Rogues

Episode 45 | Leraie

The darkness and the voices faded into white noise as the small sensation of tugging gripped at her soul. She could feel her senses returning, her body somewehere far away recognizing her continued existence in another world.

What had at first been gentle sensations shifted upbruptly into burning friction as her soul was dragged away from the afterlife. She could feel herself breaching the veil as her mind returned to the shards of her physical body.

---

Blinding white light from somewhere above pierced through the fog of unconsciousness as Leraie forced her eyes open to look around. Her body felt an uncomfortable mix of numb and hypersensitive, like she was feeling nothing and everything all at once.

The fact that she was feeling at all was a miracle. Just seconds before, she'd been nothing more than her soul drifting through the vast expanse beyond the Veil.

She recognized this room now. She'd been here once before. It was the operating room where she'd been taken apart and put back together different, pieces altered or swapped out to give her the abilities that had killed her.

She remembered the aching pain of the tremors rattling her body apart. Memories of her bones shattering and the broken pieces of her skull piercing into her brain flooded her mind, along with the damp feeling of blood in her mouth as she'd bled out from the inside.

But there was no blood now. Her bones weren't shattered, her brain wasn't pierced. How? How had she woken up after dying?

"Welcome back, Vivaldi." Leraie tried to growl in the direction of the voice. It instead came out as a weak, wining sound. "Stand. We need to be sure we've repared your body correctly."

Repared? Her body had been in pieces, crushed and shredded from the tremors she'd tried to keep in for too long. There was no way they'd managed to repare something so damaged.

But, sure enough, as she pushed herself up from the operating table, her eyes locked onto the polished wall in front of her. The shine of the tiles made for a semi functional mirror and she could see herself, her unbroken body, in the reflection. She was alive.

Shocking her even move, her voice came out unchanged asides from a slight tremor. "How?"

"We have the technology to alter your body and gift you unnatural abilities without consequence." The Superior of Surgery explained, a proud smirk playing at his lips. "It surprises you that we also have the technology to reverse death?"

Another surgeon appeared at her side, briefly testing her reflexes and making sure everything was in the right place. "You may be experiencing a gap in your memory. We had to keep you awake during the procedure, to be sure it was working. We've had Doxuu remove those memories to preserve your mind."

They were right. Between leaving the afterlife and waking up after the surgery, there was a significant gap. But they spoke of it so simply, like they hadn't tortured her so badly they'd had to take away her memories of it just to keep her sane.

She should have been happy, relieved to still be alive. Instead, a sickening sense of dread clouded her mind, her stomach churning like she might vomit the lack of food this fixed body had eaten.

She couldn't escape the Zafer Rokur. Not even death would free her from their chains. She'd be with them forever until they were finished with her, if that day ever came.

Leraie could feel bile rising in her throat and she fought not to let it out. She wanted to hate that she was trapped, wanted to miss her home.

You?