The Boy from the Bunker - Season 8

Episode Two, Part 2:

Episode Two, Part 2:
Neptunum

When the fear comes and I drift towards the ground, 
I am lucky that you're around. 

"I think I hear someone," Sol mentioned to Atlantis, pressing her ear close to the door whilst still trying to remain in a position that allowed her to peer out of the glass window.

She held her breath for added measure, not wanting anything to distract her from trying to figure out what was taking place in the hallway outside. Once she could sense that the movement was close, she pulled her ear away and focused solely on glancing outside of the room, hoping that whatever it was, it would give her some answers.

Sol watched as the first guard passed by her cell door, then another who was followed by the final guard - wheeling someone past on a medical bed. She squinted her eyes to see better, finally recognising the person on the bed - knowing it was one of her people.

"That's Dante..." Sol muttered, continuing to watch as he was wheeled further and further away from sight.

"Who? What's happening out there?" Atlantis asked, sitting on the edge of her bed.

"Dante," Sol repeated. "The boy that Luca was asking about in the mess hall yesterday; they just wheeled him past."

"Wheeled?"

"Yeah... On a bed," Sol confirmed, her voice suddenly softening in fear as numerous possibilities scattered her mind. "He was unconscious and it looked like..." She shook her head, refusing to say it; Atlantis was terrified enough without needing to know what condition Sol had just seen one of her people in.

"Looked like what?" Atlantis searched, making her way over to the door and trying to peer out the window, but he was already gone.

"Riv?" She turned around to face her sister, knowing that her silence wasn't a good indication.

"It doesn't matter-"

"Tell me," Atlantis said. "We're stuck in this cell for 23 hours a day; you're going to go crazy if you don't confide in me about what you saw and not only that, Riv, but there's nothing you or anyone can do to protect me and the rest of us from what is going on here... So tell me what you saw. Sooner or later, you might not be here if I'm in trouble so it'll pay for me to know what's going on."

Sol let out a deep sigh as she chewed on her bottom lip, frowning at her sister as she knew that she didn't have anything to protest with.

"He looked like he was hurt, okay?" Sol confessed, moving past Atlantis to sit on her bed, not wanting to make a big deal over it. "Maybe that's why these people took him and Luca couldn't find him: because he was hurt."

"Or maybe these people took him because they wanted to hurt him. Maybe these people are really dangerous and this place is going to be the death of us. That's what you're thinking, isn't it?"

"Stop reading my mind," Sol rolled her eyes, trying not to let the conversation reach a low that she wouldn't be able to pull them both up from. "I'm trying to make you less afraid, here."

"I don't need less afraid," Atlantis murmured, moving over to where her sister was sitting, falling down right beside her. "I just need you to stop trying to do this on your own. It's not like Wynn and Dreea are around for the three of you to figure this out together. You only have me, and hey, I was a Sovereign once."

Sol let out a laugh, rolling her eyes at Atlantis. "I almost forgot about that," she said. "It feels like an entire lifetime ago when my biggest problem was this girl I brought out of a bunker who turned out to be my sister."

"What!?" Atlantis exclaimed. "That's what you remember as your biggest problem at that time? Not being stuck in the DeadLands for days!? Not dad trying to have you killed?"

"I knew I could survive the DeadLands," Sol said. "But a sister? That's a pretty permanent thing."

"You're right," Atlantis laughed. "You're stuck with me. Especially in here."

"I never thought I'd see the day, but it's about the only thing I'm grateful for, right now."

"That, and the fact that we're all still alive," Atlantis said.

Sol dropped her head, suddenly quiet with a newfound tenderness as her heart filled up with fading memories and echoes of a voice that was slowly being forgotten.

"Riv," Atlantis sighed, quickly realising what she had said. "I-I didn't even think. I'm so-"

"It's okay. It's nice to face the reminders of him, even if it hurts. I'm sure it's the same for you and Bas... It means that a part of him is still in here," Sol promised, placing her hand on her chest, but it fell away after only a moment. "Hopefully it's the part of him that'll tell me what I should do to get us out of h-"

"...What's wrong?" Atlantis was cautious, trying to figure out the rest of what Sol was going to say before she cut herself off.

"I think I have a plan," Sol told her, glancing up with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "A Kodiak plan."

"You think it's something he would have done?" Atlantis asked, smiling empathetically at her sister.

Sol nodded, the joy in her heart seeming to evaporate any linger of mourning left behind. "When The City of Targo had him and Elara at Riders' labs," she explained, "he tried something then and it's how we managed to get them both out of there. It's what we're going to try the next time someone comes to take us to the mess hall."

////////

Sol and Atlantis could hear the commotion building in the hallway outside as guards arrived to take everyone to their evening rations. Atlantis sat up on the edge of her bed, trying to still her restless legs from bouncing up and down, but she couldn't keep still. She moved to her feet, pacing anxiously around the room, praying that things wouldn't take a turn for the worse like she knew they so easily could do.

"We've got this, Atlantis," Sol assured her, moving her to the door and peering out the window, trying to estimate how much time they had left before someone reached them. "You know the plan; you know what's going to happen; we're the ones who have the upper hand."

"I don't think that's true, but okay," Atlantis forced out a nervous laugh, trying not to allow her head to fill with all the thoughts hammering to get in.

Sol stepped away from the door when a masked figure appeared outside the window, glancing at Atlantis as she moved to stand in the corner behind her, waiting for the mechanical hum of the lock untwisting to know their attack had commenced.

"Oh, it's you two," the guard said, no doubt smirking under his mask. "Are you going to cooperate this time, or are you going to do as you're told?"

Sol raised her lips up into a smile, hoping the guard would sense her challenge, giving him a few seconds of warning to realise that something was coming his way...

"Atlantis, go!" Sol yelled at her sister, watching fearfully as she made a lunge at the guard, doing her best attempt faking to move past him as if trying to get out of her cell. As predicted, the guard grabbed onto her, pinning her to the floor so she couldn't escape.

"You think that was a smart move?" The guard asked, kneeling over Atlantis, pushing both of her hands into the floor beside her head.

Atlantis whined at the pressure, feeling her paralysed hand stretch out like it hadn't done in years. She was certain that if the guard carried on for much longer, then all the bones within her hand would break into pieces under his weight.

Two // Part Two
I would have taken your place.

I'm glad we're getting a lot more Sol/Atlantis scenes. Because she left with TCoT at the end of S5, she didn't get the chance to bond with Atlantis like both of them wanted to after she finally accepted her as her sister, but they got more scenes together in S7 and now this one! Yay!

01/11/20.