Pandora's Trials

Sacrifices of War

Something I learned while jammed in that small room with six other people was what true fear was. As the minutes turned to hours, I began to get antsier and antsier. I realized that for me, I never really feared action. I feared inaction; I feared being helpless. The longer I was in that room, the more I realized that we were trapped like animals in a snare and there was nothing we could do about it. At one point, I heard sniffles from someone, and I began to silently weep. I wasn't ready to die. Not yet, and definitely not like this. Elijah put his shoulder next to mine to comfort me. I appreciated the gesture.

At what I guessed was around two or three in the morning, I heard the door to the room unlock, and braced for the worst. The tension in the room was palpable; all of us like rabbits ready to flee from the dogs. I didn't expect to see Anthony push the door open.

"Let's go," was all he said before he set to work cutting everyone free from their zip ties. I didn't know what was going to happen, so I prepared myself for anything.

"What are you doing?" Elijah growled.

"Getting you guys out of here. Duh, what does it look like I'm doing?"

"Well, based on the fact that you betrayed us, one could assume you're coming here to march us to our deaths," I snapped.

Anthony sucked air through his teeth, "Sorry, I wasn't really in the position to make it clear that I was acting. Of course, they did actually tell me to convince you guys I wanted to escape too, but they had no idea that I wanted to get out of this god-awful cult."

"Sorry, but I can't trust you until I see those cultists dead on the ground." Elijah crossed his arms defiantly.

Anthony cut the zip tie from the last person in our group, then beckoned us to follow him. There, around a lamp that lit the main room, lay the twenty or so cultists.

"They're not quite dead, but they aren't waking up any time soon," Anthony said.

I knelt down and looked closer, and all of the unconscious people were breathing slowly and deeply.

"How'd you do it?" I asked.

The boy smirked mischievously and held up a half-empty bottle of pills. "Well, you never know when you need to knock someone out. Mix a few of these into a gallon of water, everyone who drinks it will be out like a light."

"That's not creepy at all," Elijah said sarcastically, "No offense, but I'm not letting you near my food or water."

"None taken," Anthony responded.

All of us quietly hurried about the dark room taking back our belongings that the Flat-Landers had taken from us along with some extra supplies. Anthony snooped through an official-looking chest and found important documents detailing the Flat-Lander's plan for occupying and conquering the northern peninsula. When we had gathered everything we needed, we left the building for the cultists' trucks and vans. Since they decided to destroy our trucks, we took theirs. As we began loading our supplies into the vehicles, Elijah waved me over to the side of a shed that stood about thirty feet away from the others. Anthony was with him.

"You know we can't just leave this outpost, right?" Elijah said.

"Why not? The cultists are sleeping, We'll be long gone before they even know we left," I countered. I didn't like where this conversation was going.

"You know why; you said it yourself. 'They'll know that we know that there's an insurgent force within the northlands.' If we leave them like this, it's only a matter of time until they make it back to Joseph and the rest of the Chosen Ones. We can't let that happen; they already outnumber us three-to-one," Anthony explained.