Prologue
A soft blue glow illuminated the room, doing nothing to dispel the ever-present chill that lingered in the air. Geometrically patterned gray walls, a floor, and a ceiling completed the utilitarian's paradise. Here, the innate Imperial need for structure was met; here, decisions were made that would change the face of the galaxy.
It served as a fitting testimony of Intelligence's legacy . . . and the only one it needed.
Order. Efficiency. Practicality.
Keeper only ever really felt safe when surrounded by Imperial walls.
Leaning slightly forward, she tried to refocus her attention on the screen in front of her, mind rapidly processing the incoming data as she read at a speed that would make a normal person's head spin. Despite her best efforts, however, the words were starting to blur as the beginnings of a headache crept stealthily through her skull.
And she was so damn cold.
She always seemed to be cold these days.
Not that it was ever exactly balmy in Intelligence headquarters (or any Imperial building or ship for that matter), but lately . . . lately it was worse.
No matter where she was, whether here, at headquarters, or the few hours she spared herself to go to the tiny, government assigned apartment she called 'home', she never seemed to be able to warm herself, to alleviate the bone aching chill that seemed to have permanently crept beneath her skin, freezing her insides and lending her naturally fair features the unwholesome pallor of a corpse.
And now, numbness had made it hard to type, had made her fingers clumsy and stiff, her feet grow heavy, and her face begin to tingle.
Pausing, she let out a soft, tired sigh, blinking disbelievingly as wispy streams of fog danced from her lips. Surely it wasn't actually that cold?
Sitting back in her chair, she stretched, popping the kinks out of her neck as she turned her eyes away from the screen before her. Closing her lids for a moment, she took in a long breath through her nose, held it for exactly three seconds, then released it once more. She felt anxious, a sort of creeping restlessness crawling up through her limbs into the pit of her stomach. Her foot tapped uneasily as she opened her eyes, the dull 'click' echoing in the silent chamber.
Glancing at the chrono on her wall, she stiffened.
She was late.
She swore under her breath and jumped to her feet, wincing as the sudden motion aggravated her steadily building migraine. The sudden shift in balance also caused her vision to blacken for a moment, inducing a brief flash of instinctive panic as she was plunged into darkness.
"Pull yourself together," she murmured.
Taking a deep breath, she leaned one hand against her desk, allowing her eyesight to clear, before sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose, (a gesture she had unconsciously picked up from one of the scientists in the Ministry of Health).
Her skin felt like ice.
After a moment, she straightened up, smoothing out an invisible crease in her uniform before swiftly exiting her office.
. . . . . . .
Without turning from his position facing the main holomonitor, the Minister of Intelligence drawled, "You're late."
Hurrying to take her place next to him, Keeper murmured, "Apologies, sir."
Glancing at one of the Fixers, she added, "Bring up the map of the academy."
A three dimensional image of the Sith academy on Korriban flickered to blue life, grand and imposing as its occupants. The pale, flickering rendition of the hologram really failed to do the ancient complex justice.
Keeper took a step closer, peering at the structure intently. Soft white dots were scattered, seemingly at random, throughout the academy. They marked areas of structural vulnerability . . . and places where people tended to gather.
"Have Ciphers seven, four, and thirteen reported in?" she quietly asked a watcher, never turning her gaze from the image before her.
"Seven and four have," the watcher began, pausing a moment before finishing, "thirteen's just made it out."
"Good. Were all charges successfully placed?"
"Yes, Keeper. We're primed and ready to go."
"You've readied the holonet broadcast?"
"It's ready," the watcher assured her.
Keeper paused, for what felt like an eternity, keenly aware of the tension in the room. There was no going back from this. The rest of Intelligence waited with bated breath for her order.
"Initiate destruction sequence."
"No," the voice was mild and faintly annoyed.
Keeper froze, turning to stare at the man beside her.
"Sir?"
He didn't deign to look at her, answering in a tone one might use to end a minor disagreement among children, "No, do not initiate destruction sequence, Watcher Four. This travesty won't be occurring today."
Cold blue eyes met Keeper's confused gaze.
"Did you really expect to get away with this?" his voice was icy as he waved a hand at the projection.
"Get away with . . . Sir, I don't understand . . ."
The backhand across the face came as a surprise. The force of the blow knocked her backwards, causing her to stumble and fall to the ground, clutching a hand to her face.
The Minister wiped his hand on his pant leg with a look of disgust.
"When the Dark Council enacted my forced retirement, my one consolation was the belief that I would be leaving what was left of Intelligence in good hands. Instead, you take the first opportunity you get to play terrorist, the very monster you swore to fight against. Keeping the Empire safe was your job, your duty, and your purpose. The only reason you exist is to serve the will of the Empire, and the will of the Empire comes from the mouths of the Sith, traitor," the last word was spat with contempt as he stared down at her.
"I was doing what I thought was right," she replied quietly, regarding him in shock.
"For whom?" he inquired, the sneer practically visible in his tone.
"For the people of the Empire . . . "
"The people of the Empire?" his voice had dropped to just above a whisper, as he repeated her words in disbelief. "The people of the Empire? Do you hear yourself?" his pitch rose as he took a step back from her, waving his arms at the rest of the room's occupants, none of whom had rushed to her aid, and all of whom silently regarded the scene playing out before them, faces blank as carved rock.
"You did this for the people of the Empire . . . " he scoffed, "No, this was vengeance, and you killed your own people to accomplish it. Look at them."
"I didn't," she started to protest, but he cut her off with a harsh, "LOOK. AT. THEM."
Breathing hard, she let her gaze sweep around the room, drawing a sharp intake of breath at what she observed.
They were dead. All of them.
They were dead . . . but somehow standing, staring at her. Why were they staring at her?
Their faces and bodies were burned, some blackened beyond all recognition. But the process wasn't over. Even as she watched, hair began to disintegrate, uniforms began to smolder and meld with scorched flesh, and the white of protruding bone appeared beneath torn skin.
She didn't think anything could be worse than being forced to witness such a horrifying image. At least, not until the smell hit her.
She stifled a gag, remembering the handful of times she had been around active combat, the sound of screams rending the air, the sickening odor of burning organic matter mixed with the sharp, acrid scent of ozone.
This was worse.
And they just kept staring down at her, even as their eyeballs began to melt out of their skulls, their bodies turning to ash and vapor from heat comparable to the surface of a burning sun, or a devastating thermonuclear explosion.
"This is your fault, Keeper," the Minister spoke with finality, "You are responsible for their deaths."
"No," she whispered in horror.
He shook his head. "Darth Jadus always warned me to keep you on a shorter leash, and it seems he was right," he laughed derisively. "I never thought the day would come when I'd prefer to have Watcher X back."
"Don't compare me to him," she muttered reflexively, unable to meet his eyes.
"You're right. That's unfair," he conceded. "Watcher X never caused this much wanton chaos."
Kneeling down, he grasped her chin in a tight grip, wrenching her head up so she was forced to look at him.
"Do you know what the most pathetic part is?" his voice had dropped again to a low murmur.
When she didn't answer after a moment, he continued, "The most pathetic part of this whole endeavor, is that you failed in your mission to overthrow the Sith. Instead, all of Intelligence has been utterly and irrevocably eradicated."
She stared up at him. Her chest felt tight, and she couldn't breathe. Even attempting to expand her lungs made them burn as if some fire had been lit inside of her body and fed until it grew large enough to consume her. It felt like drowning, or what she imagined drowning would be like.
Suddenly, his grip on her chin relaxed, but did not release, as he peered down at her with an almost tender expression. Raising his other hand, he gently wiped at the skin beneath her nose. When he drew his hand away, his fingers were coated crimson. She felt cold, weak, and shaky all at once, like someone who's just lost too much blood.
"You see," he chided in a soft tone, holding the stained fingers up to her eyes, "this is what happens when you try to defy your design. You start malfunctioning. You're like a droid, Shara; you were built with a specific function in mind. You're not supposed to step outside of that function."
"No," she forced out, feeling a strain on her lungs as she struggled to speak. "No . . . I'm not . . ."
He sighed, cutting her off, "I can see you're going to be difficult about the matter. I do wish you would stop fighting me. I find it tiresome."
Peering into her eyes, he added, "It's time to wake up, Shara."
"What? I . . . "
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A sharp blow to the side of her head sent her sprawling to the ground.
Wait . . . the ground?
Her hands shot out reflexively to break her fall, and she gasped in pain as her right wrist made contact with the hard, icy floor. The wave of agony streaking up her arm caused her to flinch and roll to the side as she instinctively clutched the throbbing limb to her chest. She bit back a groan, her ribs suddenly protesting keenly at the jarring motion.
Breathing heavily, her head throbbing, she glanced up to see an irritated face looming over her. Gleaming yellow irises stood out against eye orbits framed by darkly mottled, almost bruised looking flesh. The somewhat alarming contrast was further accentuated by the rest of the individual's naturally pallid skin and dark, wild hair.
She hadn't even heard the Sith enter. When had the other woman arrived? Had she been asleep, having a nightmare?
Or had she been trapped inside of her own mind again?
How long had it been this time? How long had she been sitting motionless, cut off in the middle of a thought? How long had she been slowly drowning in that ineffable, dichotomous web of cognition and empty places inside of her mind, the dark space where time seemed to both simultaneously race and stand still?
She felt her heartbeat, which had begun to slow after the sudden commotion, pick up again rapidly, just as it always did when that happened.
"Did you not hear me, scum?" the Sith apprentice spat, yanking her out of her thoughts as she aimed a kick at her ribs. "I told you to look at me when I'm talking to you!"
She jerked away from the motion, years of combat and agility training unconsciously kicking in. This action only angered the Sith more and, with a snarl, the other woman made a sharp, sweeping motion with her hand, brutally slamming her prisoner against the wall.
'Snap' 'Crunch'.
The yelp of pain she had been struggling to restrain was drawn unwillingly from her lips as she crumpled to the floor, only to be lifted by that invisible force and bashed against the wall over and over and over again, in a seemingly endless cycle, before the Sith apprentice's relentless temper finally appeared to be sated (for the moment, at least).
"How dare you?!" the Sith spat angrily, pacing like a madwoman in the confined space. The prisoner remained where she had fallen, slumped against the wall and gasping for breath. The effort only sparked a violent coughing fit as her lungs struggled to expand against an almost certainly fractured rib cage. She was drowning for real this time, unable to get a proper breath and hacking up globules of blood as the feeling of flames consuming her from the inside intensified. The overwhelming swell of vertigo crashing over her made her want to vomit.
"How dare you defy me?!" A swift, well-placed kick of her boot to the prisoner's sternum and the sound of splintering bone, "Me! Your natural superior!" Another kick, harder this time, "Worthless traitor scum." With a look of disgust, the woman raised her hand once more, sparks of energy flowing from the tips of her fingers and encircling the prisoner like a spider's web. A small smirk graced the Sith's face as the other woman began to twitch and contort in agony, cries of pain drawn from her blood stained mouth. Her limbs and head collided unmercifully with the duracrete walls and floor as involuntary spasms seized her muscles.
"Beg me for mercy, traitor," the Sith sneered, watching the prisoner convulse with more than a little amusement. "Beg me for your worthless life."
The prisoner fought against the automatic urge to comply, the last remaining shreds of her pride warring against the deeply seated compulsion, if only due to the sheer indignity of the situation. Her failure to immediately obey enraged the apprentice, who promptly raised her other hand, doubling the web of Force lightning that enveloped the prisoner's body. A garbled scream of pain escaped her before she bit down hard on her lip, drawing more blood that mingled with the rivulets trickling from the corners of her mouth.
"Worthless filth!" the Sith ranted, yellow eyes burning like miniature scorching suns in twin black holes. "You are property of the Empire! Your life is a privilege, not a right, and you will obey when one of your betters gives you an order!" she snarled, cutting off the lightning abruptly and making a fist with her right hand.
Once more, the invisible energy seized the prisoner's body, lifting her into the air as an unseen hand proceeded to choke the aforementioned 'privilege' out of her. The prisoner's fingers wrapped around her throat as her legs kicked uselessly against the empty space below her, struggling in vain to escape the phantom grasp that was crushing her windpipe.
"You know, Keeper," the Sith drawled in a suddenly bored, conversational tone, her heavy lidded eyes half closing as if in lazy contemplation. She resembled a cat watching a mouse attempting to escape while its tail has been pinned down. All traces of her former anger had vanished abruptly, like the flick of a switch. She paused for a moment, watching Keeper gasp for air with idle interest before continuing.
"When a droid malfunctions, we scrap it for parts. We reuse it to make something. . . better . . . but you, you're made of flesh . . . weak," the invisible hand tightened its iron grip, "useless" the prisoner gasped for breath, black spots dancing at the edge of her vision, "flesh," the Sith apprentice finished, a cold smile twisting her lips. "Does that make you less valuable than a common droid, Keeper?" The apprentice 'tsked' disapprovingly. "That's such a shame, you know, the Empire wasted a lot of credits to create you, and you're nothing but a malfunctioning, self-important little automaton who doesn't even have the decency to be recyclable."
She laughed again, a mixture somewhere between amusement and disgust as, in a manner reminiscent of one batting away a bothersome insect, she gave a nonchalant flick of her wrist, effortlessly smashing Keeper's body against the wall once again.
Keeper's head made contact with the duracrete first, a dull 'thud' echoing in the tiny chamber. She could have sworn she felt something crack. Sparks of light joined the black spots dancing in her vision, waves of nausea sweeping over her as she lay on the ground. Struggling to bring her knees up to her chest, she attempted to curl into herself, seeking to protect any as of yet uncompromised vital organs that might present themselves as new targets to the irritable looking apprentice.
"Poor Keeper," the apprentice crooned in a high pitched, mocking voice that positively oozed with false sweetness as she watched the woman's futile efforts.
A wicked looking grin curved the Sith's lips as she stooped down to the prisoner's eye level. Balancing on the balls of her feet, she cupped a hand under her chin and studied the former spymaster as the woman's chest rose and fell unsteadily, crimson liquid dripping off her face to stain the pristine white floor beneath her crumpled body.
"Didn't your owners train you not to get blood on the floor?" she chided in that same saccharine tone.
"Didn't yours?" Keeper quipped in a gasp before she could stop herself, earning a swift backhand across the face. Her head snapped to the side, making a muscle in her neck pop. It was nothing to the growing pain in her skull, a sensation like something on the inside of her brain had begun to cannibalize the surrounding tissue. The apprentice's words, barely penetrating the thick fog of physical and psychological torment that had begun to sweep over her, snagged her wandering attention.
"Learn your place, you . . . Oh . . . " the Sith's chiding voice had dropped dangerously in volume as she grew still, observing the scarlet streaks left behind on the pale skin of her hand with narrowed eyes, "Would you just look at what you've done now!"
Her head jerked up as she glowered down at Keeper. "You've gotten your filthy blood on me!" she shrieked angrily, face contorting in an ugly grimace of disgust and rage. The swift change in pitch made Keeper's head ache, the sharp exclamation too loud and too close to her already ringing ears.
"You insolent little . . . little lab rat! How dare you?!" the Sith let loose a guttural screech of pure fury.
She seized the back of Keeper's head, fingers digging into the woman's scalp as she tightly gripped her short, unkempt hair (After several months of untrimmed growth, her normally cropped locks had begun to fall past her chin. The Sith, in a characteristic fit of boredom, had decided to haphazardly shear off part of the excess with her lightsaber a few weeks ago.
She had delighted in holding the plasma sword dangerously close to Keeper's face and the back of her skull, ensuring that she left more than a few blistered burns from the heat's proximity to the woman's flesh. This, of course, was to say nothing of the acrid scent of ozone that still lingered around the blackened ends.
As someone who deeply valued a sense of order and tidiness, Keeper was primarily irritated by her hair's new tendency to hang in her face, being just a bit too short to tuck behind her ears. Of course this had nothing to do with the more existential sensation of having what tiny amount of control she had left brutally ripped away from her, and it most definitely did not relate to the spike of fear that sometimes flitted through the back of her mind at the sudden awareness that the universe, whose structures and rules she had delighted in learning from a tender age, no longer made any sense).
The Sith's fingers dug relentlessly into the wounds on the back of Keeper's head, causing her to scream. Her cry was cut short as the woman shoved her downwards, bashing her face against the floor. A loud 'snapping' noise alerted her to the fact that her nose had broken as, at the same time, a sharp, shooting pain in her mouth made her wonder if she had chipped a tooth.
"I'm . . . sorry," she wheezed in a strangled whisper, injecting as much pleading into her voice as her still struggling pride could stand. It wasn't as if she had a choice, really. Who was she to change the natural order of the universe? She was confused by the conflicting emotions threatening to suffocate her. Rage, blinding hate, fear, guilt, anguish, grief, loneliness, and many more sensations she had no name for seemed to well up out of the depths of . . . well, she didn't really believe in souls.
"What's that?" the Sith snapped testily. "I couldn't hear you," she threw a leg over Keeper's body as she moved to perch over the woman, driving her other knee into the prisoner's back and forcing her to the ground. "Could you repeat that?" she yanked Keeper's head back before slamming the woman's face into the duracrete once, twice, thrice more.
"Please . . ." Keeper breathed, fighting to catch her breath as the woman's weight and applied force pushed her into the floor, compressing her fractured ribcage. She felt dizzy, disoriented. Blood was pooling around her face. She wasn't sure how much of it she had coughed up and how much was from some sort of facial or head wound.
"Poor Little Keeper," the Sith taunted, in a vicious rendition of her sickly sweet tone from earlier. Keeper didn't bother restraining a groan as one of her arms was yanked roughly behind her back, twisting tortuously in its socket until it felt on the verge of dislocation.
"Let's play a counting game, Keeper," the Sith continued in a cheerier tone, now actively straddling the woman's prone form. "You like numbers, don't you? It's what you're good at. That's why we made you in the first place, right? So you could solve your little puzzles in the service of the Empire? It's the only reason we bothered keeping you around as long as we did, because you're smart . . . " She leaned over, placing her mouth next to Keeper's ear as she hissed harshly, "But you haven't been maintaining that reputation for intelligence lately, have you, Keeper? No, in fact, I'd say you've been behaving downright foolishly."
Sitting back up, she continued, voice unnervingly chipper, "So we're going to play a counting game, Keeper, as I do so love to play games with you." Her tone switched abruptly to one of childish petulance, "It's really a pity that my master sends me on missions so often. I am his most valued apprentice, of course, so it makes sense, but I feel like we never have any time to spend together!"
The hold on Keeper's head had mercifully been released as the apprentice spoke, the Sith newly distracted by the pleasure of idly running her hands across the prisoner's body. Cold fingers wandered through her hair (thankfully not near any open wounds, but with an almost tender, stroking motion that made Keeper want to vomit), down the back of her neck, across her shoulders and the upper portion of her back, and, finally, down the thin sleeve covering her left arm, pausing just a moment too long at the place just above her hand. She barely repressed a shudder of revulsion at the touch, mentally forcing herself not to react, knowing it would only encourage the sadistic apprentice.
"My poor, poor Keeper," the Sith crooned softly, "I do so hope you're up to playing with me today, my pet. It would be a shame if we had to cut short our time together." A steely edge filled her voice as she finished speaking and seized Keeper's left hand in her own, bending her already sore wrist in a sharp, unnatural angle. The motion elicited another anguished moan from Keeper before she had a chance to restrain it.
"Now, now, Keeper," the apprentice chided, in the manner of a small child lecturing her doll. Using her fingers to forcibly pry open the fist Keeper had made in her discomfort, she continued, "We're going to play a game, a counting game, like I said, and I don't want to hear any noise from you. NOT. A. SINGLE. SOUND. Or I'm going to have to punish you. Do you understand?"
"I . . . gasp . . thought you wanted . . . gasp . . . me to . . . cough . . . beg?" the words were once again out of her mouth before she could help herself, but she was willing to bet the Sith wouldn't detect the slight sarcasm. Another stab of pain in her head, admittedly less severe than the last.
Silence lasting a split second too long almost made her regret her comment, but the apprentice just chuckled good naturedly and replied, "Oh, I did, but it seems you're too stupid to carry out a simple command. It's really a wonder your Minister didn't get rid of you ages ago. I suppose he pitied you, poor little Keeper," her lips twisted in a mockingly sympathetic pout before she added more sharply, as if to herself,"Weak fool." A snicker, "That, or he liked your pretty face as much as I do."
She leaned over to place her lips next to Keeper's ear again,this time bending her fingers back sharply. Keeper bit her lip, eyes watering from the pain. It was easier to focus on her physical discomfort, however, than on the flash of anger and humiliation rearing up inside her yet again, the uncharacteristic desire to retaliate in a violent manner. The unpleasant sensation in her skull that accompanied this heretical urge prompted her to close her eyes briefly, gently pushing the thought away. It's presence, however temporary, bothered her immensely.
Maybe they were right. Maybe she really was losing her mind.
Personally, she felt like she had a couple of bloody good reasons to do so.
Number one being her complete and utter failure of both the Empire, her home, and the members of Imperial Intelligence . . . her family. A tightness unrelated to the blood filling her lungs gripped her throat.
"Speaking of which, do you want to know what I heard, Keeper?" the apprentice whispered excitedly, her mouth nearly touching the top of the woman's ear as her words dragged Keeper away from her internal dialogue.
Keeper stared into the middle distance, attempting to put space between herself and the feeling of the Sith's hot breath on her neck, carefully tucking away the abrupt surge of discomfort it induced behind another mental barrier, this one marginally more successful than the last. Her actions were in vain, however, as the apprentice pushed the woman's hair away from her eyes, uncovering her lack of focus, and hissed, "Look at me!"
Her free hand gripped Keeper's chin with bruising force as she yanked her face towards herself, sending pain shooting down the prisoner's neck from the uncomfortable position.
"I heard that your precious Minister, forgive me, former Minister, is coming here today, to see you," the Sith grinned wickedly. "Aren't you excited, Keeper?"
Keeper didn't reply, but her eyes must have given away something the wave of horror and dread that washed over her at the apprentice's words, as the woman had begun to cackle gleefully.
"What's the matter, Keeper?" the woman taunted. "Are you scared to see your master? I can't say I blame you. If I had made such an utter mess of things, I wouldn't want to see my master either. Fortunately, I'm not a stupid, brain dead little automaton like you," she hissed, sharply twisting Keeper's wrist again and making her gasp in pain.
"That's right, you utterly worthless little lab rat. You should be afraid. You deserve to be afraid . . . . and I'm going to remind you why. That brings us back to our game, Keeper. Now, let's see if you can keep up."
She leaned forward, slowly this time, as if taking a moment to savor the agonizing pressure she was placing on Keeper's compromised rib cage. As she settled herself, she twisted the woman's arm out even further to the side, so that Keeper's left hand was resting uncomfortably far to the right side of her body, almost at the edge of her flexibility.
"You see, Keeper," the woman murmured softly, this time placing her lips directly against the skin of the spymaster's ear, "I don't really trust you to be able to remember all of the reasons you're here, in this lovely little cell of yours. After all, you've proven time and again how completely useless and incompetent you are . . . why, you somehow managed to get your team killed trying to . . . what? Rail against the natural order of the universe?," she chuckled darkly, sending vibrations across Keeper's skin and causing that dark, nameless sense of . . . something . . . to escape its prison, further constricting her chest and, impossibly, making it even more difficult to breathe (Though that might have simply been blood loss or the effects of a punctured lung. She really couldn't be certain at this point).
"So, I'm going to remind you. That way you'll be prepared for your meeting with your master. Wouldn't want you to forget your sins, after all. How else will you properly beg for the mercy you don't deserve?"
As she finished speaking, the Sith turned her face away from Keeper's, removing the disturbing feeling of her breath prickling against her skin. Instead, in what could be considered a parody of affection, she laid her cheek against the back of Keeper's head, face tilted outwards as she began to stroke the fingers of the woman's left hand, still clutched tightly in her grasp.
"We're going to count all of the times you've betrayed the Empire, Keeper," the Sith hummed cheerfully, "and for each account of treason . . . I'm going to break one of your fingers. I expect to run out rather quickly." She added this last part with a giggle, abruptly turning and biting down sharply on Keeper's ear.
Keeper flinched away from the contact. Her reaction only drew another giggle from the Sith, who proceeded to rest her chin on the place where her cheek had been moments before.
"Let's see, where should we start," she hummed thoughtfully. "Oh! I know, how about when you decided to help that little cipher agent who dared stand against a member of the Dark Council? You used a force field to try to trap him, do you remember? As if such a thing could contain the power of the Dark Side . . ." she scoffed, but an undercurrent of indignant rage laced her tone. "If it weren't for you, Keeper," she positively spat the word as if it were a filthy slur, "that little cipher would have been dead a long time ago!" She paused for a moment, breathing heavily in her anger before adding in a calmer, almost indifferent tone, "For that, I think I'll take your pointer finger."
A sharp 'crack' echoed in the small chamber.
White hot pain.
Keeper clenched her teeth so tightly together her jaw started throbbing as her brain recoiled from the shock. Excruciating agony raced up her arm and flickered like flames through the rest of her body, setting her nerves on fire as she desperately attempted to muffle a scream. Despite her best efforts, a whimper still escaped her lips.
"Look at you being brave," the Sith cooed, "It's positively adorable." She placed her mouth against Keeper's temple, tongue flicking out to graze the woman's skin, chuckling almost inaudibly as Keeper's breath hitched. Stroking her cheek with a finger, she added, "That's right, darling. Stiff upper lip and all that."
Whether due to blood loss, the fact that every single one of her nerves seemed to be shrieking in searing torment, the horrible proximity of the dreadful woman to her person, or some combination of the three, Keeper felt her breathing catch as her vision began to blacken at the edges, tunneling out until she was almost unaware of anything in her periphery. Some detached part of her intellect wondered thoughtfully if this was what it felt like to experience a panic attack.
A small jolt of electricity sent from the woman's finger caused her to twitch. She bit back a yelp.
"We're not done yet," the Sith spoke coldly, frost in her tone.
Gripping Keeper's middle finger, "Let's see, what's next?" She hummed thoughtfully for a moment, then, "Ah! Yes, of course! How about when you wasted Imperial resources chasing after shadows? Or better yet, after we dissolved your useless organization and you still had the nerve to pull an officer of the Imperial military away from a campaign to help you hunt down your silly conspiracy group, the Star Cabal, was it?" She cackled in amusement and derision. "Oh dear, Keeper, I think that's worth counting as two fingers, don't you?"
'Crack' 'Snap'
This time the ragged scream was torn from her mouth as the Sith pulled and twisted her middle finger, cleanly snapping the bone, before repeating the process on her ring finger. Keeper clenched her teeth, desperately fighting to hold back the sob of misery threatening to overwhelm her. She wasn't weak, and she'd be damned if she let this woman see her act otherwise.
"Now, Keeper," the Sith murmured, touching her lips to Keeper's temple once more as spasms of pain racked the woman's body. Her mouth trailed down the woman's face to her cheek and the edge of her jaw as she planted a series of light kisses against Keeper's skin, "You know I think you're beautiful when you're screaming . . . especially when you're screaming underneath me," she added this part with a small giggle, "but I believe I told you to be silent!" Her last words were hissed in a tone reminiscent of an angered serpent rearing up to strike.
Keeper's breath caught once more, and she bit her lip, falling silent as she stared at the place where the far wall met the floor.
"That's better," the Sith murmured, lips still uncomfortably close to Keeper's face.
"Now, let's see, where was I . . . Oh yes . . . the barbaric, cold-blooded murder of nearly three hundred Sith acolytes, apprentices, and lords," her tone was growing increasingly angry as she spoke, "In other words, a disgusting, unnatural uprising against your masters . . . not to mention, your actions necessitated the deaths of most of the remaining members of Intelligence . . . That was yet another valuable resource you wasted in your little campaign."
She paused briefly, letting the racking, wheezing sound of Keeper's unsteady breathing fill the chamber.
"And they were your . . . colleagues, Keeper. . . I suppose self-important little lab rats like you don't really have friends, do they?" She giggled as she spoke, her tone taking on a taunting pitch, "No . . . friends are for people . . . and you're not really a person, are you, Keeper? Even if you look like one."
Keeper didn't reply, attempting to block out the sheer torment infecting every inch of her body, and to compartmentalize the sense of utter shame the woman's words and the sickening feeling of her touch engendered.
"You do know that, don't you, Keeper?" the Sith pressed when she didn't respond, a note of amused disbelief in her voice, "You do know that you're not actually a person, right? You're not really a human . . . not in the ways that matter."
"Is that . . . cough . . . a . . . gasp . . . taxonomic question?"Keeper inquired dryly, defiantly (or as dryly and defiantly as someone choking on her own blood could), "Or an . . . cough . . . existe . . . wheeze . . . existential one?" Her vision was starting to dim again, blessed numbness beginning to creep through her veins as the blood loss and lack of oxygen began to take its toll.
The Sith chuckled. Her mouth pressed against Keeper's neck as she murmured, "You know, Shara . . . and I'm really beginning to question the wisdom of allowing you to have a name at all . . . you're awfully disrespectful of your superiors. We literally gave you life. You would not exist if the Dark Council hadn't allowed the Ministry of Health to engage in their little pet project."
Her tone dropped a few notches in volume (and a couple of degrees in temperature) as she continued, "I am Sith, Shara. Do you know what that makes me? That makes me your god . . . and you wouldn't want to anger your god would you?"
Keeper didn't reply. She hated the way her name sounded coming from the other woman's mouth.
"VERBAL RESPONSE, Shara!" the woman shrieked in sudden fury. She lurched back abruptly, hopping to her feet. Keeper would have breathed a sigh of relief at the release of pressure, but she didn't think her lungs would expand that far.
"I expect a VERBAL RESPONSE when I ask you a question!" the woman ranted, sparks of lighting crackling ominously around her fingers and filling the cell with the sickening, acrid scent of burning. "DO. YOU. WISH. TO. ANGER. YOUR. GOD? Answer me!" She threw a bolt of lighting at the prisoner's prone body as she screeched, causing Keeper's neck to snap back, eyes rolling back in her head in pain as her body twitched uncontrollably. The Sith aimed a kick at her face but missed due to the spasms racking Keeper's body, hitting the front of her shoulder instead. Keeper felt her collarbone crack under the pressure.
"Answer me!" the Sith screamed again, the air around her beginning to crackle and expand as it heated, seemingly driven as much by the rage palpably emanating from her as the Force lightning dancing at her fingertips.
Keeper didn't hear her, as blessed, welcome darkness had finally risen up to meet her at last.