Chapter Text
This is it. It's almost time.
Soon I hope to be free of this place, never to return. However, I will be at peace if I had just a few short moments of true freedom.
I check the clock frequently as I check my bag for the third time since packing it.
I hide my bag in its usual spot a few moments before the time Dr. Saniteon should enter the room for his first visit today.
"Good morning Edethian, how are you feeling this morning?" He asks with a friendly smile.
"Good morning Dr. Saniteon. I'm feeling okay except I feel a little anxious this morning." I say with my hands clasped on my lap, blindly twiddling my thumbs.
"Yes, I can see that in your hormones, your cortisol levels are rather high." He answers, looking at the touchscreen device in his hands, tapping a finger on the back. "Do you know why?"
"It is because I am afraid of leaving this place," I say, that part of my statement wasn't a complete lie. "I've spent my entire life safely kept here. I'm afraid of what would happen if I'm ever away from here."
"Would you like some medication to help relieve this fear?" The doctor asks, reaching into his pocket.
I shake my head. "No thanks, I want to try some of the more natural methods you suggested to me."
"Alright." He says, pulling his hand out. "You know how to contact me if you change your mind. Is there anything else you would like to talk to me about?"
I shake my head.
"Okay, well, as I said you know how to contact me. Also, your breakfast is on the dining table, I bought it in for you." He says, turning around and walking, stopping at the door and turning to look at me. "Oh, and the time when we show you the meaning of your existence is almost upon us."
He left after he spoke those words, and for a brief moment, I wondered if I should stay here and wait.
Doctor Saniteon says that I'll know the meaning of my existence every day, but he never said how close I was to that day. If I stay, then I won't have much longer to stay here before I know why I was brought into this world.
However, I end up abandoning these thoughts. I'd rather be free than know why I'm even alive, I can figure that out by myself later.
I leave my sleeping area with my bag and enter the main room, looking at the meal on the table and deciding not to eat it. I don't want anything from this place in my body. Not now.
Instead, I grab the blunt knife and head to the blind spot in this room before unscrewing the already loose metal panel that covers the wires that controls everything electronic in this room.
Once the panel is off, I search for the green wire, because if I remember correctly, the green wire is the camera wire.
After a few moments of digging, I finally reach it and I pull. Once I think that I am too weak to do such a simple thing, it finally gives.
Next, I scramble to find the orange wire. Once it is found, I start moving it frantically, with my eyes on the skylight that sat far above my head.
I hear several pairs of footsteps approaching the door when it finally opens a crack. I would have liked to make it open wider, but I had no time. I needed to move quickly if I wanted to escape.
I back up until I feel the wall at the opposite end of the room press up against my back.
Next, I closed my eyes and concentrated on spreading my wings, hoping I wouldn't have to attempt to stab myself with a blunt knife in order for my wings to make an appearance.
For once in my life, the anxiety that seemed to almost suffocate me was actually useful to me, as it brought out the golden rays of light from my back.
Smiling softly at the sensation from the soft heat my wings produced, I sprinted forward and jumped. Though there was far too much gravity for me to actually take off, it was enough to get me onto the wall and with a push of my legs, I was able to glide to a higher place on the opposite wall.
By the time the door was violently forced open a few moments of jumping later, I jumped and barley, barely grabbed onto the ledge of the roof through the skylight.
Once I managed to squeeze my bag through the rather tight gab, I looked down right as the guards who had come in to make sure I wasn't doing what I was doing looked up. I gave them a smirk and a wave before squeezing myself through the crack.
Next came an issue I didn't consider, the star that gave my birth planet was brighter than I remembered. I expected it to be like the glass box that General Bixillie took me to on rare occasion, the closest place to outside I had ever been before this.
However, with a hand providing my squinting eyes with shade, I needed to keep moving.
"Stay where you are!" I hear a voice from behind me.
I turn around and see a handful of guards standing there, all with blasters drawn on me.
They made me wait, standing near enough to the edge that I would be able to just fall backward and hit the ground if I don't let my wings stop me first. I stood impatiently as I felt my hearts nearly beat out of my chest until the calming face of General Bixillie came through the middle of the group.
"Lower your weapons." He told the guards with a wave of his hand.
"B-but sir!" One of them protested. "Th-"
"I said to lower your weapon! That is an order!" He yelled at the guard. "Edethian is too close to the edge of the building to be put to sleep."
"What're you gonna do?" Asked another guard. "Try and talk them back into captivity?"
"Not captivity. Home." He corrected the guard. "Edethian, it's dangerous out there and you know it. You can't be there by yourself. You don't have much longer to wait before things will get better for you."
A part of me wants to give him and his desperate gaze. If I trusted anyone here, it was him.
"I'm sorry, General," I say. "I want to feel the feeling of freedom. This may be the last time you see me, so I just want to let you know that even though I never met my father, you were the closest thing to a father I've ever had."
"Edethian! Wait! You don't under-"
"Goodbye, General," I say before falling backward and letting my wings carry me through the air.
I wished I could close my eyes and enjoy freedom, but I had no time. I needed to hijack a ship that will take me into space.
To my delight, I had a ship from the labs following me in no time. Even better, it was a new flyer.
It took almost no effort to flip around to the top of it and break in through the roof hatch.
"Out," I say simply, grabbing the blaster before the pilot could.
"N-no!" He protested. "That blaster will only make me go to sleep, so I'm not scared."
"I know that it will. I also know how to throw sleeping vonsols out of ships just like this one." I tell him, smirking in triumph.
"Y-Yea... Right, sorry.." He says with his hands in the air. "I'll be going."
Once I am certain he is gone, I sit in the pilot seat and let the time I spent reading from Bixillie's guide to flight while in his office be put to use.
The first thing I did was pull up, the next thing was realizing I don't really know what I'm doing and the third thing was scrambling to find a flight manual as another pair of lab ships pulled up behind me and demand that I just give myself to them.
I was able to relax when I found one and put it aside for when I knew I'd need it. I was still being chased though, so I sped up. I only stopped speeding up when the ship couldn't go any faster.
It was an hour since the lab ships gave up before I slowed down and hid in an asteroid field and truly relaxed at last.
I decided now was a good time to listen in on any communication line from the labs and listen to updates on their search for me.
It was mostly just people reporting that I wasn't where they looked for me. I didn't hear anything interesting until I found a pair of voices I recognized while changing through frequencies.
"I don't understand why he didn't let me shoot?" One of them says, I recognized the voice from one of the guards on the roof. "It wouldn't be that hard to catch him as he fell."
"And what if they weren't caught in time and they did die?" The other one asks. "How do you expect Rarriun to explain to Zarkon what would've happened? Like what? Is she supposed to say 'hey, so you remember that thing from the labs you wanted? Well, we sorta killed it by accident, so you're gonna have to wait another twenty years before you can get-"
I turned off the radio, not wanting to get tied up in whatever they were saying.
If I was going to learn more about myself, I want to learn it myself.
Once I was done resting, I decided it was best to try and get to the asteroid field on the outskirts of this solar system by the end of my day.
I flew down slowly, leaving this belt and sped off for the next asteroid field.
After checking my scanners to see if there was anything between the field and me, I was able to rest after learning there was nothing.
The flight continued peacefully for many hours.
I was about to take a nap after dinner when the sound of an alarm along with a blinking red light filled the ship.
I rushed to the front of the ship and hopped into the pilot's seat to see what was wrong.
The good news in this situation was that I was about to enter the asteroid field I wanted to reach, the bad news was that I only had enough fuel to slow the ship down so I might not die when I crash into one of the many space boulders or dodge the field completely and drift through space with the hope I get close enough to a planet with a civilization advanced enough to save me before I can be found or starve to death.
I decided to try my fate with the asteroid field, it just seemed to be my best chance if I hoped to survive.
I headed to the center of the ship and buckled myself into the couch before pulling the bag I left with onto my lap.
I made it farther into the asteroid field than I had expected, I almost thought I'd drift through the whole thing just when the alarms buzzed to life after the collision sensors did what they were designed to do.
I watched and listened as the screens counted down until the inevitable.
"Impact in 10..."
"Yes, yes I know," I said to the ship as if it could hear me.
"9..."
I read the words under the countdown saying to steer away from what I was about to crash into.
"8..."
"Stop telling me to turn away."
"7..."
"Because I'm not going to."
"6..."
I lean back and close my eyes, wondering if I was ever going to open them.
"5..."
"4..."
I take a deep breath in.
"3..."
And I let it go.
"2..."
I realize that I don't want to die.
"1..."
But it's too late to do anything to change my fate now.
"Collision imminent. Prepare for impact."