Night Mission

Milton walks beside me, squinting at a map that I’m pretty sure he’s holding upside down. “It should be around that corner.” He uses his flashlight to point to what I’m assuming is the wrong path. I don’t know Milton well, but I’m pretty sure he’s a master at getting lost, so I’m not too surprised that he doesn’t say anything when I nod and proceed to walk in a completely different direction.

The last time I was in Capitol City Park was more than twenty years ago. I was here with a school trip; there was no way my parents would have lended enough credence to royal rule to visit the newly created city. At the time, I thought they were crackpots, but that was before I lost friends in the University Masacre and learned that the Queen isn’t the benevolent mother she wants people to see her as.

Beyond the beams of our flashlights, the park is eery. The tall buildings surrounding the park lent light to the entrance, but we’re well past that now, so the only illumination comes from what moonlight makes it through the lush late-spring branches and the scattered glowshrooms spreading their greenish radiance along the ground. Nearby, a bird launches from one of the trees, diving for a prey too small for me to see. Milton stops dead with a gasp, and the beam of his flashlight starts to shake. I wish, not for the first time, that our leaders had paired me with someone a little more… competent. That’s not a kind thought, but if this extraction goes sour because I’m working with someone completely lacking in common sense and basic skills, my ghost will be even less kind.

“Keep moving,” I grunt, and I’m relieved when he starts walking again. We go onwards, deeper into the park. A park after closing is an interesting place, and under other circumstances I’d be really enjoying the novelty and quiet of the deserted paths. Maybe if my wife were here with me instead of dead at the hands of the people who will execute me if I’m caught. Yeah, seducing Jeanie in a place like this would have been amazing.

“Vanessa?” Milton tugs on my sleeve as though saying my name wouldn’t be enough to gain my attention. What is he? Five? Because he’s acting five, for all that he looks thirty. Again, not a kind thought for me to be having.

“Yes?” I say, trying to sound less annoyed with him than I am. He’s been in the resistance movement for years, but this is his first field operation. And I do need him, much as I hate to say it. I’m about as magically inclined as the average turnip and it’s going to take sorcery to break the creature’s bonds. The device I’m carrying should do the actual work, but it has no magic of its own and will need someone to power it.

“I feel funny.”

My teeth grit together even as I try to smile just in case he can see my expression. “That’s the no-see we took. You know, the stuff keeping us from showing up on the sensors and protecting us from being spotted by the park rangers?”

“Yeah, I know.” And well he should; he’s one of the people who makes it for us from ingredients that are increasingly hard to come by as the Queen’s Service cracks down on them. We’re going through some of our movement’s last no-see ever and I can only hope we aren’t wasting it on a failed mission. “I just… Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”

My eyebrows raise. “Hell of a time to start worrying about that.”

“I know…” He slows, but keeps going fast enough I don’t feel I can say anything about it. “It’s just… If we free this thing, people are going to die.”

“Bad people,” I answer swiftly. “It’s not going to hurt us, or even the rangers. It’s going to go straight for the Queen. It’ll only take out people who try to stop it from hurting her.”

“And you’re sure they’re bad?” His pace decreases even more as he looks over at me. WIth the lighting, I can’t really make out his expression. “Aren’t they just doing their jobs? Trying to make money to support their families like everyone else?”

I let out a slow breath. It’s an argument I’ve had before. I used to have it with Jeanie every time I’d leave for a mission. She never actually did any fieldwork herself; she was too much of a pacifist to risk hurting anyone. “They know who the Queen is, maybe even better than we do. And they’re still choosing to work for her.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they don’t think they have a choice. And at this point, I’m not sure they do either. We picked sides a long time ago, and changing them now?” He shakes his head. “They’d have to give up their whole lives. Maybe literally. Have you ever heard of anyone who quit the Queen’s Service and didn’t wind up an outlaw?”

Something calls out from up the path, the creature hurrying us onward? How would it know we’re coming? No one has ever established how intelligent it is.

“I’d rather die than help that woman,” I say simply as I stomp onward, picking up my speed and assuming he’ll do the same.

“I guess,” says Milton. And though he doesn’t sound convinced, he trots to catch up with me.

We round a bend and stop in unison as we behold the target of our rescue. It stands there in its tiny moonlit yard, staring at us with eyes that burn with hatred. I can’t blame it for despising us. I’d hate a species that kept me locked up in a paddy barely large enough for me to lie down in then paraded a series of onlookers and gawkers to look at me. How many people have taken selfies with this beast? How many people posed their grinning children next to it? 

I’m suddenly less sure the creature is only going to hurt the Queen. Maybe it will hurt all of us, driving its singular horn through chest after chest until it collapses in exhaustion. And maybe we deserve it. 

Slow but steady, I walk up the creature’s pen. I hold up the device I was given. “This is going free you,” I tell it. It bows its head as though it understands. I can’t touch the fence due to its magic, so I put the device on the ground and roll it toward the barrier. 

“Alright,” I tell Milton. “Do it.” 

He nods once and holds his hands out, directing magic into the device that should destroy the bonds holding back the unicorn. And despite the fact that he could well be releasing the agent of my death, I pray to the fates that it works.

The above was prompted by a image of The Unicorn in Captivity which was shared on my Wording Wednesday group on MeWe.