The silence wasn't so much deafening as unbearably tense. Mak was staring at Mela like a man possessed, drinking in the sight of her. Mela, meanwhile, was opening and clenching her hands with enough force to produce some truly ominous creaking noises.

"What do you want me to say?" Mak finally rasped. "What can I say? I did what I had to do to keep us alive."

"How about why you killed everyone?" Mela was forcing, at least to my ears, the same accent as Mak's true default. It sounded decidedly unnatural falling from her lips. "The Kittens were family, too! They protected us. Helped us. And you —"

"They weren't family!" he growled. "I'm your family. They took you in while I wasn't looking and filled your head with nonsense. We could have lived peacefully, away from all their bullshit. You never needed to learn how to fight. I didn't need to come home just to see you piling on more and more scars every time. And that's from the injuries you let me know about!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I should have just stayed at home my whole life, terrified out of my mind every time you had to 'go work.' What were you doing while you were away, anyway? Killing people? Kidnapping them?"

Mak winced, communicating clearly that the answer was probably 'both.' "You don't fucking get it!"

"Oh? I don't? Adrian here filled me in on some things. And if you're going to say I can't trust him, how about the recording he made of your conversation? That still not trustworthy enough for you?"

He glared at me with such hatred, I swear I could feel heat scorching my skin.

"What was I supposed to do?" he snarled. "You don't say no to a man like that! Not after he gets you out of a shit situation and sets you up with a home and a chance to finally spend time with your only remaining family member."

"How about ya don't get fuckin' involved with a shit ass like that to begin with?!"

Mela suddenly closed her eyes, digging her wrists into them for good measure. When she looked up again, her mood and breathing were a little more under control. "Don't fucking pretend you didn't get involved in shady crap from the start!"

"Yes. Yes, I did. It was 'shady'. And I did it so I could send back enough money to make that bitch take care of you! And what, would you prefer I left you there? Get shipped off planet, maybe, where I couldn't even be sure she hadn't thrown you out to starve and die on the streets, if you got lucky!"

Mela shook her head. "I don't remember all of that. Not really. I do remember she was unpleasant. What was holding you back later, then? Why not just take me and run? We were in the slums, sure, but don't tell me you couldn't have organized something, or that you had no money. You always did pull credits out of nowhere, now that I'm thinking about it."

Mak's posture went rigid. If he still had all his limbs, his hands would have been fidgeting.

"It's not that simple."

"How? How is it not simple, brother? We had the resources to disappear."

"He still could have —"

"Reported you to the military? Revealed all your secrets?" Mela barked a short, joyless laugh. "He could have, I guess, if he wanted to end up dead and buried right next to ya! Dontcha try and tell me they'd have spared him for the crap he helped you do, even if he was otherwise a perfect little corpo."

Mak fell silent, refusing to look at her. I, on the other hand, was watching Mela carefully. That meant I saw the very second she gave up on finding a justification.

"That's just it, isn't it?" Her shoulders slumped, like she was deflating. "You liked working for him. You were better than the rest of the slum scum. Doing something with your life, using your fancy military training, rolling in credits… I mean, I knew you didn't really like Garren, no matter what you pretended to be, but… What about me? Was I just another idiot you enjoyed fucking with?"

"No! Mela, I didn't… I wouldn't… You're my sister!"

"Yeah, I am." She smiled, and it was a profoundly sad smile. Resigned, too. "Guess you did take care of me. Can't deny that. Always spoiled me, too."

Mak's expression softened, something like hope peeking through. "Always enjoyed doing it. You're adorable when you get a gift and light up… though I kinda wish it wasn't guns causing that reaction lately."

She hummed, and for some reason, I felt a shiver go down my spine. It was the way she was looking at him, all tender and sad and… something else.

"Listen," he pleaded. "I didn't take you and leave before, sure, and maybe I should have. It was just… Better the corpo you know, right? I didn't want to uproot everything just for the chance of fucking things up somewhere else. And what was I supposed to do, work as some random merc? I wanted what was best for us, okay? But we can leave now. Things are just getting worse here, and I want you to be safe."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Yeah. Yeah, I get that." She was still wearing that sad, resigned smile. "You don't need to worry about me, Mak."

She went to give him a hug. His entire face lit up in an actual, honest grin, with no edges or mocking undertone.

Then Mela's whole body tensed, and I had exactly one half-second of horrible premonition before her hands shot up and firmly gripped Mak's head.

I don't know what was worse: Mela's whimper of pain and rage and far too many other emotions, or the sickening crack of Mak's neck as she practically screwed his head off.

She stumbled backwards, breathing heavily. Her eyes glowed scarlet as she watched her brother's corpse fall over and hit the bed with a last few fading twitches.

I realized I'd opened my mouth and taken a step forward, only to freeze. I had no idea what to say or do. Try to comfort her? Rage at a valuable prisoner getting offed? Lock her in the room until that gleam in her eyes was gone, and I was sure we wouldn't have a mini Behemoth instead of Mela on our hands?

Amelia beat me to it.

I didn't know how long she'd been standing behind me, watching from the door. I hadn't even heard her arrive. She just surged past me to close her arms around Mela, making me squeak in terror.

"It's okay. I promise, it's going to be okay," Amelia mumbled softly into Mela's shoulder.

The big bad former ganger lost it.

Ugly, heaving sobs tore their way out of Mela's chest as she practically collapsed against Amelia, dragging them both down. Amelia's butt landed on the bed, but Mela's knees hit the floor. She buried her face in Amelia's stomach.

My girlfriend whispered something softly as she ran her fingers through Mela's hair, her other arm coiled protectively around the shaking shoulders. That was when I finally found myself functional again. I got in on the hugs quickly, lost for words but intent on letting Mela know I was there for her.

Mela's arm snaked out to snag me. She dragged me into the pile roughly, and I ended up on my knees, smushed against Mela and almost forced into Amelia's lap alongside her.

The ripper sent me a brief smile of amusement, watery and tear-stained as it was, before we refocused on the redhead.

I lost my own fight against tears when Mela hugged me even closer and began to apologize desperately between heaving sobs. The names of Kittens that slipped out of her on occasion, though, were more than enough proof that I wasn't the actual target of her frantic attempts to earn forgiveness.

—

"She's settled down, now," Amelia sighed hours later, as she slowly and carefully closed the door to Mela's room behind her. "I might have slipped her a little something too, just to make sure she can get an uninterrupted, dreamless night of rest. She'll be back on her feet tomorrow morning, good as new." The smile she gave me was still badly strained at the edges, but it was sincere.

I swept her up into a kiss. All I wanted was to squish her against me and not let go until the horrible feeling in my chest disappeared.

Unfortunately, for all our eldritch weirdness, neither of us had mutated past the need for air.

"Seeing her like that…" I shuddered, nuzzling my face into Amelia's hair for comfort. "I couldn't imagine seeing Mela like that. She was always so… so…"

"It's fine. She'll be fine."

"Will she, though?" I murmured morosely before pulling away. Then I shook my head to dislodge those thoughts and gave her a wobbly smile of my own. "No, no, you're right. Um… what do you think we should do about… you know?"

"That idiot's body?" Amelia sighed again." I don't know. She might not want to ever see it again, and I understand that, but she might also want some say in what's done with it, so… I guess I could order the mercs to take care of it, for now. They must have some kind of protocol for people dying in the line of duty."

"Unless their cushy 'arrangement' with various corpos convinced them they wouldn't need to worry about that," I groused.

Still, I had to admit that I was reluctantly impressed with the mercs. They were definitely efficient enough when it came to the collection of various local scum that deserved to die. I had a sneaking suspicion this was because they knew of said scum beforehand and might even have done business with them in the past. Regardless, the thirteen people currently being held as prisoners in the HQ were proof positive that the mercs could, in fact, be effective.

"I can't believe people are starting to react positively to them," Amelia complained..

"Yeah," I agreed, just as eager as my ripper to move past the topic of Mela and her brother "Apparently, all it took was them actually making the neighborhood safer. Who knew? No one so much as called the Peacekeepers on them yesterday."

We both fell silent for a moment, remembering the incident in question.

One of the mercs' newfound targets had tried to make a run for it. Apparently, the man was well known in the neighborhood to have some kind of connection to the corpo world, which he'd used to brush aside multiple previous crimes.

And that was just for the stuff he'd gotten caught doing.

He was a menace to all the local business owners, consistently 'purchasing' things and promising to pay for them 'later.' He'd even come under fire for sexual harassment a couple of times. There were some widely circulated suspicions over a couple that had turned up dead, shortly after he was spotted in their area.

When the locals saw him run out of an alley, and then get dragged back into it by our mercenary drones, some looked downright ready to cheer.

This, along with the quiet disappearance of several other odious individuals who used to cause trouble in the neighborhood, had begun to turn the attitude of the locals around when it came to our mercs. And all it took was for those mercs to be subjugated to weird eldritch fuckery, thereby turning their lives around! Progress!

"Do you think you'll…" Amelia placed a soft hand on my cheek. "I mean, are you planning to do something about our kidnapping victims soon?"

I didn't let myself freeze up or show my discomfort. I'd gone over the files I had the mercs prepare. These people did, in fact, deserve whatever I was going to do to them.

At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

"I… yeah. Yeah, I'm going to. We can't keep them here forever, and… I do need more Essence."

I'd done an amazing job of ignoring the few scary episodes I'd had recently, most of all my encounter with that poor runner apprentice. But my fear of losing myself well and truly wouldn't let me ignore a potential solution.

Especially since 'all' it took was a spot of cannibalism.

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