I was… I was.

Angry. Terrified. Vengeful. I either needed to figure how NOT be any of those things, or I needed a target.

And what better target than the man who'd contributed to Mela's condition?

"You know, I really thought you'd be dead. Or brain-dead. Or, I don't know, more damaged? Or was that your default state already, so whatever I did to you didn't properly register?"

The flood of words poured out of me the moment I stepped into the room and saw the limbless wonder perk up, looking at me with far too much lucidity in his eyes.

"Ahhh, the Speaker arriveth! Or something of the like, ya? I ain't ever been very good with all the fancy Old Terran languages."

I hated the smirk on his face. I hated the easy confidence he exuded, even laid out on a bed with no limbs to defend himself.

But then I caught the tension. How tightly his muscles were coiled. How closely his gaze was following me. How his eyes twitched from the effort not to keep glancing towards his silent drone sentinels.

"Speaker, huh?" Stomping across the room, I snatched a chair from the corner and dragged it over to his bed. "Want me to talk to you again? I can, you know. If I really gaze into your eyes while I do it, you'll find my words will really stay with you. How'd you like to take a spin as a Shadow, huh? I never turned someone into one of those while they were missing limbs. Could be a fun experiment. Who would have thought! Since that appeals to me, I guess I have something in common with Amelia's old man after all."

"Y-You can what…?" He faltered, but only briefly. "You know what? Do yer worst."

I studied him silently for a while, noting how he'd slipped out of his 'tough ganger' accent when I startled him. And the accent he'd defaulted to wasn't quite like anything I'd heard before. More raspy. More… I don't know, different! I didn't really know shit about accents.

So he wanted me to do my worst?

For a second, I wondered if what I was about to try would even work. Did this fucker care about Mela at all?

But… he'd chosen to kidnap her and keep her locked up, rather than leave her behind or kill her. That had to mean something.

"Ya know," I snarled, really leaning into that ganger accent he so favored, "I had to come and see you. I mean, I've seen all sorts of fucking lowlifes in the slums, right? But, like, you're special."

He looked confused now, even if he tried to cover it up.

"I mean, if most fuckers want to off a family member, they do the killing themselves," I pressed on. "They don't psychologically torment their family until the person snaps and tries to commit suicide by other people's guns."

"W-What?"

"What do you mean, what? Mela. You know, the same Mela who snapped and jumped in front of a bunch of gangers, screaming her ass off, then got shot rather thoroughly for her trouble? The same Mela who is currently in surgery while my girlfriend tries to save her life? I have no clue if she'll manage, but I figured I'd tell you that you were at least partially successful in driving your sister to suicide."

Shock gave way to numbness. When I finally stopped talking, though, numbness quickly turned to rage His body twitched, half-ruined and helpless as it was. I could tell he was barely holding back from throwing himself at me and trying to bite me to death or something.

It was with some measure of admiration that I watched him actually wrestle himself under control.

"What happened? How is she? I-Is she really…?"

"I could tell you, I guess. First, however, you're going to tell me a couple of things."

"You're fucking pressing me for answers when my sister is —!"

I cut him off coldly. "You're not the only person with a sister, Mak. Other people have those, too. How many times did you stop yourself, hm? How many sisters did you spare when the doc sent you after them? How many brothers begged? So please, fuck off. Either play along or fucking die, for all I care."

I was clenching my hands so tightly that my cybernetics squeaked. The way the sound ripped through the room, I knew he couldn't have missed it, either. He glanced at said hands, no doubt remembering his last encounter with them.

Hard not to. His face still had gouges from where my claws had sunk in.

"Fuck you," he spat. "Fine. What the fuck do you even want to know from me?"

"Everything. You can start with why the fuck you're working for Amelia's daddy dearest."

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He scoffed. The fucking nerve of him. I felt my claws begin to peek out and scrape against my palms.

"Not gonna call him by his actual name, even now?"

"No." I didn't feel like explaining that I didn't actually know what it was.

"Fair enough. So, you only want my complete life story, huh? 'Cause that's the only way you're getting that answer, you fucker."

I stared. All pretense of his 'tough' accent was gone. That strange, different, raspy voice was back. His real voice, I guessed.

"Fine, then," I sneered. "Hit me with it. Let the tears flow. I can't wait to hear what horrible backstory's led you to playing gofer to a butcher."

He shook his head. "I really thought you'd just kill me… How old do you think I am, kid?"

"I think that the next time you call me 'kid', I'm going to extract your eyes with my claws and make you eat them. Or maybe I'll just walk away and refuse to let you know if your sister is alive or not. My girlfriend can lobotomize you, too, and then you get to join the zombies as our bitch. How's that sound?"

He gritted his teeth so hard, I thought they'd break.

"We're not from here. Different city entirely. Even smaller and more miserable, if you can believe it. It was my parents, my sister, and me. I'm much older than I look. I was planned. My sister… not so much. She was a surprise when my parents were older, and then they went and got themselves killed. Some kind of stupid fucking store robbery. They could have just let the fuckers have their credits, but they… Never fucking mind."

He fell silent, panting lightly. He might have coughed too, struggling to wet his mouth. If I were in a better mood, I might have offered him water.

I wasn't.

"Anyway, they died, and I was alone with a baby. Three years old. Only family I had left. So, I did what every dumbass poor kid desperate enough to survive does: I signed up for the military at nineteen."

That actually made me suck in a sharp breath.

There were plenty of desperate people in the slums. Plenty of people literally starving to death or risking their organs for a visit to a sketchy ripper. None of them dared to go anywhere near the Republic Military Recruitment Posts. Anything was better than the horror stories drifting in from the soldiers who somehow made it back. Anything.

Having read the files on eldritch beasties we stole from Amelia's father… yeah, I agreed with the general attitude towards the army.

"You did what?" I stammered.

"I signed up. It's not all instant shipment to the closest place they want you to die. There's training. Pay. Enough pay to convince a disgruntled aunt to take care of your baby sister. And when they finally shipped us, it wasn't to some other planet, never to return. There's breaches much closer than that. Right here on this wonderful planet of ours. They're not big, or frequent, but they exist. And they're of a rather unstable variety."

"Meaning…?"

"Meaning they can spew out whatever. Stalker. Behemoth. Medic. Shadow. Doesn't fucking matter, it depends on how pissed off the universe is at you."

"Fascinating." It really was, even if I hated to admit it. "What the fuck does that have to do with the doc?"

"How the fuck do you think he got the stuff he needed to make those arms and eyes of yours, huh? Fuck me for not recognizing those immediately, by the way. Should have torn them out of your skull, crushed them, and then got the hell out of this fucking city with my sister."

"The same sister you pushed into suicide, and whose condition you still don't know. Keep talking."

If looks could kill… Oh, wait. Mine technically could.

"I ran into his little smuggling ring pretty fast," Mak ground on. "He never pushed for much. Wasn't picky, either. Arm here, leg there… The more complete the corpse, the bigger the payout. Started off as the puny guard getting paid to look away, graduated to supplier myself."

My mind was spinning. There it was. An admission to something completely, utterly ruinous for the doc. Meddling with the fucking military. If I could get Mak to testify…

I almost salivated at the thought. The doc would be ruined. His reputation stomped out. His life forfeit… along with everyone involved.

Like, say, Amelia.

A shiver ran down my spine. If this particular info got out, we'd never be safe again.

Amelia's daddy dearest? Scary, but limited in his influence. The military? There wouldn't be any hiding from them. Every transaction, every stranger on the street, every home rented or bought, it would all lead them straight to us. That is, if they didn't just instantly locate us through some horrid breach of privacy.

I wet my lips, reaching for the first comment I could think of. "Sounds cushy."

"It fucking wasn't. Should have been, maybe, but my whore of an aunt just kept asking for more. The one time I managed to get someone to check in on Mela, I found out she was living in squalor, while the bitch used my money for herself and her latest boyfriend."

He was growling now, his hatred for that aunt actually outweighing whatever he felt towards me.

"I take it you were angry."

"Yes I fucking was! I panicked, too. I looked for any solution I could think of. Then… he approached me. The doc. He wanted an agent to steal some corpses for him, and he was offering a nice escape route from the military, too."

"Fucking bullshit. He doesn't have that kind of influence!"

"Except he did. I think he called in a whole fucking lot of favors. Had someone inside the branch willing to help him out, too, but he pulled it off. Got me declared dead. Changed my identity. Got my aunt killed off and sister retrieved. It sounded like a dream come true… Except I then discovered the chain I'd tied around my neck."

"Oh wow, the suspicious idiot stealing from the military was unreliable? Shocker!"

"Fuck you. And yes, yes he was. He waited exactly as long as it took us to settle in the slums. Too risky to venture inside the city proper and live there. Then he started making demands and pretending they were 'jobs', like I could fucking say no."

I was beyond letting him excuse his bullshit. "So the big bad creepy doctor forced you to be horrid."

"Yes he did! He even threatened my… Mela. You said you'd tell me how she's doing."

"Mmm, I did, when you finished answering my questions. The Kittens… how'd that happen? Are any of them alive?"

I managed to land the question without hysterics or tears, but boy was it difficult.

"Mela got involved with them and dragged me in, too. Garren was… okay. Ex-military too, except he got out legit. He even got to keep his cybernetics. I didn't. Had to get them replaced by crap that was barely aping at what I could do before."

"Garren was ex-military? And you didn't answer my question!"

He looked me straight in the eyes, somehow affecting both boredom and resignation. "The Kittens are all dead. Every last one."

I didn't sway, or swoon, or do any of that shit. I just stared at him while I slowly balled up my fists.

"You're going to give me every bit of dirt you have on the good doctor. And you're going to do that now."

Even as I listened, using my eyes to record his narc session, I seethed and worried. Did Mela know about her brother's past? Surely not, right? And if she did know something, how much did she know?

More importantly, what would she want done with him?

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