Rift

Chapter 34: When to Walk Away

But here he is.

Before she opens her eyes, she first feels her heart beating slowly, but weightily. Each beat carries such force, but remains steady. She can feel that her body is hanging up by her wrists bound about two feet apart.

She tries to remember what happened. It's all a blur, but she recalls the smoke and fire. She remembers watching Malachi get shot and drop to the floor of the Firefly before everything went dark. She was taken by the Imperium.

Her eyes slowly blink open, seeing through blurred vision as the white room comes into view.

Then the man standing below her.

As her eyes clear, her steady heartbeat begins to grow faster. The Envoy is in front of her, watching her curiously with an unreadable composure. What is he doing? Is he studying her or just waiting for her to say something? What even is all of this?

Looking around, she sees various charts and screens, including ones that she recognizes as ultrasound scanners. She looks up at the device holding her, seeing her wrists fastened to two posts by sturdy metal cuffs. Attached to the cuffs are tubes that seem to be flowing with some red liquid, when she realizes its blood. Her blood. Beneath the cuffs must be IVs stuck into her wrists.

She feels a bit more squeamish at the thought alone and tries to block it out to focus only on her son in front of her. "Oscar—" she catches herself with a sigh. "Envoy. What's going on? What happened?"

The Envoy calmly holds up his hand and Edith can't tell if the gesture is comforting or irritating. "Remain calm. When my men went to retrieve Latanya from your base of operations, I instructed them to cause you no harm. You aren't in any danger, Edith," he says slowly, as if speaking to a toddler which makes Edith ultimately decide on 'irritating' as the way he's acting towards her.

"...That was you?" she shudders. "...You ordered the attack on the Firefly...?" she fights against the cuffs. "How could you do that? We had children there! You would really hurt innocent people all to serve The Director?!" she shouts. Her heartbeat gets faster and a device on the table next to her lets out a 'beep.'

"As I said, remain calm," The Envoy says. "Your EPC can only take so much emotional damage, after all. The goal here isn't to kill or even harm you. All The Director wants is the baby."

"That's not fucking happening!" Edith snaps and fights some more to try freeing herself, but she quickly realizes that pulling probably won't work to open high-tech metal cuffs. As she struggles, The Envoy turns and starts looking over the numerous charts and screens that monitor everything about Edith. Her EPC levels, her Bio makeup, the baby's pulse and statistics and whatever the hell else these things are recording for data that she doesn't want to know what The Director plans to do with it all.

As his back is turned, Edith returns her focus to the cuffs and attached wires. The wire connected to her left wrist hangs down over the desk next to her. She can see at the base of the machine holding her is another wire that's connected to a terminal on the desk, and beside the terminal is a fresh steaming cup of coffee that sits just near the wire that's collecting her blood.

She keeps a careful eye on The Envoy as she stretches her left hand up as much as she can and manages to grab the wire by her fingertips. She feebly attempts to flick the wire around the coffee cup, but she stops when The Envoy speaks again while still keeping his back turned and his focus on the charts.

"Yes. I can understand why Director Corbin's plan would upset you. In truth, I'm not too fond of her vision of the future," he states simply.

Edith eyes him quizzically while also stealthily trying to move the wire around the cup. Hearing that from him for some reason gives her a fragment of hope that maybe he really isn't serving Corbin and is just using her or something. "Really?"