Fic: Merlin/Firefly; Avalon (Part 3); R; Reel Merlin (Round 2)
Master Post
part 2
“Whose souls?” Arthur asked, crouching down next to where Morgana sat, all curled up in the corner. On the other side of the room Lancelot watched, obviously wanting to help, but unsure how. “Who stole whose souls, Morgana?”
“They stole them, took them away and expected them to go on… They wanted them to go on with no souls,” Morgana muttered into the wall.
“It was just a nightmare,” Arthur assured her. Morgana turned to look at him, fixing him with a clear green gaze.
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Then you’ll have to tell me who… did someone take your soul?” he asked. Morgana laughed and lifted a hand to his shoulder, shaking her head.
“No one would want it… It’s not me.”
“Then who?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know,” she snapped before sighing, leaning her head back against the solid metal of the wall and looking up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he told her, smiling a little weakly. She wrapped her arms round his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. “It’s alright.”
He helped her to her feet with Lancelot’s help and the two of them half carried her back to her bed, laying her down, already fast asleep.
“Are you two going to be alright?” Lancelot asked as they stood over her. Arthur looked up at him with a resigned smile.
“We’re going to have to be,” he said. “Don’t worry. I can take care of her.”
“I know,” Lancelot said, “but will you take care of yourself as well?”
“I’ll be fine,” Arthur said. “I’m good with a weapon, and I’ll keep my head down.”
“You didn’t even bother giving us a fake name,” Lancelot pointed out, and Arthur couldn’t help but laugh. The man had a point.
“I’ll think of one before we stop.”
“That’s what I came to tell you. We’ll be at the nearest station by morning. Will doesn’t want to leave you on Ealdor - we have friends there.”
“I wouldn’t want to endanger them,” Arthur said, nodding. It was sooner than he would have liked. “We’ll be ready, and then you won’t have to worry about us any more.”
“Doesn’t mean we won’t,” Lancelot said. “Gwen never stops worrying. When she isn’t worrying about me getting myself shot, she’s worrying about Will getting himself shot, or Merlin accidentally blowing himself up, or her making some mistake while piloting.”
“Well, tell her not to worry over us. We’ll be fine.” If Arthur said it enough, perhaps he might even start to believe it. He needed to find someone to help with Morgana, someone who might understand.
“You’d better get some sleep,” the first mate said, nodding to Arthur’s empty bed. “You’re going to need to be alert tomorrow - the station we’re going to… it’s not one of the friendliest ones.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Arthur said with a nod. Lancelot headed for the door, but before he made it, Arthur called out.
“Lancelot?”
“Yes?”
“When Will said my father’s name, the name Pendragon, you looked shocked. Why?” Lancelot drew in a deep breath.
“I know the name… who doesn’t?”
“It was more than that - you fought in the war, didn’t you - you and Will?”
“Yes,” Lancelot said shortly.
“For the Independents?”
“Yes. Will and I served, and Will’s father before him,” Lancelot said, a little sadly. “We were in the battle of Avalon when your father led the Alliance troops against us.”
“You fought over Avalon?”
“No… we were in the valley,” Lancelot told him.
“But the Independent forces in the valley were all but destro-” Arthur broke off, seeing the answer in Lancelot’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he said, “there was no honour in that battle - on either side. It was a massacre.”
“And you were…” Arthur cut himself off, remembering his history lessons. It had been a glorious victory, one his father had told him about on numerous occasions, one that had earned him one of the many medals in his collection and also brought an end to the senseless bloodshed the Independents had forced upon themselves by refusing the light of civilisation.
He tried to imagine it from the other side - not a glorious victory, but an ignominious defeat. His father had told him the battlefield on the ground had looked like hell, churned mud, and mangled corpses leaking blood into it; huge craters where shells had fallen, and the Alliance machinery rolling forwards where it could, held back by the Independents at every turn. ‘They were a plucky bunch of fighters’ his father had said, and Arthur had always thought of them as cheerfully surrendering when they realised they were outclassed.
He had never thought of those bodies being people’s friends.
“I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t there.” That was an end to it, Lancelot’s voice brooked no response and he turned and walked away without looking back.
“He saw them die, one by one,” Morgana said from her bed, her voice completely matter of fact. “Some of them fell while he was talking to them. He was supposed to protect them - the little ones fighting for fun, for glory, for a thrill. They didn’t make a sound when they were shot, just fell to the mud, and there was red pouring out of them. He saw a head get blown clean off, nothing left, just shoulders and then empty space.”
Arthur felt sick, and when he lay down on his bed, the boys he had known at school, who had joined the Alliance army to protect the Civilised way of life, paraded before him, dripping in blood and holding up bloody heads for his entertainment. One of them opened and shut the jaw of the head he was holding - Merlin’s - making him speak in a crude puppet-parody of life.
He woke in a cold sweat and couldn’t get back to sleep for hours.
*
Tintagel was what his father would have called a hole. It had once been an Alliance space station, but they had abandoned it and the parasites had moved in, criminals and ‘business men’, the higher end of the underworld. There were bars and Arthur could have sworn he saw a brothel down one corridor, not with real Companions but women who looked like they had nowhere else to go, with their pimps stalking at a reasonable distance.
They separated from the crew on the second level, Will making sure not to even look at the pair of them. Lancelot handed Arthur a gun and told him to use it if necessary. They shook hands and Arthur felt a weight lift off his shoulders. Gwen hugged both of them, reminding Morgana to eat, and telling Arthur that she was sure he’d be alright.
“You’re a good man,” she said to him, “just let people see it once in a while…” she looked like she was about to say more, but Lancelot pulled her away gently.
Valiant pushed past them and wondered off into the crowd, leaving only Merlin next to them. He stared at the pair of them intently.
“Arthur… look, you’ll be fine. Just never pay cash upfront, alright. And be polite when you talk to the Captains. Try and pretend you’re not a stuck-up git, okay?” Arthur opened his mouth to speak but Merlin carried on regardless, “and take care of Morgana. And… just… Bestudde18.” He nodded to himself and walked off like he was running away from something.
Arthur turned to Morgana, where she stood watching him.
“Right then,” he said. Someone behind him jostled him, forcing him to take a step forward. He looked around and saw people everywhere, but no one he knew. They were alone in the middle of nowhere. Morgana slipped her hand into his and squeezed lightly. “Where to?”
*
Things had been going well for Will. Arthur and Morgana had left and his ship was still in one piece. He and Valiant had set up a nice deal with some of the major business men on the station, it wasn’t one hundred percent legal, but it was going to pay well. Then it all went to hell… again.
Why was it always him?
*
One minute Arthur was trying to barter passage with a ship’s Captain, the next he had realised that Morgana was no longer standing beside him. His words faltered and then petered out as he scanned the crowd and saw her nowhere.
He swore under his breath and ran, leaving the Captain staring after him.
*
Morgana wasn’t sure what happened, exactly. She heard something calling to her, like a whisper at the back of her mind, and she could see her footsteps in front of her, where she was going to go next. So she followed them. They wove between people, into spaces in the crowd that hadn’t been there seconds before. Then they led down, down, down, into a bar.
There were people everywhere. She looked into their minds and saw what they thought, what they wanted. Simple things, most of them, a drink, sex, to forget, love. Some of them were happy, some of them were lonely. Soon she didn’t need to look at the footsteps to know where to go. She danced around the people, watching them walk past, all so absorbed in themselves.
Then she looked up.
*
An Alliance Cruiser, out here. It wasn’t a scheduled inspection, it wasn’t on patrols. It wasn’t doing anything innocuous. Will was not happy. He radioed to Lancelot immediately after he had seen it on the updates screen. The muted swearing that came down the line made him feel a little better. Lancelot never swore if he could help it. Mild mannered to a fault, that was always him. Even in the middle of the war he had barely raised his voice or used a word more unpleasant than ‘hell’.
He couldn’t raise Merlin on the comms, but the mechanic could take care of himself, and usually did. As long as he didn’t do anything stupid.
*
Arthur was searching through the docking bays, looking for any sign of Morgana. It shouldn’t have been hard to find her in the brilliant blue of her dress, but there was no sign of her at all. He turned a corner in the corridor and froze. At the opposite end there were five men in Alliance military uniform talking to one of the station officials.
“Come here,” a voice whispered to him, and a hand dragged him from the corridor into what could have been a room, or could have been a maintenance shaft.
When he turned round in the darkness, Merlin was watching him.
*
The man on the balcony wanted blood. Morgana had never felt a mind like his before. He wanted freedom and he wanted revenge. She pushed at him slightly, and gasped as he pushed back.
With her normal eyes she saw him smile.
With her other eyes she saw that he did not want to hurt her.
“Come with me,” he said to her. But whether he said it with his mind or with his mouth she could not tell. She looked down at the ground and saw two sets of footprints then. One leading to him, the other away.
“Come with me,” he repeated, “and you won’t have to run again, you won’t have to hide. You can be yourself.”
Somewhere, Arthur was looking for her, she could hear his panic. But he was not alone. He had not asked for this, he did not deserve this. He needed his own life.
She reached out a foot and took the first step, and the world changed around her, the metal became huge, leafy trees, the ground under her feet was earth and grass. Ferns brushed her legs.
Above her, the man smiled, or was he a boy… or a wolf. She walked through the woods like little red riding hood, following the wolf ahead.
Mordred, his name was Mordred, and he had come to save them all.
*
“What in the name of Eallwealdan19 is the Alliance doing here?” Will whispered to Valiant as they ducked down a side alley to avoid being seen by a group of five Alliance guards who marched down the main corridors, their army issue boots clanging loudly against the metal.
“They must have followed us,” Valiant said. “They’ll want the girl and her brother.”
“But we didn’t even record this on our flight plan. We weren’t coming here until yesterday. How did they know that we’d be here in enough time to get here?”
“Who cares? We hand over the kids and hightail it out of here before they get a chance to change their minds and blow us to smithereens like they did the Gedref.” Valiant told him.
“Forswigaþ!20”
“It’s a plan,” Valiant argued. “And it doesn’t involve us taking on an entire Alliance cruiser on our own.”
“Well, I think we should just stick it out,” Will said as they edged their way to the end of the alley and looked both ways carefully. “I’m still not convinced they’re here about the girl, or that they even know about her. The Alliance might be powerful, but they can’t be everywhere at once.”
“I say we run.”
‘Captain?’ Gwen’s hushed voice came over the comms.
“Go ahead, Gwen.”
‘They’ve placed a docking lock on Avalon. There’s no way we’re getting out of here.’
“Stencbæree cúmicge!21” Valiant swore. Will ignored him.
“Gwen, can you bypass it somehow?”
‘I don’t think so, that is, I’ll try. But it doesn’t seem likely.’
“Áwierge,22” Will muttered. “Keep trying… I’ll work something out.” The comm. fell silent and he looked up at Valiant again. “It looks like the decision’s been made for us.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Me too.”
*
“Merlin?” Arthur could just make out the mechanic’s face in the dim light.
“Yeah, thought you could use some help getting out of there.”
“I would have been fine…” he paused before grudgingly murmuring “thank you,” into the shadows. He didn’t need light to know that Merlin was grinning brilliantly at that. “Where are we?”
“Maintenance tunnels. They run alongside most of the main parts of the station, so that repairs can be done without inconveniencing people who want to walk around… the miracles of Alliance technology, now being used against them.”
“How did they find us?” Arthur asked. He could hear the noises of vents in the distance, the heating system of the station clearly also being nearby.
“I don’t think they did,” Merlin said slowly. “I overheard them talking a minute ago. The man in charge, his name seems to be Kanen, was telling them to look for a cell of rogue Sensitives, suspected of terrorism.”
“What?”
“From what they said, it sounded like they had been tracking these people for ages.”
“So they’re not here for Morgana and I?”
“No… but if they find you… Your names and faces have been posted all over the cortex. There’s no way they’ll ignore you if they see you. Unless they’re so involved in this game of cat and mouse that they have going on that they haven’t been paying attention to the updates on the cortex.” Arthur nodded. “Where is Morgana?” He winced.
“She’s… missing.”
“You lost your sister?” Merlin asked incredulously.
“Hardly my fault,” Arthur said with feeling, “I can’t keep an eye on her at the best of times. I turned round and she walked off - I’ve been looking for her.” Arthur admitted, shrugging his shoulders helpfully. “But she’s nowhere to be found.”
“Áwierge!23”
“My sentiments exactly.”
*
“I just think we should hand them over,” Valiant repeated. So far they had come across seven groups of Alliance troops, obviously searching the base in a systematic fashion. They had been ignored so far, but Will wasn’t holding out much luck.
“So you’ve said,” he replied, nodding to a young man who hurried past, “but there are three main problems with that: one, we have no idea where they are, two, you can’t trust the Alliance as far as you can throw them - and I’m really bad at throwing - and three, there’s no way on earth I am handing them over to the stencbærean Alliance docgum24 who messed them up in the first place. I may not like Arthur, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what he’s doing.”
“Right… so what’s your plan then?”
“Find everyone, hide the kid and his sister, wait it out and then leave as soon as the docking lock is lifted.”
“Þes biþ dwæs unræd,25” Valiant growled.
“Well, I’ll let you know when I think of a better one.”
*
The Alliance were coming at them, she knew that they were two floors up and two floors down. They were moving in a standard spiral pincer formation, forcing their pray to the centre of the base and cutting off all escape routes. It was the classic tactics for such a search.
Mordred had decided that there was going to one final stand. He had given a moving speech about it, standing at the front of the room and waving his arms around.
All the people in the room thought they were going to die. They wanted to go out doing something worthwhile.
Morgana didn’t understand it, not really. There was a far greater possibility of the Alliance taking them alive, anyway. And beyond that, there was a way - she could clearly see it - for them to win. But none of them seemed to realise that.
“The Alliance has spilled our blood and the blood of our families,” Mordred was yelling across the room. “They must be repaid in kind. We may die here today, but let us be remembered as taking them down with us.”
Morgana didn’t say that the Alliance would hardly feel the loss of a percentage of one cruiser. She didn’t tell them that most of the people coming towards them had never killed a man in their lives, let alone spilled the blood of families; she stood in a corner and watched. This was where she needed to be, she could feel it.
Her vision flickered from what is to what will be, and she saw bodies and blood, with the remainders of the force being led away in shackles. A tear rolled down her cheek before she cold stop it, and she bit her lip to keep from speaking.
But she did not move, nor look away.
*
“What are you doing?” Arthur asked, watching as Merlin ran a hand along one of the wires that surrounded them.
“Trying to find your sister before the Alliance does,” he replied. “This is the one.” Arthur watched as he let go of the wire and extended his hand towards it, fingers splayed open.
“How exactly are you planning on doing that?”
“I’m going to ask the station,” Merlin told him, giving a quirk of a grin. If Arthur had not been looking right at the man just then, he probably would have missed it, it happened so quickly, a flash of gold across Merlin’s eyes, starting as a ring around the pupil and then expanding to cover the whole iris. They glowed brilliantly.
“What…” he began, astounded. “You’re a Sensitive…”
“Yes,” Merlin said, lowering his hand, “with an affinity for technology. I’m not registered though, so keep your voice down.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Arthur asked.
“Tell a complete stranger that I’m an illegal freak? Or tell Uther Pendragon’s son that I’m the very thing his father hunts down? Good idea, idiot,” Merlin shook his head. “Morgana’s on the central floor, but the Alliance are pushing towards her. I think she somehow met up with the terrorists they’re looking for.”
“Glenglic,26” Arthur muttered. Merlin just grinned, grabbing his arm to drag him in the right direction.
*
“It’s like we’re being herded,” Will said after a moment. He and Valiant had been trying to avoid the Alliance patrols as best they could.
“I know what you mean,” his companion said, looking behind them. “The bloody things are everywhere, there’s nowhere else to go.”
The corridor they were in was almost deserted, but they could hear the steady rhythm of Alliance boots coming towards them.
“How about in there?” Will suggested, gesturing to a large door with the word BAR printed on it in stencilled letters.
“Good a place as any,” Valiant agreed, “and I could do with a drink.”
They walked through the door and stopped almost immediately. The room was full of people, all wearing similar shabby clothes and purple arm bands around their upper right arm. On what looked like it had used to be the bar, stood a young man with bright blue eyes, and he was yelling to the crowd.
“We may die here, but we will be heroes. To dæg biþ sum til dæg ácwilan!27”
Will groaned as the door closed behind him and he leaned back against it.
“Ic nættede hwa on forestapole æ…28” he said to the air around him.
“Look on the bright side,” Valiant told him, pointing to a spot of brilliant blue in the midst of the brown and black of the would be revolutionaries. “At least we found the girl.”
*
“This should be it,” Merlin muttered, pointing through the grating on their left. Arthur peered through. He could just make out figures and then, as some of them moved, he saw the bright blue of Morgana’s dress.
“That’s her… how do I get in there?” he asked. There was silence from behind him. “Merlin, I need to get in there and get her out before the Alliance get in there. Tell me you can do that.”
“Well, the nearest access panel is two hundred metres away back the way we came.”
“Merlin… how far away are the Alliance?”
“About fifty metres, and closing.”
“You idiot! How am I supposed to get her, if I can’t get in there until after the Alliance.”
“Well, I could try and work this panel free…. But that-”
“Do it.”
“Arthur…”
“Do it!”
“Fine.”
That was when the Alliance burst through the door.
*
‘You are surrounded. Surrender yourselves and submit to our custody and no one will need to be harmed.’ The Alliance soldier said over the speaker. Will and Valiant, flattened against the wall, looked at each other.
“This is not going to end well…” Will muttered.
“I told you it was a stupid plan,” was Valiant’s only comment on the matter.
From the bar the leader of the revolutionaries let out a scream that could have been a war cry.
“We will not surrender, we are not afraid to die!”
“Very stirring,” Will commented.
“I’d follow him,” Valiant agreed, “although I always find that war cries are better when they don’t mention the possibility of death for anyone other than the opponents.”
“My favourite was always ‘I’ll dance on your grave, you mother-fucking, incontinent dogs,’” Will mused, side stepping as more Alliance troops forced their way in to the room.
“Personally, I always liked them quite simple. ‘Die! Die! Die!’ for instance. If you overcomplicate it, they can’t quite make out what you’re saying, and you don’t scare them so much as confuse them.”
“That’s the whole point,” Will said, “if they’re thinking about what you just said, they’re not thinking about the fact that you’re aiming a gun at their head.”
“Death to the Alliance!” Mordred yelled.
“Now that’s catchy,” Valiant said, with an approving nod.
“Yeah - but it’s already been done.”
The yelling over, the guttural bellowing beginning, and the shots began to ring out. The two sides ran at each other, the Alliance’s superior technology and training easily matching the enthusiasm and raw power of the Sensitives Mordred led. And in the middle of it, standing as though she was a statue was Morgana.
“The idiot girl’s not even ducking,” Valiant growled.
“We’re going to have to go in there and carry her out,” Will said, dodging a man with a long blade.
“Or we could leave her…”
Will glared at him.
“Or we could go in there and carry her out, Captain.”
“Good idea.”
“What’s she even staring at?”
“The television screen,” Will said, following Morgana’s gaze to where the giant screen towered over them, still lit up with the bright, cheerful colours of the advertisements.
*
The screen was bright, just pictures, but beneath the pictures there were other things, like beneath people’s faces were their minds. She watched the pictures and she watched what was beneath it all too, and then she saw it.
Everything was laid out, clear and simple.
Across the room a man was about to fire. There would be a bullet rushing towards her head, a piece of metal travelling at 1000 feet per second. It would hit her in approximately 1.18 seconds and her brains would splatter out across the floor.
Morgana stepped backwards. The metal tore past her face and she could feel the air rush over her nose. It buried itself in someone else’s forehead, and it was his brains that splattered out. She didn’t even blink.
Everything was clear now.
Kill… that was all. So simple. The complications faded away until she was just a weapon. Fight, kill. She saw every step set out before her, both hers and everyone else’s too. It was easy to keep ahead, to move before they even knew what they were going to do next. Down they went, like dominoes, falling to the ground.
Kill… that was all she needed to know.
The moves flowed from one to another - like dancing, like thinking, like dreaming. She floated through the steps. She had a sword from a fallen opponent; she ran it through someone. She snapped a neck with her free arm. So simple when you knew how. Easy, easy. Take them down - ones in uniform, ones who weren’t, all of them had to fall. One of them was running away, she couldn’t let him. The sword was forced from her hand, but it was alright, she was still the weapon.
Lift her leg, kick, break his hold on her, twirl and punch him in the head - not hard enough to kill, just hard enough to bring him down. Reach for his gun, cock it, aim, all in one movement.
Stale mate - two guns drawn, one must fire, he might be quick, but she was quicker. She could see the thought to pull the trigger forming in his mind, see his reluctance. He knew her, he saw her as a person - his weakness.
Then another voice, a mind she knew, and she was falling, falling into darkness and the people without souls were there to break her fall.
*
“Huāng miù!”29 Arthur called out, tumbling out of the panel in the wall, looking round at the devastation that his sister had caused.
Morgana dropped to the ground where she stood, the gun clattering out of her hand. In the stillness that followed, Arthur religiously avoided the wide-eyed stares that Will was giving him as he crossed over to the prone girl and scooped her up, half-kicking Valiant, who had clearly tried to take Morgana down, as he did so. The other man groaned and pulled himself up, starting when he saw Morgana, until he realised she was no longer a threat.
‘Will?’ Gwen’s voice asked. ‘Is everything alright there, we heard something that sounded like a fight. Are you all okay?’
“We’re fine.”
‘Good, good… I managed to get the docking lock off. I had to bypass their primary code systems and instigate a manual override. Not that you need to know how I did it, of course, but… I did.’
Will breathed a sigh of relief, hefting Morgana in his arms to adjust her weight a bit more. Arthur was watching him carefully.
“Let’s get out of here,” Will said seriously, shooting Arthur a look as he hurried to help carry his sister out. “I feel that you have some more explaining to do.”
Arthur nodded dumbly, following them out.
*
Avalon was launched and in the air in a lot less time than Arthur would have imagined possible and, as soon as Gwen had laid in a course, there was another ship meeting in the galley, with Morgana chained up in the small cell that they used as a pantry.
“She’s not a threat,” Arthur argued.
“I just saw her take down the entire crew of an Alliance cruiser and a group of Sensitive rebels and you’re telling me she’s not a threat.”
“She probably didn’t even know she was doing it…” he argued, knowing as he said it that the argument was going to get him nowhere.
“Because that makes it so much better,” Valiant said bitterly, still holding an ice pack to where Morgana’s leg had hit his skull. “So we’ve got some wédenheortan drýicgan30 and we brought her back aboard. How is that a good plan?”
“Yes… on the plan front,” Merlin said, a little hesitantly, “do we have one?”
Will looked around the table with a deep sigh.
“There is a plan.”
“And what would that be, Captain?” Valiant asked, eyeing Arthur like he wanted to tear him limb from limb.
“I’m working on it,” Will snapped back. “So… would you like to tell us how your sister managed to maim and kill a lot of people back there. No offence, but she doesn’t really strike me as the ninja type.”
“Oh, Morgana was never completely helpless,” Arthur said, there was a pause as everyone stared at him pointedly. “But never like this, never anything like this. I knew… when I got her out that they had inbuilt certain programming into her, but I had the safe word.”
“You knew that she could do… that,” Will said incredulously, “at any time, and you brought her onto my ship.”
“And you brought her back on,” Merlin pointed out. Will ignored him.
“I didn’t know what she would do. I assumed it was something less…”
“Killing by numbers?” Will said. “Because I’ve never seen anything like that before. I swear, some of those men she never even touched and they dropped down right in front of her, and she knew every move you’d make before you made it.”
“The scientists who messed with her brain must have been experimenting on turning her into some kind of weapon,” Arthur said, frowning in anger. “They implanted commands in her… but she would have had to have been given the trigger. Did she talk to anyone?”
“I don’t know, things were a little busy in there,” Valiant said when Will looked over at him. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I didn’t see anything either,” Will said with a shrug. Didn’t even know she was there until the violence began.” Arthur sighed. “Although…”
“Yes?”
“She was staring at the television, just before she flipped out and became ninja girl.”
“The television?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe there was some sort of hidden message… or maybe someone whispered something to her,” he looked towards the door of the room they were keeping Morgana in. “I need to talk to her.”
“You can talk all you want to,” Will said, standing up, “but don’t let her out. We still don’t know what she’s capable of.” Arthur bristled slightly, but he nodded and headed to the door, noting that Valiant seemed very keen to get out of the room.
*
“Come on, Arthur,” Morgana called across the room with a laugh, raising her own foil again. “You’re not tired already, are you?”
“Of course not,” her brother lied, looking up at her stubbornly. Sweat was dribbling across his forehead. He had always been slower than her. She darted in towards him and he parried, his reflexes that little bit slower than before, but he was clinging on with determination.
“You’ll never get into MilAcad if you tire out this easily,” she taunted him, bringing the blades together with a clash. He glared at her and attacked more swiftly than she would have given him credit for half a minute ago. She took a step back, impressed. He was growing up, her little brother.
“You might as well surrender already,” she said, keeping her voice light, “you know I always beat you in the end.”
“That’s not true,” He told her, dodging her half hearted thrust and stepping back.
“Okay, tell me the last time you won,” she said, her mouth curving into a smirk. He didn’t answer, but ran at her in a lunge that was borne more out of frustration than tactics. He needed to learn to keep his temper. She used the momentum of his attack to throw him off balance and he staggered back, and back, and back.
They were practising in the second drawing room, Arthur’s idea. He had been top of his class in fencing that day and had felt the need to try to take on his sister again. She should have made him wait until they reached their own quarters but she hadn’t. She should have known.
He staggered back and fell into the small table by the wall. There was a sickening sound of broken wood and the vase, their mother’s favourite vase, teetered from side to side. For a moment it seemed like it would stay safe. But then it rocked back and over, falling to the ground as they watched to smash on the wooden floor, into thousands of tiny pieces.
*
“I killed people,” Morgana said bleakly as Arthur walked through the door. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, her hands, in their shackles, resting in her lap. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Do you remember?” Arthur asked, kneeling down.
“I remember dancing… and floating.”
“You fought a lot of people,” he said slowly.
“I know, Arthur. I know what I did, but I don’t remember it. It’s like I read about it somewhere. I killed people and I don’t even know why.”
“Did someone talk to you?” he asked carefully. “Did you see someone you recognised, or hear a certain phrase? The Captain said you were looking at the television screen.”
“No, there’s nothing…” she said. “How long are they going to keep me here?” she asked, looking down at the chains.
“Until they feel safe,” Arthur replied. “I don’t know when that will be.”
“Never. I’m never going to be safe again… Never safe.”
“No,” her brother said resolutely, “one day you’ll be safe.”
“A gun is still a gun, even when it’s in its holster. A sword is still a sword in its sheath,” she told him solemnly. “I remember that I remembered everything. I saw it all - all the things I know that I didn’t know I knew. All the things I saw that I never noticed. They’re still there, the people with no souls, only now they’re louder. The silence is louder… and I think it’s coming closer.”
“What is?” Arthur asked.
“The end.”
*
“The end of our chase is coming up,” said the General, smiling over at where Edwin stood in front of the screen.
“Play it again,” the operative instructed, and the grainy green-grey clip of video footage was shown again.
“Do we know who these people are, the ones who leave with her and the young Pendragon?” he asked.
“Yes sir, petty criminals from the outer planets: smugglers, thieves, that sort of thing, nothing big time. There’s nothing that you would be interested in, sir.”
“I am interested in everything, General. Every detail might be vital. Get me the files on these men, and send out a new bulletin for them - dangerous criminals, not to be approached and to be considered armed and dangerous.”
“They’re not really dangerous, sir.”
“They are whatever I say they are, General. And they are no less dangerous than any other criminal - more so in fact. There is an air of mystery, of glamour, around smugglers and pirates. They seem the romantic figures of legend. Call them that and they become gallant freedom fighters, call them murderers and they are merely brutal thugs. They are part of the disease, and, as such, must be eradicated.”
“Yes sir.”
“Good man, good man,” Edwin watched the wall for a moment, until two new files flashed onto his personal view screen. Will and Valiant’s faces appeared, and details of their lives. He sighed and looked up at where Morgana’s face was frozen onscreen, staring up at the television screen on the wall of the bar. “So you have found more friends… that is a pity, but unavoidable.”
*
The same image was displayed on the screens in Avalon’s bridge as most of the crew watched, Arthur standing slightly awkwardly to one side.
The dragon’s face reappeared on the central screen.
“It’s fascinating,” he said, “the amount of preparation. That two such tiny things should coincide with such cataclysmic results.”
“Stop babbling and tell us what you’ve found,” Will instructed, not in the mood for cryptic half-sentences.
“There’s a code… imbued into things. Not so much a code really as an aura… something only visible to Sensitives. It’s piggybacking on the signal, reaching out everywhere, like a spider’s web. And it’s hidden in what the young lady is watching. She didn’t talk to anybody, true, but somebody did talk to her.”
“Through the television,” Will said.
“Precisely. But… this is high level work. It has an element of destiny about it. I wouldn’t say that this was done by some hack in a research lab. This signal is a work of art. It blends beautifully. I almost didn’t spot the thing.”
“What are you saying?” asked Lancelot.
“This thing - Government issue, I’d say. They keep a few Sensitives on staff, hypocrisy and double standards at work, you know how they do things.”
“The Alliance spoke to Morgana through the television?” Arthur asked in disbelief.
“Wait a second,” Gwen said, pausing the play of the video as Morgana turned towards the television again. “Can you zoom in on her there?” Without replying, the Dragon flicked a few switches and the image zoomed in on Morgana’s face. “Play… Did you see that?”
“She said something,” Arthur muttered, “what was it, I couldn’t quite make out. Play it again.”
“Yes sir,” the Dragon said, clearly a little affronted by his tone of voice.
“Nimueh,” Lancelot said after a moment. “She said Nimueh.”
“What the hell is Nimueh?”
*
“Do you remember what you said?”
“Nimueh…” Morgana breathed.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Nimueh went mad.”
“Nimueh’s a person?” Arthur asked, leaning closer.
“They drove her mad, they ate her soul.”
“Is that all you can tell me?”
“She’s empty now…”
“Have you met her?”
“No, but I will.”
*
“Gaius,” Merlin said, smiling at the old man over the view-screen. “We should be with you in a couple of days. We’ve been having some trouble with our newest house guests.”
“Nothing you can’t handle, I hope,” Gaius said.
“Oh, nothing too bad,” Merlin assured him.
“Merlin?” The man sounded stern, and Merlin knew that he had been found out.
“It’ll be fine, Gaius, you know how it is: heads down, avoiding Alliance out posts, the usual.”
“Of course, but ‘the usual’ usually ends up with one or more of you being tortured or shot, and with you having to leave town in a hurry.” Merlin laughed. “And since I left you haven’t had a doctor aboard. Will and Lancelot’s field experience is all well and good, but if anything more serious than a graze or a dislocated shoulder happens then you’re in trouble.”
“We’ll be fine, Gaius,” Merlin said. “And we’ll see you in a few days.”
“Make sure you do.”
“Oh… and Gaius?”
“Yes?”
“Have you heard of someone called Nimueh?”
The old man looked thoughtful for a moment before shaking his head.
“It rings a bell, but nothing specific. Why?”
“Nothing important. Thanks. Bye!”
*
They didn’t scream. Morgana remembered that part, they didn’t scream even a little bit as their souls were sucked out of them. They just let it happen… except those who didn’t.
Outside, on the bridge, Will was having a conversation with Lancelot, they were 17.8 metres away from her, but she could hear every word as clear as if they were standing right next to her.
“She’s dangerous.”
“She was in the middle of a battle, she was protecting herself.”
“She didn’t care who she killed, Lancelot. You weren’t there, you didn’t see her. She just took them out like they were puppets, any of them. Alliance, the rebels, Valiant. She dropped him with two blows, Lancelot. I saw her break a man’s neck without even looking at him.”
“We can’t just keep her chained up in there forever.”
“Maybe Valiant was right, maybe we should have spaced her while we had the chance. Maybe I should have left her there.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“No… you’re right, I wouldn’t. I just wish I knew what to do.”
Space… vast empty nothingness. Light-years and light-years of vacuum. No people, no voices, no one crying out. Morgana wondered what nothing would be like. To be left alone in her own skull. Or did the souls wander out there in space? Was that where they lived when they left the bodies? Would her soul live out there forever, drifting, hopeless, aimless?
She shivered at the thought. It was better to stay with the voices, the pain and the memories that flooded her mind, memories that weren’t hers, memories of things that had not happened yet. She would not lie down and let them steal her soul. She would not let them hollow her out.
In the cold storage room, lying on the hard metal and with her wrists bound together, Morgana smiled. It was just a matter of waiting.
In her head, the soulless people waited with her.
*
part 4
part 2
“Whose souls?” Arthur asked, crouching down next to where Morgana sat, all curled up in the corner. On the other side of the room Lancelot watched, obviously wanting to help, but unsure how. “Who stole whose souls, Morgana?”
“They stole them, took them away and expected them to go on… They wanted them to go on with no souls,” Morgana muttered into the wall.
“It was just a nightmare,” Arthur assured her. Morgana turned to look at him, fixing him with a clear green gaze.
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Then you’ll have to tell me who… did someone take your soul?” he asked. Morgana laughed and lifted a hand to his shoulder, shaking her head.
“No one would want it… It’s not me.”
“Then who?” Arthur asked.
“I don’t know,” she snapped before sighing, leaning her head back against the solid metal of the wall and looking up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he told her, smiling a little weakly. She wrapped her arms round his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. “It’s alright.”
He helped her to her feet with Lancelot’s help and the two of them half carried her back to her bed, laying her down, already fast asleep.
“Are you two going to be alright?” Lancelot asked as they stood over her. Arthur looked up at him with a resigned smile.
“We’re going to have to be,” he said. “Don’t worry. I can take care of her.”
“I know,” Lancelot said, “but will you take care of yourself as well?”
“I’ll be fine,” Arthur said. “I’m good with a weapon, and I’ll keep my head down.”
“You didn’t even bother giving us a fake name,” Lancelot pointed out, and Arthur couldn’t help but laugh. The man had a point.
“I’ll think of one before we stop.”
“That’s what I came to tell you. We’ll be at the nearest station by morning. Will doesn’t want to leave you on Ealdor - we have friends there.”
“I wouldn’t want to endanger them,” Arthur said, nodding. It was sooner than he would have liked. “We’ll be ready, and then you won’t have to worry about us any more.”
“Doesn’t mean we won’t,” Lancelot said. “Gwen never stops worrying. When she isn’t worrying about me getting myself shot, she’s worrying about Will getting himself shot, or Merlin accidentally blowing himself up, or her making some mistake while piloting.”
“Well, tell her not to worry over us. We’ll be fine.” If Arthur said it enough, perhaps he might even start to believe it. He needed to find someone to help with Morgana, someone who might understand.
“You’d better get some sleep,” the first mate said, nodding to Arthur’s empty bed. “You’re going to need to be alert tomorrow - the station we’re going to… it’s not one of the friendliest ones.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Arthur said with a nod. Lancelot headed for the door, but before he made it, Arthur called out.
“Lancelot?”
“Yes?”
“When Will said my father’s name, the name Pendragon, you looked shocked. Why?” Lancelot drew in a deep breath.
“I know the name… who doesn’t?”
“It was more than that - you fought in the war, didn’t you - you and Will?”
“Yes,” Lancelot said shortly.
“For the Independents?”
“Yes. Will and I served, and Will’s father before him,” Lancelot said, a little sadly. “We were in the battle of Avalon when your father led the Alliance troops against us.”
“You fought over Avalon?”
“No… we were in the valley,” Lancelot told him.
“But the Independent forces in the valley were all but destro-” Arthur broke off, seeing the answer in Lancelot’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he said, “there was no honour in that battle - on either side. It was a massacre.”
“And you were…” Arthur cut himself off, remembering his history lessons. It had been a glorious victory, one his father had told him about on numerous occasions, one that had earned him one of the many medals in his collection and also brought an end to the senseless bloodshed the Independents had forced upon themselves by refusing the light of civilisation.
He tried to imagine it from the other side - not a glorious victory, but an ignominious defeat. His father had told him the battlefield on the ground had looked like hell, churned mud, and mangled corpses leaking blood into it; huge craters where shells had fallen, and the Alliance machinery rolling forwards where it could, held back by the Independents at every turn. ‘They were a plucky bunch of fighters’ his father had said, and Arthur had always thought of them as cheerfully surrendering when they realised they were outclassed.
He had never thought of those bodies being people’s friends.
“I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t there.” That was an end to it, Lancelot’s voice brooked no response and he turned and walked away without looking back.
“He saw them die, one by one,” Morgana said from her bed, her voice completely matter of fact. “Some of them fell while he was talking to them. He was supposed to protect them - the little ones fighting for fun, for glory, for a thrill. They didn’t make a sound when they were shot, just fell to the mud, and there was red pouring out of them. He saw a head get blown clean off, nothing left, just shoulders and then empty space.”
Arthur felt sick, and when he lay down on his bed, the boys he had known at school, who had joined the Alliance army to protect the Civilised way of life, paraded before him, dripping in blood and holding up bloody heads for his entertainment. One of them opened and shut the jaw of the head he was holding - Merlin’s - making him speak in a crude puppet-parody of life.
He woke in a cold sweat and couldn’t get back to sleep for hours.
*
Tintagel was what his father would have called a hole. It had once been an Alliance space station, but they had abandoned it and the parasites had moved in, criminals and ‘business men’, the higher end of the underworld. There were bars and Arthur could have sworn he saw a brothel down one corridor, not with real Companions but women who looked like they had nowhere else to go, with their pimps stalking at a reasonable distance.
They separated from the crew on the second level, Will making sure not to even look at the pair of them. Lancelot handed Arthur a gun and told him to use it if necessary. They shook hands and Arthur felt a weight lift off his shoulders. Gwen hugged both of them, reminding Morgana to eat, and telling Arthur that she was sure he’d be alright.
“You’re a good man,” she said to him, “just let people see it once in a while…” she looked like she was about to say more, but Lancelot pulled her away gently.
Valiant pushed past them and wondered off into the crowd, leaving only Merlin next to them. He stared at the pair of them intently.
“Arthur… look, you’ll be fine. Just never pay cash upfront, alright. And be polite when you talk to the Captains. Try and pretend you’re not a stuck-up git, okay?” Arthur opened his mouth to speak but Merlin carried on regardless, “and take care of Morgana. And… just… Bestudde18.” He nodded to himself and walked off like he was running away from something.
Arthur turned to Morgana, where she stood watching him.
“Right then,” he said. Someone behind him jostled him, forcing him to take a step forward. He looked around and saw people everywhere, but no one he knew. They were alone in the middle of nowhere. Morgana slipped her hand into his and squeezed lightly. “Where to?”
*
Things had been going well for Will. Arthur and Morgana had left and his ship was still in one piece. He and Valiant had set up a nice deal with some of the major business men on the station, it wasn’t one hundred percent legal, but it was going to pay well. Then it all went to hell… again.
Why was it always him?
*
One minute Arthur was trying to barter passage with a ship’s Captain, the next he had realised that Morgana was no longer standing beside him. His words faltered and then petered out as he scanned the crowd and saw her nowhere.
He swore under his breath and ran, leaving the Captain staring after him.
*
Morgana wasn’t sure what happened, exactly. She heard something calling to her, like a whisper at the back of her mind, and she could see her footsteps in front of her, where she was going to go next. So she followed them. They wove between people, into spaces in the crowd that hadn’t been there seconds before. Then they led down, down, down, into a bar.
There were people everywhere. She looked into their minds and saw what they thought, what they wanted. Simple things, most of them, a drink, sex, to forget, love. Some of them were happy, some of them were lonely. Soon she didn’t need to look at the footsteps to know where to go. She danced around the people, watching them walk past, all so absorbed in themselves.
Then she looked up.
*
An Alliance Cruiser, out here. It wasn’t a scheduled inspection, it wasn’t on patrols. It wasn’t doing anything innocuous. Will was not happy. He radioed to Lancelot immediately after he had seen it on the updates screen. The muted swearing that came down the line made him feel a little better. Lancelot never swore if he could help it. Mild mannered to a fault, that was always him. Even in the middle of the war he had barely raised his voice or used a word more unpleasant than ‘hell’.
He couldn’t raise Merlin on the comms, but the mechanic could take care of himself, and usually did. As long as he didn’t do anything stupid.
*
Arthur was searching through the docking bays, looking for any sign of Morgana. It shouldn’t have been hard to find her in the brilliant blue of her dress, but there was no sign of her at all. He turned a corner in the corridor and froze. At the opposite end there were five men in Alliance military uniform talking to one of the station officials.
“Come here,” a voice whispered to him, and a hand dragged him from the corridor into what could have been a room, or could have been a maintenance shaft.
When he turned round in the darkness, Merlin was watching him.
*
The man on the balcony wanted blood. Morgana had never felt a mind like his before. He wanted freedom and he wanted revenge. She pushed at him slightly, and gasped as he pushed back.
With her normal eyes she saw him smile.
With her other eyes she saw that he did not want to hurt her.
“Come with me,” he said to her. But whether he said it with his mind or with his mouth she could not tell. She looked down at the ground and saw two sets of footprints then. One leading to him, the other away.
“Come with me,” he repeated, “and you won’t have to run again, you won’t have to hide. You can be yourself.”
Somewhere, Arthur was looking for her, she could hear his panic. But he was not alone. He had not asked for this, he did not deserve this. He needed his own life.
She reached out a foot and took the first step, and the world changed around her, the metal became huge, leafy trees, the ground under her feet was earth and grass. Ferns brushed her legs.
Above her, the man smiled, or was he a boy… or a wolf. She walked through the woods like little red riding hood, following the wolf ahead.
Mordred, his name was Mordred, and he had come to save them all.
*
“What in the name of Eallwealdan19 is the Alliance doing here?” Will whispered to Valiant as they ducked down a side alley to avoid being seen by a group of five Alliance guards who marched down the main corridors, their army issue boots clanging loudly against the metal.
“They must have followed us,” Valiant said. “They’ll want the girl and her brother.”
“But we didn’t even record this on our flight plan. We weren’t coming here until yesterday. How did they know that we’d be here in enough time to get here?”
“Who cares? We hand over the kids and hightail it out of here before they get a chance to change their minds and blow us to smithereens like they did the Gedref.” Valiant told him.
“Forswigaþ!20”
“It’s a plan,” Valiant argued. “And it doesn’t involve us taking on an entire Alliance cruiser on our own.”
“Well, I think we should just stick it out,” Will said as they edged their way to the end of the alley and looked both ways carefully. “I’m still not convinced they’re here about the girl, or that they even know about her. The Alliance might be powerful, but they can’t be everywhere at once.”
“I say we run.”
‘Captain?’ Gwen’s hushed voice came over the comms.
“Go ahead, Gwen.”
‘They’ve placed a docking lock on Avalon. There’s no way we’re getting out of here.’
“Stencbæree cúmicge!21” Valiant swore. Will ignored him.
“Gwen, can you bypass it somehow?”
‘I don’t think so, that is, I’ll try. But it doesn’t seem likely.’
“Áwierge,22” Will muttered. “Keep trying… I’ll work something out.” The comm. fell silent and he looked up at Valiant again. “It looks like the decision’s been made for us.”
“I hate it when that happens.”
“Me too.”
*
“Merlin?” Arthur could just make out the mechanic’s face in the dim light.
“Yeah, thought you could use some help getting out of there.”
“I would have been fine…” he paused before grudgingly murmuring “thank you,” into the shadows. He didn’t need light to know that Merlin was grinning brilliantly at that. “Where are we?”
“Maintenance tunnels. They run alongside most of the main parts of the station, so that repairs can be done without inconveniencing people who want to walk around… the miracles of Alliance technology, now being used against them.”
“How did they find us?” Arthur asked. He could hear the noises of vents in the distance, the heating system of the station clearly also being nearby.
“I don’t think they did,” Merlin said slowly. “I overheard them talking a minute ago. The man in charge, his name seems to be Kanen, was telling them to look for a cell of rogue Sensitives, suspected of terrorism.”
“What?”
“From what they said, it sounded like they had been tracking these people for ages.”
“So they’re not here for Morgana and I?”
“No… but if they find you… Your names and faces have been posted all over the cortex. There’s no way they’ll ignore you if they see you. Unless they’re so involved in this game of cat and mouse that they have going on that they haven’t been paying attention to the updates on the cortex.” Arthur nodded. “Where is Morgana?” He winced.
“She’s… missing.”
“You lost your sister?” Merlin asked incredulously.
“Hardly my fault,” Arthur said with feeling, “I can’t keep an eye on her at the best of times. I turned round and she walked off - I’ve been looking for her.” Arthur admitted, shrugging his shoulders helpfully. “But she’s nowhere to be found.”
“Áwierge!23”
“My sentiments exactly.”
*
“I just think we should hand them over,” Valiant repeated. So far they had come across seven groups of Alliance troops, obviously searching the base in a systematic fashion. They had been ignored so far, but Will wasn’t holding out much luck.
“So you’ve said,” he replied, nodding to a young man who hurried past, “but there are three main problems with that: one, we have no idea where they are, two, you can’t trust the Alliance as far as you can throw them - and I’m really bad at throwing - and three, there’s no way on earth I am handing them over to the stencbærean Alliance docgum24 who messed them up in the first place. I may not like Arthur, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate what he’s doing.”
“Right… so what’s your plan then?”
“Find everyone, hide the kid and his sister, wait it out and then leave as soon as the docking lock is lifted.”
“Þes biþ dwæs unræd,25” Valiant growled.
“Well, I’ll let you know when I think of a better one.”
*
The Alliance were coming at them, she knew that they were two floors up and two floors down. They were moving in a standard spiral pincer formation, forcing their pray to the centre of the base and cutting off all escape routes. It was the classic tactics for such a search.
Mordred had decided that there was going to one final stand. He had given a moving speech about it, standing at the front of the room and waving his arms around.
All the people in the room thought they were going to die. They wanted to go out doing something worthwhile.
Morgana didn’t understand it, not really. There was a far greater possibility of the Alliance taking them alive, anyway. And beyond that, there was a way - she could clearly see it - for them to win. But none of them seemed to realise that.
“The Alliance has spilled our blood and the blood of our families,” Mordred was yelling across the room. “They must be repaid in kind. We may die here today, but let us be remembered as taking them down with us.”
Morgana didn’t say that the Alliance would hardly feel the loss of a percentage of one cruiser. She didn’t tell them that most of the people coming towards them had never killed a man in their lives, let alone spilled the blood of families; she stood in a corner and watched. This was where she needed to be, she could feel it.
Her vision flickered from what is to what will be, and she saw bodies and blood, with the remainders of the force being led away in shackles. A tear rolled down her cheek before she cold stop it, and she bit her lip to keep from speaking.
But she did not move, nor look away.
*
“What are you doing?” Arthur asked, watching as Merlin ran a hand along one of the wires that surrounded them.
“Trying to find your sister before the Alliance does,” he replied. “This is the one.” Arthur watched as he let go of the wire and extended his hand towards it, fingers splayed open.
“How exactly are you planning on doing that?”
“I’m going to ask the station,” Merlin told him, giving a quirk of a grin. If Arthur had not been looking right at the man just then, he probably would have missed it, it happened so quickly, a flash of gold across Merlin’s eyes, starting as a ring around the pupil and then expanding to cover the whole iris. They glowed brilliantly.
“What…” he began, astounded. “You’re a Sensitive…”
“Yes,” Merlin said, lowering his hand, “with an affinity for technology. I’m not registered though, so keep your voice down.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Arthur asked.
“Tell a complete stranger that I’m an illegal freak? Or tell Uther Pendragon’s son that I’m the very thing his father hunts down? Good idea, idiot,” Merlin shook his head. “Morgana’s on the central floor, but the Alliance are pushing towards her. I think she somehow met up with the terrorists they’re looking for.”
“Glenglic,26” Arthur muttered. Merlin just grinned, grabbing his arm to drag him in the right direction.
*
“It’s like we’re being herded,” Will said after a moment. He and Valiant had been trying to avoid the Alliance patrols as best they could.
“I know what you mean,” his companion said, looking behind them. “The bloody things are everywhere, there’s nowhere else to go.”
The corridor they were in was almost deserted, but they could hear the steady rhythm of Alliance boots coming towards them.
“How about in there?” Will suggested, gesturing to a large door with the word BAR printed on it in stencilled letters.
“Good a place as any,” Valiant agreed, “and I could do with a drink.”
They walked through the door and stopped almost immediately. The room was full of people, all wearing similar shabby clothes and purple arm bands around their upper right arm. On what looked like it had used to be the bar, stood a young man with bright blue eyes, and he was yelling to the crowd.
“We may die here, but we will be heroes. To dæg biþ sum til dæg ácwilan!27”
Will groaned as the door closed behind him and he leaned back against it.
“Ic nættede hwa on forestapole æ…28” he said to the air around him.
“Look on the bright side,” Valiant told him, pointing to a spot of brilliant blue in the midst of the brown and black of the would be revolutionaries. “At least we found the girl.”
*
“This should be it,” Merlin muttered, pointing through the grating on their left. Arthur peered through. He could just make out figures and then, as some of them moved, he saw the bright blue of Morgana’s dress.
“That’s her… how do I get in there?” he asked. There was silence from behind him. “Merlin, I need to get in there and get her out before the Alliance get in there. Tell me you can do that.”
“Well, the nearest access panel is two hundred metres away back the way we came.”
“Merlin… how far away are the Alliance?”
“About fifty metres, and closing.”
“You idiot! How am I supposed to get her, if I can’t get in there until after the Alliance.”
“Well, I could try and work this panel free…. But that-”
“Do it.”
“Arthur…”
“Do it!”
“Fine.”
That was when the Alliance burst through the door.
*
‘You are surrounded. Surrender yourselves and submit to our custody and no one will need to be harmed.’ The Alliance soldier said over the speaker. Will and Valiant, flattened against the wall, looked at each other.
“This is not going to end well…” Will muttered.
“I told you it was a stupid plan,” was Valiant’s only comment on the matter.
From the bar the leader of the revolutionaries let out a scream that could have been a war cry.
“We will not surrender, we are not afraid to die!”
“Very stirring,” Will commented.
“I’d follow him,” Valiant agreed, “although I always find that war cries are better when they don’t mention the possibility of death for anyone other than the opponents.”
“My favourite was always ‘I’ll dance on your grave, you mother-fucking, incontinent dogs,’” Will mused, side stepping as more Alliance troops forced their way in to the room.
“Personally, I always liked them quite simple. ‘Die! Die! Die!’ for instance. If you overcomplicate it, they can’t quite make out what you’re saying, and you don’t scare them so much as confuse them.”
“That’s the whole point,” Will said, “if they’re thinking about what you just said, they’re not thinking about the fact that you’re aiming a gun at their head.”
“Death to the Alliance!” Mordred yelled.
“Now that’s catchy,” Valiant said, with an approving nod.
“Yeah - but it’s already been done.”
The yelling over, the guttural bellowing beginning, and the shots began to ring out. The two sides ran at each other, the Alliance’s superior technology and training easily matching the enthusiasm and raw power of the Sensitives Mordred led. And in the middle of it, standing as though she was a statue was Morgana.
“The idiot girl’s not even ducking,” Valiant growled.
“We’re going to have to go in there and carry her out,” Will said, dodging a man with a long blade.
“Or we could leave her…”
Will glared at him.
“Or we could go in there and carry her out, Captain.”
“Good idea.”
“What’s she even staring at?”
“The television screen,” Will said, following Morgana’s gaze to where the giant screen towered over them, still lit up with the bright, cheerful colours of the advertisements.
*
The screen was bright, just pictures, but beneath the pictures there were other things, like beneath people’s faces were their minds. She watched the pictures and she watched what was beneath it all too, and then she saw it.
Everything was laid out, clear and simple.
Across the room a man was about to fire. There would be a bullet rushing towards her head, a piece of metal travelling at 1000 feet per second. It would hit her in approximately 1.18 seconds and her brains would splatter out across the floor.
Morgana stepped backwards. The metal tore past her face and she could feel the air rush over her nose. It buried itself in someone else’s forehead, and it was his brains that splattered out. She didn’t even blink.
Everything was clear now.
Kill… that was all. So simple. The complications faded away until she was just a weapon. Fight, kill. She saw every step set out before her, both hers and everyone else’s too. It was easy to keep ahead, to move before they even knew what they were going to do next. Down they went, like dominoes, falling to the ground.
Kill… that was all she needed to know.
The moves flowed from one to another - like dancing, like thinking, like dreaming. She floated through the steps. She had a sword from a fallen opponent; she ran it through someone. She snapped a neck with her free arm. So simple when you knew how. Easy, easy. Take them down - ones in uniform, ones who weren’t, all of them had to fall. One of them was running away, she couldn’t let him. The sword was forced from her hand, but it was alright, she was still the weapon.
Lift her leg, kick, break his hold on her, twirl and punch him in the head - not hard enough to kill, just hard enough to bring him down. Reach for his gun, cock it, aim, all in one movement.
Stale mate - two guns drawn, one must fire, he might be quick, but she was quicker. She could see the thought to pull the trigger forming in his mind, see his reluctance. He knew her, he saw her as a person - his weakness.
Then another voice, a mind she knew, and she was falling, falling into darkness and the people without souls were there to break her fall.
*
“Huāng miù!”29 Arthur called out, tumbling out of the panel in the wall, looking round at the devastation that his sister had caused.
Morgana dropped to the ground where she stood, the gun clattering out of her hand. In the stillness that followed, Arthur religiously avoided the wide-eyed stares that Will was giving him as he crossed over to the prone girl and scooped her up, half-kicking Valiant, who had clearly tried to take Morgana down, as he did so. The other man groaned and pulled himself up, starting when he saw Morgana, until he realised she was no longer a threat.
‘Will?’ Gwen’s voice asked. ‘Is everything alright there, we heard something that sounded like a fight. Are you all okay?’
“We’re fine.”
‘Good, good… I managed to get the docking lock off. I had to bypass their primary code systems and instigate a manual override. Not that you need to know how I did it, of course, but… I did.’
Will breathed a sigh of relief, hefting Morgana in his arms to adjust her weight a bit more. Arthur was watching him carefully.
“Let’s get out of here,” Will said seriously, shooting Arthur a look as he hurried to help carry his sister out. “I feel that you have some more explaining to do.”
Arthur nodded dumbly, following them out.
*
Avalon was launched and in the air in a lot less time than Arthur would have imagined possible and, as soon as Gwen had laid in a course, there was another ship meeting in the galley, with Morgana chained up in the small cell that they used as a pantry.
“She’s not a threat,” Arthur argued.
“I just saw her take down the entire crew of an Alliance cruiser and a group of Sensitive rebels and you’re telling me she’s not a threat.”
“She probably didn’t even know she was doing it…” he argued, knowing as he said it that the argument was going to get him nowhere.
“Because that makes it so much better,” Valiant said bitterly, still holding an ice pack to where Morgana’s leg had hit his skull. “So we’ve got some wédenheortan drýicgan30 and we brought her back aboard. How is that a good plan?”
“Yes… on the plan front,” Merlin said, a little hesitantly, “do we have one?”
Will looked around the table with a deep sigh.
“There is a plan.”
“And what would that be, Captain?” Valiant asked, eyeing Arthur like he wanted to tear him limb from limb.
“I’m working on it,” Will snapped back. “So… would you like to tell us how your sister managed to maim and kill a lot of people back there. No offence, but she doesn’t really strike me as the ninja type.”
“Oh, Morgana was never completely helpless,” Arthur said, there was a pause as everyone stared at him pointedly. “But never like this, never anything like this. I knew… when I got her out that they had inbuilt certain programming into her, but I had the safe word.”
“You knew that she could do… that,” Will said incredulously, “at any time, and you brought her onto my ship.”
“And you brought her back on,” Merlin pointed out. Will ignored him.
“I didn’t know what she would do. I assumed it was something less…”
“Killing by numbers?” Will said. “Because I’ve never seen anything like that before. I swear, some of those men she never even touched and they dropped down right in front of her, and she knew every move you’d make before you made it.”
“The scientists who messed with her brain must have been experimenting on turning her into some kind of weapon,” Arthur said, frowning in anger. “They implanted commands in her… but she would have had to have been given the trigger. Did she talk to anyone?”
“I don’t know, things were a little busy in there,” Valiant said when Will looked over at him. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I didn’t see anything either,” Will said with a shrug. Didn’t even know she was there until the violence began.” Arthur sighed. “Although…”
“Yes?”
“She was staring at the television, just before she flipped out and became ninja girl.”
“The television?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe there was some sort of hidden message… or maybe someone whispered something to her,” he looked towards the door of the room they were keeping Morgana in. “I need to talk to her.”
“You can talk all you want to,” Will said, standing up, “but don’t let her out. We still don’t know what she’s capable of.” Arthur bristled slightly, but he nodded and headed to the door, noting that Valiant seemed very keen to get out of the room.
*
“Come on, Arthur,” Morgana called across the room with a laugh, raising her own foil again. “You’re not tired already, are you?”
“Of course not,” her brother lied, looking up at her stubbornly. Sweat was dribbling across his forehead. He had always been slower than her. She darted in towards him and he parried, his reflexes that little bit slower than before, but he was clinging on with determination.
“You’ll never get into MilAcad if you tire out this easily,” she taunted him, bringing the blades together with a clash. He glared at her and attacked more swiftly than she would have given him credit for half a minute ago. She took a step back, impressed. He was growing up, her little brother.
“You might as well surrender already,” she said, keeping her voice light, “you know I always beat you in the end.”
“That’s not true,” He told her, dodging her half hearted thrust and stepping back.
“Okay, tell me the last time you won,” she said, her mouth curving into a smirk. He didn’t answer, but ran at her in a lunge that was borne more out of frustration than tactics. He needed to learn to keep his temper. She used the momentum of his attack to throw him off balance and he staggered back, and back, and back.
They were practising in the second drawing room, Arthur’s idea. He had been top of his class in fencing that day and had felt the need to try to take on his sister again. She should have made him wait until they reached their own quarters but she hadn’t. She should have known.
He staggered back and fell into the small table by the wall. There was a sickening sound of broken wood and the vase, their mother’s favourite vase, teetered from side to side. For a moment it seemed like it would stay safe. But then it rocked back and over, falling to the ground as they watched to smash on the wooden floor, into thousands of tiny pieces.
*
“I killed people,” Morgana said bleakly as Arthur walked through the door. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, her hands, in their shackles, resting in her lap. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Do you remember?” Arthur asked, kneeling down.
“I remember dancing… and floating.”
“You fought a lot of people,” he said slowly.
“I know, Arthur. I know what I did, but I don’t remember it. It’s like I read about it somewhere. I killed people and I don’t even know why.”
“Did someone talk to you?” he asked carefully. “Did you see someone you recognised, or hear a certain phrase? The Captain said you were looking at the television screen.”
“No, there’s nothing…” she said. “How long are they going to keep me here?” she asked, looking down at the chains.
“Until they feel safe,” Arthur replied. “I don’t know when that will be.”
“Never. I’m never going to be safe again… Never safe.”
“No,” her brother said resolutely, “one day you’ll be safe.”
“A gun is still a gun, even when it’s in its holster. A sword is still a sword in its sheath,” she told him solemnly. “I remember that I remembered everything. I saw it all - all the things I know that I didn’t know I knew. All the things I saw that I never noticed. They’re still there, the people with no souls, only now they’re louder. The silence is louder… and I think it’s coming closer.”
“What is?” Arthur asked.
“The end.”
*
“The end of our chase is coming up,” said the General, smiling over at where Edwin stood in front of the screen.
“Play it again,” the operative instructed, and the grainy green-grey clip of video footage was shown again.
“Do we know who these people are, the ones who leave with her and the young Pendragon?” he asked.
“Yes sir, petty criminals from the outer planets: smugglers, thieves, that sort of thing, nothing big time. There’s nothing that you would be interested in, sir.”
“I am interested in everything, General. Every detail might be vital. Get me the files on these men, and send out a new bulletin for them - dangerous criminals, not to be approached and to be considered armed and dangerous.”
“They’re not really dangerous, sir.”
“They are whatever I say they are, General. And they are no less dangerous than any other criminal - more so in fact. There is an air of mystery, of glamour, around smugglers and pirates. They seem the romantic figures of legend. Call them that and they become gallant freedom fighters, call them murderers and they are merely brutal thugs. They are part of the disease, and, as such, must be eradicated.”
“Yes sir.”
“Good man, good man,” Edwin watched the wall for a moment, until two new files flashed onto his personal view screen. Will and Valiant’s faces appeared, and details of their lives. He sighed and looked up at where Morgana’s face was frozen onscreen, staring up at the television screen on the wall of the bar. “So you have found more friends… that is a pity, but unavoidable.”
*
The same image was displayed on the screens in Avalon’s bridge as most of the crew watched, Arthur standing slightly awkwardly to one side.
The dragon’s face reappeared on the central screen.
“It’s fascinating,” he said, “the amount of preparation. That two such tiny things should coincide with such cataclysmic results.”
“Stop babbling and tell us what you’ve found,” Will instructed, not in the mood for cryptic half-sentences.
“There’s a code… imbued into things. Not so much a code really as an aura… something only visible to Sensitives. It’s piggybacking on the signal, reaching out everywhere, like a spider’s web. And it’s hidden in what the young lady is watching. She didn’t talk to anybody, true, but somebody did talk to her.”
“Through the television,” Will said.
“Precisely. But… this is high level work. It has an element of destiny about it. I wouldn’t say that this was done by some hack in a research lab. This signal is a work of art. It blends beautifully. I almost didn’t spot the thing.”
“What are you saying?” asked Lancelot.
“This thing - Government issue, I’d say. They keep a few Sensitives on staff, hypocrisy and double standards at work, you know how they do things.”
“The Alliance spoke to Morgana through the television?” Arthur asked in disbelief.
“Wait a second,” Gwen said, pausing the play of the video as Morgana turned towards the television again. “Can you zoom in on her there?” Without replying, the Dragon flicked a few switches and the image zoomed in on Morgana’s face. “Play… Did you see that?”
“She said something,” Arthur muttered, “what was it, I couldn’t quite make out. Play it again.”
“Yes sir,” the Dragon said, clearly a little affronted by his tone of voice.
“Nimueh,” Lancelot said after a moment. “She said Nimueh.”
“What the hell is Nimueh?”
*
“Do you remember what you said?”
“Nimueh…” Morgana breathed.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Nimueh went mad.”
“Nimueh’s a person?” Arthur asked, leaning closer.
“They drove her mad, they ate her soul.”
“Is that all you can tell me?”
“She’s empty now…”
“Have you met her?”
“No, but I will.”
*
“Gaius,” Merlin said, smiling at the old man over the view-screen. “We should be with you in a couple of days. We’ve been having some trouble with our newest house guests.”
“Nothing you can’t handle, I hope,” Gaius said.
“Oh, nothing too bad,” Merlin assured him.
“Merlin?” The man sounded stern, and Merlin knew that he had been found out.
“It’ll be fine, Gaius, you know how it is: heads down, avoiding Alliance out posts, the usual.”
“Of course, but ‘the usual’ usually ends up with one or more of you being tortured or shot, and with you having to leave town in a hurry.” Merlin laughed. “And since I left you haven’t had a doctor aboard. Will and Lancelot’s field experience is all well and good, but if anything more serious than a graze or a dislocated shoulder happens then you’re in trouble.”
“We’ll be fine, Gaius,” Merlin said. “And we’ll see you in a few days.”
“Make sure you do.”
“Oh… and Gaius?”
“Yes?”
“Have you heard of someone called Nimueh?”
The old man looked thoughtful for a moment before shaking his head.
“It rings a bell, but nothing specific. Why?”
“Nothing important. Thanks. Bye!”
*
They didn’t scream. Morgana remembered that part, they didn’t scream even a little bit as their souls were sucked out of them. They just let it happen… except those who didn’t.
Outside, on the bridge, Will was having a conversation with Lancelot, they were 17.8 metres away from her, but she could hear every word as clear as if they were standing right next to her.
“She’s dangerous.”
“She was in the middle of a battle, she was protecting herself.”
“She didn’t care who she killed, Lancelot. You weren’t there, you didn’t see her. She just took them out like they were puppets, any of them. Alliance, the rebels, Valiant. She dropped him with two blows, Lancelot. I saw her break a man’s neck without even looking at him.”
“We can’t just keep her chained up in there forever.”
“Maybe Valiant was right, maybe we should have spaced her while we had the chance. Maybe I should have left her there.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“No… you’re right, I wouldn’t. I just wish I knew what to do.”
Space… vast empty nothingness. Light-years and light-years of vacuum. No people, no voices, no one crying out. Morgana wondered what nothing would be like. To be left alone in her own skull. Or did the souls wander out there in space? Was that where they lived when they left the bodies? Would her soul live out there forever, drifting, hopeless, aimless?
She shivered at the thought. It was better to stay with the voices, the pain and the memories that flooded her mind, memories that weren’t hers, memories of things that had not happened yet. She would not lie down and let them steal her soul. She would not let them hollow her out.
In the cold storage room, lying on the hard metal and with her wrists bound together, Morgana smiled. It was just a matter of waiting.
In her head, the soulless people waited with her.
*
part 4