Chapter Text
2170
Mindoir Prime, Attican Traverse
— 13 years after The First Contact War
Beyond the treeline, the world was endless darkness broken only by the flickering of far off fires. Hungry flames that melted metal and consumed flesh and grain alike. Flames that consumed her home, her world. Flames started by those that now prowled beyond the safety of the trees.
The forest around her was old, much older than the humans that had appeared so recently to claim the lowlands—the same humans now being extinguished like candles in a gale.
Screams echoed through the night. Screams like she had never heard before. She shivered at the sound. She could see the desperate, twisted faces in her mind and knew what act had elicited some. Her eyes were hot with tears, her hands and face slick with sweat and blood.
Dagny turned away from the decimated farmland, retching from the smell that wafted through the trees. The smell of burning flesh. Smoke heavy with death. Her stomach emptied quickly and then she tasted only sour acid. Still she retched.
When finally the spasms ended, she clung to the shadow of the nearest tree trunk, wet cheek pressed against the cool bark. The rough texture bit her skin as she tried to still her quaking body against the tree’s steady form. The pain was a reminder—she was still alive.
Yes, she was alive when others were not. The cost had been those other lives. Heart still beating or not, they were all dead.
She choked back a rogue sob, afraid the sound would carry and reveal her. The forest around her was dense but not impenetrable, thickly tangled with bushes underfoot and vines overhead, but both would be weak against blade and flame, if they were weak against simply the bolting body of a teenage girl.
The forest was an unappealing region to comb through without reason, she assured herself. As if reason could be at all attributed to those that slaughtered and enslaved her people as she stood there clutching a tree. Still, she had go on somehow. Yes, searching the forest would take time and effort the raiders would no doubt prefer to expend rounding up unfortunate survivors and looting what was left of the colony.
It had been more than a day now. A day since she’d spotted the first ships through the evening haze, side hatches mounted with harpoons. Thirty or so hours ago she’d been worried about her performance on the fucking Standard Cores. Now—
Dread tightened her chest, terror again flooding her veins. Soon the raiders would realize the refuge that the forest offered their coveted slaves and raze it like the fields and distant arcology of the city.
Destruction or enslavement—both meant death.
Go, Sunrise. Go!
Dagny gasped at her father’s voice and woke somewhere else. Somewhere bright and sharp-smelling. A web of tubes and heavy objects restricted any movement she attempted, and her face was half-covered in tight cloth, leaving only her right eye unobstructed. Bandaging, she realized. Was her left eye…? But she couldn’t raise a hand to confirm or deny.
But she was blinking. Blinking both eyelids, it felt like. Her heart stuttered in her chest.
An insistent beeping from some machine out of view kept time with her as she counted to a hundred, every second half-hoping for the cruel peace to dissolve away, half-hoping to be dumped back into the dark forest, into the death-smoke. Part of her was still there.
She was alive—she could look for others. She’d dropped the shotgun, but she could retrieve it—
Her head throbbed, returning her to reality.
No, they were all dead. Her family was dead. Empty eyes and mangled limbs flashed in her mind. Metal slashing flesh. Her throat narrowed. The infinite beeping quickened.
She writhed and jerked against the web of tubes. The machines—knitters—protested immediately, urgent and shrill. A presence neared, a body leaned over hers and stifled the machines. Dagny kept struggling through, pain erupting everywhere.
She was alive.
Alive. Alive. Alive.
Sobs ripped through a throat so dry it felt like it was shredding to ribbons.
“No, don’t move—it’s okay.” A voice was above her. “You’re safe.” Cool, gloved hands took her upper arms, firm but kind, and held them still. Dagny’s good eye would not focus on the person, no matter how she strained.
“You’re safe,” the voice repeated. “It’s okay. Stay still.”
But Dagny wanted to scream with the echoes she knew only she heard. She opened her cracked lips but found she had no voice, no noise to push up and out of her raw throat. Bitter copper tainted the spit in her mouth, but her body’s thrashing lessened as the voice’s presence lingered.
“Stay still, kid.” The voice was so soft. “Can you hear me?”
A light flashed at her good eye, testing. This seemed to reboot her good eye and shapes came into focus. The overwhelming brightness receded and she saw the source was overhead lighting clearly dimmed for a night cycle. She moved her head frantically for more information, some anchor in the sea of pain from the knitters. The world was a curtained off area barely larger than the bed she lay on.
“Can you hear me, Dagny?”
She cringed at her name. Then she saw the woman’s face—human. The night attendant. The woman held a thick datapad, the furrowed brows atop her face especially illuminated by the blue display. Dagny having stilled, the attendant disappeared for a moment to turn on a low orange light and tap at the machine just out of sight.
“Where—?” Dagny croaked, trying to manuever into a sitting position beneath the cumbersome equipment. The word ground in her throat like broken glass as it went. It was a miracle she got any sound out at all. Tears streamed down the sides of her face at the effort, stinging like a bitch in her bandaged eye. The attendant reappeared immediately, but this time the touch of hands on her burned like flame. She hissed silently, jerking away. She saw the fire—fires on the horizon.
“You’re safe now,” the voice insisted. “Stay still—don’t say anything else.” Her body convulsed, but the hands were there, strong and steady.
Dagny pursed her lips to try again anyway, mustering strength from some unknown source, but the attendant stopped her before she really began.
“Stay still—and quiet. You’re being knit,” the attendant repeated, sharper now. “I’m going to answer you.” The machines hummed over Dagny in mocking unison, but she obeyed. Even as the fires beckoned.
“You’re in Alliance space,” the attendant continued, voice soft again. “On the MSV Drescher heading towards Asgard. You were admitted aboard four days ago.”
Four days. A lifetime! Dagny’s exposed eye widened.
“Who—else?” she rasped slowly, and the attendant let her. The question passed from her lips with a distant hope she could not explain, even as she saw the truth on the attendant’s drawn features.
The attendant frowned and shook her head, tired eyes glassy. “Just about a hundred. So far.” Her words grew hurried. “We were passing through when we were hailed by the patrol that—“ She paused abruptly, weighing something in her head. “—that saved you. We’re headed for Terra Nova. The N7 insisted,” she added, somewhat absently.
A hundred. So few. The metropolis of Bienvenu had housed thousands upon thousands, the arctower already at half capacity and steadily filling. And the dozen outlying agro-villes spread across the vast, gridded plains, was surely several thousand more. The military base of forty families.
A hundred survivors.
There’d been twice as many residents in Dagny’s village alone. But her home had been hit even before the arctower—and with equal firepower to the strike that brought down the massive city structure.
A hundred.
Dagny might have asked the attendant to see a list of names if she hadn’t already seen the bodies herself. Hadn’t tried to pull them from the still burning debris when the pack of raiders had moved on. Hadn’t already wept over the remains of her entire world.
She knew no one she loved was aboard the Drescher. They remained in the smoking rubble of Mindoir Freehold, now multiple jumps away. She was off planet for the first time. Alone. Adrift.
A more insistent beeping called away the attendant.
“I’m upping your anesthetic drip, okay?” the woman said, clear and considerate even as Dagny made no sign that she heard. “Just sleep. I’ll be back later.” The darkness swallowed her promptly.
Whether the woman kept her word Dagny didn’t know, for when she woke again—from a mercifully dreamless sleep—it was far into the day cycle, and her curtained world was parted to reveal a bustling ward beyond.
The knitters were gone, but actual restraints held her torso and limbs down in their place. She would have huffed indignantly once, but nothing stirred in her chest. Helplessness was typical now.
A young man tended to her, peeling back the bandages from her face, finally revealing her left eye to the ship’s dry, sterile air. Her vision would regulate soon, the attendant assured her. Still she couldn’t raise her fingertips to probe the area, but the exposed skin was tight and shone in the bright lighting.
It was telling that he did not offer a mirror. She did not ask, even though she had to quash the urge. What did it matter what she looked like if she would be dead soon?
A straw appeared at her mouth, pressed there by the day attendant. He said it was some nutrient-heavy concoction that would help her get stronger and feel normal again, but Dagny had no interest in either of its supposed benefits. She certainly wasn’t interested in feeling normal again.
She was waiting to die.
—:—
MSV Drescher, Exodus Cluster
— One Week Later
Dagny lay unresponsive as the lights cycled from day to night to day on and on, wishing only to slip into sleep and never awake. She always did, though—eventually. She grew to crave the anasthetic’s blurry haze, and she sometimes screamed and thrashed and yanked at her tubes only to elicit a heavy dosage of it.
The night attendant spoke kind, soft words whenever Dagny had one of those fits, but they meant nothing, rekindled nothing. Kindness could not bring back Dagny’s family. The tears that always came were only hot, salty water, pouring over the puckered scar that slashed across her face from right brow to left cheekbone. She still had not seen it.
They were dead. Her mom and dad, her brothers…gone. Part of her was still there on Mindoir, kneeling over their broken bodies.
Their remains had been recovered, she was told. Buried and honored. The civilian medal she was given in place of their bodies was like a concrete block on her chest. The Alliance messenger in well-worn blues had saluted her, boot heels snapping, almost emotionless, but the lips had been a grim line wavering with shame. He understood why the salute, the medal, was a slap to her face.
They had failed her. The Alliance had promised to protect its citizens, and instead they had allowed them to be slaughtered and enslaved.
“Dagny, can I speak with you?”
Another woman’s voice—speaking Terran, but it was stilted with an accent Dagny couldn’t place. It was vaguely familiar, however.
She continued her listless stare at the ceiling. The woman didn’t push into her view, but she did keep talking.
“I’m Doctor Ricci, Dagny. I’m a psychologist as well as the head medical officer on this vessel. I came to see you a few days ago.” The memory was fuzzy, but she knew it was true. She gave no response. “I was hoping to get your input on something.” She blinked. “My superior would advise me to have a little more tact but…how exactly would you like to die, Dagny? As in, what method?”
Dagny could not help the obvious startle of her features. Her narrowed eyes slid to the doctor where she sat innocently in a very uncomfortable-looking chair. Dr. Ricci was maybe old enough to be Dagny’s mother, with wide brown eyes sporting crow’s feet on either end, a subtle statement when every day anti-aging procedures grew more accessible to all.
The doctor continued. “I was wondering how you must feel, why you won’t speak to me or anyone. Why you fight every aspect of the healing process.” She held Dagny’s gaze with her dark eyes. “You don’t want to get better, do you?”
Dagny’s throat went very dry, and the tubes in her wrist itched. She blinked again.
“No,” she croaked. Tears pricked in her eyes. Stupid traitor tears.
“How do you want to die, Dagny?”
She had wanted to die with them. But that was no true possibility now. They had died together. Died in a blast she had been miles away from. Now she would have to die alone—no matter the method.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dagny rasped finally.
“Bullshit—sure it matters.” Dr. Ricci’s tone was rough and informal. “This is one last chance to have control. Come on, Dagny—you can tell me. How would you do it?”
Her head spun at the woman’s strange insistence, but she didn’t answer, couldn’t think straight. The fires raged on the horizon.
“Can’t decide?” Dr. Ricci gave a leisurely sigh, tucking a loose curl away from her face. “Okay, well, what about last words? What should I tell your attendants? That Nurse Wheeler? What about the N7 lieutenant? The one who finally broke through and found you. What should I tell him?”
Dagny knew she had skipped like a stone over the surface of death itself. She should have died in the first blasts. Instead she’d been out in the farthest auxiliary shed, making out with some tenth year who’d die a few hours later. She should have died when that lone batarian ran her down on the eastern road. Instead she’d blown off the slaver’s head and arm with her dad’s overpowered shotgun. She should have died when that harpoon punctured her side. Instead there’d been the blue flash of a kinetic shield, a long burst of hot lead, and an armored body covering her own.
The memory was sudden and vivid. A marine cracked a vial over the ugly metal protruding from just above her hip. He retracted his helmet’s faceplate, and low words rushed over her to perhaps soothe the shock of it all—the N7 that the night attendant had mentioned. He had removed the sliver of unimaginable agony from her gut, leaving her in a mercifully dull haze as the medigel fused the wound shut and a masked medic took the N7’s place. For a moment, she wished she knew his name, despite her vow of apathy.
Dr. Ricci had stopped talking and was only sitting there, watching Dagny with not even a tinge of judgement in her own features. Dagny wanted to say nothing, give the head medic no further satisfaction, but then she heard herself reply.
“No one will miss me,” she argued, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t care if they did anyway. I’d be dead.”
“Flawless logic,” the doctor conceded, straight-faced.
But Dagny knew when she was being mocked. Anger flared in her veins. She clenched the fists trapped at her sides. She leaned against the restraints, pulling taut the straps of reinforced material.
“Fuck. You.” Her vision darkened at the edges, and the beeping around her intensified.
Dr. Ricci laughed. Laughed.
“You can’t fool me. You don’t want to die in your sleep, Dagny. You want to die fighting.” The strange woman stood, a datapad held against her hip. A smirk played on her painted lips. “Lieutenant Anderson should be here in the next few hours. He’s already visited you once since you were admitted, but you were asleep.” Dr. Ricci paused pointedly as she pulled aside the curtain to leave. “It’s very unusual for an N7 to have so much…free time. As you can imagine.”
Anderson. The marine that had saved Dagny’s life. Her worthless, hopefully short life. She would let him say what he needed to, but only so she would get a turn to tell him that he had wasted his time on her. That he should have gotten there sooner. That he should rot in some dark hole indefinitely for his negligence.
—:—
The day attendant announced that Lieutenant Anderson had arrived aboard the Drescher and promptly intercepted a well-known sensationalist reporter who’d gotten aboard with forged credentials to harass the Mindoir survivors he’d heard were being treated there. Anderson had accosted the man thoroughly then thrown him on the next shuttle back to Terra Nova. The subsequent paperwork and call with his superiors had stalled him, Nurse Wheeler said later. Dagny tried to stay awake to confront him, reciting her planned scathing remarks to the ceiling for hours, but failed not long into the night.
She felt the hand on her shoulder before she was certain where she was. Or who offered the comfort. She jolted into full consciousness, her own hand shooting to brace against the stranger’s outstretched arm. She blinked hard at the man who stood over her.
“I’m sorry, child.” The man pulled back, his eyes searching her with genuine concern. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Dagny gripped the cool metal of the man’s gauntlet like a lifeline, staring more at her own hand than this stranger. Her restraints had been removed. She looked down at her torso. All of them had been.
The N7’s gaze followed her movement wordlessly. Slowly, she rose up into a sitting position for the first time on her own. Once she’d healed enough, she’d been walked around a wide common room like a pet on a leash on a regular basis. But always she’d been closely attended and physically restrained—her unpredictable spurts of rage had earned her as much.
She marveled at the sudden freedom. The N7 was patiently waiting. Unobtrusive. Instantly, she was not afraid of him.
“I told the staff you wouldn’t need those anymore,” he said.
“Why?”
“Call it faith.”
Dagny sniffed disapprovingly but was silent. She rolled her neck, leaned forward further, her eyes never leaving the N7. Anderson.
“I can tell you want to disagree,” Anderson said. “Well, too bad. I think you’ll rise to the occasion. Might even surprise yourself.” He was not what she expected.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No, but I know what you’ve seen. I don’t understand, but I know the facts. Like I know it’s gonna be damn hard to feel safe again for a while. A long while, I can imagine.”
Dagny wondered if the Drescher’s head medic and the N7 had spoken. It didn’t matter.
“I thought maybe I could help with that part,” he continued. “I have a place you could stay. On Arcturus. There’d be an adult there, but not me. You could finish school. Take your Standards. Get your bearings.”
“My Standards?” Then she laughed. That rattled the N7. His brows furrowed, and he seemed cut adrift for half a moment.
“Sure, it sounds ridiculous,” Anderson countered. “But the doc says normalcy would be the best environment for your recovery.”
“My normal isn’t available anymore, didn’t you hear?” Dagny fought the heat that rose in her cheek as she spoke of her home. “Mindoir’s gone. I can’t go back. I can’t go home ever again, you stupid boot.”
Her dad’s constant cynicism suddenly clicked. Fucking boots always thought they knew best.
She was seething, trembling with rage. Dagny had never spoken like that to an adult before earlier with Dr. Ricci, and now she had done it twice in one day. But he was trying to tell her to forget. That’s was recovering was. Forgetting. How could she ever do that? She would rather join the faces that haunted her.
“You want to help me, boot?” She said through clenched teeth, glaring up at him. “Then kill me. That’s what I want.”
Anderson took a step back, reading the sincerity on her face. “No, I won’t do that. You don’t mean it.”
“So I guess the doc didn’t tell you everything we talked about then,” Dagny scoffed. “Because I do mean it, boot. Why would I want to stay here? What could you possibly offer to convince me otherwise?”
“I can offer you time,” he said, calm as ever, hands clasped behind his back. “To heal. And safety. A future of your choosing.”
Control—there it was. That’s what he offered. It was what the psychologist had invoked too. The idea of making a decision alone was daunting. It was quite literally her whole life on the line now. Her own life was all she had.
“What kind of future could I possibly have?” she rasped. “I have no one, nothing, and I’m already broken. Broken forever.” She shuddered as she tried to keep her voice low. “I know how these things work. I’ll see their faces every time I close my eyes. I’ll hear their screams in my nightmares. Feel the heat of the fires. I’ll never forget. Never recover.”
“Who said anything about forgetting?”
Ironically, Anderson was right—she did want control of her life back. But not in the form of safety or schooling or a future as he offered. She wanted retribution. She knew the only word he wouldn’t shoot down though.
Her jaw was set. “I want justice.”
His eyes flashed with something primal, something hard as bedrock. Bullseye. “When you’re old enough, kid. I promise you.”
She shook her head. Wrong answer, boot. “I’m old enough to lose everything but not to avenge it?”
“No,” he said and did not elaborate.
She huffed. “Fine.”
“Fine?” Anderson’s head cocked a millimeter. His only tell.
Dagny shrugged, settling back into the bed. “I’ll take my chances in the system, I guess.”
“I’ll expedite your placement.”
“Boot.”
“Brat,” he snapped right back.
She hissed at him then, and he took another step back. The N7 recoiled from her. If he was a fortress, then she would be an airstrike. Relentless.
“How bad it is?” she asked him abruptly, gesturing to her newly scarred visage. He didn’t seem the type to sugarcoat.
Indeed, he barely batted an eye as he inspected her newest facial feature. “They can smooth away that sort thing easy now.”
“I don’t want it gone,” she pouted. “I want to know how it looks.”
“Looks real tough, kid.” He wasn’t mocking her. Unlike Dr. Ricci. “I wouldn’t wanna tangle with you.”
“Good.” She meant it.
A long moment passed with only the beeping of technology and the deep hum of the ship itself to fill her ears. Dagny did not break from the elite marine’s searching gaze. There was a softness there in his riverstone brown eyes that was out of place—a bruise on the skin of a fruit. A weakness.
He broke away first, that softness she’d caught icing over. He cleared his throat. “I see,” he said quietly. Anderson shuffled and turned to leave through the curtain, rubbing a hand to his jaw. “Guess this is see you ‘round, then, kid,” he said finally, and he dipped his head to her. “Dagny.”
“Lieutenant,” she returned the gesture, if a bit more shallowly. Despite her grief, her pain, her brewing betrayal, she found herself grinning as the N7 disappeared.
He was not what she had expected. It was almost hard to lie to him.