Hesitantly I turn a corner and finally see light from underneath a doorway.
I duck into another doorway as a soldier emerges from that room and floods the hallway with garish white light.
The soldier waits approximately thirty seconds before turning on their heel and advancing down the hallway toward me.
I don’t think I’ll have a second bout of success knocking out a full-grown adult.
I’ll be lucky if they pass without me coughing up smoke from the train.
The door I’m next to is locked, because why wouldn’t it be, so I make myself as flat as possible against the short wall and hold my breath. I am a shadow. I am dust on the floor.
He walks by me.
Once he’s fully turned the other corner, I slink out of hiding and toward the door. Up on my toes, I do my best to see who is in the room. I spot the disheveled blond hair of Private Frank, and then suddenly a presence behind me makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“Hello again.”
Whipping around, I raise my gun only to find my hand gripped tightly in someone else’s. My gun—well, the gun—is squeezed from my hand, and as it drops, she catches it in her own.
Dreaming, dreaming. I must be dreaming. I’m still on the train, or in her room, hallucinating. But it’s too real. The color of her hair, the wet shine of her eyes, the smell of her. It’s real, and my existence cannot handle it.
I drop to my knees, my hand still held aloft in hers. I have lost the ability to do everything except respond in the only way I know how.
“Hello yourself.”