Chapter 34- Taliesin
"Go down to the end of the hall and turn left into the fire stairs. These are small and precarious, so it will be harder, though shorter. Once you get to the ground floor, open the door, take a right after two doors. After that, walk straight until the end, turn right and then there will be another door. Take that, round the corner towards the left, and run," Alice directed in a panicked voice.
"How about you?" I asked.
"I will be fine, and I will take a longer route," She hesitated. "Do not worry about me. As far as they know, I am one of them." My gut twisted at that thought, but when she turned around to face me, I gave her a small nod and turned down the other direction.
Feet quietly pounding down the hallway, I found the fire escape quickly, and entered down the stairs only to find three wardens at the base, all with their guns pointed at my temple, heart, and stomach. I raised my hands slowly towards the ceiling, furrowing my brow. "How did you-?"
"Wardens! Advance!" A familiar voice called from behind the wall of white-clad men. I struggled to backtrack up the stairs, slipping and landing on my side. They pounded my body, drawing blood with the butt of their guns. They were still too cowardly to wound me with their own hands, instead opting to hide behind their weapons.
"I wonder," I fought to raise my voice above the noise of their beating, grunting with each blow. "I wonder, d-does it make the killing any easier to swallow, if you hide behind your machines?"
"Enough!" The doctor shouted from behind. He parted the soldiers like a sea, his hand still raised when he came into view. "Where were you going? Where is Miss Proctor?" He questioned.
"Miss Proctor?" I furrowed my brows and smirked. "She was commandeering a shuttle."
"Co-commandeering?" The man became flustered. "Our shuttles?"
"Why, yes. I believe she was. But now she should be in the air above your facility, carrying out the last survivors and finest soldiers in our military," I grinned at his shocked expression. "You see, this is an escape."
He was silent, crunching the edge of his crisp white coat in his fist. I laughed, and that seemed to spur him into action. "W-wardens! Check the cellblock! Quickly!"
The majority followed his orders, but two stayed behind to drag me to my feet. Dizzy, all I could do was slump between them. They pounded at the locked door, shaking it in its hinges, until it fell in.
The Doctor, who had had enough time to recompose himself, brushed his coat when he saw that the room was nearly empty of its contents. Nearly. "Why, Alice, I did not fancy seeing you here," Doctor Prose entered the room calmly.
"Taliesin," Alice whispered, eyes wide and glued to my face.
I looked upwards, scarcely carrying enough energy to meet her eye. "Alice," I whispered back lightly, and then fell into a fit of coughing.
"Why, yes, Alice. Captain Graile here was found trying to escape through the fire emergency exits. I do not suppose you had anything with this?"
"N-No, Doctor. Of course not. You know how hard I tried to get the Oriehns here," She visibly gulped. I looked up at her, glaring, using my anger at her treachery as fuel. "Another lie," I tried to whisper, but no sound came out.
She had lost all my trust, and I wondered when I would ever learn. But then I looked around. She had gotten everyone out of their cell.
Something like sadness flickered in her eyes, before she composed herself.
"Then, why, Alice, are you helping the Oriehns out of the window? Are you truly that two-faced, you can not even pick a side and stay with it?" Doctor Prose sneered.
"I-I..." she stuttered, staring at the ground.
"Of course you can't. You're just a little traitor. And if your little friend here really means so much to you as you said he does, I will make you a deal," Doctor Prose tilted his head.
I raised my head, trying to protest, before she blurted out. "Of course, anything, Doctor."
"Then keep all of the prisoners here. We will let him go," Doctor Prose said, his hands gesturing around at the captured Oriehns and eventually landing in my direction. "Otherwise he will be subjected to treatment even worse than he has ever faced before."
He turned to the wardens, nodding at them. They immediately struck my body, but I was numb, unable to feel anything. I collapsed under their force, silent yet bleeding.
Alice gasped. "I..." she looked back at me and at the Oriehns waiting expectantly in the shuttle, huddled together, frightened. "I am sorry, Sin."
Backtracking quickly, she hoisted herself over the window ledge and ran into the shuttle, locking the door. I heard the engine rev before watching them Alice in the corner of my eye. The wardens bustled about frantically, having let their charges escape.
I watched as the shuttle took off, many of its occupants slumped on the plush leather seats, unable to move from the exertion of their escape.
"They left you here to die, Taliesin Graile," Dr. Prose crouched down, easily making eye contact with a smug grin.
The wardens tightened their grip on my shoulders, once again forcing me to my knees. "As they should have," I spat out. "For the greater good, to keep our people and the resistance alive."
"Resistance?" the Doctor rose slowly, eyes never leaving my downturned face. "How did you-? Alice," He growled.
"Crious is a hard terrain to manage," I smiled, "unless you are a local."
"It is a moon!" He exclaimed. "Wardens!"
They pounced, pummeling my already bruised body. I was too weak to fight back, and ended up slumped against the concrete. I felt a sudden warmth in my chest rising slowly and I chuckled, the laughter then blossoming.
"Y-you have no idea," I laughed forcefully once more, before I felt my smile freeze over. I spat onto the ground, my blood seeming like bubbling ink spreading amongst the crevices. "You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into."
I raised back stiffly onto my knees, yet somehow I felt taller than the doctor. I could tell he sense it too, by the way he shrunk back a foot. He clearly remembered the last time we were in this position. I had choked the life out of him. Alice was not here to stop me from finishing the job, so I planned to do so without guilt.
"Your men, no matter how many forces you send, will be unable to navigate the tundra. You will freeze to death before you can send in more forces."
"We will not need to send in men. Our lives are far too valuable," The doctor told me. "We will use our machines, just as we planned earlier.
I smirked once more. "Your machines will move slowly in the cold. Easily disabled by my people. Or they will freeze over altogether. You do not stand a chance."
Dr. Prose kicked the wall, his frustration rising. "Wardens!" Once more they advanced, kicking teeth, shattering ribs and bones. I didn't cry out once, despite the fact that all I could do was take the beating.
"Listen closely, Captain," Dr. Prose grit out. "For I will only repeat this once." I looked up and quirked a split lip at him. A white-gloved hand grabbed my hair and forcefully turned my head to the side, my ear pointed towards the doctor.
"We will prevail. History has proven that imperialists like your kind will never succeed. While your race, superior no longer, failed to change history, humans have an inane knack for innovation and learning from our predecessors," He smiled. "You blue-bloods will never succeed. You lack the tenacity. And now that we have you, you lack the leadership."
"You are wrong." I looked him dead in the eye. "We have Alice."
"They will not respect her. They will rebel at any of her influence, and without you as her buffer, they will assume the truth: That Alice Proctor grew up on planet Earth, and she is undeniably human."
I scoffed. "If you are so sure, then why have you not killed me already?" Silence. He did not respond. I laughed in his face, and he flinched. "Leverage. Not only are you betting heavily on the fact that the Oriehns will trade anything of value for my life, but you are only confirming my own suspicions: You don't believe you will win, and therefore need a bargaining chip the next time you engage in battle with my kind."
"Every strategy must be challenged by doubt. I am not such a gambling man as to place all my chips on a single number."
"That would require for it to be a gamble," I clarified. "One that you will never win, I might add."
"So you have said many a time. I begin to think that you are overcompensating in hopes that I will overlook something that must be quite obvious to your eye, a weakness, perhaps," He paced about the empty prison, walking to a cell door and began swinging it open and closed. He looked over, grinning impishly. "I wonder what that weakness might be, Captain Graile."
He walked over. I stiffened under his gaze, frozen in my own tundra, and the ice grew thicker with each step closer that the doctor made. "It would not be the leadership. Despite Alice and her naivety, we believe that the early exodus of the commanders, your father among them, escaped our notice. You knew that too."
He advanced, checking my expression for any reaction that would give it away. "It would not be your location," he added, "For you have already given away that the garrisons on your biggest moon are surrounded by rough terrain and weather that would be detrimental to our forces."
"As long as there is even one Oriehn left," I raised my chin. "We will fight against your advances. And you forget, that your own frontier is under the stress of battle. Earth is still a valuable claim amongst the galaxies. We are not the only ones that would be interested in taking your natural resources for our numbers."
"Distraction. A simple method of trying to make a problem, usually fictional, appear larger than the one that is right under the nose to detract attention away from the obvious." I swallowed, falling silent.
"You mentioned your numbers earlier," He paused, a crazed grin spreading over his face. "While adequate, many of your eligible soldiers were taken down to Earth to lose weaken their resolve to live. Those left on Crious are civilians, unused to battle and the strain of war."
I struggled against the wardens' hold, but they had learned from last time, and silenced my protests with a blow to the head.
"But your soldiers," Dr. Prose added, "Your soldiers are being shipped, right now, to join the forces, by a shuttle, piloted by the last-born female and full of your fighters. I wonder what a blow it would be to the resistance if you lost everyone on board?" He looked to a wardens standing erect at the door.
"See that our capsules are sent up. The piloted ones, not the remote controlled machines," He clarified. "We need a soldier with experience firing upon and shooting down a moving target."
"No!" I balled my fists together and clenched my jaw. "You will never catch them."
"Tell me, Taliesin," Dr. Prose sauntered towards the exit. He looked over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. "Does Alice know how to fly through a battlefield?"