Estranged

Faster

His heart beat faster, yet his vision became clearer. There was no longer space in his mind to carefully consider his next course of action; there was only blind rage. There would be no more calculation from him.

With a battle cry of his own, he ran, going all out. The proton beams continued to fire. He evaded them all. The bullets continued to shower, plinking off his ExoSuit. Yet his speed did not wane. And when the foot soldiers finally reached him—their guns already discarded for swords and spears and large nets woven from fibreglass—Gringe simply jumped, sailing over them thoughtlessly and leaving them behind.

In thirty seconds he was close enough to his target to have been out of range of the cannons. And five seconds after, he was at the base of the walls. Only bullets rained down on him now. There was no time to catch his breath. He swiftly began ascending the wall in front of him just as he and Praetor and Scott had ascended the Level Wall in Synthë sector.

Soon rocks and other similarly heavy objects joined the bullets as the soldiers atop the wall tried to dislodge him from the concrete surface. All to no avail. Only death itself was going to stop him from making it out of this battle to go get Aliyah back.

***

Irrhyian Sector was the smallest of RoseField’s seven sectors, utterly unimpressive except for the fact that it was the only arable land in all of Doranne. It was night now. Gringe, standing on top of the wall he had just claimed, gazed upon the sector. A lake ran across it. Its buildings were small, save for the abandoned silos by the western walls and the housing quarters. Its soil was soft and loose, sprouting all manner of trees and shrubs. Gringe looked at these things but did not truly see them. An hour had passed since they had breached Irrhyian. There had been little resistance after he had mounted the wall and taken out the cannons. The sector was fully occupied now and any minute, the holo display slowly rotating above the sector’s headquarters would switch from the green swordfish of Irrhyian Ledna’s organization to the searing red phoenix of the Royal Family.

“You’ve barely said anything since,” a gentle voice from the right spoke. Scott faced the District Head, adding, “You’re stealing my thing.”

Gringe could not even work up any excitement that Scott of all people had told a spoken, much less told a joke. He simply grunted; his eyes still pointed at the Irrhyian sector without really seeing it.

Scott nodded. He noted, “You worry about her differently,” then turned and left Gringe to his brooding.

Different from how he worried about the rest of them. Gringe did not entirely agree with that, but he could not dwell on it long. As anticipated, the holo changed, and the Irrhyian sector now had a red-tinged night; no longer green. His MiraLink beeped with a public alert message: a video of Irrhyian Ledna proclaiming surrender.

Gringe began to leave before the message finished playing.

***

An hour had passed since midnight. The control room was still bustled with activity. Shifts had changed, coffee cups refilled, bladders emptied, and crucial work had been done—all under the watchful eye of Jebba Synthë. Since Liya’s capture, she had turned to her duty—one which under Wilda’s rule she had come to despise—as leader of the sector, pending District Head Gringe’s return.

Gringe. In some ways, he was an open book: his determination, his straightforwardness, his adherence to his values. By Jebba’s judgement, those were traits one could consistently expect from him. In other ways, however, he was as unreadable as the stars, which troubled her. She feared that he might not care enough about Liya’s absence to want to do something about it. And worse, she feared that he might deem any talk of rescue an unnecessary use of resources because it would be a fair assessment. Whatever the case, she was fully prepared to present him with an ultimatum if it came to it. She was not going to lose Liya again. Not after she was just getting her back.

As if summoned by her thoughts, the door hissed open and the District Head strode through. Jebba rose from her seat at the round table centring the room as Gringe was welcomed with resounding applause and hearty cheer.

The District Head received his congratulations, albeit mutedly, his face a touch too blank for the victory he had just commanded. He motioned to speak and the room quieted. “Thank you, thank you. Great job today everyone. Two-sevenths of RoseField was reclaimed without a single casualty. That is a feat for stories and songs. But the war has only begun. The work starts here.

“Nevertheless, you may all have the night off. Whylan’s got a party going on outside. Don’t drink too much.”

His address was met with another round of cheers and soon the room emptied, leaving only the three of them in it.

Gringe approached Jebba and Germaine, and with everyone else gone his mask of indifference vanished. His face twisted with anguish, his voice fraught with contained rage as he spat, “How did you let this happen, Jebba!”

She sighed in relief.

Germaine stepped up to her side. “It was my fault, District Head. Haylen attacked and I failed the Lady…and Liya.”

Gringe looked at Germaine—noting the scrapes and bruises covering the guard’s skin—and then back at her. His stony expression softened somewhat upon recognizing the sorrow in their faces. They were just as, perhaps even more, hurt by Liya’s capture as he was.

Jebba finally spoke. “It wasn’t for a lack of trying, District Head. Haylen attacked with an ExoSuit. Germaine engaged her, but you of all know how an ExoSuit could turn a fighter into a one-person army. We were careless being out on the roof without more protection, but I suspect that would’ve only led to casualties.” As she spoke, she noted Gringe visibly calming down; his rage diffusing and cold reason beginning to take its place.