Later the two exited the bathroom, having dried themselves off, and went looking for clothes to put on so they could go get something to eat.

"Where are your clothes, Zahra?" Asked Valna'a.

"I don't know, Mistress. I haven't seen them since I woke up here."

"I'll get someone to fetch them for you, in the meantime you can't walk round naked or we'll never get any food."

Digging through her clothes she found some that would do and the two went looking for nourishment. A search that took them to the kitchen as the two had emerged right in the middle of two mealtimes.

As neither had actually been to the kitchens before it took them a while to find it. Expecting something like the kitchens she had seen in the historical dramas she had seen on New Geneva, Zahra was quite surprised to see how small and plain it was.

She was equally shocked by the food they were give. Again, expecting something lavish, she was surprised to see that it was no different to the stuff the slaves had been given in their communal cell. Equally surprising, to her, was the lack of surprise Valna'a exhibited.

Having not eaten in a while Zahra ate with gusto. It was only as she was finishing up she realised there was a subtle difference in taste here, but she assumed that this was down to the food here being fresher than that served in the prison.  

"What do I do with you now, my little pet." Asked Valna'a with a smile that showed the term was in jest.

"I need to get back to my people, Mistress."

"Why?"

"It's a bit hard to explain, but as the commanding officer of my platoon, I am responsible for their wellbeing. I need to ..um.. " She paused, not quite sure how to describe what she went through for her people.

"You suffer the beatings for your subordinates, don't you?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"Why?"

"They are my troops. If need be I would ask all of them to lay down their lives for a mission, if I deemed that mission important enough. For example I lost more than a third of my people in the battle that brought us here. But to have them be prepared to die in that sort of situation I need them to know that I would only ask them to risk their lives in a situation where I had no choice.

"With the torture that the guards put us through I do have a choice. It is entirely my choice which member of my platoon suffers. And  I can protect them from that abuse, so I do. Does that make sense?"

"Not really. Our society is more based on the weak suffering for the strong. In your situation we would send the weakest first and protect ourselves."

"Therein, I believe is the difference. My duty, as I see it, is to get as many of them home as possible. Preferably all of them. And if it costs me my life to do so, then so be it."

Valna'a was a little hurt that this young woman was so keen to go back to the life of a slave, rather than stay with her. A feeling that surprised her, seeing as they have only just met and she was from a lesser species as well. Shrugging it off she pressed a button on her communicator before replying.

"OK. I will get a guard to take you back to your prison, and will send your clothes there."

"Thank you, Mistress. I hope we can meet up again."

"Before you go, can I ask: Is this attitude of yours prevalent among your people?"

"Sadly not, Mistress. My own father, for example, sold me out to your raiding party, to protect himself."

"Families. The friends you didn't ask for, and rarely want."

Zahra gave a small laugh at that. A sound that was almost magical to Valna'a's ears.

Once the guard had taken Zahra away Valna'a decided to find out as much information as she could about Soul Fusing. She had never heard of it creating feelings between the two victims, yet she desired to spend every moment with the human, and knew the human, who had every reason to hate her, desired her too.

Searching through the records provided no insight. There was a list of know instances of it being performed and the confirmation that the two victims had died at exactly the same instant, however far apart they had been. There was even the descriptions of experiments where the ritual had been performed on members of the lesser races.

After days of research she hadn't got any further, except for one tantalising clue that implied the rite was developed from another one.

Here she realised her society had a hitherto unrecognised, by her, problem. She had no one to talk to about this. To let on that something seemed to have gone wrong when she had been fused with Zahra was to give potentially damaging information away. Information that could be used against her.

Not that people knowing would be able to do much more damage to her standing. There was no doubt her brother would have made it public knowledge that he had bested her. In a society where only strength really mattered her new weakness would destroy her.

And destroy her it did. Five days after the ritual she received word that her entire squad had asked to be transferred to another unit. A request she dealt with by refusing to allow it to happen and then resigning her position. That way the squad could stay together, without the stigma of being associated with her.

Next came the sneers from people nominally beneath her. An insult that would normally be dealt with violently, however, in her new reality anything she did to them they could do to Zahra and she found herself not wanting to he the cause of anymore pain for the human. More than that though, Zahra was a slave and a slave could be killed with little consequence. And a dead Zahra meant a dead Valna'a.