A rancid smell filled her nose as her eyes fluttered open. The room she had been sealed within, painted in a dim red light. Her armor stripped of her and her wounds lightly tended to. The girl's muscles ached as she shifted, her hand immediately shifting to grasp at her jaw. A look of disorientation filling her features. Where was she? Jayce rose to her feet, looking about the cold steel room, only to be hindered by a large metal door. Tiny hands pressed against the object but to no avail. Taking a few steps back, her eyes wandered. "… Hello?" she shouted, her voice hoarse from her sobs.
Suddenly the realization. Viktor. Her eyes grew wide as she began frantically patting at the walls to find some sort of weakness. An escape, anything to rid herself from the hell she was about to endure.
The whirring of a mechanical device hovered into the room, a single green light illuminating the dank prison. Red shadows soon covered the metal walls as fluttering of leather scraped along the titled flooring. "And she awakes."
"… Herald?" she squeaked, tucking herself into her shoulders, desperately trying to put a form to the voice.
"Creator." the floating sphere immediately spread its mandibles, "Correction, Subject, Creator.'"
Black nails pried open the solitary box, a menacing voice beckoning the defender forward, "Come."
She hesitated, swallowing as she backed away slowly. "I… would rather just… stay… here."
"We've no time to waste. Come." Red shadows bathed the confinement from corner to corner as the battle cast leaned forward a bit. He extended his hand as if waiting for her to latch on and claim her salvation.
The steeled eyes gazed into the door way that would lead to oblivion. "Why… did you bring me here." still hesitant on the acceptance of the herald's hand. "What ever would you have to gain from me even being here in this place?"
His open palm turned over, the sanguine glow seemingly brightening. "I have nothing to gain." the Herald replied. Viktor's hand stretched wide as he firmly clasped it on her shoulder in an almost tender manner, pulling her toward the door and light.
She struggled lightly against his pull, knowing that if he had meant to harm her, he would've done so long ago. It was frightening and extremely unsettling. "You... still didn't answer me." the light slightly blinding her. A hand raising to shield her eyes, her head turned to look upon the now changed visage of the herald. "Why did you bring me here?"
"All will soon change. All will soon be answered."
The mechanized man tugged her tight against his side, his arm guiding her along side him as he forced them away from room. The whirring started again and did not cease until black digits tapped away at a keypad. The reinforced door opened, the swift sound of steel gliding apart, sighing in content as if it was fed at last. Viktor had led her into his latest domain. Before them, silhouettes of unimaginable figures, creatures, monsters whirled around to greet the latest addition.
"This is the womb, the start of all creations."
A light gasp exited her lips as she almost fled into his arm to escape what she was bearing witness to. "… What. What have you done." The girl's face ridden with horror. She found it strange that she would have brought herself to hide away within the arm he had forcibly wrapped about her. With every step she fought, with every advancement, he pulled. 'Everything will die… if I can't stop him…' her lips parted, vision blurred.
"What I've done is opened the gates to a higher plane of existence, a place where a utopia is possible, a place without strife." Viktor fervently shook her shoulder. "Just look at them. Think about it." His scepter swept in a grand arc, "A society! Always ready! Ready to adapt to any change."
He let his words ruminate in her mind, continuing on with the tour. Deeper and further into his labyrinth they traveled, only the echoes of his words, the sounds of their feet, and the droll of machines were heard. Columns of steel lined the antechamber, where he brought them to a halt. Viktor cocked his head, his eyes returning to his prize,
"What are you going to do with the rest of your life?" he suddenly inquired.
The Herald glanced at the bold letters above the doorway. It read:
'01.'
Jayce felt an unyielding feeling of insalubrious sickness burning within her core as the Herald talked of his madness. Her legs weak at the man's overwhelming deciation to his perverse future.
He forced her forward with every step, her breath stolen at every word. The sounds of machinery draining the colour from her face with the creeping realization that she would die here if she did not do something, anything.
And there they stopped, in front of another gate deeper into the abyss. Her lips parted, the broken sadness that held upon the hero dancing about in lost eyes. The same look lifted to take in the face that would end her. fluttering down to look upon the collar of his coat. "I…."
The defender's head turned to look upon the door again, swallowing the fear that had carved it's way into her heart. "won't have a choice now, will I?" she paused "—Before it was to better mankind, not through sickening mechanical abominations like this…" She never looked upon the steel skulled visage again. Only staring endlessly onto the number.
Sensing the fresh scent of the innocent, the metallic portal spread its walls apart to accept the young defender. Frigid, musty air rushed out the chamber, hissing as it escaped. The foul, stale stench assaulted her nose yet the Herald nudged her on. His deliberate steps and guiding hand marched her closer to the number, the printed portent, until they passed under the doorway where she could no longer see the sign.
Into the chamber they pressed, and only more impressive metal workings welcomed Jayce. There was not a single soul other than the horror that ferried her to the other side. His eerie rasp filled the room, and silence fell upon them, the world taking a grand pause by his command.
"You are the one," the battle cast paid no heed to her words, conducting the conversation as if she had not sounded her voice. The Zaunite simply repeated the mantra while his fingers unlocked another door, the last for now it seemed. Shoving her forward and onto a hard bed, his hollowed eyes peered into her terrorized ones.
Viktor, in one stride, bridged the distance that separated her from him. He planted his gloved hand onto the plain sheets that had wrinkled under the girl's weight, and gradually his palm shifted from the bed to her curved hips, snaking up to finally settle on her soft cheeks.
Delicately cupping her face, Viktor whispered:
"You are the '01.'"
The room she had been involuntarily forced into had the smell of rusted metal and death. Her form pressured onto a bed covered in curiously stained sheets. His mindless ramblings continued as he followed her down atop the structure leaving the hero frozen. Her lip quivering at his touch.
"You are the one."
His distorted voice echoing relentlessly within her subconscious, slowly smothering any fortitude left within her. The coarse leather gliding along her cheek brought an uneasy chill that rose to the tip of her spine. Her arms forced her backwards against the headboard of the bed. It was the farthest she had been from the Herald since their walk into the hell that was his lab. Her vision blurred, distorted by welling tears. The girl huddled herself into the bed's cold frame.
This would be the night she would die…
The inconsolable sadness that poured from the girl reverberated into the emptiness of the room. The tears running softly down her cheeks and staining what remained of her clothes. Her tiny hands crossing over her chest. Without the hammer to protect her, what else could she do?
She was trapped. Held hostage by a man haunted by crazed visions of a future that should never be. Her uncontrolled sobs quickly bridled by her quavering hands. The Defender's eyes narrowed as more tears adorned her features. She was at the Herald's mercy and her charm would not work on a man that held no emotional ties…
"Hush," the Herald leaned forward, hand following in hot pursuit until her back met the headboard. His palm captured her creamy skin, leather against flesh; and listlessly, he tilted her chin up and caressed her jawline,"No more tears unless they are for joy."
Indolently, methodically, Viktor stepped backwards, gradually withdrawing from Jayce. His gaze not once wandered from the huddled form before him, as mechanical steps brought him to the exit. The antechamber imbued the Zaunite with a ghastly glow as the entrance opened to the Herald again, illuminating the girl's dungeon for but a moment.
Still facing the Defender, Viktor breathed, "See you tomorrow, Jayce."
One boot after the other, he bowed out of the room. The hallowed eyes, cardinal like the liquid that pulsed beneath her skin, was the last image the hero saw before darkness enveloped them both.
"Tomorrow, an eternity awaits."
There, forsaken in an amaranthine cimmerian shade. The Hero lifted her hands from her rosed lips, her lament stifled from the bulwark of steel that caged her. Collapsing upon the fabric of which was beneath her, the girl choked upon her sobs. The Herald would grant her no quarter, no respite, no shimmering faith in fleeing from his grasp. He was a man, corrupted by steel and steam, birthed by abhorrence. Steeled by conviction in machine.
Blinded by the gut wrenching inner agony, Jayce's cries absorbed into the darkness with no reply. There would be no help to come for her, no man to free her from her nightmare. Her jailer, the only way to salvation.
Or so he had promised.
Perhaps playing his game would lead to her freedom. As a human, she quickly pondered, or as machine? What was it to be human? To linger forever blemished on the surface of a planet of which was dying. For once, she dreamed of Viktor's vision. A vision of the future warped by his mind. The very same that he longed for, no war, no hatred. Only impartial conversations passing the masks of metal monsters.
The Defender's sleep was strangely peaceful aside from her twisted paradise that haunted her. Her eyes opening to the ebon pit that cradled her. Her cheeks flush from her tears and her eyes graced with a subtle darkness. She lay for her keeper to arrive. To take her to his tomorrow. She would play his games, until her time would come. It was all she could do.
"Come for me, Herald." She whispered.
"Take to the eternity in which you promised."