They Stole My Memories and Regretted It

Chapter 4 The True Traitor

The screens flicker. Grey dust covers Xylos-7, and the air tastes of rust.

I crouch behind the skeletal remains of a mining rig, close enough to hear the secret meeting and trying to keep my breathing quiet.

A cloaked figure faces an Outer Rim warlord whose face is crossed with cybernetic scars.

The figure gives him a data chip containing the Empire’s primary defense codes. He hands over a case of untraceable platinum credits.

My orders were to observe, report, and identify the traitor.

The warlord gives a mocking bow before he leaves. "A pleasure doing business with the true power in the Valerius family."

The cloaked figure laughs. I know that laugh. She pulls back her hood.

Silver-blonde hair frames the angelic face known and loved throughout the Empire.

It is Seraphina.

My stomach knots. Anyone except her.

Her eyes, praised for their purity in a thousand hymns, move to my hiding place. Recognition tightens her face. Then she turns away.

She saw me.

An Imperial dropship rumbles over the barren plain. Kaelen is coming.

The trade was bait, and I had stepped into the trap.

Seraphina reaches into her robes and uncaps a small dark vial. The dropship engines grow from a rumble to a roar. She looks straight at my hiding place and drinks the poison.

She stumbles and falls. By the time Kaelen lands, the Empire’s dying Saint lies at my feet. I am the only other living person for a hundred kilometers.

Kaelen finds his dying sister at my feet, with no other witness for a hundred kilometers.

The memory fades. Her last look remains, magnified a thousand times across the holoscreens.

A billion voices shake the plaza. Every shout turns toward Seraphina.

Kaelen stares at the sister he worshipped, the woman for whom he sacrificed our child. Then he turns from the screen toward the viewing tier where Seraphina stands.

Her face is grey. She cannot stop shaking, and the whole galaxy can see it.

Kaelen growls and steps toward the control panel. His hands close into fists, and his stare stays on the sister who betrayed him.

Before he speaks, the crystalline needles pulse deeper. The machine continues.

Seraphina had deceived him.

Duke Valerius’s office replaces Xylos-7 on the holoscreen.