Rebellion

Speechless

You groan in pain as Anti lands yet another blow to your nose. Blood trails down your face, mainly from your nose, a little from an open wound that Anti had made a little while ago. Sitting up in the hard wooden chair, you have no choice but to take it.

"See? This is what happens when you fail to obey orders," Anti says as he hooks you up to something that you're too scared to ask about. "If you had just done your job, we wouldn't be in this situation."

He takes a few steps back and picks up a remote.

"I'm sorry," you force out. "Please. I've learned my lesson. I won't make this mistake again, ever. I promise."

Anti smirks. "You're darn right, you won't. Especially once I'm finished with you."

He twists the knob on the remote. You don't even need to ask what it does. Electricity shoots through your body. Your arms can't convulse as much, due to being bound to the chair, but you feel the rest of your body shake. 

You cry out in pain and, admittedly, shed a tear.  Anti pauses the tasering for a moment, and watches you. He's beyond smirking now. As you raise your head toward him, he's full on laughing.

"Pathetic," Anti scoffs.

"Please," You beg. "I'm sorry."

"Aw." Anti tilts his head and pouts in mock sympathy. "Don't beg, sweetheart. It makes you look weak."

With that, Anti turn up the dial and shoots some more electricity through you. The voltage is increased now, so it hurts almost twice as much. It's unbearable. Just as you are becoming numb to the pain, it suddenly stops.

You weakly raise your head to see Anti putting the remote down. He begins to move to the weapon wall behind you. You don't even try to look.

"You were brave to try to get away with this, I'll give you that," Anti said. He made a noise behind you that you recognized as the crack of a whip. "Unfortunately--" He cracked the whip again, this time against the back of your neck "--we frown upon that here."

He slung the whip against your back, and then your shoulders. You're suddenly wishing Anti hadn't taken your uniform jacket. With only your white tank top on, the whip easily sliced through both the flesh on your back as well as fabric covering it.

Anti moved in front of you and whipped at your torso as well. You weren't sure if it was intentional or not, but he got your face a few times as well. Your tears and sweat mixed with the new blood being shed on your face, which only added to the pain.

Finally, after what felt like endless torture, Anti replaced the whip on the wall and moved in front of you again. You breathed a sigh of relief when you saw that he had no more weapons.

"You and the rest of them need to learn that you are no longer in control," Anti said firmly, crossing his arms. "This is our world now. Perhaps, after today, you'll remember that."
  
  

You quickly hurried into place firing the final march of the night for the soldiers. You hope you look okay. Anti had dressed you in your uniform before letting you go, and you were expecting to be there to pass things off to the night shift. Your hat was crooked and you could feel one of your pant legs tucked into your boot. But it didn't matter to you right now.

Ethan took one look at you, and averted his eyes. Tyler wouldn't even make eye contact. That was fine. You weren't sure if you were even speaking to them at the moment. As Dark dismissed your troops, you caught a glimpse of Anti. He smirked as you marched off. It was enough to make you start to think about your true position here.

Once you made it back to your room, you knew you had some serious thinking to do. One glance into the mirror only confirmed that. You actually jumped back at your appearance. Cuts lined your eyebrows, and you had a purple bruise around your left eye. Your upper lip was swollen and split on the right side. 

You carefully touched a pinkish bruise on your upper right cheek. It stung, so you carefully pulled your hand away and began to undo your jacket. Suddenly deciding that you didn't want to see your damaged body, you turned around, unable to bear the sight of your wounds.

Here comes a wave, meant to wash me away. A tide that is taking me under.

You fought back the tears as you left your room in your bathrobe. You wandered aimlessly until you reached the soldiers' area you had left only minutes before. Climbing up onto the rafters, you watch the other soldiers marching into place. They were given their assignments for the evening, then marched off. They looked almost like robots, sent to do the bidding of their master.

Stay in your place. Better seen and not heard.

That was a promise you made yourself keep every day. A philosophy you lived by. As you wandered through the hallways of your "home", you suddenly wondered just how much that promise meant to you. Was it worth it to stay in a place where no one respected you? You paused as you passed by the giant portrait of Dark and Anti, hanging on the wall.

Dark thought of you as a slave. Anti took a lot of pleasure in torturing you. Tyler wasted no time in turning you in. Ethan was too scared to help you.

I cannot start to crumble.

You wouldn't let yourself go soft. Yet, you didn't want to go numb, either. One thing was for sure, you decided as you almost ran back to your room. You couldn't stay here.

Quickly packing up your things, you hesitated in packing your uniform. If they had seen that you had left it behind, they would know you ran away.  You stuffed it into your bag and decided to forget about it for now. You could burn it later.

Despite being exhausted from the sleepless night before and the torture that followed afterward, you had a burst of energy as you raced back to the portrait. For the first time in a long time, you smiled. You were sure that you had never smiled at the portrait, but now, there was something different about it. It represented the freedom you were about to gain.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

You whirled around. You couldn't see the guard yet, but he had seen you and was running toward you. His shadow was growing on the wall. You didn't have much time. You did, however, have an escape route; one you had known about for a while, but never used.

Quickly turning back to the portrait, you squatted down and grabbed the lower left corner. Using all of your muscles, you lifted the corner upward, just enough for you to fit behind it. Once you were behind, you shoved yourself into the hole in the wall, and let yourself slide.

The path down was narrow and jagged, but you slid down as if it was one of those big tube slides. You weren't sure if they had seen you leave, but you didn't care, as long as you weren't caught. 

As your feet hit the hard ground outside, you gasped a breath of fresh air. It was different this time; liberating, almost. You glanced upward as you pulled your hood over your head. You were outside and off of government property now. You grinned at your newfound freedom and took off.

"I actually got away! I'm free!"

Running through the empty streets was a bad idea, as there were probably guards patrolling, so you took the long, sandy way around. You had no idea where you were going, and you didn't care, until you realized that getting caught wasn't an option, and you had nowhere to stay for the night.

A voice rang through your mind, "Our hideout is at the edge of the city."

Jack. When he left, he had told you to come with him. Realizing that you were at the edge of town, you decided to take a chance, and began looking for anything that resembled a hideout. Finding nothing, you knew you had to rethink your technique. 

You were looking for some sort of building, but everything around you had been leveled, at least until the center of the city, where only a few tall buildings were left. Maybe they were hiding out somewhere else.

Just as you thought that, you tripped over something. Your bag dropped beside you, but you were more concerned about what you had stumbled on. You saw that there was an almost buried trapdoor. You had slipped over the handle. Feeling a surge of excitement, you banged on the door. As you waited for an answer, you were suddenly unsure of what to say.

All I know is I won't go speechless.