Hunter
What had they gotten themselves into? The tunnel sloped down and opened up into a cavern that could only be described as a bunker. Most of the room was taken up by electronics, computers, monitors, and things Hunter couldn’t identify. In one corner, there was a lumpy cot and scattered all around were empty pouches from dehydrated meal packs like the ones at the cottage.
The stale, fetid smell of someone who’d long ago given up on hygiene permeated the air and Hunter choked down a gag, his head still swimming in fog.
Snow wrinkled her nose, but made no comment about the stench. He had to give her credit. Not many princesses would be able to function in these conditions. But she’d kept a level head and saved their skins. As long as the nutjob didn’t turn on them again.
“Wow,” she said breathing through her mouth. “How long have you been down here?”
“Wrong question,” the man snapped, whirling on her with the blaster aimed at her chest. Hunter rushed in to push her back, coming between them.
“Okay, you don’t have to answer that,” she said, gently, the way one would talk to a rampaging wild animal. “What’s your name? Is that an okay question?”
The guy huffed and holstered the blaster, turning his back on them to tend to his computers. “No need for one.”
“Snow, we should just go,” Hunter whispered. What could they really hope to get out of this guy? And if they did get anything, could they even trust it? He was a raving lunatic.
“Beaver told me about you, do you remember him? He said you might be able to tell us about the project you worked on, for the Queen?”
“Doctor… Doctor…” His face screwed up in concentration and he slammed his fist on the table when he couldn’t produce anything else.
“You’re a doctor, then? We can call you that, if that’s okay?”
“Listen, Doc,” Hunter said, not able to hide his disdain for this whole farce. “Do you remember working for the Queen or not?” What would they even do with another dead end? Where would they go from here without this supposedly valuable information that Beaver had promised them?
“She’s always listening. Ears everywhere. Killed everyone else, but not me. No, no, no. Not me. Come for me and I’ve got a plan, I do. Won’t see it coming. BOOM!” Doc dissolved into a peal of disconcerting giggles and Hunter shuffled on his feet, edging back from the madman.
“A plan is good,” Snow hazarded. “We’re trying to make a plan too. Can you tell us what you helped her with?”
“Chips,” he said, sobering. “It’s all in the chips.”
Snow frowned and Hunter’s hand instinctively went to cover his heart, digging the heel of his palm into his chest.
“Chips? Haven’t you mentioned those before?” she asked, turning to Hunter. He dropped his hand and tried to remember what he’d already told her and what he was purposely not telling her. The stories were getting harder to keep track of.
“Yeah. Every Imperial citizen gets one. Except the ones that elect to have them removed, though that’s considered treason.”
“What do they do?”
He swallowed and tasted salty sweat when he licked his lips. “Officially? Banking, medical records, employment history, passports… Unofficially? She’s tracking everyone. A lot easier to see patterns of dissent when you monitor every aspect of someone’s life.”
She scowled then, putting all the pieces together. “That’s why there haven’t been tourists on Avuuna? People are scared of being marked dissidents?”
“Treason is executable,” Hunter said, his heart hammering in his throat, blocking his airway, making his throat tight and painful.
“Always listening. Always watching,” Doc muttered.
She turned back to him, her expression softening as if he were a child she was afraid of upsetting. “So you helped her create the chips? You know how to disable them, then, right?”
He blinked owlishly, his head tilted to the side. “You don’t want to do that,” he said, his voice clear, his eyes focused instead of wild and fearful.
“Why not?” Snow asked.
“She has the master. Can’t disable them any other way,” he said.
Hunter’s blood ran cold. They’d have to get to the Queen to do it? If he’d thought helping Snow was suicide before, this was asking for total annihilation. Getting close to the Queen was hard enough, but getting close to her with the means to take down her Empire? Impossible. They’d have to find another way.
Or he should just give up on all of this and take Snow in. Put an end to this ridiculous quest once and for all. That was the way to his survival. To saving his father.
“Suppose we found a way to get close to her,” Snow said, sitting gingerly on the rumpled cot in the corner. “What would we need to do to disable the chips?”
Doc’s moment of clarity broke and he shook his head violently. “No, no, no. Can’t. Always listening.”
“She’s not listening, I promise,” Snow said, standing to gingerly place a hand on Doc’s shoulder. The man winced and shrank away, but his wild steel-colored eyes softened.
Hunter almost wished he wasn’t in the room. He was the reason that promise was a lie. Doc was right that the Queen had ears everywhere, but if either of them knew they were his ears, he was sure he’d be dead in a second.
Doc’s frail body trembled and shook. “The King,” he whispered.
Snow’s hand dropped from his shoulder and her brow creased. “What about him?”
Doc’s head swiveled around the room, seeming to expect assassins to pop out of the cave walls at any moment. “The King…” he whispered again, “ordered the chips.”
Everything stopped. Hunter’s jaw dropped, but it was Snow whose knees buckled. He leaped forward catching her before she collapsed.
“What are you talking about, you lunatic?” Hunter barked, easing Snow back onto the cot. She was so pale now, almost gray, her eyes unfocused and distant. “King Stuart wouldn’t have done something like that. That kind of evil could only be the Queen.” He was going to get himself killed for sure, saying things like that.
Doc made no attempt to defend himself or his claim, watching the two of them with detached interest.
“My… father…” Snow croaked, her eyes fixed on a spot on the littered rock floor. “He created them? The things that are controlling everyone and making them afraid to stand up to her tyranny?” Her voice broke and Hunter sank into the hard mattress next to her, an arm around her, stroking her back softly. He couldn’t help but think a dead end would have been preferable.
“Made them, yes. Disabling device, too,” Doc giggled, drumming his fingertips together gleefully. “Hid it so she wouldn’t find it.”
Snow’s eyes snapped up, her back straightening. “So he suspected they might need to be destroyed,” she said, her voice gaining strength.
“You always said your dad was a smart man,” Hunter said. He squeezed her shoulder but she didn’t seem to notice he was there any more.
“Do you know where he hid it? We could get it, we could go to the palace, we could disable all the chips and then… and then…”
Hunter arched a brow. “Maybe one step at a time?” She shouldn’t get her hopes up. There was no way this crackpot was going to give them anything useful for actually finding the thing. Unless he had coordinates, Hunter didn’t see how they’d decipher anything the guy said.
“I know… I know…” Doc said, his face scrunched up again. How long had he been living in fear, his brain slowly melting away from the stress and lack of communication with the outside?
Or was all of this a result of torture? Everyone else on Snow’s list was already dead. It was a miracle Doc wasn’t. Still seemed like a dead end might have been more useful though.
“A twin… but not the jealous one,” said Doc, a finger waggling in Snow’s direction. “The center of it all… It’s…” He closed his eyes tight and his hands balled into fists at his side. “A place of heroes and monsters, and secrets are hidden until they’re seen.”
Hunter groaned and dropped his head to his hands. They were wasting their time. Snow smacked him with the back of her hand, dutifully muttering everything he said back to herself, locking it into her memory. How did she not see what nonsense it was?
“The flowers of the past bloom when it’s darkest. That’s where he hid it.”
“The flowers of the past…” Snow repeated. “Okay, I can remember all that.”
“Snow, you can’t possibly think any of this means anything. He’s obviously out of his mind. None of what he said even makes any sense.”
“You can quit any time,” she snapped. “I’m sure the resistance would give me a ship.”
Hunter sat there for a moment, his jaw hanging slack, his heart in his stomach. “That’s not what I—”
“Well, unless you have something better to go on, maybe you could stop trampling on the only lead we’ve got? He’s not as crazy as he sounds. It’s just another riddle.”
“Great. More breadcrumbs that don’t lead anywhere. Just what we need.”
“We know a lot more now than we did before we—”
His communicator beeped and Snow stopped, looking toward Doc’s bank of computers.
“What was—”
It beeped again and Doc’s eyes went wide, every ounce of color draining from him like he’d seen a ghost. “She found me!” Without saying anything to either of them, he turned to the computers and typed in a dizzying sequence of commands while Hunter tried to discreetly silence his link to the Queen. Of all the terrible timing.
“She— Wait, what’s happening?” Snow cried over the blaring alarms Doc tripped.
Hunter snatched her hand and pulled her towards the exit. “Your friend is finally losing it,” he said.
“Can’t get me. I’ve got a plan,” Doc giggled maniacally to himself.
“Protocol Alpha: Self-Destruct Sequence Activated,” the computer said calmly.
“Self-destru— Hey! Wait,” Snow said, tugging against Hunter’s hold on her. His hand was too slippery, he couldn’t keep a good grip on her while she struggled.
“No time to wait, Princess.” The cave started to rumble and all Hunter could think about was this lunatic giggling and shouting ‘BOOM!’
Doc sat in front of his computers, rocking on his heels, grinning at the code flashing on the monitors.
“We can’t just leave him!” she protested.
A steel door, thick as a person, began to descend in the doorway with Snow still on the other side.
“He’ll be fine!” Hunter shouted over the screaming alarms. How should he know if it was true? The only thing he did know was that neither one of them would be alright if they didn’t get out of this tunnel and fast. “Do you want to be buried alive in this cave or do you want to solve your damn riddle?”
Snow looked from Hunter, back to Doc, biting her bottom lip, her forehead creased. “I—”
“Protocol Alpha initialization in one minute.”
They didn’t even know the way out of this place. They were trapped. Doomed. All because she wanted to believe in this guy who was a few fuses short of a circuit.
“Doctor, we have to get out of here,” she pleaded with him. “How do we leave?”
Hunter didn’t hear what Doc said next. He yanked Snow through the doorway as the steel barrier slammed into the ground, shutting out the cacophony on the other side.
He knew she’d have all kinds of things to say to him, but now wasn’t the time. The tunnel rattled and dust rained down on them from the cracks in the earth.
Remarkably, lights came on as they raced down the tunnel. Each one flicking on as they neared it, illuminating the path. And when they got to the place where they’d been bound and captured, a great gust of wind pressed down from the retracting ceiling.
“He heard me! He opened it for us!” Snow cried, sending a longing look down the tunnel toward Doc.
“Forgive me if I’m not on my knees thanking him,” Hunter grumbled.
The first explosion rocked the ground under their feet and Hunter had to steady himself on the wall. Snow clamped onto his arm for support and he looked up. It couldn’t have been more than ten feet up, maybe less.
“I’m gonna boost you up, okay?” he said, grabbing her by the waist.
“You go first! I won’t be able to pull you up.”
He considered arguing with her, telling her it was more important that she get out safely, but there wasn’t any time. If she decided to make this difficult, neither of them would make it out.
“Alright,” he conceded, letting her go. He scrambled up the rock wall and found purchase on the surface, using all his strength to haul himself out of the hole onto his hands and knees.
Another explosion rumbled under him and Snow screamed. The lights went out and there was nothing but darkness below and punishing dust above.
“It’s alright,” he promised her. “Grab my hand.” He laid down on his stomach, reaching as far into the abyss as he could. Please let her be okay. He’d had a chance to get her out first. He could have gotten her out safely and he let her talk him out of it. Come on, Snow.
Then her hand slipped into his and gripped tight. He fastened his other hand around hers and pulled her up with a quick jerk.
There was no time for relief. Tremors rumbled through the ground and Hunter pulled them both to their feet. “Get to the ship!”
He ran, refusing to release her hand and lose her in this dust. The stairs were still down, the door open and waiting for them. Just a little further…
A huge explosion sent them flying forward, but Hunter didn’t look back. He scrambled up and tugged Snow behind him, practically dragging her up the stairs.
It was only once they were inside, safely aboard, that he saw the gaping crater they’d narrowly escaped.
He couldn’t get off that planet fast enough.