"Hey, Roland. Turn
that shit up. It's a vibe."
"Don't you dare touch it, Roland. Some of us are trying to sleep."
Zimmy flashed the other WARDEN--Aine Anders--a winning smile. "Captain Anders," she said, careful to use the proper rank. Couldn't be too careful, now that they were going home. "Shouldn't we be celebrating a bit? They're taking us back to Rassvet, remember?"
"I'll celebrate when I'm back back at the Citadel in my bed, Morander," said Anders, sitting up on her cot and fixing the younger woman with an even stare, daring her to argue. After a pause, Zimmy nodded, and the captain lay down again, draping an arm over her eyes.
"You're a real buzzkill, Cap'n." Zimmy's lips twitched, and Anders laughed, a genuine, throaty sound.
"Watch your mouth, Zimmy. I could have you court-martialed after all these months of backtalk." The Captain's tone didn't match her threats. Of all the Rassvet Prisoners of War Vangar had, Zimmy and Aine had bonded the quickest. Similar families, and similar interests. Zimmy owed the Captain more than a few drinks when they got back to Rassvet after numerous lost bets.
Roland, the guard assigned to their two cells, met Zimmy's eyes and shrugged. Technically, he could do whatever the hell he wanted, being their captor and all. But Captain Anders had a
way about her. Even the Vangar guards found it hard to go against her will. "Cap'n's orders," he said, only a practiced professionalism hiding his sarcasm.
With a sigh, Zimmy fell back against her own cot and tugged absently on the manacle on her wrist. Five months without the mist. Almost as bad as five months without a drink. She'd been given plenty of food, company, and entertainment, but compared to the finer things in life, they might as well have waterboarded her every night. Once you learned to fly, you could never sit comfortably on the ground again. Being trapped in a cell for months was even worse, like being tossed from a ship into the ocean with an anchor chained to your leg.
The Palatine tilted slightly--it did that every so often, adjusting to the wind or the mist reactor's output level.
Then the floor tipped beneath her, the walls shook, and the ceiling exploded. Zimmy tipped forward out of her seat, crashing against the bars of her cell with a crack. She forgot how to breathe briefly, rolling to one side. The walls vibrated, sending shudders through her skull and teeth. Slowly, her weight started to lessen, as if the Palatine was dropping.
"Morander! Get the fuck up!" Anders' voice cut through the shock, giving the young WARDEN enough presence of mind to get her feet under her again and look up. Through tears of pain, she saw Roland stumbling up the inclined floor toward her. A spike of rebar stuck out of his shoulder, but the burly man's snarl showed none of the agony he must have felt. He pulled the key-chain out of his pocket with his good hand and fumbled open the lock on her door.
Adrenaline was kicking in now, with everything moving in slow motion. Zimmy reached out and clung to the bar's of the cell, half-climbing up to the door. She looked across the hallway and her heart dropped into a pit.
The bottom half of Captain Anders was buried under a pile of concrete and metal. Her face was bone white, but fierce in its determination. "What are you looking at, cadet? Get out of here. That's a direct order."
"Aine!" Zimmy pushed past Roland, leaping across the tilting hallway to grasp at the bars on the other side. She whipped her head back at Roland, eyes wide. "Roland, gimme the keys! We gotta get the damper off so she can--"
"Elizima!" Aine coughed and held up a hand. Her features softened. "I'm not walking away from this, honey. Can't feel my legs, and my lungs aren't draining. You get out of here if you can. See if you can find any other WARDEN, but prioritize bailing. Roland, get her the fuck off this ship!"
Roland actually
saluted the woman, and grabbed Zimmy with his good hand. She wanted to slap him, but her balance was off and his mass pulled her free of the bars. With an angry scream, she hit the hallway floor and slid away from the cells, kicking at Roland to no avail.
"You son of a bitch! You motherfucking SON OF A--" Zimmy's head cracked against the tile, and when her eyes opened again, Roland had her slung over one shoulder, jogging along the outside wall of the ship. "Bitch," she muttered, shaking the stars from her eyes. No luck. "Where are we going?"
"Escape pods," he grunted. "Almost there."
He only made it another three steps before the wall in front of them exploded outward. The wind rushed in with a shriek, tossing them to one side. Zimmy hit the ground with an undignified
whump, but she rolled to her feet in full fight-or-flight mode. Roland cursed as he fell, and didn't get up. The spike in his shoulder oozed blood.
Zimmy reached out a hand toward him, and froze as she saw the manacle on her arm.
Mist. "Roland!" She shouted. "Roland, gimme the keys! I can save us!"
The man looked at her in abject shock. "Are you fucking
serious?"
She couldn't help herself: Zimmy rolled her eyes. "No, I'm married to him! Give me the fucking keys!"
For a millisecond, neither of them moved. Then the wind picked up next to them, howling louder, and Roland broke. He held out the key chain to Zimmy, and she snatched it free. The third key unlocked the damper, and she hurled it away from her.
The power hit her like a sack of bricks, and she almost fell out of the ship. After months of darkness, the mist appeared like a sea of stars: little pin pricks of light that permeated the air, the metal, and all the spaces in between. She could use those dots of light, smoothing them or stretching them.
Or pushing on them. Zimmy darted forward, and with a newfound strength born of magic-infused adrenaline, hoisted the big man up in her arms. She took a few shaky steps, groaning, under the weight.
Then she jumped.
In retrospect, she should have expected the heart-stopping drop. It had been five months since she'd practiced, and flying was
hard. They plummeted down and away from the ship, and for the first time Zimmy saw the extend of the damage. The Palatine had been transformed from the pinnacle of a high-class envoy ship into a flaming heap. How? How had it gone wrong so quickly?
A jolt of turbulence refocused her. Right: fly now, hypothesize later. She closed her eyes, reaching out to the sparks. They were slippery, but she was WARDEN, not some common bitch. The wind heeded her call, and gravity phoned in a holiday. She had to extend part of her power to Roland, but she'd flown Ray goddamn Hopkins himself on one of her better days. Roland was a baby in comparison.
The shitty radio spun past her, still playing. Zimmy swore at it out of instinct, and it tumbled away. The ground was rushing up to meet them. They were coming in hot, and shrapnel from the Palatine was coming in hotter. With Roland in tow, should couldn't do much more than lurched to one side or the other, so with a quick prayer to the Dawn, she dropped them a little faster. She aimed for a patch of shrubbery that hadn't been set on fire, and forced as much of her will into the gravity well of Yerin as she could without diving straight into mistburn. At the last second, she twisted Roland to be above her, spiked shoulder facing up.
The landing was not soft. Roland, even at a third his weight, forced the air from her lungs with extreme prejudice. Pain lanced up her side--cracked rib--and she bounced off the shrubs onto the dirt. Roland rolled away from her, coming to a stop a few feet away.
A few seconds later, a resounding
boom shook the world, only a short ways away. For a few more seconds, Zimmy lay on her back and stared up at the sky: blue streaked with red, black and gray. Her breath came in gasps, her body ached, and her head swam. Mistburn, then.
Zimmy screamed as she hauled herself to her knees, voice echoing through the countryside. She scrambled for Roland's prone form, swearing under her breath as he didn't move. "Don't be dead don't be dead FUCKING don't be fucking DEAD--"
She put a hand on his neck. She felt a stubborn pulse under her fingers. She collapsed onto his chest and started to sob.
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