#misopatris

This was a bad plan. She thought so, Speaker thought so, the Lady herself agreed that this wasn’t a good plan! But it was the only plan they had that really had any chance of working, of all the ones that any of them could think of. The fact that they had even asked her for ideas made it clear that they were in dire straits. And yet, this had been the only plan they had. Which meant that Fedosia was doing stupid and pointless things for the sake of buying more time.

The sun was just barely peeking up over the horizon of Aiur, and the sky was a deep violet just faintly tinged with hints of pink. The golden spires stretching to the sky reflected delicate shades of pink and orange, coloring the streets below in a stained-glass mosaic. Tekar trudged up to the door of the library, ignoring the beauty surrounding him. He’d slept more poorly than usual, serial insomniac that he was, and he had given up on appreciating sunrises long ago. He keyed the door open. It stuck, he growled at it, and keyed it open again. This time, the finicky thing slid open, and he stomped inside, muttering darkly about getting it repaired even though he knew very well that he would do no such thing.

The two shots caught him directly in his left heart. The gun had fired with the strained cough of a silenced pistol, and the library was well-built enough that no one was going to hear it anyways. He felt himself fall against the door, staring numbly up at the armored terran leaning against one of the shelves.

“…Tremanix…” If they were killing him, they were going to kill her, he had to get up, damn the bullets-!

“Who? I’m just here to kill you.” Fedosia checked her gun, and slid it back into her holster.

She wasn’t necessarily lying, but she was still grateful for the visor over her face and the Lady’s protection of her mind. The twins were taking care of the other member of this spy group, which was going to be a lot more painful and messy of a death than what Tekar was getting. But she also wasn’t in the habit of adding insult to injury after killing someone. If this nerazim died happier because he thought his spy was safe, then that was no skin off her nose.

Tekar glared suspiciously at her. “Truly?”

Fedosia placed her hand over her heart. “Swear on my life, I’m not going to kill or hurt her.” There was something uncanny about the way she could see his life-force flickering as she swore on her own life.

“I’ll hold you to that.” He managed to growl very imposingly for a dying protoss.

She tried to smile, remembered she was wearing the visor, and shrugged instead. “Alright. You do that.”

Fedosia waited until Tekar finally died, listening to him ramble about what he was going to do if he hurt Tremanix. Eventually, that faint golden glow revealed by her visor flickered out completely. She tried to move him away from the door, just out of politeness to whoever showed up to the scene of the murder, but even an old protoss was too heavy for her to move. She gave up, staring at the body.

Fedosia shook her head and growled. “Next time I hear ‘for the greater good,’ I’m punching her in the face. This wasn’t even necessary.”

She was talking to herself. That was not a good sign, especially after shooting someone. She turned her back on the scene, and retreated out the window to the rendezvous point. The hidden security camera quietly stared out at the library, recording everything.

Tremanix darted out of her apartment as the sun finally escaped the grip of the horizon. She raced headlong down the stairs and into the street, heedless of her surroundings. She simply couldn’t sit on this any longer. It wouldn’t be right to keep this to herself, even if the Fist would kill her for leaking it. She couldn’t make up for the people she’d killed with her actions before, she couldn’t make up for the people she’d killed with her inaction, and she’d deserve whatever she got, but maybe this would be a start. She had a chance, she even knew who she would give the datapad to, and it would be worse to not take this chance. She couldn’t be a coward anymore.

Her brain saw too much, too little, screaming at her about the jittery, high-contrast world she was racing into. She didn’t care. She couldn’t care. Her medicine flask banged against her hip as she ran, her bag slammed into her leg, but she couldn’t care about that either. She had to do this. She hadn’t felt this level of focus since she’d been a nurse. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it, really.

The streets darkened, blanketed by shadows from the skywalks above her. Flashes of yellow, orange, blue, red, all skated by her as she hurried. She suddenly rebounded off of a person in spiked armor. Shocked back into reality, Tremanix stared up at the Tal’darim looking down on her. Was she seeing double, or was this a pair of twins? They didn’t look particularly happy with her. She stepped back, ducking her head in apology.

The one she’d bounced off of grabbed her by the throat, clawed gauntlets digging into her throat. “Let me go!” Tremanix scrabbled at his arm, ignoring the blood trickling down her throat.

“Hm… No.” He smiled coldly, and his other hand raked across her face, tearing furrows in her skin and flesh.

Tremanix shrieked helplessly as they tore at her, desperately trying to escape. Her bag fell to the ground, ignored by the twin Tal’darim. Blood soaked the strap, but the contents inside remained safe and dry.

The alarms that suddenly went off somewhere in the city worried Fedosia. She really didn’t want to leave and have to tell Shi’Ara that the twins had been captured. When the alarms grew closer, and she began to feel a telepathic commotion, that worried her even more. The twins being captured was one thing. She had no intention of going to protoss jail along with them!

Two equal and equally bloodstained protoss burst out of the alley to the left. “We need to go. Now.” That was probably Epistrontis.

Fedosia tapped the interface on her wrist, triangulating the warp out. “So, how badly did you fuck up?”

“We didn’t fuck up anything!” Misopatris’ protest; he would use “fuck” in his defense. “Someone on the skywalk spotted us, but she was pretty much done for by then. I doubt she’ll survive.”

The cold glow of warp surrounded them. “She better not. You know what would happen if Shi got pissed of at you.”

The emergency doctor considered her newest patient. Mercifully unconscious, of course, probably from pain and blood loss if nothing else. Whoever those Tal’darim ruffians had been, they’d done a good job of flaying one side of her face, not to mention the openings that didn’t belong in any protoss’ abdomen. But, they’d gotten to her just barely in time. Assuming all the grafts and transplants took, she didn’t have a bad chance of living.

“So, what’s gotten you boys all riled up?” She flipped up her visor and gave them a lopsided smile as they jumped. “Did the breadling bite someone important on the ass, or..?”

Misopatris, it had to be him because of the well-kept hands, gallantly leapt to the defense of his pet. “Flower is extremely well-behaved, and would never do such a thing!”

“No, of course not. Shi would have killed it if it did that again.” That sarcastic drawl had to be Epistrontis.

Fedosia let the two boys tussle a bit before asking again. “So, what’s gotten you so excited?”

Epistrontis looked up from pulling Misopatris’ nerve cords. “Nothing special, really. Shi’s just having us trim some dead weight. There’s been some new recruits, so we’re just getting some useless members out of the way.”

“I don’t see why we have to do this, instead of letting the recruits do it themselves, but Shi insisted that someone who doesn’t look Nerazim do it. For the greater good, and all that.” Misopatris punched Epistrontis in the face. “Also probably because they’re one of the ones we’ve got on Aiur.”

A hit, then. Lovely. But she was bored, and there were plenty of Fist members who probably did deserve a bullet to the head. Shi’Ara had collected herself quite the merry band of psychopaths, and frankly, most of the other splinters were worse. But Shi’Ara had also managed to get her claws on more than a few people like Kaa’vaxi too. Hopefully these were the former, not the latter.

“If it’s so she doesn’t get caught, mind if I tag along? The more the merrier and all. And that means you can have one all to yourselves, right?” Fedosia shrugged. “I’m really damn bored. There’s only so much bread teleporting a girl can do, you know?”

The twins paused their fight to consider her proposal. Not that she could hear it, of course. Psionic conversation and all that. But eventually they helped each other up, ready to make their decision.

“Yeah, why not.” That was Misopatris. “You’ll get the old one. He probably wouldn’t be too much of a fight anyways.”