A deafening, bassy horn sounded through a tinny loudspeaker and startled Zynthtia awake. She screamed and began to panic when she realized that she was not sleeping in her cot on the base; she was in a filthy wet concrete room with only a mesh-covered hole to the cloudless blue sky above them for light. There was a metal bulkhead trapping her within that could clearly only be opened from the other side. Above to it was the loudspeaker, protruding from the cracked walls where moss and other jungle plants slowly wormed their way in. Small streams of swamp water were trickling in then pouring down the angled floor to the drain and dozens of the odd almost-insects that were this planet's only native life buzzed and skittered around her. She counted her blessings that only the small ones could get in...

The loudspeaker buzzed again, piercing her eardrums. She shrieked in pain and tried to get as far from it as possible. The tattered rags she was dressed in were soaked with foul-smelling water when she reached the other wall and she curled up in the corner, covering her ears. Where the fuck was she!? 

The realization hit her fast and hard. The only real option was a prison of some kind. She was behind enemy lines. Her head was aching and full of fog. She remembered leaving for her night patrol shift before... something hit her in the neck while she was smoking a cigarette.. It was fast and sharp, and a numbness spread from it fast. She reached up, expecting to feel the carapace of another one of the many-legged horrors that had buried its stinger into her, but what she felt was cold and smooth like glass. She pulled it out to see what it was, but everything went dark. She'd been sedated and taken unharmed, without a fight. They wanted her alive for a reason...

The loudspeaker crackled. Zynthtia covered her ears in anticipation of another deafening blast, but what met her ears instead was a woman's voice that she was all too familiar with.

"Stand up and face the wall, Lap Dog." 

It was the same voice that would come blaring from across the river at odd intervals throughout the day and night. 

"You are not a hero, Lap Dog, you are a pawn to a corporation. They lied to you and you sold your soul to a CEO. They sent you to die in the mud to protect their bottom line, Lap Dog. You will die for nothing and they will use your body to fertilize their crops. You are nothing to your rich masters, Lap Dog, no matter what they tell you."

She remembered being so shocked when she first heard one, but by the end of her first month on the front they had become a fact of life. They were so loud and startling that she couldn't tune them out, so by the end of her first year of her 10 year enlist, she was certain she could recite them all from memory. There were 30 of them total and they would play in the same order multiple times every day. 

"Stand up and face the wall, Lap Dog." She repeated. "Put your hands behind your back." 

Her accented voice was abrasive and emotionless and her messages were cruel and humiliating, meant to demoralize and exhaust the Corporate troops until they gave up or defected. They did their job well; soldiers would disappear frequently and be replaced just as fast by new conscripts from the Core Worlds and it was an open secret that command was getting nervous. They were trying to keep the troops from noticing by filling all of the empty cots, but it didn't fool anyone; the conscripts were young and green, they hardly lasted very long in the jungle, which meant that the problem was rapidly worsening.

Zynthia was a patriot, a volunteer who'd enlisted as soon as she was old enough, but she wasn't so stupid as to see that the current strategy was failing. The Corporate Confederacy was stretched thin trying to defend all of its territories from communist insurgents and pirate raids. It seemed as though they were simply there to keep the war at a standstill, to bide the Corporations' time while they finished off smaller threats and freed up the resources. They'd started too many fights at once that they couldn't finish, their soldiers were getting slaughtered en masse and all they did was throw fresh meat at the problem...

Zynthia scowled and did as she was told. It wasn't as though she had another choice, and she didn't like the idea of having her eardrums blasted out a third time... She put her forehead against the wall and her hands behind her back and the bulkhead screeched open. One of the guerrillas put cuffs on her wrists then roughly pulled her away from the wall, forcing her to face the door.

"Be compliant or you will be shot, Lap Dog." The woman on the loudspeaker said. "Take solace in the fact that we are helping you, even if you cannot see it yet."

Zynthtia stayed silent as the guerrilla prodded her with her gun barrel to make her walk. She relented, not keen on the idea of having a fresh hole blown through her torso. She was escorted out of her cell and down a narrow hallway lit by buzzing orange bulbs, lined with a dozen cells just like her own. She could hear the occupants screaming.

"PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME SEE IT AGAIN! I DON'T WANT TO! STOP! STOP!!" One of them shrieked, banging on the door.

"I'LL KILL YOU ALL WHEN I GET OUT OF HERE! I'LL CUT YOU OPEN JUST- just like... m-my..." Another said, trailing off like she'd forgotten what she was talking about. "...I'll make you f-fucking... suffer..." Her voice got shakier and she wretched loudly. 

"S-she said I'm g-getting better..!" Their voice was hollower than the others, soft and exhausted. "I just- just wish it w-wouldn't hurt so much..."

Zynthtia's skin was beginning to crawl. They were here for the same reason she was, and she no doubt be getting the same torture that they were. Dread gnawed at her. These communist fucks were going to try to break her, but she would try to stay strong. She wouldn't let their childish, utopic ideas into her head. She was smart and she knew how the world worked, fantasies about liberation from economics wouldn't be enough to sway her.

The door at the end of the hallway was already open, inside she saw a chair covered in restraint straps. On either side of the door were guerillas dressed in mismatching pieces of combat armour overtop a uniform that looked more like it belonged to a miner than a soldier. Miners. 

This hellish planet, Veleima, had been a prosperous mining colony for decades. While most of its surface was made up of endless swampy jungles and fast-flowing rivers, the mountainous poles were rich in mineral and ore. Thousands of refineries dotted the rocky landscape, raking in trillions for the Corporation that ran them. The guerrillas had been miners and factory workers before they staged an uprising against the legal owners of the planet and dubbed themselves the "Veleiman Liberation Army". They knew the land better than anyone and they used that to their advantage...

"Sit." The one leading her said, hitting her in the ribs with their rifle. 

She stumbled forward. They uncuffed her and forced her down into the chair, securing the leather straps around her head, wrists, waist and ankles. The chair was turned to face the back wall where a projector screen hung from the ceiling. What the fuck were they going to do to her?

They slammed the door shut, leaving her alone inside of the small concrete room. The lights shut off and the mounted projector behind her whirred mechanically. From it, a beam of light shone over her head and onto the screen, but no image appeared. The awful horn sounded again, making Zynthia thrash against her restraints.

"STOP FUCKING DOING THAT!" She bellowed impotently. All she could do was yell. "YOU AREN'T GETTING ANYTHING OUT OF ME! I'M NOT TELLING YOU COMMIES SHIT!"

A different sound began to play; a constant high frequency that reminded her of a dental drill and felt like a needle in her eardrum. It made her head pound and her eyes feel like they might burst within her skull. It was far, far more painful than the horn. She shrieked and struggled, but her bindings wouldn't relent. 

The woman's voice spoke to her directly. "You do not have any information that is valuable to us, Lap dog, this is not an interrogation."

The sound dug into her skull. She felt it in her teeth, in her bones. There was a rhythm to it and it seemed to endlessly grow higher and higher in tone. It drew her in and made her head spin. She couldn't take her focus off it, how it rang and chimed, almost sounding like music. A choir. Her stomach roiled. Everything was spinning. 

It pushed in deeper. The more she listened, the more it sounded like whispering that was just far enough out of range to make out specific words. It came from all around her. She was covered in it, immersed in it. It had pierced every inch of her. 

The projector clicked. An image appeared in front of her. Her vision was blurred, she could only make out splotches of red and green. She strained to focus her eyes. 

It was a photo of a Corporate soldier laying dead in a pool of muddy water, their hands still clutching their service rifle. Their blood-soaked uniform clung to their body, getting more and more tattered as she looked down to their midriff. They had been torn to shreds with heavy machine gun fire until they were nearly separated half. She gagged, so shocked that she couldn't form words.

"Do you feel like a hero, Lap Dog? Does your cause feel righteous?" 

The projector clicked, the image changed. Four soldiers were hanged from the gnarled branches of a tree, limp and purple faced. A wooden board with "LAP DOG" spray painted across it was nailed to the trunk below their feet.

"Lap Dog, can you see that your Corporation is lying to you? Can you see that they are the ones that tied the noose around your neck after selling you the rope?"

The image changed. A crashed troop transport lay broken on the jungle floor. The bodies of the occupants that survived the crash were lined up against its hull and executed by a firing squad. Zynthia tasted bile in her throat. This was sick, this was torture. If her hands were free she would have shoved any sharp object she could find into her eardrums for relief from the screeching, the ringing, the whispering. She howled uncontrollably like a wounded animal begging for death. 

"Your only cause is the interests of the wealthy, Lap Dog, but they have sold you a lie and sent you to your death. Your rich masters are getting fat off your suffering while you lick their boots clean for table scraps. You are less than a cog in their machine, you are the grease that lubricates it."

"STOP! PLEASE STOP!" Zynthia felt a warmth grow between her legs and dribble down the chair. She couldn't take more of this. The images had burned their way into her vision, like they were seared into the inside of her eyelids. She just wanted this to stop... She needed it to stop... 

A sickening hiss split through the unending cacophony that assaulted her and the scent of burnt copper wires singed her nostrils and mouth. She coughed and cried, but all that accomplished was forcing more and more of the foul air inside of her. The more she breathed in, the more the image before her warped. The bodies merged into one great mass, the blood on the transport expanded into fractals that dragged her in and didn't let go.

"TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!!" She begged as her vision devolved into light and colour. Blood red swirls undulated in front of her like a turbulent ocean. The sound turned to screaming in her ear. They begged for help, begged for death. They reached out to her, their twisted faces bobbing above the crimson surface.

"Do you hear their screams, Lap Dog? Do you think they felt like heroes as they bled out in the dirt?"

The voice came from all around her. It was inside her, it was everything.

"Are you prepared to die like them, Lap Dog? Are you prepared to be nothing but a name etched into a memorial wall and powdered bones spread over a field? That is how they will remember your "sacrifice", Lap Dog, even after death they will use you until there is nothing left."

Light died and colour faded until sound was all that existed. It was everything, everywhere. It cut and peeled her away until every single one of the threads that made up her being were exposed like raw nerves. It danced along their length, its sharp edges slicing and severing them one by one. 

"Everything you were has already been taken from you, Lap Dog."

She tried to picture the faces of her parents but they ran like melted wax until they too were nothing but screeching and noise. Her memories blurred into each other as more and more of her was cut away. Anything she clung to was ripped out as her mind was vivisected.

Her childhood. 

Her first day at school.

Her first kiss.

Her graduation.

Her enlistment.

Her cause.

Her dreams.

Her face.

Her name.

A sudden silence washed over her. There was light once more, and with it came vibrant greens and gentle blues. She struggled to focus on what was in front of her. She made out the shape of trees and the clear sky above them. Her gaze moved downward.

"Do you see the women in the photograph?"

She saw two figures standing in front of the tree trunks. Her eyes focused on them. Two women, but she didn't know who they were. One was taller, broader, and the other was short and slim.

Something behind her whirred and the light shifted hue. The image was now of the two women sitting together in a restaurant, the shorter planting a kiss on the taller's cheek. They looked happy. 

"Do you recognize the women in the photograph?"

She didn't. 

The image changed. It was a close-up shot of the taller one's stern face. She was dressed in a worker's uniform, her long black hair was tied into a ponytail that hung over her shoulder. She was pretty. Her face was nice. Her eyes were green. 

"Do you recognize yourself in the photograph, Dyana Kallis?" 

She couldn't. Was that her face, her name? It was so hard to remember what she looked like. In her mind there was only an empty space where she should have been. There was a deep sense of wrongness roiling within her. Why couldn't she remember? 

The image began to change rapidly, each one showing the same woman at different stages in her life. One second she was young, cradled in her mother's arms, the next she was a grown woman doing maintenance in the bowels of a starship, holding her thumb up to the camera. Images with her childhood friends, with her coworkers, with her family. It seemed like she had an ideal life, why couldn't she remember any of it!?

"Do you remember yourself, Dyana Kallis? Do you remember the faces of the people you loved?"

It stopped on a photograph of the two women standing in front of an altar wearing white dresses. They held hands and looked at each other lovingly. They were married. 

"Do you remember this day, Dyana Kallis? Do you remember how happy you were?"

It was impossible to remember anything at all. Dyana wanted so badly to remember even the tiniest detail, but all she could find within herself were the hollow outlines of where memories should have been. Her own wedding... She wanted to cry. Why couldn't she remember?

"Do you remember when that happiness was taken from you, Dyana Kallis?"

The image changed a final time. Dyana wanted to scream but her mouth wouldn't move. The wife she couldn't remember was dead on the asphalt, riddled with bullets. Her limbs were contorted into unnatural positions and her eyes were almost rolled back into her head, her mouth open as if she'd died screaming. The woman who must have been the love of her life was dead and still she had no memory of her. She couldn't even remember her name. Dyana couldn't handle seeing more of this, she tried her hardest to break through whatever paralysis had taken her until-

"Stop... Please..." Dyana croaked, her voice weak and raspy. "Why can't I-I... remember her..." 

She gasped for breath as the overhead light came on, stinging her eyes and turning the horrible photograph into a faint outline on the concrete wall. The door behind her opened and she heard a pair of boots click across the floor. A gloved hand ran its fingers through her hair, ruffling it softly.

"You are safe, Dyana Kallis. I am here to help you remember yourself."

Dyana coughed. Her throat tasted foul and her head pounded. "W-why can't I... remember..?" 

"You were conditioned to forget, Dyana, but now you have to remember."

"R-remember what..? M-my wife..?" Dyana asked, trying to get a better look at the other woman. Her body wouldn't move.

"Remember, Lap Dog." She ordered.

Everything went white.

Zynthia awoke on the wet floor of her cell with the worst migraine she had ever experienced. She clutched her head and moaned. What the fuck had they done to her? She hazily remembered being strapped into a chair and shown those awful photos, but everything after that was just noise. It hurt her head to focus on any of it. She gagged. Zynthia felt like she'd been taken apart and put back together incorrectly. It was like there was just one tiny piece of her that was out of place or maybe one that didn't belong...

She didn't know. She couldn't know.

All she could do was watch the sun set through the hole in the ceiling and hope that sleep would take her...

A gunshot rang out. She shot up, bathed in complete darkness, and huddled herself into the corner. What the fuck... She tried to stay as silent as possible, hoping that whatever was happening wouldn't happen to her... 

The bulkhead to her cell opened and standing in the threshold was an armed woman, illuminated only by the pale orange light behind her. She sat in silence, praying that she didn't shoot her like the person in the cell next to her. To her surprise, she spoke with an accent from one of the Core Worlds.

"C'mon, before they notice us! They have cameras all over this fuckin' place!" 

She was one of the other prisoners. Zynthia struggled to her feet and followed her out the door, eager to get as far from here as she possibly could. 

The woman looked fierce. By her age, she'd likely served more than just her mandatory 10 years and chosen to continue voluntarily. She was weathered, covered in as many scars as she had tattoos; a large one ran across the length of her face, from her lower jaw on one side to her forehead on the other, so deep it had probably exposed the bone. Her hair was shaggy and unkempt, hanging past her gaunt face to her shoulders. She wore the same rags as Zynthia but slung over her shoulder was a bandolier. Zynthia asked her name, and she introduced herself as Danelle. 

Zynthia looked down the hall to the other cells

"Shouldn't we help them too? Safety in numbers..?"

Danelle grew frustrated. "No, the reds got to them and it fucked them up bad, they're aren't themselves anymore. Not fully, at least... I picked you because you're new, they can't have gotten their hooks too deep into you yet."

"And they didn't get to you?" Zynthia asked, narrowing her eyes. "How do you know you aren't too far gone?" 

It looked like she had been there far, far too long... Her eyes were hollow and she looked badly malnourished...

Danelle hesitated, her grip tightening around her automatic rifle. "I'm getting out of here and I suggest you come with me." She turned and ran down the corridor. "Do you see any other way out? C'mon!"

Zynthia followed, hoping she was making the right decision.

Alarms blared and the lights flashed red. She heard shouting and quick footfalls from down the hallway and Danelle opened fire as soon as the guerillas entered her sight line. She took them by surprise and three fell in a flash of blood of bullets, collapsing in a heap on the floor. Another spray of automatic fire took out the remaining two, and Zynthia hurried to arm herself as soon as the coast was clear. They took armour from the bodies and as many magazines as they could fit in their bandoliers, ready to teach those sick communist fucks not to screw with the Corporate Confederacy.

The facility was immense. Rooms and corridors stretched on and on in every direction, leading to more cells with screaming prisoners inside. She wondered in horror just how many POWs were being held her, and what it was they were using them for. Zynthia wouldn't stick around to find out. If she and Danelle actually managed to find their way back to base, she would take joy in helping carpet bomb this hellhole into a smoking crater. 

The guerrillas dropped like flies. As clever as their tactics were, they were miners not soldiers. The two had vastly superior combat training and they cut a bloody swathe through the facility until they reached a surface access door.

Danelle smirked and patted Zynthia on the shoulder. "Hell, good work kid..." She sounded exhausted but still determined. "When we get out of here I'll buy you a drink, yeah..? I think you've earned it..!"

Zynthia snorted, unsure of their odds. A drink did sound enticing. "I'll take you up on that if we make it!" She laughed

Danelle's fingers traced down Zynthia's back. "Maybe after that we could..." Her expression darkened. "I've been here for... I don't even know... It's been too fuckin' long since I've talked to anyone normal..." She looked pained, full of loneliness and longing. 

"Let's just get out of here, okay?" Zynthia said, trying to change the subject. She wasn't interested in other women. She hoped Danelle would get the psychiatric help she needed at base.

Danelle nodded. "Yeah, sorry... I shouldn't have asked... Let's go..." She looked disappointed. Now was not the time or place.

They heaved the surface access door open, only to see that someone was already there, waiting for them, haloed in the crimson glow of the planet's two moons. 

They stopped in their tracks. 

"Forget, Lap Dog." She said, and Zynthia was torn to pieces.

Dyana felt the humid night air on her skin, the grass and soil beneath her feet. She glanced around in a panic. Someone she didn't recognize stood at attention next to her, and before her was a woman who carried herself with great importance. She spoke, and Dyana recognized her voice.

"Drop the gun, Yanys Carrvail. She ordered calmly. "Get on your knees. Your Corporate conditioning has jeopardized our mission."

The weapon clattered to the ground and the woman fell with it, her gaze cast down to the dirt and her hair obscuring her face.

"I-I-I-I'm sorry, doctor..." She stammered, then sobbed. "I understand..." 

The doctor turned her attention to Dyana.

"What happened..?" Dyana asked. "What did she do..?"

She had no memory of how she got here, covered in blood and holding a rifle, or who Yanys was. Everything was so muddled. She saw the faces in the photographs, the ones she should have remembered but couldn't. 

"These are the consequences of your conditioning and it is why we must be vigilant in your deprogramming. They turned you against your own cause, Dyana Kallis, they used you as a pawn against your ideological allies." The doctor stepped close and her features became clearer.

She had subtle wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and greying hair that framed her face tightly. Her neatly trimmed bangs covered the tops of her thin, red lensed eyeglasses and she wore a pristine doctor's coat with black nitrile gloves. She smiled happily as she intently studied Dyana.

"Kill her, Dyana. She is beyond our help and must be dealt with swiftly." The doctor ordered, gently caressing the side of Dyana's head. "She was trying to lead you back into Corporate bondage." Yanys sobbed but made no attempt to flee. 

Dyana felt her hot breath on the back of her neck, making her hairs stand on end. "Do you remember what they took from you, Dyana? Do you remember what they did to your Tara?" 

Was her name Tara? The sight came back to her in angry flashes of black and red. Her lifeless eyes, her twisted limbs, the countless holes that marred her body. She wept. They had taken Tara away from her... They stole the memories from her head so she couldn't even mourn...

"She will lead you astray again if you allow her to live, Dyana." The doctor stood behind her, hands resting on each of her shoulders, gently turning her to face Yanys. She leaned over, kissed Dyana on the neck, then lifted her arms so her aim was trained on the weeping wretch before her.  

"She is your enemy, Dyana, she could not be saved. Killing her is the only way to regain your stolen life." 

Dyana grimaced. They'd stolen everything from her... They'd taken Tara... They'd stripped her of everything and made her their puppet... She pulled the trigger. Yanys slammed hard against the ground, a pool of blood forming around her. It was done.

"Excellent work, Dyana, you hardly hesitated." The doctor praised, stroking Dyana's head. 

Her ears rang. She couldn't pull her eyes off the twitching corpse. 

This was right. This was justice.