Chapter 29: Chapter 29: Damsel…

Chleo cursed the gears around her as the doctor pulled the fifth lever.  Water poured out of a growing slit in the wall behind him as the metal clanged wider.  The stream circling the room, flowing through the ditch below her rose, the platform she was on rising with it, the paddles on either side speeding up with the current.  She forced her legs to pump faster as the platform spun beneath her.  It was torture.  

She was done playing their game.  They wanted her to feel trapped, like a hamster in a cage.  It was working.  Chleo refused to let it continue. She would not live the rest of her life as a test subject.  All she needed was her next move.

She’d already fallen twice trying to get the feel for her new coordination and did not relish the thought of fishing herself out of the stream again.  At least with the extra water it was deeper and she might not earn another bruise to add to her growing collection. She groaned when she saw the doctor flip the third hour glass.  There were at least two more.  Surely, they didn’t expect her to run five hours at this pace.  She’d never run more than a half hour in her life.  How she was keeping up at all, was a mystery.

Her eyes widened when the doctor made another mark on his clipboard.    He wouldn’t.  Her jaw clenched as he reached for the sixth lever.  He would.  With a slight tug, more water rushed out pushing the platform faster.  The guilt she thought she saw from him in the infirmary was wiped from her memory.  She decided her next move was to break the clipboard over the doctor’s head.

Chleo pushed through the mind-numbing boredom of running in place for hours and tried to ignore her burning lungs.  She was exhausted, but not as exhausted as she would have expected.  Whatever they did to her put an extra spring into her step.  Truth be told, she was as curious as they were.  Maybe when she escaped, she’d take their test plan and run it herself.  It was their experiment, after all.  They would know what changes to look for.

She eyed the chain linking her to the platform for the hundredth time.  Picking it would be a breeze if she had her belt, but she didn’t.  In fact, she didn’t have any of her clothes, save for her wristlet.  Instead, they had her running in what could only be defined as modest under clothes, a pair of tight cloth shorts and a cloth top just large enough to cover her chest, a mortifying discovery that had her wishing for her restrictive infirmary bed.  At least it had a blanket and didn’t leave her new muscles on display.

The chain’s hinge connecting it to the platform seemed to be its weak point.  She estimated that her newfound strength was enough to stress it into submission, but it would take time.  Five hours should work well enough.  

Her gaze swept across the room.  The man in black had left after the first half hour, two guards taking his place.  She gauged her current speed.  It was, by far, faster than she’d ever run.  It should be enough to out run the guards and the doctor if she could get past them.  She tugged on the chain again, disguising it as an exhausted stutter.  There was a bit of truth in the act if she was honest.

If she wanted to have enough energy to escape, she needed to act… soon.  The hinge looked ready to give.  Two more tugs, she estimated, and it would break.  

She thought back to the throne room, the mural of a bird sitting atop a bull, hope coloring its face.  Her stride stuttered.  The chain clanked against the hinge.  The doctor took a note on the clipboard, and reached for the seventh lever… the sadist.

He tugged.  Water poured, increasing the platform’s speed beneath her.  She ran two more steps before she tripped.  It was perfect. She let the platform carry her over the edge into the stream, relaxing into the current.  The chain attaching her to the machine grew taught.  Like the first two times, she grabbed it, using it as leverage to swim to the stream’s edge.  She hauled herself out, collapsing on her back.

The chamber was cold, its chill pricking her skin as she caught her breath.  The sound of boots tapping stone came closer.  It almost made her smile.  She loved it when things went according to plan.

The guards stood over her, mimicking their stances from before.   She yanked the chain.  Metal clanked then snapped, the hinge hanging on the end as it broke from the machine and flew through the air.  The trajectory was a bit off, but she adjusted.  All of those years she’d spent practicing with her watch went to good use, the movements comfortably similar.

The chain flew by first, the hinge following straight into the first guard’s head before following through and skidding to the other side of the room.  He dropped beside her.  The second guard froze processing the scene.  It was enough.  She yanked the chain a second time, making the hinge do her bidding as she rolled to a crouch.  It crashed into his head.  He dropped too.  

“Then there was one,” she said spotting the doctor cowering in the corner, his clipboard rattling in his hand.  She strode the few steps needed to stand in front of him.  He quivered, crouching low trying to disappear.  She held out a hand.  He stared at it.  “The clipboard.”

His eyes widened as he rushed to hand it over.  “You said you knew my mother,” she said as she scanned the first page.

“I do.” A hopeful edge cracking his voice as he rushed to reassure her.

“Where is she?” she asked without looking up.

“I-I don’t know.”

The page was a simple before and after comparison.  The before seemed like a detailed guess on her physiology.  It appeared they injected her without gathering a baseline first.  Amateurs.  She looked up.

“But you have a guess.”

“I don’t think I should…” He looked terrified. She glared. “Umbra.” He gulped.  “Best guess is Umbra.”

She smiled slipping his papers off of the clipboard.  “Thank you… Oh, and doctor…” She looked back at the first page reading the before description again. “… I’ve never been weak or scrawny in my life.” She brought the clipboard down on his head.  He crumpled, the clipboard snapping in half.

Move one complete.  What was her next?

~*~*~

Will led Merk, Eelock, and Dai through the palace passages for the second time in two days.  He hated it.  The passages constrained them, stone walls squeezing in from both sides, memories, new and old, threatening to overwhelm him.  

He heard a sound, jerking to a stop and lifting a hand careful not to jostle his shoulder. The others froze behind him.  The echoes traveled closer.  He ducked through the nearest tapestry, his three shadows trailing into an unused study.  

He glared at the pristine desk waiting for the echoes to pass, a new onslaught of memories flooding him.  Skin peeled away from bone. Boils covered arms. Bodies shivered, his mind replacing each person’s face with Chleo’s. He buried his worry in a sigh. His teeth clenched.

A hand squeezed his good shoulder.  “She’ll be alright.  It’s a good plan,”  Eelock’s voice broke through his fear.  Will nodded.  He would do what he always did when he was afraid, face it head on and push through.  Chleo needed him.

~*~*~

Chleo rushed down the hall, tapestries rustling as she passed, guards’ boots clanking behind her.  She made it almost five steps from the doctor’s torture chamber before someone noticed.  Honestly, she was surprised she’d made it that far.

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Disappointment flooded her as she sprinted away.  She was used to having a plan.  Her mom may say she only needed her next move, but she was always more comfortable with three or four in her back pocket.  As one of her pursuers blew his alert whistle, she resigned herself to tackling her escape in a decidedly Will-esque manner, by the seat of her pants and an abundance of luck. 

The chase degenerated into a game of cat and mouse.  Her newfound speed made her faster, but the guards knew the passages.  Avoiding traps wasn’t difficult, she could spot them from a hall away, but they were appearing at an alarming rate.

She flinched as three guards popped out from behind the nearest tapestry, dart tubes pressed to their mouths.  Dropping into a roll she whipped the chain attached to her wrist in their direction.  The hinge at the end knocked into the first guard’s head as three darts passed harmlessly over her.  He fell as she passed, the others reloading, dead eyes tracking her progress.  She ducked around a corner.  A dart smacked the wall behind her.  Another lodged into the stack of papers she clutched against her chest in a death grip.  She fled wrapping the trailing chain around her arm.

A small twinge of guilt grabbed her.  Technically, she was stealing their research.  The dart’s feather tickled her skin as it clung to the paper.  Then again, they considered her their research, too.  With a petulance more at place on a child, she sent out a mental ‘they started it,’ and considered the matter dropped.  Will would be proud.

The sound of boots pounding behind her faded, and she strained her ears listening for the next trap.  A small scrape of a boot, a slight rustling of cloth rang through the corridor, something the day before she would have missed.  They were two turns away, maybe three. 

She needed a plan.  It seemed every time she decided on a direction, a guard was there forcing her the opposite way.  The first corner passed without fanfare.  She ran heedlessly without any true sense of direction.  For all she knew, she was running in circles.  The second corner flew by.  After a quick jerk and a well placed kick, three more guards went with it.  No one would follow.  

Chleo turned another corner and stopped.  The monotony of stone and tapestry opened into a corridor lined with doors… and a barricade. The trap was impressive. It seemed while she led them on a merry chase, the guards found every loose piece of wood or furniture they could manage and filled her only exit.  It was a dead end. 

She thought about the turns she’d taken, the times she decided to go straight only for a team of guards to pop out and force her to duck down a different hall for cover.  They’d led her there.

Her ears pricked, boots and cloth.  She couldn’t go back.  There wasn’t enough time to check the doors. She couldn’t go forward.

What was her next move? She had to go forward.  She took a tentative step into the corridor.  Boots echoed behind her.  They were gaining.  She took another step, more sure, then another. 

Halfway to the barricade she jogged, silently planning how she would dismantle it.  Wood scraped the floor.  The doors flew open.  Guards spilled out as darts shot from every angle. 

She jumped.  She wasn’t sure how it happened.  One second she was target practice, and the next she was hanging from the chandelier roughly five meters above the guards’ heads.

“Hm, I guess jumping would have been the next test,” she muttered as she hung by an arm, the other clutching the doctor’s notes, “or maybe strength.”  Her eye caught on the dart still sticking out of the pages and remembered the danger below.

“Right.” She flung her weight to the side and dropped on a guard’s head, using another as an unsuspecting shield.  She stumbled, overestimating her landing.  Three darts hit the guard she was using as a shield and he slumped, another five ricocheting off the wall behind her.  She rolled through one of the open doors, knocking it closed, and slamming the latch in place.

Quiet, calm, it was as abrupt as a punch.  She felt air leave her lungs.  Her muscles relaxed.  The exhaustion that should have hit hours ago settled in.  

“Now what?” she asked the room, leaning back against the door.  It might have been a study once, long since abandoned for brighter rooms with windows and a view.  Dust covered an elaborate desk.  Even forgotten furniture in a palace seemed fit for a king.  The carvings wound through the wood, telling a story in swirls and interpretation continuing through the bookshelves framing the back wall.

A thump jolted her from the door.  The wood rattled against its frame.  Her adrenaline spiked.  She stared as another thump, another rattle shook the door.  She was trapped.

Her tongue darted out to wet her lips.  “No rest for the…” She hesitated one eye on the stolen pages in her hand.  It was ridiculous.  They experimented on her.  She shouldn’t feel guilty for stealing their research.  She closed her eyes against another thump, another rattle.  “Wicked, I suppose.”

Chleo turned back to the room determined to find something to help her bid for freedom once the guards broke through.  A quick search proved what she’d feared.  The room was empty, nothing but an ornate desk and shelves left to collect dust.  

She slammed the last drawer closed in frustration.  The thumps were becoming more frequent, cracking wood beginning to accompany them.  She swiped furiously at the few tears brave enough to fall despite her best efforts.

They were going to get in.  She slumped against the desk.  They were going to hit her with a dart, and she would wake up the subject of a new experiment, something painful, something deadly.

Her eye caught the carvings, beautiful and whimsical, dancing through shapes a viewer had to squint to recognize.  She wondered if the craftsman meant for the one in the center to resemble a man with an axe or for a nearby shelf to dip and spiral into three birds and a bull.

She lifted a finger to trace the third bird, remembering the hope in its eyes as it stared down from the throne room’s panel.  What might have been a beak gave way under her finger.  She jerked back afraid of doing any more damage.  A clank sounded within the shelf, half-heard over the thumping and cracking at the door.

A panel sprang open.  Stone, smooth and slick, jutted from the shelf.  Words danced across its surface carved with the talent of a master.

“Name the ruler of us all,” she read aloud.  

A thump, a crack, a zing rang through the room.  A dart flew over her head.  She crouched lower behind the desk.  Four stone rollers sat on the panel under the phrase, each carved with its own set of letters.

Another thump, another crack, more darts zipped overhead.  Panic threatened to boil over.  She swallowed it, a single tear trailing down her cheek.  It was useless.  She had no idea.

“Will,” she whispered, a plea, a promise. She wasn’t getting out… except… “Will,” she said louder.  She scrambled to the stone rollers.  What ruled a person, every person, without contest?  It wasn’t a person.  It was… their own will.

She gritted her teeth.  “Last move.”  Her fingers fumbled as she rolled the first stone to W.

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