Hey all,
Hope you're all having a lovely Easter, or whatever else you may celebrate/consume lots of chocolate for :) I'm on holiday now so updates will be every week instead! This chapter has quite a lot of violence in it, fair warning, as usual please feel free to let me know if you think the rating should change or if I've made any mistakes as I am still sadly beta-less. The poem referenced is The Retreat by Henry Vaughan, which I highly recommend looking up, it's beautiful!
Also, I'm no artist, but I'd love some drawings for this! Please PM me if you fancy doing any for me and I'll post links to them in the next chapter.
Thanks,
Enjoy!
Death cannot be feared for it will only become a weakness.
Yan sat in the corner of the plane turning the steps of her plan over in her head. She was hoping that when the plane landed in a few minutes the doors would open to a dark forest with plenty of opportunities for her to disappear. She was hoping that it would still be night; it was dark when they left but they had been in the air for a long time.
She listened to the engines whirring, waiting for the change in pitch that marked the descent. She was almost relieved when she heard it, in her stressed state she had even begun to consider the possibility that the plane might turn around and fly back. Not much time passed until the plane touched down, but it felt like a lifetime to her.
It was at least very dark; she could only see a few feet in front of her. It was a sparsely wooded mountainside. It would do.
Her feet reacted automatically to the sound of the starting gun and she plunged down the steep slopes, slipping on the loose rubble. The descent was so sheer that she covered great distances with each bound. With every step she carried herself further from the plane and from her captors.
The first gunshots of the night rang out sending clouds of roosting birds into the sky screeching with alarm. She began to feel a rising sense of urgency, tonight she was running for more than just survival and she knew it put her in danger. She was expending most of her mental energy on coming up with an escape plan. With her concentration thus divided she was at the mercy of any sudden attacks.
She needed something sharp to remove the tracker in her hip. It was near the surface of the skin and a shallow cut would be sufficient to prise it out. But she had nothing and she couldn't afford to stop.
Yan did not see that the ground stop until it was too late.
The mountain side fell away beneath her and she flew out into mid-air over the edge of the cliff. Instinctively, she twisted and made a grab at the sheer rock face. For a few agonising seconds she continued to fall, scraping the skin from her hands as gravity dragged her body downwards, but with a sudden jolt her feet found a ledge and she stopped.
For some time she did not move. She pressed her face onto the cold rock and panted, exhaling white clouds into the bitter winter air. Her body was arched to apply pressure to her feet to prevent her from slipping. Her bleeding hands were tightly clenched around spurs of rock.
Yan had no idea how far she had fallen or if it would be possible to climb back up. She did not know how long she could hang there before her strength failed her and she fell into the abyss. All she could think of is how close she came to death.
After a few more minutes her resolve strengthened and she looked up to ascertain the distance to the top of the cliff. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could just about make out where the pale rock ended. It was not as far as she had thought.
Now fully recovered, she realised this was an opportunity. Had she fallen she would most certainly be dead. She knew she would make it back up but her captors did not have to know. If she could somehow drop the tracker they would think she had fallen and she would be free to make her escape.
Cautiously Yan let go with one hand and, once she was sure she still had a firm grip, she reached down to her side. Her clothes were ripped. At first she thought the blood came from her hands but then she realised there was a gash on her hip from where she had caught it on a sharp rock. She had unconsciously suppressed the pain.
Her fingers alighted on the sharp lump of the tracker and she pushed it up through the flesh to the open wound. Her hands were slick with blood but she managed to pull it out. She hesitated for a moment, once she had dropped the tracker there was no going back. If she was caught without it they would immediately label her as a deserter and they would treat her just as they treated Storm.
She let go. She had no time for nerves.
Yan climbed back up the cliff and hauled herself onto solid ground. Immediately she was up and running, pushing through the pain of her wounds. She was running for Storm, for the freedom she so desperately craved, and more than ever before she was running for survival.
It was almost dawn when they caught her. She had emerged from the forest and was running through meadows, her legs were soaked from the dew in the long grass. She could hear birds singing, beautiful innocent melodies that to her sung of freedom and hope; she had not heard a gunshot or an explosion for hours. It was that pearly, pre-dawn light where a ring of fire lights up the horizon and shadows start to stretch out behind you.
She had never seen such a wondrous sight.
Yan stopped in the middle of a field to watch a herd of deer bound across her path and disappear through a hedge. The very last one stopped and looked at her quizzically, its whole body tensed for escape. Its natural survival instincts overcome by curiosity. She looked back at it. For a few calm stretches of eternity she was held in its gaze, then it leapt through the hedge and the spell broke.
Within seconds she was surrounded.
The sudden sting in her arm was the first sign that something was wrong. She glanced down to see several darts sticking out of her side. She tore them out but the numb, cold feeling had already begun to spread through her bodies. Her limbs felt like treacle as she began to run, desperately trying to stay conscious and evade the blurred figures on the edges of her vision.
The ground loomed up towards her and a boot was planted firmly on her back, pinning her down. She was trapped. Yan knew she had nothing to fear yet.
They wanted her alive.
It was the burning pain in her side that finally dragged her from blissful unconsciousness. For a few more moments Yan struggled against the rising tide of pain that was pushing away the last few numbing effects of the sedative. The harsh light shining in her face caused her to blink, betraying her awake state to her captors.
She was tied to a chair, her arms pulled awkwardly behind her so that her back was painfully arched and she couldn't fully survey her surroundings. The chair was nailed to the floor so that she couldn't move it. She knew the drill. Sometimes they tortured her and her fellow soldiers to test their resolve under interrogation.
"13," she turned her head as far to the side as she could to look at the scientist who was lounging on a chair beside her.
"Do you know why you are here?" he smiled coldly at her.
"Dispense with the needless chat," she said scornfully. "I am perfectly aware of why I am here and what comes next, I do not require you to patronize me with you questions."
The scientist laughed mirthlessly, "We had our suspicions, of course, ever since that mission in Denver. We knew that 182 had infected others with his dangerous ideas, but I could never quite believe it could be you. You have been such… an exemplary soldier, almost perfect,"
She knew what he was trying to do and was unimpressed that he thought it would work on her. She was uninterested in flattery and held no hope that she could grovel her way out of the situation, she would not demean herself in such a way. Besides, she had no information to give him.
"I am curious, how did you find me?" Yan deliberately changed the subject to throw him off balance.
"There is another tracker," he waved a hand as if to brush aside the idea, he was annoyed she had not taken the bait.
"I see, a good idea," she smiled at him. No one could play the game quite like her.
"I can understand why you tried, it must have been hard" his attempt at familiarity was also unimpressive.
"Ha!" she snorted derisively. "What would you know of it?"
He looked at her kindly in a way she did not like, he seemed too confident, "you loved him"
Yan was surprised, but not fazed. For he was wrong, she did not love Storm, for sure he was like a brother to her, but she had almost always seen him as more of an advantage. And she had been angry when he was taken from her, he had been the one thing that was hers. But love, no that was not something she felt, too strong an emotion for her to allow, certainly not in the way he meant it. She decided to stay silent, to see how the scientist will act.
As she expected, her completely misunderstood her silence, "He abandoned you,"
"No," she replied calmly.
"Did you really believe all his lies? We caught him running away, without you. He did not care," he sneered cruelly.
"You lie. He would never,"
"Such naivety! Sentiment is a weakness," Yan could see he thought he had won some great victory over her.
She laughed, "Sentiment, yes, but not mine. I would have left without a thought had I had the chance, with or without him, I care only for myself just as you have taught me. But Storm was too noble by far, it is his own sentiment that would have never allowed him to leave me behind. And thus, I know you lie."
The scientist was silent, stunned that he had lost. He stood up, knocking over his chair, and left the room to the sound of her mocking laughter.
Yan had to sit through many more interrogations like that one, each more boring than the last. She had nothing to hide, no secrets to give to them, no one to betray. Thus she had treated them as endurance tasks and each time the scientists and generals stormed out in frustration, it was a small victory for her. It gave her some slight feeling of amusement to see their anger and to know just how much she infuriated them
Anything to distract her from her failure.
She had been stuck in that same empty, grey room for days, sometimes tied to the chair, sometimes allowed to walk around freely as if to show their generosity. They wanted to give her false hope, it was their ultimate punishment. She did not fall for such traps, she knew the only way she would survive was through her own skills. She did not rely on others. Only once had she ever been helped and she didn't believe that there were any others like Storm.
Yan was alone, at least for the time being. Someone would bring some water soon, they did not want her dead, just weak. This was enough for her to be certain of her fate.
She was sitting in a corner of the room, her back against the cold, rough wall and her knees pulled up to her chest. The grimy, mud splattered state of her clothes was beginning to irk her and her hair, usually sleek and golden, was weighed down by grease and dirt. At some point she had found a scrap of material and had scraped it up into a messy bun just to escape the feeling of the matted locks on her face.
She was not a vain person. To her looks were completely irrelevant, but she had always considered her hair to be something of an asset and has thus refrained from sheering it off completely, merely keeping it at shoulder length. The ends tending to curl up slightly, disguising the fact that they were sheer and raggedy, having only ever been cut with a knife better suited to stabbing.
She had been trying to remember the words to a poem Storm was fond of. Something about the loss of childhood innocence. She had not been particularly interested at the time, but she was bored and it was something to do.
"Happy those early days! When I… hmm," she spoke aloud to the blank walls, she was sure they were watching her. "Shined! Yes, when I shined in my angel infancy. Before I understood this….place, appointed for… something…"
She could never get beyond the first few lines, the winged words flitted out of her reach and she was not helped by the fact that to her it had never made much sense in the first place.
The door opened suddenly, jolting Yan from her reverie. She surveyed the guards who were entering with her usual blank expression, whilst her mind raced against the rising panic. They grabbed her arms, twisting them behind her back as they pulled her up to put handcuffs on and then marched her out of the cell.
Their footsteps were strangely muffled as they took her down seemingly endless corridors. She did not recognise her surroundings, but everywhere in the bunker looked the same. Occasionally she stumbled and her feet dragged along the ground, treacherously betraying the weakness in her legs brought about by malnourishment and injuries. She was still wearing the same clothes, covered in mud and blood, falling apart at the seams.
They did not say a word to her or give her any indication of where she was being taken, but she did not have to ask. It was clear to her that her time had come, she almost felt relieved, resigned to her fate.
But not quite. There was still a small part of her that was desperately fighting the pain and the weariness and whispered that she must not give in, she must not die.
When they finally left the maze of corridors, they came out onto a stage. She saw the audience of her fellow soldiers, their faces almost expressionless except for the bloodthirsty glint in their eyes. She forced herself to look to her left at the black miasmic curtain that was stretched from floor to ceiling waiting to swallow her.
"You all know that 13 has been…" Yan blocked out the sound of the scientist's smug voice. She had heard this speech enough times to know every word. She had only a few minutes left, but she had no plan. What could she do? She was surrounded and she was weak, fighting would only bring a death more certain than the one intended for her.
It is so often the case that you only remember something when it is the last thing you need to think about, and so it was that the lines of the poem flowed unbidden into her head.
But felt through all this fleshly dress, Bright shoots of everlastingness.
No, she would not die today.
Yan spun, wrenching her body from the grasp of the guards and kicking up one leg. The crunch as her boot connected with the guard's face was all too satisfying. As that leg came down she leapt with the other and, twisting in midair, hooked her still shackled arms over the neck of the other guard. He was perhaps a foot taller than her and the full force of her weight pulling him over was more than his body can stand. There was a series of cracks as vital bones snapped and when he hit the ground he was still.
Now she ran straight for curtain. She knew she would pass right through it in her still living state, they had once demonstrated all that they knew of it to them just so that the shock would be greater when they used it to execute someone. Once she was on the other side she would be shielded from the other guards and she would have some time to escape. Very little time in fact, but it would be enough.
Suddenly the world exploded.
Half her vision plunged into darkness. Her ears filled with roaring static. Each heart beat reverberated around her body like cannon fire in the distance. The silence in between filled an infinite stretch of time. Each breath of air seemed to tear off layers of skin from her throat as it was expelled from her body with a fine scarlet mist. The red droplets hung in the air around her. She could see two bullets slowly gliding away from her, crimson comet tails stretching out behind them. They painted graceful arcs through the heavy air. Her narrow circle of vision was rapidly shrinking.
Ahead of her was the black curtain.
Her legs finally collapsed beneath her and she fell into its hungry embrace. Everything was dark and for a moment she was encased in silence so complete that it was more than just an absence of sound. She couldn't speak, or even think, for there was no room for her words. Then all the sound rushed in at once.
Yan was in a sea of sound.
Waves of words crashed over her. She was drowning in a never ending spiral of words. They danced around her mocking her for she couldn't understand them. They were tearing her apart.
Every second of her life was being shredded to the mere words that formed it, taking every part of her until she was reduced to nothing more than a collection of memories, warped and distorted to join the howling swirl of sound.
She could feel the darkness pressing in on her, ready to consume her and eject her lifeless carcass. She was falling, desperately clawing at nothing as she tried to stop the inevitable end of her life.
No. I will survive.
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