Sand grates against her lips.
The world returns as a stinging, bitter taste. Heat. Smoke. The ground hums like a held breath.
Fiona blinks. Her fingers twitch. Ash is caked under her nails. Her hospital gown sticks to her skin, damp with sweat. The air smells of metal and ozone—something burned, something clean, like after lightning, but harsher.
She lifts her head, barely. A wall of ruins stretches before her, skeletal metal beams bent toward the sky like exposed ribs. And beyond them—
Light. A flash. Then thunder, rolling late. Something in the distance blooms—a fireball tearing at the sky. It blooms again. Orbital strike. She doesn't have the words for it. Just the instinct to shrink.
This isn't the DRD. This isn't the game anymore.
Her soles sting as she shifts. No shoes. Just new skin, too tender to walk on. She tries anyway. The sharp rubble forces her down again.
"Don't move."
The voice cuts through—flat, cold. Not angry. Just... final.
She flinches as a figure steps into view. Black armor. No insignia. Masked. Another behind him. A third further out, watching the perimeter. Mercs? Soldiers? She doesn't know.
"Subject recovered." The first says into a comm unit, cadence clipped, no breath wasted. "Grid Pepper-Three-Niner. Showing anomalous vitals. Over."
The response crackles back, filtered through static. "Reaver, Overwatch. HVT confirmed. Initiate SIGMA protocols. Directive 87-Alpha. Acknowledge."
The soldier doesn't look at her. "SIGMA acknowledged. Reaver out."
Fiona opens her mouth to speak—but the words don't come. Her throat is too dry. A name—Sky—burns through the static in her mind like a scar she can't trace.
Another soldier—female—approaches with a scanner. Sleeves rolled up, movements efficient. The hum of the med device vibrates in Fiona's bones.
"BP 140/90. Heart rate 112. Cortisol spike. Subject conscious, baseline established."
"Timestamp 2145" Comes another voice, colder still. A woman standing behind what looks like reinforced glass, arms folded. "Commence Phase One."
The light changes. Slightly dimmer. A calculated drop—Fiona notices it. Not random. Designed. Controlled.
They're not afraid of her. They're afraid of something else.
She doesn't know where she is. She doesn't know who they are.
But they know everything about her.
The mag-locks engage with a metallic click.
Fiona flinches. Not from pain—
From finality.
Callum positions himself exactly 1.5 meters from her. Standard interrogation distance.
Measured. Planned.
Where am I?
"Commencing subject interrogation at 2130 hours," Callum states. "Subject designation Echo-Seven-Niner. Present: Captain Zara overseeing, Lieutenant Callum primary, Specialist Irina on technical."
Irina's fingers dance across the console. Machines blink to life. Readouts flare.
Echo-Seven-Niner. Not my name.
Sky said survive. How?
"Baseline vitals established," Irina announces. "Subject shows elevated cortisol, heart rate 115 BPM. Psychic signature Delta-Four—unusual for civilian."
Delta-Four. Civilian. Words blow through her like desert wind.
Cold in here. Or hot? Can't tell.
Zara steps forward, silhouette sharp. "Specialist, initiate Phase One. Lieutenant, proceed."
Callum nods. "Roger that, ma'am."
He turns to her. "State your designation and purpose. Who authorized your presence in the restricted AO?"
Fiona's mouth is sand. Words scatter before reaching her lips.
Don't know where I am. Don't know AO. Sky... you said survive. Not how.
The hydro-stressor hums to life. A panel slides open. Restraints tighten.
What's—
Ice-cold water slams into her face. She can't breathe.
She jerks—wrists grinding against metal. Thrash. Gasp. Choke.
Can't breathe—can't—
Water again. Then again. Her legs kick, useless. The chair doesn't move. Her throat's on fire.
"Ten seconds to threshold," Irina reports.
Time doesn't... where am I? What did I—
Her lungs seize. Her brain screams. Every cell howls for oxygen. One instinct left:
Live.
No Sky. No name. No thoughts. Just raw, animal terror.
Zara nods once.
"Psychic amplifier at twenty percent," Irina says. "Stable."
"Increase to thirty if no response within sixty seconds," Zara commands. "We need intelligence on subject's connection to Sky before 0600. Command wants full assessment."
The runes pulse in Sequence Beta—designed to rupture psychic resistance.
Fiona doesn't understand it. But she feels it.
Pressure behind her eyes.
A storm forming in her skull.
Callum moves closer.
"Need a SITREP on your mission parameters. What is your connection to asset 'Sky'?"
Her lips part.
Nothing comes.
I'm nobody. Didn't ask for this. He said survive.
Was that just a cruel goodbye?
Her pulse pounds. The chair floats. The room spins.
Light becomes knives.
I want to go home but that place doesn't exist anymore.
Callum circled to position Bravo, frustration edging into his otherwise controlled movements.
"Subject continues to withhold critical intelligence despite Level Three pressure application." His voice remained clinical, but a muscle twitched beneath his eye—standard patterns were failing.
Irina studied her monitors, brow furrowed.
"Captain, subject's neural patterns are… unusual. Pain response is present, but resilience isn't following expected breakdown curves."
Zara stepped from the shadows, breaking observation protocol—a rare move.
"Specialist. Analysis."
Irina hesitated, blinking past the screen's glow. "Subject's pain tolerance is at eighty-seven percent—on par with Delta Force operators. She's not just tough. She's adapted."
The hydro-stressor cycled again. Fiona's body tensed. Breathing ragged. But her eyes—unbroken. Defiant.
"Adjust the approach," Zara ordered, voice cold. "She's been conditioned."
Callum leaned in, modulating his tone. "Your vitals suggest specialized training. Who prepared you? What org are you with?"
Fiona's cracked lips parted. Bitter amusement flickered behind her exhaustion.
"No one trained me," she rasped. "You think this hurts?"
Irina's scanner chirped. "Endorphin spike. She's… laughing at the pain."
Callum stepped back. Quick glance to Zara. This wasn't in the manuals.
"She's not a civilian," Zara said flatly.
"Sir," Irina replied, voice catching, "these aren't signs of training. They're signs of survival. Years of it."
Cold air kicked in. Standard shift to cold stress. Fiona shivered, but her eyes stayed distant—focused on someone far from here. Someone she would die before revealing.
Zara's voice returned to full command: "Initiate vector Tango-Seven."
Callum stepped in. Voice soft. Weaponized gentleness. "Who are you protecting? There's someone, isn't there? Someone Sky swore to keep safe."
Fiona's eyes snapped to his. For the first time—genuine fear.
But her fear wasn't for herself.
Not for pain. Not for death.
Those were old friends.
It was for someone else.
Zara saw the break. "Elevate to Phase Four. We found the pressure point."
But what they didn't understand was that they had just touched the one place decades of agony had trained her to guard with the fierceness of a mother from the streets.
A storm was coming.
And Fiona—
Fiona had survived worse than them.
The chamber fell silent—pressure protocol Delta. The walls didn't echo; they absorbed. Runes pulsed cold and slow, like the heartbeat of some forgotten beast.
Callum stood at position Alpha, spine a steel rod, but his eyes flicked—full of curiosity. Irina hovered near the amplifier, hands poised, breath barely audible.
"Begin memory extraction," Zara ordered from behind the one-way obsidian screen. "Target emotional anchors."
The machine stirred—no roar, just the whisper of inevitability. Irina's fingers danced across the console. "Psychic resonance locked. Initiating in three... two... one."
Blue light coiled across the room like frost in reverse. Fiona jerked as the amplifier gripped her mind—not painfully, but surgically. On the holo-display: Bucaramanga under a sun too cruel, a young woman's shoulders sagging under the weight of a fruit basket. Then—a hand. Tiny. Reaching up.
A smile, soft but blurred. Not even memory could hold it steady.
"Target located," Callum said, voice metallic.
The hydro-stressor cycled up—level four. Pain sharpened. A jagged current down the nerves. Fiona arched, strained, but her mouth didn't open. Then—
A single tear.
Irina blinked. "Sir... unusual pattern. Pain centers aren't matching the emotional response."
Another tear. Still no sound.
Zara stepped in, breaking her own observational protocol. "Explain."
"She's not crying from the stressor," Irina said. Her voice, once clean and clinical, now cracked faintly. "The pain isn't what's breaking her. She's already broken."
The holo shimmered again: bare shelves, small fingers clutching an empty bowl. Fiona's younger hands—thinner, desperate—slid the last piece of fruit toward a child's mouth.
Fiona's jaw trembled. But her eyes—fierce. Guarded like gates of an ancient fortress.
"What's your child's name?" Callum asked, shifting tones—Gamma interrogation, the voice of false mercy. "You're not protecting them. You're abandoning them. Help us help them."
Fiona didn't answer. But the sobs came. Silent. Raw. Like a wound that no longer bleeds but still throbs with phantom fire.
"She's not afraid of us," Irina whispered. "She's afraid of herself."
Zara's eyes narrowed.
"Her protective instinct overrides guilt stimulation," Irina added, trying to sound clinical again, but her voice betrayed something else—respect, maybe. "She believes she's already failed. But that failure... it fuels her. Not weakens."
The display flared one last time: a bowl placed on a cracked table, a child's face blurred by hunger. Fiona's own face—tear-streaked even in memory.
Her body trembled now. But the name—still sealed behind lips as unyielding as stone.
Callum's breath caught. "How do you break someone already shattered by their own guilt?"
Zara answered only with silence. For once, it was not a tactic.
The machine hummed on. Fiona wept—but not for them. And not for surrender.
She wept like the moon bleeds light. Quiet, steady, inevitable.
For her daughter, and for the part of herself that still remembered being loved.
The psychic amplifier hummed with a dull resonance, pulsing in sync with Fiona's elevated heart rate. Her head sagged forward, strands of sweat-matted hair sticking to her cheek. Across from her, the interrogator waited—calm, calculating, eyes narrowed.
Zara's voice filtered through the chamber's speakers, distant and detached. "You're not here to resist. You're here to reveal."
Fiona lifted her eyes, unfocused at first, then sharpening with a clarity that cut through the fog. She didn't speak. She simply looked. And in that look—dry, defiant—was the echo of everything she'd already lost.
A faint flicker of blue anima crawled up her fingertips. The sensor embedded in her wrist blinked erratically.
The amplifier surged, trying to force compliance. She gritted her teeth. Somewhere beneath her ribs, pain bloomed—radiating outward, sharp, premeditated.
And then, it happened.
The machine let out a high-pitched whine. Lights blinked into chaos. Sparks spat from the console as smoke hissed from its seams. Fiona didn't scream. She simply endured.
One final surge—and the amplifier exploded with a dull, electrical pop.
Silence.
Irina leaned forward, her expression somehow unreadable. Callum instinctively stepped back, one hand brushing the butt of his sidearm. Even Zara was quiet.
Fiona slumped in her seat, barely conscious, breath shallow.
No battle cry. No demands. Only the smoldering air and the stillness of a woman who had nothing left to prove.
Zara tapped a button. The force field around Fiona's chair dissipated with a soft chime.
"She broke the array," Irina whispered.
"She broke us," Callum muttered, eyes still fixed on her.
Zara said nothing. She stood, approached Fiona, and, without ceremony, undid the restraints.
Fiona didn't move.
Zara crouched beside her, brushing the damp hair from her temple. "She held the line," she said, voice low. "Even as it moved."
Consciousness returned slowly. Not with clarity—but with pain. Her shoulders burned. Ankles screamed. Arms suspended above her head, feet barely grazing the floor. No posture for thinking. Just surviving.
The cell measured exactly 1.5 meters square. No bed. No toilet. Just a floor drain and cold blue light that never changed. The world was measured in thirst and pulse.
"Subject Echo-Seven-Niner," came a voice—distorted, hollow, Callum without humanity. "Phase Three initiated. Duration: fourteen days. Purpose: loyalty verification."
Her cracked lips moved, but no words came.
"No hydration until cooperation."
Zara had no sympathy in her gaze. This wasn't punishment. This was the grinder. The thing that broke most recruits. Sky had ordered it. She would enforce it.
"First query," Callum said. "Identity confirmation of dependent. Name and location."
Fiona's head dropped, then lifted, slowly. A whisper scratched through her throat.
"...I beg you for my soul to take."
Irina frowned. "Mantra detected. High emotional resonance. Repeating pattern."
"Continue pressure," Zara said.
Time warped. There were no hours. Only aching joints, darkness, and the question.
"…I beg you for my soul to take."
Sometimes a whisper. Sometimes nothing but breath. Always the same.
On the seventh day, her legs gave out. Only the restraints held her up. Her mouth was too dry to form tears.
"Resistance holding," Irina said.
By day ten, her heartbeat slowed. Yet the phrase still came.
On the twelfth, Irina again: "Subject exceeds expected pain threshold. Recommending protocol review."
Zara remained silent.
Water was offered—a ration measured in sips. Not kindness. Extension.
Day fourteen. Final assessment.
"Last chance," Callum said. "Full recovery contingent on dependent's identity."
Fiona raised her head. Hollow eyes. Sunken cheeks. And then—
"…I beg you for my soul to take."
In the control room, no one spoke.
Zara finally said, "She didn't pass the grinder. She owned it."
She keyed the comm. "Sky, subject demonstrates loyalty beyond standard parameters. Recommend immediate medical extraction."
The lock disengaged. A hiss. Arms caught her before she could hit the floor.
Zara's voice, now beside her—close, not distant.
"It's over. Your daughter is safe."
Fiona blacked out. She never said the name.
She never had to.
The lights remained unchanged. The cell remained unchanged. The pain—constant. But something in Fiona did change.
She was on her knees now, her body no longer able to hold even the stressed standing posture. Nobody had moved her; she had simply folded in on herself, like a structure buckling inward. Her lips trembled. No new question had been asked. No stimulus applied.
And yet, the sobs came.
Silent, dry sobs—wracking her chest with a force that had no tears to follow. Her mouth opened in a soundless cry, head bowed so low her forehead nearly touched the floor. A single motion—primitive, primal. She rocked forward and back, a rhythmless tremor that no protocol had prepared them for.
In the observation room, Irina's voice broke the silence: "Commander... something's happening. No change in vitals, no pain spike. But... she's collapsing emotionally. There's no external trigger."
The soldiers stared, uncertain. The screen showed Fiona trembling, convulsing—not from pain, not from interrogation. From something deeper. Something unquantifiable.
"Give her water," Zara ordered, standing suddenly. "Now. Break protocol. I want a med unit on standby."
"But ma'am, we haven't—"
"Now."
The door hissed. Medics entered fast, guiding tubes, scanners, neural patches. But Fiona barely responded.
And then, Sky's voice—clearer than any comms transmission before—cut through the silence like a whisper from beyond.
"Today is Camila's birthday," he said, his tone low, reverent. "Let her grief."
Zara froze.
The soldiers looked at one another, understanding dawning.
No torture broke her.
Just a chain of memories.
A home she will never fill again. A child's laughter preserved in the amber of memory. The tiny hand that once reached for hers—now reaching only in dreams. The birthday candles never blown out. The songs unsung.
In that sterile room with its precise angles and measured punishments, something immeasurable emerged. Not the soldier they sought to break. Not the asset they aimed to control. But a mother—kneeling at an altar no one else could see.
The monitors continued their steady rhythm, blind to the force that bends universes, that parts seas, that survives empires.
A force contained in six letters on her cracked lips, unheard by any machine:
Camilla.