Day 88 Post-Impact
The cell was exactly as Elena remembered it. Concrete walls, steel door, lights that never dimmed. She'd been here for nearly twenty-four hours now, and they hadn't done anything to her. No torture, no deprivation, not even aggressive questioning.
It was unsettling.
In her experience, captors fell into two categories. The first type hurt you immediately, establishing dominance through pain. The second type waited, letting anticipation do the work, letting you imagine what was coming until the fear became worse than the reality.
These people were doing neither. They'd brought her food three times. Good food, not prison slop. Someone had even left a book outside her door, though she hadn't touched it.
She didn't understand their game, and that bothered her more than pain would have.
The door opened at midmorning. She expected guards, maybe the light manipulator coming to gloat. Instead, Sarnav Vale walked in alone, carrying two cups of what smelled like coffee.
He pulled the room's single chair closer to her cot and sat down, setting one cup on the floor between them.
"That's for you," he said. "If you want it."
Elena stared at him. "You came alone."
"I did."
"I could kill you before anyone reached this room."
"You could try." He sipped his coffee, completely relaxed. "But we both know you won't. You're too smart to throw away whatever chance you think you have by making a move you know will fail."
She hated that he was right.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"To talk. No interrogation, no demands. Just a conversation between two people who might have more in common than you think."
"We have nothing in common."
"Don't we?" He set his cup aside and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "You were recruited by the FSB when you were sixteen. Maybe younger, depending on how you count the preliminary assessments. They saw potential in you and decided to shape it. Did they ask your permission?"
Elena felt her expression freeze. That information wasn't in any file he should have access to.
"I'll take that as a no," Sarnav continued. "They took a teenager and turned her into a weapon. Trained you to kill, to seduce, to manipulate. Broke down whoever you were before and built something useful in its place. How am I doing so far?"
"Where did you get that information?"
"The Malaysian government has better intelligence networks than people give them credit for. Your FSB file was partially recovered from a data cache in Singapore. Partial, but enough." He picked up his coffee again. "You've been following orders your entire adult life. First the Russians, then whoever paid the most after the world ended. The Ascendancy is just the latest in a long line of handlers."
"You're wrong."
"About which part?"
"I chose the Ascendancy. After the impact, I could have gone anywhere. Done anything. I chose them."
"Did you?" Sarnav's eyes were uncomfortably perceptive. "Or did they find you before you had time to figure out what freedom actually meant? You'd never made a real choice in your life. Never had the opportunity to decide what you wanted versus what you were told to want. And then the world ended, and suddenly you were free, and you had no idea what to do with that freedom. So you found new handlers. New orders. New missions. Because that's all you know how to be."
Elena wanted to argue. Wanted to throw his amateur psychology back in his face and tell him he didn't know anything about her.
But the words wouldn't come. Because he was right, and they both knew it.
"What's your point?" she asked instead.
"My point is that you've never been given a real choice. Not once in your entire life. Even joining the Ascendancy wasn't a choice. It was survival instinct, defaulting to familiar patterns because the alternative was too frightening to contemplate." He stood, moving to lean against the wall opposite her. "I'm offering you something different."
"Let me guess. Join your harem, spread my legs, become another trophy in your collection."
"Is that what you think this is?"
"It's what it looks like from here."
Sarnav laughed, and it wasn't mocking. It was genuine amusement, like she'd said something unexpectedly funny.
"Elena, I have nine wives. Each one of them is powerful, intelligent, and perfectly capable of killing me in my sleep if they decided I wasn't worth their loyalty. They stay because they choose to. Because what we have together is better than what they had alone." He met her eyes. "I'm not offering you a place in my bed. I'm offering you a place in my family. The sex is optional."
"Bullshit."
"Ask them yourself. Any of my wives, any question you want. They'll tell you the truth." He moved back toward the door. "The Ascendancy sent you here to die. They knew about our defenses, knew about the network. You were a test, not an asset. Your life was worth less to them than the information your death would provide."
"You already said that."
"I'm saying it again because it matters. You've spent your whole life being used by people who saw you as a tool. A weapon to be pointed and fired and discarded when you stopped being useful." He paused at the door. "I don't do that. My people aren't tools. They're family. And family takes care of each other."
Elena said nothing. There was nothing to say.
"I'll give you time to think about it," Sarnav continued. "No pressure, no deadline. When you're ready to talk more, tell the guard. Until then, you'll be treated well. Food, books, whatever you need within reason."
"And if I decide to keep trying to kill you?"
"Then we'll deal with that when it happens." He opened the door. "But I don't think you will. You're too smart to keep serving people who threw you away. Eventually, you'll realize that the only person who's ever offered you a genuine choice is the man you were sent to murder."
He left. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Elena sat in the silence, turning his words over in her mind. Looking for the manipulation, the hidden angle, the trap beneath the seemingly generous offer.
She couldn't find one.
That bothered her most of all.
Upstairs, Sarnav found Ishani waiting in the corridor.
"Well?" she asked.
"She's thinking. That's all I can ask for right now."
"She's dangerous. Even locked up, even without her shadows, she's one of the most lethal people I've ever encountered." Ishani fell into step beside him as they walked. "Are you sure about this?"
"No. But I'm sure about what happens if we don't try. Either we kill her and waste an S-rank asset, or we keep her locked up forever and eventually she escapes and comes for us anyway. This is the only path that leads somewhere useful."
"You could be wrong about her."
"I could be." He glanced at his second wife. "But I wasn't wrong about you. Or Jade. Or any of the others who came to us as enemies or strangers. People can change, Ishani. Sometimes they just need someone to show them how."
Ishani was quiet for a moment. Then: "If she hurts you, I'll kill her myself. Slowly."
"I know."
"Good." She stopped walking, catching his arm. "I mean it, Sarnav. I've accepted a lot. Shared you with eight other women. Watched you build something that should have made me jealous and instead made me proud. But I will not accept losing you to some Russian assassin with a sad backstory."
"You won't lose me."
"Promise."
"I promise." He pulled her close, kissing her forehead. "Whatever happens with Elena, I'm not going anywhere. You and the others are my foundation. Everything else is built on that."
She relaxed slightly, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. "Fine. But I'm increasing security around her cell. And I want Serena monitoring probability patterns. If she's planning something, I want to know before she knows."
"Agreed."
They separated, Ishani heading toward the security office while Sarnav made his way to the command center. The day's business wouldn't wait for prisoner psychology.
In her cell, Elena picked up the coffee cup.
It was cold now, but she drank it anyway. It was good coffee. Better than anything she'd had since the impact.
She thought about what Sarnav had said. About choices and family and being used as a weapon. About the Ascendancy sending her to die.
That part, at least, she believed. The mission parameters had been wrong from the start. Insufficient intelligence, inadequate support, extraction plans that were more wish than strategy. She'd ignored the warning signs because that's what she did. Follow orders, complete the mission, don't ask questions.
But the mission had failed. And instead of being dead, she was sitting in a cell drinking good coffee while her target offered her a place in his family.
It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.
Unless he was telling the truth.
Elena turned that possibility over in her mind, examining it from every angle. What if he genuinely meant what he said? What if the offer was real, with no hidden conditions or secret traps?
She'd never experienced that. Never been offered something without expecting to pay for it in blood or flesh or loyalty she didn't feel. The concept was so foreign that she almost couldn't process it.
Almost.
But she'd been trained to adapt, to survive, to recognize opportunities when they presented themselves. And this, whatever it was, felt like an opportunity.
The question was whether she was brave enough to take it.
The next morning, Sarnav was in a planning meeting when Zara interrupted with news.
"The prisoner wants to talk."
He excused himself and made his way back down to the cell. This time, he brought two fresh cups of coffee and a folder of documents.
Elena was sitting on her cot, looking slightly less hostile than before. She'd clearly been thinking, and whatever conclusions she'd reached had changed something in her bearing.
"I have questions," she said without preamble.
"Ask."
"Your wives. How do you choose them?"
"I don't, really. The system identifies compatibility, but the actual decision is mutual. No one joins unless they want to. Unless they choose to."
"And if they change their minds? If one of them decides she doesn't want to be part of this anymore?"
Sarnav considered the question carefully. "It hasn't happened. The bond creates a connection that makes separation painful for everyone involved. But if someone genuinely wanted to leave, I wouldn't force them to stay. That would defeat the entire purpose."
"Which is?"
"Genuine connection. Partnership. Family." He handed her the coffee. "The system gives me power, but power without love is just control. And control breeds resentment, which breeds betrayal. I'd rather have nine wives who stay because they want to than a hundred who stay because they're afraid to leave."
Elena sipped the coffee, processing. "The Ascendancy uses conversion. Forcing awakened into their network through some kind of mind control."
"I know."
"It works. For a while. But the converted aren't really loyal. They're programmed. When the programming breaks down, they either go insane or turn on their handlers." She met his eyes. "Your system is different."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it's built on genuine emotion rather than artificial control. The bond enhances what's already there. It doesn't create something from nothing." He leaned forward. "You asked me yesterday what I wanted. This is it. Real connection with people who choose to be with me. Not servants, not tools, not programmed drones. Partners."
Elena was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I've never had a partner. Never had anyone who wasn't using me for something."
"I know."
"If I agree to this, if I choose to join you, what happens to me?"
"You become part of the network. You feel what we feel, know what we know. Your power adds to our collective strength, and our protection extends to you." He paused. "And eventually, if you want it, we form a deeper bond. But that's not required. Not everyone in my network is a wife. There are other relationships, other connections."
"But you want me to be a wife."
"I think you could be. The compatibility is there. But it's your choice, Elena. For the first time in your life, it's entirely your choice."
She stared at him, searching for deception, for the hook hidden beneath the bait. He let her look, keeping his expression open and honest.
"I need more time," she said finally.
"Take all the time you need."
"And I want to talk to your wives. Privately, without you present. I want to hear from them what this is really like."
"I'll arrange it."
He stood to leave, and she spoke again.
"Sarnav."
He turned back.
"Why are you doing this? Really. What do you get out of turning an enemy into an ally when you could just kill me and be done with it?"
"Because I've seen what happens when you treat people as expendable. The world broke apart because people in power didn't care about the people they were supposed to protect. I'm trying to build something different. Something where everyone matters."
"That's idealistic to the point of stupidity."
"Maybe." He smiled slightly. "But it's worked so far."
He left her with her thoughts and her cold coffee and the strange, unfamiliar sensation of being treated like a person rather than a weapon.
Elena sat in the silence for a long time after he was gone.
For the first time in years, she was actually considering the possibility of a future that didn't end with her death on a mission for people who didn't care whether she lived or died.
It was terrifying.
It was also the most hopeful she'd felt since she was sixteen years old.
[DAY 88]
[WIFE COUNT: 9/32]
[ESSENCE: 959,100 / 1,000,000]
[ELENA VOLKOV: CONSIDERING]
[STATUS: PRISONER → POTENTIAL ALLY]
[NEXT: PROVING]