Now, she is suspended from the ceiling by her ankles, hanging directly over a heavy industrial vat. The scent of the acid issharp, metallic, stinging the nostrils. I have filled it to the very brim. The surface of the liquid is a calm, shimmering green, barely inches beneath her chin.
She has to strain every muscle in her neck, her core, her back, just to keep her face from dipping into the corrosive death below. It is a game of seconds. A game of physical endurance. I sit in a chair just outside the splash zone, watching her struggle.
"Do you know why you’re here, Lucy?"
I ask, my voice calm, almost conversational. She gasps, her muscles spasming as she tries to keep her head up.
"Deimos."
"I am the one who survived the man you’re looking for," I say, leaning forward.
"We share a father, Lucy. We share a legacy of rot. You are the 'good' child. Do you feel that love now? Does it keep your head above the acid?"
"You're... insane," she chokes out, a drop of sweat falling from her forehead and hissing as it hits the liquid.
Lucy is shaking. Every muscle in her neck is corded like a steel cable, her jaw jutting upward as she fights the gravity that wants to melt her face. A single tear escapes her eye, rolling down her cheek, and I watch with clinical detachment as it falls into the vat. Sizzle. A tiny puff of white smoke.
"Please..." she gasps again, her voice breaking. Her arms, stretched to their limits above her head, are turning a bruised purple from the lack of circulation.
"Please what, Lucy? Please save you?"
I lean forward into the light, my eyes fixed on her.
"You spent your whole life looking for a father, and you found me instead. That is the irony of our bloodline. You seek a connection, and you find a noose."
"Madeline... she was right," Lucy chokes out, her chin dipping until it almost brushes the shimmering liquid. She jerks her head back up with a guttural sob of pain.
"I should have listened. I should have... trusted her."
I smile, but there is no warmth in it.
"Regret is a fascinating chemical reaction, isn't it? It burns hotter than the acid beneath you. You rejected her because you wanted the truth. Well, here it is. Look at it. Smell it."
I stand up and walk toward the edge of the vat. I reach out and trace the line of her trembling throat with one cold finger. She flinches, nearly losing her balance.
"Don't move," I whisper.
"If you slip, the ‘Arbiter’ doesn't have a reset button. You see, Lucy, Madeline think she can save everyone. She thinks there is something good left in me. But I am showing her, and you, that some things are just meant to be liquidated."
"Why... Do you hate me?"
She whispers, her strength visibly failing.
"I didn't... do anything to you."
"You exist," I spit, my voice finally losing its calm.
Her neck is arching so hard the tendons look like they might snap. The acidic steam is beginning to blister the sensitive skin under her jaw. She looks at me, not with the fire of Charles, but with a desperate, primal plea for recognition.
"Deimos... look at me," she whispers, a sob racking her chest and sending a ripple across the green liquid below.
"We have the... same eyes. I saw them in the old photos. You aren't... just a weapon. You're my brother."
I don't blink. I don't move. I watch her like a scientist watching a specimen struggle in a jar.
"Brother," I repeat, the word tasting like acid in my mouth.
"A biological term. A shared sequence of base pairs. You think that word has power here, Lucy? You think because we have the same father, I owe you a life?"
