Chapter 26
This can't be real, Aerith thought. Someone please say this isn't real.
The corridor whipped past, too fast, a blur of concrete walls, steel grating floor, but somehow she was walking, a guard on either side of her, shoving her forward. She walked, but her legs moved without her knowing it; her body was made out of smoke, unreal and far away on some other plane. Even the pain gnawing in her chest felt as if it belonged to someone else. She had just killed eight people, probably more. Not knocked them out, as she had used to do. Not stunned. Killed. Dead.
Aerith stared at her sticky hands and twisted them futilely in their restraints, rubbing her wrists together, the plastic straps cutting into her skin. She looked down at herself. Her parka was splashed with blood from the men she had killed. It pooled under her nails in rust brown crescents, and she could feel stiff clots of it drying in her hair.
Aerith felt the tremor begin deep in her belly; it pulled the feeling from her limbs, her strength evaporating. She began to shake uncontrollably, her legs buckling under her. The floor rushed up, but the soldiers seized her before she struck the ground and forced her back onto her feet, shouting in their harsh, guttural language. Aerith stumbled forward, still staring at her bound, bloody hands. Her mind replayed what had just happened, the lines between reality and memory blurring into one long internal scream of all consuming terror.
She had waited in the container, motionless in a numb torpor, for what seemed like forever. Vaguely she remembered hearing footsteps around the outside of the container, coming and going, the incomprehensible voices of the soldiers shouting back and forth. Someone passed by outside and suddenly there was a vicious pounding at the bolt. She startled, then froze, hardly daring to breathe, but the bolt held. Someone shouted, directly outside, and she saw the fingers of a worn gray work glove grasp the bent edge at the top of the door and shake it back and forth, trying to work it loose. She could hear the man's heavy breathing; it gusted in through the gap at the top of the door. The man gave the door another rough shake, jumped down, and was gone.
She exhaled. There were more voices outside. She heard something scrape along the outside of the container, again the door was shaken, then there was a loud pop. Sparks began to rain in through every gap, the brilliant white flare of a cutting torch chewing through the bolt of the container. Helpless, she watched the burning bead travel downward, leaving behind a pair of glowing red tracks. The ivory handle of the knife was in her hand and she clenched it, slowly realizing what she must do. The smoke from the torch and the acrid smell of hot metal stung her throat and eyes. She backed against the far wall of the container but there was nowhere else to go. Her heart mashed up in her throat, pounding madly, and she couldn't breathe. Panicking, she tried to call a spell, something to defend herself with, but it wouldn't come and her heart stuttered with the strain. The doors were suddenly wrenched apart; she registered the dirty gray and green of the soldiers' parkas and the dark shine of their eyes, matching the black metal of their guns. They spoke to each other uneasily, lifted their weapons and began to advance. One said something over his shoulder to the man standing behind him. He pointed at the long hair flowing out from under the hood of her parka, and smiled a slow oily smile.
Unbidden and automatic, a harsh high scream of rage and terror poured from her throat, as piercing as a falcon's cry. She leapt forward and slashed at the hands that reached for her. Someone howled in pain, a man jumped back, clutching his ruined hands, but there were so many of them. She cut mercilessly, not thinking. A gun went off, close to her ear; the flash etched her vision, the afterimage floating in the air like a burning red ghost. She scrabbled in the spools, fighting them off with everything she had, but it was not enough. One of them knocked the knife out of her hands, then crushed her up against the wall and pressed the barrel of his gun into her windpipe so hard it made her choke. Seizing her by her hair, they dragged her toward the entrance. Wounded men staggered out of the container, bleeding, holding their slashed arms and bellies. No, she thought, it couldn't end this way, not like this. A mighty pulse was gathering within her, but from where the energy came from, she didn't know. She struggled madly, kicking and biting like a wild animal. Bright pain sparkled at her nape as the soldiers tore out a clump of her hair, struggling to constrain her. She felt herself being dragged toward the mouth of the container, but she couldn't let them, she couldn't let them take her…suddenly all thought rushed away as the air shimmered, then caught fire. There was an unearthly roar then everything went white. Men tumbled out of the container like burning leaves, collapsing into the snow in smoking heaps. Aerith felt herself fall free, suddenly released, then fell down hard on her side. The knife was on the ground beneath her, she could feel the ribbed handle poking her in her ribs. Still blinded by the flash, she grabbed the knife and leapt to her feet, ready to run as fast and as far away as she could. Her vision coming back in stripes and spots, she tripped over the welding equipment at the mouth of the container and stumbled out into the snow. A soldier ran up from behind the container, two more behind him. Without thinking, Aerith stabbed him, sinking the knife deep into the thick muscle of his neck. As she withdrew it, the man checked her with his body and she fell backward and bounced off the open door of the container, hitting her head. She sprawled in the snow, holding her head with one hand and sweeping outward with the blade, but more soldiers had already surrounded her before she could get back on her feet. One bashed her forearm with the butt of his rifle, sending the knife flying out of her grasp. A second strike to her ribs left her curled up in a ball, gasping for breath. She lay with the jagged frost cutting into her cheek, her ears ringing, disarmed and utterly exhausted as they stood over her, cursing. Somewhere, four or five yards off, she heard a man groaning in pain. She heard the metallic ping of a lighter as one of them standing by her head lit a cigarette. They kicked her in the ribs a few times more for good measure before dragging her away.
Aerith snapped back to reality. She was standing in front of a door stenciled with yellow letters. The soldiers were barking at her. There was unbearable pain and pressure in her belly where they had kicked her; she was breathing hard and fast as the reality of her surroundings slowly began to dawn on her. The door slid open onto a room hazy with smoke. The soldiers shoved her forward. A few men sat around a large smooth table in a dimly lit boardroom. The table was littered with papers and bottles, punctuated with overflowing ashtrays which wept a fine layer of ash and burnt paper onto its glossy surface. An automatic pistol and several loaded clips weighted down the corner of a crumpled and stained map. Aerith heard the jangle of a chain. A white longhaired dog was lying on the floor under the table and had raised its head to look at her. As if it knew it could be of no help, it whimpered sadly, shaking its heavy collar and the chain that tied it to the table, then put its head back down on its dirty paws. The barrel of a gun jabbed sharply into her back, and she took a few reeling steps forward. The man at the head of the table, large and bulky with a blocky head bristling with blonde stubble, looked her over appraisingly. He drew slowly from the cigar jammed between his thick fingers, and, as he stared, let the smoke curl slowly from the edges of his mouth until it dissipated. His ice blue eyes narrowed, the dirty blond eyebrows above them barely moving in his heavy brow. He said something to the soldiers, pouring a clear liquid from one of the bottles into a gilded tea glass. He jabbed a finger in her direction and said something that sounded like a question. The soldier replied, nodding. Aerith watched him lift the tea glass to his mouth. There was something about the glass that seemed oddly familiar, as if she had seen it before. Half of it was darkened, the gilding discolored, as if it had passed through a fire, one side of the rim marred with a bullseye chip.
But there was no more time to think, as the blonde man set the glass down sharply and got to his feet, glowering at her. He started talking, his rough voice low at first, but then with increasing vehemence. The man barreled up to her, screaming in her face, crushing her bound hands against him. Aerith smelt the tang of alcohol on his breath and felt flecks of his spittle landing on her face, but the soldiers behind her kept her from taking a step back or moving away. She kept her eyes on the ground, focusing deep within herself. The man towered over her, his massive bulk blocking out the light from the dim lamps. He tore off her hood, grabbed the auburn length of her hair, shook it, then angrily tossed it aside. When she did not respond he grabbed her by the chin and forced her to look at him, streams of unknown hatred pouring from his mouth. Aerith stared into his pale blue eyes, unblinking.
Enraged with her lack of response, the man seized her and shook her so hard she heard her teeth rattling in her head. Finally he threw her down against the table and struck her heavily on the back of her head. Aerith pitched forward and caught her side against the edge of the table. She cried out involuntarily but she couldn't believe that that sound, that thin and reedy bleat, was her voice. Snickering came from the men still seated at the table. She clung to the edge of the table for a few moments until her legs gave out and she dropped to the floor.
This was it, she thought, staring at the boots of the men shifting under the table, at the sad eyes of the dog. She couldn't cast, she couldn't heal herself, she was too weak to fight, and weaponless. This man, she thought, this brute one step above a thoughtless animal, was going to beat her to death in this dirty room and there was nothing she could do about it.
As she waited, her body shivering in preparation for the next blow, one of the doors to the room opened and a man staggered in, gasping. His uniform was torn and smeared with soot and he looked pale. He said something that made the blonde man pause, then reply in a disbelieving tone. They bantered back and forth, with increasing alarm, then the man stalked past her heading toward the door. He turned and paused enough to give some kind of directions to the remaining occupants of the room, glaring down at Aerith like she was a worm he wished he could crush with the heel of his boot.
A door opened in the back of the room and she heard steps approaching. A shadow fell over her and she felt a gentle pressure on her arm, pulling her up. With difficultly, Aerith turned her head. An older man with a graying crew cut, dressed in a shapeless grey-green jacket and threadbare fatigues, tugged insistently at her elbow and helped her to her feet. His dark brown eyes flickered over her bruises and for a second she thought she saw pity run through them, but it soon vanished, replaced by a vacant expression of numb docility. His rough hand encircled her bound wrists and she hissed through her teeth at the sudden pain but took a few haltering steps forward. Aerith walked the best as could manage, hunched over and limping. They made their way down hallway after hallway, all of them alike, until at last an elevator brought them up to the surface. They stepped out onto the hard packed snow under a black night sky, the stars a million pinpoints of cold light. From far below Aerith thought she could hear gunfire. The man looked frightened and lead her more aggressively, taking her by the hands and pulling her across the open space toward a half timbered building that was long and low. The doorway was made out of heavy square timbers, with a deep threshold made out of flat stones. Aerith leaned against it, resting, while the man went through a set of wrought skeleton keys on an iron ring, searching for the one that matched the lock. After trying key after key, the lock ground open and the man pushed the thick door inwards. The scent of hay and the slightly sweet grassy smell of Chocobos floated up out of the darkness. The man pulled her inside, lighting a dusty kerosene lantern to see with.
The stable appeared not to have been used for a while, and nothing, save a few restless mice, stirred in the approaching light of the man's lantern. The stalls were steel cages of woven metal, reaching all the way to the ceiling, with sturdy doors that latched and locked from the outside. A corrugated pipe was at the back of each stall, coming up through the packed earth floor and out just under the eaves of the roof. As Aerith watched in a pain-red haze, the man went from stall to stall, putting his hands on each pipe, until he found one somewhere behind her that met his unknown criteria. Moving stiffly, he dragged a fresh bale of hay inside the stall, broke it up by kicking at it with his boots, then clumsily heaped it into a pile against the pipe. Babbling incomprehensibly, he pulled Aerith to her feet, and sat her down on top of the hay. He patted the pipe, then nodded at her, then patted it again. Aerith made no response; she stared off into space, fighting unconsciousness. The man placed the lantern on the ground beside her, then tottled away. A second later she heard the lock on the stall door grind shut, then she was alone.
Aerith leaned against the pipe. It radiated heat and she pressed herself closer against it, burrowing deep into the fragrant hay. The brittle strands enclosed her in a way that was strangely comforting, even as they prickled against her skin. The grass had had to come from somewhere, she thought, somewhere far away from this place. Her mind gave her a vision of wide green meadows, lush with life and growth, waving gently in the wind in that supple way that only grass knows how to move. Aerith stared into the flame of the kerosene lantern. Her head throbbed in time with her pulse and her vision blurred perilously. When it snapped back into focus she saw the curved edge of a long black feather sticking up out of the hay. She seized it, her fractured ribs flaring in pain. Give me strength, she thought, to the earth, to the life that once had been. Sephiroth would come for her, she thought, her thoughts slipping away. She tightened her grip on the feather. It was impossible to know how much time she had, how long they were planning to hold her here, or what those men would do with her. It was only a matter of time, and she would have to see who would get to her first.