Aries (#Wattys2018)

Chapter Eight

'Come on!'  Azah yelled in frustration, as she tried for the umpteenth time that day to light a fire.
  After checking on how much ammunition she had left in her belt (not much), Azah had come to the conclusion that she couldn't waste her bullets on targeting the same spot on the window over and over again in a vain attempt to break it.
  She racked her brain on other ways to get out of the room, one of which included using one of the bedposts to break down the door, but honestly wasn't sure if she had the strength to do so.  The last time she had been trapped somewhere, at the bottom of a pool in the military base, how had she gotten out?
  By conjuring a ball of fire above her hand.
  'I saw the fire.'
  Mai turned around, and pinpointed her unseeing gaze on the Captain.
  'You have permission to dismiss yourself.' Captain Abboud said to her, and she strolled out of the room.
  'How can she get around like that?' Azah asked.  'There's no way she can even seen the door.'
  Her superior shrugged.  'Yesterday, you might have said that there was no way in a million years that you could have a ball of fire levitating above your hand, let alone ten metres underwater.' 
  Somewhere in the building, a radio blared, and footsteps echoed in ceramic halls, and people spoke with each other, so many voices that everything blended together in a long, unintelligible buzz.
  'So ... what happens now?' Azah asked.  'Are you going to report me?'
  'No.' the Captain answered.  'But I am going to ask that you keep this to yourself.  Other people might not react as well.  I'll try and find you some information.'
  And she never spoke of it again.
  Now that Azah reflected on the scene again, she found it quite unusual that Captain Abboud was so calm about it.  Maybe it was just that her sense of surprise had been dulled after a lifetime in the military, a bit like Azah's own, but something about the whole situation just seemed suspicious.
  'Why are you always so suspicious about things?  Not everyone is out to kill you!'
  Pause.
  'And now you're talking - I mean, thinking to yourself.  Nice going, Azah.  You psychotic-fire-summoning-shooting-soldier-person-who's-too-paranoid-for-her-own-good.'
  The best way to use the fireball again, she had decided, was to summon up the same emotions that she had been experiencing the last time.  But at the moment, she was just feeling fed up and annoyed, both at herself and at her conscience that kept insulting her.
  "Come on, come on!" she silently urged herself.
  They could be dying.

***

  They were the darkest colour of green that any of them had ever seen on a human being, glaring at them through the small metal flap serving as a mailbox on the lower half of the door. The sound of a deadbolt being turned was heard, and to Amal's horror, Ommer dropped to his knees as the rest of them watched helplessly.
  The door eased open, ever so slowly, tantalizingly slowly.
  They had assumed it was Jihaad who was killing the soldiers.
 
***

  'JUST WORK!'
  'It's not going to if you keep losing your temper like that.' the little voice in Azah's mind whispered.
  'Oh, it's you again.  My life just keeps getting better.' she thought sarcastically.
  'Maybe,' it continued, ignoring her jibe, 'You managed to summon it last time because you just accepted your inevitable death.'
  'What, so you just want me to accept that I have no chance of rescuing my comrades?  That makes no sense!'
  'It's not like you have any better ideas.' the voice said snidely.
  She closed her eyes contemplatively, and sighed.
  'Fine.' she thought resignedly.  'This had better work.'
  'Everyone is probably dying, but that's okay, because even if I manage to smash the window open there's no way I can make it to the farm in time, so I'm completely useless in this situation.  Acceptance, acceptance, acceptance.'
  'Not like that.' the voice groaned.  'You have to - you have to - feel the same way you did when you were drowning.'
  'Which is ...?'
  'Breathless.'
  'You're not helping.'

***

  Faaris pulled a chair in front of the five of them and took a seat just as Myrna was coming to.
  He looked almost the exact same as he had in the photo, except with gray streaks running through his hair and a map of lines across his face.  The crinkles beneath his eyes told of a lifetime of smiling - he was smiling at that moment, in fact, although it was the creepiest one Myrna had ever seen; all teeth, no warmth.
  The first thing that Myrna noticed was his throbbing headache, from when he had been knocked out with a blow from the knob of Faaris' axe.  Amal, Ommer, Lutfi and Laila were out cold to his right, their heads lolling.
  The second thing he noticed was the absence of his revolver's weight on his hip.  They had obviously been stripped of their weapons before being restrained to the chairs in what seemed to be a dark cellar.  His watch was also missing, in its place a thick rope.
  He was just about to spew out a few select phrases on what he thought about being tied up by some stranger when the man noticed his consciousness and raised his axe.  He quickly connected the head with Myrna's, which instantly shut him up.
  'So you're who the military sent to exterminate me this time.  Quite honoured to meet you.'  Shojaei remarked casually, not bothering to remove the axe from Myrna's head.
  'You're supposed to be dead.' Myrna slurred, the first thing he could think of to say in his groggy state.
  'Oh, I'm just as alive as I ever was.  It was my son who was stabbed in the chest, with the very axe that I'm holding right now.'  He was suddenly overtaken by grief, and Myrna felt the axe press heavier on top of him.
  'How did Sarwar mistake your son for you?  He was only ten.' he said, trying to keep the man talking, and wishing that his vision would stop going black at the edges.
  'He was fifteen.' Shojaei bit out.  'But he was too young ... much too young ...'
  Fifteen?  The information page had definitely said ten.  Could it have been a typo?  Or did some of the letters fade over time?
  'Tell me, soldier,' he continued, causing Myrna to snap back to reality.  'How old are you?'
  '...Thirteen.'  That was a lie.  But he didn't want his possible killer to think that he was just a little kid not to be taken seriously - not even a teenager.
  His possible killer?
  He was captured.
  He didn't have any weapons.
  There was an axe on his head.
  Four of his five comrades were unconscious, and the fifth one was on the opposite side of Ranrik, with no idea as to what was going on in this wet cellar that smelled of smoke beneath an abandoned barn.
  They were going to die.
  Because he had dropped his stupid gun.