by K. G. Wilkie
She hollered out the door for a person named Halli to come in. Taiya hardly turned to look when the woman arrived and instead jabbed her finger at the sphere. "Why does this girl carry an imprint of you?"
The woman just shrugged. "I suppose that's because she was visiting our town before and I let her stay the night," Halli said.
The boy gripped her shoulders. "Please, tell me what happened to her," Darien said. "When did you see her last?"
Halli blanked her face. "Well, I suppose a few days ago." She rolled her shoulders, trying to cast off shame that clung like tar. "If you want to know what happened to her, I suppose you'll have to ask Prince Aeron. He was the one who kidnapped her off the street, after all," Halli said.
"Halli, you knew about this?" Taiya asked.
The woman just shrugged. Whatever shame she'd struggled with, Halli now bore hardly any sign of regret. "I knew she was trouble, so I didn't do anything about it. Can you really blame me?"
Taiya sent her out with dire warnings that she would be dealt with later. "It's not so much that I blame her, you understand," Taiya explained as she sent out a call to the warriors of the town. "She did help the girl so I'll forgive her with that. What is upsetting is that no one saw fit to mention to me that we had been caring for a stray urchin seeking out protection here and then just up and let her be kidnapped again. The members of the First Five are supposed to be made aware of all major events in this town, and this definitely counts." She looked up as the warriors started to file into the room.
The summoned warriors stood proudly before them. "Great, glad to see you. I was not informed of an individual kidnapping of one who went here to seek sanctuary." The soldiers stood at attention and made no reaction to the news. "In reaction to this, we now have to do something a little different. Gentlemen, we need an extraction team."
The guards did perk up at this. "Breaking and entering, or blasting through the walls with a take-no-prisoners attitude?" one asked from the front. She looked at him. "I'm expecting we'll likely need you to go in all sneaky like, but once you're there... well, we'll need people who can fight at some point in the operation. Might as well keep them on hand the whole time," Taiya added.
The same guard at the front shook his head. "That's a big negatory. We have to have an all sneaky team, or an all brawn one." There was a rumble of agreement.
Taiya sighed. "What if we send in a sneaky team and have a brawn one on standby at a rendezvous point?"
They looked at each other, then finally gave a nod of assent. "Fine then, who do we need for sneaky?"
The soldiers grinned. "We're going to have to call on Greta for that one. No one is sneakier than a spellhacker, and that techmage has always been good at trouble."
Taiya grimaced. "Now we're in for it."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jailbreak
Alyss stared at the ceiling. The entertainment program in the room was working on overtime to try to keep her happy being stuck in this same place again after having the taste of freedom. Life on the run hadn't felt free, exactly, but it had felt like hers, her life run under her control. That was a precious thing not many people could experience.
The entertainment program was trying to comfort her, playing through scenes of other people's lives like an endless marathon of fully immersive soap operas. The images of happy people living their best lives was more torment for her than a comfort, however.
I can't handle it. The lights, the noise. Everyone standing around like their lives are happy and the world is full of peace and goodness. It isn't--it never is. The world is a stark place where thousands of people die every second of every day. Snap! A death. Snap! Another. Snap! Snap! Snap! So many dead people.
And sure, not everyone dies all the time. There's usually a few years of life sandwiched in between being born and being in a coffin. But what's the point of all those years of life, anyways? You sit. You talk. You walk. You wake up early every day to trudge through traffic that drives you nuts so you can sit in your stupid little cubicle and work for a stupid little boss and just feel how miserable and pointless your life is. And then you die.
That just sums up everything. You, me, whatever we're trying to do here, no matter how I try to escape, it doesn't really ultimately matter at all.
I tried. I tried my hardest to live a life worth living. I tried to fight for myself and what I believe in. I tried to fight for my freedom. Where did that leave me? In the same stupid little cell with the same horrible little jailer and the same stupid little dragons peeking in to my space every day to freak me out, but there's still no one to talk to. It's awful. I don't like this place, I don't like doing all this, and I don't like wasting my few years alive being a pointless waste of space, and yet here I am. I might as well be locked up in that creepy closet, still secured in my own stupid little bubble, as be in here and awake and aware and doing absolutely nothing of importance or impact on this world.
It's pointless. It's ridiculous. I absolutely refuse to budge from this spot on the floor. There's no point moving around. There's no point watching weird Daemon variety shows on the stupid TV wall. There's no point to doing absolutely anything at all, so I refuse to do one more thing today. And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And by the end of things, eventually if I do nothing at all, I'll probably be completely forgotten about and starve to death, but what do I care about all of that when I have no reason to eat or live or even exist at this point? There's just no reason to do anything at all so I'm just not going to bother.
She slept that day, and the next. It was hard to tell exactly how much time had passed, as even the practice courts viewed from her room were clearly a dragon-sized indoor field and had no view of sky or sun in sight, but it was easy to guess that the courts likely were lit up during the day and turned off at night. It should have been an easy task to guess the passage of time from that, but sometimes it felt like it took longer for them to be lit up; and she suspected that they likely had some days they were closed. She didn't particularly care about time or any of its concerns, but it was the one thing she had to think about or do in here so it was still something she noticed.
Most of the time, even when the courts viewed from her room were open and she could hear rumblings and activity out there, the windows still kept frosted at least so she didn't have to view the creepy creatures out there. Every now and then they would go clear and make her fully visible though. One time a dragon went so far as to stick his entire head into the cell. She tried to calmly ignore it, but then some smoke came out of its nostrils to flood the room; and she covered her head in a blanket to try to minimize the damage of smoke inhalation.
The edges of the blanket got a little singed when the dragon came too close, and it moved its claw into the room and tried to drag the still-smoldering blanket away from the girl, but she held tightly and ending up falling on the ground with it. The dragon huffed some more and batted at the embers around the girl as best it could. She just curled up more tightly within the blanket and rolled around as the claw batted the bundle back and forth until finally her visitor decided to leave her alone. As the head pulled out the window, it automatically closed itself. A beep sounded from somewhere within the chamber and the fire alarm drenched the room in water. She shivered and huddled more closely into the scant protection of the folds.
A white arc of light flashed through the room, though the bundle on the floor didn't move an inch. A woman with the same long hair and delicate bones of Alyss walked into the room. "Hello, hello, hello," she called out cheerfully. She glided forward and elegantly yanked the bundle out, peeling the blanket away from the still-stunned girl. The women put a hand up to the other girl's face, cracking an eyelid. "You in there, sleepy?"
"I won't open my eyes," she said pertly, scrunching her eyelids up. "If I do, I'm sure to see something scary again, so it's best to pretend there is nothing and no one out there. I can't do that if I can see otherwise."
The other girl laughed. "I'l
l just tickle you until you can't help it, then," she said. She went for the third rib, wiggling her finger until the other girl was wriggling with laughter.
"Laughter," the girl gasped between outbursts, "is no true indication of enjoyment. This is... quite... undignified!" She managed to wriggle away at last, looking warily at the other girl with her hands up in a warding gesture. She gasped then, getting her first good look at the other person. "But... you are... why, you look just like me!" It was true. The same eyes and nose, the same mouth. Why, the only true difference were the dirty and uncared for nails as well as the scruffy and clearly untrimmed eyebrows.
The other woman had stopped smiling, her face serenely serious. "You understand what this must mean, right?"
Alyss laughed harshly. "Must? There is no such thing. I can think of four, no, seven reasons why there would be someone in front of me that looks just like me, and I would be ready to believe another five on top of that with the element of magic."
"Really?" The other woman looked intrigued. "Please, do tell."
Alyss sniffed. "Fine, though most every one of them points towards a terrible character on your point, and the spectacle just now only proved it."
"What you really mean is that you're grumpy I did something as undignified as tickle you," the girl giggled. Alyss didn't deign that with an answer, preferring to continue the conversation.
"There are several possible reasons as to why you look almost identical to me, with a few notable exceptions of taste. The easiest and most obvious is that, somehow, I had a twin I've never heard about, though that is relatively unlikely. The second is that you are using cosmetics or magic to trick the poor human girl in the cell and play a prank, which seems more likely given the situation. The third is that you are a clone of me and have been raised separately from me, though that seems unlikely as, given your appearance, you seem to be the teensiest bit older than me; and a clone could only be younger than the original. The fourth, that you dyed your hair and did plastic surgery to copy my looks completely because you are an identity thief by profession, also seems improbable, as I am underage, have no established credit, and my parents aren't working as my cosigners for college, let alone credit cards. Though child identity theft seems to be on the rise, so it's not completely far fetched. The fifth possibility, that you are a visitor from a parallel universe, is unlikely, but plausible. Especially with how easily people are using tesseracts or wormholes or whatever they use to pop in and out of places all the time around here. The sixth, that you are a monster who normally lives in the palace and wanted to show up in a form that you knew for sure wouldn't alarm me, is relatively believable, and would be admirable to have put the effort into making such a glamor, though taking a form of a normal human besides me would have been a better course of action. If the sixth were your route, then I can only assume your cause for being here would be pure curiosity, which I suppose is better than tomfoolery like in option two. The seventh possibility is that, in the future, I somehow gain the ability to time travel, and for some reason I decided to go back in time and visit myself. So, which is it?"
The other girl pouted. "You're no fun; you were supposed to be scared that someone looking like you showed up."
"So sorry to ruin your dreams," Alyss said dryly. "Now, the answer, if you please?"?
"Well, I am you from the future, so I guess that makes me option seven."
"False."
"What?"
"You cannot be me, as I would never be seen with such poor personal hygiene results. I also would never skimp out on using a wrinkle cream, which you obviously have. You must be no more than five years older than me, yet I can see every year on your eyes. You really should switch to a stronger night cream, Mrs. Delusional."
The other girl laughed. "Well, I've been put in my place, haven't I? To think I really used to be like that. Anyways, I can prove I am you."
"How," Alyss asked suspiciously.
"Walk through me, and see."
Alyss quirked her brow, but with a shake of her head she and shrug of her shoulders she walked forward with her eyes held closed. She put one hand forward, as if to warn her before she ran into the other girl, but her hand felt nothing. Alyss cracked one eye, looking at the girl, and jumped back with a scream. Her hand had gone through the other girl!
"Are you a... um... a ghost? From the future‽"
"Not really, no. As far as I know, ghosts are kind of stuck wherever they are put, so they aren't too likely to go coasting around the timeline. I mean, they can't even move around the physical plane, let alone that one."
"Then what on earth are you," Alyss asked, exasperated.
"Why, I'm a projection, of course. A sort of magical hologram."
"Uh-huh. A hologram. So, Mrs. Hologram, how on earth could a bunch of pixels time travel then?"
"Well, that's easy," the other girl answered jovially. "Whenever you set a projection to start, it will, so the older you set me to start now."
"But you can't start things by going back in time!" The other girl protested.
"The older you never actually went back in time, you see. She just timed me to start up a little bit ago, and I did, that's all." The girl leaned in, peering closely at the prisoner with a perplexed face. "Though you may be right, and there may be a mistake. My creator is quite smart, and you don't seem to be getting this at all."
Alyss growled. "Well, excuuuse me for being a product of my time! Not all of us can simply choose which time to be in, you know!"
"My creator is more cheerful, too," the other girl said mournfully.
She gritted her teeth and slipped a spare strand of hair behind her ear, straightening her posture. "Well, that aside," she said, valiantly trying to push the matter aside, "and ignoring the conundrum of the physical body that touched me earlier and the insubstantial body I touched more recently, I presume there was a reason you were sent, um, set to begin at this particular time? Like, you have something important to say?"
"Yes," the girl answered, smiling. She stood there, beaming, not a word more.
"And what is it you were supposed to say?" Alyss bit off, snarling with impatience.
"Ah, that. Well, my message is threefold." The projection closed her eyes and started to speak like it came right off a script. "One: do not despair and mope, for we are a great person and should hold our head proudly no matter the circumstances. Two: there are memories of mine, locked up and secreted away, and him who I most dislike is the key to them and my innermost self. Three: I must fix the problems of this time in order to live to my time, and the only way to do that is to indulge a healthy sense of curiosity with the knowledge that I am, in fact, quite safe, even if I do not feel that way." The projection opened her eyes. "I wasn't supposed to tell you this, but I also overheard my creator debating whether to tell you that an Aeron person is someone you wish you'd befriended much sooner. Have you met this person yet?"
"Yes," Alyss said with distaste, "though I am sure I will never say such a preposterous thing. I do not like him at all, and I wish I'd been rid of him a lot sooner, more than wanting to cozy up to the jerk."
"Do you understand how you can be quite safe, yet have impending doom coming to you?" the projection asked.
"Not really," Alyss pooh poohed the question, "but I'll figure it all out, go exploring!" So saying, she tipped her nose into the air and walked out the door and into the hallway beyond.
She took her time feeling at the wall and looking for any hidden knobs on the door. She hadn't done it the first time, having been petrified in fear of her future, but it was worth it to try to make the best of things now. She knew there was one thing her visitor, wherever she had really come from, had right. It was definitely time to stop whimpering and cowering in fear. Being tossed around like a playground ball had definitely been frightening, and the drenching was terrible, but there was a time and a place for cowering in fear and it was certainly no longer either of those. I mean, sure there are a bunch of gigantic dragon
things flying around, and sure I might be stuck in the world's most luxurious prison ever (even if it is in poor taste with the sleek white furnishings piled on top of something as ridiculous as an invisible floor window), but if I can invite a complete stranger hobo into my family, then I can certainly have the gumption to try to get out.
She couldn't help but think back to a kind man leading her on a tour of the palace and warning her that any attempts on her part to get out would lead him to terrible trouble, or at least the loss of his job, but she tried to put that out of mind. It would be unfortunate for him, of course, but she couldn't stay imprisoned there for the rest of her life out of loyalty to a palace worker who seemed to be unable to even visit her every day reliably.
When the door revealed no useful secrets, she moved on to explore the windows. It made sense that if it could be opened from the outside, there might be some way to trick the system and get out that way from the inside. She didn't let the very real possibility that there might not be a safe way to climb out of the window down to the field and out the exit of this blasted place get in the way for her. When planning an escape in dire circumstances, she had quickly learned during her stay there that it was necessary to focus on only one thing at a time to limit one's likelihood of giving up all hope of ever getting out.
She spent unknown hours poking and pulling and pushing at the darned thing, but still she couldn't figure out a way to get out. In the process she had realized that exhausting herself was a great way to fall asleep and avoid boredom for some short time, so she eventually snuggled up in the bed and whiled away the hours in slumber.