Ravens of Eternity

256 Toil & Trouble

Amal and Kali both wrenched the semi-reinforced door wide open with only marginal difficulty. Xylo hopped right on through with her pistol held at the high ready. Claire came in right behind, but held her pistol with a low ready.

Miko’s cottonball drones then buzzed past them, down the side hallway, and out to the rest of the hab.

The Ravens followed after them with incredible urgency, and delved into the dingy, dirty hab as quickly as they could.

Most of the rooms they encountered were dusty and threadbare and hardly lived in, as though the hab itself was abandoned. Then they found the stairs going down to the bottom floor, where the ripe, musty smell of sweat and mildew overpowered their noses.

It was all one large open space, with a medical table with constraints in the very center. They saw the shrine wall to Eva, and a variety of terminals, datapads, medical equipment, and other things scattered everywhere else.

Eva sat listlessly on the table, wrapped tightly in the thin medical bedding that she had laid on. Commander Chase’s corpse was at her feet and drew colder by the minute.

She looked up as the Ravens burst into the room, and smiled slightly. All of them immediately ran towards her, and hugged her tightly as a group. Eva could barely respond – she was still very tired from having no energy, and was still contending with the drugs in her system.

“You’re all divine,” she muttered weakly.

They all backed up and gave her space, which allowed Amal to immediately treat her. She already had her MedGun out, and took no liberties as she performed her scans. Then, she immediately injected Eva with her nanites and began to purge Chase’s narcotic suppressant.

.....

“Are you alright?” she asked. “You hurt? Did he...”

Eva looked at both Amal and Kali. She knew what the both of them had gone through, and they had suffered far worse than she did. It dawned on her that if she had felt this torn up over what Chase did, then the two of them no doubt had their own huge demons to fight.

And yet they were both still standing, proud and powerful. So she decided to lean on them a little.

“I’m definitely feeling hurt,” she replied shakily, “but I’m also okay.”

As Amal’s meds cleaned up her system, her mind cleared up more and more. The haziness began to part, and the memories of the past dozen or so minutes became easier for her to see. At the same time, the suppressant was also being dismantled, and she felt her energy rising up again.

Yet somehow, she still felt weak.

It seemed as though Chase had found a weakness in her, and exploited it. It was as though everything she had worked so hard to achieve about herself was so easily dismantled and taken down. She felt utterly powerless in those few minutes that he had his way with her, and nothing frightened her more in her life.

Eva felt as though he really did come that close from taking it all away from her. The thought shook her deep in her core.

“How’d you all find me, anyway?” she asked, her voice raspy.

“Your profile went offline in our DIs,” said Claire. “Like, without any warning at all. We tracked your last signal back to your gym, but you were already long gone.”

“It was hours later that I found you,” Miko piped in. “I had embedded my dataworms in the commander’s systems back at the asteroid. Over time they spread through his personal network and infected all of his systems. When you logged into one of his terminals, it alerted me, and sent its location.”

“We came here immediately,” said Xylo.

Eva broke out in tears at hearing all that. Her friends really had her back, and she was grateful they were there. She didn’t know what she would do without them.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” said Kali. “But you shouldn’t have gone alone. Didn’t even tell any of us you were heading out.”

“I know,” Eva replied. “Couldn’t help it. Habit.”

Kali sighed in exasperation.

“And also carelessness,” she retorted. “From now on, we all go in pairs, ok? Minimum.”

“Makes sense,” added Xylo. “Especially since we’ve got way higher profiles now. Trash like this is gonna keep floating to the surface.”

“Agreed,” said Amal. “No more solo’ing, alright?”

The rest of the Ravens quickly agreed. There was always more safety in numbers. Eva especially vowed to no longer do anything alone.

She turned towards Miko with a sheepish grin.

It was Miko who had initially warned her about Chase in the first place, but she shrugged her warning off. She never honestly believed that he could harm her. He seemed cute and soft-spoken, and never seemed to want harm to come to her. He even seemed protective at times.

But it turned out that the commander had a darker side, one that was planning her abduction instead.

Then it dawned on her that her trait never once rang in alarm regarding him. Alarm bells certainly rang with a number of people – Nightmare and Drenn to name a couple. But never with Chase.

She realized that Miko had given her two great pieces of advice that she brushed off too easily. After all, she was the one that told her not to rely on her trait too much.

Eva immediately felt dumb and foolish and arrogant. If she had listened, all this might never have occurred in the first place. Her grin turned more regretful as a result.

“Remind me to listen to you more,” she told Miko.

“I will be relentless,” Miko replied happily.

Although Eva now felt safe and secure among the Ravens, she couldn’t shake what had just happened to her. Her thoughts and feelings kept going back to the past few minutes, and wound around her mind over and over again.

She couldn’t understand what was going on with her, how this one dumb action tore into her so easily.

Eva looked down at Chase’s corpse, and wondered why he had gone to such great lengths to get to her. Why he violated her.

Was it all just to satisfy some primal lust? One that he couldn’t control? The man had obviously planned meticulously to find her and capture her and contain her. Hell, he devised a medication that could suppress her abilities. He had even built a creepy shrine that revolved around her.

Although she wrestled with the why’s, her mind couldn’t stop thinking about his actions as well. She couldn’t stop thinking about the liberties he took with her body while she laid there helplessly. And the fact that her body betrayed her bothered her deeply on top of it.

The memories of his unwanted touch swept through her in waves, which caused her to shiver uncontrollably. And for more reasons than one.

She realized this also kept her feeling weak – this feeling of mixed disgust and unwanted physical arousal hung on her heavily. Combined with how easily her defenses were taken down...

Right now, she felt completely unsure of herself, and couldn’t trust her own footing. All her confidence seemed to stand on shaky ground.

As Eva stewed in a growing misery, and the Ravens huddled around and comforted her, a team of Helios Megacity Police came into the hab. Having received a comm from the Ravens about their missing teammate, a trio decided to follow after them.

Protocol urged them to move ahead of the Ravens, but the girls were simply far faster, and far more efficient than they could ever be. So they had to settle for seconds.

The three of them swept through the hab itself carefully. Each had an accompanying drone that scanned every millimeter of it, and pulled as much information as they could from everything inside.

One of them observed commander Chase’s corpse, and had his drone scan it completely. He noted the wounds on the man’s neck, and grimaced deeply. When he was done, he turned towards Eva with a forlorn look etched on his face.

“Apologies for interrupting, miss,” said the officer. “I’m glad to see you’re mostly unharmed, and doing well.”

Eva gave him a weak smile in response. Her opinion was that she had been greatly harmed. Just because the harm wasn’t physical didn’t mean that she wasn’t damaged.

“And I’m sorry for doing this,” he continued, “but I’ve got some pressing questions.”

“Do we really have to do this now?” interjected Claire. “I mean, our priority’s to get her somewhere safer. Would really rather not hang around here.”

The officer nodded in understanding, then waved to the corpse at their feet.

“Unfortunately, thanks to this, I have to adhere to a homicide protocol,” he said. “I hope you understand – it’s nothing personal. I just have to deal with procedure. Apologies for the inconvenience.”

“It’s fine,” said Eva. “Ask away.”

Claire immediately paled when she realized what was happening. This was no longer just an abduction – a murder had also occurred. And Helios law regarding murder was incredibly strict.

An urge to stop the questioning filled her, but she knew there was nothing she could do. It had already begun. If she did stop it, she knew it would have only made things worse.

Instead, she went right next to Eva, and held her hand.

“This was your captor?” asked the officer.

He gestured a second time at commander Chase’s corpse, to which Eva nodded emphatically.

“And he also... sexually abused and molested me,” she said.

“Drugged too,” added Amal. “He injected her with powerful and illegal intoxicants.”

The officer then cleared his throat before he asked his next question. He told it a little slowly, as though he didn’t want to ask it, or didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Did you see him die?” the officer asked. “Do you know how he died? And it’s alright if you’re confused and don’t recall...”

But Eva took it as seriously as she could.

“I did,” she replied. “Slipped outta my restraints, grabbed his throat, and crushed it with everything I had. It was all I could do to stop him from... from violating me further.”

The officer’s mouth hung agape at her blunt explanation. To her, she was simply telling what needed to be told. That he had harmed her, and so she was forced to kill him.

“A-are you absolutely sure?” he stammered. “Your friend said you were drugged, perhaps you were confused in some way?”

But Eva nodded stoically.

“I was forced to kill him,” she said.

The officer grimaced at her words.

“I gotta apologize again,” he said. “But I have to place you under arrest for murder.”

Alarm shot through all of the Ravens, except for Claire, who squeezed Eva’s hand in nervousness. The others immediately began to protest.

Xylo even got in between the officer and Eva protectively. She was quickly followed by Kali, who looked incredibly angry at what he had just said.

“What the hell?!” Xylo cried out. “Freya was the victim here – she was literally kidnapped and assaulted. But you’re arresting her for killing her captor?!”

The officer backed up slightly and put his hands up defensively. His two partners immediately went to his side to back him up at the same time. Their hands rested on their sidearms, but didn’t draw their pistols.

“Look, I’m sorry,” said the officer quickly. “I don’t write the laws alright. I just enforce them. And the laws say I gotta take in anyone who commits a homicide. It doesn’t matter who, doesn’t matter why. It’s the law.”

“This scumbag’s hardly the first person any of us have killed,” Kali snarled. “What the hell’s so different about this time?”

“I know it’s way different out in the colonies and outer territories,” said one of the other officers, “but this the Federal Core. Here on Helios, all homicide, all murder is completely outlawed. Your friend and teammate just admitted to us that she killed him, with her own hands. We’ve got no choice but to arrest her!”

“Please,” said the third, “don’t make this difficult. We-we’re just doing our jobs.”

.....

Eva looked at the three police officers – they looked absolutely terrified. Who could blame them? They had no doubt heard about their exploits by now, and understood their capabilities to some degree. If things broke out into violence, there was no way the three of them would win.

She watched as their hands trembled as they gripped their guns.

Her heart sank when she realized that she was in massive trouble, and in no way would she ever let the Ravens suffer because of her. If things escalated now, all their lives would be thrown into disarray.

And thanks to her weakened soul, Eva surrendered meekly.

“It’s alright,” she said quietly. “Let’s not fight this. Take me in.”

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