Every Life

1: Out of the Rabbit Hole

I no longer hated prison food. Perhaps that should be concerning, but I found the underwhelming blandness comforting. It was kind of like the scratches I edged into these walls, they barely pierced the outer skin of the metal as my only blunt instrument was the back end of my toothbrush. They marked the slow passing of three perfectly unremarkable months. Which is what I wanted when I buried myself into this deep, dark, rabbit hole.

An almost undetectable tread approached, so faint it could only be heard by one with inhuman senses. It was a familiar sound that braced my back up against the dented wall.

The barred door slid open to reveal a terrifying monster cloaked in dark steel. His armor was a perfectly fitted cascade of charcoal and ashen metal stitched together. The most impressive piece was the helmet, painstakingly shaped into the face of a wolf. Similar to the blood that flowed through his veins, for he was a jager, a half-wolf hunter that worked for the Alliance. They were designed to be the perfect hunters, with the senses and speed of the mighty wolf. They were beautiful in the way they moved, like an agile predator ready and aware at any moment.

He cornered me like any canine would. A dark gauntlet pressed against the dented wall over my left shoulder. I stared straight into the dark eyes of his wolf mask, but I was not afraid.

I grew a lump in my throat as I looked up and whispered, "Hello wolf eyes."

He reached up with his right hand to remove his helmet so that his metal eyes shifted into his naturally unnatural, dark orange, wolf eyes.

"You..." he growled as he clenched a fist against the wall, "damnit Abby. Three months. I was looking for you for three months."

I shifted uncomfortably. "I told you not to," was all I said as I slipped under his arm and took a couple of strides to get to my creaky old bed.

He was lightning fast as he reached out to snatch my wrist but he only met air. "Abby," he muttered, his shoulders slouching. It made him look less like a wolf and more human.

"I can't just come back," I told him, a bit of a snap to my tone, as I clutched the edge of my scratchy blanket. "They're all dead Eddie. Every single one of them... it's all my fault."

Eddie was still, unable to offer any words of comfort to negate the pain of my candor. But he was there, and I was painfully aware that I had not done the same for him in quite some time. He slipped his helmet back on as he faded from my cell. "You did quite a lot of good before," was all he offered as he left, "you could do so again. Maybe there was a reason you stuck yourself in an Alliance prison. Maybe you never really wanted to stay down here."

I let my back drop against the hard mattress, lacking even the strength to grimace. "But I don't want to be free," I protested, though I did not know if I believed that myself.

I had always been a morning person, in fact, I used to wake up early to watch the birds fly over my childhood home. But even I had my limits. So, when I was woken up hours before the eight am breakfast, I simply pulled the blanket back over my head. At least at first. A recurrence of the noise that woke me up finally pulled me out of blankets. For it was the sound of another ship, attaching to our space station. Followed by the sound of metal being cut away.

The loud tread of standard issue Alliance army boots on metal brought me to the barred door. I almost hoped Eddie had returned, but he was not that loud and even the sight of a thin, blond Alliance guard was a relief.

"Guard," I demanded as I stuck my wrist through the bars, palm upwards, "I am a citizen of the Alliance and by the fifteenth law of the decree I demand that my identification chip be scanned and my identity be registered in the prison records."