Ved'Ma - The Demon Goddess
Something had been unleashed in her that night in Kanagawa.
Something deeper, darker and more perverse than ever before. The stink of the foul ocean, of sex and drugs and hatred had roiled around her. She would have killed him; had shot him simply to listen to the music of his screaming.
She spread pain to mask pain and ignobly fought to protect those her very existence betrayed. Neither Jack nor Sydney would appreciate the blood she spilt in their honor. They wouldn't thank her for taking lives for profit, in a race to beat Arvin Sloane to the final hurrah.
They would see only what she was. A bitter, angry, hateful woman, swallowed by the darkness of the only life she would ever hope to lead. No longer answering to a conscience or a soul, she would be unstoppable.
***
"Where is the manuscript?" She asked again, her face close to his. She could smell his fear. It was evident in the stink of his loosened bowels, in the heavy puffs of air as he struggled to breathe. His eyes were rolled back almost completely and every once in a while his body would jerk wildly.
She injected him again, just enough to keep him lucid, slapping him violently.
"Tell me."
He wouldn't, couldn't, speak. The dislocated jaw, the missing teeth, the small, shallow cuts tattooing his shivering body combined to put him in a place far beyond rational thought. He was in shock, the adrenaline she was using to revive him no longer doing anything but pushing his heart's rhythm towards bursting. His brain had stopped functioning thirty minutes before, but she had pressed on, hurting him to hear him scream.
"He's useless." She said, pushing off the chair. "We'll have to find some other way to acquire the information. Kill him."
And so, after 12 hours of grueling pain that no man should ever have to endure, he was injected again, this time with a mixture of Pavulon, potassium chloride and Pentothal, and within minutes he was dead.
She turned on her heel and stalked out of the room, waiting until she was alone to scrub a hand over her face. She was surprised to find it wet and she turned immediately to the bathroom.
The industrial plate-glass mirror reflected a face gaunt and gray under the harsh overhead lighting. She reached up to touch a smudge of blood on her face and it was then that her stomach finally rebelled. She heaved, barely making it to the toilet before losing what little she had for breakfast, ten hours before.
And then she was sobbing, her forehead resting against the cool porcelain. Voices would pass by occasionally, the sound floating through the thin walls. They were laughing. Some were joking about the prisoner The Man had destroyed. They were in awe.
She retched again, biting back a keening that had rose in the back of her throat.
Like a wounded animal, she retreated to the far corner of the room, curling in on herself. Her eyes drifted closed and she dreamed. Dreamed of rivers of blood and men screaming for release she would not give them. There was sex and blood, and the feel of the hands of men like Geiger, whom she drew to her with an easy seduction.
And off to the side, stood a man holding the hand of a small child. Horror was etched into their beautiful faces, tears tracking and pooling beneath them.
Betrayal comes not in a single moment, a single action, but in a series of instances loosely tied together, woven in an intricate tapestry of treachery.
She was not sick over what she had done, but over what she had become.
By losing Jack and Sydney, she was barely recognizable as human, even to herself.
Her focus had been lost along the way; her hope for uncovering the secrets of Rambaldi. She had become more wrapped up in the journey, in the destruction, than her goal.
Passing a shaking hand over her face, she stood unsteadily and walked to the sink. She scrubbed her pale face with water and then, hunched over the chipped and dirty porcelain, slowly opened what for so long had been locked.
Images of her family poured over her consciousness, soothing her racing heart and dancing nerves. A smiling child, who would now be a teenager, skipped playfully across her mind's eye, blowing kisses and laughing gaily. A dark-haired man with an impish smile beckoned her into his lap.
She cried again but it was a release, an unbinding of someone she'd held at bay for many, many years.
***
When she emerged from the restroom, she was composed and confident once more. The storm of emotion had left as quickly as it had come, flushing the toxic self-contempt with it. She had reasons to live, and reasons to die. That they were found in the same two people only made her situation that much more difficult.
Excessive emotion was a luxury she could not afford, be it in love or hate, passion or violence. The control had slipped…it had slipped months ago, in Japan.
She had it back. Cold comfort, iced veins, iron will.
Milo Rambaldi. He was the key to everything – her past, her present and her future.
She walked quickly to her office, her mind swimming with plans and calculations, as well as the resolution to return to her home as soon as possible. Surrounded with her artifacts, in her own space, she would renew herself with his genius.
She was drained, both emotionally and physically. It was time to regroup.
In her office she began gathering together what she would need. Disks, books, her notes, her Bible…
She looked up at a knock at her door, surprised to see a slight and fairly young blonde man leaning in the threshold. He smiled at her lazily, not even flinching at her raised eyebrows and darkening expression. When he finally spoke, it was with a heavy British accent.
"Cuvee sent me." He stepped forward into the room, taking a seat before asking. His gall shocked her and she stood a few moments watching him blankly before moving to her own chair.
"What, pray tell, for?"
"You need me."
Irina laughed outright, real mirth in the sound, the last vestiges of her breakdown melting away. It was the boy's turn to look shocked. No doubt he had never been quite so dismissed by a woman before. His expression clouded and darkened. She watched his fists clench and relax as he wrestled with control. Then his face smoothed, the easy smile returning, and he looked positively boyish.
"What you'll learn," Irina finally said at length, cocking her head to one side and surveying the boy critically. "Is that nobody is *needed*, and that everyone is replaceable."
"I'm the best at what I do."
"And that there is always someone better waiting to take your place." She smiled indulgently at him, surprised to find that she was resisting the urge to tousle his hair. He would not appreciate that, she surmised. "What is it that you do?"
"I've been working for Ellsbeth." He stopped and looked at her, obviously waiting for her to be impressed. She stared impassively at him, finally signaling for him to go on. "Drops, extraction. Back-up. A little smuggling."
"Ellsbeth is a small-time hood with a pedophiliac bent. He especially likes little boys. Tell me…how close were you with him?"
"Not that close." He hadn't even flinched. She smiled widely.
"See Franco. He'll get you set up. I'm leaving for a few weeks but I expect to find you exceeding my expectations when I return."
She slipped the last of the items into her case. She ushered him out of the room in front of her, locking the door and then watching the young man wander off down the hallway towards the armory. Cuvee often chose the men in their service, sending them to her for approval. She would test them, test their strength of character. She saw in the young boy what it was that had drawn Cuvee to him. It was a vast nothingness. Whether he was eaten away by pain or anger, he was an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And she would fill him with loyalty.
***
She had needed an assistant but resisted. Yet unexpectedly she found the man to fill the job. He was young, but that meant only that he could be taught.
And indeed he could. Andrew Sark blossomed under her guidance, losing the air of the street rat who stood arrogantly in her office and becoming, instead, her closest associate.
Irina Derevko never doted, but her attention to Sark was as close as she would get. Before long, in those first few months, there was hero-worship in his eyes and he, like everyone else, would have died for her.
***