3.1 There Are No Gods Here
Site-189 Interrogation Room
Cardea, wake up.
Carissa blearily blinks her eyes as the harsh fluorescent lights overhead make her migraine even more intense. She leers, trying to push herself up out of the chair, collapsing as her arms wobble in weakness. Her head thumps on the table, making the migraine even worse as she flinches.
"Who—" she says through gritted teeth. "Who the fuck tried to kill me this time?"
"Can’t say I’m surprised that you have to modify that with a ‘this time’," a voice jeers at her from the far wall.
The room spins with the effort of trying to lift her head. Reality bears down on her, crushing in from all sides. It chafes against her skin which stings with a rawness that typically only lasts a few milliseconds with normal healing.
A thousand aches and throbs hum in the flesh of her limbs and torso. She gives up on moving and instead tries to angle her head. She fails but does manage to secure a slightly better outcome as gravity takes her. Her body thumps, laid across two chairs, splayed on her side in a surprisingly comfortable position. Well, comfortable given the current circumstances.
The position relieves the obscene weight pressing down on her chest, letting her breathe semi-normally.
Why do I feel so gods damned weak?
Do you need the shared memory pool? You were awake for most of it but…
I was?
Well, if not awake, you were at least cognizant enough to be screaming for most of it.
Cardea winces, shivering as the memory pours in. The meds they pumped into her, suppressive nerve agents that made her docile, amenable and friendly as they strapped her down. Melina, at the far end of the range, trying to speak to her, call for her. Did they use a silencing field? Has tech come that far.
Then, she remembers the magic storm. It’s as if she’s there all over again, every stroke of lightning burning into her muscles.
She vomits, fluid splattering on the floor. Some tiny manic robot rises from a divot just in her peripherals, scuttles over, and cleans up the mess.
Blunt force of water fracturing bones, healing seconds later only to have her flesh rent open by a thousand spikes of ice.
She shudders, tears forming in her eyes.
Screaming in agony as columns of earth pulverized limbs and torso.
Heart slams in her chest. Rage snarls in her chest, howling at her to get up and move.
Thrashing against the bonds, desperately shrieking her name as the dragon’s breath incinerated her flesh again and again.
Tears burst down her face, as she silently mouths Melina’s name. Her heart threatens to come apart at the seams.
The singularity and the moment before it hit, her face twisting in surprise, then horror. The pain behind her eyes flowering outwards.
Why can I never protect her like she deserves? Why can I never protect myself?
Cardea wants to grab hold of Melina. Take her by the shoulders and tell Melina it wasn’t her fault. Hold her close, run fingers through her hair. Weep with her at what they’ve forced her to do. Protect her. Never let go.
Am I just too gods damned weak? Why is my strength never there when I need it most?
And with that feeling comes the caustic erosion of self-doubt. The gnawing abyss of uncertainty trying to drag her into shadow. She falls into the void. Eyes forming to watch as she tumbles through the black of abstract nothing, as reality presses in to swallow her. But she’s not falling alone, there is another. Their features obscured by halos of green and silver, arms crossed and unbothered by the soul piercing gaze of the wheels of fate.
You said just yesterday that she can protect herself.
Cardea snarls, but in her current state it’s less of a snarl and more of a snivel. Tears trailing off her cheeks in cool relief, trickling off into the abyss above them.
She can, but when that isn’t enough, I’m supposed to be the bulwhark. I’m supposed to have her back, be her rock. I can’t even fucking do that. I can’t stop other people from seizing her control and forcibly breaking her heart. Am I just too gods damned weak? Was J right all along about me?
Her own arm slaps her across the face, snapping her back to reality.
Listen to yourself, asking if J of all people was right. I picked you for a reason. If I thought you were weak, then I would have chosen someone else. Get up. You can’t save anyone if you can’t save yourself first.
Her body jerks, muscles quaking, as she breathes in hard. Flame burns meekly in her chest, muted fury. It’s not muscle or the healing factor that picks up her aching form, drives her into standing.
Grab the chair.
The guards, casually whispering at a low volume, snap to her as she braces on the table. Even the muted willpower of half-hearted rage is enough to allow her to drag her hands to take the chair.
Exert your power. Show them what endurance is.
Muscles scream as she turns with stubborn defiance. Limping towards the mirror.
"What is she doing?"
"Fuck if I know, but good god. The better question is how is she standing after all that?"
Roar.
Cardea’s aching throat rasps out a pitiful and halfhearted attempt at a roar, barely more than a stunted yelp.
The guards burst into laughter.
They’re laughing at you. They know you’re on the verge of giving up. They want you to feel weak, small and helpless. Are you going to let them win? Hit the mirror with the damn chair. Show them you’re not weak.
Like the roar, it’s a half-hearted attempt, the chair a lead weight against her grasp, barely coming off the ground. It dings off the wall, not even a dent in the metal.
The guards laugh at her again. "What the hell was that?"
"She can’t even lift it off the ground more than a few inches."
"This is shameful. Think we can just leave her here for the next shift, and go get lunch?"
"Yeah, she’s probably going nowhere anytime soon."
Cardea’s shoulders slump, despair pitting in her belly like she’s been tied to a rock and thrown overboard all over again.
I can’t. I’m not strong enough.
Bullshit. You’re not even trying. Are you a coward?
She snarls. What did you call me?
A coward. Cause this is coward behavior, Cardea.
I am not a coward. She mentally roars, anger flaring, only to abruptly die again. I just— What’s the point when I’m just going to fail again!?
Listen to me, Cardea. Spectral hands grasp her cheeks.
The world is a harsh place, it eats lesser heroes like cotton candy at a carnival. There is always going to be a threat. Always going to be someone who wants you and I dead. Who wants Melina dead. The hands force her head up, to look into silvery, wavering eyes.
Are you going to just lay down and let her suffer every time someone gets the jump on you both? Take these insults lying down because they’ve stripped you of control? Is that pride in your chest really this fragile?
I—
No! None of that hesitation and self-doubt. You’re never going to control everything. You’re never going to have all the answers or all the solutions. So, stop fucking trying.
Cardea leans against the wall, using it as support, tears running down her cheeks. The cool metal of the bulkhead pressing against her jaw soothes the fever in her flesh. The spectral fingers stroke her cheek.
She wants to just lie down on the floor and give in.
A lifetime of this, fighting for every step forward. It comes to weigh heavy on the bones. And she’s so tired.
She wants to fade into dreams and be free of the horror of these earthly bonds. Elysium would be welcoming and warm. Not like the cold that fills this place.
What do you want me to do?
I want you to remember that you and Melina are the best improvisational duo to ever walk the planet. I want you to remember how you brought down the GOC. I want you to remember that you’re ███████ fucking ███████ and you eat fascists for breakfast. You can be afraid. You can be terrified. But don’t you ever make a fool of my legacy, my choice, by laying down and giving up.
The spectral face presses the scrambled features of its forehead to her own. A chorus of images, memories, barrel through their shared connections, flowing like a river across exhausted nerves and fragmenting hopes. It sweeps her shattered will up in its current; knitting together the tears into a roiling tapestry.
Stand tall and ROAR.
The tapestry catches fire, screeching into determination.
Flame howls to an inferno in Cardea’s sternum, rage, pride, and love bursting in a sudden gush of strength and energy. A thousandfold twirls of memory, good and bad shattering the chains of exhaustion.
Through sheer willpower she straightens like a rod and she roars. Deep throated, thunderous, the noise of a lion. It startles the guards into dropping their phones.
PICK UP THE CHAIR.
It comes off the ground, arms screeching in protest.
SHOW THEM WHO YOU ARE.
Cardea howls, winding back, and then uncoils like a spring. She slams the chair into the mirror. The thrust of the force smashes into the surface, and the chair comes apart as bolts come undone from their poorly fit housings. Plastic shatters, and metal flies apart.
The mirror cracks.
See! You can do anything. How do you feel?
Cardea wobbles unsteadily, a grin spreading from ear to ear at her handiwork.
I feel…
She tips over, with a thump, hitting the floor on her back, looking up at the spinning lights of the ceiling.
… she falls back into the void, smile on her face, completely oblivious to the clomp of boots trotting towards her slowly.
Huh. Overdid it.
She passes out.
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3.2 Dirty Paws Searching for Their Next Kill
"Truly incredible." A voice echoes in the interrogation chamber.
Cardea returns to consciousness from a combinatory assault of sensations bombarding her mind.
The first to hit home is the absence of the crushing river that left her underdeveloped conceptual sense chafing and bleeding against its might. Her conceptual threads snake outwards, grasping onto threads. Names fluttering back as a 3-dimensional map starts to piece together, the necessary calculations to maneuver spinning up.
Next comes the delicate aroma of a warm, freshly prepared meal close to her nose. Strategically placed it seems, to help rouse her. Salivating, the residual tang of blood clings to her tastebuds.
Then the voices.
"She did this? When?"
"Five minutes after the first demonstration. Collapsed right after, been out ever since."
"Fascinating, I’d say she’s the next step in human evolution if she wasn’t, well, an anomaly."
The final sensation, someone lifting her chin, trying to stra—
Her eyes tear open, a howl of defiance ripping from her throat as she bolts upwards. Torso twists; hand slamming into the windpipe of a man attempting to fit a collar around her neck; launching herself and him across the room with terrifying speed. She pins the guard to the wall with a hard thump.
"First you interrupt my night, then you muzzle me, then you tie me down and make me a pincushion, now you want to collar me. Let’s see how you feel when I tear your god damned throats out of your necks and pin you to the wall, drowning in your own blood." Her nails dig into his flesh, crimson filling her vision as he chokes in her grip. Skin distorts deeper than it by all rights should, trickles of blood leaking across the flesh.
The crush of too much reality hammers her with sudden ferocity. Her mental web sheers apart, the pain absolute. It digs into her flesh, skin reddening and threatening to tear apart.
But rage has her now, and it’s not letting go without additional provocation.
She laughs, muscles straining as she lifts him higher up on the wall, his legs kicking, trying to find purchase, but Cardea has a long reach.
She presses her grip tighter in defiance of their attempts to lord reality over her.
"You’re going to need to bring a lot more than those SRAs to bring me down."
Out of her peripherals, a woman stands next to the mirror she cracked, far calmer than she should be. "It will take approximately, five seconds for the other guards to pump you full of lightning Agent Gataki."
"You’re going to have to do better than that," Cardea snarls, unimpressed. She can feel the skin and muscles inside of the man’s neck, the rapid thump of his heartbeat.
"Well, how about this. You’ll kill Julian there, and them in that time. But it’ll only take one second, a single rifle round to kill your partner. Is that how you want this to play out?"
A rifle barrel presses to the back of her skull as rage turns to the ice of terror. The ache of sore muscles catches back up with her, arms trembling as the adrenaline and power of rage start to drain.
Melina. Shit.
Seconds tick by, caught in a standoff. Analyzing the options.
"So. What will it be?"
The outcomes are bad.
Pick your battles wisely. This one isn’t worth it.
Cardea slowly releases the man, holding her hands up in the air in surrender. He drops to the floor, on his knees choking down breath, crawling away out of her peripherals.
"Good girl, glad we could understand each other."
She bites down the snarl, feeling the barrel press harder into her skull when it starts in her throat. The residual name from the conceptual strings lingers in Cardea’s mind. Eulades. Their boss.
"Now then, I am a reasonable woman. If you agree to behave yourself," the tone of voice she’s says this in is condescending, like Cardea is a pet. A tamed animal being praised for following instructions. She hates it.
"Then we’ll forget the collar for now and turn off the SRAs. How does that sound?"
"And why should I trust anything you say?" Carissa growls, the sharp implication of what they’ve already done to her hanging between them.
"Well, if I were you, from where I’m standing, your options are the carrot." Eulades gestures towards the table, the aroma of the warm meal curling across the room to mock Carissa’s grumbling belly. "Or the stick. You’re a big girl, smart one too I hear. I’m sure you’ll make the right choice."
She’s right, there’s no out here. They’ve got me by the balls.
"And if I don’t play the game?" Carissa asks slowly and very carefully.
Probing?
Better to goad them into showing their hand, know the field, and see if w— her thoughts cut off as Eulades speaks.
"Well, of course, we could leave you to cook in here until you’re feeling more agreeable. But I’m on a timetable, and I’m sure you’re just salivating to stall us out until we make a mistake right?" A confident smirk that makes Carissa’s skin crawl.
She’s in a rush.
She knows we’re looking for contingencies.
A moment of tense silence passes between them.
"Rogers, turn her towards the projector screen please."
A hand grabs her shoulder, the touch is gentle at first gliding along her clavicle in a way that sparks red in the corners of her eyes, before she’s being non-too gently grasped and jerked slowly towards the cracked mirror.
"Now then, we could kill you. It would be trivial with the SRA’s turned up to max, but that would be a waste. But your partner? Oh, she’s very replaceable. Powerful mages are a dime a dozen." The projector clicks on, and Cardea’s whole world tilts horizontally. Her heart freezes in her chest, hands shaking in the air. Melina stood against a wall, face jammed against the metal, a rifle pressed against the back of her skull.
"So, which will it be, the carrot or the stick." Eulades smiles, and patiently awaits Carissa’s response. "Clock’s ticking Agent Gataki."
She’s enjoying this. Tripping on her power over both of you. Disgusting little worm.
I—we’re fucked. There’s no way out of this. her chest squeezes tight, breathing suddenly constricted. A panic attack. No not here, not now.
Breathe. Find your center. They will come eventually.
Not fast enough, and I can’t stall. They’ll kill her. They’ll kill me. I don’t want to die Temis. Not like this.
Sagging in defeat, she says, "Okay. I—I’ll cooperate."
"Good girl, I’m glad you saw sense." Eulades walks around the table and takes a seat, gestures to the food. "Come, you must be starving. I bet that healing factor takes up a lot of energy."
The rifle bumps against her skull, a signal to "move, but don’t try anything." The chair is still warm from her own body heat as she sloshes into it, sitting sideways and avoiding the gaze of the monster across the table. The eyes bore into her, cold and filled with hate that sends ice up her spine.
Carissa slides the tray and glass of water over, rich seabass and tuna, sides of rice and broccoli, cantaloupe and strawberries. As if a wild cat suspicious of a trap, she bends over and nearly presses her face into the food, sniffing.
With a mouthful of food she manages, about a minute later, when her guards and torturer continue to stare, "Do you people have some kind of fetish for watching people eat?" She swallows the vibrato in her tone a half measure at best. "I thought you were in a rush."
"Oh, I’m on a timetable, but I’m always curious how your kind lives day to day. Do you need to eat?"
The question stings against her skin, its implications clear. Ice and crimson flame of fear and hate dance up her spine in competition like a pair of fencers.
The hate wins.
Lovely we’re at the mercy of a hardline normalcist bigot.
"Do you need to shit?" The reply is automatic. She winces, expecting a jolt of reality from mouthing off.
Eulades tuts. "Language Agent Gataki, did no one teach you etiquette?"
We have to play along and be civil. They have all the gods damned power in the world here.
"They were too busy dragging me from the woods in chains." She swallows again. "Are you going to… this is the part where your kind," the venom snakes on her tongue, striking into the air. "Tells us what they want."
Cardea looks up to meet Eulades’s gaze. Contempt burns behind her eyes, a thousand desires all ending with Cardea’s head on a proverbial pike.
"Perhaps, lets start over from the top." She smiles.
It makes Cardea’s stomach twist, the insincerity burning against her skin. Her hands twitch beneath the table, the tray emptied in front of her.
This is all a game to her.
"Good evening, Agent Gataki. I’m Site-189’s Director, Dr. Eulades Eurylochus. I just wanted to start by thanking you for cooperating and coming in." That stomach turning smile again.
Cardea’s stomach twitches, a strange sensation settling in her belly. "What do you want? Why are you doing this?"
"What do I want? Well, that’s such an interesting question. I want many things Agent Gataki. I want to make sure the world is safe from things like you. Monsters dressed in the skin of people, trotting around among us, pretending they can live normal lives."
"I’m not a monster," Her voice crackles with strain. Tiny shoots of pain begin to radiate in her abdomen, making the muscles spasm. She curls her fingers, squeezing them tight enough to her palm to draw blood with her nails.
"Oh, maybe there was a time where you weren’t, but humans don’t come back from 23 separate impalement events, catastrophic burns, blunt-force trauma, and having their bones pulverized by a gravitational singularity. Agent Gataki, you’re a freak."
Her abdomen burns with heat, pain leeching through her bowels into other organs. She starts to curl against the table, breath fast and shallow.
Something’s wrong.
It has to be poison.
"You wanted to know what I want Agent Cardea, I want the world to be free of anomalies. You and your partner are going to help me start the process."
"Bigot," she spits out, shivering, white static arcs of pain frothing across her vision like seafoam. "Why would we help you?"
Her free hand grips the table, nails digging into the metal in ways that don’t align with their visual length. The pain is immense now, spreading into her chest, and legs.
"W-w-what did you do?" Cardea gasps out, losing the battle as she slides off the table and out of the chair onto the ground, muscles twitching.
"Well, we needed to see the full degree of your healing factor. Your partner’s display was fantastic, but can’t have you being poisoined out in the field now can we? I’m very curious to see how long it takes for your system to purge this, it’s a thaumokinetic compound derived from a cryptid Polynesian frog. Quite rare. Quite slow. Quite deadly. And you just ate five frogs’ worth."
And she calls us a monster.
In a mentally whimpering tone, Cardea responds. It hurts, it hurts so much. Temis I can’t do this. I’m going to die.
Hang in there. She wants to see you scream, beg, and cry for mercy.
It burns against her heart and lungs, eating at her flesh as cells and tissue rapidly die and regenerate.
"You’re probably wondering how you ended up in this situation. The fact is," A hand grips Cardea’s chin as she thrashes against the cold metal floor, staring up into Eulades’s eyes. "You and your partner broke clearance and accessed an unauthorized database entry.
Br-r-ro-oke clearance? Temis It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurt it hurts it hurts, I want to die, kill me kill me kill me. An instinctual agonizing scream works its way from Cardea’s throat as the poison seeps into every part of her body.
Neither of you accessed anything outside of your contract bounds, and she certainly doesn’t have authority to drag you across the world for it.
Chattering teeth impair the words trying to pool on her tongue for several seconds of agony before she manages to trickle them out.
"T-t-those flags go through █████ ███████'s office." She gasps in air and squeals like a stuck pig.
She writhes on the ground, nearly snapping Eulades’s wrist. Everything is pain, her whole existence rapidly being consumed by it.
She hears but doesn’t see the clicking of the tongue. "I know enough based on the unredacted parts of your files to know you could be useful, for an anomaly."
She screams in response. Rage and agony mixing into the tone.
"In other words, you’ll be useful."
Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. I just wanna go home. I wanna drown. I wanna die. Anything but this.
I’m so sorry Cardea. I should have seen it coming.
"F-f-fuck you." She rasps out between screams. "W-w-which f-f-file?"
"SCP-8711," an air of false sympathy meanders into her tone. "This is quite impressive, how long you’re lasting. Our medical officers estimate that it’ll take anywhere from a few hours up to five days for all that poison to work out of your system. Can you imagine that? Five agonizingly long days. I would hate for you to suffer that long, as fascinating as that would be. I can make it all stop in minutes. You just have to agree."
Dread eclipses the nightmarish pain in her chest. A moment of lucidity crashes through the tides. We accessed 8711 months ago; to sate an old curiosity on Melina’s part… but it was well within our clearance issuance. What the fuck is happening? Is this manufactured? False flag? She’s killing—we’ve been set up. I’m going to die because we’ve been set up.
Cardea howls, thrashing, and nearly sweeping Eulades’s off her feet. The director backs up a few steps, frowning.
"All you have to do is agree to help us neutralize the anomaly and do another demonstration to show us your full capabilities. Then I’ll give you the antidote."
She’s delusional. It will eat this woman alive.
"F-f-fuck off," Cardea screams. She tries to move her hands, tries to do anything, but her muscles are locked in spasms of pains.
Hands grip her body, stopping her pained thrashes, as her head is roughly tilted up towards the projector screen. Her body twitches and thrashes, but weakened as it is, it’s not enough to break the iron grip of the guards.
"I admire your tenacity. Alas, I don’t have time to wait hours for you to succumb to the experience. It’s a bit of a shame; I was assuring your partner that you’d both be safe after her agreement."
Melina what the hell are you thinking. She told you to never come back. What’s your plan? Are you banking on the time gap? That she’ll have forgiven you? Is… oh. Carissa’s eyes dialate, as an arm falls off in a guards grip, forcing him to grab her shoulder as a new one sprouts and bursts outwards, immediately resuming spasms.
You really don’t have a plan this time. We’re both going to die, screaming. Nobody is going to save us, nobody is going to save us. Her chest tightens, numb as nerves die and regenerate, pain into static into pain again like a thousand microscopic knives.
She vomits, and what comes out is so visceral one of the door guards on the other side of the room instantly vomits.
Eulades raises a radio device, pressing the on key. Cardea’s eyes try to snap to the projector screen, vision a stream of white lightning and doubles.
"Play the simulation for me would you Jacobs."
Eulades lowers the radio. Cardea watches as the projector flickers. A shot rings out, Melina’s skull exploding in a shower of crimson and grey, body sliding down the wall limply. It resets, and plays again. Then again.
Shit.
Shit.
Eulades puts the radio back up against her mouth. "Now, shall we do the real thing?"
NO!
The projector flickers, rifle pressing farther into Melina’s skull.
The choice seems clear.
"Wait," Cardea says, voice cracking with blistering panic. It comes out as a deathly rattle, hiking up in pitch with a streak of white lightning straight up her spine.
Eulades clicks the button. "Hold." She steps closer.
Cardea vomits again, splattering all over Eulades, who jumps back with a disgusted screech. She looks down at her suit through Cardea’s doubling vision, red fury and disgust spreading across her lips and eyes.
"I-I-I’ll do it. Just, just don’t hurt her." Cardea’s head lulls in defeat.
"Julian, the antidote please." The man Cardea savaged earlier hands Eulades a syringe. She walks up and jabs it in Cardea’s neck with a decent bit of force.
Then, she’s on the floor, pain slowly starting to recede. She lays there in a puddle of her own vomit and blood, dazed, muscles continuing to occasionally twitch.
"I’m glad we could come to this understanding Agent Gataki. I promise you, none of this is personal. All business." A tainted palm gently pats the fever filled flesh of her cheek. "I’m a generous benefactor, you do your job well, and I might even make sure you’re in the first crop to be normalized."
You’re going to rip her spinal cord out and beat her to death with it right? If you don’t, I will.
Her head slowly tilts up, vision barely resolving more than a few feet away as her body attempts to repair the intense cellular and tissue damage. Eulades makes a motion, and Julian comes into view, leaning down and wrapping a collar around her neck. Unable to move, unable to stop him, all she can do is lay there on the floor and sink into the black pit forming in her belly.
I don’t think I can even see a path forward to getting free, much less killing her. I’m—she’s made me her slave, and there’s not a damn thing I can do.
Cardea’s vision swims with tears as footsteps move away from her. "Wait," she calls out meekly.
You can start to rebuild your dignity.
"Oh?"
"Can I please have some clothes?"
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3.3 And I don’t want the world to see me.
Site-189 Firing Range:
A hot meal, and a shower at gunpoint later; Cardea is physically, if not spiritually and emotionally, recovered.
Enough for them to march her down to the firing range where they tied her up like a target before. Every step feels like some abstract otherworld, the crush of the SRA fields seeming very far away. Temis continuously whispers in her head, provide encouragement, trying to draw back out the fire. But none of it works. She’s numb, floating as if caught in a nightmare that just won’t end.
And it’s about to get worse.
They push her through the doorway, into the room with the firing range, the remnants of Melina’s spells still patently visible. A beautiful and well cared for M1-Garand with a modern sniper scope is shoved into her arms. In any other situation, she’d dismantle and reassemble it, just to appreciate the craftsmanship, but holding it right now makes her feel nothing.
Her underdeveloped conceptual web spreads slowly through the room, names and information flowing back to her through the threads. The spells Melina cast, the effects and raw power they held, and—
Cardea snaps out of the numb and straight into the nightmare. She whirls around to find her partner at the far end of the chamber, strapped to a horrific device.
Cardea’s heart stops in her chest, frozen by the sudden icy onslaught of realization that Melina was screaming even when they were back in the hall. Wailing in stupefied agony.
MOTHERFUCKERS.
There you are.
She whirls gun rising to point at the observation box behind her only to freeze as she sees Eulades with the remote readied.
“Now, now Agent Gataki. Remember who holds all the power here.”
“You’re a fucking monster,” Cardea screams at her, any composure gone.
“No, I’m a scientist, testing the experimental limits of two anomalies.” She smiles and it’s filled with malice. “Now, you agreed to a demonstration. Why don’t you go ahead and show us what you can do.”
“Cerberus’s breath, you can shove your demonstration right up your own ass and vomit it back out. I am not going to shoot my own fucking partner for your sick pleasure.”
“If I wanted to derive pleasure from you two, I could have done so many other things. This is all strictly business.” Eulades smiles again and then sighs dramatically. “But I guess if you won’t show us what you can do, then we’ll have to find other anomalies who will.” She presses the button on the remote, and Melina’s screams get louder. Her own collar activates and bites into the flesh of her neck, forcing her to stagger down to one knee.
Cardea wants to tear through that glass, rip off this worm’s arms, legs and then beat her to death with her own goddamned limbs. She could do it too, even with the collar choking her with too much reality.
But not at Melina’s expense.
She can’t bear to hear those screams.
Can’t bear to let Melina suffer like this.
It’s better if it’s at her own hands, right?
Melina will forgive her, right?
Right?
Fuck. Her hands tremble.
“Fine!” Cardea screams, tears welling in the corners of her eyes.
The pain against her flesh abruptly stops, but not the pain scything through her heart.
“Very good, I knew you’d see reason. Now, go on and be a good girl, and show us what you can do.”
Cardea turns slowly to face back down the range. The whole world tilts on its axis, vision twisting horizontally. Everything feels cold and suddenly very far away. The rifle rises, braced against her shoulder. Through the scope, their gazes meet, Melina thrashing on the device. A ripple of magic surges, and slams down range, barely missing her. Then another.
“Do you like my toy? It’s a fun little design that lets us manipulate her thaumaturgy.” Eulades is talking over the speakers, but it’s static in the background.
Melina’s eyes are defiant but also pleading. Begging for relief.
I’m so sorry.
But there’s only one way to give it to her.
Cardea’s finger mashes against the trigger.
The bear in the woods, gutted and skinned before her eyes as a child.
The rifle fires, round zipping through the air. The device glows behind Melina, and she screams, as a purple bubble rips into existence around her.
The twang of her first bow. The first deer in the forest at age 8.
Weeping over its corpse, apologizing again and again.
The lash and the beating from the drunken hunter for taking too long, letting rot set in.
Wasting a kill.
The round vanishes, slamming into Melina’s shoulder. The calculation was off. She’ll heal from it, not as fast as Cardea would. But that doesn’t matter. A part of her breaks in two.
The centaurs in the woods at age 10, backing her into a corner.
The shock of her first sapient kills.
Sobbing as she dragged their bodies into the deep dirt, to hide her sin.
Cardea.
She fires again.
The boy who wouldn't stop hitting her in the village. She was 12. He was 16.
His surprise at her speed. Her strength.
How easily the life had drained from his eyes.
How shockingly numb she was to it.
Cardea?
Then again.
The drunken hunter in the woods, trying to collar her for the final time at 16.
How slow he was.
How fast she had become.
All the blood.
All of it on her leathers, in her hair, on her face.
The tiny bit of satisfaction before the cold numb of indifference sank in.
Again.
The majestic boar in its glen.
The thrill of the challenge, the struggle of dodging its charges, the sting of its tusks when she was too slow.
The first time she ever blinked.
How unsatisfying the actual kill was.
How gently it went, how sad she felt.
Again.
All the blood, all the draining light of thousands of eyes.
Bodies hitting the floor, falling from far too high and smashing into the ground, blood trickling down her sleeves.
Three more shots.
But she doesn’t hear them.
All she hears is Melina’s pained cries, as the calculations shift again, and again.
All she hears are the final cries of every single numbing kill she's ever made.
Cardea!
I was never supposed to be this. They made me this way.
The ping of the ejecting magazine rings in her ears.
This was supposed to be our anniversary week.
Cardea! Fucking snap out of it! Her arms tingle with numbness, jerking her back to reality. Temis is trying to take control.
The trigger clacks several more times, the rifle empty.
Melina has stopped screaming.
She’s unconscious. Bleeding.
The rifle slips out of Cardea’s grasp, and bounces on the floor.
Tears pour from her eyes, all the numb across the years fading in a single, cataclysmic moment.
Legs give out from under her.
She stares down the range at what she has done.
What they have made her do.
What every single goddamns person has ever made her do.
She looks up towards the cold metal ceiling.
She wants to die.
But she can't.
So she screams. She screams until her lungs are burning with fire.
Because that’s all she really can do.
But she can't hear it. No, only one sound is clear in her ears.
All she hears is the ping of the cursed magazine.
﹏𓊝﹏
﹏𓊝﹏
3.4 Regrets
Site-189 Director’s office
Ericc replays the scenes over and over again.
This is all my fault.
Melina shouting in pain as the SRA’s are jacked up in the interrogation room.
By trying to push her down the right path, I’ve enabled this. Made her worse.
The fear in Melina’s eyes at the threats to Cardea.
Was I naïve to think this path would work? That they could be better than before?
The agony in Melina’s eyes as she realizes what Eulades tricked her into doing. He sets his elbows on the desk, clenched fists pressed to forehead.
Have I been too passive? Was there more I could have done?
Cardea writhing on the floor of the cell, poison eating through her body.
Their hope for the future, my hope in humanity, a stinking, rancid pit of horrors.
Cardea’s broken screams on the floor of the firing range.
I am putting them through this. I’m no better than my uncles. I failed to see this path, as I failed to see it with my own sons.
He sighs in frustration.
Eulades isn’t worthy, and this has all been for nothing. I have brought the roof down on you and yours.
He shifts back in the chair, both hands flat on the desk, palms down, eyes closed.
The video clips cut off, reality rippling with a purple hue.
The clock on the wall of the office ticks as seconds go by. Then minutes.
The realization washes over him like a warm bath.
No all isn’t lost. In what circumstances have you ever known them to bow to a greater authority, even against their will?
He taps his fingers on the desk, heart pounding in his chest.
I have been looking in the wrong place. Trying to cultivate the seeds artificially when something organic is already there.
He looks towards the window, out to the ocean.
But I’ll need to test all of them.
He stands and heads for the door.
And that means making sure the monster I helped create doesn’t kill the hope for the future.