Chapter Text
**Three Weeks Ago in the Heart of the Empire**
Bridget
After the incident, Prorok was disgraced with a ten-year ban followed by a large fine for injuring me. Madame Floentha was beside herself with fury as I at the heart of another uproar with no proof I was the cause of it. Takor reported noticing Prorok acting unusual and had remained close by per Zenana's protocol. He was unable to determine what triggered Prorok’s assault but had intervened before a valuable asset was damaged.
The Madame’s golden eyes locked on me from across her desk like a laser rifle. “I know you had something to do . . .”
I took a risk and cut her off. “Prorok . . .”
“Commander Prorok,” she corrected hotly.
I continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “ . . .is known for being violent. I told you he had beaten me many times while I belonged to him. I’m frightened of him for good reason as you can see for yourself.”
She had shown me security footage of the event. Thank God, it was taken at an angle where my face couldn’t be seen. It caught Prorok getting more and more agitated while I sit as small and harmless as a kitten. From the observer’s point of view, it appeared that Prorok had a breakdown and attacked me.
If it was possible for Madame Floentha to kill with her eyes, I would have died a painful death right then. “I don’t like your tone, courtesan,”
I kept my expression bland and slightly confused as if uncertain to what she was talking about. I watch her collect herself. She adjusted her hair which had begun to lose its stylish curl and tap the ash from her cheroot. This mess must have put her through the wringer if she needed time to collect herself in front of me. On top of losing Prorok as a customer, she missed out on all the money he was going to pay to use me as a broodmare. It must have been a sizable amount for her to be this upset over it.
“You also cost me an escort,” she said.
I tilted my head in a concerned manner. “Oh?”
“Takor requested a transfer. Since he reeks of this scandal, I called in some favors to have his request expedited. He’s leaving Zenana today so I’ll have to assign you a new escort.” She gave me a hard narrowed look. “And I’ll make certain its someone wise to your ways.”
“I’m certain I’ll get along with anyone you assign, Madame,” I said with a respectful dip of the head.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. I would get along quite well with whomever she assigned to me. I was happy that Takor was gone. It felt like an unpleasant chapter in my life was closing and if I never sat Takor again, it would be too soon.
“Takor was a good escort,” she scolded. “He did as he was told and kept you from harm. He also followed the protocol closely.”
It took all my will to keep from rolling my eyes. What she meant is that he didn’t flirt or try to sleep with courtesans. Why would he when he had his eyes set on me? And I’d rather slit my wrists and bleed out before letting him touch me.
Being a popular courtesan, there wasn’t much she could do to punish me without losing out on money. I was allowed to resume my place as a higher rank courtesan and entertain my usual patrons. I was dismissed with a promise that if another scandal reared its head with me at the epicenter. It wouldn’t matter if I was the most expensive courtesan in the Universe. She would auction me off to the first bidder to save herself the headache of dealing with me further.
I bowed and bid her good day before leaving. It wasn’t until I was several halls away from her office that I allowed myself to grin. Prorok had been punished and Takor was gone. I had won a huge victory for myself and it was enough to make me forget how badly I had failed Shiro.
Thinking of him dampen my mood and my grin faded. With the threat of Prorok gone and Takor no longer interfering, I could focus on saving him. When I next see Ulaz, we will come up with a plan to free Shiro from the arena. I owed him that much.
Shiro
The pain was an old unwanted friend. It reminded him he was still alive, but at the same time, made him wish he wasn’t. His throat was raw and mouth dry. He turned his head in hopes of Bridget providing a cup of water and remember their captors had whisked her away.
In moving, he realized the cables and sensors were gone from his body. The machines monitoring his vitals were gone and the space around the bed was void of any equipment. Sitting up hurt, but he could do it without aid. His vision was clear, more focus, and he saw the hulking monster standing before the bed.
It was a huge Galra and the most dangerous-looking one Shiro had ever seen. Standing at 8 feet, he filled the room with a palpable menace, of which the brunt was reserved for Shiro. An orb gleamed at him from the right eye socket of a broad face with large upturned ears. The most striking part of this beast was his left arm - or where his left arm would have been. In its place was a huge gauntlet connected to the shoulder via a crackling beam of purple energy.
The Galra’s face split from a malicious grin that bared cruel sharp teeth. “Are you done resting, human?”
Shiro didn’t move but gathered his energy in preparation for an attack. He nodded with his eyes fixed on the Galra’s eyes - or single eye.
“Good. We have plenty to accomplish before the end of the cycle. I’m Commander Sendak and I’ve been tasked to be your trainer and handler.”
His eyebrows rose and he slowly relaxed. It appeared this Sendak wasn’t offering violence . . . for now. “I don’t understand. The arena is training me?”
The arena didn’t bother training prisoners. They threw you into the grinder and if you were lucky, you were handed a weapon before being shoved onto the field. Then it was killed or be killed. The experienced fighters and trained combatants outclassing those without those advantages.
Sendak’s lip curled in a sneer. “I don’t take orders from the arena. You will take orders from me beginning now. Get up and follow.”
With that said, the Galra turned and left the room. Shiro hesitated for a second before scooting off the bed. It took a moment for his legs to function properly after so long being off them. Questions whirled around in his head, but he knew that demanding answers would get him nothing. For now, he focused on the positives of the situation. He wasn’t dead. The Galra didn’t seem to want him dead. And he might be mistaken, but it appeared he was no longer involved with the arenas.
Leaving the arenas would be a dream come true, but he remembered the old saying . . . out of the frying and into the fire.
Haggar
It was a habit of old - so old, she couldn’t remember where she learned it. Tripling checking her findings before presenting them. The quintessence tested positive. The records were infallible. And the tests were accurate.
If it was for her purposes alone she could accept room for error. However, any information for Him must be correct without any mistake.
A Druid was waiting quietly as a shadow with the patience of death behind her while she studied the data. Without turning away, she gave orders. “More tests will be needed to confirm the results. Order a physical and blood tests. And run a quintessence compatibility test.”
“Yes, High Priestess,” the voice said in a whisper that spread across the chamber. It disappeared into the shadows cast from the glowing data flowing over the screen.
**Three Weeks Later on Earth**
Keith
When he returned to the apartment, he told everything that happened. From when he met Thace outside the barracks, to being led inside, and how well the plan was going until an impromptu visit from a Haxus. As Keith described this new Galra, Lance noticed Pidge’s eyes widen with recognition.
“Do you know him?” He asked once Keith had finished his story.
“He sounds familiar,” Pidge said. “I think he’s the Galra that almost caught me at the factory.”
“You’re lucky you got away. He’s dangerous,” Keith said. “He knew Thace and had been in his quarters before. He seemed at home there.”
“Do you think he suspected you?” Hunk asked.
“No, he was just messing with Thace,” Keith said. He was sitting on the floor against the wall and with a can of soda pinned to his knee beneath a hand. There was no way in hell he was going to mention that Leslie, Thace’s mistress, resembled him. “But he lost his shit when Leslie mentioned a church with a storm shelter.”
“What? What church?” Lance said.
Keith shrugged, but Sammi leaned stepped forward from where she was standing next to Pidge. “Um, I think he’s talking about Lion’s Den church, but that was taken over by drug dealers. They call it the Drug Den now.”
At the mention of drug dealers, Lance and Hunk looked at each other. Then Lance turned to Keith. “What did he want to know about it?”
“I’m not sure. He wanted to know where the shelter was. When Leslie told him it was under the church, he said their scanners didn’t pick anything up.”
“But the shelter is under the church. I went to a party there one time,” Sammi said. When the others looked at her, she blushed. “It was before the Galra invaded, of course.”
What was confusing was why the scanners didn’t pick up the shelter in the first place? The Galra had advanced alien technology with superior scanners and means to detect . . .just about anything.
“Wait, how old is the building?” Hunk asked Sammi.
“Old. Like really old. Hundreds of years, maybe?” She chewed her thumbnail in thought.
“Back then, they built storm shelters with concrete or cement. That’s like rock and earth,” Hunk explained.
Pidge’s eyes glowed behind her glasses. “So when the Galra scanned the ground . . .”
“All they saw was rock and earth,” Hunk said. “It probably hid whatever was underground.”
Lance pounced on this new information. “Is it possible that the rebels could use this to hide people and supplies?”
Hunk considered this for a moment. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it. The Galra might wise up to it after this.”
“This doesn’t tell us why Haxus is so interested in a storm shelter?” Pidge said. “Sammi, have you heard about anything happening between drug dealers and Galra?”
“I don’t know.” Sammi sagged apologetically. “Word has it that the Galra were questioning people in Bruisers and that’s where dealers sold drugs to Galra. I don’t know much more than that, except that the church burned down a few days ago.”
Lance rubbed his chin and met Hunk’s gaze. “Remember when Margery cut us loose? She said the Galra was onto her and she had to lay low? That was a few days ago too.”
“And she burned down her ranch house.” Hunk’s dark brows went up into arches.
Keith wrinkled his brow. He wasn’t familiar with the area as the others, but even he thought this was strange. The Galra never cared about drugs other than medicine for chronic illnesses which they confiscated and rationed out to those they favored or willing to pay the exuberant taxes for them.
“Do you think they caught onto Margery helping the rebels?” Hunk asked.
Lance shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’d be seeing a bigger reaction from the kats. Whatever is going on, they don’t it made public. However, we do know someone who might know. Sandy works as one of the girls at Bruisers. Keith can ask her about what’s going on the next time he’s there.”
“Alright, you heard what happened on my end,” Keith said drawing their attention. “What happened on your end?”
They told him. Keith didn’t take the news well. He was on his feet and pacing the room like an angry tiger in a cage. “She could have told us where Shiro is!”
“Hey, pal, you were the one who cut the connection, not us.” Lance crossed his arms and his eyes followed Keith’s route back and forth, almost wall to wall.
“If I had known . . .” Keith started but was cut off by Pidge.
“That’s right, you didn’t know just as we didn’t know what was going at your end,” she said. “It’s no one’s fault . . .”
“Easy for you to say,” Keith rounded on her. “You were able to ask about your family, forgetting that they’re not the only ones lost . . .”
“Whoa, man! Not cool!” Lance was on his feet and put himself between Pidge and Keith. “If it wasn’t for her, then we wouldn’t know anything at all. Now we have a huge source of information about the Galra Empire.”
“What does that matter?” Keith said. “We’re worried about the Galra on Earth, not the ones in the middle of their Empire. And it’s not a dependable source of information if you don’t have a reliable way of contacting her. It was a fluke that she happened to be in the room when you made the call. And how do we know she can be trusted?”
“What do you mean? She’s human, duh!” Lance retorted.
“She’s been held captive by Galra for more than a year. What if they brainwashed her? Or she has Stockholm syndrome? She could be feeding us a pack of lies!”
“Then what about Shiro?” Lance said, bringing his face close to Keiths. “He’s been a prisoner for two years. He’s more likely than Walsh to turn on us.”
Keith’s face darkened into a dangerous glare. “Shiro would never betray us. Ever.”
“And we know that,” Hunk said appearing between them. With a gentle hand on their shoulders, he said, “Look, it’s not up to us to decide. We report and the superiors decide what to do with the information. Then they give us orders and we go from there. We’re all tired. We went through a stressful thing and we’re all coming down from the adrenaline. Let’s all have something to eat and go to bed. We’ll feel better about everything in the morning.”
That brought everything to a close. Sammi and Pidge bid them goodnight and went back to their apartment. With a brusque nod, Keith left for his apartment. Lance and Hunk went to bed not long after.
Sammi
An hour later, found Sammi tiptoeing down the hall to the bathroom. He barely made any noise on the floorboards which was just as well as she wanted no one to know what she was up to. After locking the door, she stood in front of the mirror and pulled up her shirt.
Her belly was extended into a small ball. Bruises and lacerations covered the skin. Some old, most fresh.
“Alright, let’s try this again,” Sammi said.
She grimaced as she lifted a hand weight she had absconded to the bathroom. Taking a break and bracing her resolve, she smashed the weight into her stomach with both hands. She grunted, almost bent double from the pain. After taking a moment to catch her breath, she geared herself to do it again. And again.
Thace
After seeing both Leslie and Keith on their way home, Thace should have retired for the night. It was late and he had plenty of work to do if only to keep himself from throttling Haxus tomorrow. The bastard had claimed he could keep his personal and professional life separate. How dare he drag innocent Leslie into this? And how dare he humiliate him in front of Keith! He was cutting things off with him and that will be the end of it.
He fumed for nearly an hour, drowning his fury with Galra ale. Once he was calmer and able to think clearly, his thoughts went to something else that bothered him.
The door. The doors automatically lock themselves when closed. All doors on any Galra military facility, base, or ship would auto-lock. It was just as they come built. If they couldn’t or there was a malfunction, a request for maintenance was sent. Thace went to the door and checked it. It was locked and wouldn’t open until it read his bio-signature on the panel.
The door worked, so how was Keith able to open it himself? He had seen the youth palm the panel and it had registered him as if he were Galra. That was impossible. All Imperial devices were key-coded to respond only to Galra DNA. It prevented non-Galra, such as prisoners or rebels, from having free reign during infiltration or escape. There were workarounds, but it took top level techs or engineers to crack the coding. Keith had done it effortlessly and didn’t realize what he had done.
There was no use worrying about it now. There were other matters to consider. Ulaz’s mission to free a prisoner from the arena had failed spectacularly. Not only where they were unable to free him, but the circumstances had drawn the attention of the Witch. Ulaz couldn’t give him the details and was stoic about the failure, but Thace had known him long enough to know when his old friend was worried.
There wasn’t anything he could do to help Ulaz other than passing along messages or codes between him and brothers and sisters on Earth. As he distributed the codes via backdoor structures in the network, he retired to bed. His head was on the pillow for several seconds before his eyes snapped open. Shooting from the bed, he went to his terminal and powered it on.
His bare heel tapped a tattoo on the floor as he waited for the file to pull up. How could he have forgotten? The message was probably buried under all the other work he had been doing. When the file came up, he skimmed it until he found what he was looking for.
When Keith applied for work slip, it came back with an error with his DNA sample. Thace had chalked it up to a tainted sample or a drug in the youth’s system, but what if it was something else. The tests were human-oriented for human DNA so if it received anything that doesn’t read as such, then it would give back an error.
Keith’s words came back to him like an echo from a dark cavern and a memory of a knife floated before him.
I didn’t find it. I’ve had it my whole life.
What if he had been telling the truth?
Thace collected the knife from its hiding spot and stared at it. It was . . . it was possible. No, it was likely the case. It wasn’t unheard of for a fellow Blade to disappear or leave the sect to follow his or her own path. The protocol was they leave their knife behind, but sometimes they were unable to.
The knife, the door unlocking, and the DNA error all led to one conclusion. Somewhere along with Keith’s ancestry, a Galra added his or her genes. Thace had the suspicion it was more recent than that. Keith told him that his mother disappeared when he was very young. Was she the original owner of this knife? Keith’s behavior and skill screamed Galra youth exuberance. Was that why he was so attracted to him?
Thace out the knife away and thought of what he should do. Should this be reported to the Leader? Or should he wait and investigate more? Or do nothing?
Investigating Keith might draw attention to him. If his parentage was discovered it would raise questions of why a Galra would come to an undiscovered planet without reporting it? Then Keith may be taken to a detention center for half-breeds.
His eyes were heavy for want of sleep and he could think more clearly in the morning. After putting the knife away, he finally went to sleep. He dreamed of Keith’s eyes that kept switching from a lovely violet to brilliant gold.
Haxus
It took two hours to clear the rubble, but they found the hatch. It had been chained shut, but a single bolt from an energy gun changed that. A drone was sent inside to scout for life forms and once it gave the all-clear the doors were opened. The smell of blood wafted into his face as he descended into the stone steps. It was old and decayed. His nose wrinkled as his eyes took in the sight. The drone, now joined by two more, cast high light beams on the shelter then turned into a surgery.
There was a large table with straps hanging like broken wings from the edges. Surgical monitoring equipment lay abandoned with various medicals tools lie forgotten on metal trays.
This was the place . . . this was the place where the missing men were murdered. The bitch was butchering them and then coming up to lord it over the junkies and her underlings. And she played him for a fool while all this was beneath his feet.
He ordered his men to collect samples from everything and sent out an order to arrest Margery Kayla on sight. Any men recognized as working for her was to be arrested and questioned. If he had to tear this district apart to find her, then so be it.
Iverson
Talking with Dr. Margery Kayla was like taking an oil bath. He felt unclean like her foulness was clinging to his skin.
“Did you cover your tracks?”
“As much as I could given the circumstances, hon.” Her voice crackled over the radio.
“If the enemy discovers what we’re trying to do . . .” His hand tightened around the receiver.
“They won’t. All they’ll find is medical equipment. I have all the notes and data with me.”
“How close are you to a breakthrough?”
“It’s going to take time. Even under normal conditions, this shit still takes time. Couple that with being on the run and in hiding from a grouchy alien asshole . . . I’m good, honey, real good, but I ain’t that good. If you want me to come up with something soon, then I need these kats off my back.”
Iverson took a moment to weigh his options. It was regrettable, but he had his orders and he understood what was at stake. If there was any chance of winning this war, then they needed this project to work.
“Stay low and continue working if you can. My men will give the kats plenty else to worry about. Over and out.”
When Lance reports in, Iverson will give him the order to blow up District 88’s munitions factory.