Day 48 Part 2 (Comms Series #7)
26 Mar 2018Viridian
Rage had always been her fuel. It had always been more overwhelming than fear, more powerful than any sense of love or mercy. Rage is how she chose to exist and each step up the metal stairs to level eight only boiled that fire until her skin rose to every surface.She knew this building. Third floor was food storage. She had hidden in plenty of airducts during her bondage, finding discarded scraps and stuffing herself full of it, so that her captures normal method of control, starvation, was ineffective. Fourth floor were offices. Comm units and grid shuffling of the local slave trade and other business.
Fifth floor was the slave pens.
"Freeing slaves, especially from hands of abusive owners, is absolutely something that a pilot of our navy should be involved in," Acroci said.
She had not come here to free them, she reminded herself. She had come for Raven, and as a result, for a slaver's death. Both guns in her hands remained cocked and she looked down at her guns.
"I expect you to return," Acroci said.
This was not what she had come here to do. The rage had begun to cool enough that her weapons had come into focus. Was it really that simple? Kill Isaac? Free Raven, go home? She was ready to die when she arrived and there she stood, halted on the fifth floor, staring at a set of double doors.
"Fuck," she uttered and she slipped back on the safety on both weapons. She fit them back into her belt and pulled out the keycard. "This is stupid, this is a mistake."
The light above the door turned green when she passed the plastic key by the panel. The pens didn't look any better than they had in the security room. There were ten of them, and when things got bad, they would double-up the pens (though that wasn't preferred; when slaves were together, they got smart).
They all walked to their clear glass walls when the door opened and Viridian's shoulders sank. In the first one was Edge. A dark-haired slave who laughed when he shot down pirates. Across from him was Acacia, the quiet one who fixed engines. Mask. Aposti. Gate. Each of them was a slave freed by the Federation and each of them had been taken back. She found herself leaning against the door, her joints having gone soft and weak.
"Viridian?" Edge asked, muffled by the glass.
"What did they do," Viridian asked as her legs began to work again, allow her to walk slowly to his pen.
"They took us all back," Edge said.
"You shouldn't be here," Acacia said, her little round face stricken.
Viridian turned to look at her. "Why?"
"Because you're the last one," Mask said, his blonde hair mussed above his eyes. "He knew you'd come for her."
Viridian looked down at her guns. A trap. A trap she fell for. "Edge," she asked, "Can you fly a Cobra?"
Edge blinked. "Sure, but--"
Viridian walked up to his cage and pressed the key against the card panel. The glass disappeared. "Get everyone out. East side of the base are SRVs. Take them. One of them is mine and has 'RCN-23' on the side. Get everyone and go east one mile. There's a Cobra."
"What about you?"
"I'll be right behind you," Viridian said as she walked across to Acacia's pen, opening it with the card.
"What are you going to do?" Acacia said.
"I'm going to get Raven," Viridian said and placed the keycard in Acacia's hand. "This ends today." She nodded to the other cages. "Get them out. Go."
"Viri--"
"I said now."
Viridian walked out of the slave pens and back up the stairs, fully convinced she would never see any of her old family again.