Chapter One—Part Five: The Imprisonment

I shot out of that room like a bullet from a gun, dodging arms with grasping hands that sought to entangle me. I don’t know how I got past Mary and Diana as they scrambled to block my path, but I did, and I found myself darting past diners in the cafeteria who looked curiously up as I ran by. Then I was in the hangar, all bustling with activity, and I ran and ran until I’d crossed its full width, trying my best not to slam headlong into anyone on my way. But I didn’t know where I was supposed to go, didn’t know where the exit door was, so when I reached the far end of the hangar, I slowed my pace and walked along the perimeter, searching for a way out. With my hand on the wall I moved, turning to spare a glance over my shoulder in the direction from whence I’d come, and I spotted Mary and Diana, their heads turning this way and that as they tried to find me. So I turned my head away, thinking that the back of a head is harder to identify at a distance, and tried to find my way out.

But the gates were down, and they were thick iron, rough to the touch as I tried to find any sign of a way through. I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest, a frantic, erratic rhythm, and I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder and making direct eye contact with Mary. I couldn’t hear her voice over the throngs of people, but I saw her shout her sister’s name, saw Diana turn her head, and saw her lock her eyes on me. I turned, pressing my back against the wall, and tried not to let a blind panic overtake me: there was nowhere to go as they descended on me, wending their way through the crowd as they neared. I may not have known where to go, but I knew well enough to keep the bulky forms of jeeps and other vehicles in between Mary, Diana, and myself. At least for as long as I could.

“Come on,” I whispered to myself in an attempt to invoke Kaz’s voice in my head.

“Tell me what to do.” My eyes darted furtively over the expanse of the room, but the voice inside my head was silent.

I blindly chose a direction and ran, keeping my right hand up lest I should tumble into the closed iron gate. The hangar was spherical so as I made my way forward, I wrapped around from the same direction from which I’d originally come. Too late did I decide to head for the lift, too late, because Diana grabbed me by the hair, gripping my curls close to the scalp to subdue me.

“Mary!” She cried out, and Mary appeared, the crowd separating, and muttering as they watched me be apprehended. No one, no human and no Ivaldan, lifted a finger to help me. No one so much as questioned Mary or Diana as they dragged me by the hair back through the cafeteria.

The flow of conversation dimmed and died as they hauled me bodily through the room, and an electric silence descended. I guess I must have been an oddity, a human woman who was also an enemy.

I tried to stay calm, my fingers curled around Diana’s unforgiving wrist in an attempt to minimize how much it hurt to have her fingers in my hair. I thought she’d take a chunk of my scalp clean off. And though I remained silent save for the hissing gasps of air I sucked in through my teeth, inside my mind, I was wailing. Help me, I said, out into the ether, Please, Kaz. Find me—Help me. They have me. Help me.

And so it was that getting up to run got me precisely nowhere, except dragged by the hair, breathless, and forced to my knees in front of Blanche Ingram. The scene in the room was a somber one: Riley was unconscious on the ground, and Blanche sat, sipping her still-hot coffee. With a final shove, Diana let go of my hair and I rubbed at my pained scalp as I scrambled to where Riley lay. He was breathing soft and heavy, like he was in a deep sleep.

“What did you do to him?” I demanded, pressing my fingers into his neck where I felt a sturdy pulse.

“I couldn’t have him go after you,” Blanche explained. “I know how he feels about you—I couldn’t let him help you find a way out. And if there was anyone here who could get you out, it’s definitely Riley, here.” She smiled then, almost fondly. I cast a glance back at Mary and Diana; Diana was nonplussed, but Mary seemed somewhat perturbed that her brother had been knocked out.

“Blanche—” she began, a question in her voice, but Blanche just held up a hand, instantly silencing her.

“Relax, he’s only asleep.” Blanche reached into her pocket and pulled out a pocket watch, admiring it in the palm of her hand. “What do you think, Jane?” she asked. “I redesigned it. Do you like it?” I narrowed my eyes at it, not immediately understanding. Blanche rose to her feet and sidled around the table so that she could stand directly in front of me where I knelt beside Riley. “You don’t even recognize it, do you?” she asked, canting her head to the side. “It’s the device you gave me—your nanite machine. Your little aquamarine necklace. And I’ve used Ivaldan tech to put Riley here to sleep, the same way they put as all to sleep.” Blanche crouched down and smoothed Riley’s dark hair over his head. “I wouldn’t do any permanent damage to him—he’s instrumental to this entire operation. And eventually I’ll get him to see why we had to use his precious little Jane this way. He’ll come to recognize all the good it will do.”

Blanche stood upright again, tucking the pocket watch back into the pocket of her black leather jacket. “Don’t worry, it’ll only be a moment,” she said, ever composed and calm, “I’ve already called for someone to escort you down to the brig.”

True to her word, a coterie of armed guards showed up in what looked like secondhand Kevlar and an array of scattershot weaponry: a machine gun in one pair of fists, a baseball bat with nails crudely knocked into the end in another. A few of the guards had face masks, a few didn’t, and they showed just how underprepared they would actually be for a full-on riot, let alone an intergalactic war.

The guards hoisted Riley up like a dead body and carried him and led me to the lift and down, down into the bowels of the mountain. The brig was a makeshift jail, with chain-link fencing used to divide the open room into cells. Each cell had a cot and an empty bucket, and that was all. There were no prisoners there, just me and Riley, who was deposited unceremoniously down onto one of the empty cots. The gate-like door to his cell was closed and secured with a padlock, and I was led into the cell next to his.

“Have a seat, Jane,” Blanche said, and I did as she bid me, perching myself on the edge of the cot. Blanche curled her fingers into a fist, cocked back, and backhanded me knuckles first. Searing pain, tinnitus, and that unpleasant feeling of my brain rattling around in my skull, I grunted on impact, and nearly toppled over with the force of the blow.

I lifted a tentative hand to my cheek where she’d made contact, and ventured to open and close my mouth, my muscles tense around the sudden pain. “Hands down,” Blanche commanded.

“Fuck you,” I spat back, and she gave a nod of her head which sent two of her goons forward to hold my arms out to my side. “Blanche,” I began to plead, but I didn’t get another word out before a second blow landed on my jaw. I immediately tasted the sharp tang of blood, even as my pulse throbbed there, the ache radiating out.

“Gag her,” she said, and one of the guards put a strip of fabric between my teeth and tugged back so that my mouth was awkwardly open, but my tongue was subdued. He tied it in place, then secured my wrists with a zip tie behind my back. My eyes watered from the sting, and I felt the cloth of the gag soak up the tears that streaked down my face.

Blanche fished her cell phone from her pocket and snapped a picture of me. “Good,” she said, tucking it away again. “So, here’s what you can expect: We will send this image to Master Kain, and you will be our bargaining chip. He will give himself up for your freedom.”

I wanted to ask what they planned to do with him, but the question came out in a garbled amalgamation of sound. Blanche smiled, big and bright. “I’m not sure what you’re after,” she said, her tone playful and infuriating, “but you’re just a small-time hostage, Jane. Kazimir Kain is the bigger fish I’m after. Once we have him, you’ll be free to go. In fact, I’ll have Riley drive you further East until you find a little town that suits you. Then we’ll drop you there, and you can wait out the revolution, or the end of the world, in relative obscurity.”

I wriggled where I sat, my wrists straining against the zip ties. “Don’t struggle, Jane,” she said, a warning in her tone, “it will only make things worse.”

And that was all. The men left, Mary and Diana left. Blanche left. And it was me and Riley and two padlocks on our cages. We were crated like dogs, and I laid myself down on my cot and did nothing to try to stem the flow of my tears.

~ * ~

I heard Riley come to with a grumble and a moan, and I sat up on the cot with my eyes wide and watched him gather himself up to sitting. With one hand planted on the cold concrete floor, he used the other to rub at his eyes and blink himself back into consciousness. The cells were illuminated by naked bulbs that cast everything in a sort of dim orange, and the shadows swirled all around him as he shifted. Slipping his fingers through the chain link, he pulled himself to standing before his eyes alighted on me.

“Jane,” he said, his expression white with shock. Did I really look that bad? “Are you all right?”

I couldn’t speak, so I nodded my head.

“Come here,” he said, and I went to the far side of my cell. “Turn around.” And I did. I felt him grip my hands where they were zip tied together, heard the flick-snap of a switch blade, and felt the cold metal just before he cut me free.

I reached up and tugged the gag away from my mouth opening and closing my jaw as I reached up to untie it and abandon it on the floor, the foul thing.

Then I turned back to Riley and let his fingertips touch my fingertips. “How do you have a knife?” I asked.

“I always have one on me,” he said, “and I guess they just didn’t pat me down.” He looked around the cell, noting the padlock on the gate doors. “But it won’t do us much good in here, beyond relieving you of that zip tie.” Riley looked exhausted in the dim light of the cells, despite having just awakened from an hour-long sleep. “Are you all right, Jane?”

“I think so,” I said. My face was throbbing and tender to the touch on the right side of my mouth and along the left cheek bone, but I didn’t think my eye was swollen and I didn’t think anything was broken. “Does it look back?”

“It looks like someone beat the hell out of you,” he said, smiling faintly.

“I think it was just for posterity,” I said. “Blanche hit me and then tied me up, gagged me, and took a photo. I imagine she’s luring Kaz here even now.”

“And do you think he’ll come?”

There was no question in my mind—I could feel him, drawn to me. “I know he will,” I said. “But he shouldn’t.”

I moved away from Riley then, and sank down onto the cot. I let myself really look around: the space we were in was huge, easily the same size as the hangar. And it had been divided into dozens upon dozens of cells, with naked bulbs dangling, haphazard, above each one. How many people did they plan to keep here? No, not people: Ivaldan leaders.

“What will they do to him?” I asked, barely able to pose the question.

“I don’t think they’ll kill him,” Riley offered, “if that makes you feel any better.”

“A little.”

“But I do think he’ll be coerced, tortured if necessary.”

I scoffed. “I don’t feel better anymore.” I bent my head and cast my gaze to the floor, trying to distract myself from the pulsing ache in my face. “The worst of it,” I muttered, “is that I don’t even know what to believe any more. I don’t know whose side to be on.” I lifted my head and looked to Riley, whose gaze was focused and attentive. I went on: “I don’t know which team is made of good guys and who are the villains. Is it the Ivaldans for invading our planet and putting us to sleep? Are they the bad guys? And is the revolution the underdog hero that would take our planet back? Or are the Ivaldans just…lost creatures looking for a home? And is the revolution a band of bullies that will murder innocents to achieve its goal?”

I shook my head, and heard Riley sigh from where he stood, in an easy lean against the chain link that held him captive. “It’s not like that, Jane,” he said gently. “It never is. The real world isn’t made up of black and white villains and heroes. It’s all just…a mess of both. The Ivaldans were desperate, looking for a home. So, they took one: ours. And the revolution…well, it’s a necessary group fighting for the rights of the people who once ruled this planet. And each side is made up of individual heroes and individual villains.”

I swallowed hard, trying to keep myself from giving in to my utter despair. “And what are we, Riley? You and me? Are we heroes or villains?”

“Right now?” He said with a crooked grin. “We’re prisoners.” He turned to face me fully then, gripping the fencing and staring intently at me through it. “But either way—it doesn’t matter. You have to remember, Jane, that villains fancy themselves the heroes of their story.”

“So, everyone tries to do the right thing—even if their methodology is questionable. But there is no one right thing.”

“Yes,” Riley said. He turned away and slid down the chain link until his back rested on the fencing we shared. I went and sat near him, my back to his, so that I could feel his warmth radiating through the metal. “What matters, on the small scale, is what you think is right. What you think is best.”

“And what is it that you think, Riley?” I asked.

“You know what I think,” he said. “I’ve told you. What do you think?”

I took in a deep breath and listened to the consistent bray of my heart. Kaz wasn’t with me, in my mind. Not now. It was just me, alone in the landscape of my brain. And I knew what I thought, I knew what felt right in my gut. “Why shouldn’t we share the planet? We are all made of the same matter, and they are our celestial neighbors. Why shouldn’t we share it, peacefully?”

“There you go,” he said, almost sadly. “That’s what you believe. Now, you fight for it.”

“How can I, from in here?”

I heard him sigh, felt him shrug where our backs touched through the chain link. “I don’t know how we do anything from in here.”

“We?” I echoed. “You’re on my side now?”

“Jane,” he replied, “I’ve always been on your side.”

We breathed in quiet camaraderie for a moment before I felt him move, and I turned around to look at him. He passed me his switchblade through the chain link. “I can’t take this,” I protested, even as I curled my fingers around a handle inlaid with mother of pearl.

“They won’t give me a chance to use it,” he said. “I imagine they’ll just leave me in here until they’ve used you for whatever purpose they intend, and then…” he shrugged, shifting to sit cross-legged with his elbows on his knees. “If I were Blanche, I’d leave me to rot down here.”

“She won’t do that, Riley,” I said, trying to squeeze my hand through the fence so that I could make physical contact with him, just to try to comfort him somewhat. “She needs you—she said so.”

“She’ll never trust me again,” he said, scoffing, smiling sadly. “And I don’t blame her for that.”

“Well, then I can’t leave you here,” I said plainly. “You’ll just have to escape with me.”

But he shook his head. “There’s no place for me, with you.” I parted my lips to speak, but no words came out, and I found that I was struck dumb with the truth of it. There wasn’t: he would have to remain and try to get some semblance of his life back. And we would go on, on opposing sides of the same war.

Just then I heard some noises at the far end of the corridor—“Riley, you need to pretend to still be asleep!” And he sprawled himself out, assuming his former posture to the best of his recollection. Me, I just stood awkwardly in the center of the cell, having only the wherewithal to put the switchblade into the back pocket of my jeans.

One of the guards came down with two bottles of water in his hand. This guard had no visor, and no gun; he was the one with the baseball bat with nails stuck into the end of it, like a crude mace, which he swung almost absently in his left hand. He wore a placid expression—this was just a day on the job for him—and I tried to determine whether or not I could take him. He wasn’t much taller than I was, but even still, I very much doubted my ability to overpower him.

“I have some water for you,” he said as he approached. He was ruggedly handsome with olive-toned skin and dark, discerning eyes. His hair was black and slicked back, and he smiled at me as he tried to shove the bottle of water through the chain link. It didn’t fit.

He tucked the handle of his baseball bat-turned-weapon under his arm as he fumbled with a formidable set of keys and opened my cell. I must not have been much of a threat because he didn’t even look up at me as he removed the padlock and hooked it through the chain link before opening the gate to my cell and extending his hand with the bottle of water in it.

Time stood still in that moment, slowing to a stop while I examined my options. Could I kill someone to free myself? No, probably not. But I could hurt them, attempt to subdue them as they had attempted to subdue me. I did not know this man—I had not ever seen him before today. And although he was ostensibly a kind hand offering me sustenance. But he was my captor, and I would not go down without a fight.

In an instant, I had the switchblade out of my pocket and in my hand. I fumbled for an instant to extend it, and in that moment, I saw the guard’s expression change. But before he could drop the bottle of water and go for his weapon, I’d plunged the blade into the back of his hand. Into it and through it, so that it pierced the plastic of the bottle and water began to run freely from where it was attached to his hand. Water and blood, water and blood, until it pooled at his feet.

He dropped the other bottle of water and the baseball bat as he gripped his wrist and screamed, the kind of blood-curdling shriek that would absolutely send other guards to his aid if I didn’t act fast. So I scrambled forward and grabbed the baseball bat, and when I had it in hand, I turned to see Riley on his feet, watching, wide-eyed.

“Get the keys!” He whisper-shouted, and I reached forward to pluck them off the hook on the guard’s belt where he kept them. I darted out of the cell in time to watch the guard pull the knife out of his hand and send the punctured bottle clattering to the floor. I closed the gate, and he threw himself bodily into the gate.

He was breathing hard, and so I was I, as I fumbled with the padlock and got it closed.

“Help!” The guard shouted. “Help! I’m down here! Help!”

“Which key is it?” I asked, my shaking hands making it difficult to unlock Riley’s cell.

I tried one key, and then another, and nothing fit, nothing fit. There must have been a hundred keys on this ring—why on earth did they have so many bloody keys when there was no one in the cells? “Hey!” I shouted to the shrieking guard. “Focus!” I banged the door of the cell with the baseball bat and rattled him to attention. “Which key is it? For this gate, which one?”

“Why should I tell you?” He snarled.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll come in there and bash your face in with this bat.”

“Bring it, bitch,” he said, cradling his bleeding hand close against his chest. I needed a new tactic.

“Please,” I said. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Maybe not before you shoved a knife through my hand!” He countered. He had a fair point. I returned my attention to Riley’s lock, and tried key after key.

“You should just go, Jane,” Riley said, but I shook my head.

“It didn’t work out well the last time,” I said, “when I tried to escape on my own. No, whatever time I lose here trying to free you, I will make up for when you actually show me the way out.” I took in a deep breath, tried to steady my hands, tried to block out the sound of the guard’s shouting, and finally found the right key.

We must have been very far down, because no one was coming for the guard. I couldn’t help but smirk at him a little when I freed Riley and shoved the keys into the back pocket of my jeans. “Sorry, man,” I said. “Nothing personal.” And Riley and I darted out of the makeshift prison, the guard’s shouts retreating behind us as we moved.

“This way,” Riley said, taking me down a corridor I didn’t recognize, dimly light that led somewhere I could not see from where we stood. But I followed all the same.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We can’t go back out the way we came,” he explained. “We’ll never get through the gate. We have to go out through the old mining tunnels.

“That sounds safe,” I snarked, but on we went.

What started as a hallway slowly began to devolve into a cavern. It became immediately clear that we were moving through stone that had been exploded to accommodate human travel, things were getting darker as the electric lights were spaced further and further apart. Orange extension cords snaked along the floor, attached to lanterns every fifty feet or so. Then every seventy-five feet. Then every hundred. “Take my hand,” Riley said, and I did.

Fortunately the floor was relatively obstruction-free, packed earth that had been trampled down to be walkable. I kept my free hand out, my fingers brushing every once in a while over the stone.

In the dark, my other senses came to life. I could feel the cold radiating through my tee shirt; I could smell a far-off underground well and the slight tang of sulfur. I could hear Riley’s quick breathing, and my own. “Where does this go?” I whispered. I didn’t know why I was whispering; something about the dark made me keep my voice low.

“It opens out on the side of the mountain, basically,” he replied, his voice also low. “We won’t get far without stealing a vehicle. It’s freezing out there.”

“It’s freezing in here,” I insisted, my eyes straining to catch the next light, the next light, and the next.

“We’ll be ok,” Riley said, dragging me along behind him. “I have a plan.”

“You do?”

“Well. I’ll have one soon enough.”

I prayed that he would. We traveled in silence, and I tripped once or twice when we started to walk along the old tracks that carried the cars full of ore out of the mountain back when people were mining it by hand. We followed the tracks forward, forward, until I could see the light of day at the mouth of the cave.

The temperature was dropping with every step, and eventually I could feel fierce winds whipping in to snag us. “Riley,” I said, as I began to shiver, “what do we do?”

“We keep going,” he said. “We have to.”

We neared the exit of the cave, which gave way like a gaping maw into a world lit white with snow and sun. We stepped out hand in hand, and I blinked, my temporarily blinded by the glare of white. And I was trembling when I could see clearly, not only because of the cold, but because there in front of us was Blanche Ingram and fifty of her fiercest looking men.