The Defiant
Chapter Forty Four

I blinked heavily.

I was groggy. My head buzzed like it was filled with a hundred bees. My arms and legs were hard to move. It seemed to take a long time for a command to travel from my brain to my extremities.

I sat up, blinking my eyes open again. I slowly took in my surroundings.

A plain concrete cube. Unadorned walls and floor. I sat on a thin cotton mattress on a hard wire bed frame. The only other thing in the room was a small toilet with a curtain hanging from the ceiling in front of it, to be drawn closed for privacy. A metal door was in the wall across from me, a small one-by-one foot square barred window set in the center of it, about five feet up. A small slat underneath no doubt allowed the jailer to slide a tray of food in.

I was getting really tired of waking up locked in unfamiliar places with no memory of how I got there.

At least I’m not tied up this time, I thought, planting my feet firmly on the floor and slowly pressing myself to a stand. I was wearing the same plain pants, tank top, and black boots I’d been wearing on Sorhna, but they’d taken my weapons, no surprise. I investigated my little cube and found nothing more of note. I went to the door and pressed my face to the bars, looking out.

The world beyond was a narrow hallway, lit evenly with bright fluorescent lights. I saw a door just across the hall, the mirror image of mine. I wondered who was behind it. There were more doors on each side, though I could only see one on either side clearly, even with my face pressed all the way to the window.

“Hello?” I called. My voice sounded small and childish, swallowed up quickly by the silence of the hallway.

“One?” Two’s voice, coming from the cell to my right. I couldn’t see him, but it was reassuring to hear a voice I recognized.

“Oh my god. Two.”

“What the hell happened?”

“The Aerzhu. They found out where we were somehow, and they got us. Imelda showed me…” My voice broke. “They bombed Kiamenoa. Probably killed hundreds, thousands of people. They made me watch.”

“I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“You know me. I’ll be fine,” I lied.

“How did they replace us?”

“I’m betting on Eight,” I growled. “The Aerzhu must have given her some kind of device to contact them in an emergency. Why didn’t I think to search her?”

“It’s not your fault. No one could’ve predicted that she’d do that—”

“Except us! Come on, Two, don’t lie to yourself. We should’ve known she’d have a backup plan. That’s why she was so smug after she told us the truth.”

“How are we supposed to get out then?”

“I don’t think we can.”

“What d’you mean? You always have a plan.”

“Not this time.” Suddenly exhausted, I backed away from the door and slumped on my cot.

“Oi! Anybody there? Let me out!”

Four’s Irish brogue wafted from the door on my left diagonal..

“Four? Is that you? Where are you?” Two asked.

Four’s head appeared briefly through the bars, disappeared, then reappeared. I wondered what she was doing before it occurred to me that she probably wasn’t tall enough to see out the window without jumping. I felt a sudden, insane urge to laugh.

“Yeah it’s me, you daftie, who else would it be? Anyone else up?”

“I am,” I replied, returning to the bars.

“Hi, One. What do we know?”

“Not much. We’re in an Aerzhu prison somewhere. They kidnapped us from Sorhna, probably on Eight’s information. That’s all. Oh, and they bombed Kiamenoa before we left.”

“Shit. Do we know where anyone else is or how long we’ve been here?”

“No. There’s no way of telling who’s in the rooms until they wake up, and I just woke up about an hour or two ago,” Two said.

“Then I guess we’d better wait, hadn’t we?”

So we did. Over the next several hours, Seven woke up in the room across from Two, on my right diagonal. I wanted to talk to her about what she’d said on Sorhna before the Aerzhu arrived, but I couldn’t do it with everyone listening, and I needed to be able to see her face.

Three was in the cell directly across from me, and Six woke in the one on Two’s other side. He couldn’t talk to us, as the Aerzhu had taken away his speech interpreter. Our only way of communication with him was through Seven, who could see his signs and describe them to Three as best as she could, who then translated them to English. It was a slow and tedious form of talking, and I felt bad for Six, who had only recently gained the power of speech.

Once we’d finished filling Six in on the situation and we had time for the silence to build again, it was broken by a crisp English accent issuing from the cell to my left.

Five’s voice.

“Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?” he asked.

I exchanged a look with Three, in the cell across from me, as hers was the only face I could see clearly.

“We’re here,” I said, careful to keep my voice neutral.

“All of you?”

“Everybody but your traitor girlfriend!” Four piped up, waving her little white hands in her window. “We told you she worked for the Aerzhu. But you couldn’t get our words through that thick head of yours!”

“Four, please,” Seven admonished.

“She doesn’t work for the Aerzhu! There has to be some other reason she’s not here. Maybe they took her somewhere else or…something,” he finished lamely.

“I think you know we’re telling the truth. But if you want to continue to deny it, by all means continue,” I said.

“Fine!” he shot back, and then refused to talk.

I expected him to give up on his no-talking vendetta before too long. I wasn’t sure how he withstood going crazy in there for the six hours that Four told me had passed since she woke up.

Not that we talked about anything of substance. Quite the opposite. Purely to waste time, we chatted about anything and everything, regardless of how stupid, just trying to stave off panic and insanity. Two treated us to a fifteen-minute rant about why green was his favorite color. Three sang a few pop songs she had memorized on the Defiant. Her voice wasn’t actually half bad.

Eventually we had to stop talking. Our mouths were getting dry and we weren’t sure when or if the Aerzhu would bring us water.

Just when I’d made up my mind that they intended either to let us starve or dehydrate to death, Eight arrived.