The White Rabbit Chronicles - Part X

X

Sainne waited impatiently as he stared into the turquoise film. The great oblongs shifted and pulsed in their suspended film between the intersecting rings. When he stared at the view for too long, he found it faintly disquieting. Like these undulating blobs were secretly trying to tell him something. To whisper some foul alien secret to him. Some secret he already knew deep down, but had buried it far below the surface. For everyone’s sake.

The technicians scurrying around were taking longer than he’d like to connect the gate. But he knew that haunting their steps would do little good. He prized his disturbing visage, but it was a tool that had its limits. Putting the fear of Anarakia into his minions would do little to improve their focus and coordination.

If the problem wasn’t on the other side.

Sainne had specifically instructed the operators which gates needed to be connected. The one here, and the one on Aechyr. But it seemed that his little duel had unforeseen ripple effects. Khina was sniffing around his holdings on Aechyr, and his own forces on that island were suspicious as a result. A call from the Black Skull’s facility to connect a time gate? Their vigilance would normally be rewarded. But currently it was a nuisance. He was the new Sainne, and they owed him loyalty. The latter they knew perfectly well.

Finally, the two rings swept over each other, crossing paths as if the other wasn’t there. And when they came to rest once more in the same position, the blue surface had vanished. Instead, his eyes met pink clouds with a golden radiance pouring through.

Finally.

He signaled for the entirety of his contingent, and without waiting, marched forward and crossed time.

***

White Rabbit pulled herself back up. She had fallen, rather than climbed, out of her hiding place. The lunch she had scarfed down was long gone, as was the strength it had given her. She stared at the puffy clouds from the back of the gate. They looked like any other opening to a time gate, even though she had never seen them from this vantage point.

And yet, somehow, intangibly, they looked stormy. They were the same fluffy texture and warm pink hue, but something was wrong. She couldn’t just run into them from this side.

She pulled herself up and plodded forward. The patter of footfalls from Sainne’s men pouring through the gate reached her ears as if there was nothing between her and them. Maybe there wasn’t. But they didn’t cry out for her capture. She was safe for a moment, and she’d have to wait moments more to make her move. She paused at the back side of the gate. The pink mist reached out, nearly touching her boots. She recoiled. She knew, somehow, she couldn’t let it touch her.

And yet she’d have to. To get around to the front of the gate, she’d have to dive through the small opening between the wall and one of the angled rings. And as always, when the gate was active, the clouds extended just a ways beyond the threshold. A sickly caress waiting for any errant touch.

The stomping of boots suddenly ceased. The last of the enemy had gone through. She had to go now. In case the others turned off the gate.

She sprang from the floor and made for the opening. She could feel the clouds cling to her skin, sizzling with the gentle cling of acid mist. It was a mere second, and she was already through, suddenly back into the chamber that had first spawned her. Technicians looked up at her. A jaw fell open.

She turned on her heel. Before the clouds clinging to her could dissolve her flesh. She had to get into the right ones. The opposite but identical clouds that were on the right side of the gate. She had to de-atomize herself in the leap through time. Only by being reassembled on the other end could she be saved.

The warm embrace of these new clouds barely caressed her skin as she flew into the gate. And fell, and fell, and fell. The golden hue gave way to endless and formless white. She tumbled head over heels, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t real anymore.

A round cutout in the perfect blankness appeared in the distance. It rushed towards her. She thought that was rather curious. It looked kind of like the exit to a time gate. But she wasn’t real. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Her battered body banged against a rocky surface. She rolled once, scraping her arms against some ragged edge. All of the pain and exhaustion suddenly bloomed in her conscious mind.

What just happened?

Where was she?

Her eyes refused to grab hold of her dim surroundings after all the white. Before they could feed her any information, a tremor running up her arms told her something was wrong. The rock she had been unceremoniously deposited on shuddered. Some great force was beating against this new world like it was a giant drum.

Shouts and scurrying assaulted her eardrums. There was more confusion and panic out there than in the spinning recesses of her skull. But somehow her mind was able to churn out an answer – to fit the signs to a pattern.

This was a battle.

She scrambled without thinking. Her groping hands sought any form of cover that could shelter her battered body. As they scrambled across the stone, her eyes finally started to dissolve the blurry fog that hid the commotion around her. She was in some sort of cave. Another long tunnel lay ahead, but this one carved out of rock. There was the time gate in the wall behind her, still humming with its eerie energy, and a few crates of supplies stacked about in haphazard formation. The only things piercing the heavy shadows were the glowing mouth of the gate and some fiery iron lanterns burning orange against the walls.

The men inside hardly spared a glance. There was a whole column scrambling up the tunnel and away from her. The sounds of battle – of artillery and gut-wrenching screams – came from that way too.

The cavern shuddered and a rain of dust and pebbles pelted her. She scrambled behind the nearest wooden crate, trying to piece together why she was here. What she was supposed to do.

“Hey! Tagalong!” someone cried out.

That was it. The end of her luck. Two men hadn’t made after the now long-gone troops. They were parked at either side of the narrow exit, their hard eyes still on the larger cave. The last line of defense. And one was pointing her out.

Once more, she acted before thought could slow her down. White Rabbit clutched at her time gauge and wrenched out the crystal. Her final weapon. She had charge now. She would–

A blue bolt from a silver pistol struck her in the chest before the crystal reached her palm.

***

White Rabbit was adrift in a sea of agony. Crashing waves threatened to split her head open. She couldn’t feel anything else. Except her stomach, which seemed to be stirred up by that sea. The queasiness fed off the pain and forced her from the comfortable darkness of unconsciousness.

Once again, she was dependent on her failing senses. Something cold on her wrists. A new pain on her back. And still dim lighting. But this time it was a cool mechanical blue rather than the flickering of flames.

Awareness returned much quicker this time around. Perhaps whipped up by the constant pressure of her throbbing temples. She was in a small room, with gray and blue walls, handcuffed and strapped to a metal chair in the middle.

She was a prisoner awaiting interrogation.

Curse the quick thinking of that Anarakian sentry. He had just delivered a Time Peace white rabbit into his masters’ hands. An asset beyond compare, especially right after a rabbit hole had been opened up.

She could feel that she no longer had the safety helmet on, but the workman’s coveralls were still smothering her body. She was hot and exhausted, and her head was about to explode. She was utterly defeated. She couldn’t stand up to any interrogation.

But what answers did she have to give? She couldn’t clock why she was here any more. She was the White Rabbit, but what did that mean? It meant she was a ghost outside of time – alone and incomprehensible. She was a non-human being. The floating remainder of things that never were. What good would she be to anyone?

There was still some faint thumping playing against the walls. But not much. She slumped against the chair and let apathy be her guide. She slipped into senselessness, disregarding anything that tried to flit through her mind. Anything but her immediate comfort. The sensation of being strapped to the metal frame of the chair drove from her mind any doubt as to what might have caused her back ache. Ergonomics clearly were not a concern when it came to prisoners.

Time’s sticky fingers couldn’t find purchase in her brain. Hours, days, minutes, it all slipped past without significance. Until the door slid open.

She waited for the posturing and the intimidation, numb but compliant to it all. But strangely, it wasn’t some Anarakian interrogator strolling in. Two grimy men in combat fatigues peeked in, twitching their rifles about like paranoid antennae. Their faces remained blank even as their eyes swept over her. One turned into the room, scanning the corners, before announcing, “Clear!”

Now a third man materialized, stepping up to her, weapon hanging limply in its sling. His face was as covered in sweat and dirt as the other two. They all looked horribly out of place, like they had just stepped out of a sweaty desert and into a space station.

“What’s your name?” he asked in a gruff voice that tried at gentleness.

“White Rabbit.”

Something about that didn’t seem to please them.

“What’s your number?” he pressed on.

“I don’t know.”

“Something’s not right here, Sarge,” one of the others put in.

“Easy, Mendez,” the man speaking to her reproached him.

“It smells like a setup,” the other muttered anyway.

“If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” the Sergeant barked. Then regaining his composure in a snap, turned back to White Rabbit. “What are you doing here?”

“I have no idea,” she answered honestly, her head falling to one side.

Somehow, the sergeant was appeased by the words. At the very least, they got him to turn his gaze back towards his men and away from her. White rabbit heard, but discarded the words being dealt between them.

“–rabbit hole recently–”

“–always know their number–”

“–an Anarakian bunker–”

“–at her hair!”

As they inched towards the inevitable conclusion that they would hand her off to someone else, something started to squeak from deep within the recesses of Rabbit’s mind. A little insistent voice that couldn’t make itself entirely clear.

“Silva,” she muttered, manifesting the impulse.

“What did you say?” the sergeant asked, interest suddenly sparked anew.

“Captain Silva. I need to say something to him,” she muttered, still piecing it together herself.

“Do you know Captain Silva?”

She had pulled something free. Now a trickle of the past was pouring out.

“I need to tell him about someone.”

“We can pass along a message.”

“No– it’s something important. I need to do something. There’s someone–Frost! Kennedy Frost!” White Rabbit suddenly blurted. The dam had broken. Everything was flooding back. Her past instantiation was shouting at her.

You need to go! Complete the mission!

“Who?” the sergeant asked, bewildered.

“I need to find Kennedy Frost! He’s under Silva’s command! Sainne’s going to kill him!”

Purpose was pushing out the numbness. Even though part of her didn’t understand, a past life was puppetting her thoughts. All she had left to give was surrender. Surrendering to herself seemed like a good option. Beat surrendering to anyone else, right?

The two men behind the leader exchanged glances.

“Do you know how hard it is to find one Theta in the middle of a battlefield?” the sergeant asked.

“I need to do it! It’s why I came back!”

“So then you are the most recent Rabbit?”

“I don’t–yes! I followed Sainne down the rabbit hole! We have to stop him!” the voice inside her pressed out.

“We’ll send word,” the sergeant said dubiously.

“I have to go,” White Rabbit heard herself say, and she tried to stand up. Pain blossomed freely across her nerves.

“Just stay here. You’re in no shape. We’ve got people who can take care of this,” the sergeant assured her.

“An Anarak on a battlefield?” she heard another of the soldiers whisper. But the sergeant was sending out the word on his radio. She sank back into the comforting embrace of apathy, back into semi-consciousness. Her echo had been assuaged.

Until.

She was lying flat on something. It was kind of soft. No, it gave beneath her. That was a slightly different sensation, she realized in the jumble of her mind. A stretcher – she was swaying on a stretcher. Being hauled through tunnels. A cool and salty breeze washed in from some distant dimension. But some other stench was hitching a ride. A charred, bloody, evil scent that wormed its way up her nostrils.

Someone ran up alongside her. Started rapping out something. The others tried to steer him away, but he pressed on.

“–Frost?”

Rabbit’s mind stirred again.

“Find Kennedy. Stop Sainne,” she said through the fog.

“What did he want with Frost?” the voice repeated.

“He was going to kill him,” she said. And then suddenly, her eyes flashed open. “Did he? Is he dead?”

“Frost is alive,” the man said. And she immediately recognized the grizzly gray skin and thick black mane.

“Silva!” she said. “It’s Sainne! He went down a rabbit hole! I tried to follow!”

His hard face got harder. “At ease. Just give me the message. Complete your mission.”

White Rabbit swallowed. “That was it. Sainne was after Frost.”

Silva paused, searching her with a hint of disdain.

“Just to kill him?” he asked in his croaking voice.

White Rabbit blinked. The small voice wasn’t helping her this time. “He was after him,” was all she had to offer.

“He didn’t want to do anything else?” Silva pressed, eye boring into her.

“I–I don’t know.” White Rabbit felt her heart ramp up to an erratic pulse. Something was wrong. She had failed. “Silva, what’s happened?”

The steely eyes searched her expression once more, as if doubting she was even human. The beating blades of a helicopter chopped through the air overhead. Sand and dirt blew up around her in the chaotic wake. She realized now she was at the mouth of the cave, staring up into a starry sky marred by roiling smoke. An uncaring moon staring down at her. Like her past life evaluating her dismal performance.

And then Silva announced, “Frost is blind.”

***

END TRANSMISSION