The door closed behind them with a quiet hiss of air and what lay before them was another sterile white hallway with an offshoot to the left and right halfway down it. Blake shook off Sayen, forcing her to release his collar and stop running. "What are you doing? We have to hurry. I want to get outside as soon as possible and help my tribe, so come on; move it." Sayen looked to Blake with pleading eyes, not wanting to fight and simply finish their mission.
"You are all mad, you know that, right? We have no idea what lies in this compound, yet we split up so easily. It's asinine." Blake stared defiantly at Sayen, rooted to the spot. "I won't be part of this futility. If Siegfried wishes to die and waste everything that was given to him, that's his choice; but I'm not dying for that idiot."
Sayen let out a heavy sigh and walked up to Blake. "Look, I understand that this isn't what we planned and that this is an even greater gamble than we were anticipating, but that was the entire idea behind this operation; a giant gamble. To see if we could, in fact, fight back against these beasts and win." Sayen placed her hand on Blake's shoulder to try to reassure him. "This is all moving really fast, but we have to soldier on and finish our part of the mission. The faster, the better. So let's do a quick sweep of the rest of the compound and then head further down to plant the explosives. Sound good?"
Blake batted Sayen's hand from his shoulder and reeled back in disgust. "Don't touch me, you mongrel bitch! Just because I graced you with my presence and allowed you to work alongside me doesn't give you that right, and it doesn't make us friends." Blake looked to Sayen with disgust in his eye, not wanting to continue with her.
Sayen let out another heavy sigh and approached Blake once again. "Siegfried warned me of your...unique ideologies. I must say, though, I don't hate doing this." With a confused look from Blake, Sayen head-butted him with all her might, forcing him to fumble back further into the hallway. After falling down with a hard thud, Blake scrambled to stand again. "Now listen here, punk. I don't care what you think of Siegfried, Boris, the Sage, or me, but if you, in any way, hinder my ability to finish this mission and make it back to my tribe, I will disembowel you without a second thought. Now be quiet, stay quiet, follow me, and do your fucking job. Are we clear?" with an angry nod from Blake as he tried to lessen the bleeding from his nose, the pair continued down the hall, taking the left passage.
As they ran down the hall, they quickly approached a new doorway. It opened up into what looked to be a recreational room. There were shelves with books and photos, couches and chairs, an attached kitchen and dining area, and an entertainment area with a crystal vision. They had made it to the private quarters of the compound workers. In a strained silence, the pair began to riffle through all that they could; books, papers, and any personal effects that they could find. After a few minutes of searching, taking what they thought important, and mostly coming up empty-handed, they headed through a doorway at the back of the room into a short hall with ten separate doors, each leading to a bedroom for each worker. With each bedroom, they found personal effects of the workers from clothes and photos, but nothing that would be useful in stopping Father. After searching through nine of the rooms, they didn't think they'd find anything.
Sayen entered the final room to find it pristine. Orderly and neat, it was almost uncomfortably so, but that wasn't what caught her attention. "You. Have. To. Be. Kidding. Me." Slowly, she approached a frame that hung on the wall. As Blake entered the room, wondering what was going on, he was met with an angry Sayen. "HE'S A SAGE?!" She held a framed parchment awarded to those who achieved incredible feats in academic fields and were appointed the rank of sage and allowed to work in the Towers of Knowledge.
"Who's a sage?" Blake, genuinely confused, began to read over Sayen's shoulder.
"That scum of a supervisor is a sage. How is that possible? How could a person of peace and the expanding of knowledge stray so far?" Sayen simply stared at the framed document in anger and horror.
YOU ARE READING
Bodanen: Cobalt War
FantasyThe world of Bodanen has known war for forty-five years, but outside the capital of An-ox in a small trading town, a less than average farmer has grown up relatively peacefully. When the war comes to his home, he finds his aptitude for violence to b...
