“Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.” – Sydney J. Harris.
YC110.09.19, 22:00
The image on the mirror did not reflect the picture Thanagherion had of herself. It was strange she felt that disconnection between her mind and her physical self. Her body… her clone… hadn’t changed in a very long time, so it would stand to reason it was the most familiar thing in her life. To be precise, it should be the only familiar thing in her life. However, at that precise moment, she was not familiar with that face, that body or the way she felt. Even her thoughts sounded alien to her, like there were two sets of voices inside her skull: a perfectly calm and rational one, working through all that needed to be done, and a screaming one, amazed at how that strange being worked. She slowly blinked and that motion appeared to stretch to eternity as a drop of sweat mixed with some blood, dropped from one of her eyelashes and crashed on the cheap polycarbonate sink with an almost imperceptible sound.
She was battered, bruised and exhausted. Her left eye was almost swollen shut. The cracked ribs made breathing a chore and her knuckles were bruised and scrapped. The pistol tucked on back of her jeans was still warm from the recent gunfight. She mentally counted how many rounds were left, while moving and examining her hands to make sure she retained a full range of motion, taking note of a slight numbness on her left middle and ring finger. The capsuleer gingerly touched the cut on her scalp and wiped the dried blood away, happy to see it had stopped bleeding.
But it was not the damage that made her feel different or unrecognizable. No, she had been through some bad scrapes and came out in worse shape than this, so it wasn’t the dents and kinks on the chassis, so to speak, that worried her or made her feel like a stranger to herself. What made her feel different was the realization that she had changed in the past two days. Her outlook had changed, her behavior, the way she thought about herself. Or had she suddenly come to some sort of realization about herself and who she really was?
She checked if the door to the dingy room was locked and then proceeded to hardwire the door lock to only open from the inside, no matter what anyone tried. The lock effectively became a standalone mechanism with a physical trigger.
«Good luck opening that with anything other than a cutting torch» – she thought. The mercenary in her would have even smiled, if that option was out of the realm of the reasonable. Unfortunately, she knew better than that: when they found them, they would bring all they had.
After taking care of the lock, she pushed the metal cupboard against the door, to provide an extra barrier of protection. Only then, did she slid to the floor and sat down. She pulled out the snub nosed pistol and looked at it. Its owner would miss such a piece, with its zydrine laced grip, if he was still alive. The contoured grip sat uneasily in her hand. It has not been made for her so, after a fashion, the gun fought her grip.
Her time in the Gallentean Special Forces would serve her well for the next few hours. If it served well enough, maybe she could do what she had set out to do… if she lived up to the corps finest ideals, she might even survive this day.
The room felt claustrophobic. The air recycling was working poorly in this forgotten corner of the station and so were the environmental controls. It felt like a tropical jungle: warm, damp and sticky. The top clung to her skin and made her feel trapped. She wished she was on her capsule and could simply brush this problem away with that instinctive flick of her fingers which operated the blasters. Unfortunately, she was trapped and her body was meat, not metal, and she was going to have to plan this accordingly.
The next step in her plan was not pleasant. She rummaged through her backpack until she found the small flask, not much bigger than her hand and placed it on the corner of the sink, before reaching into her right combat boot and pulling her knife out. It was a nice blade, with a serrated edge on one side and a wickedly sharp edge on the other.
Her fingers probed her hip bone looking for the place where she kept a hidden identity chip, just in case. Usually she wouldn’t have to resort to such extreme measures, but considering she had to smuggle someone else out, she was going to need the extra one. A deft cut and the small capsule where the chip was contained popped out. She pressed a bit of cloth on the cut to staunch the bleeding, before applying some healing paste to close the cut.
She picked up the flask from the sink and took a deep swig. The water inside was warm and didn’t do much to quench her thirst. She simply poured what was left into the sink and proceeded to pry the fact bottom open and remove the small hidden explosive pack. It wouldn’t make much damage, but it would be enough for her plans.
‘Honey…’ – she whispered, with an uncharacteristic softness and sweetness, to the little bundle of stubbornness who was the reason she was in this mess to begin with. - ‘I need you to get a hold of yourself, if I am to get you out, can you please do that?’
Then a pair of green eyes looked back at her, filled with pain, fear and despair, she realized she had ever been what she thought.
