Page 3 of Ravaged By the Reaper

AMARA

The creature slithers again, tendrils curling against my eyelids with the pressing intimacy of a lover turned assassin. My bones flare inside me, a wild drum signaling some primal undoing. In one heartbeat, I’m plunged not just back in time—but into memory’s most fragile seams.

Warm lamplight shivers in the marble courtyard of the Companions Academy, stained in rose-gold and sweat. I’m twelve, perched on the edge of a fountain carved from bone-white stone. My gown is too stiff, too new. The silk rubs raw against my spine with every breath.

A senior instructor drifts near, her voice a silent conveyor: “Eyes forward, Amara. Poise, not panic.” I bite my lip. Can't let them see dread. I can’t let them sniff the enhancements—my hands tingling with something more than human.

“Remember, Destrier,” another whispers, fingers cold at my elbow, “grace under pressure wins clients. Never show your hand.”

I swallow air thick with jasmine, exhale with the echo of something I’ll one day call fear. I cling to that moment like a death grip—though I don’t know it yet.

Again—I'm eighteen, in candlelit silk sheets. A client’s voice, low and dangerous, curls through my hair as he entangles his hands in my platinum tresses.

“You are perfect,” he says, rough as ground stone. “What did they pay for you?” His lips brush the hollow between my collarbones.

My heart flares—a wild drum in my chest, loud against the hush. “They paid—only what was fair.” I’m lying. I know the Academy paid them for me. I'm trained to please, but I don’t know how to tell the difference anymore.

He laughs, and the sound slips off my ribs like acid. “Fair is convenient fiction. But you…” He guides my hand to trace his chest. “You’re something more.”

More. More.

Then coal dust choking in my throat—Coalition tutors, Protocol Offices deaf to my voice. I load my arguments, wet as gunmetal. “I’m legal. Human enough. Flexible. Useful.”

They lean back, cold as bone ribs. The lead diplomat regards me with the calculating gaze of someone reading troop movements. “Talent is not enough. Humanity is a commodity, Companion.”

And when I ask to be posted to Coalition worlds instead of selling comfort to our own, he just smiles thinly.

But in that moment, I taste adrenaline—sweet and vicious. I bristle. I’m not theirs.

The memories fracture and stitch into each other, like wet silk patched with rust. Hallways morph into silken sheets which become good-luck charms in my palm. Every scent sharpens: jasmine and sweat, spices and regret, antiseptic and despair wrapped in droid resin.

I feel arms weaker than I should be. My mouth presses against the metal table. Metallic down my throat. The world splits between memory and pain—my own body trapped here, screaming in its cage, even as I drown inside my mind.

“Help me,” my silent cry bleeds into the darkness.

In one memory, I see a corridor of translucent oil-drenched tiles. My footsteps echo, too loud. A reflection; a mirrored double of me kneeling, lips stained with silk roses. I’m telling myself to hold on. Quiet.

My breath hitches—I’m spitting wet terror into the air. Madness tastes of copper and lilac.

I claw at my head, nails lining up with invisible maps of survival. But every scratch peels open another layer of terror—unraveling me apart. Flesh, memory, identity—thread by bloody thread.

I see one image with the gleaming clarity of bone steel.

A figure, towering over bodies torn by battle. Scarf of gore and moonlight, eyes like embers. He’s leaping, roaring, red strength incarnate. In his hand is a blade—curving, chained, alive—

He cleaves forward. Running for me.

Not rescue. Claim.

And he’s suddenly there. Right at the edge of my memory’s scream. His presence narrows the storm inside me, a single lighthouse in the shatter.

I feel the extractor pulse. My muscles tense like loaded wires.

I cannot... not break.

I roar again—but only once; not mindless, but focused. My scream is a keening vow.

“Not now,” I rasp, even though I’m almost disconnected, bone to blood to consciousness. “Not him.”

Malem leans closer, unblinking. The fluorescent, machine-light hover over my face, and I taste steel.

“This—” he says softly, “is progress.”

I swallow back the rest of my sanity. My lungs feel stolen. The world tilts and I collapse back, limp. The walls vanish. I don’t know how long I’ve been held at the brink, balancing on memory’s fractured edge.

But I feel it still. The promise of him defying the wreckage. The tether.

I hang on.

Between the scraping agony and the echoing void in my head, a spark: something new flickers through the haze.

Gray metal dissolves, pain pulses, and suddenly—there he is.

A warrior made of nightmares and fury, drenched in crimson. Not a man. A force.

He detonates through the guards like they’re straw dummies—bones exploding, plasma sprays, his roar tears through the static ringing in my ears. I don’t recognize him, but every molecule of me responds. My breath catches on broken bone air.

He grips a curved blade chained to his hand, slashing through armor like it’s nothing—like butter on hot iron. Blood arcs in silver droplets, suspended in the strobe of overhead lights and red alarms. It's violent and unearthly—and impossible. Not a memory. A vision. Or hallucination. Or a warning.

My throat goes dry. My skin burns with heat echoing inside me.

The octopus thing flickers. Tendrils retreat for a heartbeat, as if scared. The creature pulses and twitches, like it's seen something it knows.

That tiny hesitation tells me it's not just technology. It’s afraid.

I jerk my head toward the wall. Malem's shadow is still there, calm as ice. His face is impassive, but his fingers twitch in the air. He's watched the flicker too, but he's not acknowledging it. Like he’s training me to break…and panics at the shatter.

My mouth tastes like ash and adrenaline. I swallow.

“Was that…” I croak.

Malem’s eyes narrow. He steps forward, gaze cold. “A glitch.”

“No.” My voice is louder. “Not a glitch.”

The creature quivers, half-detached. The room thuds with the pulse of quiet alarms. I can smell ozone, metal, betrayal.

“Explain what just happened,” I manage, head resting against the table, heart pounding its own brutal rhythm.

He tilts his head. For the first time, his expression thaws, indecipherable. “It’s adaptation. The extractor is reading more than memory. Things… current.”

I stare. My pulse flutters. Hope slams into me like a hammer.

“You mean… it recognized something? Not from me?”

He brushes a strand of hair off my temple—too gentle for comfort. “Something is targeting you.”

All the training, the grace, the armor in my bones—it shatters. Dread cracks me, low and fierce. If they’re targeting me… someone’s coming. Someone who cares. Someone who sees me beyond the Companion mask.

My breath catches again. I breathe through numb lips. “Is that... good?”

He doesn’t step away. His dark eyes flick to the extractor, then back to me. "That depends on who's coming."

The image of him—him, the red beast— is etched on the retina of my mind. He wasn’t there before. My mind didn’t conjure him.

He’s real. And he's coming.

I don’t know how…but something deep inside me knows.

I open my eyes. My voice is a whisper: “I need to believe that.”

Malem steps back, dismissive, as if he’d never leaned in. “You will.”

But I’m already riding that thread of hope. My body trembles, not from pain, but from recognition. Something alive and unstoppable is reaching for me.

And I’m not broken yet.

I feel the thing crawling along my scalp again, its tendrils twitching, greedy, wet. It wants another dive. Another flaying of my soul. But it hesitates—ever since he showed up in that flash of red and ruin. The warrior with the hooked blade and blood-drunk eyes.

He’s not a memory. He’s a warning. Or maybe a promise.

I have no control over whether he comes or not… but this? This extractor? Malem?

That I can twist.

I take a breath, even though my ribs protest with a thousand bruises. The next time the extractor lowers, I guide it—not to the truth, but to something soft, seductive, and entirely false.

I’m younger again, walking through the soft blue gardens of Velmari Prime, a favored Companion haunt.

The scent of star-roses clings to the silk of my sari; the hum of invisible insect drones vibrates in the air.

A client, faceless and elegant, walks beside me, murmuring about the diplomacy of silence.

"I've always found the right pause says more than any poem," I whisper, tilting my head, letting a strand of platinum fall artfully over one cheek.

The memory is perfect. My heart thrums in time with the fake scene. Let the extractor eat this.

The tendrils shiver. I feel them flicker, confused.

Good.

I plant another memory—me on the sand dunes of Dralkhar III, laughter tangled in the wind, naked under twin moons with a client who never existed. I paint the whole thing in color, scent, and heat, layering every detail like I’m orchestrating a scene from a performance opera.

The extractor twitches again. One of its filaments retracts with a spasm, like it’s choking on the imagery.

“Problem?” I purr, my voice syrupy, measured. The Companion mask slides back into place like an old glove.

Malem lifts his head from his slate, his pale eyes flicking toward mine. “You’re coping.”

I smile, the kind that promises silk sheets and secrets whispered at midnight. “I’m surviving. There’s a difference.”

He says nothing, but I catch the shift in his posture. The faintest lean forward.

Good. Bite the hook, bastard.

“Tell me something, Malem,” I murmur, letting the straps dig into my wrists just enough to flush the skin. “Do you always greet companions with shackles and mind-rape?”

His brow ticks up, just a fraction. “You’re not a Companion. You’re a spy. You know that. I know that. This charade serves no one.”

“I serve,” I counter smoothly. “That’s what we do. Even when we’re bleeding.”

He’s watching me now. Not leering—he doesn’t have the stomach for that. But studying. Like I’m a riddle. Good. Let me be a riddle he underestimates.

“You bleed well,” he says at last.

I arch a brow. “Was that… flattery?”

Silence.

I laugh, and it's a sound I haven’t made in hours—or days. “I didn’t think Inquisitors were allowed charm.”

“We’re allowed results.”

“And have you got any?”

He narrows his eyes, but I see the shadow of hesitation behind them. I twist the knife.

“I’ve worked with generals, you know. Real ones. Ones who could command an army and a lover with equal skill. Men who didn’t need torture to get what they wanted.”

“You speak as if your body is still yours.”

I smile again, this time baring teeth. “It is. Even now. You haven’t taken it. And you won’t.”

That gets him. He stands. Walks the perimeter of the room with a predator’s slow glide. I let my gaze follow him. Not afraid. Not broken.

I slip into Companion mode full now—shoulders rolled back, voice low, intimate. Every inch of my posture is bait.

“You’re curious about me,” I say softly. “Don’t deny it. That’s why you’re here every cycle, watching the extractor work.”

“I’m verifying data.”

“Sure,” I breathe. “You could send a drone. A lab tech. But you don’t. You want to see what makes me tick. Maybe even touch the gears yourself.”

He stops beside my hip, just outside reach. “You forget your position.”

“Never. I’m quite aware I’m restrained, drugged, and mentally violated. But it’s not my position I forget—it’s yours. What are you, Malem? A scientist? A priest? Or just a voyeur?”

A beat. Then, “You talk too much.”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’ve just never been spoken to by someone who doesn’t fear you.”

His fingers twitch again. He doesn't touch me—but I know he wants to.

That's enough.

I feign a flinch, just slight, curling in on myself. “If you’re going to kill me,” I whisper, trembling lip and all, “do it. But if you’re going to keep playing this… at least let me sit up.”

“No.”

“You get more from me when I’m lucid.” My voice is silk over steel. “You’ve seen the fluctuations. Every memory I plant cleanly is a performance. You want clarity? Let me perform.”

He says nothing for a long moment. Then, “Rest. The next cycle begins shortly.”

He turns and leaves, but his pace is slower than usual.

When the door slides shut, I exhale hard, ribs screaming in protest.

He’s buying it.

I tuck another fake memory into the forefront of my thoughts. This one full of lies and lace. I smear it with longing, bathe it in artificial pain, lace it with hints of betrayal that lead nowhere.

If I do this right, he’ll be chasing shadows for hours.

I may not be able to fight with fists—but I can with stories.

He wants to break me?

He’s going to drown in every fake tale I’ve ever invented.

Let the next cycle come.

I’m ready.