Karai waits in a room with no windows. She thinks, she remembers.
And oh, how she regrets.
Once upon a time (seven years ago), Karai had been feared. Not loved - whatever the Shredder felt for her, it was not love, just the affection a warrior held for a particularly useful weapon - but feared. Respected too, because she was effective.
Fear made up the lion's share of what people felt for her, and Karai loved it. Fear - other people's, not hers - made her inventive. She knew nothing about how to build a song, note upon note, but she could play someone's fear like a shamisen.
I used to make music, she thinks, staring at her hands. She longs for her katana, distantly, like a landlocked sailor for the sea. I used to dance, and play. I laughed, once.
Almost two thousand days have passed since she laughed. Her face is scraped clean of makeup, and her hair hangs in a long braid down her back. The only things unchanged are the long, sleek lines of her body, compact muscle and implied threat. She may not have her katana, but she has been kept ready.
She is the katana now, resting in silk and darkness until it is required.
The door to her room opens.
Karai lifts her head.
"The storm begins," says a man's voice, flavorless as chaff. "Come with me."
She is brought through wide hallways, with ceilings so high she can barely glimpse their graceful curves, and rooms with doors she has to crawl through, the walls pressed in tight against her. In the end, she arrives in a room just like the one she left.
Maybe it is the same room, she muses, like she always does. Maybe I'm just being dragged in circles.
The man — faceless and nameless, like he always is — disappears with a slight smell of charcoal. Karai straightens and waits, her eyes focused on a vague point in the distance. The voice will speak soon, and she wants to treasure her last few moments of silence.
When it speaks, the voice invades her body; her teeth chatter against each other, and her bladder fills to the point of pain. She clenches her jaw, trying to breathe through her nose — remember your training, you were a kunoichi once, you can withstand this — but then the voice is in her lungs and nose, and she has to open her mouth to let it out, or she will choke.
Karai. Oh my lovely, my dear one, thank you for coming.
"Did I have a choice?" she asks, gasping. Tears bead at the corners of her eyes. It takes everything she has not to run. Running never gets her anywhere. She would be caught before she took two steps. Like always.
You did, says the voice, and the hint of a smile under the words makes Karai's skin itch and burn. Seven years ago, my child. And you chose this.
Karai closes her eyes. "I didn't," she hisses, one last hot flash of defiance darting across her mind before the voice smothers it, like oil, like fog.
Hush. The voice is full of kindly reproach, but the weight in her skull forces Karai to her knees, panting, clawing at the floor. You waste time, and we have so little to spare.
The pressure lifts long enough for Karai to shove herself upright. "What do you want me to do?" she asks, hating herself with every word. Surrender is anathema; surrender is a little death. But better the little death than what the speaker will do to her if she keeps trying to resist.
The last of her honor died years ago.
Your old friends — the freaks, I think you call them? They attacked one of my supply drops two weeks ago. Do you remember?
Of course Karai remembers. The survivors limped back, bloody and torn to a man, whining and pleading. Leonardo and his brothers had discovered some new tricks in the years since she left New York, it seemed. The smugglers had no chance against the freaks, and they deserved mercy — so they said.
Mercy? The voice had laughed, and laughed, until Karai screamed her throat bloody. Mercy, for the expendable? My protections worked; the girl will not be able to guide them.
Then, it made Karai watch while it ate.
Karai wipes the last tears away with the back of her hand. She feels nothing for the dead smugglers. They were pawns, nothing more, designed for one purpose: sacrifice. Even Rahzar, who thought himself a knight — maybe even a bishop, stupid dog — is dead.
She envies Rahzar. He had his freedom; he chose this service, for a chance at revenge, to feel blood in his fists. His hate for the brothers is second only to hers, and it killed him.
Lucky dog.
If it would free her, Karai would put aside her hate, let it wash away to the sea. For the chance to be rid of the voice, she would bend her neck to Leonardo and beg him to kill her. Spill my blood, freak, it's what you've wanted all these years. So do it, end it, kill me and leave me here for the crows. It's all I want.
A gentle bubble of laughter interrupts her thoughts.
Is that really what you want, my lovely Karai? A vague white shape begins to coalesce at the edge of her vision. Is it, Karai? You told me all you ever wanted was to be free of the Shredder. And have I not given you that?
The shape approaches, its legs short and its belly hanging low to the ground. Karai tries to cringe away, but the voice holds her fast. Her muscles will not obey her, no matter how hard she wills them to move.
"This wasn't what I wanted," she spits out, before the voice slams her jaw closed on the tip of her tongue. The taste of blood fills her mouth, and its scent fills her nose.
You said anything. Anything to be free of him. Didn't you?
To Karai's horror, her head nods, without any input from her brain or nervous system. The voice chuckles.
You did, you did. Why are you so surprised that I took you at your word? The shape slips into focus: a massive white boar, its tusks as long as her forearm, its eyes pink and watery and utterly mad.
You didn't tell me you would take my heart, Karai screams inside her skull. My heart, you cut open my chest and you stole my heart, you bastard —
"Oh, Karai," sighs the White Boar. Karai twitches, her horror at the Boar's mouth forming words overpowering its control for a brief, sweet second. Before she can take advantage of her release, the Boar bellows, the sound filling the room until all air is pushed out and Karai chokes on her empty throat. She tumbles back to her knees, ears ringing, and barely notices when her head hits the floor.
The pressure is lifted by degrees. Karai realizes she can breathe again, and pushes herself up slowly.
At first, her eyes refuse to focus on the Boar. All she can see is white mist, and a suggestion of bones, so she turns her head away and tries to ease the shaking in her muscles.
"Karai," says the voice. "Karai, look at me."
"No," Karai moans, hot shame flooding her as she hears the quaver in her voice. No one would mistake her refusal for defiance. "I won't."
Cool, hard fingers hook under her chin and force her head up. She keeps her eyes closed as long as she can, but a breath washes over her face and she cannot resist.
A woman in white smiles down at her, all smiles and gentle eyes. She is neither old nor young, her skin smooth as glass, her mouth mobile as a girl's.
She is beautiful, the twin of the man who came to Karai seven years ago and said What do you want, Karai?
Karai's first reply had been my mother.
Then, she said, to be free of the Shredder, and damned herself to this — a half-life of dust and silent hours, waiting to be called into service.
"Are you ready, Karai?" says the White Boar. "New York awaits you." Its smile would delight children, and comfort the dying, but Karai's chest aches as she watches the Boar's smile spread.
It can be anything — father, mother, hero, lover — and that is its danger, its seduction. Karai took the bait, swallowed it whole, and only noticed the hook as it tore out her heart.
"What do you want me to do?" Karai asks again. There is nothing else she can say.
The White Boar smiles. "Open the way for me," it says, and draws its robes tight around its woman's body. "The brothers will fight." The joy in the Boar's smile slips away, and all that is left is hunger: insane, unending hunger. "Wear them down. Exhaust them. Prepare them for my offer." It strokes Karai's cheek, and licks its lips. "A whole city," it muses. "That will keep me fed for quite a while, don't you think?"
"Yes," whispers Karai. She presses her hand to her chest, searching for a heartbeat that has long been silent. "Yes, I do."
Better them than me, she thinks, staring at her feet.
She does not have to look up to know the Boar is drooling.