The Ice Warrior

Chapter 11

Leaving the warmth of the alien ship was more difficult than Silv assumed, but it was nothing in comparison with facing the icy weather that waited for them outside the base. Looking back at the old stairs they had taken to the surface, she wished Denis and her had found them before she fell into the hole. Perhaps that would have changed their circumstances.

However, thinking about Denis only made her breathe more heavily in anger, and she knew it wasn't the right time to deal with all that rage. She needed to bury it deep down until the moment when she could make Denis pay for what he did to her came.

The fact that he tried to kill her didn't hurt her as much as the realization that none of it was real. He was never his true self around her. She opened up to him, saw him a friend when all he ever saw was a person he could take advantage of and then discard.

Silv felt violated, betrayed, but she knew that she needed to approach what they were about to do with a clear head, so she decided to distract herself. It was the only way to stop her thoughts from consuming all she was in the flame of indistinguishable anger that was already almost palpable in the air around her.

"How cold is your planet?" Silv asked Wir Eis.

It was the first thing that came to her mind, but the moment she asked the question, she realized she was curious about the answer. While she hunched her shoulders trying to keeping in the body warmth as much as possible he stood proudly in the freezing wind without even flinching at the cold blast.

"This," Wir Eis said, moving his hand to encompass their surroundings.

"Summertime on my planet," he said.

Silv's mouth popped open in shock, but soon enough, freezing air flooded in, so quickly shut them before her lungs could freeze. Her mind couldn't even comprehend a place where the weather that made her very bones shiver was considered as summer weather. From his expression, it was clear that it was a pleasant one for him.

"Well, for us it's too cold, so are we waiting for your sister, or can I lead the way?" Silv asked.

"She not come. She get others. Tell what happening. Give hope," he said.

His words made sense, but Silv wasn't sure if that was the right choice. After all, they didn't know for sure if they would succeed. Getting the technology wasn't easy, and Silv worried that she had perhaps made it appear easier than it was.

False hope wasn't something she wanted to give the poor beings. They had been through too much, and Silv feared that if she were to fail them, they would be even more disheartened than before.

"You do know that this is still a dangerous mission, we might fail. I can't guarantee success." Silv said.

"Better die trying. Hope necessary." Wir Eis said.

Silv admired that he was willing to die, to be a martyr if necessary, so that his people could go on. That made Silv question what she was ready to do and for whom.

Was she ready to die for aliens she didn't even know well enough to tell whether they were good or bad? To her surprise, the answer was yes.

She was ready to die helping them but not exactly for them, for justice, to make a wrong right. Silv was always a woman of principles, ready to die for what she believed in. The problem was that in the past, she had had nothing she believed in strongly enough to die for.

Although she was ready to die for her family, there was never an ideal that she was prepared to fight for, not even the government. Perhaps that was the reason she was deemed disposable. It was too evident that she wasn't as dedicated as the others. She wasn't as good at pretending as her grandmother had learned to be.

"My dear, truth is overrated in the world we live in. The truth is more dangerous than this never-ending winter. Keep your truths close to your heart because they can get you into a heap of trouble." Rose used to say.

Yet, at the time, Silv dismissed her advice, thinking that the old age was finally catching up with her grandmother. After all, she was one of the first SABs, slowly aging beings, as they were widely known, and Silv had thought the age had finally caught up with her.

She couldn't have been more wrong. Only as she led the strange alien who's ancestors doomed her planet did Silv realize that her truthfulness, as well as her search for the truth, were the very things that had led to all her troubles.

That was how she found herself cut off from the rest of humanity, feeling more of a connection with an alien than her race. And it all started with her being honest with Denis, in her refusal to be a bigger part of the system she despised.

Had she progressed through the ranks, she would have been in the know. It wouldn't have been necessary to get rid of her and all the truths she carried with her.

Lost in her thoughts, Silv almost missed the familiar hill with the secret entrance she had discovered in her hours of desperation, in the time when she needed to be alone to understand why she was so different. It took her a while to conclude that she could never be the same as the others, she couldn't reach the level of blind devotions they had. Those hours spent alone helped her learn that she was okay with that.

"We are here," she told Wir Eis.

"It's just behind that rock," she added.

They dug through the snow to reveal the familiar entrance, and finally, Silv entered the tunnel followed by Wir Eis. It was dark at first, the way Silv remembered it, but soon enough, their eyes got used to it.

After a few meters, the tunnel ended in a wide space that Silv maneuvered through with years of experience.

"I'll turn on the light. No one can see it down here." She told Wir Eis not wanting to startle him.

She wasn't sure what the alien could or couldn't do if he felt cornered. If she was being honest, she knew very little about anything, but for the first time in her life, she decided she didn't care. Her heart was telling her she was doing the right thing, and that was all that mattered to her.

"Alright." Wir Eis said.

The strong neon lights revealed a living area that was quite different from the living areas Silv and the others had lived in. Those were living areas of another time, other humans, and yet there was something in them that held familiarity to Silv. Some things didn't change, but others were much improved by the technology.

It was clear that the best of materials were used and that aesthetics were as important to them as survival. However, the space was unused, covered with a layer of dust. Beautiful tables, chairs, and sofas just sat there as silent witnesses of people's stupidity.

Their pride was their downfall, after all. They thought they could outrun their demise, and thus those bunkers ended up being relics of a time long gone. Silv couldn't help but wonder if the same would happen to her world one day as well.

After all, the government of her time was as proud as those of the past times, perhaps even more so, having in mind they had technology at their beck and call. Their precious technology was more important to them then truth, honesty, lives of their people, so Silv wondered if their end would be as sudden.

With all the preparations that went into the making of the bunkers, one would assume they didn't forget about them, but most who knew of them were outside when the cold struck, and others thought of them as useless when they had such advanced technology at their disposal. They had become forgotten the moment technology took over.

Now, they mattered again. They could bring salvation to more than one being.