Chapter 21 – 100 Hours, pt.1
T + 15 minutes…
Jet found himself woken up as he fell through the air.
For a split second, he thought he was still falling from the Tornado, his parachute failing to open and that those would be his last moments before he was reduced to a smear on the hills outside Tulau, though the dull thud against the scorched grass, rather than a high-speed splat, told him quite conclusively that he had fallen from a tree or some other ground clutter that had instead broken his fall…
"Oww." He groaned, picking his battered body off the grass, and looking around.
Where they had come down was amongst the hills around eight to ten miles outside the capital – far enough away that any response would take a while to get to the site, but not so far that they wouldn't be there by sunset.
Assuming they weren't too busy dealing with the burning city, that was.
The city of Tulau was lit up like he imagined Dresden might have looked on certain nights – fires raged high into the sky and shone bright enough to give even the hills a distinct orange hue, whilst the storm clouds that had gathered over the city earlier in the evening had become something far more dangerous: a firestorm.
He couldn't help but feel guilty at that, having read up on the phenomenon at some point; a fire so intense that it was able to generate its own convective current, and burn hot enough to melt tarmac… and they had been partly responsible for that.
Not completely though. No, that fell to whoever had given the Administration those Scuds in the first place, and more so, had given them the warheads for them. Whatever they were, he knew two things: first, they were some kind of cluster weapon, designed to scatter burning incendiary devices across the target area, and two, they had disabled a sizeable portion of the Scud arsenal.
Still though, that didn't allay his guilt – after all, their targets had been the Scuds, but the Yuktobanian targets were mostly on the close air support type of mission, and whilst he ensured his pilots did their best to reduce any possible civilian casualties, the same couldn't be said for the Yukes.
They had watched MIG-27s launching strafing attacks on suspected MANPADs and trucks carrying supplies and weapons, and the "cone of death" that those things produced with that GSh-6-30 of theirs was both a sight to behold… and a mass casualty event waiting to happen.
Or one that had actually happened already, if he was honest. The 30mm guns weren't the only thing that they carried that could wreak utter carnage on the ground; those rocket pods and unguided bombs were just as bad, and when the practice of target verification seemed to be "if it moves, kill it", well… he wasn't expecting anyone to come out of this looking good.
That pit of guilt could be stared into later though, he decided, having spotted some kind of APC moving up the hill, and heading his way.
Sadly, pilots weren't issued with RPGs as standard – they didn't fit in the cockpits after all – and the M1911 he carried was about as much use as a BB gun against any kind of armoured vehicle, which meant there was only really one course of action…
Hide.
"The wreck is about a mile to the south." He heard one soldier say.
"Hopefully the bastard died in it."
"Yes, Chudelkin wanted any downed pilots taken to him. I think I would rather die in a wreck too…"
That… wasn't good news. If the head honcho wanted them bought to him, that only meant one thing – they would be used to be made an example of, and somehow, he doubted it was in the "stand in front of the class" kind of way.
More likely the "hacked to death with machetes" type was Chudelkin, he reckoned. Whichever it was though, he had to find Sierra, and fast. Before these goons got to him!
Without a chance to utter a single curse, a bullet tore through the first soldier's head, spraying blood across his counterpart as the second turned away from him, only to meet the same fate as his colleague.
"Like pigs to the slaughter, aren't they?" A voice said, and he unholstered his 1911. Whoever this person was, they were clearly armed and well trained, though he couldn't say he'd noticed him; only the two dead soldiers, and an APC… and APCs weren't known for talking. Not without recreational drugs being involved, anyway. "Ah, forgive me. I am part of the resistance." The man stood in front of him put his gun down; a sign of peace to him, and he came out from his hiding spot.
"Ah, a pilot… you are Osean, no?" He asked.
"Yeah, Osean. You are…?"
"You can call me Viktor. How about you?"
"Uhh, Captain Jet Edmondson. 302nd Fighter Squadron." He replied, remembering what he was always taught. Name, rank and number only, nothing else. "Thanks for the save there."
"Do not mention it. We are on the same side here; after all, we both want the Administration to fall, do we not?"
"Yeah." He answered. "Don't suppose you saw where our planes went down, did you?"
"A bomber went down about a mile that way. That was about ten minutes ago." Viktor pointed to a hillside; one he remembered as Hill 199 on the maps they used. "I only saw a single parachute though…"
Jet winced. He really hoped Viktor was mistaken, or that the second chute had been slightly after he had seen it, else it meant Sierra hadn't escaped from the stricken Tornado as it spun to earth…
"That would've been my plane. I need to go and find my backseater." He answered as he began to walk in the direction that Viktor had pointed.
"The area will be crawling with the pigs soon, you do understand that… right?" Viktor seemed hesitant, and he could wholeheartedly understand that… but he was going to go and find and help Sierra, and that really was non-negotiable.
"I'm aware of that, yes. If my backseater went down with the plane, he might still be alive, and I refuse to leave him to that lot!"
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T + 45 minutes…
A mile was a surprisingly long way when you were completely exhausted, Jet had soon discovered. Even running on adrenaline, as he was, it felt almost like time had slowed down as the two of them walked to the crash site, and Francois filled him in on what it was truly like to live under the Administration…
Horrible didn't begin to cover it. He wasn't sure the words really existed that did, if he was quite honest…
Coming up on the wreck though, his worst fears were slowly realised – the Tornado was nothing more than a charred pile of rubble on the ground; a scene that no human could have survived. He felt physically sick at that realisation, that Sierra – no, Cody, one of his best friends was almost certainly dead now. That swirling vortex of emotions inside of him; hatred, fury, sorrow, all of them manifested in only a single word.
"Fuck." He said, still in shock.
"There is a parachute over here!" Viktor called from further up Hill 199, and he found himself sprinting up the hill faster than he'd ever run before, a small glimmer of hope reappearing in amongst that swirling vortex.
Reaching the chute, he pulled it away from the person it had consumed, and he knew, simply from the fact that it had opened far too low to be safe, that the person beneath was no longer on this mortal plane. The only question now was who was underneath it, and as he pulled the chute off them, he got his answer as that glimmer of hope was snuffed out like a lid being put over a candle.
The body underneath it was Sierra, badly burned and with his limbs contorted unnaturally, the bones broken… no, shattered, from the impact with the ground. What was most disturbing about this though, was not the burns and shattered limbs that wouldn't look out of place in a horror movie, but that his eyes were still open, and if he felt slightly charitable, he'd have even said there was still life in them…
"Wake up you idiot!" He hissed at the body, as if expecting him to magically come back to life.
"I think he is long past waking up, Captain." Viktor said sadly, his head bowed in respect. "I am sorry for your loss though, sir. We have all lost friends to this infernal regime…"
If Viktor had carried on talking, then Jet had completely tuned him out by now as he checked Sierra's pockets. He pulled out very little, only a few bits of string and fluff, and a picture that had neatly been folded up.
A picture of himself, Sierra and Kureha stood in front of their F-4 back on the Harrier. He looked at the Phantom, and spotted its markings: "Osean Navy", a sign that the picture was taken on their very first day here – he'd repainted it to say "THE NAVY" within the week, he remembered that much.
A picture he now put in his pocket, a reminder of his friend – the last reminder he had of him.
"Rest in peace, mate." He said bleakly as he closed his friend's eyes for the last time, before sighing heavily. "They'll hang for this, I promise you that much. I'll fucking hang them, if I get-" He muttered, before being returned to reality by Viktor.
"Whilst the spirit is appreciated, we are but two. They considerably outnumber us. I am sure your friend would not wish for you to die in an ill-conceived effort for vengeance, and that your other friends may need your help more than he will." Viktor pointed out, and he let himself simmer down a little.
"I suppose so." He sighed.
"The other two aircraft crashed to the east, on Hill 219, though I did not see them go down." He could only hope that Alice and Eugeo had escaped from their aircraft, else he wouldn't be the only one grieving when they made it back to Bana; Eydis would be a complete wreck and to be quite honest, he doubted that much of the 303rd would be any better too…
They had lost one member, and decided to utterly destroy a civilian port in vengeance, so he could only imagine their response to losing two members…
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T + 2 hours…
Alice would have never said she was an outdoorsy type of girl. Of course she went outdoors, and when they were younger, the adventures that the three of them had had were definitely rather outdoorsy, but she was not the type of person to prefer more intensive physical activities, such as hiking or climbing, over say, sitting and reading a good book…
Which was unfortunate for her, as she found herself hiking and climbing across the hills to the east of Tulau, in gear that was never really designed for that.
Since she had landed, she had been looking for Eugeo, or hell, even Jet and the American, but to no avail. Wherever the boys had crashed, it had not been within easy walking distance of her position, and so, she made an effort to hike back towards the town, and towards the Yuktobanian held areas of town, where she would at least be able to get a message back to their forces for help. With any luck, she would come across the three boys as she made her way back too…
That had been almost two hours ago now though, and the adrenaline rush from the ejection was fading away – her movements became slower and less methodical, whilst her reaction time began to slow down considerably as she thought increasingly about rest above everything else.
Despite that, she had only thought during her search…
Where the bloody hell were they?!
If they had come down in the same general vicinity as she had, then she should have found at least one of them by now, should she not?
"We lost contact with Lumic and Zavos up here. They said they had seen a plane crash after the fires began and were heading to investigate."
Realising that she was in trouble – there was one of her and at least two of them, with more on their way no doubt – she took cover behind a tree nearby and hoped – no, prayed – that they would simply walk on by…
"Ah ha!" She froze, every muscle in her body tensing up as they spoke. "Yuba has found one of the pilots. Dead. His parachute didn't open." She forced back a whimper at the knowledge that one of them was dead, knowing that even the most minor of sounds could give her away.
Thankfully, one of them turned away for a moment, before he called the other over. "I see a chute down there. Looks like the pilot abandoned it though."
It wasn't hers, she knew that much. It would have taken a miracle of nature to have blown that far to the east against a prevailing westerly wind, but that meant that one of them was still alive at least. A hateful part of her mind chose that moment to make itself known, as it started valuing each of them for how she was most accepting of being dead…
A part that she soon silenced, in order to continue eavesdropping on the soldiers in case they would reveal anything more useful and made a note to expunge that part of her psyche, if she could do such a thing. Unfortunately, the soldiers had come to the same realisation as herself… "Then at least one of them is alive. If we find them, maybe Chudelkin will let us keep them. My house needs work done after all the bombing…"
Despicable.
That was the only word that came to mind to describe these soldiers – that they would use prisoners for something so utterly tedious as manual labour.
Thankfully, his colleague seemed to be a tad more intelligent, and reminded him who they worked for. "You have too much faith in that man. No doubt he would kill us for daring to speak against the plans of her eminence…"
The plans of her eminence? What did that mean, and who the hell was "her eminence"? Adamas did have a dictator, but he was, as far as anyone knew, male.
That left a horrifying thought – someone was pulling the strings on the person pulling the strings.
"A man can dream, can't he?" The less intelligent one shrugged. "Besides, I heard that one of them was one of those Angels… you're telling me you wouldn't want her waiting on you hand and foot?" She fought the urge to retch at the thought, and instead thought of the image of strangling them with the chains she would no doubt have found herself in.
The other one didn't have chance to answer before they spotted something. "Hey! You!" For the first time in her life, Alice truly froze in fear, every single muscle in her body choosing that moment to freeze in position, no matter how much she wanted to run away… "Blondie!"
This was it, wasn't it? She was going to die… or worse, and no one would know what happened to her. Eugeo, Eydis, Selka, her father… they would never know what happened to her. Just another casualty on the board-
"Yes?" Someone else responded, and in that moment, so did her muscles…
"What are you doing out here?"
"Just looking for someone."
"Yeah, well, these hills are dangerous. I'd go back to the city if I were you, pal."
"Oh yes, of course." The new voice answered, before two distinct noises that she recognised – one being a blunt object being administered to one of their skulls, whilst the other sounded like an unsuppressed gunshot… "Perhaps they should've heeded their own advice, hey captain?"
"Shame this one will probably wake up, but we could do with his kit." Another voice, this time one she absolutely did recognise…
"Jet!"
"Alice?!" He visibly jumped back in surprise, before pacing over to her.
"You really do not know how good it is to see you right now." She told him with an exhausted laugh.
He sighed, and in an uncharacteristic display for the Brit, pulled her into the tightest hug he could manage – almost rivalling Eydis for that award…
Despite being completely baffled by the display of an affection that she didn't believe existed between the two of them – they were colleagues and acquaintances, certainly, but she was not sure either of them would have described the other as a friend, merely a friend of a friend – she returned the favour . Right now, she did not mind the odd behaviour so much; she was simply glad to have someone she knew around her, even if they were starting to cry into her shoulder…
Wait.
Oh, she was stupid sometimes… "I heard someone had died." She told him matter of factly, and felt his grip tighten, as if the words were forcing his muscles to constrict. "Was it…"
"Sierra, yeah. " He mumbled as they pulled apart. She had heard from the American – okay, more that she was eavesdropping, but she had heard it from him – about how Jet had snapped at Notte back at Canaveral, calmly telling her how they would make her existence the dictionary definition of suffering for what she had done to them, and for being responsible for Koharu's death…
Now though? There was no fire in his eyes and no ice either, just… a lonely and detached sadness. As if he truly felt alone, and in that moment, she understood why he had resorted to hugging her on sight…
He wanted to feel something.
Anything.
She sighed, and tried to give him a reassuring smile, as Eydis would have done in that moment, and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I really don't know what to say. He annoyed me so much, and yet, to know he is gone…"
"This is rather touching, yes, but the Jesters are after us…" The other man said, and she couldn't help but think something was off about him.
Something about his panic did not feel particularly genuine, but rather as if it were an act being put on to corral them somewhere… "We were not introduced."
"Does it matter?"
"Viktor, just introduce yourself or she isn't going to-"
Did Jet realise who he was, or had the fool genuinely not read the files that Philia had… oh, right. She had only given them to Kirito, who told Eugeo, who then told herself. They really needed to have a good, hard look at their information sharing, sometimes… "Viktor? Jet, back away slowly…"
"Alice, what are you-" Before he could finish his question, he found himself with a gun pointed at his temple. "Of course." He sighed.
"He is one of Chudelkin's lieutenants – Viktor Nozov."
"Yeah, I'd sort of figured from the gun against my head." He replied blankly.
"Good, now all of that is over, you're coming with me." Viktor told them, and Jet rolled his eyes. "I was hoping to find all of you, but two is better than none, hmm?"
Neither of them found themselves disagreeing with him there, especially not whilst the cold-hearted bastard had a gun pointed to someone's head…
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T + 28 hours…
If she had found the hike that she had taken to meet up with Jet exhausting, then she had not seen the trek that Viktor forced them to undertake. It had been almost an entire day now, since they set off…
The man was a brute, plain and simple, and he had shown that when he began to beat them for daring to slow down… or even talk between them.
"Perhaps you shall be joining your friend soon enough, hey captain?"
He could say hello when they ensured he found his way to the fiery pits of the inferno too, and he could rest assured, they would be sending the cruel and conniving bastard there as soon as was humanly possible!
"Fuck you." Jet spat, only to receive the butt of the stolen Kalashnikov to his face, knocking him to the floor.
"That was not nice, was it?" Viktor sneered as he stood over Jet. "I am the one person here who can control your fate… if Yefim finds you, well… let us say that you shall never see freedom again."
Whoever this Yefim was, he must have been higher up in the Jesters… or some kind of torturer. Either was bad news, she knew that much, but he had a point – he was currently the lesser of two evils, and being defiant would only work when they had a way to fight back. Currently, they would merely be cut down, and left for dead like so many of the bodies that had found in the hills – shot in the back of the head, and tossed into trenches to be buried by the fighting as it climbed the hills outside Tulau – rather than tortured for any information they knew, and then brutalised to make one of their sickening videos.
She looked away, suppressing a guttural growl as she did. A gesture that Viktor took as her deciding against undergoing a similar punishment to Jet… "See, the girl gets it. Besides, I would hate to damage that pretty face of yours…"
Now she was going to throw up, she decided.
"Touch her, and I ram that AK so far up your arse you'll be coughing up bullets." Jet told him, without a hint of exaggeration in his voice.
"Ohh, a touchy subject, I presume…"
"Nah, just can't stand bullies like you." He stood back up with a callous smirk on his face. "And she doesn't need me to kick your arse for her, that much I will tell you." Alice sighed, both thankful for the intervention, and wishing that he'd picked a better time, because she knew what would happen now…
"Oh, is that so?" Viktor asked, before a punch slammed into Jet's stomach, winding him and knocking him to the mud again. This time though, Viktor stood over him with the AK held to his head, and she knew she had to act. If she didn't, there was a chance he would be shot dead, and any chance she had at escape would be massively harder if it were just her. For some reason though, Viktor was standing in such a way that she knew meant she had only one shot at this – and preferably before he realised that as well! "Beg for his life."
And beg she did. "Please don't kill him, he's important to me and I don't know what I'd do without him…" She tried to cry, though tears were not forthcoming. It didn't matter though, as she'd been able to close in on him, and with one swift motion, her boot was administered with considerable kinetic energy to a sensitive part of the man's anatomy, whilst Jet grabbed the AK and pushed it away from his head, the few bullets firing into the mud beside him.
With Viktor keeled over on his knees in front of them, Jet grabbed the AK and held it to his head. "You know, I was lying about ramming it up there…" He told him, and she thanked God for that – that was not an image she needed to see! "But I'm not letting you go."
He took a step back and let off a burst into Viktor's kneecaps. "If I aimed right, you've got no chance of walking again."
"Just kill me then."
"Nah. I'm gonna do what your lot did to all those poor bastards down there." He told him, and pushed the wounded Jester into the ditch, before shifting some of the bodies, so they lay atop him, burying him amongst his own handiwork.
The irony would almost have been darkly amusing, had it not been such a grim fate – if he didn't die of his injuries and the blood loss from it, he would die horribly from the diseases around the decomposing bodies…
"That should stop him for a bit." Jet told her coldly, as if he was not responsible for that fate. "I refuse to kill… but that doesn't stop me from making people like him wish they were dead." He explained as they walked down the hill…
Only to walk into a roadblock organised by the Jesters.
Both of them had the same reaction, broadly speaking… "Oh, fuck off…" Jet groaned in anger.
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T + 29 hours…
The firefight they found themselves in was… spirited, to put it mildly.
Anyone who wasn't named him or Alice would have more accurately described it as "terrifying" or "a hail of bullets that was met with a trickle in response", but eventually, they had managed to slip away whilst the Jesters became the deserved targets of the phrase "when the hunter becomes the hunted", as sniper fire took out a group of them, and allowed him to get off one last burst before the AK became more of an intimidation tactic than anything else…
That wasn't to say they got away unscathed though, as he was now discovering… "Alice, you're bleeding."
"It isn't anything major, just a round came too close."
"Lemme see." He told her and looked at the side of her face. A round had indeed come too close – not to grazing her, but to outright killing her. It had hit the side of her face and must have done some damage to the side of her eye, given the location of the wound. "Jesus Christ, Alice! How can you still see out of that eye?"
She sighed and turned her head away. "I cannot. Is it bad?"
"Not that it'll do anything much, but I'll try to patch you up as best as I can." He told her, retrieving the medikit that Kureha made sure they all kept on them on missions, and opened it to retrieve the bandages.
"I suppose I shall do well at Halloween this year, given I shall still be wearing an eyepatch by then…" She joked, and he could just tell how terrified she was at that point – Alice had nothing that he could discern as a sense of humour, after all.
"You must be bricking it…" He told her.
"I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared, yes." She admitted. "How did you know that though?"
"You're making jokes." He answered. "You don't make jokes, and you tell us off for doing as much."
"You make it sound as if I am some kind of humourless witch." She stated, though there was a tone of sadness in her voice, almost as if she was realising what he thought of her as. "But yes, I suppose I could do with lightening up… especially after this."
A makeshift patch over her eye that was bandaged up around her head was the best he could do with the limited resources in the medikit, but it was enough to make sure she didn't do any more damage to it for the time being. Whilst ACES did have a healing mechanic, it was slow (though quicker than IRL) and honestly, it was almost as painful as healing naturally would have been – although it could heal things that certainly wouldn't heal in real life; lost limbs and loss of eyesight being the two he could imagine were the most useful…
It still meant Alice would be bandaged up for a few weeks, but she wouldn't die of an infection or anything like that… he hoped. "Yeah, well it was keeping your head on a swivel that kept us alive. If we'd followed my lead, we'd be halfway to wherever the Jesters keep their prisoners, so I wouldn't take that side out back and shoot it just yet…"
He winced realising what he'd just said, and her good eye narrowed at him slightly. "Bad choice of words there, sorry."
"Forgiven." She said, before sighing again. "And no, that one is on us. Philia filled us in, and I assumed she had filled you in as well."
"Not that I know of." He answered, trying to hide his irritation at being left in the dark at something quite so important. "C'mon, we need to get a move on, before they catch up to us."
"Who was that sniper?"
"Beats me, but I owe them a drink when we meet them." He answered, as they carried on hiking through the hills towards the Yuktobanian safe zone at the end of what they had named the Snake Pass.
With any luck, the Yuktobanian forces would have progressed far enough that they would be able to link up with them there, and get a ride back to Bana from there…
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T + 35 hours…
Things were not going well for the Yuktobanian 8th Battalion, as it turned out.
Firstly, they had been hit by the remains of the destroyed Sky Scorch missile that the Adamasians had launched – though thankfully, they had been spared the worst of the impact, which had engulfed the capital of Tulau in a firestorm of a magnitude they had never seen before, the wooden buildings accelerating the flames, and leaving a nightmarish inferno where the city had been before.
Secondly, the Jesters had been able to circle around them during the chaos, bombarding them and disabling their heavy equipment; their tanks, APCs and artillery all lay in ruins after the bombardment, all whilst their air support was grounded from the firestorm, and forced the survivors to scatter throughout the hills.
Lastly, but certainly not least, Sam had been split off from her group, and was left wandering the hills with whatever supplies and ammunition she had on her – enough for at least a couple of engagements, if she made her shots count.
Which meant she had spotted the downed pilots pinned down by the Jesters at a checkpoint and stepped in to get them out of the tight spot. She had managed to get them from the engagement, and hoped she could catch up to them – they stood a better chance of reaching the field base at Mara that way, where they could call for evac for the two aircrew.
Not that they saw it that way, mind you.
"Who are you, and why did you help us?" The man now pointing a gun at her asked her. She had enough training with the AK to know he wouldn't pull the trigger… it wouldn't do anything after all, the magazine was empty.
"Relax, I'm Yuktobanian! I'm on your side!" She told him to try and put him at ease. "Name's Sam. I'm part of the 8th Battalion; we got wiped out earlier in the day by the Jesters."
"Alice…" He deferred to her for some reason.
"She is not one of them. Not that I recognise, anyway." The blonde girl answered, and she must have been hit during the engagement, as her head and left eye were now bandaged up. Yeah, she needed a field hospital right now, but the nearest one was at Mara, almost fifteen kilometres away…
"Right. Sorry about that, still a bit on edge after earlier…" The man let the gun drop onto its sling, and dangle from his shoulders. "Captain Jet Edmondson, Osean Air Force, CO of the 302nd Fighter Squadron."
Damn, he was young for a CO, wasn't he? He couldn't have been much younger than her, and already in charge of his own squadron…
"Captain Alice Schburg, 303rd Fighter Squadron." The blonde girl, Alice, told her.
"So, how far have we got to the Yuktobanian lines?" Jet asked with a grimace.
"A way back, the 8th was the tip of the spear, and well…" They were scattered to the hills, and she wasn't even sure how many had survived the Jesters' assault. "There's a small farmstead at the top of the pass that we can use to make contact with our field HQ at Mara, and we'll figure out what to do from there."
"Sounds like a plan." The two nodded in agreement, and they began to hike the remaining mile or so to the farmstead.
She could only hope the Jesters hadn't been able to push that far up yet, else they'd be walking headfirst into a trap. Still, she remembered her unit's motto… Quis audit, vincit, or in English, Who dares, wins.
"So, how did you end up out here?" She asked as they hiked further up the hillside. "I mean, you pilots aren't exactly soldiers, are you?"
"That bloody missile, that's how we got here…"
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T + 47 hours…
By nothing short of a miracle, Eugeo had not only survived the detonation of the Scud above Tulau, but he had managed to drift down to relative safety near the bottom of the Snake Pass and had managed to spend the next day and a half evading Adamasian patrols.
He had tried everything he could think of to locate Alice, or even Jet and Sierra, but nothing had come from his efforts, and after nearly two days of exhaustion, of fatigue and of hunger, he felt as if he was about to pass out.
The world was now going fuzzy, almost as if his eyes refused to work without any food or water, and his head felt light at the same point. He took a brief stop, before he tried to carry on, only for his legs to feel as if they would no longer work either, and in that moment, he felt his eyes become heavy and he began to drift away, to the sounds of voices in the distance…
"We've found one of the Oseans!"
"Excellent. Hopefully, this one will put up less resistance than Viktor's pair did."
"Take him." He heard, before he felt himself being picked up by someone… "Oh, and if you find the other two, kill them. They aren't worth the trouble to capture."
Two of them, he thought to himself… shouldn't there be three?
That was the last thing he thought before he passed out fully, being carried over the shoulders of one of the Jesters…
{Author's Comments}
Not quite the double bill I planned, and the reason for that is very simple: the original chapters 21 & 22 would've been told in inverse (starting at the end, and working back to the beginning, scene by scene), and having written ch.21 in that format... I realised it was crap.
That structure made it really difficult to read through and even I couldn't complete it in read-throughs, so the idea was dropped , in favour of a more conventional chapter. Still a bit different in how I've done these chapters, but I massively prefer this style over the backwards one already.
So chapters 21, 22 and 23 will all be a single time period, told from different perspectives...