"Dear, let's go!" called Alicia.
Bart was definitely unsatisfied with that result. Clearly, he came here in the first place as some sort of an entertainment, a twisted sense of enjoyment to get away from his life.
Flaring a glare at me, he followed Alicia in the cover of his controlled servants of the palace along with Lily and Relly.
I wondered their very objective to come to the Grand Amina in the first place. The Aegis-using robots mentioned their priority was to capture me, though one of them had entered the throne room leaving me confused.
Then there was the fleet of Great Corporate United's ships heading towards Nigeria, presumably causing a war against Neo Africa by doing so. Perhaps that was their intention all along, considering the Aegis Users' sudden attack on this palace.
Agatha struggled to move away from the horde of servants charging in her direction while holding her bloodied face.
The urge to help her surfaced. 'But I can't use my Aegis, or even move,' I thought. Certainly, all of that was true. Even then, my vision was still blurry, my mind drowned in the dizziness.
Caesar stepped in just in time and threw five clumps of his Aegis crystals upward. They all clicked and soldered themselves in the stone ceiling.
"Arrggh!" A few of the controlled servants collided with a yellow pillar that sprouted from one of the crystal clumps. The other servants had the same happened to them with the other four pillars.
Looking at it, the pillars as a whole resembled a cage.
About four servants managed to squeeze themselves from the confinement and lurched for Caesar.
"Sorry for this, people," said Caesar. He made his point when a yellow pole he wielded swiftly knocked one of them unconscious. His robe whirled around as he struck the other two with quick jabs in the head. The last one blacked out from a quick flurry of swings and fell down. "Sorry."
Agatha heaved herself into a sitting position and grunted, holding the left side of her face shakily.
Then I noticed Amaryllis's figure from the corner of my eye.
The two servants from before, Helena and Tabetha, had come back for her and bandaged her amputated right leg with clean clothes. Helena pressed both of her hands around the injured area, in order to stop the bleeding. I had seen Hope did the same once.
Amaryllis cried while the other two gave words of encouragement to her.
"Amary, you'll be fine. Hang in there," said Tabetha.
"You'll be up and working soon enough," assured Helena.
Both her and Tabetha tended to Amaryllis's injury the best they could. And fortunately, her bleeding seemed to stop.
CRASH!
A chunk of silver metal flew past my head out of the throne room.
"Isn't that the robot?" I muttered. A figure in golden coat stepped out of it and swept his gaze across the hallway.
It was Gheele Folami. He had the Aegis-using robot's head in his left hand. The metal wires and cords swerved lazily as Gheele held it.
His eyes stopped at the dead male servant. The one I had killed. He then noticed another female servant that I killed previously. He drew his eyebrows together at Anuman's dead body. Lastly, his eyes were wide open when he saw Amaryllis to his right. He threw the robot's head away and approached Amaryllis's slumped body on the floor, straining from pain.
The controlled servants were swallowed by Gheele's crystals and so Caesar ceased his Aegis pillars away after seeing that.
"Um, Master, we need to get her to the hospital," said Helena. She and Tabetha were sitting on the floor next to Amaryllis.
"What happened?" asked Gheele. He summoned some of his Aegis crystals to coat Amaryllis's injury.
"It was Alicia," Caesar said from his spot about fifteen meters away, lending Agatha his support.
"The pink Aegis?"
"No. The one that possessed the invisible Aegis," replied Caesar.
"I see." He turned his attention back to Amaryllis.
She refused to meet him in the eyes.
"...Master, I'm sorry," she said, restraining herself from showing any emotions.
"She did this?"
"Yes." Amaryllis paused. She forced a smile towards Gheele. "Now...I'm useless to you, right Master? I can't do anything like this. I can't water your plants. I can't... clean the palace."
Tears fell from her eyes as she sobbed. "I'm sorry, Master... I'm sorry."
I noticed the bandages that wrapped her amputated right leg was blood red. All that time, she refused to reveal the pain shooting at her injury.
Gheele was silent. His eyes were shadowed by his dark hair.
"Caesar, you have to chase them," said Agatha. "I'm fine."
A strange feeling enveloped my heart. Yet it was foreign. I recognized it as the feeling that I had discarded long ago, which I once considered to make me weak.
With every ounce of my strength, I walked to Agatha. Ripping a piece of my new blue dress, I gave it to her. "You need this."
She had a shocked expression on her face, before allowing one of her hands to retrieve the piece of cloth.
"Thank you," said Agatha. "My wound is not that bad. It's that girl you need to worry about."
Caesar took it from Agatha and applied the cloth to her face, wrapping a good portion of the left side.
Helena and Tabetha bowed to Gheele, asking permission to treat Amaryllis immediately.
Gheele glanced at them. "I'll carry her. Get the car to the front."
They both nodded and rushed to the front entrance.
Gheele grabbed Amaryllis's small figure and carried her on his back. "I'm afraid I can't join you all to pursue the attackers."
"It's fine, Master. We will do just that," said Caesar.
"I'll come back to hold the fleet heading to my Nigeria." And so, Gheele followed Tabetha and Helena to the car waiting outside.
"Master..." muttered Amaryllis.
"I can't have you sit around doing nothing. I'll have you treated and work in the palace. Same goes for my other subordinates," said Gheele sharply.
Amaryllis closed her eyes as Gheele carried her.
"I should go," stated Caesar. He touched my shoulder and shook his head. "But you, miss Ava, you stay here. Your Aegis still need to recover."
"But I want to help!"
"It's better if you help the other servants in this palace, miss Ava. They might have gotten injured somehow," suggested Caesar.
"But..."
Alicia and Bart were in the capital city and all, so I had to get at them right then and there. I feared there would not be any other chance.
It could even be my last opportunity.
"Agatha."
"I know, Caesar." She gave a weak smile at him.
With that, Caesar ran outside of the palace, leaving us with the trapped mind-controlled servants.
Seeing them inside the orange crystals were somewhat terrifying. In just a blink of an eye, Gheele could entrap anyone. I was still in the dark of how his Aegis actually worked. The only thing I grasped since I had seen, his Aegis can be formed anywhere he wanted. And that was about it.
I turned my head to Agatha who was wincing a bit from her pain.
"Aren't your face hurting right now?" I asked.
"It does hurt. But when you're used to doing this kind of thing, it's nothing special. You'll be like 'Oh, this happens again, huh.' and you just shrugged it off," said Agatha.
I remembered Caesar said the same thing back in Yellowknife. That getting hurt and experiencing pain was just a part of what they had to go through every day.
My feet swished along towards Agatha, folding my legs to sit next to her. "How long have you known Caesar?"
Her finger brushed over the bandaged part of her face as she gazed at me. "Since we're partners in work at the HQ, about three years ago. I think your age was nine back then, isn't it?"
I nodded.
"Our work was mostly involved sitting down and doing paperwork, aside from occasional patrolling. We're soldiers, but we don't do much soldier-like stuff, you know."
"So, why do you run away?" I asked.
"Hmm, I merely tagged along with Caesar after he decided that he didn't want to waste any more time there. And also because about what he wanted to achieve since the very beginning."
I frowned.
"It all stemmed from a group of scientists that develop the Aegis in the first place twenty years ago. With that, they gained insurmountable power from the secret weapon and took over Sweden. From there, the world conquers started to unfold one by one."
"The supreme leader of Great Corporate United is a scientist?" I asked.
"No. That's what I'm confused about. A politician somehow stepped in and became the supreme leader. He received continuous support from the scientists instead until today," said Agatha.
"I see." I was more curious about who the scientists were than the supreme leader himself.
The people who created Aegis.
The roots of all my suffering.
I clenched my emotions and stuffed it back into my heart. Trying to maintain my composure was something I lack severely. Especially when thinking about Bart and Alicia.
All those emotions that I have locked deep inside me, I would unleash it upon those two when the time came.
My red irises shared the sentiment and so did my trembling fingers, pulsating from it.