The Egress Option

PHOENIX BORTEN

I peel my eyes open as a nauseating fear grips my stomach. Bright white-blue lights shock my system, I attempt to sit up, but my muscles are unresponsive. I can’t even close my eyes. A sharp pain probes the inside of my arm as a needle is extracted. Well, that explains why I can’t move, they’ve used some kind of neurotoxin, though I don’t know what. Obviously, they’ve forgotten to give me anesthesia, or even analgesia. Though why I’m in surgery anyway is a mystery. 

Above me, a vophox with fiery orange-red eyes smiles at someone I can't see and places an icy cold metallic hand on my sternum. I try to signal with my eyes, panic is making me dizzy.

Wait, I think she noticed! A smile briefly plays over her silvery-blue features as she leans over and whispers, “You think we don’t know you’re awake?” 

~

I jolt from my slumber, heart pounding, and just barely stop myself from jumping. There’s a cool, hard circle pressing into the back of my head. Unmistakably a gun. I await an order, shifting my weight into a more comfortable position on my cot. A low breathy voice quickly comes.

“Get up.” I do so, feeling my bare feet on the concrete floor. I gaze out the minuscule window ahead of me and wish that the bars over them would disappear. I walk forward when the pressure on my head increases, when we reach the stone door the pushing stops. A muscular gloved hand reaches around me with a key and silently turns it in the lock before pushing it open. 

We wander down hallway after dank hallway and I begin to wonder if we are lost. After all, I was at the highest security. The farther we walk, the more worried I become. Have they finally gotten the shipment? No, they couldn’t have, not after all these years. The hallways appear suffocatingly small and it feels like a fist has closed around my lungs. If it isn’t for the injections, then what is it for? Is this person authorized to be here? I brush that notion away, but not before a glimmer of hope ignites in my chest. Someone could be here to help me. No. It’s not possible. As old as this place feels, the security is nothing short of terrifying. You’d be dead in less than a second. Plus, who’d be saving me? Not many people know just how useful I might be. In the right hands. We’ve been walking for at least half an hour, and my brain has given up on thinking and is now humming a song that I have no idea how I know. Just as I'm starting to lose hope of us ever finding our destination, we stop. The hand once again reaches in front of me to push open a door, this time a granite one, and to my surprise, it’s not locked. The granite ones always are.

We enter a small room with whitewashed walls that’s packed with figures. All wearing black. And all but one of them have their faces hidden by plain white masks with mesh in the eyes and mouth. On the forehead of each is painted a pair of gold angel wings with a pair of red devil horns floating above. I had seen that sign before, but couldn’t remember where. 

The one with their face uncovered appears to be a human boy. His hair is close-cropped to his dark brown skin. He’s dressed in the same fashion as the others, in all black, a ratty turtleneck over dress pants. Oddly, he appears very young, fourteen at most, and that’s a stretch. I’m still unsure of his species, though nearly all of his features seem human, his eyes are a startling violet - a common feature for yaazoks. However, it could be a side effect of the drugs given here; for all I know, I could look similar. 

“Zenon, I have brought her,” my captor says, and to my confusion, he’s talking to the boy as if he’s their leader. Then again, you never know how old someone truly is nowadays. False youth was becoming ever more popular five years ago, and it has probably skyrocketed since then. 

“Good job,” the boy, whose name is apparently Zenon, replies. His voice seems appropriate for how old he looks, which makes me think that it might not be false youth after all. 

“Here, take a seat,” he says, now addressing me and pushing a stool in my direction. 

“Oh,” he smiles, realizing there’s still a gun to my head, “Xavier, let her move,” motioning towards my captor. Xavier walks forward, then turns around and winks at me, flicking a gold ring onto his finger.  I sit on the hard wood, and even though I can’t see anyone’s faces, I can feel all eyes on me.

“I bet you’re wondering why you’re here. I sense you know your value already though. I’m here to give you information, and options.” Zenon lay all his cards out in front of him, or so it seems. His openness is comforting. Finally something straightforward. I nod, anticipation rising in me.

“Good,” he replies. “Now, I’ve deciphered some things about you, most certainly not everything, so I would like to know if you have heard of something called the egress option, as it pertains to something I wish to discuss with you.” 

I open my mouth to speak. An unbreakable habit. Then look at my feet, not wanting to scare anyone off.

“What?” he asks, one eyebrow raised. I realize that it is inevitable. They won’t believe I’m that shy. Unsure of the best way to break the news, I decide on a demonstration. Opening my mouth, I reveal the scarred stump of tissue, wrinkled, and red with irritation. All that’s left of my tongue. You might say showing them instead of writing or something is unnecessarily gruesome, you might be right, but at least there’s no room for interpretation. I expect the usual, an auditory gasp, his face paling. But no, no one does anything. Zenon looks at me with an expression I can’t place, not quite sympathy, not really pity. Then I realize, it’s understanding, empathy. He understands the pain. Opening his own mouth he reveals a scar, where it had undoubtedly been cut, only to be sewn back on. He smiles in a reassuring way that comforts me immensely. 

“I’ll admit, that’s a minor setback, but we can get that fixed later. For now, do you want some paper? I apologize, I had no idea the severity of the situation, if I had, I would have brought a mind speaker.” He smiles, but not fully, as if the weight of the world has crushed it slightly. The spoiling of his innocence feels like a knife to my heart, however old he may be.

Now he stops smiling, steeples his fingers, and leans forward, sighing. Getting down to business. 

A masked figure comes up behind me and shoves a small blue notebook and an antique-looking pen into my hand, it looks as if it had been made mid-twenty-first century, ancient. 

“Have you heard of the egress option?” No beating around the bush. No room for interpretation. Just answers.

I still don’t know who these people are, if I can trust them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can never trust anyone. His young appearance may just be to toy with me. His calm demeanor a tool to lull me into a false sense of security. To figure out how much I know. To find out how high priority it is to kill me. I set the pen and notebook down in my lap and look at Zenon. He raises an eyebrow and glances down at the abandoned writing utensils. 

“Ah, I see,” he says, recognizing my hesitation, my fear. “I understand why you are guarded, but I assure you, we are not your captors. Quite the opposite in fact.” He pauses, gauging if I’m with him. I may as well hear him out. “We are a rebellion of sorts, we…”

The door bangs open. Gunshots ring out from behind me, how stupid I’d been to face away from it. Training and muscle memory take over as I drop to the ground and cover my head and stomach. Going partially limp in an attempt to appear already shot. 

Under my arm I catch sight of Zenon falling backward off his chair, the bullet propelling him back a few feet. Xavier clearly has more training than his apparent boss as he assumed a similar position to me, but as Zenon falls he screams, diving towards him and catches a bullet in his leg. He doesn’t appear to even notice and crouches over Zenon, another bullet hits him, then another. He collapses over his fallen comrade’s body, twitching. 

Someone grabs the back of my shirt, pulls me upright, and wraps an arm around my neck with barely enough room for me to breathe. 

Their crony, a short but heavily muscled woman with a shaved head, shoots my left leg. White-hot tendrils of pain curl up my calf, through my thigh, and up into my abdomen which curls into a fiery knot and pushes a low shriek out from between my clenched teeth.

I breathe heavily, struggling against the arms that hold me, the pressure on my neck increases, and my lungs fail to draw in air. The pressure disappears, but only long enough for the woman to push a long hollow needle into a vein in my neck. 

The last thing I see before the world swirls into blackness is what seems like hundreds of bodies strewn carelessly across the floor.