The White Knight

Pisha’s hand slid from her belt to C.B.’s spine. She lifted his uniform, planted her stun gun on his bare skin, then pulled the trigger.

“AGH!”

C.B. spasmed, his muscles seizing up. He dropped to the ground and banged his head unceremoniously against the tiles. His arm hissed, inflating and deflating at his unconscious side.

He left behind a pulsing, arm-shaped hole in her chest. Her exposed organs slid back into the opening with wet squelches.

For the first time, Bonnie’s marble face flickered with a hint of emotion. Fear.

“Freak!” she shouted.

She thrust her palms to the floor, and the wires hoisted Pisha up in a gory acrobatics routine. Pisha slammed against the metal roof with a hollow clang. She left a human-shaped dent in the ceiling before crashing down to the solid tiles, her limbs landing in a contorted heap.

After having her innards crushed, the impact of fall damage was nearly tame. The crumpled heap of limbs twitched once, then twice, before it uncurled and teetered to its feet.

Bonnie took a half-step back as Pisha rose.

“You’re… Disgusting,” she muttered. “An abomination.”

Pisha shambled forward in her best zombie impression. With every footstep, she reached into the bleeding gash in her ribs. Her fingers wormed between organs and dragged out more of Bonnie’s cord. The ceiling fixtures groaned as Pisha strained the cable forwards.

She coughed, sputtering salty dried blood. “Tell me… something I don’t know.”

Bonnie raised her trembling hands. The strings quivered between her fingers.

She took a deep breath before shifting her weight for round two.

“Then, prepare—“

Right at that moment, the blunt hilt of a machete spun into Bonnie’s head. She folded to the ground like a physics-based videogame ragdoll beside the tossed projectile.

“Batsuora, this is highly against procedure!”

Pisha whipped around towards the shouting, spotting Bats stomping through the doorway. He dragged a nervous staffer behind him, the employee literally clinging to his loose jacket.

Bats? Wasn’t he supposed to be benched?

He spun around and grabbed the staffer.

“Three words,” he said, his fingers clenching around their white collar. “I. Don’t. Give a fuck.”

He pointed a thumb at C.B.’s twitching body. “He’s already down. She won. Don’t waste our time.”

The panelled walls groaned and shifted around them. From each side of the room, turrets emerged. They swivelled, whirring towards Bats and aiming flickering red dots on his head. The glowing lasers gathered on his forehead like a fresh case of teenage acne.

He sighed and released the staffer. They landed on the tiles ass-first with an awkward thud.

“Whatever,” Bats grumbled. He nodded at Pisha. “Come on, let’s dip.” He marched through the doorway without another word.

Pisha glanced between C.B. and Bonnie, to the turrets, before finally shaking her head.

“Just keeps getting better, huh?”

* * *

Pisha’s legs dangled off the stiff bed in the medbay. She rubbed the exposed patch of skin where she’d been skewered just hours ago. Somehow, it still stung.

Unlike their shoddy training areas, the medbay was spotless. Blue-tinted autopsy lights lit the room. They were so bright, their blinding after-image lasted even after she closed her eyes. The scent of bleach competed with the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor beside her.

Faded motivational posters were plastered across the back wall, their edges torn and creased. One Photoshopped cat hung perilously from a rope, while another shorthair kitten wore an oversized pair of glasses.

She leaned in, pressing a hand to the glossy paper. They were all cats.

Bats flung a thin towel at her head. She flinched as it flopped down over her face like a bride who’d donned her wedding veil backwards.

“You should…” He cleared his throat, turning away. “Uh, cover up.”

Pisha lifted the towel and glanced down at her torn jacket. Ah.

Right.

For the second time that week, she wished her uniform could regenerate.

She wrapped the towel around her chest as Bats studied the blank concrete wall. His spine was stiffer than the bed, his foot tapping along with the chirping heart rate monitor like a duet.

Never thought I’d see him acting all polite. She leaned back, the mattress's paper sheet rustling beneath her.

“Hey, Bats,” she said. “What was that all about?”

“Huh?”

Bats turned an inch and paused before facing her fully… With his eyes closed.

“You can open them, stupid.” She sighed, swinging her feet absentmindedly. “Back there, I mean. Why’d you butt in?”

“Ah, that.” He rubbed his neck. “Dunno. Just, hate sitting around, I guess.”

Yeah. That confirmed it.

Him and Anma were benched after all. Probably mopping tiles or polishing the walls, not that the specifics mattered. Bats wasn’t the type to sit still, anyways.

Why she expected anything more, she wasn’t sure.

“Right. Okay,” she said.

The autopsy lights were suddenly bright enough to make her eyes water.

Bats shut his eyes again. He looked like he was deep in thought, which was rare, because he usually didn’t think at all.

He shifted before speaking, the machetes on his back clinking together.

“Plus… You said dying hurts, right?”

Her feet stopped swinging.

“You remembered that?” she asked.

She thought his brain only had room for fighting and combat. But, for a bloodthirsty moron, he might’ve had a decent memory.

A faint chain flashed into existence around the roll of bloodied gauze at her side. By the time she’d blinked, the wet roll was gone, replaced by a clean one still in the plastic wrapper.

“Pisha! Are you alright?”

Anma burst through the entrance and bolted straight for Pisha. She stopped at the bedside and tossed an ice pack onto the sheets. Her eyes darted and searched Pisha for injuries, her hands patting the empty air in front of her.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Pisha grabbed Anma’s hands and lowered them herself. “You can get off me, now.”

Anma straightened, nodding in what almost resembled a bow.

“Right. Of course,” she said, turning to Bats. “As for you.”

Anma stepped towards him, the toes of her shoes thumping against his. “You do realise if the Director didn’t find Pisha valuable, you’d be spending the week in zone three for that?”

“Who cares,” he groaned.

“I care.” She planted a hand on his shoulder. “I’m the one who’ll have to spin this from insubordination to asset protection. We’re not kids anymore.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“Then you should know we’re on thin ice. We don’t stay in line, at least for now, the bench becomes the least of our problems.”

He nudged her hand off and brushed past.

“Sorry. Not in the mood for a lecture right now.” He stepped through the doorway, ignoring Anma, then gave a small wave. “Rest up, Pisha.”

Anma stared at the entrance until his footsteps faded completely down the facility’s halls. She shook her head and began pacing, her fingers tinkering with her muzzle’s dial like an overpriced fidget toy.

Click. Click. Click.

Pisha twisted the mattress sheets between her fingers. It was always Director this, or Director that with Anma. Like some sort of well-behaved pet. She wouldn’t shut up about him.

But, what about Pisha? What about that kid? What about the Othered down in zone three?

Anma was too busy spinning her reports, of course. Nobody in the facility genuinely cared. About anything.

She was as fake as the stupid cat posters on the wall. As fake as the regenerated heart that’d replaced Pisha’s own.

Pisha dug into the sheets with her still bloodied nails.

“You knew about zone three. This whole time.”

Anma instantly stopped pacing.

“I did,” she said.

“And you still let them chain that kid up. Knowing what they’d do to him.”

“...Yes.”

Pisha laughed. She threw her head backwards, covering her eyes with one hand.

“You’re really no better than the Director,” she said.

Anma’s fingers clenched around the dial. “Don’t compare me to him.”

“It’s true. You looked that kid straight in the eye and let them take him.” Pisha pounded her fist against one of the posters. “Can you even imagine what he's going through right now? Or does that muzzle shut off your empathy, too?”

The question ended up sounding like an accusation.

“Imagine?” Anma’s voice dropped into a strained tone Pisha had never heard before. “I grew up in zone three, Pisha.” She finally looked at her. “Sometimes, it feels like I never left.”

Under Anma’s glasses, her eyes were distant. She tilted her head away, and they disappeared behind the heart rate monitor’s glaring reflection in her lenses.

“You…” Pisha froze.

She’d lived in zone three. Of course she had. That’s why she knew about it. Bats had already mentioned she’d been born in the facility, too.

It was stupidly obvious. Even a kindergartener would’ve figured it out.

If Pisha wasn’t so damn dense, she could’ve put the pieces together.

“...Shit,” she muttered.

“It’s fine. You didn’t know.”

Anma’s voice straightened out to its usual supervisory tone.

“No. Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise...” Pisha shook her head. “No, that’s my fault. I didn’t think, I didn’t realise you and Bats both—”

“Not Bats. It was only me.” Anma crossed to the bed. “We didn't meet until after he was taken in.”

She grabbed the dumped ice pack and laid it down in Pisha’s lap.

“But, you should ask him the rest yourself.”

With that, Anma turned and followed Bats’s route out through the entrance.

The ice pack was clammy between Pisha’s trousers. She poked at it, the cold biting at her fingertip.

I fucked it up again.

Somehow, it almost hurt more than being impaled. Almost.

She snatched the ice pack. Her knuckles tightened around it until they turned as white as the A.O.A.’s walls.

With a glassy snap, freezing water leaked out from the shell and trickled onto her legs. It soaked through her trainers, biting at her feet, and pooled on the ground before vanishing under the bed.

* * *

Intercity Excursion Force, Case File #10

Othered: Pisha.

Ability: Immortality.

Description:

Rapid regeneration and reconstruction of sustained trauma, including lethal and non-lethal damage.

Limitations:

TBD.