Season 04 - Episode 09

‘leave the terrible’

“Ma'am,” says the EnFo. “The Church have launched an all out assault. They're killing everyone they can find and they're here, in the detention centre. They're coming.”

“What?” says Syl, completely overwhelmed.

“Here,” says the EnFo, offering her the knife strapped to his leg. “I have to go. We'll try and hold them back but if they get through then... just do your best.”

Then the EnFo is gone and Syl is alone with a knife in her hand, while just outside the sounds of slaughter and panic grow gradually louder. She backs away from the door until the bars of the empty cell press against her back.

Tearing her eyes from the door, she searches the room for any other way out. There is none. She is trapped. The sounds outside grow closer and worse, screams and crashes, sick gurgles and thunder. Syl realises she is crying and automatically wipes away the tears with her free hand.

She is going to die.

She knows this but part of her refuses to accept it, insists on hoping against hope and it's the hope that hurts the most. A sob leaps from her lips, echoes around the room so that she clamps her free hand over her mouth, breathing desperate strings of snot through her nose.

Finally, after an agony of waiting, she sees the door handle turn, sees the door swing open. Framed in the doorway is a panting man, bloody but grinning. His eyes fix on her, run her over and he leers with vicious joy. Without taking his eyes from her, he closes the door behind him and begins to loosen his belt, stepping towards her slowly, chanting hoarse and heavy.

“We are The Sons of Pho!” he rasps. “Lady of The Levels, Mistress of The Scapes, giver of light by which you see! All shall bow and know her name and I, her son, will now have thee!”

He lunges and is on her, pressing her back against the bars, pushing his fetid breathe inside her mouth and nose. Syl wants to scream but can't. She can't speak, can't breathe, can't think.

But the man has stopped, he is frowning at her, baffled. Slowly, through spasms, he looks down between their bodies and then staggers backwards. Syl realises her hands are empty. The EnFo's knife is gone. Something that looks like the hilt of that knife however, is now protruding from the man's stomach. Slowly, he looks from the knife to her, blinking in shock.

“You...” he croaks and launches himself forwards, back at her. He crashes into her and they fall to the ground, his weight and stink pressing down limp on top of her. She shudders and cringes but then realises the man isn't moving. His eyes, so close to her own, are staring blankly, his jaw is slack.

She hears the door opening again and closes her eyes, fights every instinct she has to remain perfectly, perfectly still. For a time there are voices and laughter and prodding with boots but eventually they leave. The terrible sounds outside quieten to deathly silence until it is just her and the dead man, lying together.

Syl erupts from sweat drenched bedsheets and gasps and gasps and gasps.

While she sits perfectly still, her heads spins and her heart pounds until she buries her face in her hands. It's been months now, months and months and still she can't escape the memory, not even in her sleep.

She's tried to move past it, to focus on now, to think and make plans for the future. No matter how hard she tries however, they just will not let her forget. Heroine of the Detention Centre they call her, the bastards even gave her a medal! It's GovCo's fault, the cults and The Church, the war and the suffering, all of it.

In the thick quiet black of her swanky new quarters, Syl makes a decision that will change her life. She's held back in the past out of fear. Fear of pain or shame or even death. But now, now that this is her life, what does she have to lose?

She is going to destroy GovCo.

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