taxonomites | 009 ||[ Location: Sanctuary] || Nine Princes in Amber

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009 ||[ Location: Sanctuary] || Nine Princes in Amber

Waking up in a place he had definitely not gone to sleep was a rather large blow to Corwin’s soldiers’ instincts. He’d come awake all at once, tense and ready to strike with his hand on his blade—

—but nothing had happened. Typical. Get him worked up over nothing…

Everything felt too…medical. Stifling. Too many reminders of a certain Greenwood Private Hospital and nights spent over-narcotized and memoryless. Dreamless, even. They hadn’t even given him that luxury.

He could at least change that, dammit. He’d lost his cloak in the suddenness of the move (not so much as a warning to grab at least a few things, hm?), but it wasn’t the worst thing that could have vanished. He still had something sharp with him, the sword his best and most trusted companion, that one piece of the Pattern that he still had access to.

It was, understandably, a surprise when he ran face-first into…something keeping him inside the building. First holding him inside the city, now…caging him in here? This place was getting to be more a prison every day he stayed.

Experience here told him that anger was useless, but it should have been frightening. He’d done terrible things to people for less than this—he should have been an unstoppable force—

—only he wasn’t. And that only made him angrier.

After several more attempts at leaving, he finally gave up with an oath and turned to stalk the halls instead, all dark and silver, restlessness hardly abated.

Someone else had to be in here.

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She frowned, not quite certain how to take the short brusque laugh. A moment of scrutinizing Corwin didn't give her any hints, so Alexis took it as skeptical amusement, which was the best of the options she could come up with. "You wouldn't happen to know why we're stuck in here, would you?"

"Not a clue, Princess, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the hamsters being amused watching us all scurry around." Because that's what it always was. And he couldn't bring himself to even grudgingly like it. Interesting, he'd admit to, but "interesting" left all kinds of room for imterpretation.

The mental image that painted for Alexis was a particularly vivid one, and she looked up at the sterile walls of the Sanctuary with sudden suspicion. "So you think it's payback for us putting rats in mazes?" she asked. The suggestion sounded surreal to her, but on the other hand, so did giant hamster aliens.

"So... we get out when we find the cheese in the middle of the maze?"

"I don't know what the hell it's revenge for, kid--" he had enough that people wanted revenge for that until someone told him it could really be anything--"and good luck finding that cheese. Or the maze. I'm more inclined to believe the 'cage' theory. Somehow, this seems more like bars than labyrinth walls."

She wrinkled her nose at the continued nicknames, but didn't bother correcting him. Somehow it didn't seem like it would actually do anything, except maybe get her more nicknames. And worse ones. "But people leave," she pointed out instead. "People on the network keep talking about their friends going home. So there's got to be a way out, right?"

"How do you know they've done it on purpose? How do you know it's not the hamsters getting bored of them and getting rid of them?" That made a lot more sense from what anyone knew of this place than people actually escaping under their own power. "This isn't exactly the fairest place in the universe. In case you hadn't noticed."

The nose wrinkle became a frown and Alexis glared at him in the way that only teenagers really managed to perfect, an irritation born of the belief that adults clearly needed youthful experience to enlighten them. "If the hamsters got bored and got rid of them wouldn't they just kill them as a--"

Equal parts dawning enlightenment and horror warred over Alexis' features as the magnitude of her unthinking retort grew. "Oh."

That look got one of his own right back--more disapproving than pouty, though--as he watched her expression change when things started to dawn on her. Maybe it was a bad idea to be telling her all of this, but where he was from, ignorance was worse.

"Starting to figure it out?"

Her dad had been here, for a few days, and had gone again. If the aliens had really gotten bored and... And Kate... Horror was definitely starting to win out and Alexis took an involuntary step away from Corwin, her shoulders slumping as if she was trying to draw into herself.

A long moment, at least for her, as she blinked rapidly. No tears fell, even if there was a watery brightness in her eyes for a moment before she spoke again, more subdued this time, younger sounding. "But if they did, then they'd leave the bodies as a warning. To scare us."

Corwin shrugged, shaking his head. He didn't actually expect that that was what was going on, but it was a possibility. They had been captured, sure, but their captors had been nice enough to give them a city to roam around in, a nice big cage to play with each other. At least they kept them mostly safe, even if there were occasional zombies.

"Maybe that's not it, then."

The implications (of both sides of the equation) sunk in slowly, and Alexis furrowed her brow as she tried to get the initial reaction under control. "Then what makes you think it's a cage instead of a maze?"

"It sounds nicer." But he knew that was only part of it. And despite trying not to continue, he kept right on going. "Because a maze implies that there's a way out that we can find. A cage has only the door that the collectors can open when they want to play. I'm not entirely convinced that anything we do will get us out of here."

She frowned at that. "Have you tried?" she couldn't help but ask. It wasn't in Alexis' nature to not try everything she found interesting. "There's an awful lot here. I haven't even finished trying to break my tablet."

"...you haven't finished trying to break it?" That didn't really make any sense, but then it had seemed particularly hardy, even standing up to his best efforts to smash it into pieces when no one was looking and he couldn't stand the cage's bars any longer.

"Of course not. It's an experiment," she answered, as if there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about the idea. She ticked things off on her fingers as she spoke. "I've tried dropping it off a couple of buildings, but that didn't work. Then I tried a hammer. And soaking it in the bathtub. And boiling it."

Alexis gestured to the Sanctuary. "I had planned on freezing it next, but then we got stuck here."

Corwin gave a low whistle at that. The kid was nothing if not thorough at least. That was almost to the point of impressive and he'd been lacking for that lately. There was little enough to be impressed with around here that didn't have anger and frustration attached just as firmly to it. He could be impressed with what they'd done to stick him here, sure, but, sure enough, the rage with it would follow.

"Sounds like you've got it pretty well-covered."

It was obvious by the smile on Alexis' face that she was pleased by the reaction she got. "Not really," she answered. "I've only covered what I think might break it, and the aliens probably thought of those too, since they're pretty simple. I should ask on the network about other ideas."

A pause, and her pleased smile grew thoughtful. "Maybe I can ask someone to shoot at it. Or blow it up."

"At this point, I doubt that there's much left." Or that any of it woud have any effect, but as long as he was at least pretending to be encouraging, she didn't need to know that part. No need to spoil anything she was keeping herself occupied with.

"Good luck with those experiments of yours."

She nodded, thoughtful despite the smile. "Thank you. It keeps me busy." She used to say that it helped keep her caught up with her classes back home, but... she'd stopped thinking about that a while ago.

She turned away to continue her exploration, then stopped and turned back. "I hope you're wrong, you know. About this being a cage."

That sigh was, perhaps, just a little too much on the side of obvious, but he couldn't exactly help it, either. His expression grew distant as he looked away from her, fighting back the nostalgia that always came with thinking of Amber.

"Me too, kid."

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009 ||[ Location: Sanctuary] || Nine Princes in Amber

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