-Zia-

She was standing in a garden. Alone. Garden beds lay on either side of her, filled with verdant, leafy plants. The air was fresh and clean. It was peaceful. Quiet. She was curious, but at ease. There was something about the place that made her feel at home, even though she knew she'd never been there before.

Zia could see a clay-bricked path that stretched out in front of her. It disappeared behind more garden beds, filled with small trees and thick bushes speckled with blossoming flower buds which blocked her view.

She walked down the path. Soon she passed the flower beds and came to an open area. Unlike the gardens she had passed, this clearing was made up of harsh soil and sprouts of tough, dry grass. It was as if the sun beat down harder here. The path became more dilapidated as she went further into the desert-like clearing. The bricks became more cracked and worn down by use and the unforgiving terrain.

There was a small orange flower growing alongside a small tuft of grass in the dry, weathered dirt. As Zia walked farther she saw more. Small bunches of white and orange, appearing in tiny clefts of the arid soil. There were more of them the farther Zia went into the clearing.

The path had almost disappeared when Zia came upon a small stream trickling through the clearing. Tufts of bright green grass and a multitude of the flowers sprouted alongside the sides of the water, drawing from this solitary source of nourishment.

She walked closer, kneeled by the stream, and looked down at one of the flowers. It was healthy and orange-colored, and was composed of three small petals. How strange that it had grown here, on the edge of an unforgiving landscape.

A voice spoke to her. "Mariposa lilies."

Zia sat up in a start, looking around her. "Huh?"

Right in front of her stood a strange, middle-aged woman. She was dressed in the livery of an Advent priestess, wearing ornate white and cobalt-dyed robes. She wore simple sandals, exposing veiny, weathered feet. What was strange, though, was that the woman's eyes were not pure, glowing white, unlike the mono-colored irises and pupils of all Advent priestesses that Zia knew of. This woman's eyes were hazel. Uninfluenced by the extensive side effects of immersive PsiTech implants.

The woman looked down at her. "The flower. It's a Mariposa lily."

"Oh," said Zia. She paused. "Are they special to you?"

the woman smiled softly. "Not particularly. But they are special flowers. They grow in arid regions, but can only be found by water." She kneeled down, and cupped one of the orange blossoms. "When you see one, it means there's water nearby. They're beautiful, but tough and resilient little ones."

Zia nodded cautiously. She slowly stood up, brushing the dirt from her dress as she did. "What-what is the place? And…who are you?"

The woman turned from the blossom and looked at the young Psintegrat, her warm, hazel eyes boring into Zia's harsh, white ones. "You don't know?"

The woman yanked the Mariposa lily from the ground, and it shriveled and died in her hands.

Zia awoke screaming.

Something was on fire. The smell of acrid, spoiled blood choked her throat as she tried to take a breath. She couldn't see—something was blinding her. She started struggling. Screaming. Why was she screaming?

"Damn it! She's waking up!" A loud voice shouted above her.

"What on—how the hell? We sedated her!" Another voice. Equally loud. Booming. Too loud.

Zia hacked and coughed. Her skin. It was burning. Something was on fire in her veins, shredding her senses to pieces from within. She tried to scratch at herself to put it out. She couldn't. Her hands were restrained. Shewas burning to death.

"We need another injection. Bloody hell, she's going to kill herself!"

"Prepping!"

Zia kept clawing. She was coughing and crying. She was dying. This is what a painful death felt like.

A painful prick in her arm. All of a sudden, she felt a wave of lethargy overcome her. She tried to breathe, but couldn't. Against her will, her body slumped and she lost consciousness.

When Zia awoke again, it was very quiet. Too quiet. Did she…die?

Something was beating rhythmically and softly in the background. What was it?

My heart.

Her heart beating, mechanically and consistently. In her chest. Which was intact. Not dead. Her skin no longer felt on fire. But there was a dull ache in her entire body. She felt heavy. Something felt missing.

Her eyelids were ponderous, carrying the weight that one feels after too much sleep. It took an immense amount of effort to open them and a long moment to allow them to focus. Finally, she was able to take stock of her surroundings.

She was lying in a cell illuminated by a set of dim, yellow fluorescent lights. There was a door with a small window, letting in some light from the hallway. The room was fairly bare, adorned only with a desk with a metal chair, a toilet, a small mirror high up on the wall, and the bunk that she was laying on. She herself was no longer in the battle-dress that she had last remembered wearing, but in a simple hospital gown made of some synthetic fiber.

The battle.

That's right. She remembered now. Zia had been aboard her Aeria Drone Host, which was part of an Advent strike force caught up in an ambush from the humans. An EMP pulse had knocked out her ship and cancelled the psionic links of the Psintegrats aboard, including her. The barbarous Traders must have captured her. How long had it been since then? How did she end up here? And where was here? Zia tried to sit up but found, to her surprise, that her hands were restrained to the bunk.

A buzzing noise filled the room, blaring for a few seconds before the door slid open. The sound of crisp footsteps on a polished fllor preceded the entrance of a large, grim-faced human soldier carrying a hefty baton, who was followed by a smaller, yet equally grim-faced man with sharp eyes. The man had black hair and a pair of rimmed glasses which balanced on a narrow, weak-looking nose. The man was wearing a simple green uniform with no rank insignia, and he held a data pad and a recording device in his hands.

"Don't bother struggling," the man remarked, "Those restraints are far too strong for you. I wouldn't recommend trying anything."

Zia glanced down at her fists, surprised to see that they were clenched. She relaxed them.

"Good," said the man. He fiddled with an earpiece and pulled up the metal chair from the desk over to her bedside. He glanced up and nodded to the guard who had assumed an alert posture in a position by the door. The sharp-eyed man clicked a button with his thumb on the recording device and set it on the ground next to him.

"I assume you can understand me?" said the man.

Zia nodded.

"Good. Glad to know that we still left that neural implant in one piece."

One piece? What did they take out? Zia thought.

The man looked down at her as if he could see the questions behind her eyes. "I'm sure you have plenty of things you want to ask, but first I'm going to have to cover a few things with you." He crossed his legs and laid his data pad down on them. "My name is Murrow. I'm an officer within the Department of Naval Intelligence of the Trader Emergency Coalition. I'll be supervising you for the time that you spend here. The gentleman by the door is Sergeant Gray, one of our security officers. Let's start by asking what your name is."

Murrow waited for Zia to respond. When she didn't, he looked at the soldier by the door. "She knows how to talk, right?"

The soldier shrugged.

The intelligence officer frowned and leaned forward, his sharp eyes peering into hers. "You're an Advent Psintegrat. Middle-ranking, judging by your uniform and your station's position in that ship. You have the potential to be valuable to us. It's my job to make sure that you're comfortable, since you'll be staying with us for quite some time." He leaned back and cocked his head slightly to the side. "So I'll give you a break. Ask me a question."

Zia hesitated and glanced over to the security officer at the door. A white hallway was beyond. She looked back at Murrow. It was hard to speak, but Murrow waited patiently until she opened her mouth.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"An intelligence installation. We call it Outpost 13." Murrow gestured with his hand to the door. "One of many in TEC space. We acquire and study alien assets here. That includes, on occasion, prisoners of war, like you. "

Study? Zia grimaced at the thought of her being a specimen to these Traders. "So how can you understand me? For that matter, how can I understand you?" Trader and Advent language were not known to be mutually intelligible.

"I'm sure you're familiar with augmentation and implantation. You're more technology than biology yourself," Murrow said and tapped his head. "I have an implant, up in here. The best linguists in Trader space have been working on cracking your language, and I have a little gizmo that helps my brain translate the sounds that you make. As for how you can understand me," he pointed at her, "You yourself have an implant. One of the dozens, by how it was placed, that you were probably implanted with prior to your deployment in your Advent fleet. It serves a similar function to mine, it seems. I'm sure you know more about it than I do."

Zia shook her head. "No. They didn't tell us too much." Of course, Zia was lying. She knew. She had received many new pieces of PsiTech before she set off in an offensive against the Traders. One of them was a communication device, to help all Psintegrats understand human speech should they intercept a radio wave or something or the other. But Zia wasn't going to be explaining the nature of her military implants of the Unity to a TEC intelligence officer.

Murrow hummed, unconvinced. "I'm sure. We can come back to that." He tapped on his data pad. "Now, I'll ask you again. What is your name?"

She thought for a moment and decided there was no harm in telling him. "Zia."

"Zia. Thank you." Murrow made a note on his data pad. "Well, Zia. Welcome to Outpost 13."

Zia looked back at the door. The prison guard had not moved. The hallway was right there. If she could move her hands, she could activate her PsiTech. Attack the intelligence officer with her fists. The chair was made from simple steel, she was certain. Manipulate the wavelengths of the chair and have it fly into the guard with an inhumanly amount of velocity. When he's stunned, grab his baton. Put them both down, then escape to the hallway. Her PsiTech and gut instincts would be enough to get her to a space vessel, or some form of escape.

Zia cleared her throat. "Officer Murrow?" she asked politely.

"Yes, Zia?" Murrow looked at her expectantly.

"You said your job was to make sure I was comfortable here?"

"That I did."

She gestured with her head to her restraints. "Will I be restrained like this for my entire time here? Or will you be allowing me some freedom of movement?"

Murrow considered her proposal and then nodded. "You're right. They were kept on as a precaution. If I undo them, you'll behave yourself, right?"

Zia nodded, in what she thought was an earnest manner.

Murrow laid down his data pad and reached over to undo the buckles around her wrists. First the far left one, and then the right.

The instant that his hands undid the right restraint, Zia reached up with her left fist and cracked it against Murrow's face. He yowled with pain, clutching his nose. The guard at the door started and pulled his baton, crackling with electricity, from his belt.

Zia paid him no mind for now, leaping up to her feet and shoving Murrow with all the strength she had. Her arms felt weak and unused to physical activity. No matter. Her PsiTech was all that she needed.

She cast her consciousness outwards, to the chair that Murrow had just been sitting on. She clenched her fists again, preparing to use her mind and body to alter the molecules of the chair which were in contact with the floor. She would manipulate their wavelengths, expanding and deforming them, building up pressure over the course of a millisecond so that the chair could fly off the ground with an immense amount of speed and collide with the guard with enough force to destroy his internal organs. These Traders were no match for her skills and powers. They were fools to underestimate her.

But she stopped suddenly and gasped. When she reached out, to the chair, there was nothing. In fact, she had not felt the familiar rushing sensation that comes with psintegration. Her hands were not glowing with energy. Her mind felt normal, not charged or brimming with power. There was no psionic power for her to activate. What in the Unity was going on? Her eyes widened as she began to consider what was wrong. What the very worst could be.

"Missing something?" said Murrow mockingly, still holding his nose as blood dripped from it.

Zia looked at Murrow, eyes wide with horror. Behind Murrow, there was the mirror that adorned the cell. She couldn't help but notice her own reflection in it. Her snowy white hair, a side effect of her training in brute force PsiTech, was the same. But her eyes—they were no longer the familiar, glowing white.

They were dull, and hazel.

Her PsiTech was gone. It was why she felt like she was dying in the operating room. They had been removing her implants. She was now no more special or enlightened than the humans who captured her.

The guard closed the distance and jammed the baton into Zia's back. Electricity coursed through her, setting her nerves on fire. She slumped back down on the bunk as she felt herself losing consciousness. Too many times. What horror was next for when she woke up again?

Murrow stood above her, his sharp eyes stabbing into her as she fell. His nose was bleeding, but he was otherwise unharmed. "You're a feisty one. But you have no claws anymore." He adjusted his glasses. "And the TEC will break you, one way or another."

Zia wished she could scream. Scared, alone, and terrified, she fell unconscious.

A/N:

And I'm back! It's been a very long absence. I hope to have a few more chapters coming out relatively soon.

Thanks so much to reviewers Foacir, TheSilenceisVast, ZackbFunky, survivor686, DutchWarlord12, viperodx, MajorKO, A-01, and Guest. It was your reviews which eventually galvanized me to get back into writing this fanfic. I love reading your feedback (good and bad). Hope you enjoy this one and Happy New Year.

-CinnamonTea