Accession || Ongoing ||

Fifteen: What About Ember Griffin?

"Get me out of here, please please pretty please? I'll do literally anything for you if you get me out of this concrete prison! This place is choking every ounce of individuality in my veins!"

Burt cocked a single eyebrow in confusion as he deposited a large spoonful of slop onto his lunch plate. "Are you always this dramatic?" Alyxia exhaled indignantly, annoyed that Burt wasn't even considering her request. 

"Usually more so," Reiley piped up as she swiped a banana milk box from the counter. "Constant exposure makes you immune to the sheer annoyance."

"Hey!" Alyxia shouted indignantly at Reiley, but was promptly shushed by Perdita, the lunch lady. After mumbling an apology, she moved sideways towards the end of the lunch line. Sighing, she moved to the large table at which all the members sat and ate their lunch.

Interestingly enough, the Alpha was nowhere to be found in this community nosh session. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen at all in this past week.

"What's next in our schedule?" Alyxia wondered aloud as she sat in between Farron and Reiley. "Do we have to worry about any more of those rapid fire question sessions?" She shuddered as she recalled the politics briefing they had earlier: Ignis had regular briefings which drilled the incompetence and danger of the royal family into their heads. For a moment, she could almost believe that the royal family was this distant, hovering spectre of a concept and not her own family.

"Don't think so," Farron shrugged. "Next is geography, so all you gotta do is listen. It helps to know our branches and sister groups."

"Branches?" Alyxia wondered . "I didn't know Ignis was that big." All around the Peninsula, people hated her family, and she was only becoming cognizant of this at her most vulnerable moment. 

Brilliant. 

Suddenly a piercing alarm tore through the previous comfortable silence, causing Alyxia to nearly fall out of her plastic chair onto the checkered tiles of the floor. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by the sound, though; they simply rose from their seats, scraped their food waste into the compost bowl and shuffled outside the hall.

"And that's the bell," Farron smiled knowingly, as if he had been in her position years ago. "Time for our next briefing."

***

"So this is your daily geography briefing," A small woman with her hair scraped back into a severe bun stated plainly. "It is vital to know where you can get help from when you're in a tight fix. And it doesn't hurt to know the landscape of areas you may be sent to on missions." A hologram map of the Peninsula hung on the wall behind her, with several tiny dots and figures that Alyxia couldn't comprehend.

"But we won't be sent on missions, right?" Alyxia whispered to Reiley. "We're their informers; they wouldn't put us at risk, right?"

Reiley shrugged. "You never know, Alyx," she mused. "What if we get sent to identify people? Either way, we have to be prepared. It also helps us to know where not to go if our identities are ever discovered by Ignis. Now zip it and listen."

Alyxia nodded hastily, trying to remind herself that she now had a cover to maintain on two fronts. She had to pretend to be a simple roughworlder to the authorities, and she had to pretend to be an informant with valuable intelligence to Ignis. Squeezing her eyes shut and opening them again, she tried to focus on the map.

"Now here is Regis," the woman said as she pointed to the city at the very centre of the Peninsula with a stick. The hologram instantly zoomed in on the spot, showing from a bird's eye view the walls that separated the capital city from the rest of the country, as well as the wall that separated the exaltworld and roughworld. It also showed several blue and red dots scattered around the city, and one big golden one.