Wonder By Ben O’Brien

I wake up to find that we are still in the same hellhole. I wonder if we shall ever be saved. Is there anybody who would save us anyway? We have been locked away in this place for years now. All that happens is that by random people get selected to do something. I think that this place is a test place. They occasionally cut people up for sick and twisted experiments. I try to relax but sleep doesn’t come back to me. I walk around to find that nobody else is awake.
Somebody comes into the room, not the regular person who selects people but a person dressed all in black, carrying a large gun. He points to me and beckons me closer. I do it willingly, knowing that if I don’t he will probably hit me. He says, “What would you do to get out of this place.”
I finally realize that this is a rebel coming to rescue me. I hope that he can save my friends, too. I could never live with myself if I didn’t bring them. “Anything, but only if I can bring my friends!”
“How many?”
I think of all my friends and realize that I can’t take them all. It would set off the alarms. I decide to take my two closest friends, “Two.”
“Go wake them now, but silently.”
I go to my friends and they only need to hear one word to know what’s happening, “Freedom.”
We walk out to the halls. There are dead bodies all over the place. I can still hear action elsewhere. He takes me through the hallways. I wonder if it’s worth it with all these dead bodies. Both sides are suffering heavy losses. I see temporary walls set up with large plates of metal but nobody is around them. The area looks scorched as if the people were burnt out.
We go a while before we see anybody. When we do our friend the rebel shoots him in an instant, he was an enemy. We try to keep quiet but it’s hard. We just clutch each other and carry on and carry on, hoping that the rest of the trip will not be as exciting. We pass a room where they experiment with lasers on our skin to manipulate us and I spit in its direction.
We get to a room where some rebels have made HQ. Our friend talks to somebody that looks like the commander of the operation. They argue for a while and finally the commander just looks at us for a while and nods. For some reason I get the feeling that we have won our freedom again. We are led down more hallways and through a couple of rebel check points to a door where a rebel is trying to fix the door. They chat for a while and eventually it is decided that we are to wait here until we get through. After a couple of minutes we hear some weapons fire. It lasts for a long time. I lost the ability to keep track of time a long time ago. Our friend the rebel gets on a radio to somewhere and sounds a little panic stricken. I get the feeling that things aren’t going too well. He hands us some small weapons from a crate beside the rebel who was repairing the door. One of the enemy gets in and kills our friend the rebel but I put about thirty shots into him, about thirty too many since the rebel repairer had already shot him dead. Some rebels come in after him and apologize to us for the delay on the way.
The rebels take up the posts that had just been gunned down and I wonder if they mourn for their losses or if they had known them at all. I was answered by a rebel coming in and running up to our friend the rebel. She holds our friend the rebel in her arms while crying for the death of him. Cradling him in her arms, she whisperers something in his ear but I can’t hear her. I am looking at the ground at this point. The commander is there with her. She demands to be put in the front lines. But the commander denies her vengeance, saying that he had promised their mother that he would bring them back alive and that she was the last one and at the very least he wanted her to stay alive. He assigns her to us, and makes it clear that he wants us to go directly to the ships and leave.
I tell her that if she wants that she could shoot the bastard who killed her friend but she just laughs. She doesn’t shoot him but she does kick him. We laugh and we walk down the hall. I guess it is because there are times to shoot and kill without mercy and there are times when you can say that it was a crude act of warfare. This is a time to kill, a crude act of warfare to save our lives.
There are some paintings placed on the walls of coastlines and great flying things. I wonder what they are and who would make such things. I see a painting that is entirely red with some minor tone differences but red. It looks like the artist had tried to make it look like there was a face in the red but it was unclear. I realize that I am lagging behind so I catch up. Our new friend the rebel glares at me for looking at the painting or maybe for just lagging behind; I don’t know. We plod on as if nothing had occurred but I still wonder about the people who had painted such artwork. I wondered if they had a family or friends, if they enjoyed life or were just going through life waiting for death. I wondered if they had any real talent or if they really didn’t want to be here, or if somebody had just forced them to go. I wondered if they loved and hated just like us. I wondered about who they were. I wondered…
The light goes black and things slow down. I find it hard to breathe. I wonder if I have been shot. I look around and wonder what is happening. I expect to see a smoking weapon but instead I see the paintings, sitting there looking at me.
An enemy popped out of nowhere and was as stunned to see us, as we were to see him. Our friend the rebel shot him before he could do anything, even surrender. I wonder if I’m on the right side but I realize that if the conditions were reversed that the same thing would have happened. I pray that he would be the last one.
We pass through long hallways and odd shaped rooms with lots of seats. I decide that if I get out of this alive that I will devote my entire life to peace. I wonder how I would do this, but decide that if I get out of here alive, I will worry about it then.
The lack of people amazes me in the hallways. I wonder where they all are in this massive structure. I wonder how many people are in this building and how many are never going to leave. The thought sickens me.
We come to a massive room with lots of machines pumping in and out, doing what I don’t know. Massive tubes are everywhere. The room is hundreds of times my height.
The next room is twice the size and I hold a giant spinning orb in the middle of the room far above my head. A giant spinning rod comes out of the room we were just in and connects to the sphere. I ask our friend the rebel what it is but she doesn’t know or just doesn’t tell. But somehow I don’t believe her.
She tells us that we are close and that it isn’t a long way away. I wonder what she means by close. Is it down the hallway or another mile, will we meet the last enemy far away, around the next corner or down another hundred hallways?
About two minutes later we are in a long line up of people with either injuries, or they just looked like they were tired. Security was all around them. These sick and tired people were going back to get help where as I was just going back to get out the way. But that’s not true; if I were going back to get out of the way I would have first had to come from there. There are about fifty people here in front of us. There is a door that looks special for some reason that I cannot realize yet. It has a certain feel to it like it either will or already has seen too much tragedy or too many deaths. I ask our friend the rebel about it and she says that there was a mass death there at the beginning of the attack. Right there with a couple of automatic-turrets. She says it so coolly that I wonder if she was just programmed to give that response or if she was just waiting for the real danger to end before she dealt with her own emotions. It feels like more then that but I don’t bring it up again.
The door eventually opens and everybody moans and groans through it. When I get through I see that it is a giant hanger with ships and many other things. A small ship is there waiting for us. Security had been going down when the door opened. I wondered about possible enemies but shrug it off. When I go through the door I hear a clank behind me but think it is merely a door closing. I turn around anyway just in time to have a sword thrust right through me, but that doesn’t stop me. I tell the others to go as I rip the sword out of myself. I have the advantage of shocking the enemy as I cut off his head in one foul swing. I hope that this will strike fear into the other enemies. The ship behind me takes off.
The enemy leader reaches out his hand but it’s too late and I fall. The sword clangs to the ground. He is by my side holding my hand. I wonder why he is doing this. Why is he endangering his own position in the security force, when I realize that I don’t know who’s who? I wondered if he had a wife or kids. If he had kids did they look up to him as a hero or was he just a dad who was never there. I wondered if his parents were nice, or were they also not there. I wondered if his wife loved him and if he loved his wife. I wondered what religion he believed in, had faith in. I wondered if he had brothers or sisters and if so what the relationships were like. I wondered who he looked up to or if he even looked up. Did he lament the past or look to the future. I wondered…