Deep in thought, I noticed a pinch at the base of my neck; it felt like a bee sting and instantly began to swell.
“What the –” I clapped my hand over the wound and turned to find Dawson’s brother, Drake, who had snuck into the darkened room undetected. Whatever he’d pierced me with began as an annoyance and quickly started to burn. “Jerk!” I shouted, shoving his shoulder. “What the fudge was that all abbboooooou ...”
My words turned to pudding on my swollen tongue and my vision blurred into fractals. I collapsed into his arms as the darkness swallowed me.
Chapter Six
Being held prisoner in a medieval dungeon isn’t as bad as it sounds. Sure, a dank, torch–lit cell that smells like a combination of mold and human despair is depressing at first, but once you get settled in it’s pretty cushy. After a quick look around I realized that my current confines were actually bigger than my entire New York City apartment, and had about the same amount of furnishing; an oak table, hand carved chairs...hell, the cot in the corner of my cell was actually more comfortable than my bed at home. The worst part of being held captive was the anticipation; not knowing if, or when, I was getting out...and not knowing what King Lehmann had planned for me next.
“Guard,” I shouted, snapping my fingers to draw his attention. “Hello, anybody home?”
A pair of stoic prison guards stood at attention, backs pressed against the stone wall on either side of a staircase – the lone exit from the dungeon. Each well–armored guard remained perfectly still, like a pair of ash white statues, each brandished a long metallic device that resembled a cattle prod. I’m sure they’d been informed of my weakness by Drake, who had no trouble detaining me with his electrical sword after I’d arrived. Not that they’d need to use electricity to subdue me at that point, anyway...my lovely new thumb ring was keeping me corporeal, rendering me unable to phase through objects. Stun batons were probably overkill.
I ran the toe of my steel boot back and forth across the bars, hoping to annoy one of my captors into blinking. “Either of you guys in charge of dinner? It’s been half a day and I’m starving over here.” I clinked and clanked my boot for another few minutes, echoing the sound throughout the gloomy underground tunnels.
“I can do this all day,” I called out with exaggerated cheerfulness.
“Enough,” the guard on the left groaned, finally breaking his silence. He was addressing me, but not making any attempt to establish eye contact; he stared awkwardly at the middle distance while he spoke, eyes bulging with concentration. “We can’t feed you, we can’t entertain you, and we sure as heck can’t talk to you.”
“You just did,” the guard on the right blurted out, his eyes apparently fixed on the same thing that Leftie’s were.
“I know,” Left replied sharply. “But I was only talking to her so she’d know that we can’t talk to her, all right?”
Right groaned under his breath, rolling his eyes. “You really are a mental giant, you know that? Don’t you know that they have cameras down here? What if someone is monitoring us? If they play back the recording and discover that –”
“Discover what?” a curious voice asked, the sound traveling down the spiraling brick staircase. It was Dawson. He emerged from the opening with a torch in–hand, casting a bright orange hue against the damp dungeon walls. He was still wearing his armor and had a tan satchel slung across his chest.
“Nothing!” the guard on the right said, so stiffly that his lips barely moved.
“He’s telling the truth,” Left confirmed, remaining equally still. “Oh, please don’t tell your father I spoke to the prisoner. If he finds out ...”
“He won’t,” Dawson assured the guards. He stopped at the base of the stairs and glanced from one guard to the other, then back towards the staircase. “You’re both dismissed for the evening.”
The guards exchanged glances without even craning their necks.
Dawson let out a goofy laugh. “The whole ‘dismissed’ thing only works when your feet move. Are either of you confused about the concept?”
Without further instruction the guards hurried up the spiraling staircase and out of view.
Dawson approached the bars to my cell as he unbuckled the latches on his satchel and reached inside. “How are things?”
“Can’t complain,” I shrugged. “Aside from the lack of food, sunlight and human interaction it’s been pretty relaxing. Actually I’m not too concerned about that last one.”
He pulled a rumpled paper bag from his satchel and passed it through the bars, dropping it into my hands. I could smell the freshly baked goodness even before I tore it open.
“I hope you like chocolate chip.” He raised his eyebrows as I shoveled the warm cookies into my mouth, barely allowing myself enough time to chew. “Are they good?”
“Good?” I mumbled in between bites, continuing to cram pastries into my face with reckless abandon. There’s something about being imprisoned that makes everything taste extra yummy. “That is an understatement, Galahad.”
His leaned forward on the bars, letting his head sag. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, a trace of defeat etched in his voice. “Drake had been following us and saw that you were in the control room. One call to my dad, and ...” he grumbled, burying his face in his hands. “My family sucks.”
After crumpling the bag and brushing the crumbs off on my shirt I reached through the bars. I wiped Dawson’s floppy blond hair aside. “Everyone’s family sucks sometimes. But at least you have people who care about you. Back in 2041 I had friends, but ...” I stopped myself mid-sentence, realizing that I was thinking aloud. I was once again waxing nostalgic about a time in my life when I felt like I was a part of something. My friends were the only family I’d ever really had, and people who complained about their families – no matter how overbearing or annoying or infuriating they could be – simply didn’t know how good they had it. “There was nothing you could have done differently.”
“I guess.” He glanced down at his armored shoulder plate, tracing his fingertip around the red and blue sigil. “Sometimes I think Drake and my dad care more about this stupid logo than anything...more than doing what’s right.”
It’s a symbol I’d seen before; not that exact design, with two flaming dragons nipping at each other’s tails, but I’d seen something similar back in my dimension. “It’s the Ouroboros.”
“An Oreo–what?”
“An Ouroboros,” I giggled. “It’s the name for a serpent eating its own tail. Different versions of it have been around for centuries. It represents a cycle.”
He nodded weakly. “It makes sense that it’s my family crest, then. I’ve been stuck in this stupid cycle since the day I was born. Every day I put on this armor and follow around my older brother, watching him lead and make decisions, and prepare for the day when he takes over the kingdom. Drake is faster than me, stronger than me, a better fighter than me...it’s like I’m living in his shadow. And my life, whatever that’s supposed to be, never seems to get started.”
I dragged a wooden chair towards the bars and sat, and Dawson did the same on the outside. “What do you want?” I asked flatly.
He raised his eyebrows, innocent eyes widening. “Wow...no one has ever asked me that before.” He inhaled deeply, scratching at his mop of hair with both hands. “I suppose I just want my own path. Somewhere to go and something to do that’s my choice, and my choice alone. Then if I screw up at least I know it’ll be my mess to clean up, you know?”
“Guess you don’t clean up many messes when you’re royalty.”
He managed a weak smile. “No, I definitely do not. So what about you?”
“What about me what?” I asked.
“What do you want?”
I glanced at my surroundings, eyes ticking back and forth. “You’re kidding, right?”
It took a second or two, but the realization eventually set in. Our conversation had been so casual that I think Dawson momentarily forgot I was
a prisoner. “Ah, right,” he chuckled. “Well aside from the obvious, then.”
“I want to get rid of my powers.”
“But you can move through things like a ghost! Go anywhere, do anything ...” He glanced around at my confines once again. “Okay, well not at the moment, but usually isn’t that a pretty awesome power to have?”
“I suppose,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I can read minds, too.”
The heat suddenly rose in his face. “Oh...really? Like, you can read thoughts?”
“Relax, I haven’t read you,” I assured him. “And besides, it’s not as exciting as it sounds. Most of the time it’s better not knowing what people think about you. Believe me.”
“So why get rid of it all?” he asked.
“I’m not really real...I’m a perception.”
“So...you’re not here?” Dawson pulled his chair closer, leaning in on his elbows.
“I am, but it’s not me. It’s like, I’m not whole. I’m just an abstract idea until someone observes me, and then I begin to take shape. I start to appear however my creator wants me to look.” I was still the person that Matthew Moxon envisioned back in 2041, but that could change at any time.
“Hmm.” He trailed his eyes from my boots up to my wave of blue hair just as he had when we’d first met, although this time he did it with a silly smirk. “Whoever saw you last had some interesting ideas about hairstyles.”
I let out a tiny laugh. “I’ve had worse. But it’s more than just that. After a while I start to feel what my observer feels, taking on their fears and desires...I’m an echo. It’s like I’m never really me: I’m just a reflection of someone else.” It was the first time I’d ever said that out loud, but for whatever reason, in that raw, naked moment, it felt liberating to reveal it to another person.
He laughed under his breath, shaking his head.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“You’re a superhuman time traveler and I’m a teenaged prince from a parallel Iceland, but we have a lot more in common than I thought.” He glanced back at the exit, and then back at me. He leaned into the bars until his forehead touched the steel. “What if I got you out of here?” he whispered, his lips barely moving.
I’d been scanning my cell and the darkened corridors for the better part of the afternoon, and I hadn’t spotted a video camera, but it didn’t mean there wasn’t one hidden around here somewhere – the guards said it themselves. “Are you insane?” I hissed, leaning forward until our heads nearly touched through the bars. “You’re the only one down here. Your dad would know it was you who let me out.”
“So what?” he snapped back, his voice rising to a dangerously audible level. “I could take a ship from the hangar. I’ve got my pilot’s license and I’m not bad at flying the smaller crafts. I could take us off Iceland while the shields are down. We can be out of range before Drake and my dad even know we’re gone.”
This kid – this adorable, sweet, naive kid – was willing to put his life in jeopardy for me. Or at least he was fantasizing about it with way too much enthusiasm. I almost hated to be the one to put a pin in his shiny little bubble. “This is crazy, Dawson.” I reached through the bars, cradling his soft chin in both hands. “Almost every country is under Taktarov’s rule. And the remaining human–controlled countries might not even let us in. Plus I’m still a superhuman. One of the enemies, remember? I always will be.”
His eyes welled with emotion. “But ...”
“But nothing. It’s not happening, kiddo.” I ran my fingers though his floppy gold hair, rumpling his bangs. “You’re unbelievably cute, and if I were a decade younger and we weren’t in some bizarro universe...you never know.”
He deflated, sagging back into his chair. In that moment Dawson had mustered the courage to suggest something wild and impossible and completely life–changing, saying the words I imagine he’d repeated inside his head a thousand times. He wanted out, and he wanted someone to escape with. And when he finally loosed the words I crushed them one at a time, letting them crumble to the cold dungeon floor. Sometimes just saying something out loud makes it real...I guess that’s why we live so much of our lives internally. Your dream can’t be crushed as long as it remains in the abstract.
“If you die again,” he asked tentatively, staring down at his boots. “Will you...disappear? Go to some other time and place?”
“I have no idea,” I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“But your clothes go with you, right? I mean, you were dressed when I found you.”
“Yes ...” I said cautiously, cocking an eyebrow. “I was indeed clothed.”
He reached around his neck with both hands, tugging at a thin chain. A flat, circular disc emerged from the top of his breastplate; it was an intricate recreation of the twin dragons on his family crest. He dipped his chin and pulled the chain overhead, passing it through the bars. “When they’re q-questioning you ...” he stammered, trailing off for a moment. “I mean, if you don’t make it, maybe you’ll just disappear and wake up somewhere better. Anywhere but here. And you’ll still have something to remember me by.”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t ...”
“It’s no big deal, really.” He looped the chain over my head and brushed my hair over top, adjusting the pendant around my neck. “For me, this symbol is just a cycle that never ends. But maybe for you it’ll mean something new. A fresh start.”
“Dawson,” a voice thundered down the staircase, resonating through the underground chamber. I knew immediately who it belonged to. I hastily tucked the chain into my shirt and ensured the pendant was invisible beneath the dark fabric.
The King, looking half asleep, trudged down the staircase wearing a fuzzy white housecoat with matching slippers, sipping from a martini glass. “Keeping our prisoner under close watch, are you? Good work. It’s time for her question and answer session.”
“You can’t,” Dawson pleaded, rising to meet his father. “I mean, she didn’t do anything.”
“Now son,” the King said lazily, patting him on the shoulder. “Don’t be like this. You know we can’t trust the superhumans. If we let her go what kind of a message would be we sending to the rest of the Kingdom...to the world, for that matter? And besides, the shields are still down and we have no information about incoming attacks.”
“The fire woman?” Dawson asked.
The King finished his drink with a single gulp and shook his head. “Nope. Nothing. She hasn’t said a word. Unless she decides to suddenly confess, your foul-mouthed, blue-haired wench needs to be questioned.”
I stood so fast the wooden chair toppled behind me. “I’ll make you a trade.”
“A trade?” The King asked, his sleepy eyes now looking somewhat more alert.
“Information for my freedom.”
The King took a step towards my cell and reached out, leaning against one of the bars. “My dear young girl, let me explain something: whatever you have, I will simply take it. It’s one of the best parts about being King. You have nothing to offer me.”
“I can get the fire woman to talk,” I promised him. And I could. I just needed a few minutes and access to my powers.
The King smiled – a wide, condescending grin that stretched across his face. He didn’t believe a single fudging word I was saying. “We’ve had the Tyrant working on her for hours and she hasn’t made a sound. He’s done things to her that...well, I won’t bore you with all the details, but let’s just say I’ve seen Japanese horror movies that were less graphic. What makes you think that you can do any better?”
“I can read minds,” I said. “I just put my hands on her head and jump inside.”
“Convenient,” he chuckled, holding his belly with one hand. “And I suppose you want me to just remove your disruptor ring so you can perform this parlor trick? Then you phase through the wall and you’re on the loose, probably back to send a message to the Manticore Uprising.”
“Come on,” I shouted, stomping
my feet. “Where the fudge would I even go?”
He poked a finger through the bars, inches from my face. “Language, young lady.”
I groaned and threw my hands up, no longer able to control my temper. “We’re in the middle of a fudging island, and there’s nowhere to go! What am I gonna do: jump in the ocean and dog paddle to Norway?”
“Technically Greenland would be closer,” Dawson interjected, suddenly enthusiastic. “But the Faroe Islands and Scotland are pretty close, too.”
“Dude,” I said sharply, “not helping.”
“She’s right,” The King added. “This conversation is already growing tiresome and you just made it a little more boring.”
Dawson’s eye flicked between his father and I before shrinking back into his chair.
“This is the deal,” I stated flatly. “Give me one chance at reading her. That’s all I need. I’ll get inside her head, scrape out the goods and tell you everything about this Manticore gang and whatever they have planned.”
The King sighed and shook his head, absently scratching his beard stubble.
“Come on!” I screamed, balling my fists. “What’s the difference? If I fail you can torture and kill me afterwards.”
He nodded in agreement, scratching at his belly beneath the drawstring on his robe. “And if you succeed, I suppose you’ll want a royal pardon in return. What will you do with this new found freedom?”
I had nowhere to go and no one on my side...there was only one thing I could do. “Figure out a way to get home.”
The King tossed his martini glass over his shoulder, shattering it against the stone wall beneath a mounted torch. “Oh all right,” he yawned, stretching his hands overhead, a motion that lifted the bottom of his robe to a dangerously precarious height. “It’s getting late, and to be completely honest this conversation is putting me to sleep.” He rattled off a series of numbers that caused my thumb ring to stop pulsing. “You have precisely one hour,” he said sternly, extending a single digit in front of him. “Not a minute longer.”
The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe Page 4