Alice Faulkner woke up to the sound of heavy banging on her apartment door.

At first, she thought it was just a continuation of her dream in which she ran alongside her parents in the city ruins, surrounded by the sounds of gunfire. And then when a gruff, harsh voice yelled “Open the damn doors!”, her eyes flew open and she lifted herself up from the ragged bed, with her shoulders tensed. When the banging didn’t cease, Alice hurried to the door and despite the sinking feeling in her stomach, threw it open.

. What greeted her was her worst nightmare.

The Torchguides- the secret police who arrested citizens accused of treachery and sent them to the military camp- loomed over her lean figure at the door, their emotionless faces gazing down at her. Clad in the dark khaki uniforms, one of them stepped forward and opened his mouth to speak.

“Please, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Alice said before he could say the dreaded words. “There’s no reason for you to be here.”

The Torchguide’s badge, a night lamp lighted by a blood red flame inside its glass container, gleamed in the dark just as its bearer’s dark eyes flashed. “Your words aren’t worth a penny. Either you come with us, or we kill you right now. Your crime has already been recognized.”

Alice felt her face pale at his words. “What crime? No one knows me well enough to make accusations, neither have I committed a crime of treachery!”Keep talking, she told herself, you can’t go down without a fight.

The torchguides- about 5 of them- stared at her, the same blank gaze that screamed disinterest, then one of them stepped forward and grabbed her shoulders. Alice shouted in alarm, and she acted out in reflex, blindly kicking out her legs at the man. It connected directly to his shins with a thump, and he stumbled back a little.

She took the chance to run away, but before she could, she felt her shoulders connect with something very heavy and lean- like a metal bat. Crumpling to the ground, she began shaking in fear as a pair of hands grabbed her arms and lifted them up. She complied, her thin frame having no strength enough to fight back.

“Knock her out,” a voice left to her said, and before she could even process the words, her world suddenly shut off with a crack as her temples exploded in pain.

———————————————————————————————— 

For the second time that night, Alice woke up again, this time with something more unpleasant- when her head crashed against something solid continuously. A massive headache already slowly spreading from her nose, her eyelids fluttered open to see-

Nothing. Nothing at all.

In a fleeting moment of panic, she wondered if she had gone blind- perhaps those bastards had blinded her with that hit to the head. She thrashed, mouth open and taking quick, panicked gasps of air like a goldfish out of the fish bowl. Then she realized the world around her was pitch-dark, and she thankfully hadn’t lost her sights. Not that this new discovery was anymore encouraging, she thought.

In her thrashing, her back had hit something like a metal, erect bar- and when she tried to move her arms, her movement was greatly limited. She was almost sure she was locked inside a small cage. And to top of that, she couldn’t actually see anything, except for listening to the sounds around her or sniffing the air to get an idea of her current situation.

Clanging of metal bars against each other.

No human sounds around her except for her panicked sobs.

Strong stench of iron in the air- or was that blood?

Screeching, breathy sounds of an engine that she had heard from before- A train.

 

She was on a container train, Alice realized. Alone. And also stuck in a small cage, like an animal pet that was going to be sold at the market.

But she knew the fate that awaited her was much more worse than that- She was going to be sold as a slave. At the city of New Shilma. That’s what happened to women who escaped the clutches of military camp- she’d heard these stories about a million times in her childhood. Alice suddenly felt sick as the images of the , brutally beaten women filled her head.

“I’m going to die,” She said aloud, to herself. As if speaking the fact aloud would help her escape from this dreadful reality. Then, struck with the cold truth behind the statement, she suddenly opened to scream—

“Help! Please help me!” Her hoarse, desperate screams bounced off the walls of the empty container. Yet, with a new surge of power, she continued screaming; “Help!”

Just when she thought was about to explode, a loud crashing above her made her stop screaming abruptly. Then another crash followed, this time stronger and feeling more nearer to her. Alice’s eyes widened, and she began to yell again. “Anyone there? Please, I need your—What the actual hell?”

She screamed as the roof of the container collapsed above her and landed in heaps just inches away from her cage. Sudden lights of the dawn that rained down upon her forced open her clenched shut eyelids, and she shivered in the cold morning winds. As her vision slowly focused into place, she was able to make out a curious pair of soft green eyes that peered at her, meeting her own.

Alice blinked.

A lean, muscular man with flaming marigold hair stared at her, his soft strands of hair flapping in the brutal winds that resulted from the running train. He was dressed from head to toes in black leather clothes. His eyes held a gentle curiosity as he stared back.

“What a strange way of travelling.” Was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

“You think I actually like travelling to places locked up in a cage?” she replied back- she couldn’t help it. The man actually was either very stupid, or found humor in strange, sarcastic comments. She decided it was the latter.

The man smiled at the remark, his eyes crinkling up to form a straight-line eye smile that she’d never seen before. Hell, she actually didn’t see a lot of people smiling during her entire lifetime. “Sorry. I have a hard time controlling my twisted sense of humor. Are you one of the prisoners caught by the Torchguides?”

Alice nodded back uncertainly, not sure if this man was here to help her or to dispose of her because she was of no value. The man nodded back, as if he was expecting the answer, and immediately moved forward the cage, his hands reaching out to the lock on the cage. He took out a small pin, and started twiddling them after lodging it into the lock.”Let me get you out of there. It looks highly uncomfortable.”

“Why are you helping me?” Alice asked. “Who are you?”

“Oh, I haven’t introduced myself properly, my bad.” The man said, then after giving her one of the most brightest smile she’d ever seen in her life, he said the words that would change her life forever.

“My name is Jimin, and I’m the Fifth Falcon.”