Surviving Arkadia

Someone did follow me. The officer trailed in my wake, still talking.

“We can’t have you in the building unsupervised. You’re clearly built for stealing,” he said.

“You know I’ve already been this way?” I said as I walked around the experiment benches on the way to the door to the next room.

“Such big eyes you have, all the better to find things with. Such big ears you have, all the better to avoid pursuers.”

“Not actually a Wolf-Kin,” I said.

The officer grabbed my right arm and I stopped. “Funny thing. Little Red Riding Hood and her Big Bad Wolf never made it to Arkadia,” he said. “I know because I checked.”

So he was an Outlander and now he knew I was one too. “So you put that uniform on by choice, knowing full-well what it looked like?” I said. And then my brain caught up with me and too late I realised that he had to be bluffing. There was no way to know that a particular story wasn’t found here at all. Just that it wasn’t part of pop culture in Talia or Ostia or wherever he’d found himself.

“Whatever do you mean?” he said. “I think it’s very stylish.”

“You look like Nazi Germany fucked Imperial Japan and Mussolini dressed the baby. You’ve got little skulls all over you.”

He looked down at his uniform and that gave me the opening I needed. Sparring with Akira and Varma back on the Citadel had proved useful. My UNARMED COMBAT skill was now 6 and I’d managed to level my BITE, CLAW STRIKE and CLAWED KICK skills to 2, 5 and 4 respectively. BITE was hard to level in sparring for obvious reasons.

As Varma had taught me I moved in several directions at once. I used the claws of my left hand to clear his hand from my right forearm at the same time as my right arm moved back in the direction he was pulling me to strike him with my elbow. I’d hoped to get his throat but by the feel of it I only got the breastplate. He staggered backwards as I vaulted the last two benches and made it to the door in the back wall of the room.

I almost charged right into Nurse Trudy. She was in the second lab, pulling Tommy and Angela close to herself and looking back out the door into the corridor. I started to ask her what she was doing there when I heard something thud against the wall. It sounded awfully like Amris, body slamming someone into the corridor wall.

“The soldiers,” she started to say.

“No time,” I said. “Hurry out the back and then back into the corridor.” I pointed to the door in the back wall of the lab and tried to shoo them towards it.

Angela reacted to something over my shoulder and grabbed Tommy’s hand. She backed away in the direction of the door at the back of the lab.

“I knew it,” said the officer from behind me. “You are from Moonstone.”

I got to watch as Nurse Trudy’s face went pale. I imagined the blood leaving her face for her legs. All the better to run with. She turned and hurried after the children.

I turned to face the officer but backed away from him, trying to keep some distance between us. I wanted to keep his focus on me and not on Trudy or the children.

“Why such a hurry to leave? It was the same when we arrived in the city. What is it with you people and always running away?” said the officer.

“You know you’re holding a gun, my dude?” It was an effort to keep my voice level as I inched away from him. There was an empty holster at his hip. I must have missed the gun before, when it was in the holster. It’s funny how your brain grabs onto little details when the prospect of getting shot pushes your heart rate through the roof.

The gun was an ugly thing. The bastard child of a Luger and a revolver with a little touch of flintlock about it.

“All the more reason to stop,” he said. “You don't want me to shoot you, do you?”

“That makes me instantly suspicious about the alternatives. I don’t make the rules, Hans. You’re covered in little skulls. That makes you the bad guy.” Behind me I could hear Trudy and the children leaving via the door to the next lab.

I tried to increase my pace but the important thing was to prevent the officer from just shooting me and running after the others. I heard another thud from the corridor and I hoped that Amris had dealt it out and was not on the receiving end.

The officer’s head twitched in the direction of the sounds from the corridor. I also didn’t want him to run out and shoot Amris but I wasn’t above using the distraction to put more distance between us. I vaulted over one of the experiment benches and suddenly there was a lump of solid oak furniture between me and the gun.

“That’s why people fled the city. An army rocks up with no warning and no demands and people assume that whatever it wants is so bad that it takes an army to enforce it. If you’d wanted regular Empire stuff you could have just sent a message. If you’d told us that we needed to fly your flag and pay you tribute we would have understood that. An Empire’s gotta empire. We probably would have rolled over for that. Moonstone didn’t even have a standing army. We would have put your flags up and put some people in your very pretty uniforms and complained about paying your taxes. What you’re doing isn’t regular Empiring.”

I heard furniture being dragged across the floor on the other side of the door behind me and then Trudy growling at me to “Get in here now.”

The officer started to say something but I didn’t wait to find out what it was. I rolled backwards over the last bench between me and the door and darted through.

Trudy and the children were waiting on the other side. Tommy pushed the door closed and Trudy and Angela slid a bench into place to keep it closed.

We fled to the central corridor. I expected to see Amris there, possibly still fighting the soldiers, but the hallway was empty. I could still hear sounds of struggle though, and see evidence of the ongoing fight. The middle door on the other side of the corridor had been broken open. It looked like someone had been thrown into it and the impact had torn it off its hinges.

“Take the kids out,” I said to Trudy. “I’m going to help Amris. We’ll be right behind you.”