Valyrie flies towards the sun and, for a moment, imagines what it’s like to be free. The cold of space wafts against her aura, finding purchase in the small patches of exposed skin along her tattered skin suit. For four thousand credits, a bit more than two months of her extensive salary, she could have a brand new one fresh from the Freestar Collective’s machine printers. One of the armored ones, too. Tight, secure, isolated. She wouldn’t risk radiation burn. She wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth of the sun.
So Valyrie gently pushes back against the uniform mandate as much as she can. Missions where she’s allowed to fly unburdened in the raw sunlight are few and far between. She likes twirling in the light, and a nonfunctional suit means that space cools one side of her body to near subzero, only for her to drench it in the sun’s loving radiance a mere twist later.
Valyrie loves space. She loves dancing through the wrecked debris of apocalypses past, watching the colossi of earth lumber forward like baby spiders against a misshapen eggsack. She loves the feeling of her breath catching on a vacuum, yet her lungs still filling with the magical luminescence permeating the aether. Humans used to soak up what little of the sun they could get, far beneath the Earth’s overprotective atmosphere. But Valyrie’s more than human and almost not a slave.
[0-19, you’re deviating from the optimal course. Please correct your flight path 0.3 radians towards Earth.]
“In a moment, handler. I’ve spotted something curious.”
There’s little around her that isn’t dead. Sunbleached spacejunk sparkles in massive tumbleweeds of ships and stations. She rapidly swaps her focus from one burnt electronic to the next. She spots what must be an old plushie but doesn’t let her sight linger enough on it to guess at the specific animal it once resembled. She hopes her handler will get vertigo if they look through Valyrie’s eyes. A few moments of nausea for her handler is all the time in the world up here.
[That’s just old soviet station 0-19. It’s likely been picked clean over the last century or two. Nothing valuable would ever remain. Stay focused on the mission. Conserve your energy. You’re almost there.]
Valyrie doesn’t change her path. She’s inching closer to the sun, though she knows that even at Mach speeds, it would take years. Right now, she’s going much slower than her limits, so old age or the Collective would take her long before she passed mercury.
“This whole mission is to collect old soviet tech, right? Are you sure there’s nothing valuable I should check out in this station? The bulk of it is only a klick or two away.
[Dr. Xu is not old soviet tech. Nor is it her research. You have been briefed on this. The only thing of interest in this mission is the bunker she’s hiding in. That’s new salvage and potentially one of the best minds in the system if the distress signal is real. That’s what’s important, not old world trash.]
“But-”
[You’re stalling 0-19. You’ll now have to adjust your flight path 0.35 radians to return to the golden zone of Earth’s gravity well. You’ve delayed arrival at the bunker by twenty minutes and increased aura reserves by 2%.]
“Let me burn green then. I’m against the sun up here. That’s practically a nuke in my face every hour. Let me burn it all and make up for lost time.”
[It’s against corporate policy for a soldier at your rank to burn green outside a combat scenario. That’s why we precalculated your flight plan to get you to the bunker in five hours of red with minimal exposure to the sun. You’re deviation is increasing aura capacity rapidly. At forty percent, I’ll need to…I see what you are doing 0-19. Please adjust your course. Please don’t make me perform disciplinary actions.]
And then the euphoria is gone. Valyrie feels her collar tight against her neck. She feels the bomb at the base of her spine just waiting for a signal to go off. It’s hard not to feel either of these things, though she tries. The circular collar doesn’t conform to the shape of her neck, so two edges always dig into the skin, no matter how she adjusts it. She hates the damn thing, but a collar is all she’s ever known. Valyrie’s first was gifted to her the moment her body was strong enough to hold its head up by itself.
Valyrie continues her deviation despite orders. She tries not to think too much about why. The handler monitors her brain signals. The handler would know any of Valyrie’s rebellious ideas before Valyrie could even consider them. So Valyrie doesn’t think about how heavy her collar is or how tattered her clothes are or how empty her stomach is and will be for the estimated eight hours remaining in this mission. She just thinks about how the warmth of the sun heals old scars and welts and how good it is to fly. She’s not rebelling, she’s just enjoying her duty to the Collective. She’s relaxing so much her control slips, and red aura shifts orange. Her speed increases slightly, but that’s fine. Freestar soldiers move with urgency and focus. A good soldier would focus on using their aura precisely, not just expending it, but her people were born lazy, so urgency is all she’s got.
A mild electric shock buzzes through her, but her mind is too empty to remember what it means. Her people were born docile after all. The pain will go away on its own. If she shifts into yellow, she won’t even feel it. A small number on her HUD reads 0.4 radians. Her people are stupid though, so that can’t be much more than the last few numbers her handler called out.
Valyrie shifts yellow, approaching the upper limits of her power. Yellow’s her favorite color. She likes it a lot. Being yellow is like being the daughter of the solar giant, a star in her own right; her glow lights up the dead space around her. She moves fast. Numbers tick up, she forgets what they mean. Stars don’t need to know. The Earth gets the tiniest bit smaller. She waves at one of the colossi. She wonders if the slow movement is it waving back. The sun is so warm and nice against her skin. She flies toward it like a moth.
[0-19. Your brother would like to see you again.]
Memory crashes down on her like a wave. She’s not supposed to be yellow. This mission did not call for anything but red. She twist her body and shoots at a right angle back towards the optimal path burning yellow then orange then red to get back on course. The beeping on her collar lessens.
[Aura has dipped 15%. Thank you 0-19.]
“I know.” Valyrie struggles to figure out what to say. “I’ll maintain efficiency for the rest of the mission.”
[Please do. You’re aura belongs to the Collective, and your life is worth living.]
My aura is infinite, and so am I. She doesn’t say that, but she knows her handler sensed it. She tries to correct her reasoning. Her power is not rebellion. “The Collective is all. I’m sorry for putting you through a scare handler.”
[It’s okay 0-19. Apology accepted, though I’m afraid Mission rewards will need to be adjusted accordingly per protocol, but I will put in a request for additional leave time when you return! A mini vacation would be good for you.
“No.” Please. Flying is all I have. “I will not deviate again on this or any mission. Trust me. My priorities are straight.”
[It’s not a punishment 0-19. The protocol is leave after a potential psychic break. Symptoms of drapetomania have to be treated with care and respect. As your handler, I care about you and I want to see you get through this for your sake and all who rely on you.]
“Understood…handler.”
[We are aligned. That’s good. We both do our part for the Collective. Your deviation has resulted in an extra thirty minutes of flight. That’s not terrible. In fact, it’s your lucky day. You’ll be able to see a sliver of the Eventide upon your return.]
Despite everything, Valyrie can’t help but smile at that.
—
Valyrie touches down on the moon shard with a thud and an explosion of dust. Typical protocol is to turn around and decelerate before approaching a gravity well to avoid potential impact damage to equipment, but doing so burns aura and she’d like to save what little she can for the rest of the mission. Besides, her skinsuit is nonfunctional anyway. There’s little to protect but her backpack, and that’s sturdier than she is.
Valyrie’s red shivers from the impact but doesn’t shatter. Her red is strong. She was the first in her creche to develop an aura, and she keeps it on at all times despite the expenditure and the punishments that come with. It makes her feel powerful even though she knows she’s not.
[That landing only expended 3% of your Aura 0-19. You were meant to arrive at the bunker at 25% capacity. You’re currently at thirty.]
“Burning on approach would have cost triple that, leaving me at twenty percent or less. I don’t know what’s in there, and I want to be topped up for a fight. Besides the equipment survived, didn’t it?” Valyrie bites her tongue when she realizes how much venom she soaked into those words. Thoughts of her brother flirt at the edges of her mind no matter how much she tries to push them away.
[I don’t need to remind you what will automatically happen to you if your aura exceeds forty percent. A black mark on your record is not good for your career. Your trip back will be longer and your exposure to the sun more intense. This is while you’ll have an aura incapable passenger preventing you from moving at excessive speeds. I’m doing my best to keep you alive 0-19. The math says twenty-five percent is enough for you to deal with any threats while being low enough to avoid the cutoff point upon return. Please trust me and expel as much aura as you can on your way to the bunker.]
Valyrie's handler drones on in their cheerful tone. [Once inside, please stay safe. Remember, you are as valuable as Dr. Xu,] they lie. [If the bunker poses too much of a challenge at current aura levels, return immediately.]
So we can avoid wasting our time sending you on scouting missions is the implicit threat. Valyrie knows what this is. It’s a test. She was promoted from tugger to expendible a year ago on account of reaching blue. She’s one of three nil-class citizens allowed to leave the station’s sphere of influence, and the military is just looking for reasons to get that number down to zero after one idiot attempted to defect. If she fails to secure Dr. Xu, not just her research as she knows how the Collective feels about consolation prizes, at current capacity levels, then she’ll be demoted back to a tugger in a moment. So it's time to get serious.
She takes a deep breath and shifts into yellow. Her perception slows significantly, and she can see the pixels on her HUD repainting themselves with new information from her collar’s sensors. There’s no atmosphere on this shard, and the basalt is loose like sand. This shard is months away from breaking apart, the gravity well is not holding itself together, and all of this is probably why Petra’s distress signal resurfaced years after her disappearance.
Valyrie doesn’t really know or care who Petra Xu is outside of the mission. She’s one of a thousand witches who disappear every year. Some are poached by various collectives, others are enslaved, a few die, but it's hard to permanently kill a witch. The vast majority become wandering echoes either through exposure to the Eventide or getting bitten with their wards down. Petra was apparently looking to cure zombism before she disappeared five years ago, so Valyrie’s bet is on her getting bit and whatever company that employed her sweeping the incident under the cover of another disappearance.
The fact of the matter is that absolutely nobody cared about Petra’s disappearance five years ago until the data laced in her distress signal was signed with her biosignature. The experiment results she transmitted with the signal were apparently promising enough for the Collective to throw an aura-capable slave at a bunker in the middle of nowhere to hunt for the research.
If Valyrie succeeds in this mission, then the military will be forced to delay her demotion for a couple of months. If she fails because this is an obvious trap laid with a forged biosignature, the Collective isn’t going to waste an actual citizen investigating the signal or collecting her body, especially when the deteriorating orbit of this shard takes it further from the Collective every hour. Recovering her body isn’t worth the fuel.
“I’m approaching the bunker, but this doesn’t seem promising.”
Valyrie sees a cave in the distance. Shifting the aura around her eyes green, she can make out a weathered set of blast doors. What really gets her attention is the graveyard of ships sunken into the ground around the bunker like a parking lot for lost adventurers.
“I’m seeing a lot of fighters and shuttles buried in the dirt here. They don’t look Soviet.”
[Anything recoverable?]
Valyrie jumps a few meters towards the nearest fighter. One of its wings is buried deep into the ground, and sand fills the cockpit. She brushes the dirt away and sees that everything from the dashboard to the seats has been salvaged. The ship is little more than a shell of steel.
Valyrie shakes her head. “It’s all been salvaged, picked clean. My sensors aren’t picking up on any rare earth materials either, so there’s no point in wasting more aura searching. Whoever is in here has been baiting scavengers and taking their parts.
[Whoever is in there…Do you smell a trap? Would you like to pull out?] Two questions with two very different answers. “It’s obvious it’s a trap. Whether it’s Petra’s or a bunch of raiders remains to be seen. I’ll be entering the bunker shortly.
Valyrie jumps and lands directly on the steel of the bunker. She shifts into red now that her capacity has hit 25% and readies herself to destroy the blast doors when a siren goes off. She breifly shifts to yellow waiting for an attack but nothing comes. Instead the blast doors creak open.
[It looks like Dr. Xu is inviting us in.]
Valyrie takes in a deep breath. Sometimes she forgets that the handler sees everything she sees, hears everything she hears, and likely knows her treacherous thoughts before she does. Valyrie is never alone, even when the mind in her head is silent. The handler only talks to her during missions, but how much does the Collective monitor? Does the handler see her when she eats with her family, when she takes a shit, when she’s …intimate with others? More worringly, how long has her handler been monitoring her? She’s only been an expendable for a year, but the Collective didn’t perform a surgery or implant a special device to get into her head. Are all nils being monitored at all times, or just her? Has there ever been a moment in her life when she’s been truly alone?
[Stay focused 0-19. Every minute spent here distances you from the Collective.]
Again, Valyrie breathes. She tries to clear her head, but that doesn’t work, so she continues forward, mental distress and all. The blast doors slowly close behind her, and the second set opens quickly. A rush of air and pressure fills the small airlock, and for the first time in hours, Valyrie can breathe.
It’s weird. She sustains herself with her aura; the vacuum of space feels right to her, so the pressure of oxygen pushing its way down her lungs makes her cough. She feels like a drowning fish, but she tries to get used to it quickly. They are monitoring her after all. Her performance here will determine how much sun she gets in the future.
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A burst of white light saturates the hallway as Valyrie steps into it. The bunker is typical Soviet affair, engineered without a hint of humanity in its design. Gray walls and ceilings without a single artificial window flickering with false visages of space. The air is nitrogen-rich and oxygen low, saving on costs but stifling even deep breaths, a chorus of cheap fluorescent lights hums away with a mind-numbing static that tingles in the back of your head like the onset of a migraine. The soviets didn’t last long in space. Most of them fled these stations as much as the government that constructed them.
A red spotlight turns on to her left. Valyrie flares her aura but nothing comes to attack her. Instead, a voice echoes down the hallway. “Put the pack down and you can walk away.”
Valyrie blinks, looking at the pack she’s wearing as if remembering that she had it in the first place. In there is the suit she’s supposed to stuff Petra in for the flight back, a few security boxes for any research she might obtain from the bunker’s computers, and a collar. In the pockets, she’s stuffed in a bit of food as well, just some jerky that she planned on having for dinner on the off chance this mission takes longer than its allotted twelve hours. She wasn’t sure how much the collar was worth, but the rest could not be worth more than a few hundred credits combined.
Valyrie shakes her head in case the disembodied voice has eyes in the walls. “I can’t do that, ma'am. This gear and I belong to the Freestar Collective. You will as well if you come peacefully.”
“You’re a slaver then.”
Valyrie shirks at that. It doesn’t like thinking about that every waking moment of her life has been spent helping the Freestar Collective grow large enough to take away the freedoms of others. She just wants to get by. She wants to see her brother again, whichever branch has him. She wants this itchy freaking collar to not dig the same welts into her skin. Petra barely factors into Valyrie’s wants and needs. Valyrie doesn’t want to enslave the witch, but she needs to.
“You shouldn’t have sent out a signal if you didn’t want slavers poking about.”
[0-19. Can you grant me vocal controls for a moment?] Valyrie nods, though she has no idea how she could refuse. A voice that’s much too high bounds out of her mouth a moment later.
“Hello. Am I speaking to one Dr. Petra Xu, a researcher formerly employed by the Kalyan Supremecy? Scientist here at the Freestar Collective have replicated the experiments described in your signal. The results are very promising. We would like to employ you if possible.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Why would you refuse? Your research could be the breakthrough of the century! If we can cure zombism, that’s the first step to taking back the earth. We could eliminate the colossi, rebuild society, and advance technology enough that all of us left in Earth’s sphere of influence could rejoin humanity in the Eventide. It would be revolutionary, heaven, people would sing your name from now to the end of eternity. Please let us help you.”
“If you want to help me, bring me food and supplies. Let me continue to do my research here until the shard disintegrates. I can communicate through radio or your avatar if you prefer.”
“It would be an extreme expense for us to communicate like that. Space is…dangerous to say the least. You’re not well protected. Who's to say someone doesn’t barge in to take your research or your life? No. It would be much better if you joined the Collective.”
Valyrie wanted to vomit at the vitriol spraying from her mouth, but she couldn’t even dry heave. Every muscle from the waist up belonged to the Collective.
“I have a daughter.” Valyrie’s eyes blinked. Her mouth opened but closed hesitantly. “What will her life be like if I join. How can I trust you?” Valyrie wanted to shake her head and got a mild electric shock in response. She stops resisting.
“Every citizen of the Freestar Collective is entitled to several inalienable rights. We’ve based our society on the old United States Empire. Freedom of speech and religion are guaranteed, and all citizens are provided with an education, though I’m sure the homeschooled education for a daughter of such an illustrious mind outpaces whatever we can provide. We’ve created an egalitarian society built on meritocracy. You and your daughter will have every ability to rise through are citizenship process. Most importantly, we aim to provide everyone with a comfortable existence. Food is plentiful, work is minimized, and social bonds are encouraged. Most people choose to become part of the Collective.”
“Your avatar. Did she choose this life?”
“Of course she-”
“I would like to speak with her if you don’t mind.”
Control of her body came back suddenly. Valyrie stumbled forgettign that there was some amount of maintanece required to remain standing but she quickly regained her posture.
[Okay 0-19. Sell her on the Collective, and we’ll be able to get home without a fight. You can do this. Break a leg.]
She could do this, but she could just as easily not lie. Every word spoken by her own mouth was a two-faced fib. Freedom of religion meant you were free to join the Freestar church. Food was plentiful because slaves worked the vertical farmsteads and died from toxic pesticides, work was minimized for first-class citizens and beyond, and social bonds were fine as long as they led to you giving a random man some children. In the Freestar Collective, you were free to wiggle your chains, not remove them. She wanted to tell Petra all of this, tell Petra to take her daughter and run as far down into the bunker as she could before Valyrie was forced to tear this place apart, but truthfully, she didn’t care. She had stopped caring about anyone outside of her immediate family a long time ago.
“The handler doesn’t lie.” Her voice felt scratchy. The handler knew that Valyrie’s throat was dry but didn’t figure out that she needed to swallow every now and then. Valyrie coughed and could feel the handler cringe in the back of her mind. “The Freestar Collective is good and wonderful, and it would be great if you joined.”
She waited. The handler buzzed in her ear giving some talking points that Valyrie repeated ad nauseum. She didn’t really care, she could tell from the silence how this whole sell was going. Instead she focused her sensors on the structual integrity of the bunker. When she fought she needed to know how much power she could use without risking the collapse of this shard.
At some point, neither the handler nor Petra had anything left to say. It was quiet in her mind and in her surroundings. Almost as still as the vacuum of space though the convention currents in the air still scraped at her skin. The handler took control of Valyrie's voice once again. “Hello Petra. Do you accept? Are you and your daughter able to come out now?”
Valyrie listened to the small screech of the speaker mic activating. “Drop the pack and leave. We want nothing to do with your Collective. Valyrie smiled as the handler relinquished control. [That’s unfortunate 0-19. I truly hoped she would join and save us the trouble. It’s back to plan A then. Can you please proceed through the bunker? We were able to map a good amount of it through the sound reverberations of that conversation.]
Valyrie shrugged and walked forward. Time to blow shit up.
—
Thirty minutes into the hunt, Valyrie was running dangerously low on energy. Without easy access to the sun, her normal strategy of overwhelming anything that moves with sheer force needed to be adjusted. She had started the dive by burning orange and blasting down corridors at near Mach speed with the handler’s guidance. Now she had maybe a fifth of the aura she started with and was struggling to maintain her red. She really didn’t want to drop red in a live fire scenario.
So she got smart. There were two types of weaponery in the bunker. Balistic turrets, crazy old world tech as it was insanely expensive to manufacture actual bullets in this day and age, and modified security bots. Her one saving grace was that the AI built to run all of these defenses was down; there was no way Petra would waste electricity running an actual security AI, so everything was being manually aimed.
“Just leave us alone!” A voice screeched over the loudspeakers as Valyrie sprinted into the next room. Her HUD showed two hidden 5.56mm turrets in the ceiling. She could tank low caliber shots like that if she flared her red but she doubted she could keep that up for the next chamber. She could try to run past but that might just get her killed faster.
In front of her were two hulking security bots twice as big as the base ones she’d been tearing through. Both were straight out of a medieval flick. The first was a brass knight wielding a spear and a greatshield with the letters F U spray-painted on it in red. It skittered quickly on eight spiderlike legs in front of the door leading to the next chamber. It raised its shield, and Valyrie could feel its remote pilot just begging for her to attack head-on. The other robot blurred in front of it, dual-wielding swords. It burned with glowing red eyes that promised extreme violence.
This was unusual. Normally, a corridor would either have a pair of turrets or a pair of bots with Petra and her daughter remotely piloting them. The turrets wouldn’t fire on her without manual controls, and there was no way either of her targets was dumb enough to try to pilot multiple obstacles at the same time. So either the turrets were a bluff or a third combatant was waiting for the right opportunity to shoot her in the head.
What to do? What to do? Valyrie had a few moments to think before she collided with the sword bot. It was big, twice as tall as she was, and wide enough to take up half of the bunker corridor. She could try to sneak past it, but that shield bot must have something up its sleeve to stand so confidently in the back. She had been fighting her targets for a while now, they knew her fighting style was mostly powering up her fist and slamming it into steel until it stopped moving. If they’re choosing now to go all out, they would have prepared strategies against brute force.
Valyrie didn’t want to die here. Which was a weird thought, as before today, she genuinely didn’t care that much whether she lived or died. Life was pretty freaking miserable and a few hours ago she was considering flying into the sun. Though dying on her own terms and being shot and stabbed to death in an old war bunker were two separate things. She had seen several hallways painted with rusted blood with the bodies nowhere to be seen. Whatever scheme Petra had going on had taken its fair share of victims. She really didn’t want to be another one.
So her options were to fight, run, or…would her gun work? Using it would be risky. It was Aura-powered and fired a pretty concentrated beam, but at her current levels, she’d risk dropping out of red after a single shot, and chances were combatant three would choose that moment to splatter her guts against the wall. She did have the nuclear option.
“Do I have permission to speak?” She sent her handler a message and hoped she’d get a reply before things got hairy. Things sped up as she focused her aura into her fists. She rushed to the sword bot, dropping to the ground immediately and avoiding a scissor cut aimed at her head. Hands on the floor, she burned like a rocket and focused all of her momentum into a handstand kickup that would hopefully take off the bot's head.
The bones in her knees cracked as her foot rebounded off the swordbot’s chin. Valyrie screamed as her own body took the force of her kicking a brick wall with all her might. She plummeted back to the ground and only barely rolled away from two swords piercing into the spot behind her. Valyrie tried to catch her breath while the sword bot plucked its weapons from the ground one at a time. She kept her eyes on the hidden turrets above, not that she could do much if combatant three activated them. She had poured half of her remaining aura into that last attack and got nowhere. A three-round burst from either of the pair would probably shatter what was left like glass, but Petra wouldn’t know that. The combatant would wait for a sure shot rather than risk valuable bullets breaking an aura shield.
Her best strategy now was run back to the previous cooridor and hope sword bot would chase her. If she could get it one on one then- [You have permission to speak].
Valyrie froze, eyes and mouth going wide at the handler’s words. Immediately, as expected, both turrets opened up and fired at her, but bullets weren’t as fast as her words. Fornacis. Valyrie spoke, and the Eventide answered.
—
The first apocalypse was climate change. In the early twenty-second century, the Earth became hostile to most mammals. Tsunamis flooded most coastal cities, fires destroyed most farmland, and, insanely, the heat dissipated most ocean currents, causing a rapid cooling and an immediate ice age. The humans who could afford to leave left for the stars, setting up the first stations and moonbases. They and tens of millions of the servant classes left the rest of humanity to die.
Humans didn’t die easily. The second apocalypse was the First Worlds War. A geneticist birthed a pathogen that changed human biology, making us hardy enough to run naked into a tornado and live. Valyrie’s ancestors started a war to bring down the stations and flip the script. Colonize the cowards who fled with their slaves. Reconquer the planets for a new golden era. The third apocalypse was the virus. Some hateful scientist, knowing that the war was lost, created a virus that turned her people into zombies. The idiot didn’t account for it hopping to humans without the Ω factor. What little was rebuilt on Earth was destroyed by hordes of mindless monsters. Space didn’t fear any better as the zombies kept moving when shot, burned, or evacuated out of an airlock. Stations blast themselves apart in the hopes that those clinging to the outskirts could survive.
The fourth apocalypse was the gods. Valyrie invoked her chosen name for a god of the Eventide.
The name itself represents a constellation in the southern hemisphere in the shape of a furnace, but a furnace is exactly what a god is to her. A uncaring hatefuly machine that turns raw chunks of metal into something beautiful and powerful and she’d be damned if the shit in her life didn’t mold her into the greatest gods damn weapon this side of the moon. Being a speaker raised her from 0-7892832 to 0-19, and two security bots would not be taking her out.
The room erupts the moment she speaks her god’s name. The bullets melt and drip hot plasma onto her skinsuit. The plastic boils, but her skin shines like marble. The swordbot charging at her gets flung into the adjacent wall and breaks the ten-centimeter-thick steel separating the bunker from the outside basalt. She feels this shard grow and quake at her unleashed power, the ground beneath her melts as she floats leisurely in the air.
This is her still burning red. She shifts the aura of her arm green and raises it towards the shield bot. The bot, to its credit, doesn’t hesitate. It raises its spear and skitters towards her in a desperate charge. Valyrie opens a palm, then closes it into a fist; the shield bot crumples into a heavy ball. It melts as Valyrie flows past it. She looks over her shoulder and crushes the remaining bot and turrets to nothing. Finally, she lets out her breath and releases the word.
Valyrie’s red is back to normal. Her aura levels hover around fifty percent of capacity. That’s enough to get her docked if her handler hadn’t sanctioned it. It’s enough power to maybe destroy her collar before it can send a signal to the bomb at the base of her medulla oblongata.
“You can speak.” The loudspeakers groan, somehow not destroyed with the rest of the burned-out hallway. “Yes,” the handler replies with Valyrie's voice. All thoughts of an easy rebellion or a quick death fade as her handler takes complete control of her body. “0-19 is a speaker capable of blue aura. Whatever weaponry you think keeps you safe is nothing to her. Please. Let's end this peacefully. You may come up.”
Valyrie thinks about rolling her eyes because that’s all she's currently allowed to do. The time for negotiations has long passed. The handler authorized Valyrie to speak. If the report states that Petra was obtained through peaceful negotiations, then they’ll look incompetent to the higher-ups. Aura expenditure is supposed to be heavily limited for the nil-class for fear of them freeing each other. If Valyrie was a bit more disloyal, she could have burned her collar and potentially tanked the bomb, leaving her free to escape the collective, likely taking Petra as a hostage to negotiate citizenship with another faction. Of course, the Freestar collective would kill her brother, mother, father, and probably anyone she’s ever slept with as retribution, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a risk to let a nil-class speaker use her god given powers.
The loudspeakers hiss for a minute, Petra’s hand on the trigger. “0-19. What’s your name?”
“0-19,” Valyrie’s handler answers in her stead.
“Not you, Freestar dog. Let me talk to your avatar. The person you’re piloting. 0-19, you hate that tag, don’t you?” Valyrie tries to nod her head, but she can’t. Only after her breathing is steady and her mind is calm does the handler relinquish control of her mouth. The rest of her body is still firmly under the Collective’s control.
Valyrie swallows, wetting her dry throat. “Valyire,” she says. “Valyrie Fryer. And yeah, I hate the tag. It’s too low. It’s an acknowledgement that I haven’t done enough for the Collective yet. Under the Freestar collective, I hope to be 1-19 someday,” she says dryly for the handler’s sake and her own. She doesn’t care if Petra believes her words as long as her handler writes them down for higher-ups to see.
“Is that really all you want?” Petra whispers.
“It’s all I can ever hope to want,” Valyrie says back. This time, the loudspeaker doesn’t hiss. Petra’s done listening. Peaceful negotiations have collapsed.
[0-19,] her handler tickles the back of her head. A reminder of what’s at stake. [I can’t seem to map the rest of the facility. The shielding is too thick. You’re reaching the core, probably a mile down. You’ll need to accomplish the rest of the mission yourself. Can you do that for me?]
“Of course,” Valyrie stops herself from rolling her eyes.
[Thank you.] The handler says. [I’m allowed to give you an hour. It’s the most we can give to a nil class, and I’m authorizing you to speak again if needed, though I don’t know if that’s even possible in so short a time frame. You know what this means, right 0-19?]
Valyrie tries not to think too hard; a single treacherous thought will spell the end for her. “I’m unsure,” she says quickly while the words are still true.
[It means I trust you, 0-19. I want you to be 1-19 or even 2-19 one day. It will mean the world to me if one of my soldiers gets there, but you can’t get there without trust, so I’m trusting you. You have the authority to make your own decisions. Bring Petra back alive. Her daughter can be eliminated if it suits you. Please let me know if you have questions on your orders.]
“Am I allowed to burn blue?”
[Are you able to?]
Valyrie thinks. The only time in her life she had burned blue was a week before she became 0-19. The first day she spoke. The day the Freestar Collective burned her sister to ash. The anger she needs for blue is still there in her chest, walled off where the Freestar Collective can’t have it. That anger is hers to use, hers to burn when the time comes. She digs down and remembers that moment of pure unadulterated hatred, and as the tears start to flow and hints of green flash through her aura, she looks down the electromagnetic spectrum at the handler sitting in her chair a thousand klicks away. Valyrie says, “Yes.”
[Then I authorize you to burn that too. As long as Petra leaves this facility safe and sound with as much research as the two of you can carry, you’re allowed to burn whatever you need.]
Valyrie nods. “Understood.” The handler leaves her mind and for a blissful moment Valyrie is free from all of this bullshit. Then, once the moment is past, she fills herself with anger and hate. She kicks open the elevator doors. Burns a hole through the floor, and burns yellow towards the center of the bunker.
