Sigma/Star

Chapter 59.5: This One Night

Leif tightened his grip around the hilt of his blade. He couldn't stop holding it since he had acquired it off the streets of Arkterra. The capital city was full of nearly everything someone would need in life but when it came to acquiring the sorts of things Leif had needed...well that wasn't so easy.

The weapon seemed like a precious gemstone to him. He wasn't holding an instrument of violence; he was holding hope. It would be with this and everything else he had collected that he would do what he had to do tonight.

But it felt so foreign in his fingers, so wrong. Everything about the hilt seemed off, as though he should recoil from the touch. And he should have. He was a pacifist by nature; he had always been a proprietor of a velvet revolution, not a violent one. Now it would be different. Harmful acts in order to perpetuate a dream. He had to keep convincing himself that the ends would justify the means. This was the only means he could find to the only end he had ever desired.

It had been a year since he had lost Allyson, a year since the Red Scarf Rebellion and her subsequent capture and incarceration. A life sentence for treason against the Enian Federation, as well as for being responsible for the deaths of a few key political players. And the list of her crimes went on and on, some of them fabricated and framed upon her head, and some of them real and she took each one as a welcomed burden.

Leif had watched it all during the public trial by fire, seen the girl he loved up on the screens everywhere in the city, around the nation, broadcast in every possible way to deliver the strongest message: dissidence would not be tolerated. After her final readings from some of the scriptures of Enia, she was given life imprisonment and sent to the Arkterra Federal Prison. And Leif hadn't seen her since.

Hadn't seen her since...

....not one smile...

...nor a laugh...

...he had not touched her...

...smelled her...

It would be back to normal soon though. A year since she had disappeared. That meant two years since Leif had set foot in his own house, since he had seen his father. He hadn't gone back to see the birth of his brother either when they called to him. He didn't need them and their judgement. He needed her, and only her.

A year since she was taken from him. A year of training, of planning, of researching and spying, of gleaming information and building up the money he would need. A year for this one day. This one night.

The Federal Prison was located in the southernmost corner of Arkterra, hidden amidst a conglomeration of bureaucratic office buildings. It disguised it well, for not many knew that the bubble-shaped edifice was actually the highest security prison in the country. Most assumed it was more office space.

It had taken Leif quite some time to figure out where it was they were keeping Allyson and even longer than that to get a layout of its interior. Only recently had he finally secured a contact within the facility; they would be the one letting him inside tonight. They had also revealed to him the only way to get someone out of the federal prison, and which passageways he would have to use if he was going to escape undetected.

Now he knew though and he would make no mistake. The young man blended in perfectly with the crowds around him, an innocuous civilian, like anyone else. Brown hair, brown eyes, nothing impressive about his build, only a little taller than everyone else, and that was it. He melded with the passing crowds, slowly approaching his destination and his destiny, until he veered away from them, ducking into an alley.