To say that the truth behind Mercury’s mission hit them all heavily would be quite the understatement.
The moment they’d gotten the call that Vandrad was back, Serilda and Mythal had dropped everything to get to Bellum as quickly as possible, only to find that the prince had already run off to find Mercury before his family could even tell him everything they had learned. At the very least it had given them time to gather everyone, the entire lot of them waiting in anticipation for him to return. It was a relief to see him, even if he looked as though he had been gone far longer than the better part of a week, considering the full face of hair. Wherever he’d run to, whatever he’d found in trying to find her, it had clearly done a number on him as he looked as though he’d been crying.
It would not take long at all for them to learn why. Hooking his scouter up to a larger screen, the prince elected to share with everyone the video that Mercury had recorded for him, and the horrifying truths that she had to share. The room was so quiet that it was damn near deafening, each one of them having their own visceral reaction to not just the news what she had been doing the last several years of her life, but what she had lived through.
At first, no one said anything at all. What was there to say? But they needed to move forward and luckily Mythal took it upon himself to break the tension. And just like that Vandrad was off once more, demanding ideas and solutions for moving forward, determined not to waste any further time. It was sentiment they all agreed with, but Gren was quick to pull his son back from the ledge, encouraging not to jump into anything without all the details. The mention of Scourge raised Vandrad’s ire as he sought answers on what the Dread Master had to do with the current situation.
Themmy laid out the summary for him, detailing how Scourge had been working with Mercury in an earnest effort to find the prince, and how they had been caught off guard by Thana. This, of course, only enraged Vandrad further as he accused Scourge of doing nothing while Mercury was kidnapped before his very eyes, yet even that assumption was quickly dashed. Scourge had done all he could to protect Mercury, and unfortunately saving her life meant he had to let her be taken. But, he had not left empty handed, getting as many details as Trinity was willing to divulge to him before she disappeared with the woman in tow.
It was a lot to take in, and no one would have blamed the prince if his fuse continued to blow short with stress and anger. Yet, he proved himself the better man, compartmentalizing his frustrations for the moment to focus on the facts that would allow them to move forward. When he asked what all Scourge had relayed to them regarding Mercury, Ever admitted that it wasn’t much. Vague details that Mercury had covered in her video only moments ago in greater depth. But then, his aunt took a moment to catch Vandrad attention, looking him in the eyes as she assured him that Mercury’s past changed nothing about how they felt about her. She was still family, and if anything she was endeared to them all the further for choosing to fight her fears and stand up for herself.
Mythal chimed in with agreement, expressing that he was all the more inclined to do what he could to help her now that he knew what sort of oppression she had faced her whole life and the sort of habits she’d had to build just to survive – a numbness that the darkness slayer was all too familiar with. Serilda reached out and took her fiance’s hand, giving it a squeeze even as she met Vandrad gaze. “Absolutely. And the truth is, we’ve known she wasn’t human since the day you two first stepped in my office. I was able to sense right away that her body didn’t match the atomic composition of a human, but she never brought it up so… we assumed – correctly, it seems – that she didn’t want to talk about it. But no matter her past, she has proven herself to us a thousand times over, and we are happy to repay the favor of protecting her where you both helped us protect Mythal.”
The prince took the time to look over the faces of his family standing there, as well as Saffron. The blonde looked a little out of place in the crowd, and there was no mistaking that a lot of what was being said around her was going way over her head. But she was there, and by the grim and determined expression on her face she didn’t intend on being left out. She said nothing, but her violet eyes locked with Vandrad’s when he glanced her way and she gave him a single nod to let him know that she was right there with everyone else.
Vandrad thanked them all, and with a brief dismissal of their need for his thanks Everance got to work on ushering them forward toward a game plan. In his absence his family had taken every stride they could think of to be ready to go once Vandrad returned, but they were still left at a loss due to the fact that they had no idea which direction to head in in order to find her. Mythal confirmed that they had secured a space faring vessel, but without guidance it wouldn’t be of much help. Dudley chimed in with ideas on how to triangulate the trajectory of which Khelben’s ship might have exited the atmosphere so they could track it, and that was when something seemed to come back to Vandrad.
He scrambled for his bag, practically tossing the contents out this way and that until he withdrew a small device of advanced make. He explained that Mercury had given it to him years ago so he could track her down, and it seemed the prince had kept the device all this time. Flipping the switch, they all waited with baited breath to see what would happen, only to find nothing. By his own words, he theorized that when she had made the device it had only been with the geography of the planet in mind, not something that had been crafted to guide him out beyond the stars. It had the function he needed, but not the range.
Thankfully, Mercury may have inadvertently provided him with a solution. She had left him the coordinates of her ship, which was most certainly going to have the capability of universal navigation. He may not have been as adept as Mercury was with Earthland’s technology, let alone that of a highly advanced alien race, but Mercury had been teaching him over the last year or longer and he seemed confident that he might be able to make something work with whatever he found there. All he had to do was install the tracker in her nav system and he could use her own ship to get to her.
Except it wasn’t that easy, as Gren pointed out. Vandrad was strong, but they knew absolutely nothing about what he would be up against and it was entirely possible that he would be signing his own death warrant by going in alone. Themmy chirped up to suggest that he could use the ship to guide the rest of them on the larger vessel, allowing a full scale attack. Yet that too had its faults, as the ship they had prepared was not designed for war. They would surely be vaporized before they even got close enough to get to her.
And thankfully, that was where Mythal had a new solution: Serilda. She didn’t need a ship to travel through space. The voidwalker could get there night undetected and sneak them all on board before the Nazru even knew they were being infiltrated. “Yes,” Serilda agreed, sitting forward in her seat and all too eager to work with the plan. “I can travel through space on my own much faster than we would move in a ship. The only thing I need to know where is I need to go.”
“And I’ll stay here,” Victoria offered, the Seal – much like Saffron – having been sitting back and observing quietly as everyone pitched their ideas and came up with a game plan. “Serilda and I are telepathically linked. No matter how far she goes, I will be able to communicate with her instantly. That will allow us and her to keep everyone up to date in real time, so we can be ready the moment she gets there to let us through.”
And like that, they had the workings of a very plausible plan. Vandrad announced his intention to make with all haste toward Mercury’s ship so he could get started on making the necessary adjustment to the tracker. Everance and Dudley volunteered to go with him, to put their own engineering skills to Vandrad’s aid. Everyone else would stay behind to prepare in any other ways they could, with the duchess of Bellum declaring in no uncertain terms the type of reckoning that these Nazru were in for as retribution for kidnapping her future daughter-in-law.
Oddly enough, it was Saffron who finally chimed in at that moment. “I know this is going to sound totally out of left field, but I actually think I can help get some intel. I happen to be buddies with a couple extraterrestrials myself. Long story, but they’re both intergalactic bounties hunters so they’ve been around the space block more than a few times. If anyone can help us get more information on what we’re walking into, it has to be them.”
As soon as everyone fanned out, Saffron was already on her phone sending a message in the group chat she had with Hosrius and Grubar, asking if they were free for a call to help with an emergency. Once she was able to get them both on the phone with her, she turned the volume up on her phone and set it down on the table where everyone else who wished to join the conversation could gather around to do so.
“Hey, I’ve got you guys on speaker phone. I’m here in Bellum with Vandrad’s family.” While neither of the aliens had met Vandrad before, they were both well aware of who the blonde’s mentor was as he had come up in conversation plenty of times in the past. “His fiance is missing. Turns out she’s an alien like you guys, and she was taken off world. Do you guys happen to know anything about the Nazru..?”
Zemenar sighed softly where he stood behind the door to the room beyond. It had been a long time since he’d been put into the position of having to actually fulfill his duties as the Enforcer. The last time had been when Argon and his followers had led their attempted coup against the Nazru, managing to somehow free themselves if at the cost of many other Xocili lives. He didn’t really blame them for it, as much as he wanted to. Stress and trauma affected everyone differently, and where some were willing to lay down and do whatever was asked of them in order to survive, some were defiant to their last dying breath. There was no right and wrong, but that hadn’t meant there weren’t consequences, and Zemenar had been forced to hurt a lot of his own people that day.
And now, years later, here he was again. Khelben had been sent out over a year ago to get an update on a wayward Scout and had unfortunately found reason to bring her in. The Collector had prostrated himself at the feet of his overlords, bearing his update on the events he had discovered and informing them that he had brought both the runaway Scout and samples of the phenomenon known as magic that he’d procured for their direct study. From there, Zemenar had been summoned with instructions to meet with the young woman while Khelben stayed with the Speakers of Yuuzhan to demonstrate the trinkets he had brought with them.
Steeling himself, he opened the door to the interrogation chamber to find Mercury slumped forward in her chair, awake but emotionally unresponsive to the world around her. While her feet were bound to the legs of her seat and her torso was strapped to the back of it, her arms were locked behind her by shackles that he had been given very clear instructions not to remove due to the supposed power that they were holding back from her grasp. It seemed like overkill to him. At the moment, she wasn’t striking him as the type of woman that was about to get up and start killing anyone. If anything she looked all but dead, a great weight pressing down on her pneuma to the point where she didn’t even care to turn her face to look up at him.
He observed her quietly for a moment before shutting the door behind him. Then, he wordlessly took a chair from the side of the room and set it in front of her where he sat down and put himself on her level. “Do you know who I am?” he asked her gently, his voice kind, if sorrowful. The man waited patiently for several long beats to see if the woman would respond, only to be greeted with complete and utter silence. Indifference, even. Normally the Xocili he had to interrogate were frantic with panic, weeping and at the end of their ropes with fear, but not this one. She was numb, detached to the point of dissociation, if he had to hazard a guess. Whatever she had been through to bring her to this moment, it had scarred her more deeply than he’d seen from one of his people in quite a while.
When it was obvious she had no intention of speaking, he adjusted himself in his seat, hanging his head in resignation. “This is how this is going to work: I’m going to ask you questions. If you answer them honestly, then I’ll do what I can to keep your suffering to a minimum. If you don’t comply, I will be forced to torture you until you do. I have no right to ask anything of you, but please… I’m begging you to not make this harder on us both than it has to be. Can you do that for me?
Nothing. Her gaze didn’t even consider flicking in his direction, the woman so lost in her own mind and thoughts that he may as well have not even been there. Zemenar took a moment to study her, his amber colored eyes searching her features for anything even remotely familiar looking. Ever since the night where Argon had somehow managed to sneak aboard the flotilla to meet with him, not a day had gone by where Zemenar didn’t fear that he might be called upon to fulfill the promise he’d made that night. He’d never gotten the chance to meet Argon’s daughter. Like many others, she had been hidden away either shortly before or after birth along with many men and women that had been tasked with trying to keep their future generation protected. His own wife had been among that number, while Zemenar and the other men and women of the military had stayed behind to hold a defensive force long enough for the others to flee.
But the truth was that there were a lot of children on board that ship when the Nazru had finally caught up to it. Dozens, if not hundreds of kids between the ages of fourteen and pre-birth, and there was no telling how many of them had and had not survived that fight. Looking at the young woman before him now, however, he had to say that she didn’t really seem to look too much like his friend. That being said, he didn’t allow himself the chance to study her for too long, his own personal fears and insecurities nagging in the back of his mind and reminding him that he could only do his job if he didn’t allow himself to fully humanize the one before him.
“I’m told by the reports that you were collected after confirmation was received that you had inherited particular abilities native to the world.” He scanned the documents in his head, searching for the keyword. “This… magic. Can you tell me about that?” Once more there was silence. Zemenar waited for a long moment to see if she would respond, though he already knew she wouldn’t. He wanted nothing more than to give her a chance, to give her the time she needed to come to her senses and keep him from having to take drastic measures, but the longer he waited with no acknowledgement the more he began to understand that she was not going to give him a choice. “I know how scared you must be, but..”
Zemenar stopped, his voice trailing off as a sound bubbled up from her throat. A laugh. It was strangled and coarse, like she either hadn’t talked in days or had overused her vocal chords recently to the point of straining. He held perfectly still as he looked at her, not wanting to dissuade her from speaking up, and after a moment he was rewarded for his patience. “I’m not scared,” Mercury told him evenly. “What is there to be scared of? Death? Death would be a blessing, but even then I already know that they want me alive, so you won’t kill me. The worst you can do is hurt me… and what could you possibly do that’s any worse than everything else I’ve had to endure my entire life up until now?”
Finally, she lifted her head to look up at him then, meeting him with tired, hopeless green eyes. “Yes, I know who you are, Enforcer. Whatever you have to do, just… do it.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, child.”
“Yes. It does. Because I know what they will expect of you in order to protect everyone else, and I know that you will choose to comply because you have to for their sake. I can’t and won’t fault you for that… but know this now: I will not tell you anything. So just get started.”
The Enforcer sat for a long moment just looking at her, his gut wrenching with a great deal of mixed emotions. Finally, he nodded. “I understand. And… I’m sorry.”
Mercury held his gaze for a brief second more before she finally relaxed, her head once more slumping off to stare out at nothing in the distance. “I know.”
What followed in the hours to come was beyond excruciating, but it was still nothing in comparison to what she had already been though. She screamed. She cried. Her body would not allow her not to react, as much as she didn’t want to give the Nazru the satisfaction of knowing she was in pain, but still she grit her teeth through it all. Each time the Enforcer would pause and give her another chance to answer his questions about Earthland and its magic, about Vandrad and the people that had been listed in the report among her allies, she simply refused to say anything at all. And each time, Zemenar would be forced to go back to what he was doing, his methods becoming more brutal and extreme as time went on.
When he sensed the approach of another, Zemenar stopped what he was doing. Stepping away from the woman in the chair, he backed himself up against a wall with his head hung toward the floor. The door opened to reveal one of the Nazru, the heavily scarred humanoid bringing with him an air of confidence and self importance as he eyed the Xocili in the chair. “What have you learned, Enforcer?”
“Nothing, Speaker Draux. She will not talk, no matter what I do.”
“Then perhaps you are not trying hard enough.”
Zemenar gently got down on his knees, still keeping his head down out of deference. “Please, I am doing everything I can. I’ve gone harder on her than I have any other who has sat in this chair in the past, done as much as I can without either killing her outright or rendering her completely unable to provide the information you seek. She refuses to comply.”
The Nazru stared back and forth between the two before a cruel smirk played upon his lips. “Then perhaps you have yet to find the right weak spot. If her own pain will not loosen her lips, then maybe that of another might.” He turned to face the door once more, his intention to have another slave fetched for the purpose he had in mind, but a single word stopped him in his tracks.
“No.”
Slowly, the Speaker turned to look at Mercury again with a surprised expression. “No?” he repeated, visibly pleased by the attempt at defiance.
Covered in blood and bruises, she tilted her head up to meet him square in the eyes with a weary but peaceful smile. “No. See I’m afraid that won’t work either. Hurt or kill as many of them as you like. They mean nothing to me, and there is nothing you can do, to them or to me, that will make me talk. So you're just going to have to bone up and kill me."
He considered her for several long seconds before he smiled. "I'm sure you'd like that, but unfortunately you have far too much potential to just kill." The Nazru walked back into the room and wandered around her chair, circling her slowly. "Do you know why we seek to purge the synthetic? Why we mutilate our own bodies?"
"Masochism? Listen, if that's what you're into I'm not here to kink shame. You feel free to be as ass ugly as you want."
The speaker chuckled. "Some of us maybe. We do hold a very deep respect for pain. Pain is the catalyst for growth and strength, as you are so admirably demonstrating for us now. So much like you we embrace it rather than pull away from it. But no, the reason we live the way we do is simple: evolution. We have become the alpha predators of the universe because we learned to harness the power of nature itself, taught our bodies to adapt and evolve upon command, and as a result we have achieved a level of potential that would have otherwise taken us millions of years to reach, if we ever attained it at all. To put it simply, we are scientists, much like your people.”
“But there is no evolution when it comes to the synthetic world. Technology is a crutch that weakens the natural immunities and defenses of the body, and we have lived long enough to see that over time it is the organic world that overwhelms and outlives the synthetic one. Why would we seek to weaken ourselves by becoming reliant on machines when genetics and the biological world are far superior? Computers cannot be grafted and integrated into the body, and they weaken the process of evolution by making us stagnant and lazy.”
“And then we discovered Xocil, and the beings that were impossibly both organic and synthetic. Living computers. It was heresy to the highest degree, yet in it there was opportunity. The Xocili were ugly things with flesh as clean as a newborn babe’s, unable to scar or change their genetics to adapt to the ever evolving universe around them, and the vast majority of the tribes simply wished to purge you from existence. You were too dangerous to let live, to infect the minds of our young with fantasies of the artificial. However, we Speakers convinced the tribes to let a few of you live so we could study you and ascertain your evolutionary potential. And at first, preliminary tests seemed fruitless.”
“But then there was you.” Gently, he brushed the hair from her neck, trailing the pads of his fingers along the thin scar that awaited there. “The young child that was able to scar, where the rest of her people could not. It was fascinating. And even though we were unable to replicate it in any of your kin, it told us that evolution was possible. We just had to keep searching for the answer.”
There was a long silence where it seemed he was waiting for some kind of reaction out of her, some kind of revolutionary stupefaction or outrage. Instead, after a moment, Mercury blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I nodded off for a bit there, somewhere between longest-speech-ever and I-don’t-give-a-fuck.”
She grunted and ground her teeth as the Nazru’s large hand clamped down tight behind the back of her neck. Mercury made a show of struggling against the vice grip, though it meant little in the end. “Perhaps you don’t want to give us answer, but the Collector gave us more than enough to work with. This… magic phenomenon, much like your people, seems to be both natural and fabricated. And while it disgusted us to allow him to demonstrate the trinkets he brought us, it did give us an idea of what was possible. Perhaps we will have to pay Earthland a direct visit to see first hand what the purest form of their ethernano energy looks like.”
“You take off these shackles and I’d be more than happy to tutor you right here and now,” the captive Xocili offered, anger and anxiety coursing through her veins at the thought of the Nazru pushing up their timeline for conquest to something much quicker than Earthland would have time to prepare for. If only she hadn’t waited to talk to Vandrad and his family in more detail… why had she put that off, leaving them ignorant of what was eventually to come?
He chuckled. “Actually, I have a better idea.” Withdrawing a knife crafted from bone, he cut through the back of her shirt to expose her shoulders and back. Then, he carefully began to carve away a large square of her flesh. Mercury was able to keep the sounds of her agony mostly under control as he was simply cutting her, but once he began to peel the second of skin from the rest of her body, she shrieked and screamed in unbridled torment and pain, her body burning like fire. Zemenar shook where he knelt doing his best to keep his own emotional center.
As the monster finished, he came around to stand before her, smiling at the block of bodily tissue that was covered in her blackened blood and even a portion of the ink from her tattoos. “The tribes may blanch at what we are about to attempt, and I am sure they will view us with disgust like primitive animals… but that is why the Speakers exist. To study the heretical in order to better ensure the purity of our people.”
“Enforcer: Continue your job until instructed otherwise.”
“Yes, Speaker.”
The torture went on for a couple more hours, with Zemenar doing his best to comfort the young woman before him while also being force to continue inflicting further pain upon her. It wasn’t until there was a gentle knock at the door that the session was interrupted. The Enforcer looked up to see Khelben standing there, his eyes flicking to Mercury nervously before he glanced away again, almost afraid to look at her.
Zemenar frowned. “Khelben. Why are you here?”
“The Speakers sent me to see if you have made any progress.”
Both men looked to Mercury, who sat there coated in blood and trembling in her seat from the pain and shock of the last several hours. She had barely even registered Khelben’s entrance. The Enforcer shook his head sadly. “No.”
“I finished my debrief. Speaker Draux is in surgery, and he has declared that if she refuses to comply then they no longer need whatever information the Scout is withholding.”
Zemenar’s shoulders slumped sadly. “So it has come to this, then.”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry, dad.”
“It’s not me you should be sorry for…”
Mercury’s head slowly rose to frown at the two men, finally deigning to acknowledge Khelben with a look. “Dad..?” she repeated, even as the Collector turned to look at her warily. “You said both your parents were dead.”
He held her gaze for a beat. “I lied,” Khelben finally told her simply.
At first she could only stare at him, and then the laughter hit as she chuckled herself into a small coughing fit, her voice raspy and strained. “So a coward and a liar. Imagine my surprise.” Khelben drew in a deep breath through his nostrils to steady himself but otherwise refrained from allowing himself to be baited. “I guess I’m not so worthwhile to keep alive, after all. All that big talk from that idiotic Speaker and he bitches out before the finish line. What a joke.”
Zemenar closed his eyes, his long locks of dark plum colored hair covering his face as he hung his head sadly. “They’re not going to have you killed. They still want you alive.”
Mercury scoffed wearily, exhaustion dragging her down and leaving her deliriously chatty.. “So what, they’re just going to have you keep torturing me? I don’t care what other tricks you have up your sleeve. Unless you plan on leaving me alone with that one again,” she spat, nodding toward Khelben who flushed in anger and shame, unable to meet her stony glare. “There is no truer torture than having to share breathing space with him.”
The Enforcer glanced between the two briefly in confusion, studying the hostility between them and noting how visceral their reactions were to one another. He would have to ask Khelben about it later. For now, he pulled his chair up in front of the young woman and sat before her once more. “Please, I am begging you… Just talk. Just tell me what you learned while you were on that planet, and give them the information they want. Please don’t force me to do this.”
“I’m not forcing you to do anything. They are.. And I refuse to be complicit in subjugation any longer.” Her emerald gaze was fierce as she looked at them both, consumed with passion and contempt despite her broken physical state. “Continue to bow at their feet if you want, but I am done. I have spent my entire life being nothing but a tool, a weapon forged to bring about the deaths of literal billions of people, taught to live my life without feelings or desires of my own. But despite everything, I found a home. A real home, with people who care about me enough to fight to protect me, to risk everything to set me free. I found a man who taught me the meaning of love and that I didn’t need to be controlled by fear. He taught me the strength in never giving in, and never giving up, and I intend on following his stubborn example.”
“So you can do whatever you want to me. It will never be enough. You may break my body and drive me to the brink of insanity but for one brief, fleeting moment I had love… and I had peace… and I finally understood what it felt like to want to live, and to have someone to live for, to fight for, and to die for. That’s why you are always going to fail, here. You can break me to within an inch of my life, but I will always have those memories to hold onto and to challenge me to rise above everything else… and that’s the one thing you cannot take from me.”
The room was thick with tension from the end of her speech as she looked at them with a palpable intensity. There was a long, long silence before Zemenar sighed sadly. “Actually… I’m afraid that’s not true.” When Mercury continued to stare at him, awaiting an explanation, he made sure to level his gaze at her as evenly as possible to make sure she understood. “They don’t want me to kill you, or even to keep torturing you. Whatever intelligence you’ve kept under wraps, they’ve decided they no longer need from you… but they don’t want you dead. You’re still too valuable for them. So instead, they… they’re moving forward with a clean slate procedure. I will have permission to use our technology to wipe the data centers of your brain and reprogram you back to your base training. You will lose all of your memories, and the only things you will know are the skills you need to continue doing your job. It is effectively a lobotomy… and once it’s done, it cannot be reversed.”
Before their very eyes, the fire within her soul extinguished, her eyes wide in panic and disbelief. “You can’t do that…”
“I don’t want to… but I can. And I will have to live with that for the rest of my life, but I will do it. I’m sorry, child… but I cannot, and will not, allow the rest of our race to perish to save one life.”
As he took a deep breath and stood to collect the tools he needed, Mercury quickly began to deteriorate. Khelben watched her in sorrow and regret as she began to hyperventilate and, for the first time since she had been brought back to the flotilla, fight against her bindings. “Please! Please don’t do this… Vandrad is the only thing I have ever had. Please don’t take his memory away from me.” Tears streamed down her face. “I promise I’ll never go back to Earthland, and.. And I’ll keep doing my job as I should have been doing…”
“It’s too late for that, now. The Speakers have made their decision. I’m sorry.”
“Wait. WAIT! JUST… WAIT FOR JUST A SECOND!” Zemenar stopped in his approach, the tool in his hand as he looked at her. Reality was crushing her, and she was suffocating beneath the weight of what she was about to endure. “Please, just… just give me one minute. That’s all I ask. One minute to… to remember him one last time…”
The Enforcer watched her carefully, his own eyes glistening with emotion and compassion. Even Khelben looked moved, the Collector disturbed by the truly heartbreaking event he was about to witness as moisture built in his own eyes. Finally Zemenar nodded. “One minute,” he told her gently.
Mercury dissolved into tears as she fought to process the trauma of the moment and the fact that she was about to lose her memory of the only people that ever meant anything to her. Through her internal HUD, she pulled up her recording from the night that Vandrad had nearly died, where he had finally told her how he felt about her. Over and over she replayed the clip of him telling her that he loved her, like she was trying to burn the memory to a place where not even the Enforcer’s tools could remove it.
“It’s time.”
Zemenar slowly approached her and began to hook her up to the machine he had brought over. Truthfully, he was taking his time, trying to do his best to draw the inevitable out as long as possible so she could make the most of what time she had left. It wasn’t until he was almost ready that he realized she was murmuring something under her breath. With a frown, he paused to look at her in confusion as he realized she was singing. Leaning in a little closer, he tried to pick up the words.
“Meet me on the battlefield,
Even on the darkest night.
I will be your sword and shield,
Your camouflage,
And you will be mine.
Echoes of the shots ring out.
We may be the first to fall.
Everything could stay the same,
Or we could change it all.
Meet me on the battlefield.”
The last stanza was barely more than a broken whisper, the lavender haired woman resigned to her fate. If she had bothered to look up, she would see both Zemenar and Khelben staring at her in wide eyed shock. “How… how do you know that song?”
“My mother wrote it. It’s the only thing I have of her.”
“Scylla?”
Finally, Mercury looked up to frown at the Enforcer, the familiar name drawing her back to her senses. “You knew my mother..?”
Through the entire interrogation, Zemenar had been calm, almost passive. Now, he looked like he was on the verge of a mental breakdown himself as his worst fears were realized before him. This wasn’t Argon’s daughter he had been torturing all this time.
It was his own.
Without explanation, he snapped and started quickly ripping off the attachments from his machine. “Khelben, remove her from those cuffs!”
The Collector was staring at Mercury, his eyes transfixed in absolute, unadulterated horror. “Dad, what are you–”
“I SAID REMOVE YOUR SISTER FROM THOSE CUFFS!” | |
marzia at shine & gs.
