152 – Zara

152 – Zara

Zara groaned, wakefulness brushing against the edges of her mind and starting to creep in as the gentle rays of the sun warmed her cheeks. She stayed like that for a few short moments, just wishing for another second of this comfortable rest, but then she remembered ... she remembered.

She shouldn’t be this comfortable, her metallic collar as thick as a man’s wrist never allowed her to lay so comfortably. Worse, she remembered the feeling of her mind going numb, feeling her grasp on her thoughts and reality slip as the vile drugs flowed into her veins.

Zara sat up with a start, her eyes wide open and skittering across her surroundings as her fingertips brushed against her bare neck where there should have been at least a scabbed wound from the syringes poking through her skin. There was nothing, but the world around her made her frenzied thoughts ground to a halt.

Her fingers registered the silky grass underneath her, brushing against her skin gently while her eyes stared at how blue they were. Zara had rarely seen nature before — having grown up in a Hive City and then shipped off to the Schola Psykana at an early age before being dumped into Inquisitor Thrace’s lap — but she knew grass largely tended to be green.

Her gaze roamed over her surroundings, over the little valley between two grass-covered hills and the forest covering them from halfway up. The rustle of their leaves in the gentle breeze caressed her ears with the softness of the grass underneath her. Still, everything was some eye-catching vibrant colour, only the sky had the decency to be blue while trees had their crowns in the colour of the rainbow from pink to yellow to even purple.

“What do you think?” an ethereal voice, like a whisper on the wind brushed against her ears. “I think I’ve done quite well in decorating the place ... but maybe the colours are a bit much?”

Zara jumped up, whirling around to catch sight of the interloper and surprised even herself when her powers reached out to feel for any nearby minds almost instinctively. Only then, did it fully register to her that there was no collar on her neck and no psychic hood around her head. Even the connections, the ports were gone and her body was reduced to its fully organic state without a single bit of Mechanicus additions.

“W-what have you done to me?” Zara asked, her voice quivering as she thought of the only conclusion she could come to: She’d been drugged up to the gills and was currently having the largest hallucinogen-induced trip of her life.

Likely, her real body was currently drooling with a vacant expression on her face as Thrace shackled it to his operating table. The thought made her tremble, and she looked around at her colourful surroundings with a hint of suspicion.

She knew hallucinations, at least she thought she did, but they shouldn’t have felt this real. No, she shouldn’t have been lucid enough to think about doubting them. That put her in a bit of a slump, until the voice answered her panicked question, “I just cleared the nasty things out of your body. No drugs, collars or metallic additions to cloud your thoughts. Ain’t that nice?”

“Why?” Zara asked, trying her damndest to recall what’d happened before she’d gone under, but all she could dredge up were fragments. The pain in her neck, hope, terror, glee and a pair of predatory green eyes holding her in their grasp.

“To talk,” the voice said, and then Zara stumbled back as those very same pair of green eyes appeared inches away from her face. She saw the smile on her peripheral vision, but those emerald orbs didn’t allow her to move her gaze even as she tried to scramble away. “I have questions, so many questions and you’ll have to answer them if you don’t want to die.”

Zara swallowed the lump forming in her throat, finally managing to tear her gaze away from the eyes of the being in front of her and let it wander down her body. She looked human, eerily so. Is she? She could be ... I heard the Tau have some humans who betrayed the Imperium serving under them, but to have a Psyker as strong as her ...

“W-why?” Zara asked, the question coming to her unbidden, demanding to be answered.

“Why what?” The strange woman asked, quirking a snow-white eyebrow.

“Why am I alive?” Zara asked, a hint of irritation seeping into her voice as she remembered the woman plucking her name right out of her mind with the casual ease of someone picking a flower. There was no way she didn’t know what Zara’s question was.

“I don’t think this ball of rock has a name, probably just a randomly assigned number,” Echidna said, then with a flick of her wrist made a replica of her own chair grow under Zara, which she gingerly seated herself into after only a moment’s hesitation. “Vallia Prime would be my guess for the Imperial designation, the first moon of the death world of Vallia. My own little domain, which I’d been granted full access to by the blueys now that I blasted that little flotilla and the mines on the planet you were defending to bits. Next question: were you enjoying your job? Prying thoughts and secrets out of people’s minds, breaking their psyches, plundering their memories?”

Zara barely had enough time to think about the answer she’d gotten to her question before her thoughts ground to a halt. Echidna seemed easygoing still, her cheek propped up on a fist as she gazed lazily at her with her legs crossed, but there was an intensity in her stare that told her the wrong answer here would mean Zara wouldn’t get the chance to ask her own follow up question after answering. Being a bit too dead to do so, and all that.

Thankfully, it was an easy question ... well, easy if the woman wanted to hear the answer Zara hoped she would.

“No,” Zara said, her voice clear even as her grasp nervously tightened around the wooden armrest of her chair. At the woman’s suspicious squint, Zara hastily blurted out a clarification. “Not how Thrace had me do it! I’ve been taught to be unbiased and methodical as an interrogator ... but he enjoyed it. He enjoyed watching me break people almost as much as he enjoyed watching how much doing so hurt me.”

After a few breathless moments, Echidna gave a slow nod with a complicated look on her eerily perfect face. “Your question?”

“What are you going to do to me?” Zara asked after a short few moments of thought, thinning her lips into a line to not show much emotion on her face. “If I survive this ... test?”

“I don’t know yet,” Echidna shrugged with a carefree smile. “It all depends on your answers ... the only thing I’m unwilling to do is to allow you to rush back to the Inquisition with what you’ve learned from me and of me. There are a bunch of pesky little bugs in your Imperium hellbent on making my life miserable and I just can’t have you giving them the edge they need. Optimally, you’d join my crew and forsake the Imperium.”

Zara had to consciously keep herself from reacting, her heartbeat speeding up at the mere suggestion. She’d been ready to die here. Hell, she’d been more than ready to die back on Thrace’s ship, especially if she got the chance to blast the bastard’s mind to bits before she went out ... but this was a lifeline. It would also be treason, high treason at that and heresy on so many different levels Zara didn’t have enough fingers to count it.

If she’d been the same woman sitting on the shuttle, heading for Thrace’s ship for the first time, fresh out of the Schola and full of zeal, she wouldn’t have even thought twice about the suggestion. Disdain for heresy and treachery had been beaten into her in a thousand different ways, and ingrained into her mind in a way that still made parts of her rebel viciously against the mere thought of even entertaining the thought.

But that had been a lifetime ago. She’d seen humanity at its worst, she’d seen faith and zealotry be rewarded with a horrible death. Zara had learned; she had been taught anew by the harsh reality and knew the Emperor wouldn’t suddenly stand up from his golden throne and smite down the traitorous witch before her. He never did. He never protected anyone. Not from living foes or from the horrors of the Warp after one passed.

The woman before her had done just that, saving that poor tortured woman sent at her, embracing her tarnished soul and stealing it out of the maws of the Hellspawn. Saved her from the fate that was promised to every Psyker in existence, spared her from the end that had kept Zara from just killing herself in a suicidal attempt at murdering Inquisitor Thrace ages ago.

Would Echidna save her too if she managed to pass her tests? Would she?

Because if she did ... that was well worth earning the wrath of the Inquisition.

Fuck ... it's worth everything. I would give everything for that. What use is belief in an absent God when he can’t save anyone, when he can’t save me?

As Echidna’s lips parted to ask her next question, Zara resolved herself to do her absolute best. Her soul’s eternal salvation was at stake here. She just hoped she’d not be found wanting by the woman whose emerald eyes seemed to be able to peer into her mind and soul with casual ease. There was no use in pretending ... she could only hope her sincerity would be enough.

It had to be.