"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.
"From the intel we've got so far, the Murk household on the edge of the wall seems to be royalist," The woman pointed out as the stick went to a red dot near the dividing wall. "So remember to give them a wide berth if you're trying to sneak into Glitz."
Alyxia trusted that Reiley would take care of the boring stuff, so she zoned out to visualise the map of the Peninsula as a whole. The mountains towards the west, the eastern and western coastlines, the plains, the southern tropical forest and the Peninsular plateau. A long-forgotten vacation in the mountain city of Thanna suddenly arose from the fog of her memories. A vacation home. No, an ancestral home.
After her mother's death, they had never visited the place again.
As if to save her, a loud knock interrupted the briefing and the heavy door swung open, revealing her favourite manhandler, Burt.
"The Alpha wants to see the informants," Burt announced. All at once, the crowd of Ignis members seemed to part to give them a clear pathway to the door. Alyxia beamed at the gesture, but stopped when she noticed Reiley's mouth turned down into the smallest of frowns. Did Reiley notice something she hadn't?
Alyxia and Reiley followed Burt out of the briefing room and into the familiar dead hallways of Ignis' base. "What's going on?" Alyxia questioned. "Is the Alpha rethinking our continued existence?"
Burt shrugged. "Not likely." However, he didn't seem too sure either.
Minutes later, Alyxia and Reiley found themselves in the strange room of the Alpha, with the strange Alpha herself staring at them. As the door shut behind them, she wondered with a feeling of dread whether she would come out of the room in one piece or not.
"There was a calculation mistake," The Alpha admitted. "We decided that while the rest of the members would have their geography briefings, the both of you will report to me. After all, we can't have you knowing our strategic points, can we?"
Alyxia instinctively nodded, feeling a single bead of sweat run down the back of her neck. "What do you want to know?"
For the first time since she had seen the Alpha, the woman stepped out from the vicinity of her desk and walked up to the pair of them. "I want to know this: how can you help me get to Ember Griffin?"
***
"What about Ember Griffin?" Reiley queried, seeming oddly surprised. Alyxia was shocked to register that the Alpha seemed to care about the Commander more than the royal family. At least, that was what it seemed like to her.
"I want to know as much as possible about the woman," the Alpha ordered. "What her routine is like, how she thinks, who she cares about, her motivations. Everything."
"Well I don't know an awful lot about the woman," Reiley replied, lying through her teeth. "All that I know is that she only thinks about herself, serves herself and cares about only herself." There seemed to be a hint of something Alyxia had never noticed in her friend's voice: pained bitterness.
"I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me," The Alpha prodded. "Lennox said that you have connections to the Griffin family, but you don't know where Lieutenant Maeven is and you claim to not know enough about Ember Griffin. What must I do with you?"
Alyxia broke in, so that Reiley couldn't dig herself into a deeper grave. "She has worked closely with Lieutenant Maeven, but she simply doesn't know her whereabouts. Why would it be so important to find Lieutenant Maeven anyway?"
The Alpha looked at Alyxia as if she was an ignorant child. "Why else? I need to get information about her mother's plans from her. Ember would obviously tell her child and subordinate, isn't that so?"
"Actually, you're wrong about that," Reiley pointed out, looking straight into the Alpha's eyes. "The Commander and the Lieutenant are actually quite distant. Besides, the Lieutenant is staunchly loyal to the princess. It is unlikely that she would have told her about the plan."
"Is that so?" The Alpha queried. Without waiting for an answer, she continued. "All the more reason to find Maeven. If she is as loyal to the princess as you say she is, she would be hell bent on getting her mother off the throne. And that could be an asset to us."
"What about the princess herself?" Alyxia questioned. "If you found the princess, wouldn't that be better?"
The Alpha seemed to ponder the suggestion for a moment. "That would go towards our primary objective, but we're making the dethroning of the Commander our top priority for now. Erasing the royal family can come later once this crisis is averted."
Alyxia almost choked on air as she heard her words, but tried to calm herself down. Don't make this about you. Remember, if they find out you're the heir to the throne, they will kill you. "Sound logic," she managed to squeeze out.
"As I was saying," The Alpha continued, "If we can find Maeven, perhaps we can work up a temporary agreement to achieve our mutual goal: to supplant her mother." The word temporary seemed to hang in the air; unseen, but its presence felt all too well.
"For your sake, I hope that your idea to work with Lieutenant Maeven is fruitful," Reiley offered. "Don't underestimate her though; she has the habit of popping up where you least expect it."
The tension in the air threatened to crush Alyxia's lungs from the inside as they exited the room. Now the both of them had to watch their backs around Ignis. Twinsies. Whoopee.
As soon as they had gone out of the earshot of the guards, Alyxia whispered, "I can't believed you lied to the Alpha about knowing your mother. Telling her the information could have put us in her good books!"
Reiley glanced at Alyxia momentarily, then fixed her gaze on her feet as they walked through the corridors. "I said nothing but the truth. I don't know Ember Griffin. Not as well as I should have, anyway. If I did, maybe we wouldn't have been in this mess in the first place. Besides, she really does only care about herself."
Alyxia felt a pang in her heart. "But that's your own mother you're talking about!"
"She was never much of a mother," Reiley retorted with her acerbic chuckle. "She gave the work of raising a child to the two sons who were so disgraceful as to refuse military careers. She couldn't imagine anyone of her blood not following her orders." Alyxia wanted to place a comforting hand on Reiley's shoulder, but she didn't know if she could bring herself to do it.
"I'm glad it was that way," Reiley muttered, visibly griiting her teeth. If I'd been raised fully by her, I'd probably be leading the manhunt for the princess."
"Well, you weren't," Alyxia reassured her. "You've saved my life on multiple occasions and despite my best advice, you probably won't stop anytime soon. And I'm really grateful for that, Reiley." There was so much more that she wanted to say, about how Reiley had always been there for her even if she was being pushed out of her limits, about how she always put Alyxia before herself, but the words simply couldn't escape her throat.
"Yeah,yeah," Reiley replied, a watery smile playing on her lips. "Mushy stuff, I get it. For now, let's just focus on staying alive, and then you can thank me for my honourable service."
"Leave it to you to ruin a sweet moment."
"You call that sweet? I feel like I just ingested a whole lemon."
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A/N
Filler chapter time!
I didn't really put much in this one, so you'll have to excuse my pathetic brain. I just didn't want to leave you guys hanging without an update for.months though.
But for furthering the plot, we have a mommy issues update with Reiley. Woohoo.
I'll try my best to be more regular with my updates!
Lav.