"Guys, move—" Aaron's voice spoke, before becoming lost in horrendous crackling noises.
The crackling finally subsided, and a deep voice with a heavy Alcontean accent spoke through our speakers. "Baird Joseph Amergin, Keira A. Korynn, Khemera Taing, Aaron L. Korynn, Hannah Heather Higsley, Jedrek Damosh Urban, I address and greet thee."
"What's with the antiquated diction?" I whispered to Keira with a smirk.
Keira shrugged. "Asks the one using the same." she muttered back.
"To the aforementioned individuals, I condemn thee for transgressing Alcontean law, and departing from thy lawful countries of abode, which our blessed Redistribution Force hath elected and prepared for thee. For such treachery, thou art now held in the Alcontean Empire's contempt, which hath been proven at manifold occasions to be a terrible, horrendous status to earn."
I leaned over and tilted the microphone to my mouth. "Hey, person, whoever we're talking to, can you hear me?"
"No objections shall be hearkened to, and neither shall any particular mercy be bestowed upon thy vile persons. On the contrary, thou shalt be subjected to harsh punishments and suffer greatly for thy abominable crimes committed against the Alcontean Empire."
In reply to the voice's many condemning words, Aaron fired two rockets into the ships before us. My eyes widened as the weapons did absolutely nothing but explode harmlessly on their shield-like fronts.
"The path of aggression shall only make thy experience all the bitterer." the voice calmly declared.
In stiff disregard of the voice's instructions, Aaron pointed the nose of his pod upward and climbed in altitude. I shrugged and moved to follow suit. Before we could even clear the edge of the rectangular shields, two rockets sped around from the other side and one collided with each of our pods. I gasped as the glass dented and our vessel spun uncontrollably into a pile of boulders.
I grimaced at the screeching sound of our metal siding scraping onto the sharp boulders. Nonetheless, no water made its way in, and the vessel soon righted itself, though I heard some labored creaks and groans from the engine area that I hadn't heard before.
Aaron's pod had spun into the patrol vessels waiting at the mouth of the cave, severely damaging those vessels and his own. Seeing that all the lights faded out of the patrol pods, I could only assume they'd been rendered entirely dysfunctional. Aaron's pod quivered and shook, but still appeared maneuverable.
The imposing rectangular vessels rotated to face Aaron, seeming to have forgotten my pod entirely. Taking advantage of that, I disengaged my headlights and sped to the backside of the vessels, nodding with satisfaction as I realized their true makeup. Much like a shieldman on land, these vessels had a weakness from behind. The small, round pod on the back was vulnerable and easy to attack. Keira intuitively slid a green slider, and a viridescent laser beam demolished the pod, causing the whole rectangular shield structure to fall down with it.
The other vessels turned and fired a flurry of rockets at us, which I studiously struggled to evade. However, despite my most concerted efforts, two of the projectiles found their mark and sent our pod flying into the sand. I jumped in sheer terror as Aaron's pod inexplicably shot over in our direction and collided with us.
The passage of time seemed to transition into slow motion as the shield-ships fired a storm of rockets our way. Aaron and I collided several times as we attempted to avoid every single one of the projectiles, causing essentially the same damage to one another.
Finally, a massive shadow appeared above, and I gasped at the sight of a juggernaut submarine, triangular in shape and jet-black in hue. It shot out a yellow tractor beam and drew our two pods in, rendering any resistance we offered, entirely futile. I glanced at Keira and Khemera in inexpressible terror and despair.
********************
(Abigail's POV)
Just before 9 o'clock struck, I emerged from my room and gently shut the door. The halls of the royal palace seemed weirdly quiet, and unbusy. Of course, that didn't matter to me. The presence or absence of guardly wallpaper didn't have the slightest effect on me finding the rehearsal spot.
When I did step through the door to the rehearsal room, Jamente's brows moved together, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
"So, what's the big idea here, Miss Wilde?" he confronted me with stern eyes, "You realize you've pushed our project back two whole weeks, right? And for what? Just because you didn't want to be here? You should be ashamed of yourself."
I closed my eyes and nodded in a show of humility. Being an actress had its quirks. "I'm sorry," I replied, "but at least, here I am now."
Jamente nodded, satisfied with my apology, however untruthful it really was. "Well, go see the hairdresser. We never settled on your aesthetic, because you slipped away the day we tried."
I ignored his jab and moved to obey. "Alright, will do."
As I walked across the room to enter the hairdresser's booth, I passed by Sid, and he was somehow even skinner than when I'd seen him before. It would be a hard matter to convince me he wasn't a walking skeleton. No. Actually, it'd be harder to convince me he was walking at all, because his limping gait looked so pitiful.
I managed to brush that ghastly sight aside and step into the hairdresser's booth. The plump lady greeted me with a smile and motioned for me to sit down. Over the next 45 minutes, she carefully styled my hair and applied makeup to my face, eventually calling Jamente in for his feedback on her work. He thoroughly approved, saying my getup was even beyond the perfection he'd originally envisioned.
With my hair and face on point, I emerged from the booth and presented myself to Jamente again, and he told me he was ready to start some script rehearsal. As I'd planned, I pretended to have just remembered that I'd forgotten my script in my quarters, so I said I'd be right back with it.
In reality, I was headed elsewhere.
I made my way down an empty hallway. It led to the stairway where I could descend to the prison level. I turned quite a few heads as I walked down the hall, even more than usual, just because of how my hair and face had been done up. I could see the guards' resolve to hold their positions rapidly threatening to drop.
Eventually, I rounded a corner, descended the stairs, and found myself on the last step. I felt a puff of hot air brush across my ankles, which alerted me to the fact that a heater duct was mounted to the wall at the bottom of the steps. An idea occurred to me, and that very instant, I did it.
I broke off some pearls from the necklace I was wearing, and tossed them into the duct. I smirked as I heard the clicking sound of them bouncing around inside. Then I rounded the corner and strutted down the rows of cells, realizing with relief that only two pairs of guards stood around here, and one of those pairs was busy leading a prisoner out of the complex.
I approached the remaining guards with a flustered manner. I cleared my throat obnoxiously loud to catch their attention. "Excuse me!"
Both guards looked like they were unsure whether to be enamored or annoyed with me. "What do you need, ma'am?" they asked in unison.
"I lost some of my pearls, in your stupid heater vent!" I shouted, intentionally hyperventilating to make my act more convincing.
The men glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. "I mean...we could take care of that for ya, if ya want, ma'am." the stouter of them stuttered.
"Please do! I'll be waiting here!" I said, putting on a haughty, impatient face.
"Okay then...don't go anywhere. We'll be right back."
"You'd better be!" I replied. This persona was an unpleasant one to maintain.
Once the two men disappeared around the corner, I dashed down the row of cells until I came to Wendy's. She squinted and frowned upon seeing me, before she jumped up and approached the bars.
"What're you doing here?" she asked, obviously confused.
I slipped a metal bobby pin from my hair. "I came to get you out." I said as I bent down to slip the pin into the lock.
"Only time will tell if you're brave or daft." Wendy commented, looking down at me with an undecided expression.
"Maybe I'm both." I grunted as I twisted one end of the bobby pin into a handle.
"Well, at any rate, I know what I am."
I glanced up at the blonde woman as I slipped a second pin from my hair. "What's that?"
"Bloody grateful."
I smirked as the first pin clicked open. "Well, you're welcome."
A few seconds later, I heard a bang down the hall, which I assumed was the sound of the guards removing the heater grate. Simultaneously, the second pin slid out of place, meaning I was halfway through the lock.
The third pin was much trickier. It just wouldn't budge. Try as I did, it remained fixed in place. My heart began racing when another clang down the hall indicated that the guards were replacing the heater grate already. Finally, the pin gave way, which was a little relieving, but I still had another to go.
"Hurry up..." Wendy hissed. She wasn't trying to be pushy, but still, in my frantic rush, I became flustered.
"I am hurrying!" I growled, becoming even more upset when the stubborn third pin dropped back down.
I quickly got it back up, but still had to get the fourth one. At that moment, the guards began strolling back down the hall, which turned into running as they saw what I was doing. "Hey, lady, stop right there!" they shouted as they sped up.
I grunted and got the last pin. I leapt to my feet and swung the door open, unleashing the beast, or more accurately, Wendy. She tackled them both to the ground and disarmed them. Then she swiftly removed their helmets and knocked one out with a kick to the head, another with a punch. With a huff, she snatched up a keychain and a dagger before she leapt to her bare feet.
"Thanks again." she said as she looked into my eyes, "Now, I need to get some bloody armor again."
"Sure thing." I replied with a smirk.
With that, she took off running, with me close behind. How the woman could run on the gritty stone floor of this prison complex on her bare feet was beyond me. At any rate, it was great to get moving again.
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A/N: I'm unsure which is stronger, the residual suspense over Baird and crew, or the relief and celebration that Abigail got Wendy out! (It was kinda awesome to see her find a way to use her acting skills to her advantage. 😆)
Anyway, if you enjoyed this chapter and haven't yet, please remember to vote and comment, please and thank you! 😁
It's funny looking back and seeing how far we've come in this story already. Like, I originally wrote that first Abigail POV segment just for a quick change of pace and a way to show Pietrovo, instead of just telling about him. But then, as I wrote, it morphed into this beautiful subplot, and then Wendy came along...it's just so awesome looking back and seeing the seeds that have grown into where we're at now. 😀
Anyway, it's insane that we're already in September! Like...wow, this year flew by! Now that we're coming up on the holidays pretty soon here, I suppose this random question loses a bit of its randomness, but it least it's still a question: What's your favorite holiday? (And now that I realize Wattpad's globalness, even if I've never heard of your holiday, I'd love to now!)
(My family doesn't celebrate a lot of the main holidays, like we don't do Halloween, or Christmas, or Easter. But we do Thanksgiving, so I'll definitely go with that, if I can't pick my birthday. I'm not one to turn down a table covered in food! 😂)
Well, that's it for me, for now. I gotta say, next week's pair of chapters...they're gonna be a doozy, especially chapter 22. I'm hyperventilating, just thinking about it. To put it simply, things are getting serious. Anyhow, until then, I hope you have a great next six days, and I'll see you on the Friday update! Until then...don't die.
(Wow, that sounds so...dramatic.)
Anyway, until next time, onward to victory! 🐛🐛🐛 😂👋🏻