“Ria Scorn, for the heinous crimes of murder, fraud, forgery, public indecency, extortion, bribery, malfeasance, tax evasion, blackmail, and grand theft I hereby sentence you to sixty years submission to public service. Just as you have taken from the people of our fair city, you too shall have something precious taken from you. I dearly hope that when your time is up you sincerely rethink your actions in life and return to a life of constructive productivity.”

* * *

This is it.

‘They’re really going to do it to me.’

I can see them walking by my cell as if I don’t notice the slight glances the throw at me. I’m nothing but a stinking prisoner in the damp, squalid conditions of Armoria’s greatest high-security detention center, after all. I’m not a threat to them. They think that those light trespasses against me will go unnoticed as I dwell on my own misfortunes—the kind of personal security that I know they’d never had before I was put behind bars.

I’d been here before, after all.

This prison, that is. A job two years back that saw me bust out a high-profile inmate with deep pockets and few scruples. They were fast on their way out of the country after I slipped them from the tender clutches of Armoria’s finest. Even started a prison riot to cover my tracks.

Fuckers never slept another day without wondering whether they’d wake to more alarms as their precious, secure little world fell apart around them. Seventeen other prisoners escaped in the chaos, not that they were my business at the time. One of them even wound up surviving the manhunt that ensued.

That one found me a few weeks later, determined to ‘thank’ her great rescuer.

Good memories.

Memories of better times…

Yet here I am, slumped against the wall of my tiny, dirty cell, more than aware of my hopeless position, and I’m filing away the faces of nameless prison guards like I have any chance of taking revenge on them.

They’d never dare before. Nobody had. I had reputation and skill and that was enough.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!

My fist crashes against the concrete floor and I cry out in pain, sharp and fast as my knuckles split open and run with red rivulets of my life’s blood. It hurts, hard and deep in the core of those fragile bones, but nothing but the skin breaks. Nothing important. It’s a good pain. The kind of pain you can take inside you and use to lock your heart deeper in you. Nothing can tear away those locks. Nothing.

Nothing.

Those bindings on my heart are all that keep my together now… I know my fate.

* * *

The Minder.

That’s what they call it. My demon. My usher into oblivion. The thing that will drain me of everything that is Victoria Nowell and make me their bright eyed, docile labor drone.

It’s the fate of most high-profile criminals and others deemed otherwise ‘irredeemable.’ Total personality death—for a controlled, pre-determined amount of time. That’s what they shovel to the judgmental masses anyways.

Bullshit. They never let victims of the Minder revert to what they were before. Not only would that be a waste of a perfectly good, no-strings-attached labor force, it would also release the worst of the worst back into the world with an added chip on their shoulders.

Soon, they’ll show up at my cell, bind my hands, and march me to the Minder’s room and strap me down. I’ll put on a show of resistance and they’ll be more than enough to handle me. Might use a sedative just to make sure I don’t struggle too much once the Minder’s awake and burrowing into my head.

I’ve heard stories.

Bernard Howe. He’s the first guy I met to live through the Minder’s tender ministrations. Kind, gentle, and covered in the most singularly brutal and graphic tattoos you’ll ever see in your whole damned life. He’s got the whole litany of criminal ink, from his mother’s name (Eileen) to a minotaur fucking a maiden over his left shoulder. Lots of symbols and tons more names too.

You could learn the entire man’s history from those tattoos. I sure tried. A life of crime dating back to adolescence. Gangs joined and abandoned, some gutted and some gone to seed as new blood took over their territory. Friends and enemies crossed out and adorned with black and red and white and green and violet and indigo.

And that’s all you’ll ever get to know about him, because that’s all the Minder leaves anyone with. Kindness, gentle disposition, their scars, and an utterly pathetic docility to their every action. Bernard was an assistant to the stables, consigned to shovel horse shit for the rest of his life. I tracked him down because his old buddies learned of his fate and ordered a hit on him—for them, there were fates worse than death and Howe had earned his and more.

Angelica Stromme was another, poor bitch.

I met her in less fortunate circumstances. Finished with her sentence, she’d been released onto the streets with only the most superficial veneer of a personality. Two days out of prison she happened upon a ‘masseur’ that would take her in and she became the newest member of the Friendly Hands.

If I need to explain it to you, then you obviously didn’t catch the fact that I’m a notorious member of Armoria’s seedier sides.

She was wonderful, and heart-breaking to behold at the same time. I hope I simply die on the job before I complete my sentence—crushed by some construction equipment or somesuch. There are fates worse than death. I will never understand her relentless, undeniable contentment with her terrible lot.

Victims of the Minder are incapable of such things as recognition of their own personal misfortune.

I still haven’t described the technical aspects of the Minder, and that’s because I don’t understand most of it. Only that you go in and leave a mindlessly empty shell of a person.

It fucks with your head. It cores you out, leaving what they choose to leave you with. Basic language skills, table manners, how to shit with modern day plumbing. The works. They don’t even leave you with the name—that’s not ‘useful information’ and may even jog the victim’s memories in extreme situations.

I won’t even know my own name once I come out. I was sentenced as Ria Scorn, and that’s the name I’ll have for the rest of my life; I refuse to let Victoria Nowell—the name my sister and mother grew up knowing—become so tainted. Victoria Nowell is dead to all but myself, and soon she’ll be dead in that respect too.

Another guard.

“What do you want, shitstain?”

“Bitch like you doesn’t have long to go, Ria,” the fucker said, grinning toothily. “Think you’ll be so tough once the Minder’s made your head all soft and silly on the inside?”

“Here to badmouth when you know I broke this place wide open already? I’m not the only criminal in Armoria—I was just Queen Bitch of the lot. There’ll be others.”

“You won’t be much of anything soon enough, and we can handle the others. Bunch of my friends died in the riots. They’ll get their revenge tomorrow morning. It’s about damn time, I say.”

And he left.

And all I could do is slump against the wall, because I know he wasn’t just shit-talking for no reason. Meathead though he was, it didn’t take an idiot to know I was royally fucked.

* * *

I slept for a long time that afternoon. There was little else to do, really. I am a thief, and we’re patient creatures at heart, but locked in a cell there is no job to complete, no target to wait out, no purpose to be had. Just waiting for the sentence to be served and freedom to be eventually had. And I didn’t even have that luxury in this case.

I would describe my cell, but there’s only the one feature unless you start to pay attention to the various stains lining the walls, and I’d rather not linger on those. Some things are of nightmares made, and unclean prison cells are designed to make life unpleasant.

I was apparently blessed with someone in the bureaucracy kind enough to place me in a cell with a window. It wasn’t a large window (no idiot puts large windows inside a prison cell); I wouldn’t be able to fit my head through it if I tried, even. But it let in a slight breeze and vented some of the disgusting smell of shit and piss and blood and disease out of my tiny domain.

The prison was built into the side of a cliff as well, so escape was even less likely. Even the best climber in the world was unlikely to survive the winds coming up off the coast below, or the sheer rock wall going up and down for hundreds of feet, or the simple fact that even the most fortunate of prisoners are kept malnourished and emaciated.

At any rate, like said, the window was too small to fit my head through, so even a child was pretty unlikely to even get the opportunity in the first place.

One might wonder how I managed to break open such a fortress. The prison is built underneath Armoria, so named because it’s locked up tighter than the treasury, and because it’s bristling with hostile steel no matter where you go. The walls are high and well-maintained, the guards are stupid and suspicious, and it’s built against the sea, so your escape routes are limited.

It’s rather simple, actually. I bribed the seneschal managing the whole damn thing to conduct drills outside the keep for a few hours under the pretext of maintaining discipline. He’d normally never agree to such a thing, he’d claimed, but the target I was hired to break out happened to be a cousin (fucking royal was probably related to half the keep, honestly).

It was also an obscene amount, truly. I am a skilled thief, and not hesitant to bribe my way through security if it makes the more lucrative job more likely to succeed.

With security light, I posed as a page and sent the Warden after the seneschal in a towering rage (two letters did the job; one describing his absconding with half the prison’s garrison, the other describing his absconding with his daughter’s virtue, signature forged by said daughter after she heartfeltly pled with him to understand the resulting pregnancy).

It was all smooth sailing after that. I stole the keys from his office, shanked two of the patrolling guards while pretending to deliver meals, and unlocked every cell I could find. Escaping during the chaos was simple, and I even managed to blackmail the target to pay me extra when I told him that his mistress was the one to hire me instead of his beloved, rich wife.

Ah, to have such luck. Nobody would be coming for me.

Down the cell-block, someone farted loudly, the sound accompanied by a wet splatter and a cry of heart-rending distress.

I do believe the culprit will be shanked come next meal-hour. The stench that followed earned him some of the most lurid threats and hatred I have heard in my entire career as a master thief.

* * *

“Wake up, bitch. It’s your turn for the Minder.”

“Shove it where the stars don’t shine, shitstain. I’m not in the mood for banter.”

The guard yanked me to my feet and pulled my arms behind my back, hands greasy with chicken fat and bacon grease as the heavy cast-iron cuffs clanked around my wrists. His fellows laughed and jeered at my filthy, rail-thin countenance.

I wasn’t groggy. I hadn’t slept the entire night, knowing what would come for me in the morning. There was little thought to it—I simply waited.

I’ve never been one for existential ponderings. I was fucked. I didn’t need to understand heaven and hell and fate and destiny to understand that.

They marched me along the cell block, the inmates falling silent as I passed in silent acknowledgement of a lifetime of skill and reputation. They knew the name of Scorn that trailed behind my every action. Some of them I had probably worked with at some point, perhaps a shared job or client. They knew where I was heading and were grateful that it was me and not them.

I was grateful for that. Am still grateful.

What can I say about the journey to the Minder? It was short, at least. Lack of food, sleep, and exercise meant I was weak and tired and not ready for any sustained exertion. Even my normally toned body had atrophied after weeks in a cell waiting for my sentence, and the few days after had drained me further. They’d taken their sweet time getting me here, but now’s the time.

My mind wanders. They took me to the Minder. It’s a big fucking machine, full of wires and strange devices that elude my understanding. I don’t pretend to understand how such an incomprehensibly complicated thing exists in our world, but it does, and that’s something I can’t really do anything about.

The cuffs are taken off me, and I feel the stirrings of rebellion deep in my bones, heart thumping as the blood in my veins ignites with fury.

I spin, hand compressed into a tight, hard blade, and chop into Shitstain’s throat. He goes down with a gurgle, his esophagus crumpled by the blow, and I move to strike at the next guard—one of the laughing idiots jeering at my oily, tangled hair and sunken eyes—when my vision explodes in stars and fuzzy blobs.

I crumple next to Shitstain, hearing his death rattle from a long distance, and feel the pinch of cold needle and the painfully cold sensation of sedative entering my veins. By the time my vision clears I’m as limp as a rag doll and my tiny rebellion is over.

One guard. One revenge. One more thing to add to Ria Scorn’s towering reputation. I didn’t go quietly into the night. I didn’t face obliteration meekly.

They put me in the chair, strangely comfortable, made for reclining. My arms and legs are strapped down with leather, and another tightens around my forehead, another around my upper chest and torso and hips. My mind is sharp and panicked, the exultation of my final rebellion fading away as quick as it came.

One guard. One revenge. It didn’t make me feel any fucking better about being strapped into the Minder. I don’t want to be like Bernard… I don’t want to be like Angelica… I don’t want to die…

Several of the devices descend upon me, guided by the coldly efficient hands of the Minder’s operator. My ragged, threadbare garb is torn away roughly, several sticky pads adhering around my body, near to arteries and nerve clusters. On my hips, my chest, one above my vulva, on the insides of my thighs, at my temples. Oh gods…

“Testing. Miss Scorn, you should feel a small jolt from each of the sensors in turn.”

I did. Like rubbing feet along carpet and touching the hilt of my knife, around each area where those sticky pads were stuck to me. My limp body could barely do more than twitch at each touch, but I felt them clear as day.

“Why?”

My eyes swivel to his, bewildered. My pulse is beginning to race again. The sedative wasn’t meant to last—just long enough. Cold efficiency. My heart is pounding. I can’t escape.

“Why what?”

Muddy brown, his eyes. Like old, dark mud at the bottom of a pond, and utterly uninteresting save for the fact that their owner was about to murder me.

“Why did you choose crime? Why choose to terrorize Armoria’s people? We didn’t do anything to you. Was it worth it, now that you’re here?”

Something heavy settled in my gut—a lead ball that slowly began to heat cherry red.

“Last chance for confession, is this?”

“Professional curiosity, more like. Scum like you always have such interesting things to say before the end.”

Oh, it burns. Anger like this is good. It helps focus on something besides her imminent demise.

Before the Minder was invented, centuries before, when punishments were even more primitive and cruel, some of the worst criminals would have a ball of molten lead force fed to them. Legends told of how it would burn through their guts slowly until it simply fell through and the victim died painfully, during the process or soon after as sepsis or blood loss set in, or until they simply slit their own throats to escape the agony.

I can feel that same burning within me. My own personal molten glob of rage burning through my guts, spreading through my veins like fire and up into my mind.

“Scum?” I spit, unable to hit the fucker from my prone position. The gob flies out of sight. I hope he slips in it. “Says the person who makes a living off of murdering identities, of turning people into objects. I chose nothing. You’ve chosen to be a monster.”

“Monster hmm? I turn scum into productive members of society. It’s quite gratifying to see the stain in your souls leave your eyes—I am hardly monstrous; I am responsible for making the world a better place.”

I want to kill him.

I’ve killed before, but never felt such bloodlust like this.

The machine begins to hum, and I feel the sensors begin to jolt lightly against my skin, deeper this time. Into the muscle, spreading out through my body.

Anger is good. Anger fights the fear. Anger clouds everything. This fucker is about to murder me. I must make him flinch first. I will never flinch, not even in front of my death.

“You don’t fix anything,” I growl at him. “You’re the bandage on a festering wound. Your society never cared for us, and when we try and survive you lay the blame on us and do whatever you can to break us.”

“Am I?”

His tone is unnerving. Professionally, utterly disinterested.

I can get angry at this. I feel the machine’s power growing. The jolts growing larger and numbing my skin, before awakening it again. Where the sensors attach to my temples the jolts make my brain fuzzy for mere moments before I regain control.

I open my mouth to respond, but the machine ignites.

Shock flows through my veins, up through my body, and my mind blanks into emptiness.

* * *

I am empty.

The bed I lie on is soft on my skin. Warm. I open my eyes—scratchy with grit and foggy from long sleep.

It’s so quiet.

I don’t quite know what to think. I don’t quite know what to do. I stay laying on the bed, breathing deeply, and slowly, waiting.

My eyes rove the room, taking in the details. White walls; pristine. More space than… I fumble, my thoughts reaching for something that is not there any longer. A window on the wall, large, glass-paned. Plants on the sill, swaying in the breeze, green stems and colorful petals.

There’s little else to the room. The bed I am in is warm and cozy, with blue blankets and white sheets, the feather-pillow soft below my head. Against my shoulder, my hair feels silky-soft and well-maintained. Had someone brushed it?

Time passes. I don’t know why I don’t remember anything, but there really isn’t anything to worry about. Clean and warm as my body feels, it’s also hard to ignore the persistent ache within. Bones creaking in places, muscles tired and strained. It feels good to drift in a dozy haze and wait for something to happen.

The bed was warm, in the meantime.

* * *

Time passed. I was content to wait.

Eventually the door opened, and a woman walked in. She said her name was Corrine. She was the kindest thing, fussing over me, giving me food and drink and worrying over me like… like…

I don’t remember, but it felt nice. We spoke—several conversations since she sat next to my bed as I ate. Mostly about small things. How the meal tastes. Whether I wanted more to drink.

There were several spots, though where I started down one train of thought only to stall and realize I didn’t know where I was going. She seemed so sad when that happened, eyes haunted in some way that I didn’t understand.

“It’ll pass, dear,” she reassured me with her sad eyes. “It does with everyone. It’s not right, what they do to you all, but nobody listens to me. Everyone’s just happy when people making trouble disappear one day and stop making life complicated.”

I wondered what I’d done to make trouble. Nothing came to mind. I didn’t feel like I was a troublemaker, after all, but I didn’t remember much of anything so who knew? I asked her why she felt differently from other people, genuinely curious.

“It just isn’t right, dear. It doesn’t take a genius to understand that.”

Time passed. I’m getting stronger. My body doesn’t complain as much when I sit up in my bed. I’ve managed to walk around the room on my own power, Corrine always at my side when I try.

We spoke every day, and I quickly realized that no matter the subject matter—and we talked of a myriad of things—I could not feel anything but a light, lazy haze of emotion over my mind. The faintest of echoes of what I might feel. Was that sadness I felt when Corrine talked about the capture of a young thief the day before? I could never tell. Was it anger I felt when she spoke of my sentencing? I could never tell.

Days pass like the wind now. They come and go, and I barely notice, marking them only by the times that Corrine returns to my room.

She’s here now, not talking as much as she usually does. She seems sad, like she usually is when conversation turns toward me and why I’m here.

“Corrine? is something the matter?”

She jumps, movements jerky and train of thought lost.

“I… today you receive your first lessons, Ria. I’ve told you that I dislike this entire business, and I don’t like the thought of you… Well.”

I feel a vague sense of sympathy for her and smile, taking her hand in my own.

“It’s not your fault Corrine. You’ve been nothing but kind to me while I’ve known you,” I try to soothe her.

Her hand shakes in my own and she can’t quite meet my eyes.

“Oh dearie,” she whispers painfully. “I… I must go. I don’t want to see them put you under… It’s not right what they’ve done to you… no matter what…”

I stare after her as she bustles out of the room, muttering to herself all the while. I catch most of it. My senses are quite sharp.

“…can’t keep doing this…breaks my heart… so like little Maria… don’t care if she…”

Time passes after she leaves. I am content to wait, humming a quiet song Corrine taught me to pass the time.

Eventually the door opens again, and another woman enters, taller than Corrine and arch. She carries a leather bag in one hand and has the air of business about her. The door clicks shut behind her with a click and she stands next to my bedside, peering at me with curious eyes.

“So, you are the famed Ria Scorn?”

I blink back at her owlishly.

“I am?”

Corrine told me my name before but doesn’t use it. I am ‘Dearie’ to her. I don’t remember anything about fame. I can’t remember anything.

She smiles thinly. “You are, my apologies. I always seem to forget that I should not judge my subjects by their reputations. Futile business, that.”

“Okay?”

“…Shall we get down to business, Miss Scorn?”

“Ria, please.”

“Ria. Yes. Shall we…?”

I nod, and she pulls out a long, intricate chain adorned with a jewel at the end. My eyes immediately lock on it, the fractals of light emerging from it and the window indescribably soothing to me.

Phantom sensations raise goosebumps along my skin, and the woman—I don’t know her name, even now—chuckles.

“Ah, it’s always nice when half the work is done for you beforehand.”

I stare as she moves the jewel in front of my vision, utterly captivated by its motion.

Back…

Forth…

“You are Ria Scorn. This is your name.”

“Yessss…”

I barely note that my voice has begun to slur. It’s so hard to think…

“You have no memory of your previous life.”

“Nooo… I can’t r’member… None of it….”

“You do not want to remember.”

Feeling. Something hot in my gut. I don’t know what it is—it’s all muted. What is this emotion? It hurts. It burns. It’s searing inside of me. Waking me up from this dream existence. I don’t want it. It’s so… It feels like me. Hard and twisted and real. So unlike the dream I live in. So unlike the soft haze… I want it though. It’s me. It feels like me and I feel so lost…

“Ria. You do not want to remember.”

It’s fading…

“Noooooo…” I whisper, desperate. Mental fingers reaching out for the searing ball of me that’s slipping away.

So pretty…

“You do not want to remember.”

The woman’s voice is so authoritative… the jewel is so pretty… so hazy, drippy dreamy… so easy to relax and slip away… I’m getting far away… the emotions I don’t understand are fading away… my belly feels better without the hot lead inside it, eating through me.

Nooooooo…

“I… I don’t want to remember…” I sigh, eyelids drooping. Without the lead inside of me, weighing me down, I feel so light. Like I could just drift away in the wind…

“You are Ria Scorn.”

“I am Ria Scorn.”

“You remember nothing of your previous life.”

“I remember nothing.”

“You don’t want to remember anything of your previous life.”

“I… don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember.”

“You are a citizen of Armoria.”

“I am a citizen of Armoria…”

“You must serve Armoria.”

“I must…”

And on it went.

* * *

Corrine returned that evening with my meal. She only had to look me in the eyes, seeing the dreamy emptiness, before her words died on her tongue and she fled the room, leaving my meal at my bedside.

She recovered. She still brought me my meals and tended to my needs, but there were few of the conversations of before. I didn’t need them. In my mind was a spinning jewel that captivated my every thought. Every fractal of spinning light was a Truth that the nameless woman engraved in my psyche, holding all my attention.

I am Ria Scorn. I remember nothing of before. I am a servant of Armoria. It is my duty to serve.

I would sometimes say this aloud, conviction in my voice I had never felt before. Corrine looked ill when I would tell her my Truths, and she once told me that it was the blankness in my eyes that so scared her.

Time passed. The visits continued. I could pass entire days without moving from my bed. Thinking about the Jewel and its Truths was enough to occupy my every thought. It was my Purpose, without it I was adrift in a sea of nothing.

And the days passed, summer turning to autumn, the plants on the sill dying even as my limbs grew stronger with the light exercise Corrine walked me through and the healthy food she served me.

Poor woman. Corrine seemed to age as the season turned, her eyes downcast and sad. I reminded her of someone else—Maria, I had heard her name was—and she couldn’t leave me be even as my presence tortured her.

I retreated into thoughts of the Jewel when my mind turned to these thoughts. However faint, I did not like the ugly feelings that tried to seep up from nowhere whenever I contemplated my presence bringing Corrine sorrow.

It was mid-autumn when Corrine finally seemed to break through her depression. I saw it the moment she walked in the door, posture erect and determined, eyes flinty and expression brittle. It was an expression I had seen before, though I cannot remember where.

I cannot remember anything of my previous life.

I do not want to remember anything of my previous life.

She was slow to serve my meal, taking her time to pour the drink, sprinkling in some powder I did not recognize and slowly stirring the stew with a warm biscuit, thickening it until it was a delicious, hearty paste.

I devoured it with gusto, enjoying the meal as she made small talk with me, eyes attentive and sad.

And then suddenly I could not hold my spoon.

It clattered into the bowl and my head, suddenly intolerably heavy, fell to my pillow. Corrine took away the tray and bowl and set them carefully by the bedside.

Her eyes were so sad.

“I’m sorry Ria…” she whispered.

“Why?” I asked.

“They already killed you. They stole your soul and tried to keep your body. It’s not right dear… It’s not right… You would have wanted this… wouldn’t have wanted to be used until your body failed… until they could dispose of you like trash…”

I did not understand. I could feel darkness encroaching on my vision, a deep, abiding lassitude weighing down my limbs.

Why did this feel so familiar?

“Corrine…”

She was so desperate to hear what I had to say then.

“What, dear?”

“I…”

I felt something in me. It was not the dreamy bliss I had experienced for so many weeks, nor was it the fiery lead ball I had felt before the Jewel had enlightened me. I do not have words to describe it, even now. It is something I needed to relearn, and still cannot fully understand.

“Ria?”

“Thank you…”

I don’t know where the words came from, but they felt true. Felt right. From beyond the walls of my dissolved memory, something buried in my spoke beyond what I had become, felt the emotions. I did not understand, but I felt it.

Gratitude.

She smiled at me, watery and genuine, and I faded away.

Sleeping.