The room in which Squad awakes is cold, with no windows and he quickly surmises that it's a basement of some sort. He's tied to a chair affixed to the floor and looks around, catching the scrutinising gleam of Sig's eyes. Sig is also tied to a chair.
"Hello, sleeping beauty." Sig looks the worse for wear, with bruises under each eye and a big cut vertically slicing his lip.
"Where are we?" Squad asks.
"It looks like a sex dungeon," Sig replies. "But, then, everything looks like a sex dungeon to me – I'm an optimist."
Squad smiles at his friend. "We've been beaten, tied up and we're almost certainly going to die here."
"Yes...that really is very irksome."
"Did you see who captured us?"
Sig shakes his head. "Hopefully some lame-ass virgin that I can seduce into letting us go."
"...And if that doesn't work?" Squad asks, shaking his head with a smile.
"When has that never worked?"
"When has that ever worked?"
"Don't answer a question with a question, you mind-bender!"
Remembering some of Sig's past endeavours, Squad smiles. "Well, you've not always been the best at flirting..."
*
A night-time party on the beach and revellers dance barefoot by torchlight as the gentle susurrus of the waves beats upon the sand. Sig is in the middle of it all, dancing with a kind of grotesque inner glee, several colourful necklaces hanging from his neck.
He spots a beautiful woman and their eyes lock. He's entranced by her. They draw closer and their gazes lock; the rhythm of her movement contrasting with the motionless dance of her eyes. The passion locked there. The dance grows more intense, their hands touching. Sig shivers as if his fingers have discovered some new world of pleasure.
He leans in, strong, masculine, almost to the distance of a kiss, whispering.
"I can see you don't shave your feet!"
*
Sig is indignant at Squad. "I don't even know what you're referring to...and that was three weeks ago! I'm a changed man! I've turned a corner—"
"Then driven off a bridge."
Sig laughs and shakes his head. "I'm not some comic book character, you know," he protests. "I've got feelings! Just because I like to socialise sexually, doesn't mean—yes! I've got an erection! Perhaps I can use it to burst through my trousers and pick the lock on these chains."
"I think I'd genuinely rather die than see that happen."
While wriggling his crotch in every direction, Sig offers Squad a lesson in geopolitics. "My people get screwed all the time. How many Dwarves do you think are in the emperor's security council? That's a rhetorical question." After a few moments, Sig loses patience. "...Well, how many?"
"You said it was a rhetorical question!"
"That doesn't mean you shouldn't answer it!"
Looking Sig right in the eye, Squad states bluntly. "Sometimes it's hard not to be your murderer."
Ignoring this, or taking it as something that is said regularly to him, Sig presses on. "One – one Dwarf in the emperor's security council!"
"Well, how many do you think it should be?" Squad asks, adding. "And what's the group plural of Dwarves anyway? With lions it's a pride, with sheep it's a flock, but I don't know the group pronoun for a bunch of Dwarves—"
"An orgy."
Squad laughs. "An orgy of Dwarves?"
"Yeah," Sig smiles.
"I'll take your word for it—"
A door in the far side of the room screeches open and several imposing-looking Scrovengi warriors, dressed all in black, enter.
Sig turns to Squad, jubilant. "I knew it was a sex cult! We're saved!" The Scrovengi warriors line up either side of the door in salute and Lord Scipio walks through. "Oh, fuck!" Sig exclaims. "He's not going to bum me, is he? God, that'll be a hate-fuck if ever there was one!"
"Hello, Sig," Scipio smiles. "I haven't seen you since Racambad. How is old Senderos?"
"He died peacefully in his bed..."
"That's nice."
"...Of fifty-six stab wounds in the back."
Scipio smiles. "I've missed your sense of humour." He punches Sig full force in the gut, causing the Dwarf to reel forward into his chains.
Winded, Sig looks up at Scipio and chokes out a ragged retort. "I see you like to have clean shoes...but, buddy, you've just stepped in a huge pile of shit called Sig Hammerhead!"
"I know," Lord Scipio replies.
"...That probably didn't come out right," Sig adds, before Scipio catches him across the head with a powerful backhand, launching his neck backwards. "Ah!" Sig moans.
Scipio turns to Squad. "You see, Squad, I know you won't talk under interrogation, no matter what you're put through. But let's see how your pet fuckwit holds up."
Squad protests. "He may be a fuckwit, but—"
"Could you both please stop agreeing that I'm a fuckwit?" Sig butts in. He turns to Scipio. "It doesn't matter how much you torture me, I'll never tell you where we took the Jiangese girl!"
"Ah, so you have the girl?"
"Shit!" Sig turns to Squad. "That would have been a lot more heroic if I hadn't just given the game away."
"You're still my hero," Squad says.
"Thanks." Sig turns to Scipio. "So, what have you got planned for us, Lord Scipio? R.K.A. Mr Happy Nice Guy."
"R.K.A.?" Scipio enquires.
"Rarely Known As," Sig explains, and gets a punch to the gut for his troubles. He spews up a lot of blood and looks Scipio right in the eye. "Sorry, I've got an allergy to nutcases."
Looking at Squad, who senses what's coming next and fights against the chains, Scipio smiles and lifts his fist, holding it in above Sig's head; then he launches it into Sig's face with brutal force: one, two, three times, snapping the head back with each hit, breaking the Dwarf's nose and causing devastating damage.
Sig slumps forward and Scipio lifts his head, then smashes it back with concussive force. As he strains against the chains, Squad shouts. "Come on, that's enough! You're going to kill him! What use will he be to you dead?"
"What use is he to me alive?" Scipio counters. "Tell me what I want to know," he demands of Squad, choking the semi-conscious Dwarf.
Squad hears the Dwarf whispering something and, trying to save him more punishments, interrupts. "Be quiet, Sig!"
A smile flickers on Scipio's face. "What did you say?" he asks Sig.
Sig leans forward, left eye full of blood. His words are a whispered trail. "I said..." His voice grows stronger. "UP. YOURS. MICRODICK."
A punch knocks several of Sig's teeth pattering across the floor and there's a horrible snap as his neck flies back; Scipio continues pummelling him, strikes jolting the Dwarf's head to either side with sickening crunches. His target unconscious, Scipio lifts his fist high, to deliver his most powerful punch yet.
The door opens and a Scrovengi soldier enters and whispers something in the former spectre's ear. With a look in the soldier's eyes, Scipio nods, casts a glance Squad's way and exits, followed by all the Scrovengi.
Sig's face is a horrible, bloodied mess and he's hanging, totally unconscious, from the chains on his chair. The chains are choking the life out of him, if there's any life left.
"Sig! Wake up!" Squad shouts, but there's no response. He needs to wake Sig up quickly or the Dwarf will never recover. "Come on, buddy, wake up: the Von Cool brothers are together again." Again, no response: blood is pooling and running in rivulets at the Dwarf's feet. Desperate, Squad looks into the imaginary distance and says loudly. "Okay, ladies, I'll have sex with you."
Sig splutters into life. "Me first!" he yells, coughing up blood.
"Good, you're awake."
"...You said it, bitch," Sig says, but his voice is weak. He can barely talk and falls in and out of consciousness.
"Stay awake!" Squad commands, worried. "Remember the happy moments. Like when the magician showed you that magic trick..."
*
The chattering lights of a funfair light up the early evening, as children run happy and light-hearted between the attractions. Sig walks between stalls, checking them out, when an enthusiastic magician leaps out at him, smiling.
"Thanks for meeting me here!"
"You just jumped out at me," Sig replies.
"Well, thanks for meeting me anyway." With a bulging smile, the magician asks. "Would you like to see a magic trick?"
Before Sig can answer, the man performs a startling series of gestures, feints and brilliant misdirection, culminating in an explosive series of tricks worthy of the greatest stages. Panting, the magician holds out a hand to Sig, enthusiastically seeking his opinion. "Well, did you enjoy the magic?"
"I'm still dead inside," Sig deadpans.
*
Tied to the chair, Sig laughs, sending up a small fountain of blood, his breaths jagged and laboured. "I don't think he got my sardonic sense of humour." He turns to Squad. "Can you use your magic to get us out of here?"
A shake of the head. "There's a magic dampener on these chains – incredibly strong."
"Stronger than love?" Sig hopefully asks.
"Yes, much stronger."
"What's Plan B?"
"...That was Plan B."
"Fuck! Do we have a Plan C? Does the alphabet go that far?"
"For most people, yes," Squad answers, trying to find a weak spot in the chains. There are none. He can hear Sig's breathing getting worse. He has to keep him conscious and engaged. "Hey, Sig, didn't you once tell me something about being able to tell the time using only a trumpet?"
Sig barks out a pained laugh. "That was back in my student days."
"You were a student?"
"God, no!" Sig replies, appalled at the notion. "But I did stay in the student halls: I was the right age to be a student and I could chat up the women. Anyway, I would always arrive home at some point early in the morning, totally hammered, and I didn't own a clock so to tell the time I would..."
*
Sig stumbles into his student flat, keeps his balance by holding onto the furniture and fights his way to the window. It's clearly night-time and the courtyard outside is dark, student flats on all sides. Sig tugs open the window, picks up a trumpet placed there for the purpose and blows a single loud note tunelessly, and repeatedly, out into the quiet streets. He looks like a big baby trying to suck on a straw as he fights to hold himself up while doing this.
Lights spring up all over the courtyard, dogs barking as people look out to try and see what's going on. One man opens his window and bellows at the top of his lungs.
"Do you mind, moron? It's three o'clock in the morning!"
"Thanks!" Sig yells back, puts the trumpet down and falls flat on his face by the window, snoring loudly.
*
"That's a good one," Squad laughs, but Sig starts convulsing. "Sig? Sig!?"
Everything fades for Sig and a little boy's voice cries out shrill and clear in his mind. The boy's voice weeps out with doubt and hurt, and the realisation that even parents can't save you from everything. No one's going to feed me, mummy! Childhood's great, aching hopes have gone from this child—who sounds no more than five or six-years-old. It is a hopeless, dead voice. A look of indescribable pain flits across the Dwarf's face, his mouth a writhing wound, the lips pronouncing inaudible thoughts as he shakes.
A scream rips through Sig's throat as he wakes and shouts out, the words almost unintelligible. "Fuck off! Fuck off! No!" His powerful chest slams against the chains, coughs tearing him to pieces, unable to stop the rushing waters of his anger and pain. I'm going to die here, the boy thinks. There's nothing he can do; the world continues, it walks away. There are desperate sights on every street and the air is primed with violence and terror. No one cares about the boy or his mother.
Squad is scared for his friend, who he's never seen like this before. Sig lets out one more cry and falls forward against the chains, panting; violence speaks from every line of his body. Squad wishes Sig was free and uninjured because, in this state, the Dwarf would tear apart anything in his way. Then he hears Sig's voice, a few fugitive tremors in his normally confident speech.
"Squad, if I don't make it out of here, I need you to do something for me."
"Okay," Squad answers without pause.
"As you know, I was raised in a Dwarven mountain enclave on the border with Jona, and it was just me and my mum. She was my world and I was hers; then she got a boyfriend, Jerril, and after a while he moved in. Things weren't the same after that, but they weren't terrible. Then, when I was five or six, the Jonan Tribes invaded and the enclave was besieged for over a year. After the first few months, we'd run out of everything and life just stopped, even for the kids, every day was a struggle to find something to eat. We were thin, man, we were thin as ghosts.
"My mother's health wasn't good by that point and Jerril was basically an arse, so I was the one who wandered the streets every day, begging for scraps but people just pushed past, swept up in their own problems. It was around this time that Jerill started beating me up and, if we had food, he refused to give me anything, because he said it would motivate me to find more. It hurt me. It hurt me to see that my mother couldn't protect me. I loved her so much, and I depended on her so much, I just couldn't understand why she didn't protect me. I was her world and she was mine, but there was nothing she could do, and that was a cruel lesson.
"Anyway, one day, when we were close to dying out, I saw one of my old teachers in the street – school had been closed since the invasion, so I hadn't seen him for a long time. He looked fucking terrible. Kind eyes filled with tears, framed by a face that was starved. He was the only teacher who had any time for me, probably because he knew my family situation."
Sig's face contorts, a vagrant smile of inhuman suffering spreading across features more acquainted with humour. "I'd never wanted to be helped and was always a wilful child, but I didn't know what to do. He didn't look long for this world. He took out a piece of bread and I forgot my pride as I took it, held it there and thought only of never letting it go. I didn't think about where it came from, I didn't think about what it took for him to give it away, there was just a blind stampede of hunger and desperation. And I thought to myself: now that I've been given this chance, I will never let down my mother, because this one act of kindness and decency has to be the start of something new."
The words click shut and Sig puffs his cheeks, in obvious discomfort. "I gave the bread to mother and she tore it up, one piece for me and one for Jerril, nothing for her. I ate mine quickly and it tasted so good, like life or hope, or some rat-like desperation. Jerill was distracted and, suddenly, I found myself rushing over and putting a knife through his throat." Sig's voice is filled with horror. "And the terrible thing is, in the seconds before I did it, my mother was looking at me and I think she knew what her boy was thinking, but was too weak to stop it." His head lowers. "I wish she'd been stronger, or that I had." He quickly adds. "Not for Jerril, he was a piece of shit and I've done much worse since, but so my mother didn't have to see that."
His eyes closed, Sig keeps his head lowered. A woman's desperate voice screams in his ears. Sig, what have you done? What have you done? Sig shakes his head, wordlessly trying to escape the past. "Her emotion freaked me out, so I ran and hid, but that night, when I plucked up the courage to return, the fighting for the final relief of the enclave began and I couldn't get back, as there was too much destruction. When I made it back next morning...she was gone. I've been on my own ever since, feeling guilty as fuck about having left her there."
"Sometimes the only way you can survive is to tell yourself you'll never look back," Squad says. "You were just a kid."
"I'm not making excuses, Squad. All I'm making is that, if I don't make it out of here, you go back for me and—"
The door opens and Lord Scipio enters, eyeing his captives with confidence. Squad, who knows Scipio, feels that something is off.
"You will tell me where the girl is," Scipio tells Sig.
Sig contemplates this. "Stranger things have happened...but only about four ever."
Faster than a blink, Scipio closes the distance between him and Sig, grasping the Dwarf by the throat and shoving a blade to his neck. A single gesture will be fatal; their gazes lock, the pristine and the bruised, then there's an explosion and the door blasts inward.
Anya steps into the room, sword drawn. "Alright, boys." She slams a spell into the face of a Scrovengi guard, then leaps into the air and puts her sword through his neck as he stumbles back. She kicks the body clear and spins just quickly enough to block the attack of a second Scrovengi, putting her on the backfoot.
Like a panther, Scipio stalks his way around to Anya's side, and turns his sword to slice through her knee. As he does so, a figure leaps through the door and bats his attack aside, almost stabbing through Scipio's face with the follow-up attack, but the former spectre is too quick, though his counterattack is also evaded.
Squad recognises the newcomer, a female human with supernatural mutant traits, by sight and reputation, as the spectre Talinn. She has brown skin and is from the far eastern country of Indira, part of the Samarian Empire; her eyes are huge gold orbs surrounded by slight moats of white and her head is topped by turrets of pure gold hair perched with supernatural rigour, as if they are a series of succeeding mountain peaks.
Scipio leaps forward and Talinn darts back, avoiding the thrusts of his sword with the smooth suppleness of a dancer. They stop and the mutant dips her sword in salute and smiles at Scipio, who nods in return. They know each other. She attacks with superhuman speed, her sword moving like flashes in dark water.
Parrying her attacks, Scipio puts her on the backfoot and presses forward, but Talinn locks her sword onto his, grasps his free hand and, with a tight hold of Scipio to pull him with her, throws herself backward and kicks him into the ceiling. Scipio slams into it with force, raining rubble down but, while mid-air, recovers and launches himself downwards at Talinn, who's on her back and throws herself to the side just in time to avoid Scipio's blade, which smashes through the floor.
As she's jumping to her feet, Scipio flies forward and kicks Talinn two-footed in the chest, knocking her into a distant wall, where she's engaged by several Scrovengi soldiers. Scipio turns towards Sig and Squad, but before he can say or do anything, he's forced to parry a spell and Anya follows up her magic with a charge. Avoiding her sword-thrust, Scipio almost takes Anya's head off with a swift counterattack, but she throws herself to the side in time and magically rips the floor from under his feet.
Scipio leaps through the air faster than Anya can react, his sword striking down at her head, but he's tackled mid-air by a new combatant. Boon and Scipio land a distance away, the engineered assassin launching several downward thrusts at the former spectre, who expertly blocks them and slices at Boon's stomach, which Boon evades.
Scipio's eyes gleam inquisitively. "You're one of the assassins they made from my blood," he says. "You move like I do."
"Yes," Boon answers nonchalantly, and attacks.
Anya circles around and concentrates a magic blast on Scipio as he's fighting the assassin, and Scipio splits his concentration to block the magic attack whilst also duelling with Boon; spinning, slashing and throwing back magical attacks at Anya.
While they're fighting, a tall, elegant man with long jet-black hair wearing bright, ornate armour of a milky white hue steps into the room. He possesses a lithe but muscular physique, with medals enclosed in the chest plate of his armour. Squad has only seen such beautiful, antiquated armour once before, and he recognises its wearer as another spectre, the master vampire Thomas Dukat. Dukat calmly draws his sword like a gentleman duellist, the blade thin and deadly sharp, then positions himself on the side of Scipio not covered by Anya or Boon.
While fighting between Talinn and an entire Scrovengi team goes on in the background, there's a deathly stillness as, with a smirk, Scipio eyes the three fighters arrayed against him. With one bold stare, he casts down a challenge, the scene exploding into life: Scipio blasts Anya off her feet, spins around Boon's attack and slaps away Dukat's sword, which is an inch from piercing his neck.
Grabbing Boon, Scipio sends him spinning through the air until he smashes into the wall, sliding down head-first. Leaping at Scipio, Dukat shapeshifts into a gigantic, man-bat creature, lashing out at impossible speeds with his many, razor-sharp limbs. He presses Scipio back, the former spectre fending off attacks raining down from every direction, but when Scipio gains the upper hand and slashes out, Dukat shifts back into human form and Scipio's attack flies wide.
Dukat's sword bites into Scipio's shoulder, sending him spinning, but the former spectre intensifies the spin to avoid more hits and slices the tendons in the vampire's knee as he completes the 360. Knowing that Dukat is far from finished, Scipio kicks him across the floor, knocking him into the opposite wall.
Anya's fireball is barely blocked by Scipio, who's forced back and kept on the backfoot by a second fireball, then Anya summons a magic lasso and grapples Scipio's sword arm, almost knocking the blade free but the former spectre, with a subtle flick of his wrist, causes the lasso to explode in a blast of energy.
Anya is knocked onto her back with Scipio's sword poised above her. Their eyes meet and the subtle alchemy of Scipio's face betrays doubt, or maybe confusion, then he's blasted off his feet and straight through a wall by incredibly powerful magic.
Indigo strides forward, the palm with which he'd attacked Scipio outstretched, reaching down with his other hand to help his sister to her feet. "Are you alright?" he asks, but she's staring at the wall through which Scipio was shot, lost in thought.
"Er...a little help?" Squad says.
Talinn finishes cutting down the last of the Scrovengi and peers through the smoking crater in the wall. "Scipio has escaped." She turns and strides confidently towards Sig and Squad. "Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room."
"Oh, fuck off! I've tried to diet!" Sig replies.
Talinn looks down at him and smiles. "Hopefully your sperm count is as low as your IQ." She presses her sword to his throat. "I meant the location of the girl: did you tell Scipio?"
Sig looks up at her, askance. "Hey, you know me."
"Exactly."
"He didn't tell him anything," says Squad, standing up after being untied by Indigo and walking straight up to untie Sig.
Sig weakly leans back in his chair. "Ah...I think I'm dying."
"If only," Anya smiles, recovering from her contemplation and, as Squad unties Sig, going over to take the Dwarf's other arm and help him up. "You know what they say: pain is just your body's way of telling you you're an idiot."
As he laughs up a blood clot, Sig turns to Anya with a shake of his head. "Don't you care about me at all?" he asks, knowing she does.
"If you were being attacked by a dragon, I'd ask it to stop."
Sig grunts. "Good enough for me." He turns to Indigo. "That was an impressive piece of magic there."
"Thank you," Indigo answers, adding with his own special brand of tact. "You look like you've been reanimated by lightning. And not in a good way."
"I feel terrible," Sig agrees, quickly turning his broken body to Squad. "I'm not doing a poo, am I?"
"You already did one."
Anya and Squad, one under each arm, continue carrying Sig towards the door while the others watch out for threats. "What time is it?" Squad asks the others.
"Pub o'clock," Sig quickly suggests.
Talinn shakes her head with a smile. "First you'll need to be debriefed and go through everything you discussed with Scipio."
For a moment, Sig pretends to consider this. "Yeah...that's not playing out very well in the playground of my imagination." He turns to the others. "Pub!"
"I'll be heading straight back to Samaria," Talinn says,
"I was hoping we'd have the chance to strike up an inter-orifice relationship," Sig winks with his one good eye, broken body still held up by Anya and Squad. In response to Talinn's stern look, he smiles. "It doesn't hurt to ask."
"It will if you ask again," Talinn smiles back, then disappears through the streets.
"She wants me so badly she can taste it!" Sig confidently tells Anya and Squad. "I just need one more opportunity."
"Well, you know what they say," Anya smiles. "When one door closes...it's shut."
***
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