E M P R E S S R Y K O
I slid through the floors of security like a shapeless grey blur. A face here. An identity there. I knew our window would close as soon as the faceless was off the streets and we were on their radar. But it's incredibly hard to flush out a fox once it's already in the hen–and of course wearing several dozen different faces of the chickens.
I smirked and dropped a nod with a fist on my chest as a dozen heavily armed Division agents barely glanced at me. I swiped a holo pad off the desk behind a distracted tech and swiped through the floors.
There you are.
The holo was back on the table before the man turned back around. The lift doors opened to my new retina and I rolled my shoulders once as they closed before my face.
Flashes. Levels passing. The low blue floor lights glowed over the face that wasn't mine.
I touched my jaw and rotated the circle three times.
Then I stared at the glass and Scorpion stared back. I smirked with her lips. Looked at her golden eyes and the doors opened before before. The soldiers at the cell floor became rigid and snapped into salutes before me.
"Get out." I said in a bored tone.
They didn't hesitate. They rushed past me and assembled in the lift I had just removed myself from. Then the doors slid shut and the highly secure hallway was silent. I trailed Scorpion's hand along the metal wall appreciating the new details the faceless had made... Like scars and tattoos that would hold up under scrutiny.
I pressed my palm against the door and swung my face into view.
It flashed green and the doors made a series of mechanical sounds before opening with too much theatrics for my taste. I snorted in the threshold.
"She really has treated you well hasn't she..." I drawled, leaning against the five inch thick steel.
A hunched figure didn't move from the wall.
I clearly my throat and knocked on the wall more deliberately.
"Fuck offt..." She slurred beneath a mess of dark hair and shattered glass beneath her bare feet. The blood was dried and the smell was potent.
I growled under my breath and pushed off the wall quickly.
"I don't have time for this."
I closed the steps across the cell quickly and made to grab her from the floor. But the second I did she bolted to the side and unearthed a hidden shiv made of broken glass and cloth–but I wasn't born so close to yesterday either.
I stopped her hand dead, as quick as the death she promised.
The confinement had made her weak... Or perhaps she always had been. Her brother was the epitome of human strength. Her eyes flashed with a deeper hatred than I gave her credit for–
"Came to gloat?" She spat, trying and failing to rip her weapon free.
I watched her calmly back.
"Are you done?"
"Get your fucking–hands off me you ugly cun–"
I dropped the face away with my free hand and enjoyed the way her face drained of colour entirely. The weapon left her fingers and shattered on the floor. I relaxed my hold and rolled my eyes.
"I thought you were the brains of your family."
"Who the fuck–are you exactly?" She demanded.
I pouted and leant back against a broken table.
"I thought you'd know by now... I was making deals with your dead lover after all."
She flexed a bloody hand and different emotions flickered over her. Whatever her opinion of Hades had been she was not about to announce it.
"What is it. I can do for you then–nameless bitch?"
Despite it all I laughed. It was light and natural. I tilted my head at her truly amused.
"Dazz Dartega. I think you should be asking yourself what I can do for you." I flickered my eyes around the cell pointedly. "Or is this your last hurrah? Four walls inside a rotting hole in the ground."
She gave me a broken laugh.
"I'm done playing games for others."
"What if my game includes this woman's head?" I drawled, touching my jaw and becoming Scorpion once more. She still flinched against the wall before her lips twisted in a snarl and she spat at my feet.
"You're a new kind of mentally challenged–and I've met a fair few of them."
I grinned in response.
"You've met none like me." I promised her, crossing my arms again.
She didn't fail to notice the tattoos that took place over my upper arm. She shook her head slowly and eventually a small smile took her lips. But it wasn't for me. She met my eyes.
"Taking the faceless was your first mistake."
I tilted my head again and appraised the stained wine on her lips.
"It got me in easily enough. And I'm not close to finished here yet."
She nodded easily, taking up a broken shard of glass and running it along the wall with a thoughtful look. "It's just that... Everyone in Sector 1 seems to think along the same lines. They seem to make very similar mistakes..."
I frowned at the way she freely let the glass cut into her hand. I watched the crimson trail in a line down her hand. Almost like there was an endless rage in her calm expression. I flexed my hand near my concealed fusion pistol and watched her.
"It's good by the way." She noted, pausing and appraising Scorpion's face closely.
I shrugged and rolled my wrist.
"Can we skip to the part where our desires align... In case you haven't noticed–I'm short on time." I stated flatly.
At this she smiled and nodded.
"That you are, Ryko."
I froze and stared at the side of her calm smile. At the face of Proximo's sister... The glass fell from her hand and she pressed her back slowly against the wall to watch me fully. I wrapped my hand fully around the pistol now and drew it from my cloak. But the more pressing concern was the cell door that had all but closed behind me with a mechanical click once more.
"You're not...."
"No, I'm not." She said simply, and I watched the smile melt away along with every other emotion in it. Ever so slowly she brought her hand up to her face and touched it.
Makayla Xavier stared back at me.
I raised the gun in a flash and shot.
Nothing fired.
I stared at the weapon and the fusion cartridge that wasn't glowing inside it.
"You should really know how to disassemble a weapon before you use it. It may teach you a few things about it." She noted, unmoving from the wall. A glowing piece of the fusion cartridge appeared beneath her crossed arms and she appraised it for a moment.
"How." I got out, taking a slow step around the table to put a greater distance between us.
This time the smile was darker on her face.
"Because I knew the moment you took the faceless. You'd go for the weakest point in the armour. Who better than Proximo's beloved sister that hates Scorpion more than anyone... It's so Sector 1 it's like staring at the female version of my father." She said slowly.
"I'm flattered." I drawled, rapidly trying to reconsider my exit from this building and from the burning ice in her eyes. Ones that saw a different ending.
"She will be upset with me when she finds out I took one of these..." She sighed, pulling out a gleaming black blade. Serrated on the edge. Death black. Black like venom...
I stumbled a step over a chair and my throat dried.
"Makayla I am not your father–"
"You're worse." She said simply. "You act like you are different."
"Killing me will sign your death warrants. All of you. The satellite weapons–"
"Will not be used. Because Proximo's real sister was being played by Hades. And she loves her brother more than she hates Scorpion." She answered simply, running that deadly blade along the wall again. "You know, I almost wanted you to make this difficult. To at least have some creativity. But you really are all the same."
I darted my head back to the door now, fight be damned but it was sealed as tightly as it was and opening for nothing–
"Take her face off." She stated across the room.
I slammed my fist against it with shout of frustration. I heard her footsteps come nearer and faced her with a glare. Then ripped two blades off my hips and tore the hood back from my head. "Fine. This is how you want to play it, Xavier? You may have Vanta fish venom but I was trained from the Imperial academy from birth. You arrogant low-born filth."
She grinned back and spun the blade in her hand as if... She was unbothered by how close one glance from that edge would kill her in moments.
"And I'm just an Emperor's daughter with no training and big ideas... Should be easy for you."
I snarled and tightened my fists on the daggers as she approached not bothering to put her guard up.
"When I'm done with you I'm going to wear that face." I spoke slowly, sending the cool methodical calm back into it. "And you know what I'm going to do then?" I smiled slowly and ran my tongue against the edge of my blade. "I'm going to go find the leader of the Division and finish what we started in that pool room... again. And again. Until she realises how good the real Sector 1 tastes."
Makayla's smile disappeared and my own grew wider.
She stopped just out of range and the blade of black stilled in her grip.
"I think you know she wanted me, Makayla... Or she would have stopped me. I felt what she felt when I pressed myself against her and–"
My words stopped.
I stared at her in confusion. At the blade still in her hand.
Then at the one that was sunk into my leg. I hadn't seen her other hand move–I had only seen the one holding... Then the lines of black started rushing past my skin. I dropped to my knee in confusion as a liquid fire ran up my leg–took my throat.
I was on my back. The room going black. My mouth churning a fountain of fire and flame. The fire was endless it was tearing apart my insides–
Then a new stab at my neck. My face rippled and fell back to my own.
I screamed and opened my eyes. Then room came back and she was there. Crouched with another syringe in her hand and watching me with those vengeful ice cold eyes. I coughed out a fountain of foam as I gasped clear air again.
"I never considered myself a vengeful person... Empress. Then you had to open your mouth."
She stabbed me in the stomach and I roared out the pain as new fire and flames licked their way through my body in racing black lines. The blackness claimed me again and my entire body shook with the shock of two doses of this liquid death.
But death didn't come.
The devil brought me back to the surface again gasping.
"Don't–fuck–you–" I spat through the foam of death.
She took my jaw and tilted my eyes to meet hers. Her grip was stronger... It glinted with a flash of gold. A strange band on her finger. As if she was–
"I never considered myself a monster either. But then again... I know I would become one to keep her safe. I would do it all. For her." She whispered onto my lips as a lover would. As someone who has kissed death and come back from it would. As someone endlessly in love would.
"You are right though, Empress Ryko. You are indeed. Out of fucking time."
Then that gleaming blade wielded by the ice blue eyes of the monster sank itself through my neck. I stared in stunned shock. In a blur of shadow and venom and disbelief. Because no antidote would bring this back...
The room blackened. It felt so cold.
As cold as the ice in her eyes.