The Seven Revels

An Unexpected Alliance

Milo's hands were bleeding again.

He was so bored... he'd picked each of his fingernails raw at least ten times in the last seven days. There was nothing more for him to do. He flopped back onto the floor and stared at the bare white ceiling. Seven days and no one had told him a damn thing. They'd toss food through the door, then lock it again without a word. The only way he knew how much time had passed was his watch, the one thing they hadn't taken away from him. They'd taken his clothes and forced him to change into a grey jumpsuit that was two sizes too big for him.

The brief look Milo managed to get at the Cognitive only told him two things; It was much bigger than the ship he'd been taken from and it was too heavily guarded for him to do anything but comply. So he'd taken the jumpsuit, he hadn't argued when they locked him up... He'd seen the guns those agents had up close and personal, and he wasn't keen on ever seeing them that close again.

The room he was in was boring too. The walls were blank, there wasn't even peeling paint to pick at. He'd asked his captors at least ten times for a ball, a deck of cards, anything to keep him occupied, but no such luck. So he turned to his fingernails. The pain helped him focus on not panicking. He couldn't afford to panic.

According to his watch, the CME's would have hit Earth three days ago. He couldn't help but wonder if his comrades had gotten away in time... If they hadn't... Indigo...

He tore a hangnail off and winced. Blood pooled on his cuticle. He held his hand up over his face for a moment before dropping it back onto the floor.

"Consider yourself lucky," he said to himself. Better to be bored than dead. Still, he wondered what was going on outside his little room. The food he was brought wasn't any better or worse than the food he'd had on his airship, they brought it twice a day... they were treating him fine. Except no one would tell him what was going on.

A drop of blood rolled tenaciously down his finger and melted onto the floor.

The silence was the other thing that got to him. He couldn't even hear the hum of the ship... He could feel the vibrations through the floor he was sprawled upon, but the silence was unnerving. The only time he heard anything that wasn't his own voice was when they threw food to him.

He wished they would at least hand it to him, rather than just toss it through the door and lock it again without a word. His voice was the only thing he ever heard anymore. He wanted to hear Indigo's voice. He tried to imagine it, but he felt as though his memory of it was fading. Was that possible? Could he really have forgotten her voice after just one week of being apart from her? He wondered what was happening with her.

What had his comrades done to escape the CME's? What had Indigo done when she found out what had happened to him? Would they come rescue him? No, he told himself. They needed to get as far from the Cognitive as they could. They needed to get to safety.

What Milo didn't understand was why he was still alive? He'd been sure he'd get a bullet through his skull that first day aboard the Cognitive. He'd felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed to his temple; had squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of Indigo's face... He hadn't been able to. It felt as though he'd stayed like that for hours, waiting for the bullet to tear through his head and bring his life to a screeching halt. But it hadn't. The muzzle had been replaced with a blindfold, the hands holding his own behind his back pulled him to his feet and he'd been dragged to... wherever he was now. Sector 16. That's what the one agent had said just before throwing him roughly into the arms of Agent Simmons. The last thing Milo had seen of his ship was Quill, standing defiantly in front of the first Agent. Milo had never gotten his name.