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The guards opened the door, but I didn’t bother to look at them.
“Artemis, it’s time,” said Daria.
“I’m not moving a single inch,” I said.
“There’s nobody else left, you fool,” said Taylor. “And Ariane’s here. You know, the General Ariane.”
“General Ariane can kiss my bloody vagina,” I sneered. It’s not what Brady would have wanted. She would have been defiant but polite, even if she were dressed in filthy rags in a dingy cell with cockroaches crawling across her face.
“Fuck you Artemis,” groaned Daria. Then Daria and Taylor slammed me with sticks for a solid minute and dragged me out of the cell.
There were no jeers from the other cells, nor shouts of encouragement. There was no staring or shaking of heads. The cells of Michaela prison were empty. All the Natives had died, and all the Imperials had taken the deal.
What idiots. If they knew how the Empire rewarded its greatest hero and most loyal defender, then no woman in the world would have even considered joining.
The guards were saying something about the situation. Something about war and supplies and fortifications. But I hardly listened. I just kept thinking about all those years ago. Those halcyon days of travelling continents, searching for clues, climbing mountains, riding trains, stealing flying machines, talking to villagers. According to the scratchings I’d made on the cell wall, that was all the distant past. According to my mind, that was yesterday. For me, that was the only thing that mattered, the memory of who I once was, and who Brady once was.
The guards dragged my limp body across the Michaela prison complex and into what used to be the Warden’s office. All the furniture had been removed except two chairs and a desk. As the guards lifted me into one chair, I briefly whimpered in pain.
The other chair, normally occupied by the Warden, was instead the location of General Ariane. Her hair was cut short even by military standards. Her drab uniform contrasted with all the shiny status symbols she earned by abandoning all human decency. She had a scar on her cheek, which was great marketing. It might have intimidated a person who still had something left to lose.
“So you’re Artemis,” said the General. “Oh sorry. Where are my manners? You’re Doctor Artemis Munroe, the historian.”
I did not respond.
“The motherland is in danger, Artemis,” said the General. “The republic has looted the entire continent, they’re stealing food from the starving, they’re robbing the poor of their last copper coins, they’re clearing entire forests to feed their war machine.”
I stared at the walls and ceiling. No modern electric lights, but there was sunlight shining through the window. All I could see out there were the clouds and the ocean.
“The Republic’s tyrannical First Citizen will stop at nothing to achieve world domination, and the Princess-Shaman calls on all her daughters to defend the motherland, save our allies and preserve our Empire.”
I did not speak because there was nothing worth saying. The cockroaches of my cell were more honest conversation-partners. The roaches were peaceful eaters of feces, carrion and garbage. The woman across from me, she was a murderer in an Empire of murderers.
“Will you rise to the occassion? Will you follow the command of the Princess-Shaman, the one and only woman guided by the spirits? Will you do what it takes to save the world?”
I stared at the general and said nothing.
The General raised her eyebrow. “We’d set you free after the war. All charges dropped. The Princess-Shaman is generous and forgiving, even to her most… intransigent… daughters.”
I did not move any part of my body, except for my eyes. I looked at the bruises on my arms, and the dirt, and the mosquito bites.
I’d suffer it all again to see Brady once more. But she was with the spirits now.
Hah, the spirits. I used to giggle at such platitudes. Now here I was, generating them and making them part of me.
“We’d pay you. After the war, you could rest in comfort, hire some handsome manservants perhaps. Those degenerates of the Republic, they are actually putting men in their army. Can you believe it? That’s how desperate and maniacal they’ve become,” said the General.
I rolled my eyes. Just kill me, I thought.
Well, why not kill me? I got a bit curious. Surely keeping those idiot guards here was a waste of Imperial resources. There were enough loopholes in the law that the General could unilaterally have me shot, turn Michaela prison into a military base, and press the fisherwomen of neighboring islands into service.
The fisherwomen of this island, of course, were deceased. Much like Brady.
Why did the General want me alive? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
The General looked into my eyes, and I into hers. She didn’t seem scared, nor angry. She seemed focused. She was looking for something from me, something specific.
General Ariane then looked up, and spoke to the guards. “Can you two wait outside for a bit?”
The guards stood up straight and saluted the General. “Sir, yes, sir,” they said, and tried their best to look disciplined and soldierly as they exited.
All that was left was Ariane, myself, and the window to the ocean.
“Care for a drink?” asked General Ariane, pulling out a bottle of wine from the desk. “I was surprised to find this in the cellar here. Half a century old. Might be the last good wine in the Empire, the girls on the front pissed away the rest of the booze.”
I tried not to respond, but a smile briefly appeared and disappeared from my face.
“Well? Do you want any?” asked Ariane the general, the murderer, the liar, the hypocrite, the manipulator. This is manipulation, this is textbook, I thought to myself. Her alleged joke? Wasn’t even funny, I thought to myself. That’s the only person I share my thoughts with, myself.
I said nothing.
“Suit yourself,” said Ariane, as she popped open the bottle and poured herself a glass. Ariane looked out at the ocean and sighed.
“I miss her too, you know. I didn’t know her personally, but I knew of her. Captain Brady Indigo, hero of the Swamy war, defender of the Empire, executor of the terrorist, the so-called Chosen One. I heard all about her when I was a kid. She was a legend. She was my inspiration.”
I opened my mouth, but closed it before any words could escape my lips
The General continued, “It was awful how she died. Stabbed by a savage. She deser-”
“NO! IT’S NOT TRUE!” I screamed. “It was over! The natives were scattered and fleeing and dead! And I saw Brady alive! The Empire killed her! The Empire must have killed her! She was alive after the massacre.”
I expected some hostility from General Ariane. That was my usual reward for telling the truth: getting beat with sticks, mockery from the guards, drugs from the doctors, crying into the cold floor of a dark cell. Even calling the massacre a massacre was treason. But I would do it all again. I would never betray Captain Brady Indigo.
General Ariane didn’t sound angry however. Her voice remained neutral as she said, “the official records say otherwise.”
“The records are lies!” I shouted.
“The records were written by Captain Indigo’s own sister,” said Ariane.
“Lies! You can’t trust her! Throw her in this prison, that snake, she’ll admit to everything, she’ll crack in day!” I yelled.
“I cannot interrogate the dead,” said Ariane.
It look a few seconds for me process that remark. I could feel my heart slow down, and my fists loosen.
“How much of the offical story of Captain Indigo is trustworthy?” asked the general.
“I don’t know the official story except for the end,” I said.
“Well then let me be more specific,” the general said. She got up, stood at my side, and leaned in.
“The records state you two stole a fixed wing aircraft, and flew it out of a Republican-aligned facility. Is that true?”
I thought back. Back to all those years ago that felt like yesterday. Back to Brady and I in the skies, her hair waving in the wind, with only the clouds for company. Back to that moment when I looked into her eyes, and her irises were lit by the setting sun.
I wished for that moment to return.
I wished that moment was my entire life.
I felt my mind fall to pieces as I responded to the General. “That’s the only true fact in the universe.”
“Well, Artemis, you have a choice. Either you can die in the ground, or you can kill in the sky. For the first time ever, the air itself has become a theatre of war, and the Empire wants all the pilots it can get.”
“I don’t care about what the Empire wants,” I said.
“I know. But riddle me this: what would Brady want?” asked General Ariane.
Tears welled up in my eyes. My face contorted as I started to cry and nod in unison. And that was how I, the last prisoner of Michaela, volunteered to join the Imperial Air Force.
This is an epilogue to a novel that I no longer want to write.