Fighting for Change

2. Or Not

The holding cell clearly wasn't meant to hold someone of Lily's caliber.

She could easily have escaped had she wanted. It had only the barest security measures, the kind she had been hacking since she was twelve. Instead of the usual inspections, yet another checklist Lily had written for herself, she sat listlessly where she had been tossed in the corner of the cell. Her head lolled to the side, her breathing rapid and shallow, heart fluttering weakly. A surge of rage flared unexpectedly in her chest, and then was swallowed by the spreading void in her heart. All will to do anything had left her body the instant she had surrendered. It had literally been Lily's life work to track the Cibre down and end his encroaching reign on the universe. After months of planning, working to set everything up, quietly tolerating misogyny and harassment and having to follow the dumbest orders and officers the army could possibly throw at her. She had even had that wonderful element of surprise. The process wouldn't have been nearly so well oiled if the Kybris had suspected Lily was alive.

Now the war would change. Lily was the ultimate weapon, if underappreciated and unused. The Kybris would now either attempt to capture or destroy her. And the others would suffer for it. The fighting would get harder, bloodier, more difficult. The Achryi were already struggling and if the tactics didn't change soon, it would be a bloodbath. And it was her fault. A moment of weakness, doubt and hesitation behind a mask of logic, had just condemned thousands. All Lily had wanted was to end this miserable war and prevent the suffering and horrors she had been subjected to since childhood.

She felt the prickle of haunting memories creeping in from their dark corners in her mind, clawing their way out of the shadows where they remained locked away in order for her to function. Every betrayal, every fear, every anxiety Lily had ever felt washed over her with its original intensity. Lily summoned the energy to curl into a ball, and waited for the nightmares to play themselves out.

When the guards returned, they found Lily loosely curled up, limp and pale, unconscious. Possibly dead. The older guard, who was a little quicker in the reasoning department, rushed to the girl's side to attempt shaking her awake. Had she been dead, it would have meant the guards losing their jobs, or perhaps even their own lives; she was far more important that she seemed.

Luckily, after a bout of rough shaking, Lily wearily opened an unfocused eye. The younger soldier let out a breath of relief, having eventually come to the same conclusion as his colleague. The open eye slowly began to focus on the faces looming above it, and something snapped back into place, bringing Lily back to life. She stood with jerky mechanical movements, with the occasional unnecessary tug here and there from a guard, to help her to her feet.

The rest of the trip passed like a dream. Lily didn't know where the guards were taking her, but then again she didn't really care. The somber, lackluster walls blurred and melted together as she passed, blending and mixing with the personnel that flowed around Lily and her escorts. She drifted endlessly through the halls, failing to notice when her feet caught and she stumbled. She absorbed nothing of her surroundings as the guards dragged her through the labyrinthine building. At some point, she would later recall, Lily said to herself I think I'm in some kind of shock, but it didn't seem terribly important to her at the time. Nothing did.

After an eternity of turning innumerable corners and walking through infinite hallways, she was aware of a great opening before her with a sudden vastness beyond it. With the slight spike in cognizance, Lily found the reason why everything had looked so much the same: she had been staring at the floor the whole time, without realizing it.

Now she took in her surroundings dazedly, processing only a small part of it. This appeared to be a much larger room than most on the compound, though dressed in the same boring colors. She had a vague sense that the ceiling was high above her. This was some kind of multipurpose room, maybe. At the front of the room, directly opposite the doors through which Lily had just been dragged, was a long table, set on a slightly higher platform than the rest of the room. She disinterestedly noted that seated at the table were several officious looking senior members of the army. Before these men were two smaller tables, placed side by side with several feet between them, each with two chairs. Three of them were already filled, but Lily's sluggish brain didn't care to decode the backs of their occupant's heads to identify the seated men. Her eyes meandered through the rest of the room. From several feet behind the smaller tables up to just within the door were rows and rows of chairs, wall to wall with a narrow isle in the middle, and every one was filled. Their inhabitants had even spilled out of the seats to lounge on the sides.