Nat hated each time she’d had to return to Gela-Akragas. The graveyard of a city, abandoned and overgrown, felt like it was haunted. Nat knew it wasn’t, but just around every corner - sometimes in the windows of a highrise, another time at a crosswalk, one time seated in the passenger seat of a car - Nat swore she saw Her. Only for a moment, just a fleeting phantom. She performed better in this Arena as a result. She was always on edge. Always feeling Her lingering.

It’s why she’d looked down that street in the first place. She swore she saw Her standing there. Her crisp gray and black uniform and perfect posture sent a chill down Nat’s spine. She always just…stood there — not saying a word, imperturbable, hands behind her back. It would’ve been better if she spoke to Nat, but that small part of Nat knew that she didn’t deserve it.

Only if you were good did She choose to speak to you, after all…and Nat Temple was a coward. A defective.

A mutt who’d not killed with impunity when ordered.

And when she saw Alleah standing in front of that destroyed building, staring at the Hulkstrider’s vine-covered carcass? God…she couldn’t handle it. Had she known this whole time? Is that why Alleah took such pleasure in being cruel to her?

…Is that why Nat had grown to love it?

She took off in a dead sprint.

She wasn’t fast enough. She knew she would never be. The moment she heard Alleah’s footfalls in pursuit she knew how this would end. After the first time, she hoped Alleah would at least not ruin her too hard. “Meat like you deserves to be used.” That awful woman had said those words, hissed them in Nat’s ear a decade ago as the drugs burnt away any hope at resisting their influence. It was like being drowned in liquid cosmos - equal parts searing heat and absolute cold. They had a name for the cocktail, but Nat would never utter it.

It felt too much like an acceptance of what had happened to her.

It was better to run than to fight. To cede ground and flee. Nat was a coward. She knew this. She’d dreamt once of being a hero and doing the noble things that needed getting done. War stories never talk much about what happens to would-be heroes; the chains they ended up in, the graveyards they littered…the bleak destinies of the deluded kept from the martial chorus that was wartime propaganda.

After all, you cannot sell a good crusade without a hero and a cause.

Somehow her cage hadn’t been as bad as her cot at Fort Triumph. “Fort” was generous; in reality, the word meant “dozens of tents with sandbags and a metal cell to hold her in”. The doctors of the Interim didn’t understand what had been done to her. She spent two years in a converted shipping container, detoxing bit by bit. It was agony. Her muscles seized and she’d find herself trapped. Nat was elsewhere and elsewhen, Her hands clasped around Nat’s throat as She whispered truths that only Nat could know. Nat couldn’t help it. Chemically, yes, Nat truly could not shut her out, but She just…understood. This woman, with Her tone dripping poison, Knew about Nat. The words She spoke resonated with something shameful deep within Nat that she couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn off.

It snapped away parts of her until she was something else. Nat became something useful, something less human, even as She brought out something that promised deeper changes. Nat was glad to be rid of those broken parts. Being a person had some advantages; she couldn’t deny that, even if she’d tried to. They paled against how good it felt to not exist. Sitting in that cell, tucked deep within Fort Triumph’s “liberation camp”, she’d been forced to exist.

“Reintegration Therapy,” is what they coined it. She had to face it, day in and day out. After the first year, they brought her to a machine. At first, it looked like what She had used. Nat fought. She bit a guard. Fredricks. To his credit, Fredricks didn’t bust her jaw or break her teeth. Nat could tell he wanted to, the way he grimaced. Instead, he hauled her into the chair and clamped the restraints in place.

Needles lanced into her. Only as she screamed did her doctor finally explain the nature of gene therapy. “Cutting-edge stuff,” he extolled. “We’re going to de-age your mind and rebuild it to what it was before they got their hands on you,” he’d said. Then he called her by a name she did not know. It was the name she’d had before Her, before the words that made the Hound real.

“You’ll be a good soldier again in no time, Nathaniel.”

She never was. She’d become a problem. Her insistence that she was Nat made them disbelieve her. Even when the Interim’s doctors “freed” her a year later, she found herself shuffled between endless meetings with bureaucrats. She testified in closed-room hearings, swore in affidavits, and signed documents again and again. Doctors ran tests: imaging her brain, drawing blood, sequencing her genome…all to ensure that she was as broken as they “knew”. The official term was “resistant”.

They didn’t want her. They wanted to beat her back into a shape they understood. She’d been warped into a different tool than the one they now demanded. That her mind was hers again, save for the horrible memories she couldn’t rip free, was of secondary concern. Nat saw another one of her former houndmates at one of the endless meetings. Marin had been beautiful. She’d been a stunning pilot. The light in her eyes, though, it was hardly there. Her short cropped hair and the way she introduced herself as “Mark” with furious eye contact told her the truth of what they wanted now.

She would never measure up.

One Senator asked her how they could ever trust that she was truly “cured” enough to be out in the field. He asked what her “beliefs” would do to unit cohesion and morale. After the hearing, one of his aides slipped her his room key.

He became President the next year.

They wouldn’t let her back into the cockpit of a Hulkstrider.

Despite their promises, she wasn’t forgiven.

It was only then that she’d been approached by someone from Tact Corp. Fredricks. He’d landed in the private sector after his time at Fort Triumph. She’d wondered where he’d gone. There was something forlorn in the way he regarded her as he offered her a job…and mentioned that there was a way she could still be on a battlefield.

The Tag Hunts. It was as close as she could get, but it was something. No matter what they spun to the press about “reintegration” or “social enrichment studies”, it was just a different drug to feed her, Nat soon found out. She didn’t much mind. At the very least, this one didn’t rip your personhood to shreds. In fact, Nat discovered that she was learning to like herself. Some of the people who’d Tagged her turned out to be kind and decent. They were fellow ex-pilots like her.

She’d found friends. She’d found community. She’d found something approaching peace with her past.

And then Alleah joined the games. She was gifted, arrogant, and willing to do what others wouldn’t to win. She never broke the rules, but they sagged and twisted under the pressure she applied to them. They were violations in spirit. Nat hated her even back then. Her hatred only grew when Alleah first Tagged her. It had been a lucky ricochet. She was right to say it.

And Alleah had every right to make her regret saying those three words. She exercised it, again and again, that first time. Nat remembered the bestial fury that Alleah brought to bear against her all too well. It reminded her of the kennels. Of her place at Her feet. She’d just started seeing someone before that Hunt, but afterwards it fell apart.

Nat should’ve fled. That was the time. Instead, she let herself get used by Alleah for five years. She lost friends. She’d stalled out at work, too, once she realized that Alleah had gotten hired. She lived her life in a stasis of Alleah’s making, the energy of her charismatic cruelty trapping Nat just as effortlessly as She had.

Alleah looked so docile. It made Nat’s stomach churn. Nat didn’t want this.

Nat didn’t even know why she’d pulled the trigger that first time. Back then, in the voluminous and storied yesteryears of a week ago, she thought it was fear. She knew her heart was pounding fast enough that it could be. The ringing in her ears and the way her hands shook felt like what she’d understood fear to be. Except when she was scared, her stomach didn’t flutter.

Maybe it was instinct, then.

She hated that word. It reminded Nat of Her. She loathed that she could still feel the phantom touch of what that monster had done to her. She’d scraped her hands across Nat’s mind, leaving horrible wounds that Nat couldn’t let herself heal from. Took bundles of neural pathways, singed them, and rewired them. Ripped and tore at memories until they became broken, graffiti’ed flagstones that did little to mark the passage of her time through this world.

She’d tried to follow them, once, after She had played with her mind. Every thought of Nat’s led back to Her. Birthdays, funerals, lazy days in bed with the woman she’d loved…they were all Hers. She’d flattened them all and linked them together into a Möbius strip. Run far enough in her mind and she ran into Her arms.

And Nat had thanked Her because it was easier. Nat regarded Her as a Goddess. Her Handler. Just a bloodless word for what she’d actually been: a torturer, a trafficker; a specter that loomed at the edges of Nat’s vision, even now. It almost wasn’t even Nat who commanded Alleah to strip that first time. It couldn’t have been. She had taken that from Nat.

Nat believed it was Her speaking through Nat’s mouth. Had to have been. Nat’s voice was calm when she said the words, the way Handler would be just before she hurt Nat. And the power she felt as she saw Alleah obey, to see her tormentor naked and on her knees.…it hurt. No, it made her feel lovesick for Her. It made her understand something about why She had chosen Nat because if Nat looked half as abusable as Alleah had? Well, how could she ever blame her Handler for taking in the way that she had when someone was that willing.

Dog Lake. What fucking horrible poetry it had been. Some sort of cosmic joke to take the worst of what she and others like her faced - the burn of the drugs, the screams of friends as they betrayed them, the horrors they’d done because of the twisted love they felt for Her - and cheapen it into something tawdry. Lustful. A game. Even if she’d wanted to - which she hadn’t, she couldn’t, Handler had made sure of it - it would never be there. Never be then. Even here, in this city, so close to…to that.

It was one small glimpse of every bit of autonomy Nat had been denied by Her.

She’d reveled in a power that had not been hers to ever wield. It felt sick and wrong. It was why - when she saw the way Alleah’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, she knew she couldn’t continue. Where the woman had gone in her head, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she wasn’t present. She’d seen Handler dose another Hound in front of her. Seen the look of it. It was the way that Alleah had looked at her: reverence mixing with the slightest tinge of horror and rage.

But Nat was no longer Hers. She was a real, full woman, according to the courts and Dr. Astrum. “Nat Temple is in good, continuing, and stable mental health,” was what her last paperwork said. It was dated two weeks ago. Nat had thought of those words just before she’d stopped staring and pulled the trigger.

And Alleah’s fury at work had made everything about her decision worse. Alleah was right, after all: who was she to pretend that she had any say over the body of another person. Nat knew two things in her life. One of them was the horrid business of war and the other was the peace that her wretched, simple life had afforded her.

Why. Why did Alleah have to push her, then? Couldn’t she see that Nat was happy? Or as happy as a damaged excuse for a human being could be? No, she couldn’t. Clearly, she couldn’t because Nat had tried so hard to hide and it wasn’t enough. Alleah would never let the past be a dead thing. She’d even tracked Nat to that building. How did she know? Nat could ask. She should. She could understand why Alleah had become savage if only the words came to her.

“Strip.”

Coward. Nat was a coward and she knew it the moment she uttered the word. This was a retreat into a place she understood. Nat understood sex. Her and Alleah fucked almost every week. They had for years. It was cowardice to her to play into it. She would take no satisfaction into watching Alleah undress. She would not - could not - allow herself to be turned on. “’Answers, soldier. You need answers.’ Isn’t that what your Lieutenant always chided you about? Firing first. Being too rash. Getting yourself caught?” The jolt of Handler’s voice surged through her synapses, kicked free from what she’d left buried.

“Drop.”

For the first time, she’d had the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen kneeling at her feet. “Except she isn’t a woman, Nat, not anymore. You’ve changed her. And you know it.” Her voice echoed in Nat’s mind. It was like knives slicing into bits of her cerebellum all over again.

“Suck.”

The pleasure. God. It was so much worse than Nat imagined it would be. It wasn’t just seeing this proud woman dutifully devour her, it was knowing that Alleah would hate this…and that she couldn’t stop it. Nat knew what it was like to be compelled. Handler’s command of her was so absolute, so unfliching in its resolute completeless when it came to Nat’s psyche that even now she could feel it. The way it felt like someone had sunk their fingers into the grey matter of her brain and could twist it to serve.

Alleah was dutiful. She stared at Nat as her head slid up and down. There was adoration in her eyes. No. Not adoration, not really.

“A-Are you…grateful?”

Alleah nodded her head, adding a pleasant new motion to the rhythm she’d established.

“Fuck. Fuck that’s so…mmmm-“ Nat moaned as a wave of pleasure surged through her. She was thankful for the interruption. She wasn’t quite sure what that last word would’ve been anyway. Her mind was on fire. This was wrong, wasn’t it? Yeah. Alleah had asked for it, signed every box of her own free will and made sure Nat knew it, too. And yet there couldn’t be anything about the way her tongue felt as it swirled around her that was right. It was too good.

Nat’s thoughts were already spiraling into a bad place. Into a place she couldn’t go if she ever wanted to be able to come back from this. Except…she’d already gone too far. Alleah would get her fired for this. Her hand curled against the back of Alleah’s head. She pushed forward, urging Alleah to be more aggressive. She’d never thought she could get off like this, let alone get off this quick and yet…Alleah knew every bit of her far too well.

“Fuck! Fuck, Alleah, the strap…my cock, you…did you…?”

Nat’s cock left Alleah’s mouth within an audible pop. Alleah grinned at her as she stroked. “I got drunk once after I bought it and gave it a blowjob, Mistress.”

“Mistress?”

“Do you want me to call you something else? Last time, I had a- well, it wasn’t real, but I imagined the way you used me. The way you fucked me and passed me around to your friends to use.”

The look on her face was too much for Nat to bear. Fealty mixed with an almost evangelical reverence.

“In my vision of what I could be, you were my…Handler.”

It was awful to hear her say those words. The way she breathed out that last word with such exultant exuberance was noxious. It was confirmation of what she hated about herself. She would always be a horrible thing that hurt people, even when she didn’t want to. Even when she submitted and was used, she’d just hurt people.

Nat could feel her Handler’s caustic laughter echo in her mind. Images of Alleah with a collar barking for her - being good for her in all the ways Nat knew a Hound would be if given the chance - assaulted her mind unbidden. They sent a horrid feeling through her even as she felt herself tumbling over the edge. She gasped, shuddering as her cum hit Alleah’s cheek. Then Alleah’s mouth was on her again, sucking more insistently as rope after rope drained into her. Nat’s legs shook.

Her vision unfocused.

She’d never felt so shameful...

...It was incredible

She shouldn’t want this…

...She never wanted it to stop

The stunning wrongness of what she’d done...

...the abject rightness of Alleah being Hers

God, Alleah wasn’t a Hound...

...That could be rectified

Did this
woman thing
really want this?

it would
become

toy
hound
rapebait
abusedump
willingvictim
unpersonfucksleeve

And yet here she was, begging for it.

Asking to be made into something that plagued Nat’s worst nightmares. Alleah gulped and then smiled at her. It was a radiant and doting thing. She lolled out her tongue. It was pornographic, literally — something practiced and meant specifically to arouse Nat.

When Nat’s cock began to stiffen again at the sight, even the anger and fight left Alleah’s eyes. There was only joy.

“Did I do good, Handler?” The creature that asked was not like the Alleah that Nat knew. She really was some beast. Not a mutt, certainly not a Hound. “Not yet, but you can change that.” Awful thoughts bloomed in Nat’s mind. She couldn’t stop it. It was knellvine, sopping up the radiation of her old life as an Imperial slave and sprouting thick, weaving vines; they wreathed her mind in dark, corruptive notions.

It was an Exhalation, crowding out the light that might have told her to turn back. Whatever awfulness had taken root was too deep for her to pluck free now.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad.
Just for this Hunt.
Just for now.
To protect.
To save.
Liar.

“You are not an ‘I’, Hound.”

Nat grabbed Alleah’s face, her touch firm and commanding even as she registered that her voice was not her own — it was Hers. Rough, cold, like jagged ice grating against gray matter. God. She couldn’t help herself. Her heartrate climbed. The dumb fucking way Alleah panted up her was pathetic. Nat wondered for a moment if she’d looked that pathetic. Fuck, why was she doing this?

“Hound apologizes, it forgot its place.”

“Good dog.”

Oh. That was why. “Do you see, Nat? Why I chose you?” Handler’s voice taunted her, but she didn’t need to care about that anymore. Shame flourished in the light. Her mind was a place the sun could not reach. Voided of good. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Not when she Understood. Not when she Knew. Not when it was Clear now to her the power she held. Besides, it was Alleah’s fault.

“Hound. I am your Handler. Confirm.”

“You are this one’s Handler.”

“You will not harm your Handler. Confirm.”

“Hound will not harm Handler.”

“You will be my weapon. Confirm.”

“Hound will claim all that would harm you.”

Nat’s mouth went dry. Moment of truth. Maybe, just maybe this would work. She’d felt the way the Influence didn’t cleanly go away when the game ended. The mind had to adjust, had to integrate. It had to accept. Maybe, just maybe…

“My claim on you endures. It does not fade. You are mine.” Nat didn’t realize she’d said without the gravitas. She said it as herself, a plea as much as a command.

Alleah cocked her head to the side, trying to reconcile something she couldn’t. Fuck. Why did Nat think this would work? It wouldn’t. It couldn’t work.

A faint ping emanated from Alleah’s holocuff. The tone of it unmistakable, even muted.

Alleah opened her mouth to speak, but all Nat heard was the screech of medevac engines. In moments the medevac team was in the room. Nat felt the shock of the taser just as everything went dark.

* * *

Roque pushed at Nat with their foot. Nat pushed the foot back, not willing to budge. “S’too early. Quit it,” she said.

“You gotta get up, nerd,” Roque teased.

“Mmmm. Sleepy,” Nat’s hand flopped out a dismissive wave. She buried her head deeper into the pillow.

“Nat.” Roque’s voice was more serious. “Nat, you have to wake up and remember.”

Nat pulled in a sharp, startled breath through her nose as a hit of adrenaline coursed through her. Still, the fog burnt away from her consciousness with painful languidity. At first, she wasn’t sure of anything except that the cot underneath her had a shitty spring digging into her kidney. Then she remembered Alleah. What she’d done. She’d have to update her resume. ACRE would see her through this, maybe, but her caseworker was overmatched by a system spread far too thin. It’d mean months of unemployment on the short end. Min and Lace would give her shit for it. Elbrin would be concerned. Roque, well…Roque would be Roque about it.

That’s if she survived this moment. Her peril wasn’t physical, though, but economical: Tribunals of the Hunt weren’t ceremonial, so much as they were binding arbitration that had been known to bankrupt rich assholes — let alone someone like Nat. It was buried deep in the Contract. Nat had read the whole thing. It’s not like she’d had precious else to do while languishing in a dead end job working on Class I infotech. She’d burnt through all of the buzzed-about dramas in her first few weeks on the job, but it was only after a particularly humiliating and violating Hunt with Alleah that Nat read the rules.

She read them over and over, looking for anything on which she could nail Alleah, but it was ironclad. Every infraction had been laid out in the meticulous detail only a corporation would muster. After reading it for the fifth time to try to make her case for a Tribunal of her own, she gave up. Alleah had just been better than her. There was nothing about it that was luck. And Nat knew she could quit if she wanted to. She’d wondered so many times why she stayed.

She left every Hunt feeling violated by Alleah. She had for years. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to stop. It’d caused the rift between her and Sameen that led to their break-up…and even then she kept going. Eventually Nat stopped trying to make sense of it and simply accepted that this was the way everything was going to be. And it had been. It had been until Alleah had let herself get Tagged. Twice.

No, no let. And that was the key point in all of this — Nat had fucked up. Nat tallied up the things she’d done: Circumvention of mental state, exploiting vulnerabilities in proprietary firmware, conduct unbefitting a member of the Hunt…

A year’s pay for what she’d done to Alleah. Worse still was that she’d be banned from further Tag Hunts.

And somehow, even worse, she was back in a cage. Back in a shitty holding cell with the barest nods towards human comfort, sitting on a shitty cot, as another deliberative body who didn’t give two shits about her dignity decided what to do with her. Another Ouroboros, then. She’d ran as far as she could and the terminus of it brought her back to others making every decision about how she should live.

She’d been so close. Just a few more minutes and she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she could’ve gotten it to work. Alleah Masterson would’ve been her dog, her plaything…fuck. God. She’d really done it. Alleah had looked incredible on her knees, adoring Nat. No wonder why she broke Sameen’s heart just for the opportunity to have that woman look at her that way.

She needed more of it. She knew that. Alleah Masterson was a drug. One that Nat couldn't resist. She’d free herself from this. She was smarter than the small bits for which she gave herself credit. She went over every line of the Contract that she could remember. Binding arbitration meant that she was entitled to representation. It was embarrassing, but Nat knew someone she could call. She began to think through her options. She could offer a plea. She could contest it. She—

The door to her cell opened. Nat hopped up from her cot, bracing herself. If they were going by the terms of the Contract, the person stepping through that door would be the arbiter’s liaison. They needed the process untainted by bias. Nat spoke the words before she registered exactly who had entered the room: “I demand legal representation. My lawyer’s name is—“

Nat’s demand died on her lips as Alleah stood in front of her. She wore a scowl and her eyes burned with contempt. Her makeup looked flawless, hair done up in a complicated twist that Nat knew she could never master, let alone attempt. She’d traded her fatigues for a tight, crimson sweater and black pencil skirt. It accentuated every inch of power in her form. Nat’s mouth went dry.

“…fuck.”

“Is that their full name? Some sort of mononym?” Alleah’s barb didn’t sting as much as Nat thought it would.

“I…”

“The tribunal’s done. We’re leaving.”

“No, but— I didn’t even—“

“Temple. We’re going. Now.”

* * *

And that was how Nat found herself in the back of Alleah Masterson’s town car, driving away from what she was pretty sure was a Tact Corp. black site. The bag over her head is what tipped her off. Only after the car had rumbled in silence for the better part of thirty minutes did Nat feel the bag tugged free from her head. She stared at Alleah. She should be afraid. She wanted to feel it. Nat willed the fear to overtake her.

To be a coward.

It didn’t come. Instead she just waited, wrists bound, legs chained, sitting across from Alleah. She wasn’t interested in giving in. If Alleah wanted to humiliate Nat, she would have gone to great lengths to ensure the audience was there. It wouldn’t have been enough to have her hauled before a tribunal. Alleah’s vengeance was calculated and personal. It was getting used to understanding what it meant to be violated by yourself, again and again, because it pleased her.

They rode in silence for a few more minutes before Nat finally spoke.

“You’re planning,” Nat said.

“Yes.” Alleah’s confirmation was clipped and cool.

“You want to make me suffer.”

“Yes.”

“Because of what I did to you.”

“Yes.”

“And you think you’ll succeed.”

“I know I will.”

The conversation lapsed into silence. Alleah looked away. Nat just continued to stare. She took in what Alleah wasn’t saying, the loudness of the way she didn’t talk ringing in her ears. It was meant to be stultifying, to suck all the oxygen from the room with a sense of practiced boredom. At first, Nat felt it all too keenly. It was incredible the way Alleah could nullify even the possibility of conversation without even a single word. She treated Nat as though she was so unworthy, but the way she was too still seemed off.

Then she felt something stir in her. Something predatory and gleeful. It longed for success and oblivion in equal measure. And it sized up Alleah Masterson for exactly what she’d become to Nat: prey.

If Alleah Masterson would play, then Nat Temple would as well. She kept her gaze fixed on her quarry. Minutes passed in silence before they found their way into downtown Xuge-Arrapha. Only then did Nat start to take in her surroundings for the first time. She’d known XA was a sprawling metropolis, but knowing it and truly experiencing it were two different things.

The city was one of the few that had survived the war unscathed - for the most part. The architecture that remained was mostly First Settler in nature. Nat had always admired the way it was so distinctly…human. Unlike modern builders, the First Settlers had used whatever materials they could find. It was from a time when artistry mattered. Now that had been lost.

They must’ve only been a handful of blocks away from Eiselhecht Tower, home to Tact Corp’s headquarters and both her and her prey’s place of employment. She never hung around in the city when she could help it - everything was too expensive, too loud, too crowded in a way that reminded her of the kennels. Nat had seldom taken the time to consider just how much life there was in the place. Now, though, ensconced in a town car with tinted windows, she could enjoy the towering skyscrapers. The people. The sights of what the rebellion she’d fought for had made a reality.

It wasn’t hers. Not yet.

“You look like a tourist, the way you’re gaping,” Alleah spat.

“I’ve just never seen it before…” Nat said, continuing to marvel.

Alleah pressed a button on the car door’s armrest. The tinted windows went opaque.

“I was worried you’d smudge the glass,” she said by way of explanation.

“Isn’t she just wonderful?” Handler spoke to Nat for the first time from the seat next to Alleah. She’d not been there a moment ago, but now…now she was there.

“Don’t look that way, hound. You summoned me from the depths of your mind. If it helps, think of me as the angel on your shoulder. Take this. Take her.”

“No,” Nat said.

“No?” Alleah cocked her head to the side. “Your nose was less than an inch awa—“

“I wasn’t talking to you, cunt.” Nat surprised herself with the viciousness of it. Handler gave her a golf clap and - for the first time since Blackwater Bay, when Nat had marked 20 rebel KIAs in a single day - She smiled at Nat. It was all in Nat’s head. She knew that, logically. They’d deemed her as “resistant” for a reason. Until now, she’d thought it was because she wanted to be punished.

No. It was because she had things to teach this world. “Good, hound. You’re beginning to understand.” Nat met her Handler’s gaze, rage within her. She wasn’t Handler. She would be better. Handler glowered at her. “Fine. You’ll see things my way eventually.” Then she simply became nothing. Blipped out of existence. Nat’s vision cleared ever so slightly, as if a translucent film had been peeled away. She knew she wouldn’t see Her again. She was on a different path.

When Nat fixed her gaze back on Alleah, she saw the way the other woman flinched. Just barely. Just enough. Nat smiled.

“Alleah, I think we can be adults about this, right?” she said, her tone saccharine.

Alleah snorted out a baleful chuckle.

“I mean, I didn’t do anything that wasn’t in the Contract, right?”

Alleah fidgeted, her legs pressing together.

“And really, you’re still pretty good at the Hunt. I mean, you’ve only been Tagged twice!”

“No I haven’t!” Alleah said, her protestation sounding brittle and childish as it clawed free from her throat.

The town car lurched to a stop outside of a squat, three story apartment building. The Apartments at Aerielight - a tenement complex that was not a place anyone wanted to end up. Stuck in the middle of a “development and opportunity zone” free of both developments and opportunities, The Aerielight remained one of the few places that would house ACRE residents like Nat. It was a kick in the gut to her that Alleah knew where she lived.

Alleah’s face morphed from one of fear into one of triumphant, gloating glee. “This is you,” Alleah said, clearly relishing in the squalid nature of where Nat called home. It made Nat want to bare her fangs. She opened her mouth to retort, but the door to her left opened and she was hauled out before she could speak.

Of course Alleah had bodyguards. Nat should’ve accounted for that. At least she knew now. The woman handling her was tall with a broad build and silver hair. “You’re not gonna bother Miss Masterson,” she said, her firm, square jaw tensing as she held Nat tighter. It was more intimidation. Nat made a play of flinching - yipping, really - and it got the woman to loosen her hold.

She shoved Nat against the car. “Stay still. Gotta get these off,” the woman said. Nat wasn’t sure what she was talking about until she remembered the chains restricting her legs. Strange. She’d barely felt them this whole time. It was only after they’d been released that their absence permeated her skin, leaving another wretched ghost. The same were true of the ties on her hands, which the woman cut free with a rather impressive service knife. Nat recognized the logo.

“Seventh Legion,” Nat said.

The woman cutting the bonds shrugged. “So?”

“Northern Brigade, Strider Corps.”

“Good for you,” Alleah’s bodyguard said, before shoving Nat to the ground. Nat managed to catch herself without more than a few stinging scrapes on her hands.

“We’re all good here, Miss Masterson,” said the bodyguard, peering inside.

“Thank you, Rach,” came Alleah’s voice. There was a shuffle of movement before Alleah peered out of the open door. “See you at work, Temple.” She blew her a mocking kiss before withdrawing back into the car.

Rach closed the door and jogged around to the front passenger door of the town car as Nat got herself back on her feet.

“I don’t care if you were a fucking hero,” Rach said, scowling. “Stay the fuck away, yeah?”

And like that, they left. Nat watched for a long moment as the car drove away, disappearing into the city limits of XA; then she turned and walked up the cracked concrete steps, swiped her access badge, and pushed open the rusted gate to her apartment complex.

* * *

Nat climbed up the stairs to her third floor apartment. Unit 308 was at the end of the hall, next to the elevator that spent more time out of order than in working service. Even then, “working” was a charitable way to describe how it lurched and shuddered between individual floors. The Metalite wall panels - some unholy cross between plastic and steel that had the disadvantages of both and the advantages of neither, save for its cost - bulged slightly outward. Rust tinted the corners, revealing a sheen film underneath it.

Nat hated this. She hated the smell of metal and must that permeated this place. Every time she came home, it attacked her. It was a constant reminder of her immiseration. She’d accepted it, even as she’d felt her nose wrinkle. Now, though? Now she was beginning to do something dangerous.

She was beginning to reconsider whether or not she deserved more.

Roque was the first person to greet Nat as she entered. The apartment Nat shared with Roque, along with her other roommates Min, Lace, and Elbrin, opened into the living room. A large, plush couch worn threadbare in a number of places dominated one wall. On the floor in one corner lay a pile of fluffy pillows. Thrown over them, in slapdash fashion, was a blanket. That Nat didn’t spy a woman-sized lump underneath told her that Min was awake or at her job. The holocast played clips from one of Roque’s favorite creators.

Roque had themself propped against the entryway to the kitchen just off the living room, eating a bowl of cereal.

“We lost,” they said in a flat tone.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Nat said as she slumped into a shitty reclining chair.

“No you’re not,” Roque said as they pushed off the wall. They took a seat on the couch, crosslegged, and studied Nat for a moment.

“Holy shit. You’re actually not sorry.”

Nat wanted to protest, but she settled for the truth. “No, I’m not. I don’t care. I want to, but…” She trailed off, not sure how much to share.

“It happened again?”

Roque knew her too well. “Yeah, it did.” Nat stood and began to pace.

“Fuck, Roque. It was so…” Nat exhaled. She thought about how it felt, just to try to convey some semblance of the rush.

“She tried to kill me.”

“She what?”

Nat bared her throat, running her fingers along it to highlight the bruises. As she was about to pull away, her pinky finger grazed the scar that ran in a circle around her throat. A reminder, all too vivid, of what happened when someone disobeyed. When they got punished for letting someone live.

“Fucking hell. So you, what…Tagged her?”

“Emptied a mag into her.”

“Damn.” Something passed over Roque’s face. Nat wouldn’t have recognized it before. She did now.

“Do you ever…” Nat paused. Even as she wanted to continue, she felt her mind clearing. Whatever corruption had spread through her waned.

“Do I ever…?” Roque prodded.

“God, this is fucked to even mention, but…do you ever miss it? What happened to us, I mean?”

Roque blanched at the question, but it took a moment too long for the expression to form on their slender, lupine face. They swallowed hard, but then blew out a breath and rolled their eyes. “I mean, yeah, Nat. I totally miss being unpersoned and having my mind played with by a bunch of fascist dickheads while I’m forced to commit war crimes.”

They punctuated the statement by shoving a loud, slurping spoonful of cereal in their mouth.

Nat stood there, stunned. Yes, the corruption - that tangle of knellvines strangling the light from her compassion - had withered now that she was no longer in proximity to Alleah. Still, she felt changed. Better. And part of her knew she didn’t need the vines any more. They sloughed away because they’d done too good a job.

Worse, her confrontation with Alleah and her bodyguard hadn’t sated the thing that now resided in her. It was awake and burnt with the desire to claim something. Roque was a thing. It’d be so easy to just…

“You do, though,” Nat said. Roque stiffened even as a whimper burst from their lips. For a moment, Nat felt smug. Then she saw the look of abject fear in Roque’s eyes.

“Shit. Roque, I-“

Roque dropped the bowl of cereal and fled the room.

Roque had pulled Nat free from the worst parts of her life. They’d accepted Nat and told her that it was okay to not want to go back. They’d told Nat to speak her truth. They’d affirmed her at every turn and yet the first moment Nat had power, she’d made Roque scared. Truly, genuinely scared.

Nat sighed and grabbed a roll of paper towels. She folded a few and dropped them onto the carpet, watching them sop up the Kensamylk and soggy cereal bits. All this newfound power and here she was: cleaning up a frightened dog’s mess.

Alleah was to blame for it, too. She’d pushed Nat. She made her want this. Without Alleah, Nat would’ve gone through the rest of her life haunted, but she wouldn’t have had this ruinous urge coursing through her - one that whispered for Nat to do wicked and horrible things. She couldn’t turn it off, couldn’t control it, and it seemed intent on poisoning every relationship she had until either she found herself destroyed or in supreme control.

Alleah Masterson had forced the issue again and again and now? Now Nat Temple wouldn’t flinch. She wouldn’t hesitate. There would be no remorse.

And she would destroy Alleah Masterson.