I’d expected to be tied up in some kind of holding cell. Instead, I was dragged into an office filled with a smoky yellow light. Dark, heavy armchairs and tables decorated the room. The walls were skinned in a forlorn shade of brown, smeared with event-monitoring systems. Tiny, clicking mechanisms perched atop a row of bookcases. Heavy drapes were drawn back from the viewport that peered out into the sweeping asteroid field. Jae Myouk-soon sat behind an antique wooden desk. The woman who had taken my brother from me. She was reading an old manuscript and casually folded it away to inspect me. I took in the pronounced Korean cheekbones, intelligent eyes, dark hair swept up in a perfect bun. Her small frame was almost swallowed up by the highbacked leather chair. If she’d been standing, she’d only have come up to my chest. Her cream blouse, shawl, and pencil skirt looked bizarre in contrast to the scuffed armour worn by the men who’d dragged me here. Sitting above her on a backlit podium was the same black, serrated helmet I’d seen her wearing in the photo.
I was roughly shoved to my knees, still hunched forward. The metallic scrape of the chain being locked in place high above me. Cables were unspooled from the corners of the room and latched to the back of my harness to cement me in place. I couldn’t move an inch.
‘Good.’ She dismissed my escort with a flick of her fingers. Artyom moved to follow, but she called him back. ‘I’m told you captured your brother. It’s only fair you remain to see the results.’
The Jackal hadn’t moved. ‘You promised me I’d get to spend time with him,’ he said in a low, cold voice.
‘I did. That was before you failed in the Pits. Failed tremendously.’
‘You owe me for—’
Jae cut him off. ‘You are owed nothing, Akira. Only what I choose to give.’
A crack shivered down the Jackal’s facade, exposing an animalistic outrage. At first, I’d believed it was embarrassment, rejection in front of others that was his sole weakness. Now, I saw it was also having his authority undermined. He was a quiet schemer from the shadows, manipulating until he had you under his control. Jae saw it, too. Tension strung between them over my restrained body. Eventually, the Jackal bowed his head, his mask back in place. A temporary retreat to fight another day, although he was no doubt imagining sawing my head off with a dull knife.
He departed and left the three of us alone.
‘I’d be lying if I said it’s not been amusing to watch you scurry around.’ Jae inspected me like I was the most bizarre of animals. I smelled her minty perfume as she leaned forward to tap the jaw of my muzzle. My restrained hands shook against my chest with the urge to wrap around her scrawny throat. ‘Amusing and annoying.’
‘Should have thought about that before you got my brother involved,’ I spat through my muzzle.
‘Don’t be so naive. Artyom joined us willingly, didn’t you?’
Artyom said nothing. He didn’t have to. ‘And what makes you people so sodding special? You’re just like any other group of violent nutjobs, spreading fear for power.’
‘We’re the only ones who see the truth, Fukasawa. Harmony’s a parasite. Holding us back in the dark ages when we could be so much more.’
‘Did you come about this dawning realisation while poisoning Harvest deserters?’
‘I came about this dawning realisation when your people destroyed my home.’ Jae’s face was expressionless as asteroid rock. ‘The Harmony warships swarmed the skies of my homeworld and turned everyone I loved and everyone I knew into meat and rubble. I wanted to know what could possibly be worth so much that entire civilisations would try to destroy each other for it.’
‘You think we wanted to go to war?’ I’d never have defended Harmony once, but I couldn’t stay silent at this insanity.
‘But a war was had regardless, wasn’t it?’ She laid her hand just under my collarbone. Her touch burned like dry ice but I was in no position to shake it off. ‘And then I found out what the stormtech was and what it could do.’
‘So you formed this little band of alien-worshipping freaks?’ I asked.
But Jae wouldn’t be provoked. ‘It seems your brother has all the brains in the family. You’re exactly what he said: a rabid dog on a leash.’ She traced the stormtech zigzagging from rib to rib. ‘You have never understood what a gift this is. How to embrace it.’
I stretched as far as my restraints allowed, trying to shrug her hand away. My knees were already aching and numb. ‘Is that what you’re doing, as you study and enhance it?’ I nodded towards the stacks of leather-bound tomes and readouts, glowing with statistics pertaining to the Shenoi. Maybe I’d die here. But I wasn’t going to go down without knowing why the cult was doing this.
‘We’re embracing what’s natural, Vakov. The stormtech heals, enhances and boosts those who are worthy. It sharpens the dullest of minds, nurses crippled limbs back to life, eats diseases out of the human body. It’s a gift. Harmony wants to take it for themselves, use it for their own gain. Instead, we’re giving it to the world.’
‘You want to infect everyone,’ I breathed. It had never just been about discrediting Harmony. It was a complete and utter rejection of their rule. They wanted to spread stormtech to as many people as possible, while dialling up the distrust of Harmony and any rehabilitation or suppressors they offered.
‘We want to advance humanity,’ Jae corrected with a vaunted air, her small, fox-like face wrapped with the room’s golden glow.
