“Meet me on the first day of the pause at the Skyward hospital in room 243. I know something about Eliza.”

Alexej’s words, whispered to her when she had been helplessly pressed into the coarse sand of the arena, were burned into her memory.

Why? Why did he have to know something about that damned name? Why him of all people? How did he even know? Questions raced through Thana’s mind as she headed up to the counter. The fact that she was able to get away without anyone checking in where she was going was a lucky break in this whole situation.

With everyone else occupied with their training, especially John who was busy testing his new stuff on this Saturday, the only person who was looking after Thana was Nathalia. The dragoness was anything but a good overseer and hadn’t even bothered to ask when Thana said she had to go for an hour; instead, she had just lain down to sleep or something.

Thana didn’t give a fuck, really; she just walked into the hospital, robe closed, hood raised and scarf wrapped around her neck, cladding her in an illusion that made her look like a ‘normal person’ version of herself. It was a horrible disguise, but the only one she had.

And she wouldn’t have changed this illusion, how ineffective it may have been, for anything else. It was a gift from the people that accepted her, it was worth whatever headache it could cause.

‘Not that it works against these asshole cockroaches,’ Thana thought, hearing the whispers of journalists around her. They weren’t sure who exactly she was yet, or rather they weren’t sure if she was herself. Even if they came to the correct conclusion, the blood mage doubted that they would try to stop her.

There was no law preventing her from beating up a bunch of overly ambitious journalists, however killing them was bound to get her in trouble. In the absence of direct laws, the Abyss had power dynamics. That made every enactment of violence something she actually had to calculate if it was worth it. Thana couldn’t help but giggle madly at the thought of tossing one of the sensation addicted assholes through a window and right into their hospital bed.

Then her lips froze, and she remembered what she was here for. Her grin disappeared leaving her angrily glaring at the reception. “Room 243,” she growled, feeling bad for just a moment as the woman behind the desk hurried to give her a description of the way.

She had no reason to be angry at this person, but she was angry at the world, period, so that whore could just tell Thana where she had to go and then shut up. Which was exactly what she did, and Thana stormed off.

She practically flew up two flights of stairs and then ran down a hallway kicking open a door and stepping inside. The first thing Thana saw was Alexej with a smug grin on his face, looking up from a book he had been reading. The door magically closed behind her.

“There you are,” the blonde man said, his brown robes whispering as he stood up and smacked the book close. The noise was offensively loud to Thana’s sensitive ears, but she ignored it in favour of cracking her knuckles.

“You better tell me the fuck you are on about, or I am going to split your ass!” she announced as she stepped closer.

“Oh, see for yourself,” Alexej chirped in that annoyingly good mood of his and gestured at the bed that had been hidden from view by a drapery.

On the bed lay an old woman, very old, easily in her nineties. A face that was more wrinkles and skin conditions than an actual face, with white hair that had mostly fallen out. She looked incredibly frail, no real muscle tissue remaining on her body as she hung on several life-sustaining mechanisms.

The woman was comatose, that much was clear.

“Say hello to Eliza,” Alexej said, gesturing at the bed.

“You are so full of shit,” Thana said and ripped her eyes off the comatose elderly person.

“Am I though?” Alexej said and opened the book again; “Wasn’t easy getting my hands on notes of Mengele himself, even if they are just copies, but here I am, left with the complete register of people involved in experiment MG-B-UM-01, including the victims, and look at this.”

He turned to show her the list, and Thana felt the hatred inside her boil from the handwriting alone. Without a doubt that was a copy of her torturer’s work. The sound of a fountain pen scratching over paper as the bastard instructed Herman to cut her open and mess with her organs. The putrid, iron stench of her own blood. The gasmask.

She shook her head to eliminate these memories from her mind. They were not important, they had to be buried. Against her better judgement, she read the list. ‘Eliza Baros,’ the name was underlined, but it wasn’t the only one. Directly underneath it was a very similar name: Cecylia Baros.

“I want to apologize to Eliza.” Thana’s eyes darted down to the face that suddenly appeared on the floor. It looked so much like herself, a terrible, guilt-ridden version of her own face on the brink of crying. “Can you find Eliza?” “Eliza?” “We did wrong to Eliza.” “But death must have been delivered to Eliza.”

One after another, more of the faces started forming from the mists of her failing sanity as the faces that had been vanishing slowly crept back. It had only been one, why, why did they have to come back. “Shut up!” Thana screamed.

“But I have so much more t-“ Alexej interrupted himself when he realized he wasn’t the one addressed.

Thana stomped at the faces with her naked feet. Whenever one dissipated, another one appeared. “Eliza…” “…Have you seen…” “…the human’s…” “…I want to see…” “Eliza…” “Eliza…” “They all deserve…” “Th… hum… Ana…” “...El...i… Za..” “…T…h…Ana…” “Must apologize.” “Cecylia, her fault…” “My fault.” “Our all fault.” “Failure.” “The hu-…LISTEN TO ME!” “…Thana wants…” “…Eliza…” “Mine, this is mine…” “Clarity…” “This is MY body! MY mission!” “…Cecylia points at her…” “…it’s lost.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Thana screeched from the top of her lungs, and the faces finally obeyed, vanishing one by one.

“Eliza…” The only one that stayed was the one that looked like Thana herself, but after that last word it also vanished with the words, “…I am sorry, tell her I am sorry, I can’t see her.”

Thana was breathing heavily, the only sound in the little room that wasn’t the humming of arcane machines who carelessly continued their work of keeping the person in the bed alive. “Calm now?” Alexej asked and turned a page.

“I am this close to separating your dumbass jaw from the rest of your fuck ugly face,” Thana threatened.

“Doing so would get Lydia in a lot of trouble,” Alexej pointed out, careless; “Surely you don’t want that.”

Thana’s claws, she hadn’t even noticed they had formed, dug into her palms. Blood dripped on the floor. “You can thank me for making the room soundproof by the way, otherwise your little outbreak there would have alarmed everyone,” Alexej noted.

“How do they just let you do whatever you want in here?” Thana asked.

“The Apothecaries are maybe the most corrupt people in the Abyss; the only thing they care about is that you leave their patients untouched and their research to themselves. Everything else you can buy with money,” Alexej answered. He turned another page and showed her something, “Seem familiar?” It was an old photo, or something like it, of someone that looked like a malnourished version of herself. The fact that it was in colour alone meant that it had to be some sort of picture magic instead of an actual photo, due to the date in the corner. 12th of September, 1941.

It was a photo of her. Designation: Cecylia Barow, the code 002 was tattooed on the right arm.

This was not the way she wanted to learn her real name. The evidence was on the paper; Thana didn’t trust Alexej, but there was no way she would mistake that handwriting. “And here, then, you have Eliza, your sister,” the blonde asshole pointed at the bed.

Thana looked over to the bed. The comatose woman was still just lying there, giving no chance to testify for her own person. “Fucking hurray, you found Eliza for me,” the blood mage put her right wrist against her forehead; she was suddenly getting a splitting headache.

“Yes, and now what I want as my reward,” Alexej said; “In the next group fight you will act like whatever little force Max uses will knock you out.”

“You can take that idea and shove it up your ass,” Thana growled, the pain was only getting worse, flashes of colour crackled along the edge of her vision.

An image, a courtyard with a hundred or so people in it.

“If you don’t, I am going to kill her,” Alexej stated in a matter-of-fact tone; “This is not a request, this is you doing what we want, Cecylia.”

“This is not a request, this is an order, Cecylia,” the words, almost the same as Alexej had just spoken, echoed through her mind, the image of a faceless man super-imposing itself over him.

“B-but…” that was her voice, but she wasn’t the one speaking. The room blurred before her eyes as the pain pressed down on the back of her eyes. She blinked once, trying to see clearly again. Instead, she found herself somewhere else.

A courtyard between rows of brick buildings. All colour seemed to have left the place; it was only brown and grey and one spot of white. Faceless people were standing around, watching as a guard kicked an already lying woman.

The woman was her, the pain was real. It had been real, it had been before all of the other horrible shit happened to her. The feeling was still new, undulled and terribly real. The heavy leather boot plunging into her stomach almost made her throw up whatever remained of the mouldy meal she had consumed two days prior.

The ground was muddy from the previous day. It had rained, now the sun was blazing from the washed-out sky, turning the remaining puddles into little mirrors.

They all just watched with sorry expressions on their faceless features as guns pointed at them. The white spot moved, a man in a lab coat criminally clean in this place of torture. “Make the choice, which one of you is going to die?” Thana hated that voice, she just wanted to rip it apart. Mengele, always Mengele.

Cecylia looked down as she tried to recover her voice. She was the only one with a face. It was her face, almost. It wasn’t pale, but it still looked sick. Malnutrition had hollowed out her cheeks.

“Who is going to be the sacrificial lamb, Cecylia? Who is going to die so you all can live?” the faceless Mengele asked. She answered by raising her hand, it had to be her, it had to be her sister. Her sister with her creepy aura. Around her, her own blood always ran cold. ‘If someone has to die, let it be her,’ Cecylia thought.

“Eliza then, good, she was my choice as well,” Mengele nodded at a guard who went over and, after the faceless girl that was Cecilya’s sister struggled for a bit, broke the victim’s neck. “Stick her into the chamber,” Mengele said, corpses got burned in concentration camps, it was nothing new. “Now for you, Cecylia…” The scientist stained his white lab coat as he kneeled down at her side. Something clicked in his hand, “I have a reward for you and your lesser folks.”

Thana slammed Alexej against the wall as soon as the memory subsided.