Earth 2106 Part 4

Please, do read the first three parts, or this will make little to no sense to most. As always, anyone who want's to volunteer to a character concept for future stories is more than welcome.


Anne woke up in her new bed. For a moment she couldn’t quite place where she was, then it all came tumbling back to her. The guy in the alley, the men at her home, The Resistance, Caitlin. Her head was rushing. All had happened so fast. The pillow was wet from tears, and the room smelled kind of funny. She got up and put on her clothes. She couldn’t find any other, so she used the same as before. She had just buttoned the jeans when she heard someone walking outside. She pulled over the white top and snuck towards the door. She could hear rumblings outside, and lots of footsteps. She waited a while, until all sound had diminished, and then opened the door. The hallway looked the same as before, and was completely empty. Anne walked out looking carefully around. She wasn’t sure why she was up, but she couldn’t bear the thought of staying confined. She moved along the corridor, not sure which way she had come from last night.
Then, from the far end, she heard something. It sounded like someone screaming. Anne hesitated, and after a moment she started walking towards the sound. The floor felt cold under her bare feet, she hadn’t found her socks anywhere in her room. As the sound seemed to grow in strength the closer she came, she slowed down and made sure to trip lightly. She came to a halt at a door at the end of the corridor. The screams came from the other side. She swallowed and pushed open the door.
She had entered what looked as something of a big laboratory. People were moving back and forward, seemingly too stressed to notice her. Some were dressed in white coats and looked very much like the average scientist stereotype, other in more casual clothing.
Another high-pitched scream sounded, and she nearly jumped. For a moment she wondered why no one else seemed to notice, and then she looked up. Before her was an uplifted platform, raised about three feet from the rest of the floor, and on it was a metallic table. She couldn’t exactly spot what was going on, but she didn’t need to, she had heard about this. The poor girl up there was being “questioned”. She couldn’t see her, and she was quite glad for it. The girl was sobbing and laughing at the same time. Anne didn’t wanna see it…
“Anne?” She turned around and got a glimpse of black leather, before Caitlin grabbed her hand and pulled her back. “What are you doing here?” She looked both upset and worried.
“I woke up… what are you people doing here?” She said, deciding not to apologize.
“I told you, we’re fighting The State.”
“By torturing innocents?” Anne responded, and realised she was talking very loudly.
“She’s hardly innocent, Anne. She’s one of the agents of The State. We caught her trying to infiltrate our base through one of the tunnels. We have to find out what she knows, and this way is least likely to kill her.”
“But you’re torturing her!”
“They do the same to us”, said Caitlin, and something dark swept over her face. Anne decided not to press the point right now, and instead looked around. “How did you get ahold of this place so quickly? You can’t have been here long.”
Caitlin seemed to cheer up a little at the change of subject. “Yes, actually, we’ve only been around for a couple of months, and we would’ve never gotten ahold of this place if it wasn’t for an inside tip we got. It’s actually an abandoned airbase, a leftover from the third World War.”
“I thought all the bases were deconstructed at the end of the war?” Anne said with some amount of surprise.
“Not everyone, although it was believed so. Some were left, I guess because it would cost too much to deconstruct them, like with this one, lying out in the middle of the desert and all.”
“I see, well, that’s very… Oh God!” Anne said aloud, something just occuring to her.
“What is it, Anne?” Caitlin asked worriedly.
“Johanna! My roommate! She doesn’t know about this. She’ll walk right into…” A sinking feeling made itself felt in her stomach. It’d been over a day since she was attacked. Johanna had already gotten there long ago. Anne’s head sunk.
“I’m sorry,” said Caitlin with a low voice.
“What’s gonna happen to her?” Anne asked, although she already knew the answer.
“She’ll be questioned, and then killed,” said Caitlin in a hard voice.
“It’s all my fault,” Anne said, her eyes starting to brim with tears. She turned her head down; she didn’t want Caitlin to see she was about to cry.
“Is there anything I can do to help you?”
“Yes,” Anne said and looked up, eyes red, but suddenly with a look of determination in her face. “I want in. I want to join The Resistance.”

Johanna woke up again, the ice-cold metal chilling her back. She was still nude, still soaked in sweat, and still with a feeling of dread in her chest. She tried to look around, but her neck hurt from banging it against the table repeatedly. She cried a bit, and started silently to curse over Anne who had gotten her into this. She wondered for a moment if she shouldn’t just tell them whatever she knew of Anne, little as it was. It wasn’t like Anne had done anything for her. Quite the opposite, if it hadn’t been for Johanna, Anne wouldn’t even had had a place to live. Then she brushed those thoughts aside. Anne had always been her friend, she wasn’t gonna sell her out, and there wasn’t even any guarantee that they would let her go if she did come clean.
She tried again to move, and to her surprise the right arm slid out of the metallic bond. She looked for a moment with surprise, and then realised it was damaged. She didn’t know how it had happened, and right now she didn’t care. She got up and off the table, and started walking. She heard a moan coming from the far end of the room, and when she turned around she realised that James was still strapped on the table over there. After a moments consideration she turned and ran to him. He looked half-conscious and she wasn’t sure he could see her. He seemed thinner than ever, and his whole body was pale. Johanna grabbed a metallic bond holding his foot and tried to bend it, without success. James seemed to groan and move, but his eyes were still half-closed. She bent over him to try the other, and as she did, her breast slightly grazed his ribs. She pulled back quickly. He was cold as ice.
She looked around, trying to hear any sound from outside the doors. The guards could show at any moment. She wanted to turn and run. For a short moment she even considered running back to the table and strap herself down again. She didn’t want to think about what those men would do to her if they found out that she had tried to escape.
She gave up on trying to bend up the metal holding James down and looked around. Maybe there was some kind of mechanism for freeing the prisoners in here. She gave up the idea quickly. They would not leave something that important in the same room. Her hips nudged the cold metal of the table as she looked around, and she jumped.
As she regained her balance she found herself staring right at a small surveillance camera in the corner of the room.
For a moment she couldn’t make any reason of her thoughts.
A camera. She hadn’t seen it. They’d seen her. She had no chance. She started to feel panic pouring up in her throat, staring around like a scared animal. Then her mind started working again, she regained a little focus. They couldn’t have seen her immediately, then they’d already be here. Perhaps they had lots of cameras to oversee. It was a big place after all. And that meant they might still not have noticed her. She looked at James and realised she had no choice. She had to leave him behind, or else they’d spot her soon enough. She turned and went to the door, opening it and slipped out with ease.

Anne stood in front of the metallic table. She looked nervously around. Caitlin looked at her decisively, and the people around looked curious, some even excited.
“Do I truly have to?” Anne asked, looking and feeling very worried. This was a bit unexpected for her.
“Yes, you have to,” said Caitlin. “The laws are clear. To join, you must prove ability to endure questioning. The initial test will only take ten minutes, and we will not use Varcon to augment the effects.”
Anne swallowed nervously, then pulled her top off.

Johanna was running through the back alleys of New Falcon City. She was cold, bordering on freezing. She still had no clothes, and her glasses were starting to cover with frost. She had tears in her eyes, and her hair was a mess. She looked around her, trying to keep her speed, yet terrified of making too much noise. These alleys were filled with criminals, rapists and worse at night. She didn’t dare to think about what they’d do if they saw a young naked woman all alone in the night.
She speeded up, trying to drive away the memory of the torture. She missed a bump on the ground and lost balance. With a panicked shout she fell, bouncing into a pile of garbage cans with a loud thump. She looked around, and her heart seemed to stop beating as nearly half a dozen shapes started moving around in the alley. She got up, trying to get her balance back. One of the men in the alley seemed to spot her, and he instantly started running towards her. She got to her feet and started running, her leg hurting more than ever. She screamed, hoping that someone would hear her, but at the same time knowing it was futile. People here didn’t interfere in anything that wasn’t their own business.
She turned a corner and without realising it, ran straight into another bum, who stood there waiting for her. She screamed and fell backwards, landing on her back. The other man came after her and in a moment she found herself surrounded by the two. She tried to get up, but her leg hurt too much. One of them knelt over her, and she screamed as her legs were spread apart. She cried and pleaded, but they didn’t seem to hear. She closed her eyes, and suddenly she heard something, like glass shattering. She looked up and saw the bum holding her legs apart looking distraught, then he suddenly tipped over and fell to the ground. The other thug backed off, and started running away.
She looked up, and saw a young man in a leather jacket, smiling slightly.

Anne was lying strapped to the metallic table, stripped down to underwear. Caitlin stood over her; a reassuring smile on her lips. Anne really wasn’t sure about this, and she was shaking now. People (in all fairness mostly guys) were standing around, trying to get as close as possible. Caitlin was dressed in her tight leather suit and looking at Anne through her black sunglasses. She bent sown over her, her fingers closing in on her armpits. Anne closed her eyes, trying to think of something else. She honestly didn’t think she’d be able to do this. She felt like she at any moment now might start screaming and saying she wanted out, but she determinedly stayed quiet. She could feel Caitlin’s breath on her skin now, slow and steady. She bit her teeth together…
“Commander Caitlin!” sounded an upset voice. Caitlin got up again and looked at the source of the sound. Anne opened her eyes and saw one of the maintenance workers at the feet of the platform.
“What is it?” asked Caitlin, with a hint of irritation.
“You have to come, please, it’s urgent.”
“Not now, we’re performing a testing.”
“But there’s someone here to see you, she says she’s fled from The State, and that she knows… (he looked at his paper note) Anne.”
The mood shifted instantly in the room. Caitlin gave a signal, and Anne felt the metal bonds open up. She slid out, with a feeling of disappointment and relief. If Caitlin looked annoyed, that was nothing compared to most of the guys around them. Some looked ready to kill the maintenance worker right away.
Anne and Caitlin started to walk away, towards the rooms exit. In the reflection of the metal table Anne saw the guys checking out her thong, and one even making a “call me”-gesture, but she ignored them. They hurried through the corridor, Anne following Caitlin who seemed to know where she should be going. They came to a door, much like the one to Anne’s own room, except with a guard standing outside. They opened and Anne noted that the rooms seemed slightly mass-produced. This could almost have been her room as well, same type of furniture in the same places.
She looked around, and with a slight shock she realised that Johanna was sitting on the sofa across the room. She didn’t seem to have noticed them as they walked in, and she seemed to wear nothing but a thick blanket wrapped tightly around her. Anne walked up to her slowly.
“Jo… Johanna?” she asked carefully. Johanna looked up, and seemed slightly confused.
“Anne?” she said, sounding more surprised than happy.
“What has happened to her?” asked Caitlin the guard outside the door.
“We don’t know, she seems to be in a shock, and she’s been like that since she got her.”
“How the hell did she get here? It’s a secret base for crying out loud, with emphasis on secret!”
“He dropped her off,” said the guard with an odd face. Caitlin seemed a bit thrown off by this, but regained her composure quickly.
“He did, did he? And you haven’t been able to get anything out of her?”
“She just got her, we alerted you immediately. The only thing she said was that she’d been interrogated by The State and that she fled.”
“They… they have him,” came a weak voice from the sofa. Caitlin spun around. Johanna was sitting upright now, looking a bit more alert.
“What did you just say?” Caitlin asked.
“They have him, James. They’re torturing him, cause I fled,” she said and sobbed.
“They have James?” Caitlin whispered, looking truly fearful for the first time. Anne wasn’t sure what was going on, and the guard didn’t seem to clear either. “Are you sure?” Johanna nodded slightly, still shaking slightly and looking like a mess.
“What are you two talking about?” asked Anne with increasing annoyance. “Who’s James?”
“He’s one of us,” Caitlin answered. “He’s a very important part of The Resistance here. I knew he’d gone missing, but I had hoped he was killed.”
“You hoped he got killed?” said Anne with surprise and disgust.
“You don’t understand. He’s one of the few people here who knows how to get here, most are just driven along in a truck. If they break him, they’ll know where to find us.”
“What can we do?”
“The only option we have, we try to move.”
“Try?”
“We’ll probably be able to get everyone out, but we gotta leave most of the equipment behind, no chance to get that out.”
“Just like that?”
We do it often. You always gotta be ready to move when you’re messing with The State.” Caitlin said, yet she seemed worried. “I’ll go and arrange for the moving.” She turned around, and the guard followed her out.
Anne turned back to Johanna, who still seemed badly shaken, but at least tried to smile a little. “How are you?”
“I’ll be alright. How are you?”
“Could be better,” Anne said with a slight smile. She gazed at her body. “Why the lack of clothing?”
“You’re one to talk,” Johanna responded and Anne blushed as she realised she was still only wearing the thong and bra from the testing. “Well, I was just being…”
“Of course you were…”
“Hey! It was nothing like that!”
“Sure, I believe you…”

Anne (now more properly dressed) hurried up next to Caitlin, who was walking rapidly across the whole underground complex, ensuring everything went smoothly.
“Caitlin!”
“What is it?” she asked without slowing down.
“Maybe we won’t have to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Escape.”
Caitlin stopped. “What are you talking about?”
“If we can free James…”
“Are you crazy? Have you completely lost your mind? He’s captured by The State. People don’t come back from that.”
“Johanna did.”
“She got lucky.”
“Maybe, but she knows the way in. She can guide us to him.”
Caitlin looked at Anne with a puzzled look. “Why are you pushing so hard for this?”
“Cause I believe we can save him. And I also believe you want to save him as much as I do.”
Caitlin kept staring at her, and Anne, feeling uncomfortable, looked away.
“It’s insane,” Caitlin finally said, with a significantly lower voice.
“Is that a yes?” Anne asked.
“I suppose it is.” Caitlin said, not smiling, but looking a little intrigued.
Anne smiled. “Then I know where to start. Tomorrow, we’re bringing down Officer Hannah and The State!”