This Isn't The Place

[Evoros]

E S H A N
Location: Classified
Time: 2047 Standard Hours

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Slavery meant different things to different people, and she'd met people who felt unbearably strongly one way or another over the concept; truthfully, to her it was an interesting idea and little else. Evoros had no slaves of her own (not to say that she hadn't enslaved people - matters of perspective) but wouldn't complain if someone saw fit to present her with such a gift. But as far as her career was concerned, her interests were secondary. The Collective had their ideas about slavery, and when it came into play in a mission their ideas were hers.

As it stood, those ideas were that slavery could serve a purpose.
But the promise of freedom from slavery had its uses too.

Behind a screen filled with text she shouldn't have been allowed to look at, Yvonne Evoros narrowed her eyes. The Board had sent her after a slave force who worked the life out of their laborers but neglected to keep their security system up to scratch. These slaves were not treated well, and their skills were not put to any sort of use - luckily, that hadn't removed those skills altogether.

She was looking for the ones who could shape up to be something if they were given the chance to no longer be nothing. The ones who had rebelled, in some way or another, against the chains being put on them. The ones with talents that could be useful once they burst through the repressions of slavery. She had searched for a while, but in the end she was not disappointed.

The encampment where these slaves were put to work seemed like your standard complex from the outside, and if you didn't know they lacked choice in the matter of their labor you might have never guessed. But she did know, and so Evoros stalked nearer the building, out of sight but attention fixed on its layout.

The plan was simple. She got to know the site. She got to know the people running it. Then she broke out whichever slaves she deemed useful and planned how she'd spend her next paycheck.

| [member="Magdalene"] |​

 

[Magdalene]

She was flying; flying so fast around the world it seemed as though the globe itself was moving beneath her. No. It was moving beneath her, and she wasn't flying, she wasn't even moving; she was forcing the world beneath her to move at her will. The planet was in darkness, shrouded in black, and she spoke gently to it; a whisper barely audible from an insect.
"Wake."
Suddenly, the once-empty and dark planet erupted in silver light for all of five seconds before returning to its default state.
"Wake."
The planet blasted itself with more light, drowning in blinding white, and once again faded back to grey and black.
"WAKE."
She was shrouded in her illumination, personifying the light that she emanated for but a single moment, before blackness took her sight once more, and nothing else.

She felt a heavy boot lay into her malnourished belly, and struggled to breathe a while as commotion surrounded her.
"I don't know why we keep you here. Blind queen."
Reality. Cold, hard, black.
"Useless," came the voice again, rough and bellowing. Rast. "That's what you are. Are you listening? Or are you deaf as well?" There was chuckling from behind her, some feet away. She writhed a little in the agony from the morning alarm, and cursed herself for sleeping too deeply. Don't dream. Stop dreaming all the time, you idiot.
She pushed herself up from the cold ground, head lowered subserviently. As she moved, the chains that bound her clinked, grazing her skin. Rast continued to berate her in any way he was articulately able, which was not particularly diverse in vocabulary. He was an idiot. But she wouldn't cross him. She could never cross him. He was a slave master and she... she was just a blind queen...

Rast laughed, and the nameless girl suddenly realised she had been scrunching up her face.
"Is she gonna cry?" Rast mocked. "Come on." She felt a hard tug on her chain and stumbled forward, but was able to stop herself before falling again. She heard her chain linked to other chains, and was ushered forward by the line of slaves now in front and behind her. The smell of cold metal, blood and human waste flared at her nostrils as the procession grudgingly marched to the work camps. She did not cry. She did not speak. She was just another link in the chain.

But something inside her burned. A yearning desire. She harboured hate and love, and wished to transcend the nightmare.
Just a dream...

[member="Evoros"]

 

[Evoros]

It didn't take long.

Reconnaissance, investigation - those could be fiddly, but they were the straightforward parts of any mission. If you did those right, the job was done before anyone had noticed you at all. The part that was harder to predict was when you came face to face with your targets. That side of a job had greater stakes, greater potential to go wrong.

Not that she expected they would, of course.

Finding out what she had to know about the slave camps she was infiltrating took a few days; half scouting the area and half sitting behind a screen, slicing through their records, patrolling the HoloNet (Evoros favoured the former, but she would never let it be heard that she couldn't do a seamless job of either. She was a perfectionist in the purest sense.)

But then, her favourite of all.
The one with the greatest potential to wrong - not that expected it would, of course.
Facing her prey.

_________​

​

She had already created an identity, bared that new face to the leaders of the site. Started to build communication, started to build trust. If they had searched the web - and they had - maybe one or two would turn up dirt, things her persona would have tried to keep a secret. Not a single search would lead them to the woman who worked as an agent for the Collective.

"My name is Kaia Locke," Yvonne Evoros introduced herself smoothly at the reception of the slave complex. "I reached out recently about making a purchase."

__________​

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And they were ever so pleased at the opportunity to sell.

Kaia Locke had not been obvious in her wealth, but a little digging offered the results of great riches hand-in-hand with a reputation in the slave trade. Entirely professional in her intentions, but lacking any qualms when it came to the ethics of her business. Ideal for trade indeed.

"...Twi'leks, and Zeltrons, too, if they are more to your taste. Among others-"

"That's all good and well," the woman cut in, smile polite but words blunt, "but I can find Twi'leks and Zeltrons wherever I please. What can you give me I won't find at any auction on Nar Shaddaa?"

All of a sudden he seemed inspired. "Well...I can offer slaves who were formerly bought to be trained as assassins." (A ploy. He knew Kaia Locke was not looking for killers, even if Evoros might be).

"What else?"

"What else? Hrm - I can give you a girl who uses the Force in order to see, or-"

Jackpot.

"Let's start there."

| [member="Magdalene"] |​

 

[Magdalene]

The days were gruelling and endless, but for Magdalene it was all that she knew. If not for those strange dreams that plagued her every night, she would be utterly voiceless and without those rare though certain sparks of desire and faith. She would instead be much like those around her... Desperate, silent. 'Pathetic.' The word would often strike her mind like a hammer to steel, and then rage. Pure, unadulterated rage towards everything. The weak around her, those who would lord it over her, those who brought her into this universe in the first place. Oftentimes she would hate, nay, despise them all with every inch of her body, but it would never show. It would simply brew, and manifest in her dreams through visions of glorious fire.

Until one day, that fire burst.

She was on cleaning duty and, naturally as always, the guards did not trust her lack of vision to do a good job. Yet she always managed to leave her post immaculate. On this day, Rast was feeling particularly agitated. Something felt off about him to her. She was unable to understand why, but she could... sense his frustration with his job, his men, his life, and he had thus resolved to channel it, as usual, towards her, the seemingly 'weakest' of the lot.
"You really make me sick, you know that?" he called from behind, as she continued to mop the hallway to the facility offices, doing his best to ignore him. But he was just getting started. "Why do you always get such special treatment, just because you're blind? Do you think you're gonna get out of here? Well you won't. You're ours, for as long as we please. The boss'll never get rid of you." Continuing to work slowly, she felt a tear fall without warning down to her lips. Then she felt the hard grasp of Rast's dirty hand pull her face towards his own. She could smell his sour breath and unwashed clothes. "You never speak, slave. You're so high and mighty because you think your weakness can get you out of any trouble. Well, nobody is here to save you now." With a push, she fell into the cold, hard ceramic floor, the mop's wooden handle rattling against it as she dropped it. Yet she remained silent, and clenched her fist as tight as she could to the point where she could feel small amounts of sweat and blood trickle from her palm. Though she could not see him, she somehow knew that his heavy boot was about to come. "Time to teach you a lesson you'll never forget, slave."

The boot came swinging. In the blink of an eye, there was a terrible scream, silenced suddenly by a nauseating crack. Before she had realised what had happened, Rast's broken body had piled into the floor, his neck twisted horrifically backwards, his face repugnant and wild. She sat in silence for all of a second, before emotion of the rawest degree abruptly flowed from her, and she screamed with all the hatred her small body could handle until darkness came...

__________​

​

Several days after her solitary confinement had been issued, she awoke to the muffled sounds of two men discussing something about her and the new arrival who had come to inspect the slaves.
"Who is she? Why does she want to see her?"
"Dunno. But the boss radio'd just now. We're to prep her for inspection."
"Man, I don't wanna take her out of her. Crazy b-"
"Careful. Who knows what she'll do to us. You remember how they found her before..."

There was a loud screech as the metal doors were pulled open. Though she couldn't see it, she could feel the change of temperature on her skin and the lift of stale air, and she silently welcomed a fresh breath.
"Alright, on your feet. Your lucky day. Someone wants to see you." She struggled to stand, for she had been starved for nearly a week, but she pushed herself up, her face slightly lowered. She could hear footsteps, and new voices. One she recognised as 'the boss', and... a woman?
"As I said," came the boss' voice, now more in range of her hearing. "She's been in solitary confinement since she murdered one of my men. We don't know what to do with her."



[member="Evoros"]