“They are in my deepest confidence,” Rhea said. “They’ve been with me through thick and thin. Anything you say to me, they deserve to hear.”
He pursed his lips, then: “My name is Burhawk. I am your mentor. I trained you to be what you are.”
She arched an eyebrow. “And what am I?”
Burhawk stared into her eyes, unblinking. “President Khrusos’ most skilled assassin. At least you were, once. He sent you to dispatch his greatest enemies. You helped him consolidate his power.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Rhea said. “Considering I’m a hated Ganymedean.”
“He captured you when you came to Earth with the others of your moon,” Burhawk said. “Like the remaining prisoners of war, he wiped your mind. But when it became obvious you still retained certain fighting skills and abilities, despite the wipe, he assigned you to me. And I trained you as an assassin.”
“I don’t believe it,” Rhea said.
“Why do you think you have muscle memory for swords and throwing knives, and all the acrobatic skills an assassin might need?” Burhawk nodded at the weapons that hung from her hips. “Did you have the same muscle memory for those pistols, or did you have to learn them from scratch?”
She didn’t answer, but he did have a point. She remembered the countless hours spent training on the pistol, whereas she had needed no training whatsoever for the X2-59. She instinctively knew how to use the bladed weapon.
“That’s only because I’m a Ganymedean warrior,” Rhea said. “We have weapons that are similar.”
Burhawk nodded. “Your Ban’Shar. But still, think about it: how similar is an X2-59 to the energy weapon that is the Ban’Shar? The weight and feel are completely different. The former has some actual heft in your palm—you can feel its position even with your eyes closed. Whereas the latter is almost weightless, and if you’re not keeping track of its every movement, you’re liable to slice off one of your own limbs.
“I’m the one who trained you on the bladed weapons. That has nothing to do with your warrior heritage. Why blades? Well, for one thing, we didn’t have access to Ban’Shar. For another, you were an assassin. Swords and throwing daggers are the assassin’s weapons, easily forged from common metals after entering a city. This allowed you to subvert the weapons ban common to most big cities and settlements. As a former Ganymedean warrior, it was easy enough for you to adapt; you took to the sword readily, as the forms were similar to what you learned wielding the Ban’Shar, even if the weight was drastically different. It took me only a few weeks to turn you from Ganymedean warrior into Khrusos’ personal killing machine.”
“So this is why she called me the Dagger of Khrusos,” Rhea said. “Veil.”
“That would be why,” Burhawk agreed.
Rhea cocked her head. “If you’re my mentor, someone who trained me to be the Dagger of Khrusos, doesn’t that mean you serve him?”
“I do, or I did,” Burhawk agreed. “But I’m retired now. You’re part of the reason of that retirement, in fact.”
She waited for him to explain, but when he didn’t, she told him: “In the hallway outside the secret tunnel, when I told you I wanted to get to the palace, you said I would die. I responded that I could take on an entire army. And then you claimed I said that ‘the last time.’ What last time?”
“You tried to kill Khrusos,” Burhawk said. “It’s a long story.”
Rhea gestured toward the empty auditorium. “We have time.”
“Some.” He leaned back in his chair on the stage and set his palms down on the table. “We wiped your mind. We filled the void with very specific indoctrinations, training you not only to be an assassin, but to follow the orders of Khrusos without question. Your every quiet moment was spent reflecting on how grateful and devoted to Khrusos you were. Despite all of this, eventually Khrusos began to lose control. Eventually, some of your memories began to come back.
“It started little by little at first, as sometimes happens to those who have been wiped. Everyone’s brains are wired slightly different after all, so it’s not guaranteed the wipe will catch every memory, especially for someone like you, a Ganymedean: you’re part of a human population that has lived away from Earth long enough to have evolved almost into an entirely separate sub-species. So it’s not surprising the wipe didn’t entirely take.
“These memories were triggered by certain sights and smells, and slowly, over thirty years, you finally put together who you were. You kept it to yourself, hiding it from even me. But then you reached a tipping point. I don’t know what it was, you never told me. It could’ve been something Khrusos said to you, or some memory that triggered. Whatever the case, you tried to assassinate him for it. And failed.
“That was when he ordered your destruction. You fled to Earth in a shuttle craft. But his men caught up with you, boarding your vessel before you could land. You fought bravely against those who came to take you in, but eventually succumbed. You fell, hurtling from the craft, your body shattered, plunging into a canyon. I was there, watching in my own craft inside that canyon: Khrusos ordered me to witness your death. But when you fell into that rocky defile, I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I didn’t have the heart to let you die. Though I called you Dagger, you had become the daughter I never had. So I accelerated and managed to scoop the remnants of your body out of the air with my craft. Then I fled, undetected by the others.
“I reported to Khrusos that you were slain, your body lost in the canyon. He ordered me to find it. I ignored that order, and instead hid you. When I could not produce your body, Khrusos informed
