Chapter 3

It's dark on the bridge, the control's screens being the only sources of light. Empty space is visible through the large window, broken only by a few, glinting stars, light years away.

Helena rests on the Captain's Seat, knees drawn close to her chest, leaning slightly to the side.

Her eyes burn. She's been staring into space for too long.

The silence is only broken by the occasional tapping of a scientist's fingers on keys. Her and Helena are alone on the bridge, 'nighttime' having fallen on the ship, but Helena finds herself unable to sleep, even in Ivory's soothing, cool embrace.

Now that her fury has faded, Helena finds this entire situation a whole lot harder to deal with. Her sisters, her fellow, proud Captains, kneeling before this brat, this half-baked, snotty little girl. She drives her canines through her tongue, and feels her mouth fill with blood.
When she retracts them to swallow, the holes are already closing.

What she is facing now is, according to her fears, the end of her kind. Queen Death will fail, she is certain of it. And she will drag everyone else down with her.
The time, the work, the lifeblood she had invested to build this community, to unite her people and take them to the stars, together with Ivory, everything her heart beats for, taken from her within the span of a few minutes.

She reaches over to the console near her, and her index finger hovers over Myah's subspace contact data. How easily she had submitted to Death, how she had urged Helena to back down...

The scientist in the back of the room flinches when she hears Helena hiss, as she pulls her hand back.

"Helena, Captain?" she asks, her voice not filled with fear, but concern, well aware of Helena's erratic temper, and her tendency to make choices she would regret afterwards when agitated.
"I'm fine." she assures, not sounding the part at all.

The girl rises from her seat, and moves closer to her, crouching in front of Helena's seat. Their eyes meet, and Helena recognizes her – she is Lorelai, usually confined to the machine room. Helena recalls her mentioning optimizations on the ship's main systems during downtime.

"We have lived through worse, Captain." she speaks to her, cutting Helena off, as she draws breath to respond. "We are eternal. I know you fear for our kin, but I believe they will come to their senses. They must."
Her voice sounds soft and gentle, but it fails to soothe Helena's mind. Lorelai does not know what she is talking about. She has not been there, has not seen a dozen Captains kneel before a Wraith.

"Thank you," Helena replies regardless, too worn out to continue this conversation.
Just as Lorelai rises to her feet again, a flash of light breaks the darkness on the bridge. She spins on her heel to face the window, and Helena straightens her posture as well.

"That..." Lorelai mutters.
A ship, black and sleek, formed like the head of an arrow, laced with faint, red glow, has emerged before them. Its flank is covered in white markings, indicating its allegiance.

"It's Euridice's base ship." Helena announces, and a jolt of hope lets her perk up. "Go, summon the crew. I will open-..."

She's abruptly cut off, her eyes widening at the reading on her console.
"Go, go! She's charging weapons,-..." Again, she stops mid-sentence, and something akin to a convulsion runs through the ship.
A crimson, gleaming beam is connecting the two base ships, continuous fire searing angrily into Helena's base.

Lorelai has already run off, and Helena turns to flick the alarm on. Her guts feel balled up into a knot, as she stares at the beam extending from Euridice's ship.
Death must've ordered her … death. The ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime – defying her. She clenches her fists, her mind torn between sorrow and rage.

"Helena!"

Ivory has reached the bridge, with the remainder of its crew. She immediately hurries to Helena's side, and places her off hand on her shoulder.
"Shields up." Helena presses forth, and her hand jerks up, to grab Ivory's, applying enough force to crush a human hand, but Ivory withstands easily.

The image on the window is distorted by a slight shimmer, as the shields build around the ship, red cracks pulsing like veins on the force field, as Euridice's assault begins wearing it down.
Helena's gaze remains locked on the window, a muscle twitches on her clenched jaw.

"Permission to fire, Captain?" asks someone from her left.
"Captain?"

"Orders, Captain!"

She remains silent, feeling a gentle push against her mind, Ivory's investigative glance on her features, trying to read her.

Euridice has been one of the first Vampires to join Helena's forces, back on their home world. Beautiful, she has been, young, but full of a fire Helena has always envied. Often, they had shared that tender touch that now exclusively belongs to Ivory. Helena can still recall the scent of her skin, her gleaming eyes meeting hers...

"Bring us into Hyperspace." she orders.
Her throat feels tight.
She's giving up. She's fleeing.

Ivory's free arm drapes around her waist.
The idea of killing Euridice, one of her own, feels worse than surrendering her pride.

–

There it is again. The Fire.

Erinya stirs in her sleep, and the flames work through her veins again.

She dreams of closed spaces, of chains and bonds around her wrists, of being dried up, parched, and yet unable to expire, stuck in this eternal limbo of harm and healing.
Needles and scalpels, digging into her skin, and it heals too fast, getting utensils stuck underneath. And the flames. The heat.

She's always been like this. A Vampire, but never quite ordinary. There's a flaw in her code, a glitch in her system.
Energy, heat, building in her core forever, unrelenting, as she burns up from within. Nothing can ease this pain. Nothing can snuff this flame.

Nothing, except...

Erinya's hands claw into her sheets, her skin flushed from her heat.

Her fever-dreams are filled with different sensations.
The clanking of metal, heated voices, someone's labored breathing.
A flash of white and green, starburst patterns circling around her, as she lies delirious, strapped down on a metal table, supposed to feel cool on her skin, but seething from her heat.

She dreams of a hand pressing down hard on her chest, and the pain lessening, the heat cooling slowly, as her excess energy leaves her, slowly, and regenerating faster than she'd have liked.
The hand is ripped from her, and the pain is back.

Erinya wakes with a pained outcry, muffled hastily when she recalls where she is.

There are no bonds on her limbs, no heated metal pressing against her bare back. Just soft sheets and dim lights.

How long has it been? Years, she muses to herself, or months. Time blurs, when she's burning up.

She knows that he's here, starving in his cell, while she rots here, desperate to rid herself of what he craves. Cursing through gritted teeth, Erinya forces herself to stand up, tears her nightclothes from her body, and drags herself into her bathroom.

Her shaking hands manage to turn on the cold water, and she sits in her shower, the ice cold water steaming at it hits her smoldering skin. Wincing, she curls up.

Just one unsupervised moment... if she could disable the security cameras in his cell...
Desperation and pain draw another whine from her. She can't risk it. Her cover, her persona as Doctor Cecilia Thorne, Earth Physician, recently stationed in Atlantis, was flimsy as it is. She doesn't even bear much resemblance to the real Cecilia Thorne, and arousing just the slightest suspicion could mess up her entire mission.

She raises her head to let the water hit her face directly, washing over her burning body.

"Guide," she finds herself whispering.
It's not like she hasn't managed to sneak into his confines before, to let him feed. But that had been a Genii facility, not Atlantis. Here, everything is so unbearably well protected, making it harder, even though Erinya can move freely, as opposed to her status as the Genii's prisoner, their lab rat.

Her nails dig into her flesh, leaving deep cuts that fade too fast. There's no respite for her, not now.