WARNING: This chapter contains discussion of violence and adult material.
A New Ally(1) Chapter 11: The Dark Side of The Sun
Staring up at the dark wooden door, Aly pressed her lips together into a thin line. Brandished on the door was a nameplate that read, "Dr. Rossman, Director". Beside the English letters, there were a few Japanese characters carved in to the brass plate. With little understanding for written Japanese, Aly assumed it was the equivalent of the man's name.
Dr. Rossman was Ami's father and the director of the Preventors. In all the time Aly had known Ami, she had never once met the girl's father. He had scarcely made visits to the L7 Colony while Aly and Ami had lived there. It was usually Ami who went to Earth to visit him.
Taking a calming breath, Aly knocked briskly on the door before her. It was only a matter of seconds before a gruff voice barked out, "come in!" in both English and Japanese.
Turning the knob and walking in, Aly shut the door behind herself. At the other side of the dimly lit room sat a gray-haired man behind a large desk. He brought his head up from the folder on his desk and seemed surprised to see Aly standing there.
The man had red-rimmed, tired eyes. It seemed as though either his job or the stress over his missing daughter had taken a lot out of him. Aly felt sorry for him. He seemed like a very compassionate person.
"Who are you? Namae wa?" The man barked out in English and Japanese.
"My name is Aly. We spoke on the phone yesterday." Aly said with a light bow.
"You're Aly? I expected to see someone twice your age... But, I guess if Ami trusts you, I trust you. I'm Dr. Rossman." He said with a light bob of his head. "Suate, kudasai. Sit, please." He gestured towards one of the leather chairs facing the desk.
Keeping her expression cool and emotionless, Aly sat down in the chair he had pointed to. She kept her legs uncrossed and her back straight, never losing her stoic expression.
"As I told you on the phone, Ami left your name as her emergency contact. A few weeks ago, she went on a recon. mission in France. There was an old chateau rumored to hold a rather large group of rebels and their personal...prison."
"Personal prison?" Aly said, unsure what he meant.
"They have hostages...any person in the nearby area who opposes their organization, they throw into their prison... Ami sent out one report on the exterior aspects of the prison. That was her last report. We have not heard from her since then. It is almost certain that she has been taken hostage by the rebels." Dr. Rossman's expression turned grief.
"It is a place of nightmares...I fear the worst may have happened to her..." Dr. Rossman closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. He was losing his calm very quickly.
"I will find her. What help can you give me?" The Ice Angel pilot said rather calmly, despite the small knot forming in the pit of her stomach.
"In order to help you, I will need you to temporarily enlist in the Preventors. As a Preventor, you will have access to all equipment, contacts, services, information; anything you may need on this mission." Dr. Rossman said.
"Fine." Aly stated after a moment's hesitation.
With one quick nod, Dr. Rossman turned to his computer and began typing briskly.
"Ami did not give me any information about you, so I am assuming there is a reason. I won't ask you who you are, nor how my daughter knows you. The best conclusion would be for you to have a false identity all together." Dr. Rossman said as he continued typing.
Over the next hour, the Preventors director worked to make a false profile and background for Aly. As far as the organization was concerned, she was just another person, trying to keep the peace between the colonies and earth.
Now connected to main server
Please type message now
User: Tsunami
Location: France
Time: 1200 hours local
Message: I have easily located the aviary. No sign of the lost bird yet. I learned from local townspeople that they are looking for new trainers. I plan to attend the meeting tomorrow afternoon. If I get the job, I will lose contact for several weeks.
I will do more bird-watching tonight. I heard they let the birds out on the main grounds to get some fresh air at night. Perhaps I will spot the lost one.
Sending message... Please wait...
Message sent
With a determined look on her face, the Ice Angel pilot cleared the memory of her Preventors issued laptop. She had already been in France for three days. In that time, she had been required to send at least one mission update per day. The protocol was more of a hassle than anything else to the young female pilot. It seemed more logical to devote all of her attention to the mission rather than sit around having to log in to secret forums and send out messages to Rossman, the director of the Preventors.
Shutting the lid to her black, portable PC, Aly glanced to her left at a group of young men sitting two tables away. The young men were clad in uniforms of sort; each had on black pants, a blue, button-down shirt, and a black cap. On their right arms were black armbands with a red, setting sun.
The group of three males were not the only ones in the small, outdoor French café wearing that uniform. Aly observed that four of the other seven white, wire tables were occupied by both males and females in the same uniform.
It was not entirely surprising how widespread the popularity of "The Sunset" was in that particular, small French town. In the previous two days, Aly had learned many things about Sunset. Mainly, she had learned that young persons had two choices: to either join Sunset, or be thrown in the prison-made chateau on the other side of the woods where death was the least of one's worries.
Sunset had been around for quite some time. It was hard to find many people who did not approve of the rather oppressing faction. The youths in the café were a prime example. They were all laughing and carrying on as though it were normal that some of their former friends and neighbors had been locked in to a cruel, torturous prison.
It appalled Aly to see them that way, so carefree. In a matter of hours, those same young adults and teens would be taking their buses and jeeps back to the prison where they worked as guards or completed training as soldiers. They would keep those same, carefree looks as they watched others receive cruel, limitless beatings or in some instances, extermination.
The three boys to Aly's left were looking at her oddly while talking amongst themselves. It appeared as though they were convincing one boy to go over and speak to her. After a few short moments, the boy finally gave in and stood, making slow strides over to where the Ice Angel pilot sat.
Standing before her, Aly was able to carefully scrutinize the young man. He was rather attractive with a strong upper body and a soft, bronze complexion. With his boyish features and dark, brown hair curling out from under his black cap, Aly estimated that he was just shy of eighteen years of age.
"Je m'excuzes, mademoiselle..." The boy addressed her tentatively.
"Oui?" Aly replied, keeping her face calm, despite her annoyance at being interrupted from her train of thought.
"My name is Erik." The boy said in fluent French.
"Marianne." Aly said slowly, putting on a falsely innocent and timid smile.
"It is a pleasure to meet you Marianne." Erik said as he grasped her hand and kissed the top of it lightly as the traditional French greeting.
"It is a pleasure to meet you as well Erik." Aly replied.
"Please excuse my curiosity, but my friends and I were simply wondering what brings you to Ville-Soleil. It is a small town and it is rare that a solitary, young woman would arrive so suddenly." Erik said casually as he let go of the Ice Angel pilot's hand.
"I came here to join up with The Sunset. A friend of mine joined not too long ago. She finally convinced me to follow suit." Aly said as she nodded towards the armband he was wearing.
"A friend of yours? What is her name?" Erik asked, suddenly curious.
"Lise Alouette." The female pilot lied easily.
"Eh... I have never heard of such a girl. Sorry." Erik's smile fell as he furrowed his brow in thought.
"It's all right. She usually keeps to herself." Aly said, reassuringly.
"Well, what section are you hoping to join?" Erik said, his boyish smile returning.
"Mobile-suit piloting."
"Really? My friends and I are pilots." Erik nodded towards where his two friends still sat, watching him with amused smiles on their faces.
"See, Jaques and Luk. What about your Lise, is she a pilot too?"
"No, she is a mechanic."
"Oh. Well, at least you will have me to work with."
"Oui." The conversation was going on far too long. Aly realized she could not really use the boy to her advantage. He was a pilot, not a prison guard. With his innocent charm, it made Aly wonder if he even knew what went on in the other half of the chateau-prison.
"Erik! Allez-viens!" Erik and Aly both looked over to see Jaques and Luk waving from where they stood on the sidewalk down the road from the café.
"Zut. It's time for me to go back to work. Perhaps I will see you tomorrow Marianne. Good luck." Erik said with a friendly smile.
"Erik!" Jaques and Luk called again.
"Merci. See you later." Aly said with a smile before Erik turned and dashed down the road to join his impatient friends.
After Erik and his friends were out of sight, Aly paid for her lunch and left the little outdoor café. It was a short walk to the small apartment the Preventors had arranged for her to stay in, but Aly was in a hurry. In a few hours, she would travel through the woods at the edge of the town and continue her observation of the prison.
It was sad to know that the tiny French town of Ville-Soleil was the neighbor of such an awful place like The Sunset Prison. With its quaint little shops, calm cobblestone roads, and antique-looking apartments, Ville-Soleil hardly seemed like the hometown of cruel soldiers and prison guards.
With a frown, working its way onto her face, Aly climbed the metal steps up to the front door of her second floor apartment. She pulled out the key and inserted it into the lock, turning the brass knob after the small click of the tumbler turning inside.
Stepping in to the single room apartment, Aly closed the door behind herself and locked it. She set her laptop case beside the door and placed one foot behind the other to slide off her sneakers. Leaving her shoes by the door, she made her way over to her bed in a few short strides. Aly laid down atop the blankets, closing her eyes and trying to clear her mind as sounds from the open, bedside window filtered into her room on the breeze.
It was nearly eight PM, local time. Aly lay on her stomach beneath a bush near the edge of the woods leading to the Sunset Prison. From the woods, there was a slight slope of a hill leading down to the approximately one hundred meters of open field before the tall, stone-column, chain-link, electric fence surrounding the outer walls of the prison-made chateau.
From her position at the woods' edge, atop the small hill, Aly could clearly see over the fence, into the outer wall of the prison where a large group of prisons in ragged clothing were being marched around a grassy courtyard.
Holding her binoculars tightly, Aly held her breath as she carefully searched the group of prisoners for one particular French-German girl. Every evening, the prisoners were marched outside and forced to run or fight each other as a form of exercise the leaders of Sunset deemed necessary for their pitiful existence. There were six groups of prisoners for the six leaders or Sunset. Each group was marched outside in shifts for one hour at a time.
The group Aly was presently watching was the final group of the night. She had been there, beneath that bush, watching the prisoner exercise period for five hours already. The Ice Angel pilot was beginning to lose hope for finding Ami alive.
The sound of approaching footsteps got Aly's attention. She lowered her binoculars and strained her ears for the source of the noise. It sounded as though two people were running towards her, but what they were running from, she could not discern.
After a few short seconds, Aly could make out the sounds of other footsteps. Four others were closely pursuing the pair running towards her. A shot thundered through the silence of the woods and one of the two fell.
A girl with dirty, short, auburn colored hair came into Aly's view. The girl was thin, obviously malnourished, yet stunningly pretty despite her weakened state. Based on her torn jeans and shredded blouse alone, Aly could tell that the teenage girl was an escaped prisoner.
Pausing to jerk her head in both directions as she neared the edge of the woods, the girl seemed to have a momentary panic. If she kept going, she would end up back at the prison. Her pursuers were now coming at her from more than one direction and she was unsure which way to run.
More shots sounded from the direction the girl had come from. Aly felt her heart race as she feared for the girl's safety. Her pursuers would surely find her, and when they did, they would kill her without hesitation just like the person the girl had been with seconds before.
Without another thought, Aly leapt from the bushes. The other girl simply stared at her with her mouth open as if to scream in surprise. Grabbing the girl forcefully, Aly dragged her into the safety of the bushes and held her to the ground.
"Who...who are you?" The girl whispered in English.
"Unimportant. Stay quiet." Aly hissed as she pushed the girl further into the brush. The girl's pursuers were closing in on their hiding space.
Climbing slowly out from the brush herself, Aly switched the safety off of her automatic gun. The young pilot walked silently away from the bush and ducked behind the trunk of a nearby tree.
The footsteps of the girl's pursuers had slowed down. They were trying to sneak up on her. Peaking around the tree's wide trunk, Aly could make out the dark forms of four uniformed soldiers, all walking forward quietly with guns raised. It was nearly twilight and the woods made the whole atmosphere seem even darker and more menacing.
A crunching noise behind her caused Aly to whirl around, coming face to face with the barrels of not one, but two guns.
"Fuck." Was all she managed to say before a hard object struck her on the side of the head. Apparently, one of the original four soldiers she had seen had caught up in time to hit her in the head with his gun.
The female and male soldiers in front of her seemed to sway back and forth as her vision blurred. Aly sank to her knees, unable to maintain physical stability after the sudden blow to the head. Her gun slipped from her fingers and made a light thump in the dirt.
When her eyes cleared again, she discovered that she was surrounded by six soldiers; two females and four males. The soldiers appeared bloodthirsty and angry after chasing the auburn girl Aly had hidden. The Ice Angel pilot doubted they would show her any type of mercy. And, to make matters worse, they were all pointing their guns at her.
Lowering her head and accepting her fate, Aly closed her eyes and waited for the pain of their bullets slicing into her skin. She had failed her mission. The mission had been jeopardized when she had decided to save the girl with the auburn hair. Everything was her fault, and she was ready to accept the consequences of her actions.
"Should we shoot her, Ma'am?" One of the male soldiers asked.
"Shoot her? No, of course not. Don't you know who this is? She's Natalya Tayeari, The daughter of the late Foreign Minister. Don't you see how fortunate this is?" The older female soldier, obviously the one in charge replied.
"How so, Ma'am?" The only other female soldier asked.
"I doubt Ravana will be so quick to kill us for losing the other girl if we bring him Tayeari here." The female in charge replied with slyness in her tone.
Somehow, Aly felt as though she would have been better off, if they had simply shot her instead.
"Ravana. I've got a present for you."
With a grunt, Aly fell to her knees in front of a large desk. Her hands were chained behind her back, with heavy, electronic cuffs containing weights around her ankles. Mustering what little strength the girl had left, she brought herself back to her feet and glared at the man known as Ravana.
The man had a medium complexion. He looked like a native Frenchman, with long, dark hair, dark eyes, and a small nose. Ravana was beautiful. Beautiful, but deadly.
His eyes were what frightened Aly the most. They were pure evil. Ravana, with his beautiful, dark brown, nearly black hair and wolfish smirk, had the most frightening, dark eyes she had ever seen. His eyes looked as though they were entirely black, with no visible irises in their depths. Yet, looking closer, Aly discovered that they were not black, but an intense shade of gray.
Despite all of her training over the course of her lifetime, Aly could not make her body move in any form of struggle. She stood frozen to the spot on the floor, staring with her eyes captured in the deadly look of the man called Ravana.
"Natalya...my how you've grown! You probably don't remember it, but I visited you once when you were only five or six year old."
Confusion and surprise flashed onto Aly's face. Surely one would not forget someone like Ravana. After a short consideration, it was not so surprising after all. Aly had always had problems remembering her preadolescent years.
Forcing herself to remain calm, Aly took a few slow breaths. A million questions ran through her head. The main question of course being, why had Ravana visited her?
Snapping back into focus, Aly noticed that Ravana had left his desk in order to stand directly before her. His smirk reappeared as he reached out and grabbed a lock of her hair.
"Hmm. I always knew you would grow up to be beautiful." Ravana said softly, letting go of her hair to trace a line from her brow to her jawline with his fingers.
The Ice Angel pilot involuntarily shivered in disgust and trepidation at his touch. Physically violent abuse she had expected, but the way he touched her, Aly feared that he would rape her.
"Those chains are not all that attractive on you. I could have them removed if you would peacefully surrender yourself to me..." Ravana trailed off, letting his hand fall to his side as he studied her face.
"Surrender myself to you? I'd rather die." Aly growled, finally turning her fear into anger at his insinuations of making her his mistress.
"I expected you would say that. A shame to watch such beauty waste away in a prison cell..." Ravana shook his head in a mockery of pity. "Oh well, you will grow to like me eventually."
Stepping back, Ravana looked over Aly's head at the female soldier who still stood behind her, watching the whole scene.
"Lock her up, under my section." Ravana said in a low, dark tone, quite different from the tone he had given Aly.
"Yes, sir." The female soldier said curtly, grabbing Aly roughly and dragging the girl towards the door with the help of two other male soldiers who had accompanied her.
It seemed like nearly half an hour of twists and turns down marble-lined hallways before Aly found herself facing the heavy metal door of her prison cell. The door opened and Aly was shoved inside, landing awkwardly on her stomach on the cold, hard floor.
With the wind knocked out of her, the Ice Angel pilot barely noticed as the electronic door slid shut behind her. The room was dark, the only window of the metal lined cell was on the door, and the window had been closed from the outside.
After catching her breath, Aly rolled onto her back and slowly sat up. The girl scooted herself over to the wall and leaned against it. With a grunt of strain, Aly slid her chained arms beneath herself and managed to get her arms under her legs so that they were in front of her.
Unsure of how the locks on the chains and shackles about her wrists worked, Aly sighed and gave up her attempts to remove them. With the wall as leverage, she rose to her feet and moved shakily towards the back of the room.
In her efforts, Aly had not realized it before, but she was not alone. There was one, slow, uneven breath at the opposite side of the cell.
"Who are you?" Aly asked the darkness. Her heart was beating rapidly as her fear grew. Simply because she was chained up, it did not mean that her cell-mate was. Nor did it imply that her cell-mate was not hostile.
Stopping when her shin bumped into something short, Aly reached down to inspect the object and look for the source of breathing. The object she had bumped in to was a metal-framed, rickety bed.
Without warning, a hand reached up and grasped Aly's arm, sending a jolt of shock through her system at the cold touch. A gasp of surprise hissed through her parted lips. It felt as though the grim reaper himself had grasped her.
"Don't be afraid. I can't move fast enough to hurt you." A strained voice whispered.
Analyzing how weak the other person's speech seemed, Aly believed the voice and tried to calm herself down. The hand let go of her arm, leaving a patch of goosebumbs in its wake.
Coughing quietly, the person on the bed below spoke again. Aly wished that there were the tiniest bit of light. The pitch black of the cell was unnerving and difficult to maneuver in.
"How'd you end up here?" The female voice asked.
"I was captured as a spy." The Ice Angel pilot answered truthfully.
"Me too... There's another bed to the right of this one if you want to sit down." The girl said before coughing lightly again.
Aly slowly went around the foot of the girl's bed and managed to find the other bed. She sat down on the edge, frowning at the creaking noise it made as her weight forced the coils of the frame to stretch.
A shuffle of sheets and a creaking of coils signaled to Aly that the other girl had rolled over to face her.
"What section did they put you in?"
"Section?" Confusion was evident in the teen's tone.
"What leader are you under?" The other girl reiterated.
"Oh... Ravana."
"You're lucky."
"Why?" Aly did not consider anything dealing with that particular prison to be lucky.
"Ravana doesn't like having his prisoners...marked."
"Marked?" Aly prompted.
"He thinks people are beautiful and should not have scars. They can be beaten, have broken bones...but no burns, no cuts, no scars...Especially for the females." The girl explained.
"And the other leaders?"
"Anything is considered acceptable. Some of the soldiers here...like to be creative. They consider torture to be an art form. Others just vent all of their aggressions; see prisoners as swine rather than human beings." A touch of anger entered the girl's quiet tone as she obviously spoke from experience.
"How long have you been here?" Aly asked, trying to take the girl's focus from her obviously painful memories.
"Three months...maybe more. I've lost track of the days... I guess I gave up hope for..." The girl trailed off, sniffling slightly and choking back a sob before continuing. "I'm sorry. I have been so sick they have just left me in here. I have not spoken to anyone else in a long time."
"It's all right." Aly felt her heart clenching at the girl's suffering. So far, Aly had been shoved around a bit and knocked in the head once, but no real torture had fallen on her. It was inexcusable for her to have given in so easily. She had to escape, regardless of what the girl in the other bed told her.
"Strange...when you think of being... you don't think about the infections you can get from it. I never thought it were possible to die from something like this..." The girl whispered, seemingly in a daze.
"From what?" Aly asked, uncertain what the girl had been referring to.
"I was weak before...but no where near this bad... I have some kind of disease now. The examiners say I got an infection when one of the soldiers...had his way with me."
The girl shivered and Aly was not sure if it was due to her state of health, the memory of her abuse, or both. Either way, Aly wished at that moment that she could blow the prison to smithereens after slowly killing all of the Sunset Leaders.
"I'm sorry." Aly whispered, feeling her stomach tying in knots at the horror stories this girl was alluding to.
"It was my fault...if I had never..." The girl trailed off, sniffling back tears again. "My daughter...I love her so much. I do not regret having her." The girl seemed to be in a slight delirium, letting out stories and secrets to a person she did not even know.
"Is she...?"
"No. Thank god. She is with her grand father, safe, somewhere far from this hellish place."
The Ice Angel pilot was confused as to why the girl would regret having a child. Was it because she missed her child? Or was it for some other reason; had it jeopardized her mission the way compassion for the auburn-haired girl had jeopardized Aly's mission?
"If only they had not known..."
"Known what?" Aly asked, snapping back to attention.
"That I had a daughter...maybe I would have gone to Ravana's section instead. Ravana likes the untainted ones... all his soldiers know not to...mar any of his. I was tainted though...that's why I am here. That's why I am wasting away."
Lying down slowly on her side, everything sank into Aly's head. There was so much corruption within that prison. Ravana was twisted, the other leaders were twisted, the soldiers were twisted; they were all twisted. One way or another, Aly knew she had to escape. And if possible, she would take the girl with her.
Physical exertion and fear had taken a lot out of Aly. It would be difficult to sleep, but the teen knew she needed to store up her energy if she were to endure whatever the soldiers had planned for her.
"You should sleep." The girl said, adding more confirmation to Aly's earlier thought.
"Yeah."
"Before you sleep, I want to know your name. You can lie to me if you like, but I would prefer to call you something other than girl."
"Marianne." Aly said, sticking to the name she had given to Erik at the café.
"Hm. I'm Ami." The girl said softly.
Aly's felt her heart skip a beat before chills raced down her spine and her blood ran cold.
-End of Chapter 11-
Author's Notes:
Wow, sorry that took so long to post. I wrote this last night. I admit it is a far cry from my best work. Then again, if you are thinking about it from Aly's Point of view, things would be a little skewed from her memory. That, and I wrote this after taking the SAT, being sick, sleeping a whoooole lot. Hehe. So, please forgive me if this chapter is lame. It will get better though! I have spent all this time trying to get up to this point.
My free-time had been limited due to the school play I was helping build sets for and running. But, now the play's over and school work is lightening up a tad. I should have a lot more time to focus and write more extensive, more thought-provoking chapters.
All this babbling leads to me saying...Sorry it's late, yes I do suffer from laziness and sleepiness. Please review any way though. All comments and critiques are greatly appreciated.
More next time!
-AlyRain
Definitions of French used in this chapter:
1) Oui Yes 2) Merci Thank you 3) Ville-Soleil Sun City 4) Je m'excuzes Excuse me 5) Zut! shoot/ Darn!
6) Allez-viens! Let's go!