Fourteen hours. That's how long Winnie had been a tortoise. She knew because it had been near one o'clock when she and Helena had broken into that stupid terrarium, and the clock in her dorm room read three in the afternoon now. She could have checked any clock in the world, yet her mind kept going back there. Despite being so close to where the tower fell, it was empty and clean. If she were there, it would almost be as if this nightmare wasn't happening, except for the sirens in the distance.
Instead, she was in a maintenance room. At least, she thought it was. It was a small, tiled room lit by buzzing fluorescent lights, and its walls were lined with equipment racks. A lone door led into a landing hangar, where the soldiers had arrived after detaining Christof and Alexander. She'd hoped when she saw the soldiers arresting them, that the end had finally come, but then Alex started telling all those lies. How did they buy that? Didn't they see how intently he was looking in their eyes before each word he said?
Winnie had squawked and hissed and climbed the edge of her box, but no one had even looked at her. When the soldiers had gotten back to base, they'd taken Alex straight to their general so Alex could spread even more lies, while they stashed Winnie, Helena, and the other tortoise in this room. Cold and tired, Winnie drifted in and out of sleep. After hours, hunger had set in that not even deep seated misery could hide. The most attention anyone gave them was the occasional private who came in, glanced at the box, and asked anyone nearby, "what are these doing here?" or, "should someone do something about these animals?" But the soldiers were too preoccupied watching television in the other room to bother; the news showed the world coming apart.
Dozens had died in the collapse. Rescue workers were being admitted to hospitals for radiation poisoning. Parts of the city were evacuating. The empire was in a state of emergency. Territories on the other side of the world saw this as the end of the Lakiran empire and were already talking about succession. Less stables countries were seeing wide scale riots. The death and destruction grew worse with every hour.
She wondered if it was easier for Helena, who was curled up in her shell at the other end of the box. Without the benefit of Winnie's power, she couldn't know about the hell she and Winnie had forced on the world. All she knew was cold and hunger. Time was meaningless for her.
Winnie, meanwhile, soared about with her flair, but nothing she saw made her feel better. The television in the other room had announced Victoria's death hours ago. Winnie had already known. Her mind had been there when they'd dug her ruined body out of the twisted wreckage of her ship, just as she'd been there when Sakhr had killed General Soto, and the poor exemplar who came to scan the sick, and the doctor who'd treated Quentin. She was there every step of the way to see the ruination her actions had brought. She didn't know why she bothered watching. What was the point? The one woman who could have fixed all this was dead.
Winnie wished so much she could take it all back that her regret seemed tangible, as though she could exert her will back to that single moment. Just a push perhaps. She could nudge herself so she fell against the birdcage instead of the terrarium, or maybe the cabinet on the other side. Maybe she could force a thought into her past self's head. Don't do it. Stop Helena. Stand up to her. You have no idea what hell awaits you, and how many people you'll hurt. The tiniest change could derail all of this.
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The pit in her stomach gnawed at her, but there was no food, and no one around. With nothing left to do, Winnie pulled into her shell. She just needed to shut out the world and try for a moment to forget this living nightmare.
Just for a while.
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"I must say. None y'all look very happy this morning."
The words awoke Winnie. Natural light shone just outside her shell. Using a trick she'd used many mornings while nestled in her bedsheets, she used her power to look around instead of peaking her head out.
She and Helena were still in the shipping crate in a maintenance room. It was morning, and a elderly man with a gentle smile knelt over her crate. The gray, curly fuzz on his head matched the beard outlining his white toothed smile. His limbs were thin and gnarled, like someone who'd spent his long life doing honest work under the sun.
All Winnie knew was that he wasn't a soldier. He wore a simple pair of khakis and a faded shirt. Given that no one else was around, she wondered whether he'd just walked into the base, completely overlooked. Surely not.
"Don't worry now," he said. "I'm here. I haven't forgot about you. Looks like we lost a few of our brothers and sisters, but you made it out. Y'all lucky devils." After studying Helena, his brow furrowed. "Never seen you before."
Helena emerged from her shell and looked back. When he picked her up, she thrashed in alarm.
"Calm down now," the man said. "Just giving you the once over. Looks like you're a uh... Hermann's Tortoise? Male, hmm?" He grabbed Helena's tail between two fingers and looked underneath. "Yep, male."
Startling. Until now, Winnie had never considered the gender of these tortoise bodies. Everything felt foreign. Even thinking about it, she couldn't tell what equipment she had. She concentrated, wiggled around a little, visualized her rear side. She was a... girl? Alex was a male though, right? It was his tortoise body she'd inherited. Had Victoria not bothered to match gender when putting people inside tortoises?
"You must be the upstairs tortoise," the man said to Helena. "You're lucky someone saved you. I heard you were kept under lock and key. Don't matter to me. I'll take you in. You can call me Gilles."
He set Helena down, then examined Winnie and the other tortoise, talking soothingly all the while. "Don't know what's goin to happen to you two. In all this commotion, I think everybody done forgot about you lot. But here I am. Not sure what's going to happen tomorrow, but you're okay today."
At first, Winnie paid attention to what he said, but there wasn't much content. Soon she let the words wash over her. It almost made her forget about her hell. The man's touch was soothing. Given his expertise, she guessed he was one of the tower caretakers. He was lucky not to have been in the tower last night.
Gilles took up the crate and carried them to another building, into a lobby where a private was at attendance behind a desk.
"Ah, you found them," the soldier said.
"Mmhmm," said Gilles. "Are these all they saved? There musta been fifty animals in that tower at least."
"These were all that were in the shuttle last night. If anymore animals survived, I don't know about it. No offense to those things, but I'm kind of surprised anyone bothered saving them with everything that's going on."
"These tortoises meant a lot to the queen."
The soldier nodded vaguely. "I talked with Major Husher. He doesn't want them on the base. Are you able to take care of them. W could find a zoo..."
"Nah, I got em."
"I can't promise you'll be reimbursed for your expense."
Gilles waved him off. "I'll take them. I'll take them. Fellas need a proper home, don't they? We can't be sending them off to any old zoo."
This satisfied the soldier.
Outside in the landing lot, Gilles loaded the crate into a personal shuttle. Before closing the door, he fetched a handful of collard greens from a bag and set them in the box.