Author’s Note: This episode is a little different. It’s in first person for one thing…but I felt like I needed to present things in this fashion, so please stay with me here.

Episode 19

My hands shake as I try to open the bottle of pills. Damn shakes. I throw the bottle against the counter in frustration. I shouldn’t be taking them anyway. "I quit cold turkey last time…I can do it again."

But you weren’t the same person then. You had a chance. You’re nothing but a killer now. A voice in the back of my mind whispers.

"Shut up." I growl through clenched teeth. That seems to make the voice go away. I curl up on the bed in a fetal position, but I don’t try to go to sleep. The dreams come when I’m asleep. Blood filled dreams, images, some of them memories, some of them drug-induced hallucinations that cause me to sweat and wake up in screams. In a way they’re worse than the voice. I don’t sleep any more than absolutely necessary. Last count it had been four days since I’d last slept.

The knock at the door startles me. I pull a 9mm from underneath my mattress and creep towards the door. Leveling my weapon at the door, I try to steady myself. "Who’s there?" A frightened voice asks. Is that really my voice? I wonder.

"It’s Gunther mam. Your ship’s almost done refueling." A voice answers. I lower my gun.

"Thank you." I reply and walk back to the bed. I’ll stay here a few more hours and then head for the next colony. I have to keep moving with both the Dark Wave and Preventer looking for me now. I understand why the Commander and Megaere want me back, I’m their plaything after all, but I don’t understand Preventer’s motives.

What would they want with a killer like me? A traitor who attacks her so called friends, who kills bases full of soldiers without a second thought…why do they want me back?

I step in front of the dingy room’s mirror. I don’t even recognize the woman there looking back at me anymore. I know that part of what I did, was caused by the drugs…but couldn’t a small part of me have been strong enough to stop myself from attacking Jade, from killing those men?

My reflection seems to mock me. The woman there is normal by all appearances. A little too thin, a dark circle under her right eye, a cascade of brown hair obscuring the left side of her face. She could have had a normal life. She could have been happy. Hell, she was once.

My mind drifts back to a time when I ran through a field of lilacs chasing after a little blonde haired girl, whose dark green eyes were a mirror of my own. Back then war was a fairy tale, a monster under the bed that would come and sweep away bad little children who forgot to eat their veggies. It was a myth.

I know better now. Now I am war. Now I am pure fury, out of control rage. A killer. But then, then I was just a little girl. It was a good time. A time when there were people, who cared about me, who loved me.

Unbidden, images of another time enter my mind like an assassin. Another time when I felt loved, lost in a pair of strong arms.

I don’t want to go there. I try to think of something else anything else to keep his eyes from my mind, but they appear anyway. The taste of his skin, the way the artificial moonlight played off of the muscles in his back as we made love in that motel room in L9 before... It was like a dream then. It feels like a dream now. To think that I had avoided him for so long…that I had denied us both something so powerful.

A bitter laugh escapes my throat. It doesn’t matter anymore. I raise my hand and sweep the hair away from my face and study the scar there. I look into the pale pool that was once my left eye and remember what my true reality is now. I’m merely a weapon; he himself proved that when he replaced me on the team with that blonde pilot.

I trace the wavering line down the left side of my face with a fingertip. The swelling has gone down since I left the Dark Wave, and was able to get some treatment for it. One doctor even told me that most of the damage could be removed with a little synth-skin…but you’ll never be able to use that eye again.

The woman in the mirror smiles at me, as I continue to trace the scar with my fingertips.

It’s fitting in a way…in mythology the Furies were meant to be fearsome creatures who, while justly, punished the sinners of earth. The scar is anything but pretty.

I pull my hair back into a low pony tale. The scar stays, and I might as well let the world see it. Jade told me that we all have scars. Mine’s just more prominent than others.

***

A few hours later I’m walking towards the colony’s shuttle bay. I get more than a few looks because of my face. I keep walking and try not to notice. I have to get used to the stares. People have suffered far worse at my hands; having to put up with a few startled stares is the least of my penance.

As I walk by an electronics store a familiar face on the large vid screen in the window catches my eye. For a moment I silently pray that it’s another one of my hallucinations. But as a crowd forms around me at the window I realize that it’s all too real.

I wait until the message is complete before I break out into an all out run for the shuttle bay. It will take me two days at least to reach them. Once again a pair of blue eyes flash in my mind. I have to stop this…