Still, He was Brother Fist, and she was His angel.
His will was always to be done. Disobedience was blackest blasphemy.
So she had meekly obeyed, command deciding the conflict.
Deciding, but not resolving. She had left her home and risked her life and soul to capture Marchey, but that conflict was a smoldering ember of doubt buried deep in one chamber of her heart.
An ember that made her wonder what possible use this drunken infidel could be to him. Which led her to wonder—
—could Brother Fist have been… wrong?
That thought triggered a convulsive burst of pain and nausea, cramping her insides like some fatal poison. Her body stiffened, every muscle twisting into a quivering knot. The cup she held in her silver hands shattered as they clenched into fists.
The spasm subsided, and in its wake a voice howled a litany at the back of her head. A man’s voice. The irrefutable voice of her conscience. She heaved herself to her feet in dumb obedience.
She had shown weakness of faith. She had doubted. Not just herself, but God’s perfect servant Himself. She had sinned most greviously.
And so she must atone.
Marchey watched Scylla go rigid as a steel beam, her one green eye rolling back in her head until only the white showed, crushing the heavy ceramic cup she held like so much eggshell. At first he thought she might be suffering a grand mal seizure.
After a moment she seemed to shake it off, taking a deep breath and lurching to her feet. The blank lens that replaced one eye slid blindly past him. Her other eye, the one of the unusual bottle green that reminded him of another woman, another time, another life, was fixed and dilated.
She plodded to the center of the deck space like an automaton, folded to her knees. There was a metallic double click. The bulky silver bracers on the back of her forearms released themselves to dangle loose. She removed them, laying them aside within easy reach.
Out of the utility pouch she wore at one silver-sheathed hip came a palm-sized matte black box. She pressed a catch. Two coiled wires sprang from a concealed compartment. At the end of each wire glinted a long steel needle.
She turned her hands over. Marchey saw that removing her bracers had bared a small patch of exposed flesh at the back of each hand, the pale skin framed in silver. Her ink-etched face a stiff, frozen wasteland, she drove a needle deep into the back of first one hand and then the other. Only the knotting of her jaw muscles betrayed her pain.
Now wired to the box, she placed it before her knees. The heel of each hand went atop it. After a long moment she leaned forward, putting her weight on her arms and hands. The box began to emit a low, sinister hum.
Scylla’s arms stiffened. Her back, her whole body clenched cable-taut as electricity surged from one electrode to the other, using her body as the conductor. She threw her head back, her jaw clamped tight on what had to be a scream.
She inflicted that agony on herself for a slow ten count, then let up. After muttering a low, monotonous prayer, she leaned on the box again.
Marchey shuddered and looked away.
Obviously she was punishing herself. A term for what she was doing floated up out of some obscure corner of his memory: self-flagellation. Usually it was a matter of the penitent scourging him or herself until he or she bled. Her exo made whipping pointless, even if she were to use a length of chain on herself.
Why was she doing it? He stared into his cup as if expecting to find the answer there, then shrugged and drained it. He refilled his cup, this time with straight brandy.
A strangled moan from Scylla drew his attention. She was panting for breath. Sweat beaded her tattooed forehead. Her whole body trembled as if palsied, nerves misfiring and muscles twitching from the overload. The set of her jaw said she was preparing to scourge herself again.
If he hadn’t know it before, this was irrefutable proof that he was in the hands of a madwoman. One who believed herself to be an angel of the sort favored by Revelations. No guests for years, and then this is what he got.
I should stop her, whispered a voice in his head.
He didn’t move. There was no point even to trying. As long as she was in that exo, she could be anyone and do anything she damn well pleased. This he knew from firsthand experience.
Back when he’d interned in that UNSRA Military Hospital he’d watched a shock trooper installed in an exo like hers take on a fully armed Ogre tank, his bracers deactivated to even the odds. It had taken the trooper all of twenty-one seconds to single-handedly reduce the battle machine to smoking scrap.
Marchey knew he ought to be scared shitless.
But he really didn’t feel much of anything.
He took a meditative swig of brandy, wondering if he’d reached the point where he was past caring if he lived or died.
Interesting question. He didn’t think so. When he got right down to it, his present situation wasn’t all that different from his normal routine. His destination might have been changed from the one originally set for him, but he wasn’t being wrenched off in some radical new direction. Someone else had been in control of his movements for several years now. Someone else chose where he would exercise his special skills, and on whom.
This was undoubtedly more of the same. Sure, this time an armored female maniac was in charge, but for all he knew his itinerary up until this time had been decided with darts, dice, or pigeon entrails.
When his work was done he would be shown the door, shoved back into the old game, still the ceaselessly moving pawn in an endless chess match where the Black Queen ruled the vast and far-flung board. Her name was Death, and the stalemates he forced on her had become meaningless events, forgotten by day’s end. Fleeting and inconsequential as fireflies in the void or fingerprints on glass.
He played on, but by Survivors’ Rules: apathy was sanity; caring would be the kiss of death.
Marchey’s right hand strayed up to the silver metal pin he wore over his heart. The metal still shone, even if its gleaming promise had become obscured. He found himself remembering when he had agreed to give up what little autonomy he still possessed.
He was back where it had all begun. Square one.
A meter-long reproduction of Marchey’s pin hung on the wood-texed wall behind Dr. Salvaz Bophanza’s desk, the initials of the Bergmann Medical Institute under it in gold-edged black. A close look would have revealed a patina of dust on the upper curves and strokes.
The chunky, middle-aged black man behind the desk gave Marchey a rueful smile. “I’d offer you a drink, old buddy, but I had to give it up.” He patted his stomach. “Kept eating holes in the tank.”
Marchey made a face as he sat down. “That’s a bitch, Sal.”
Bophanza shrugged. “It’s not so bad. I only miss it when I’m thirsty.” His smile faded. “You probably wonder why I recalled you.”
“I was hoping it was so we could catch Happy Hour on your expense account,” Marchey answered in an attempt to lighten the mood.
Sal rolled his eyes. “I wish. No, you’re back here because things aren’t working out very well the way they stand.”
Marchey sketched an ironic bow. “Still a master of understatement, Mister Director Sir.”
He’d arrived at the Institute to find it all but deserted, a bare handful of the staff still remaining. The corridors were silent and empty, the air of abandonment palpable. A mood of bleak pessimism had descended, but he’d hoped seeing his old friend would make him feel better. One look at Sal had been enough to kick the slats out of that.