A grim smile of satisfaction drifted across Mari’s face as something distantly adjacent to hope and just diagonal of fear fluttered in her chest. She wanted to embrace it, to celebrate, but even as the blade was being lifted off her throat she could hear the roughness in their voice, the half-belief that she couldn’t quite separate from them simply entertaining her.
Then the door slammed open, crashing against the wall like a stray gunshot. Mariko winced from the suddenness of the noise, not from the sting and burn that came with the donning of a crimson necktie. Even that gave her some comfort, in a twisted way. Too shallow, not enough to kill her but enough to get her more than halfway there. Her windpipe had offered some protection; a rookie mistake, to be quite honest. Either the Hound had wanted to make her suffer for what she’d done, or Spork didn’t truly want to kill her.
Regardless, without them holding her up Mariko fell to the ground, collapsing in a heap that forced air out of her lungs with a wet gasp. She wasn’t the only one, though. Her German was rusty, but she recognized a command to stop when she heard one.
And, with a word, Spork dropped, curling in on themself, a low, keening sound trickling out of them. Mari’s chest ached, the long-since-heard but never forgotten sound of Spork crying out in pain pulling on heartstrings she’d forgotten she’d had. She’d always been there when she could, for the worst of them; the headaches and migraines that Spork said felt like needles in their brain, someone digging nails into their gray matter and
twisting. She’d done her best to help them get through, often enough that their low whimpers of pain were a familiar sound to her.
Even more familiar was the whispered name,
her name, muttered like a prayer, like a lost thing, like a lifeline that they were grasping at blindly in the dark, hoping to snag it. She barely managed a call in kind, just as quiet, if it came through at all. A grasping hand, looking to clasp theirs and drag them out of whatever they were drowning in.
Then a foot collided with Spork's ribs, a vicious kick that had them gasping and Mari gurgling out…something. A warning? A reprimand? A frightened yelp? Perhaps a mix of all three as Spork’s pained cries were replaced by those of the people trying to bring them to heel. They were brutal, visceral, the motions of someone who knew how to disassemble people like she did guns. Mariko could do nothing but watch the carnage, the thought of closing her eyes to it far too taxing.
They were right. They were wrong, of course, about their identity. They
were Spork, her best friend, the only person she’d felt close to in this world. But they weren’t just Spork. Not anymore. Spork didn’t let people see them in pain, to be vulnerable around anyone, but that never went to the lengths of violence.
This. This was the Hound. This was the boogeyman whose sole purpose was death and destruction, their face a funeral mask completely detached from the carnage that coated them like a second skin of viscera. Mariko felt ice creep up her spine as she watched their devastation, completely detached from the chill of death creeping up her limbs even as the floor around her grew warm with her blood.
She attempted a shout of warning as a figure ran in brandishing something, a burble that only succeeded in hastening her own demise by a few seconds. The figure jammed down a button, and a woman’s voice spilled out.
It was firm, vaguely surprised, and just the sound of it made Mari’s brain itch. She’d heard that voice before, knew it from somewhere, a memory buried under a multitude of deaths and years. It wasn’t until she saw Spork fall, collapsing to the ground like a sack of bricks, a lightning bolt struck her ailing mind.
The voice was Giselle. The recorded voice that made Spork drop like a puppet with cut strings was that of their own mother. Anger started to flare up, briefly sending dregs of strength to Mari’s limbs before she remembered that Giselle was dead, had been for years. Mari hadn’t attended the funeral, hadn’t even known she’d died until months after the fact. She’d been somewhere in South America at the time.
It didn’t make sense. Why would they have Giselle’s voice on record, and why could they use it to bring Spork to their knees?
How could they? As much as Mari despised the woman, even she surely would’ve drawn the line at experimenting on her own child and turning them into a killing machine.
No, there must’ve been a better explanation. She could piece it together. Her mind tried to make connections, even as coated figures swarmed around Spork like bees around an intruder. She seemed to have been forgotten, an intruder that had been incapacitated and was left to bleed out. Already Mari could feel thoughts slipping through her fingers, trains disappearing into smoke once they reached the end of their track.
Death was coming, as it so often did. Not a looming spectre, nor the comforting embrace of an old friend. It was paperwork, taxes, showing your ID whenever you so much as glanced at a bottle of liquor. Death was tedium, and Mariko was already planning for her next life. And while she wasn’t sure how long this regeneration would take (she’d gotten it down to a matter of weeks instead of years), nor where she’d come back, she did know her next move. A new item had been added to the top of her to-do list, and once she recovered it would be her sole focus. It made the death easier, having a plan for the other side.
1. Find Spork
