I’m at the back of the room. Cornered. Enemy soldiers creep closer to me. Between us, bloody men and women lay unmoving.
This is the first memory I have, and it’s a struggle to hold onto it. I try to focus on the wounds of the fallen, but my mind won’t give up those details.
The hiss of scraping metal snaps my eyes open. A tray slides through the slot at the bottom of my cell’s door. Those crafty soldiers use the end of a broom to push it through; by now they’ve figured out that I’ll take out a finger or two if given the chance.
I’m not a very nice person. I wonder if that’s the result of nature or nurture.
My stomach cramps painfully as I stare at the food, and only then do I realize just how hungry I am. Adrenaline and pain had distracted me up until now.
I get up and grab the tray. The sight of the food tempers my appetite somewhat. If I were less hungry, perhaps I’d simply skip the meal. Instead I pick up the plastic utensil and try what can only be described as gruel.
It’s over salted, and the more I eat, the queasier I get.
I set the food aside and steady my breathing. I’m all right, just a little too battle worn. It doesn’t help that my arm wound pounds like it has its own pulse.
The memory of those dead bodies flash through my mind again, only now, when I don’t bid it, do I see their injuries in all their gruesome detail.
I barely reach the toilet in time.
My entire body shakes as I vomit, and all the awful food I just forced down leaves my system. I feel weak, so weak, as I hunch over the toilet bowl. My stomach didn’t just purge itself of food. There’s blood in the mix as well.
From my injuries?
Behind me, the door creaks open. I don’t bother glancing back. I’m too tired to defend myself, and I’ve already accepted the fact that torture will come. If it’s right now, then there’s not much I can do about it.
Instead, a chair scrapes back. Someone’s taken to watching me.
“You’re sick.”
I recognize the voice. It belongs to the general, the man who knows me.
I’m not surprised he’s come back, but I am surprised at the shift in his temperament. His voice even has a modicum of control to it.
Experience that I can’t remember tells me not to trust his calmness. There’s always a calm before a storm.
I reach a hand up to flush the toilet, then drag myself to the wall, leaning my back against it. I’m sweating, either from sickness, like the general mentioned, or my injuries.
“I hadn’t realized …” the general starts, taking me in. “When you were sick before, we assumed you and my son …” He lets the sentence trail off. His Adam’s apple bobs.
I try to process all that he is and isn’t saying. Apparently this nausea is more than just fatigue, and the general’s known me long enough to have some insight into this. More surprising, this man who opposes the king is father to a man I was once close to.
“Will?” I ask, remembering the name he threw out at me yesterday. There’s something downright spooky about learning of a relationship and having no recollection of it.
The general bows his head and nods.
I’m afraid to ask what happened to Will. Afraid of what else this man knows about us.
“You really don’t remember who you are?” he asks.
I stare at the rings on my left hand. “No.”
I am a woman unmade. Something of skin and meat and bone and consciousness, but not a person, not in the truest sense. I have no opinions, no past, no identity. It’s been stripped from me. And even here I can feel the wrongness of it.
“That bastard,” the general whispers.
I glance up at him. All the earlier heat in his expression is gone. Now he just looks old and defeated.
He studies me, something like pity softening those hard features. “Our sources believed he’d been working on a memory suppressant. Never thought he’d turn it on you.”
A memory suppressant. So that’s why I lack an identity. Someone deliberately erased my memory—the king, if the general is to be believed.
He could be lying. About everything. For all I know this entire situation was concocted for some purpose I’m unaware of.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m the former general of the Western United Nations—the WUN.” He says this as though it should ring a bell. It doesn’t.
“Who am I?” I ask.
“You were our former emissary.”
Past tense.
“But I am no longer?” The cell is proof of that. Still, I want to know what changed between then and now.
The general rubs his face.
“No, Serenity,” he sighs out. “No.”
White whiskers grow along his cheeks and jaw. He doesn’t strike me as a man who forgets to shave. Everything about him screams defeat, despite the fact that once he’s done here, he’ll be the one walking out that door a free man.
“What happened?” I ask.
I don’t think he’s going to answer me. I’m stepping out of line, the prisoner asking questions of her captor. But then he does speak. “The WUN surrendered to the Eastern Empire and you were part of the collateral.”
I furrow my brows. What he says makes no sense.
“It’s my fault,” he admits, leaning forward in his seat. He threads his hands together and rests them between his legs. “I made the call to give you to King Lazuli.”
Lazuli, like the stone on my finger. My stomach drops.