SPECTATOR LOG: The Fate of Little Xici.

[agogemod]

WHO? Anyone interested in witnessing the end of Little Xici, the Regency spy.
WHAT? Little Xici's story concludes.
WHEN? Midnight; September 22ed, 1972.
ANYTHING ELSE? Contains body horror and death.

At some point, late at night, Little Xici is interrogated. The Commander drags the spy into a private tent, closed off from the rest, and the sound of blows and swearing can be heard. An hour later, Xici is dragged back to her previous place, tied up once more, blindfolded, and left to stew.

An hour after that, the screaming begins.

It's late at night, after the battle itself is long finished. Many dismiss it as a condition that will one day come to be known as shellshock, and go back to sleep. Anyone in the tent with Little Xici, though, will know the source of the sound: Xici herself, screaming and screaming, though no one and nothing is touching her.

"I don't deserve it!" She pleads to no one, and tears begin to prickle through her blindfold, "only traitors are- I am not-!"

Her arms slip their bindings, because her hands no longer rest at the end of them. The wounds are old, looking like her hands were severed years ago, even though anyone who saw her even minutes back saw perfectly formed working hands. Now only with stumps, she claws at her blindfold. In an act of mercy, another operative in the tent, one Angela Zeigler, removes the blindfold for her. Little Xici barely notices the woman, too consumed with the fact that, within her boots, her feet have also disappeared.

Next go her ears, and then her nose. Her eyes disappear as well. Each time, there is no blood. There is no gore, beyond the organs themselves simply slipping out of existence, leaving scars that look years old and long healed.

Little Xici screams the entire time, screaming that she doesn't deserve this, that the tribunal only does this to traitors, and she has told them nothing. "I have always been loyal!" She yells, "I have never betrayed-! This is for betrayers! I was loyal!" She cries, and struggles, and moans. The screams pitch, high, pathetic and desperate, they build and build in the night air.

As suddenly as the sounds begun, they end. Little Xici is gone, as though she never existed at all.

The tent wasn't empty when Xici's death-- when her slow erasure from existence-- began, and certainly many more have come to see the source of the screaming. There is nothing to do but talk amongst yourselves of what you just saw-- that is, if you feel it needs discussion. Some may wish only to return to sleep, or leave immediately for other reasons.

What's done is done. Xici is gone, however slowly she went. The spy has been dealt with.

Comments

[byfist]

"I did." Her one visible eye doesn't leave the space where one Little Xici had occupied. Screaming and pitched misery and then silence. If it's touch her, it didn't cross her face. "Do you think I should have shot her first?"

Contemplation really - either way, she's dead. But here she stood, witnessing something apparently.

[heilt]

Part of her knows the soldier's response, thinking it would have been kinder. The woman would have died regardless but they could have saved her what she'd gone through. The humanitarian in her, the woman that had felt sick and distraught watching such a thing--

"Would there have been nothing we could do? No way to help her?"

[byfist]

Her head shakes. Regretful - in the way her eyes look to the empty space. How such a thing could be so full in that moment as she forms the words to field the understanding that any veteran of this war knew.

"The moment she was captured, her fate was sealed whether she recognised it or not. We only had so much time to prize the information out of her because they did that to her." It's said with a shake of her head - a waste, though a waste of what, she hardly knew.

[heilt]

Angela takes a few moments to consider what she says. Her fate was sealed, capture... they needed information but it seemed that getting it would result in the death of whomever they took it from.

"Can we not find another way? Get the information without capturing someone?" Listen, talk... not get anyone killed.

[byfist]

"Subterfuge, spying, highly secretive reconnaissance. Unfortunately." She has no skill for it, quite clearly. The scars on her knuckles are proof enough for that. Her way forward has always been regretfully, the most direct way forward.

"But once they have been captured, and from time to time, we must - this is there fate."

[heilt]

"But if it isn't so necessary we should try other methods." She had just admitted that it was possible, even if not all of the time.

"Those lives that are lost could impact on the history we're trying to save."

[byfist]

"We try - " there is a concession, sharp inflected in tone and the stiffness of stance - a Commander, after all. She looks back to her soldier, she squares her shoulders and directly.

"But we are at war, Miss Zieglar. I suggest you do not forget that fact. I will make exceptions where and when as I can. But never forget that."

[heilt]

That irritates her. Considering her role in all of this it's something that she's well aware of.

"How could I forget?" Never mind that she'd come from one war torn place to be thrust into another.

"I'm not a soldier but I see the cost this has on everyone." Every injury, each death. She'd had to remind her last Commander about the humanitarian toll before. Soldier's could easily forget, or be so focused on their goal.

"Do you really want to win this using their methods?" COST might not be going back in time to torture people to death but allowing it was just as good.

[byfist]

Her one eye slides across her. Looking her down from her height, hard, jaw tensing sharp, then loose again before she goes to speak. That uneasy curl of her fingers behind her back as she takes her ground.

"You mistake me, I have no quarrel with your wanting to try to do better." Her breath is in slow. "But pretending that it can always be so? I see no gain in it. You have enough reasons to distrust me as it is, without my senseless lying about the kind of war this is."