Chapter 23 Freya
FREYA
The pain comes first — a sharp spike across my skull, jagged and immediate, as if someone’s kicked me from inside. My vision blurs, black spots bloom across the pale green of the cell’s dim lamp. My hands clench involuntarily. My heart thumps like a hammer against rib-cage, like rock on steel.
Then the world goes soft, liquid, and wrong.
I slump forward on the cold slab, and let the effect carry me — the jerks, the tremors, the low moan caught between breath and sound.
I can taste stale air on my tongue, stale metal in my nostrils, the dryness of despair sweeping beneath my lashes.
I let my limbs go slack. I let my fingers curl unnaturally, as though I’ve lost command.
Yes, this is good. This is exactly what I need.
My eyes roll back. Light leaks in strange slants across the ceiling.
The lamp above flickers, rebounding off the damp stone walls, reflecting across metal and dust so the cell seems to dance — cruel, mocking, merciless.
My throat rattles, making a dry hiss instead of a scream. I let it. Soft. Weak. Vulnerable.
Somewhere in that haze I hear movement — heavy, metallic, servos whirring. The door slides open. Bolts scrape. The scent of antiseptic — or maybe coolant fumes — washes in with fresh air. I don’t move. I don’t blink. I don’t make sound.
"By the Nine-Veined Skulls, what happened now?”
A voice: harsh, mechanical, amused. I don’t need to open my eyes to know who it is.
Trebuchet. The monster with a man’s memories stitched over a machine’s skull.
He enters, boots clanging softly on stone slabs, cloak dragging like a death shroud.
The cell’s glow flickers off him in silvery shards, glinting on his rope-metal spine, rigid plated arm, cables trailing like broken veins into grey walls.
I keep still. Every muscle tensed under the edge of collapse. My head swims; my vision edges in waves.
He stops at the rim of the slab. His red optic pulses slow. For a heartbeat, he bends over me — silent, detached. He touches nothing. Smells nothing. He just watches.
“Human fragility wears thin fast,” he mutters, just above a whisper — not for me, but for the shadows the cell walls throw. “But you always snap back on fragility thresholds.”
I catch the word — “fragility.”
The link between fear and control. He thinks I’m broken.
Good. Let him think.
His servos click. He turns away, steps toward the faint console half-hidden against the wall — the very console I studied. The one that keeps half-metal monsters like him alive. The one with soft switches, pulsing lights, thin conduits that hum low, absolute.
I force it all into focus: the hiss of ventilation, the faint drip of condensation along the far wall, the click of his plating-field boots. The steady pulse of the console’s heart-light.
I drag breath down. Pain tastes bitter. But beneath it — hot determination.
As Trebuchet leans forward, tweaking gauges, tapping switches, the console clicks obediently. The vent port hisses behind him — cold, deadly air sliding through rusted metal. He’s adjusting oxygen flow, or neural stabilizers, or some translator of life and metal I’ll never understand.
Soft hum, click-click, light flicker.
He stands, turns.
I wait.
Then — I strike.
I jerk forward. The surge hits like thunder. My head snaps back into pain — skull-fog burrows deep. But I don’t stop. Air leaks, life stutters. My stunned arm flails — reflex takes over.
A bone-cracked roar tears from my throat as I reach out — fingers hit hard, grab the calibration tool that lies half-concealed on the console. It sparks under my grip as the tool snags wires, fractures circuits.
Sparks burst — blue, white, sharp — like lightning in a bottle. The panel flares, flickers, then goes black.
Alarms scream. Red lights bloom. The hiss behind the vent port inverts — a rush of air, then silence. Metal clangs. The cell door’s heavy plate shudders under pressure.
Trebuchet jerks — sways like a puppet tugged by frayed strings. His left forearm spasms, then goes dead — limp. The servo whines, drops. The arm hangs grotesque, useless. Sparks sputter at the shoulder-joint as power cuts off.
He staggers. His optic pulsing erratic — glitching.
And I’m on my feet before I even know. Pain flares, ribs burning, muscles wobbling — but instinct drives me. I snatch the shard — half a broken calibration plate — from the shattered console. Cold and jagged. Metal warmth press-sharp under my palm. I don’t pause.
I raise the shard, wild eyes locked on the shoulder-joint twisting at a sick angle, metal whine leaking weakness. I swing — I don’t think, I’m not graceful or careful.
I stab.
The shard sinks deep between panel seams. Sparks fly. Circuitry fries inside him. The coil cables sputter black smoke. A grunt — hybrid of synth-servo and pain — tears from Trebuchet’s throat, mechanical voice garbled.
His ruined arm spasms and drops to his side. The cell door bursts open as internal security systems register breach — dull clang-clack of bulkheads releasing across corridors. Sirens begin to shriek — a mechanical wail of warning and alert status.
I don’t hesitate.
I snatch the key-card clipped to his belt — cold plastic etched with clan-sigils and security codes. Fingers slip (blood mixes with grime) but I don’t drop it. I tuck it inside my uniform.
I turn — and run.
My legs scream under weight and pain, but adrenaline burns sharper.
My back aches. My ribs threaten collapse.
My head spins — but I run anyway, following the path I’d memorized in darkness, under fear, in silence.
The hallways opening, the metal doors sliding — all follow the codes that card unlocks.
Security Responders flood corridors — ten men, armor plated, rifles swinging.
I see their forms flicker in hallway lights red with alarm.
I don’t stop. I barrel through a side-door, stomach slamming against a guard’s gauntleted chest, sending him flying backwards.
He curses, smashes into a wall. I don’t look back.
The alarms echo — metal screams through vents, bulkheads seal behind me, red lights bathing steel corridors in madness. I hit the hatch that leads to the outer doorway. The card bleeps, the latch clicks.
I shove the panel open. The door hisses. Outside — cold air slams into me like a gun-shot: pine smell, wind through spires, distant scent of forest and rain, alive and angry. I suck in air hard. My ribs burn; I gasp.
I step out — boots scraping gravel — and the horizon greets me with smoke.
Not soft smoke. Not cooking. Not warmth.
Black towers of ash and flame climbing into the sky. The scent hits me first — acrid, sulfur, burning wood and machinery. The wind carries distant shouts, the crack of distant energy weapons, maybe, or collapsing metal. The edges of the compound glow with orange flicker. A warning. A war.
I don’t pause. I don’t catch breath. Pain bleeds from every wound, but fury drives me.
I clutch the broken shard in my fist. I taste metal again — sweat, blood, resolve. I taste survival. I taste vengeance.
“Y-You think I’m weak?” I spit into the night wind. I speak to walls, to smoke, to ghosts and stars. “You think you stripped me clean? Broke me? You didn’t count on bone.”
Beyond the gates, black smoke curls up behind silhouette figures — raiders, traitors, Reaper castoffs. They don’t know yet I’m loose. But I smell fear in their armor–metal and ozone. I smell hesitation. I taste opportunity.
I lift my head. The wind tears at my hair, rustles my clothes, carries ash against my skin.
“Freya,” I whisper. “I’m coming.”
I don’t run forward blindly — not yet. I sip the night wind, hear distant whistles of alarms and rocket-thrusters firing, smell the burning compound mix: wood, metal, flesh, panic. I rotate my shoulders — bone-plate cracks under pressure but it’s steady, bare pain.
Smoke on the wind. Firelight on the horizon. People running. Screams swallowed by chaos.
And I stand.
Claw-hand tight around broken steel. Heart pounding like drums of war. Rage humming through every nerve.
I rise up straight. Spine cracked. Breaths ragged.
I am not just a survivor.
I am not just a broken princess in a prison cell.
I am Vokar’s mate. I am a survivor. I am vengeance.
I step forward into the night, each footfall echoing — a vow.
A promise.
And the horizon burns for it.
The forest air hits me like a blade — sharp, cold, alive. I taste pine sap, damp earth, and something else: old smoke, metal tang, fear turned to flame. I draw it deep, filling lungs that ache with every inhalation, and I run.
I don’t know where exactly I’m going — only that I need to move.
Away from the compound, away from broken circuits and captive walls.
Away from the stink of betrayal and the clang of rogue armor.
My bare boots skid half-steps across cracked ground, but I don’t care: every footfall carries weight. Purpose. Pain. A promise.
The sky above is smeared with ash and dying embers.
The gas-giant’s light filters through the haze, casting strange ghost-rays over jagged tree-lines.
Branches crack overhead as I sprint through woodland fringe — moss, cold needles, wet bark slapping against forearms that ache from bruises.
My skin tastes of dirt and sweat, but beneath it all sits trembling hope.
I sense before I see the glimmer of torch-lanterns ahead — faint gold lights dancing across curved temple-columns built of warm wood, old stone, iron-banded doors.
This is the heart of the Solari enclave on this moon.
The people I barely know — but trust more than the muttered loyalty of traitors.
I want safety. I want sanctuary. I want shelter.
I burst through the outer gate like a wraith, coughing, eyes wide. The guards swivel — tall lithe figures of mixed Alzhon and Vakutan features, rifles up before hands drop in the dim surprise of recognition.