When Aleph had finally awoken, to him, it was as though not a breath had passed between when he was restrained by the faceless captor and when he had opened his eyes. This confusion lasted only as long as it took for him to realize that he was no longer covered in blood, and wore a type of patient garb you would normally see in hospitals, with the exception that it had been colored a pure white. He had also been laid in a cot, itself inside a cell about twice the width of it. His nose, so assaulted by his previous endeavors, was glad for the sterile scent that the whole place was wrapped in.
The place was only a beat above silent, with the occasional toilet flush or creak of a cot being heard off in the distance.
So there are other people, here. He thought, rising from his cot. He noted the handwashing station and toilet in the corner, but his eyes soon fell on the cell opposite him. A horned woman with long hair, about his height, lying on the cot with their scrubs being used as an extra pillow. He could only tell the figure was a woman by the bra saw stretching across their back.
Feeling slightly guilty for staring longer he felt comfortable, he began looking at other cells. The floors were tiled concrete, the walls being grey and featureless besides the occasional sign, like the number designation above each cell, before another cell could be seen above that. Although he couldn’t crane his neck up to see the others beside him, he could see his own number on the left side of the cell in white lettering. Or, what was most likely a letter.
I can’t read their language. He suspected. That is going to seriously complicate things for me.
He inspected the symbols, and came up blank for any comparable Earth ciphers. Foreign Languages just never caught on for him, unfortunately. Unable to come up with an answer, he paused his musings at the introduction of a new sound. The click clack of shoes on hard ground carried an echo that reminded him of the exaggeratedly dark and foreboding thing that brought him here.
Hold on a minute, it spoke English to me. Does that mean the people here know how to speak it? I have to hope so, or I’m going to look at least a little crazy.
Then a man turned the corner and began speaking in, for all intents and purposes, gibberish.
Okay, perhaps I am a little crazy.
The man in question was, of course, not human either. They were an elf of some kind, with pointy ears and an uncannily gaunt face, wearing a white coat donned in various small black stylizations, some of which I recognized as a similar script to the one on the wall. “I’m sorry?” I tried, and they raised an eyebrow in turn, their brown hair swaying as they cocked their head. Pulling a thick metal wand with a black end and a grey base out of their coat, they gestured it towards me, mouthing my question back at me. I obliged at the unspoken need, “I’m… sorry? Can you understand me now?” He put his finger to the ear of a needlessly-elaborate headpiece that wrapped around his head. To my surprise, it carried the runes like the ones I had seen in the firebreaks at the farmhouse.
Damn, now I’m really wishing I hadn’t skipped over EFL as much as I did.
~
Debras
Debras was nearing the end of his wits, here. They had so many refugees coming in that the city had run out of municipal housing in the first hour, and they just kept coming in. He wanted to be out there, looking for his family in the crowds, but instead he was dealing with some amnesiac who spoke a language he hadn’t heard in decades.
He had no ID, he had no genetic marker, he had no memory markers- hell, with how stingy the goddamn Oligarchy was being with info on where they found him, it was like he appeared out of thin air. He was going to have to spend hours sorting this out-
“Deb? I think I see a vein about to burst, there.”
Debras turned to face his coworker. He turned to them, prepared to shout something he would regret, but was met by nothing but pity.
She knows, then. He thought, sighing out loud. Whatever, let’s get this over with.
“Sorry. Today has… been a lot. I feel cooped up in here.” He stiffened a little. “Any update from the Oligarchy Enforcer?”
The smaller, rounder elf shook their head, sitting at a chair facing a rectangle monitor that took the form of a white frame encasing a suspended digital screen. “They’re outright refusing to tell us where they found him, only that they are ‘begrudgingly holding up the Halbeck Agreement’.” She let out a sigh of her own, “I can’t even contact the higher database, we’re getting choked out of the system by the huge increase in traffic. We’re unable to convict him of anything.”
“He can’t be the first person we’re having this problem with, right? Why haven’t we gotten our channel back yet?” To that, she simply leaned back and pursed her lips, clasping her fingers as she let the chair spin a little.
He knew that look. “Fucking, don’t tell me Kepler is doing this to us now of all times!? I should have never agreed to let him be our Voice this month, that piece of shit just crossed the line.” He pointed at the door, gesturing vaguely at her, “There are people starving out there, and he’s STILL pulling bureaucratic nonsense? I’m go-”
She shot from her chair. As timid as she usually was, Niima’s built figure was intimidating when it stared him down the way she did now. “STOP. Stop it, Deb. Please. We’ll just make do with what we have. I just had an idea.” Just as she turned back to the computer, Debras’ hands went slack to his sides. Briefly looking back at him, she spoke gently, “I know it’s difficult, but we can’t afford another infraction. We’re already going to be behind dealing with this human as-is. Watch her hand, Debras, and we’ll pull through.”
For what felt like the thousandth time today, Debras sighed, but acquiesced all the same. “Watch her hand and let it guide us.” He said, reciting it more genuinely than he had ever done for his entire life.
~
Aleph
He was taken to a separate room and sat in a chair in the middle of it, and then they hastily exited. It was a kind of interrogation room, he imagined. He couldn’t see much other use for it.
He wasn’t restrained at all in being lead here, and as such he was free to inspect a magazine that lay on the table in front of him. He couldn’t read any of the words, but he could at least inspect the pictures.
It was pretty bad. It was like he was filing through a tourist guidebook rather than an inmate process manual. He paused his accusations a beat later. It probably is a tourist guidebook. Still, this is what they give a guy who they just imprisoned? It showcased various monuments of rather impressive design and size, such as an ornate building it placed near the center of the city that had a colorful set of floors, each dedicated to something. It was frustrating, but he moved on. He noted where the prison he was in was located- at the edge of the ravine of death. Cool.
Wait, what? Hold the phone.
Somehow, he could read ‘Ravine of Death’ In bold, runic lettering, pointing at a valley that bordered the town. It stretched out a full mile, and nothing was built in or across it according to the book’s helpful images. It had a line connecting to a black floor on the colorful building he just read about in the page prior to the full map.
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Weird. They have some ominous death valley on the edge of their city and they just… is that a waste processing plant? Are these people pouring waste into an ominous black ravine for CONVENIENCE?
Fuck, I’m jealous now.
There was actually a page dedicated to the building he was currently in. They were strangely transparent with it’s design- scratch that, it was basically just white reinforced corridors and tight jail rooms, of course they wouldn’t even bother with it. It was bookmarked in the guide by a previous reader, which still made him question such a decision.
In the end, he was thoroughly absorbed for the entire time he spent waiting in that room, until a new elf walked into the room. The door silently slid open and closed, which left Aleph startled when he looked up and saw a human woman staring at him. “Ah! How long have you been sitting there?”
“Five minutes. You seemed rather absorbed in ‘Tourist Attractions for Aimless Inmates’.”
More than their sudden appearance, their fluent English gave me pause. A good kind of pause, though, the kind that lets you sit and soak in your good luck. Still, I had a huge amount of questions and little time to ask them, so I wasn’t too long in delivering my response. They were, thankfully, a patient enough woman for that.
“So… Nice to meet you? My name is Aleph, hopefully I can answer any questions you have, miss…?”
“Ravanaugh. My apologies for spooking you, I simply haven’t had much time to sit down and organize my thoughts lately. Let’s get right to business.” She turned to grab a small tablet from her pocket, and in this brief lull I took in her features. She, too, wore a finely designed coat, wearing a dress beneath it. A strange combination, but I really don't have a foot to stand on, do I? Her black hair was held in a ponytail, and her face bore subtle wrinkles that put her age somewhere just shy of 30. It told some level of experience, at… interrogation? Police work? I don’t rightly know what this is quite yet.
“I understand you must be confused, but please don’t ask any questions of your own for the duration of the interview." She asked, before tapping on the tablet and reciting a question.
"Let’s start at the beginning. As per the Halbeck Agreement demands, you were teleported to the closest non-Oligarchy managed prison after being found attempting to make away with Zhoravskaya property. On you we found items that someone attempting to sneak their way through Oligarchy would need, but none of them showed signs of use. Your weapon was never discharged, which is a good sign, but you still damaged Oligarchy property with… Oligarchy property, itself stolen in your escape.”
Does… what does she mean? I destroyed an entire library, and they’re fixated on the skeleton in terms of ‘property damage’? I can still taste the blood in my mouth from that, I don’t know who got the worse end of the exchange.
“This, coupled with a lack of memories we could flag as criminal, points towards you being a scapegoat. Do you recall anything that could help us pinpoint who could have planted these on you? Do you remember names, faces?”
So they think I’m some kind of… unwitting smuggler? Like I was tricked, even? And what was that about memories? Do they know about me being from Earth? They sure don’t seem to care. Or, maybe, they don’t know… I’ll just explain things like an amnesiac for now, I’m sure that’s what they expect.
“I… honestly don’t remember anything before, what, this morning? I set off in the safest-looking direction, in the middle of nowhere, and just look for the closest shelter to wait out the night. I think I walked about forty, fifty miles until I came upon a farmhouse.” It is then that I pause, wondering if they know anything. They simply wait for me to continue. “I grab for whatever might mean I can get out of that barren wasteland intact, and next thing I know, there’s a skeleton trying to break down my door, I…” The rest hurts to recall. I was running on fumes by the time I made it out the front door.
Sensing my hesitation, she stops me there before I can continue. “It’s alright, you don’t need to defend yourself, we already understand your situation.” She smiled gingerly, “Give yourself a second to breathe, and only continue when you’re sure you know what you want to say, alright Aleph?”
I was honestly a little stunned, she was more of a therapist than an interrogator. At least it appears as though I’m not being jailed. It made things a little easier to put behind me, to try and put them into words. So, I did. “I don’t know how useful the full story is, but… I barricaded the top floor even before they try and get in, feeling paranoid, and that saved me I think, I can’t be sure. The hand of one reached in and broke off when I slammed down on it, but it then tried to strangle me before it ended up falling limp. Then more barged in, and I ended up jumping to the a library on the lower floor through a broken hatch. There was another skeleton, and I couldn’t just run away from it this time. I had the most… pathetic fight with the damn thing, rolling around on the floor until I bash it’s head open, more because I was frustrated with it than anything else. I…” I sighed, remembering how long I just sat there traumatized. “Well, I then turned over some heavy bookshelves to break the floor open as a distraction, and that’s how I made it out the front entrance. That’s where this… thing took me.”
“The Enforcer?” Ravanaugh asked, showing a bit more interest.
“Yeah. Yeah that’s a fitting name. Pulled me up into the air, and now… now I’m here.”
That's really how it went. I don't know what I'll do if they find some other reason to detain me.
I had only fully realized I had been facing the desk during much of my retelling when I look back at her and see that she is already at the door. "Am... Are they going to let me out, now?" I questioned, hesitantly.
"Yes, and now that the interview has ended, I'll be the one answering your questions." She said matter-of-factly. "We could do it here, or..." Scrutinizing the bare walls of the prison with suspicious glances, she put her hand on her hip as she proposed a different idea. "I think you'd prefer if we found somewhere... quieter. You must be starving, I know a good place."
~
Niima
"Was Ravanaugh was really the best option you could come up with, Nimma?" Debras said, accusatory. He was at a desk of his own, now.
No they weren't, but I'm gaining a favor instead of losing one, here.
She bit back that response, however, as she knew he hated even a scant mention of political gains. "Time is tight, Debras. Ravanaugh was the first person who called back, and she's far from the worst person I could have called on, no?" Niima half-lied. Ravanaugh was the first person she tried to call, and she hadn't left voicemail for a minute by the time she frantically called back.
Debras looked at her a moment, dissatisfied, but just shook his head a little before returning to his own tasks. "Yeah. But... I just hope she doesn't go overboard with the guy. There aren't many humans around, so getting the opportunity to meet one might leave her slightly... anxious, if you know what I mean."
His story was helpful in confirming important details surrounding the 'crime', because if he hadn't then he could have been imprisoned due to the defaults of the agreement. She would have hated to do that. Both because they would end up needing the space rather soon, and he didn't seem to deserve that. However, she now kind of regrets that choice, given the surprisingly traumatic day he had. "Yeah, now that you mention it... he's been jumped by enough bones already as of late. I'll just have to hope she realizes that too." She said, eliciting a slight laugh from Debras.
"Sure, yeah. Her of all people, treating the situation with care?" He chuckled, still facing the screen. "Honestly? Stuff it, Niima, and let's just hope our little Aleph can endure a little bit more. He's going to need the energy."
~
Aleph
As I was walking across an entirely smooth concrete sidewalks, I felt a deep shudder run through me out of nowhere, forcing me to stop a moment in surprise.
Ravanaugh, slightly ahead, stopped as well, "Is the coat working properly? I would have offered one of my own if I had a spare, but I don't. The Republic doesn't make any tailored to humans."
I shook my head at that, "No, the coat should be more than enough to keep out the cold. I think it may just not be used to me, yet." It was still rather odd, as I've been perfectly warm since I put on this coat, which makes me wonder what prompted the deep chill. Motion sickness, maybe? It's been years since I had a bad case with it though. That cab wasn't even going particularly fast, it was just a little... disorienting.
"Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. Or maybe you're the one who's not used to it? I don't think I can ever forget your look of astonishment at a taxi, of all things." She said, laughing at her own joke before marching onwards.
I was going to make a response when she stopped again rather quickly, turning to face me. "We're here. It's a dive I've spent many a night at. The Oily Cambross may not be the most glamourous introduction to the fair city of Mortum, but I think it's the best way to know what you're in for." She said, grinning as she stepped in the direction it's doors.
I stared up at the illegible, flowery red glowing sign a moment longer before finally moving to catch up. Another gust of wind came by, and I clutched my newfound, blank coat as it sprawled in the draft. There are worse beginnings, I suppose. All I can really hope for is that it will be better than yesterday. And that this... Ravanaugh woman has good intentions.