CW: Trauma-Induced Depression

Chapter XIV: Put Back Together

The next week or so was, in effect, a blur. I didn’t do much, didn’t think about much. I didn’t eat much either. The first couple of days I could barely manage to stand up, leaving me to languish in my special little room, watching the shadows trace out paths on the wall and think about what I had done. And think about it I did. I had killed a woman because of my own goddamn incompetence. It was all my fault. Over and over again, the sequence of events played on a loop, challenging me to find some way to change what had happened. The sound of her dying gasp, the look on Lady Leyrender’s face, the smell of spilled blood were all burned into my memories. I couldn’t get them out, no matter what I did.

On top of that, I didn’t want to do anything. Everything was all slow, like my body was dragging through disgusting slime every time I moved. Did it really matter if I ate? Did it really matter if I did anything? Probably not, I figured, so I didn’t do much of anything. Anna noticed after the first day that I hadn’t left the room or eaten, and went out of her way to bring me a bowl of soup, directly from the kitchens. I’m pretty sure I thanked her, though my mind was on something else at the time. With a bit of prodding on her part, I was even able to build up the motivation to shamble over to the library and grab a handful of tomes before crashing back down on my bed to sleep for fourteen hours.

Things got a bit better on the third day. I could think clearly again, at least some of the time. I was able to start reading some of those books I had grabbed, in between periods when I was so tired I couldn’t move and the times when I cried until my tear ducts ran dry. They were good books, if I remember correctly. One in particular about a soldier fighting in the war against Cassandra using ancient mystical powers stood out to me. Weird how, even in a world I found fantastical, people still craved fantasy.

By the fourth day, I was able to crawl out of my room. It took me a couple of minutes to decide which way to go. My first thought was “turn around”. It was also my second thought, and my third one. I took a step forward anyway. Then another one. Then just one more. Before I knew it, I was actually walking. At first I was just walking for the sake of it, but after a couple of minutes I was able to coalesce some kind of plan.

I left the manor, and after being nearly blinded by the sunlight that I had become unused to, made my way across the yard towards Miss Rook’s gymnasium. I shoved open the double doors, which had apparently grown heavier, and vaguely hoped that Rook would be there. 

The old-fashioned gym was pretty much empty, flat wood floors and plaster walls that my eyes slid across like an ice skater with two broken legs. Everything was out of focus, so much so that I barely noticed that Rook was indeed inside, covered in sweat and drinking something out of a canteen while leaning against the wall near the storage closet. She didn’t notice me until the doors swung shut, when her eyes immediately flicked in my direction. For an awkward moment, I looked at her and she looked at me and neither of us did much of anything. Then she carefully set down her canteen and started heading in my direction with long, easy strides.

“It’s been a while,” said Rook.

“Yeah... it has.” I wasn’t quite up to looking at people while I talked to them. It required too much effort. The windows were much more interesting anyway.

Rook was standing in front of me by this point. Even out of uniform, she maintained her rigid stance. “Are you ready to continue your training? Unfortunately, this will likely be far from the final duel you face in your life.”

“I think so,” I said, failing to hold myself up. “I can certainly try.”

Rook furrowed her brow, loosening her stance. “I’ll be sure to not push too hard. Remind me, how old are you?”

“Twenty-four,” I mumbled.

“I was fifteen the first time I took a life, during the Second Secession War. My second kill was not a minute later,” said Rook, voice empty of emotion.

I was blown away. She’d had to kill when she wasn’t even old enough to drink, and she just talked about it like you might admit to preferring cream to sugar. “That’s…I can’t believe you were able to…”

Rook turned around, and began walking towards the supply closet. “I could barely sleep for days after that. Trust me when I say a girl’s first kill is always going to be hard, no matter the age.”

“Why was a fifteen-year-old fighting in a war?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

“That’s a story for another time,” said Rook, not breaking stride. “Right now you need to focus on practice. It will help clear your mind.”

She rummaged through the supply closet for a few moments before returning with our training sabers. It was the same pair we had been using before; I could recognize mine by the pattern of chips on the blade. After jogging back across the room, meeting me in the middle, she extended the hilt of my sword towards me. I slowly lifted my arm to take it, already exhausted by all of the standing up I had been doing. I wrapped my fingers around the grip, and felt the familiar weight in my hands. It was too familiar.

A green jewel in a ring. The smell of antiseptic. Sticky red hands. A look of rage on a widow’s face. The sights and sounds flashed through my head over and over again. I threw up in my mouth a little, as my entire body started to go limp. The saber clattered to the ground. I was about to fall over entirely when Rook grabbed me under my arms, holding me up.

“It seems to me that you aren’t ready yet,” she said. She had reverted to her natural accent.

“I don’t feel very good…” I said, trying to find my footing. After several awkward seconds, I managed to stand on my own again.

Rook sighed, presumably at how obvious I was being. “When was the last time you ate anything?”

I had to think about that one for a second. “Yesterday afternoon. I stole a bit of bread from the kitchen.”

Rook flared her nostrils at me. “Well then. You stay here and get some rest, I’ll find a servant and ask that some lunch be brought out to you.”

“Why the hell should I stay out here? I’m not going to be able to get anything done,” I said.

“True. Go out on the yard then. You look deathly pale and the sunlight will be good for you.” Rook didn’t sound like she was making a statement about my health. The way she said it was more like how one would describe a car that wasn’t working. Even still, it was oddly… touching?

“Wow, I didn’t think you gave a shit about me,” I said, walking towards the door. “Here I was thinking you had lost your heart in the war.”

Rook was halfway through opening the door when she heard me and stopped dead in her tracks. I could almost hear the gears in her head turning. “Trust me, I did lose my heart. The military doctors are very good at their jobs.”

That was oddly cryptic.

…

 

Thank god for sandwiches. It didn’t really register with me how little I had been eating, until there was a pile of some kind of cucumber-chicken-and-spread things on a plate in front of me, at which point I began to stuff my face. Rook, still shocking me with how thoughtful she could be, had brought out a small blanket for me to rest on while I filled my stomach in silence. I may have gone slightly overboard, becoming overwhelmed with drowsiness and laying back like a sunbathing snake as soon as I was done.

Selene was surprisingly warm, at least compared to the utterly frigid Chicago I had gotten used to. It was still plenty wet, of course. It had rained almost every other day since I had arrived, and when it rained it poured. How lucky, then, that this particular day was not one of those days. There was nothing in the sky but piles of light fluffy white clouds and warm rays of sunshine for me to bask in.

“I’ll leave you to this,” said Rook.

I lurched upright. “I still want to train today, you know?”

Rook raised an eyebrow. “After what just happened? I seriously doubt it. You can’t rush healing, even for mental wounds.”

“I know that… is there something else I could do, that wouldn’t involve having to hold a sword? I’ve been spending so much time alone and listless in my room. I want to do something, anything, to take a bit of control back.” I hadn’t expected my feelings to come pouring out like that, although my feelings are well known for doing whatever they pleased without my input. It was a trick my mother had taught me for dealing with periods where I wasn’t feeling well, periods which came and went throughout my life seemingly at random but were never strong enough to qualify as depression. Doing something active helped me center myself.

“Hmmm…” Rook crossed her arms, eyes flicking to the side. I followed her gaze, landing upon a small building which I had never been to before, but which I understood was an armory of some kind.

“Are you thinking of training me to shoot?” I asked. I briefly tried to imagine myself using a gun, holding one in my hand. No real response. Funnily enough, I was less terrified of using the lethal weapon than I was the simple sword.

“Yes. It’s a useful skill. Do you have any objections?” she said.

I looked up at the sky, then back down at the soft blanket. “Can I just have five more minutes?”

 

…

 

The shooting went fairly well, I guess. The first gun she gave me was a normal-looking revolver, similar to the kind Lady Halflance used. I guess it made sense, given that I was a killer too. The first time I fired it, the recoil nearly broke my wrist, sending the gun flying through the air. Rook made the executive decision not to have me try that one again. She had me try again with a tiny snub-nosed revolver, which went a little bit better. By the time the deep fatigue started to crawl over me again, I could sometimes hit the center of the little paper target. Sometimes.

The next day was even better than the day before. I managed to eat a meal on my own, and spent a bit more time learning to shoot with Miss Rook. The flash memories started to fade, just a little. Things started looking up.

Then things got worse. Much worse. What the hell had I been doing? Had I just started ignoring what I had done? I don’t think I moved much before noon on that day, because I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve any of this. I should have died when that lightning bolt hit me, and just been done with the whole thing. Maybe if I laid in bed for long enough, I would fall asleep forever and get my wish. I might have been able to crawl out of my room one time that day to get some food, though my memory is a bit hazy on the topic. Besides that, nothingness held on to me like a vise. Memories surfaced, shifted around in my confused and clouded mind, and then sank back down into my subconscious. I was thinking like a hippo swims through honey, if hippos swam through honey for whatever reason.

A couple of days passed like that, with me listless and barely conscious. There were a couple of times that I managed to pull myself out of it, whether by reading or going to the shooting range with Rook, only to sink back before long. I didn’t really care.

 

…

There was a knock at my bedroom door. A fairly strong one that sounded like somebody meant business. I flipped over, having wrapped myself in blankets, and looked at the window. It was raining, so no way to tell the time. By default, then, the time was “too early”.

“Go away!” I yelled at the door.

“It’s Amina,” said Doctor Charcharias, standing outside my door.

“…Alright, fine. But don’t expect me to do much.” I turned over again, so that she couldn’t see my face.

The door creaked open, letting pale gas light into the room. I hated it. “It’s almost noon, kid. Have you been asleep this entire time?”

“Yeah. So what? It’s not like I could do anything better awake,” I said, voice muffled by blankets.

“I… I heard what happened, at the duel. I wasn’t able to make it because I was sick, but I just want you to know that it’s not uncommon. People make mistakes, there are weapons involved, deaths are inevitable. It isn’t your fault.”

I sat up, brushing a lock of tangled hair out of my face. “What the fuck are you talking about? I killed her with my own weapon. Just because I didn’t mean it doesn’t mean it’s not my fucking fault.”

“Okay then, maybe it was your mistake. But she knew what she was doing, and anyone could have made that mistake in your situation.” Doctor Charcharias sighed, and leaned against the door. “Goddamnit, kid, you shouldn’t be starving yourself over this.”

I rolled my eyes at her. Great, now Amina was talking like my mother. “If you’re just here to try to talk me out of it, or whatever, then you should just leave now. Maybe go work on that machine you were building or invent penicillin or whatever. This is not going to work.”

“Fair enough,” said Amina, folding her arms. “It wasn’t the only thing I wanted to tell you about.”

“Oh? Spit it out, then.” I slung my legs over the side of the bed. It was progress.

“Remember the Mechanodrone that you managed to disable? She’s been in a hospital for the last three and a half weeks. And I just got a letter today saying that she’s conscious, and wants to talk to you. I was wondering if you were interested in the offer.”

On the one hand, saving her life had been one of the few good things I had done since arriving on this useless rock, and getting to see her would likely be worth it. On the other hand, I would much rather be sitting in this bedroom doing nothing. “Sure, I’ll do it. Just let me get ready first and we can meet in the foyer.”

Doctor Charcharias nodded in acknowledgement, then shut the door. I didn’t feel like spending too much time getting ready. I mostly just combed my hair, washed my face a bit (I definitely was not missing having to shave), and put on a plain white shirt and black pants that seemed reasonably free of wrinkles. Then I was down the stairs and in the foyer in a moment. Doctor Charcharias was waiting for me. We both grabbed umbrellas and headed out.

 

…

 

Thankfully, we were able to get seats on the inside of the cable car this time. The good doctor even assisted me down the step by taking my hand. I was too apathetic to complain about her being patronizing.

A light rain still speckled the ground, making staccato music against the granite streets. Though it felt like the rainstorm was almost ready to pass, the skies were still gray, giving the very air a monochrome cast. It certainly didn’t help my mood.

The hospital itself was a squat, red-brick structure not quite like anything I had seen in Amrinval. I expected to walk in and see a college lecture hall more than I did an actual hospital. Doctor Charcharias, in spite of her strangely colored skin, looked completely at home here, in her spotlessly clean white coat and dress slacks. Many of the doctors were wearing similar attire. This was also the first time in my life I had ever seen someone wearing the stereotypical nurse outfit, complete with the hat, who wasn’t trying to evoke some kind of fetish. I had never understood the appeal, and seeing them carrying around blood bags and bottles of drugs did not help.

“Amina, have you ever worked here?” I said.

“No, actually. I received my medical training up in Rasslock, and got hired by the Halflances as soon as I moved to Amrinval. I do work with this hospital a lot, trading notes and giving lectures and all that,” said Doctor Charcharias, while waving down one of the nurses. A nearby nurse did indeed respond, and after a brief exchange of words began leading us off into one of the wards.

We went down a long hallway, turned several times, went up some stairs, and through a door. At least I think so; unlike the Halflance manor, I haven’t had to be in Amrinval South Hospital enough times to know where anything is. I noticed that we were in the intensive care and surgery ward, where some of the least healthy patients were staying. That did not bode well.

The room we ended up in looked similar to a hospital room I might have seen in an old movie, at least at first glance. There were four beds, one of which was empty, none of which had any sort of privacy around them. The beds were relatively spare, thin metal piping for head and foot, but piled with blankets and pillows. There were at least two nurses for every patient, talking quietly with their wards or injecting medications or taking measurements with steel and wood instruments that looked almost painfully crude. The nurse who had led us in, an overweight Jaleran woman in her thirties, gestured towards one of the beds. Doctor Charcharias and I walked over, and I recognized her almost instantly.

She had the same face that I had seen before, dark brown skin with a broad nose and large eyes the color of acorns. I couldn’t see her eyes at that point, what with her being asleep, but I assumed they hadn’t changed color for some reason. Her hair was curly and black, cut to less than an inch long by the doctors. Her appearance had improved considerably since we last met, on account of her no longer looking like a corpse and having some actual blood in her. Without the heavy shrouding of Mechanodrone armor, I was off put by how small she was, skinny and barely taller than I am.

“It’s a miracle that she’s still alive, after all that was done to her,” someone said. She sounded authoritative, and as I turned around in surprise I came face to face with a wrinkled old woman, of the kind who looks like she could stop a charging rhino in its tracks with a phrase and a stern look. Her hair had gone completely white, and was tied back in a strict bun. 

“Hmmm? I didn’t see you get here. Who are you?” I said, her unexpected arrival having surprised me more than I had thought possible.

“Doctor McGrander,” she said, pushing her eyeglasses an inch up her stubby button nose. “I’m Unity’s primary caretaker. I assume you’re Emma Farrier, the girl she asked to speak to?” 

I tentatively shook her hand. Doctor McGrander unnerved me, in the way her beady grey eyes seemed to scan through me. She also had a rather unusual accent, one that was familiar, and yet I was unable to place it. “Yes, I think so. I’m the one who rescued her from being mind-controlled by Nemesis. It was the least I could do, really.”

McGrander looked at me confusedly. I was really not in the mood to have to explain the whole story, but thankfully Charcharias stepped in before then.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Amina Charcharias, I believe we’ve corresponded in the past. Do you mind if I ask what exactly happened to her? I’ve been very busy recently, so I wasn’t able to check in on what exactly you were doing,” said Doctor Charcharias, shaking hands with McGrander.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. For one thing, there was a massive dose of a certain antibiotic, named lapicillin, in her bloodstream. Presumably, she was given this drug by the person who modified her, in some misguided attempt to prolong her life against infection. Even still, she was on death’s door when she got here. She would not have lasted more than two days without our help.”

“As for the actual modifications, they were extensive.” All emotion dropped from Dr. McGrander’s face as she started reading off the information. “There were a series of pneumatic actuators along her arms and legs, bolted directly into the skin and muscle, with the presumed purpose of increasing her strength and carrying capacity. Mounted crudely on top of those were a series of heavy steel plates, thick enough to deflect handgun fire. Surgically implanted into the back of her neck was some kind of electromechanical computer with a receiver for electromagnetic radiation. Lastly, attached to all of these devices by an array of rubber pipes was a backpack-mounted liquid coal steam engine, generating power for the actuators.” She winced, her mask of academic dispassion failing for a moment.

My jaw fell open. I started fiddling with the buttons on my shirt, failing to understand what I had just heard. “Holy fucking shit.” Dr. McGrander gave me a stern look.

“So what you’re telling me is…” Doctor Charcharias rubbed her forehead, “All of that was implanted in her? Surgically?”

“Yes, and very poorly if I do say so. There were gaps in the skin through which infections could pass, blood vessels and muscle groups crudely re-routed to account for the heavy metal studs that were jammed into the flesh. Whoever did this was an abysmal surgeon, and clearly had no regard whatsoever for the care or lifespan of her patients, given that the subjects would have been in constant pain until their inevitable deaths,” said Dr. McGrander.

I clenched my jaw, still fidgeting with a shirt-button. My feelings were confused, jumbled. Parts of me wanted bloody revenge, while others still wanted to curl up and die. A few scattered portions with a high-minded bent asked for justice, while others wondered if Nemesis even deserved such a concept. “I need to find her. I need to find Nemesis. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I find her, but I know I have to,” I said under my breath.

Amina glanced my way, looking slightly concerned. “That’s… terrible. And you were able to undo all of that, while still keeping her alive? That’s incredible, I’ve never seen anyone manage to fix damage that severe.”

McGrander nodded morosely. “To be fair, I wasn’t alone. We had about half a dozen doctors working on it in shifts. I can call them all up individually if you would like to give thanks, Dr. Charcharias.”

“I would like that, I think,” I said.

“Yes. We wouldn’t normally put that much effort into saving the life of one person. However, the day after she came in, there was a rather large and generous donation from a—” she stopped to ruffle through her pockets, pulling out a small slip of paper, “Lady Sarah Halflance. The only condition on the donation was that we do everything in our power to keep her alive, which we did. We tend not to ignore requests that come with fifteen thousand dinars attached.”

I was never very good with money, and ending up in another world with a completely different system of currency had not made things any better. What I had figured out was that a dinar made for a fairly decent amount of money, something you might use to pay for a dinner for one. Fifteen thousand dinars was a lot of money. But more to the point, it was money from Lady Halflance. What exactly was she trying for here? Was this some sick attempt at regaining my trust by throwing money at the problem? It certainly wasn’t out of any actual morality, given what she had done to the other Mechanodrones… or was it? It wouldn’t be the first time Halflance had confused me with her morals.

“Anyway, we’ve done our best to remove as much of the material as we can, keep the infections to a minimum, and preserve the functionality of her muscles and nerves. We’ve been mostly successful, although there were a few bits of machinery that were too deep to safely remove and will likely remain inside her for the rest of her life. Thankfully, after the last major surgery, Unity here has been awake and fairly coherent for the past day or so. We found out her name, how she’s feeling.  Yesterday evening, she requested to speak to whoever brought her in,” said Dr. McGrander, circling around me to Unity’s bedside. She bent over and whispered directly into her ear. “Unity, there’s someone here to speak to you.”

Slowly but surely, Unity flickered to life. Her eyes slowly opened, slightly unfocused, and she pulled her arms out from under the covers to stretch them over her head, rolling her wrists. The skin on her arms was scarred and pitted, with several patches of differently-colored skin expertly sewn on. She turned to look around at myself and Charcharias, a bit confused. As she turned her neck, it exposed a few metal studs still embedded in her flesh. I should have felt horror, or maybe anger at Nemesis for doing this to begin with, but I didn’t feel much. In spite of all that had happened, there was still a thick, dark fog hanging over me.

“Huh? Who is it?” said Unity, looking up at Dr. McGrander. She slid herself up the bed a bit, trying to sit up straight. Then she looked around, past Dr. Charcharias, until her eyes landed on me. She looked like she was staring at a ghost. “I… I remember you.”

I wasn’t sure that she was talking to me at first. “You mean me?” I asked.

“Yes, you… You seem so familiar. I remember you from, from when I was locked in that horrid armor. I don’t remember, remember much but I remember you,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” I said. My mouth wasn’t quite following my brain quickly enough. It was weird. “My name is Emma. I’m the one who destroyed the receiver that Nemesis was using to control you, which I would have to guess is where you saw me.”

“Thank you for freeing me.” She turned to Dr. McGrander. “Did any of the others make it?” she asked. McGrander shook her head. Unity seemed to sink back into the bed, eyes tearing up. I didn’t want to look at her, the poor thing, so I turned to Dr. Charcharias. She looked back at me, nodding her head in Unity’s direction. The implication was clear.

“Unity… I know this is a hard time,” I said, stepping forwards and leaning over Unity’s bed. “But I’m trying to find Nemesis, the person who did this to you, and take her down. Could you tell me what you remember, anything you know about Nemesis, how you ended up like this, where her base is, anything like that?”

Unity breathed deeply and shut her eyes, pushing back the tears. “Of course I, I will.”

“It started a few, few weeks ago. I was living…” Unity paused, glancing first to me, then to the two doctors. “I was living on the streets, myself and a few other homeless people. It was late, and we had been out foraging—“

“Foraging?” I said. I wasn’t paying much attention, to be honest. 

“Searching for scraps, basically. Leftover food, bits of metal, anything really. Anyway, we were headed, headed back after a rather good find in an abandoned workhouse. It was late and dark because we wanted to stay out as long as possible so we could get more stuff. And then they showed up. They looked like engineering workers at first because of those big coveralls and the tools they were carrying, but when they started heading towards us we realized that this was something else.”

“Do you mean Mechanodrones?” asked Dr. Charcharias. Unity was about to say something when Charcharias clarified. “As in the thing that Nemesis turned you into.”

Unity thought about it, her face scrunching up with effort. “Yes, they were, were the same.”

“Fu— Oh my. You weren’t even the first ones,” said Dr. Charcharias, cradling her forehead in her hand.

“We were going to turn around and run after they started acting aggressive,” Unity continued. “But then she showed up. She shot Truth in the heart without even saying a word. Then she told the rest of us to stop running or else she’d do the same. I’ve never heard, heard such a calm and cold voice saying such words of spite.”

“So we did what she told us to do. We followed the engineer people a really long way, to her lab. Then she put needles in us, and she started getting out the knives, and,   and…” Unity started breathing quickly, tearing up again.

“Unity, you can stop there. We all know what happened after that,” said Dr. McGrander.

“Thank you,” Unity said, wiping tears from her eyes. “That’s pretty much the end of the story. Everything after that was a haze of pain, pain and colors and weird feelings until I woke up here yesterday.”

“Thank you.” Doctor Charcharias looked at me. I was still blank. I felt sympathy for Unity, obviously, but it was muffled below a thick woolen blanket of apathy. “Do you mind answering one more question?”

Unity smirked. “If you let me ask, ask a question at you.”

Doctor Charcharias and I turned to each other and shrugged. “I don’t see why not,” I half-whispered.

“Alright then.” Doctor Charcharias leaned forward, resting her weight on the rails of Unity’s bed, before looking her in the eye. “Do you remember anything at all about Nemesis’s hideout? Any sounds, any smells, any memories at all? Any information you have might help.”

“I remember, remember it being wet. Also, I remember the color green, though I don’t remember what it was that was green, only that it was everywhere.” Then Unity stopped, looking down sheepishly. She shifted around, squirming in her blankets, shoving them down to uncover her chest. She was so, so, so skinny I could hardly believe it. “The whole place smelled of rotting meat,” she added.

That did not do well for my stomach. I was imagining some kind of charnel house where Nemesis took people apart, with limbs hung on meathooks and Mechanodrones in nurse outfits taking people apart bit by bit. I may have watched too many horror movies as a teenager. I took a step back, probably looking queasy. 

Doctor Charcharias for her part didn’t seem all that concerned, cupping her mouth in her hand and thinking hard. “Maybe her base is by the docks?” Charcharias said to nobody in particular. “It would explain the wetness and the color. There are enough abandoned warehouses and old wharfs in that part of the city that she could easily stay hidden.”

“I guess?” I said. “Anyway, um. Thank you, Unity.” I started to turn around, heading for the exit, when Unity said something.

“Hey, remember the, the deal? Now I get to ask you a question.” She didn’t sound like she had entirely convinced herself of what she was saying.

I stopped in my tracks. I looked back at her. She wasn’t looking at me, not directly, though I may have caught her glancing in my direction once or twice. “Sure…”

Unity swallowed a couple of times, then coughed to clear her throat. “Why did you save me?”

“What do you mean? It was what anyone would have done,” I said. 

Unity raised an eyebrow at me. “I remember what happened. Nemesis was using me like a puppet to kill you. Most people would have been too busy fighting, fighting for their lives to give a shit about the person trying to kill them. Why not you?”

“I…” I had no idea. Why had I done it? It had seemed so obvious at the time, there wasn’t any alternative, was there. She was a human being, not just a piece of machinery, and because of that she couldn’t die. I wouldn’t allow it. But clearly that wasn’t as much of a clear and obvious truth as I had thought it was in the moment. Lady Halflance certainly didn’t seem to think so.

Unity was staring at me. The two doctors were staring at me as well, Charcharias starting to look intrigued at my silence. I had to figure it out. What had I been thinking? I had to have been thinking something, some reason why I had decided to save this one random girl’s life, a girl I had never met before. My memories of the event were still strong, and I began to comb through them as best as I could to reconstruct my motives at the time. I looked back at Unity. She looked confused, probably because I had been standing there in complete silence looking awkward for almost a minute. Then it hit me.

There hadn’t been a reason, at least not one that could be easily explained. I had done it for her, because dammit she didn’t deserve to die. The look of sadness on her face when she heard that she was the only survivor told me that all of the other Mechanodrones had been people she knew as well. There are very, very few people out there who deserve death, and these people deserved it least of all. I wasn’t going to be a killer. I wasn’t a killer.

“I’m not a killer,” I whispered. A wave of relief passed over me as I said that phrase. I wasn’t a killer. If I was a killer, I would have killed Unity. What I did to Regan was a mistake, nothing more. I started to realize that maybe I wasn’t a complete garbage pile of a person after all.

“Sorry, I couldn’t, couldn’t hear that,” said Unity.

“I’m not a killer. The moment I saw that you were a person and not just some machine, I would have done anything in my power to avoid killing you, because I don’t kill people.” I shrugged at her, realizing how much of a non-explanation that was. “I can’t really give a better explanation than that.”

“No, no that’s good. Thank you again, Emma.” She turned to Dr. McGrander. “I feel tired, I think I’m going to rest some more.”

Dr. McGrander nodded. “Of course dear. You’re going to need quite a bit of rest before you’re back on your feet. You two may leave now.” 

McGrander’s accent was so familiar, I could almost place it. I spent a second trying to figure it out before noticing that Charcharias was already leaving. I headed off to follow her, a bit more spring in my step than when I had entered. I felt… not quite happy. Content, I guess would be the word. Either way, I hadn’t felt anything like that in quite some time. I started almost feeling happy about my being happy, just because it had been so long. Then I remembered where I had heard that accent before.

I quickly turned back to Dr. McGrander, who was already heading off to take care of another patient, or something like that. “Excuse me, Dr. McGrander? Do you mind if I ask you a somewhat personal question?”

“You may certainly ask. I won’t guarantee an answer.”

“Your accent isn’t something I’ve heard very often, but it sounds familiar. Where are you from?” I asked.

“Oh, yes!” Dr. McGrander suddenly perked up. I guess she was excited to answer this particular inquiry. “I’m a refugee from Creandas. It’s a region far to the north that’s been a part of the Cassandran Empire for centuries now. There’s not many of us that make it out of there to Bluerose.”

“Oh… Thank you,” I said. I turned around to see Charcharias leaving the room. I didn’t want to get lost in here. “I should go.”

As I caught up with Charcharias and started making my way to the exit of the hospital, my mind was a jumble of emotions. The relief of realizing that I was not in fact a piece of shit gave everything a brighter tone to it, like I was seeing the world for the first time again. The horrors Unity had gone through gave me a buzz of righteous anger towards Nemesis. I had lost too much time to my depressed stupor, and I had to get back on track with finding her so I could kick her ass for all she had done. My curiosity was piqued as well. This was because Dr. McGrander, a Cassandran refugee from the far north, had the exact same accent as my teacher, Miss Rook. I couldn’t wait to get back to the manor. I had so much to look forward to.

Author's Note: And here we go, as promised. Because of all your comments and ratings that have been sent since the posting of chapter 13, this chapter is coming out three days ahead of schedule! And as a bonus treat, chapter 15 will be coming out at the usual time on Thursday. Thank you all so much for continuing to read and enjoy this story, and remember to leave comments, give ratings, maybe even write a review if you feel like it.