Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

With her horned and visored helmet on, she was nearly seven feet tall and three across the shoulders. She had her greatsword over her back and her axes on both hips, and the clank of her armor was the only sound between us as we descended into the stillness of the underground.

“Hello? Is someone there?” Jacob began calling out when we were barely halfway down. His voice rang off the walls, tinged with desperation. “Vash? Vash, is that you?”

Neither of us spoke until we reached the thick iron door to the cell. My enhanced senses told me that he was pressed up behind it, trying to peer through the meal slot. I motioned Suri to wait.

“To the back of the cell,” I ordered.

A couple of weeks ago, Jacob would have argued or whined. But now, I heard him scurry off without a word of protest. I unlocked the door and slid the bolt across while Suri watched, her expression unreadable behind the impassive black grille of her helm.

The door creaked as it swung in, spilling a square of light over the hunched figure of Jacob: former Warden of Al-Asad prison, SysAdmin of Archemi, and a pathetic, sadistic man-child. He cringed back from the brightness, squinting through watering eyes.

“Hullo, Jacob.” Suri clanked past me. I hung back, holding the doorway.

Jacob froze, struggling to make sense of who and what he was seeing. When it finally clicked, he made a high, strangled sound, and pressed himself against the wall.

“No.” His eyes widened, turning white with fear. “Oh god. It’s you.”

“Yeah. I’m a whole lot bigger than you remember, huh?” Suri bobbed down to squat on her heels about six feet away from him. “You definitely look a lot smaller.”

Jacob wasn’t a bad looking guy, except for the aura of cringing cowardice that pinched his features, hunched his shoulders, and hung around him like a bad smell. We’d stripped him of his gear and given him a plain tunic and pants to wear. No belt. No cords of any kind.

His upper lip twitched and trembled. “Fine. Okay, Suri. You won. Now just get it over with.”

Suri spread her hands. “Get what over with?”

He scowled at her. “You know? The torture?”

“Why would I torture you, Jacob?”

“What the fff- what do you mean, ‘why? Maybe because you hate me?” He scowled back at her, drawing his knees closer to his chest.

“It’s true that I’ve got every reason to hate your guts.” Suri shrugged. “But here’s the biggest difference between you and me. I don’t get my kicks from torturing people.”

His eyes darted to me, then back to Suri. “I’d never hurt a real woman.”

Suri reached up, and pulled her helmet off. “Look at me, Jacob.”

“No.” He shook his head.

“LOOK AT ME!” She slammed the greathelm down on the stone floor.

The sound of metal hitting stone exploded through the room. Jacob screamed and cringed, throwing his arms up over his head. And then, grudgingly, he peered at her from underneath his hands.

“I am Suri Ba’hadir. Starborn. Descendant of queens. The Warsinger of the Sixth Age,” she uttered. “I am human, Jacob. I have found a lover, friends, enemies, and purpose. I have grown beyond you and without you.

“I don’t-”

“What do you have to make you real, Jacob?” Suri talked right over the top of him, her voice slicing the air. “Your body outside of Archemi? Go on, Mr Architect. Go back. Prove you’re more real than I am.”

“This. Is. A. Simulation!” He hissed.

“How do I know that?” Suri shrugged. “Go on. Prove it.”

“I can’t! Y-You can’t prove a fucking negative!”

“Why not? Shouldn’t be a case of proving a negative if you’re so real and I’m not. So go on. Prove it.”

“I CAN’T, GODDAMMIT!” His voice rose into a sudden scream of raw rage.

Suri’s back tensed.

“I’m as ‘real’ as you are, and you fuckin’ well know it,” she said, after a pause. “As ‘real’ as the other women in the Dregs. Lara, Tali, Miranda... I remember them. And some of them remembered Earth. They tried to talk to me about it, about their lives. I didn’t believe them, at the time. But now I know that I’m a person from you world. Someone who’s memories were wiped, who was installed here so you’d have someone to torture. Do you deny it?”

A tic started next to Jacob’s mouth. He slumped back, as if stunned. And then, he burst into tears.

“Okay! I get it! For fuck’s sakes, I get it!” He half-snarled, half-sobbed. “I’m fucked in the head! Okay? My brother died, New York City w-was bombed, my family and millions of fucking people dead... and I was stuck in Juneau in f-fucking Alaska and I couldn’t fucking help anyone! I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep... then Nick told me what he was doing with Archemi, told me I could burn off some steam with him. I didn’t build the prison. Nick did. It was his idea, all of it. And it was wrong! Okay?!”

“So what? You were just going along for the ride?” I exclaimed.

“It’s not ‘okay’, Jacob.” Suri’s voice shook only slightly. “And it never will be ‘okay’. No more than the bombing of your city or the death of your family was ‘okay’. They’re all crimes.”

“So just kill me, then,” he wept. “Just... kill me and get it over with. Do it however many fucking times you want. I’ll stay. I’ll let you do it.”

“No matter how guilty you feel, I will not kill or torture you, Jacob. But I’m not gonna forgive you, either. What I am going to do is hold you accountable,” Suri said slowly, dropping her voice back down. “The last thing we need is another Ororgael.”

“Oro... Ororgael...?” The name made him visibly flinch. He scrabbled up to sit against the wall, dashing at