[Lauchenoiria]

PREVIOUSLY in the IDU…
 
“We both know that I could kill all of you before you’d even blinked. If I wanted you dead, you would be, Councillor Pierre,” Zichitla said calmly. “I respect you, and I am loyal to the Matriarchy, I swear to you. I am telling you, as the expert on this matter, what you are about to do will risk the security of yourselves and this country.” (Artists of Progress, 17 Oct 2020)
 
*
 
“You’re really an Aurora?” one of the guards asked her eventually as they walked, blurting the question out like it couldn’t be held back.
 
“I am,” she confirmed, smiling at the guard. “I am of Kerlile, as it should be, not as it has become. Don’t worry, I won’t be any trouble for you, a cell is as good a place as any to hide from the coming destruction.” (Artists of Progress, 17 Oct 2020)
 
*
 
“I am your only hope at freedom, Aurora. If I grant you your freedom, I want to know you will pay your debt to me.”
 
“No,” Zichitla said simply. (Artists of Progress, 15 Nov 2020)
 
*
 
“You lied to us,” she continued, to the walls, “and said we were safe here, that we wouldn’t be punished for our perceived failure. You took us as children and moulded us into weapons to serve your own purposes, stealing our lives, and you wonder why so many of us cannot adjust to what you consider normal afterwards. And now you will take my life, again, not as punishment but because you fear I am right.” (Secrets of the Council, 20 Dec 2020)
 
*
 
The woman in the office in front of her stood up, and spun around, alarmed. Zichitla raised her gun, and shot the woman in the head, killing her instantly.
 
“That’s for what you did to Nikita,” she whispered to herself, memories running unbidden through her mind. (Secrets of the Council, 21 Dec 2020)
 
*
 
"We have reason to believe Zichitla poses a threat not only to Kerlile, but globally," Arnott took over, glancing sharply at Porter. "We do not presently know where she is, how many false identities she has, or what she is up to. What we do know is that she has attempted to recruit several of her former colleagues in the Aurora Programme to join some kind of, well, it appears to be some kind of apocalyptic cult." (The Second Tour, 29 Oct 2022)

---

PRESENT DAY
 
Zichitla closed her eyes and began her exercise routine. It was her own unique blend of various disciplines; adapted from a standard Aurora training routine. It kept both her body flexible and strong, and her mind sharp. She was going to need it if she was to finally put her plan into action. It had been several years now of gathering her forces; finding wayward Auroras who rejected Yauhmi’s sanctuary or Kerlile’s supposed retirement plan.
 
There were many Auroras who felt shunned and abandoned by Kerlile. They had been used, from toddlerhood, and cast aside without a thought. They had not managed to achieve their mission, and yet they were expected to sit down, shut up and potter about a garden like they’d done a lifetime of work. Even though many of them were still in their twenties. No, that would not do.
 
You see, the Council of Kerlile had always been corrupt, of course. But they’d managed at least to advance the mission of Kerlile alongside their corruption. Now, they were neglecting even that to cement their own position. Reform was, at its heart, a ploy to keep the Council in power by placating the foreigners who wished to remove them. But some of the Auroras, Zichitla’s Auroras, intended to keep the dream alive.
 
If the Council of Kerlile would not export gynarchy to the world, Zichitla would do it herself. One Aurora recruit at a time. She had been busy gathering the willing. Now, it was time to move onto the next stage of her plan. May the world tremble in fear.

[Lauchenoiria]

PREVIOUSLY in the IDU…

“I am not Veronica Penners. I am not Lauchenoirian. I came to this country as part of the Aurora Programme, sent from the Matriarchy of Kerlile in order to influence this nation in order to spread the women’s revolution.” (The Hunt for Auroras, 13 Feb 2020)

*

“There are some members of staff at the Aurora Centre with DKS sympathies,” Veronica nodded. “When each of us is recruited from an orphanage, we are assigned a member of staff to look out for our welfare. One of those members has in turn recruited a number of us for this mission.” (The Hunt for Auroras, 23 Mar 2020)

*

Veronica threw her weight against the assailant who had grabbed her from behind and kicked the first one, unknowing what part of them she'd hit. Using her momentum, she broke the hold and ran back in the direction she'd left Olivia, but in the darkness, she couldn't see. Damn, she thought. (Aftermath of War, 14 Jul 2020)

*

“Keep it that way. I like and respect you, Councillor Robinson, so I’m giving you this warning: the Auroras of Kerlile are angry and tired. We want safety, we want freedom… and we want justice. I think you’re aware of what can happen to anyone who stands in our way.” (Secrets of the Council, 21 Jul 2020)

---

April 2023; before Duty of Daughters

Xia Chiu was pregnant again. Her eight-year-old daughter Jia was currently being chased around their kitchen by her two-year-old son Cheung, when the doorbell went. Xia did not live on her family estate, preferring to live alone in Grapevale without servants snooping in her things. So, she went to answer the door herself.

“Hey Xia! Congrats on the pregnancy!” Olivia Pierre said, squealing and hugging the other Daughter.

“Come in Olivia,” Xia sighed.

Since her release from Alt-Ed, Olivia had begun working on some top-secret project related to the Aurora Programme. It was an open secret, however, that the project was a Council-funded attempt to desperately try and track down and find Zichitla before she could do something foolish. So far, all they’d discovered was that she was recruiting other ex-Auroras to some kind of cult. They did not know how many, or where they were based.

“Hey, can we talk away from the kids? The thing I’m here about isn’t really, uh, a family-friendly conversation topic,” Olivia said apologetically.

Xia led her into a sitting area and closed the door behind them. “Why do you only ever show up here when you have something disturbing to tell me?” Xia sighed.

“Yeah that wasn’t by choice,” Olivia said, glancing around.

“I sweep for bugs daily,” Xia replied to Olivia’s scanning of the room.

“Good. I found out something really distressing. Do you remember when we got kidnapped by those weird Lauchenoirians?”

“Yes, I do,” Xia replied. How could she not?

“Okay so two things; one is that the Lauchenoirians traded some of the people who did that to the Xiomerans for some activists. So, they’re loose. The second…”

“Wait, wait, hold on. The Lauchenoirians did what?” Xia said, alarmed.

“Prisoner exchange, Sanctaria was involved; I was informed by KIS. Anyway, that’s not the disturbing thing.”

“How can that not be the…”

“Do you remember the Aurora who rescued you?”

“Yes,” snapped Xia, who was getting fed up of being interrupted.

“She’s in the Restricted Region.”

“She’s in the what!?” shouted Xia.

“She was part of the Robinson conspiracy. So, they’ve got her locked up in the facility they kept open in secret. Obviously, given she saved you, and tried to save me, we have to rescue her.”

“Olivia, you have lost your mind,” Xia replied. “Is this even true? Are you on drugs? Since when did the Lauchenoirians trade their own citizens in prisoner exchanges? As for the Aurora, how do you know?”

“I can’t say about the Lauchenoirians, I don’t understand half of what they do these days. One minute they’re talking about freedom of speech and the next they’re rounding up activists. So, is this really that hard to believe? I mean, Calhualyana has been pretty openly threatening them. They’d probably give her anyone she asked for to stave off an invasion or a nuke. Or both. As for Veronica – the Aurora – my mother let it slip by accident.”

Xia closed her eyes, steadying her breathing. Why did all the horrific news come when she was pregnant? Last time her grandmother kept her prisoner for months, and this time Olivia was apparently determined to stress her out even more.

“Olivia, I am in no fit state to be launching rescue missions in secret facilities in officially-closed torture regions,” Xia replied calmly. “If you wish to rescue Veronica, have you considered asking other Auroras? They look after their own, we’ve seen that with the whole Cauhloc affair.”

“The ones in Huenya won’t talk to me,” Olivia huffed. “I tried, but they just laughed at me and told me that Huenya was in no fit state to fight a war with Kerlile, and something about the Jinyu Agreement.”

“Peace treaties,” Xia rolled her eyes. The phrase was almost a curse in Kerlile these days. “Have you tried other Auroras?”

“None of them will risk their lives for someone they think betrayed them too. They hate the Robinson Auroras. Well, the loyal ones anyway. For obvious reasons, I haven’t been able to contact Zichitla’s cult.”

“Zichitla’s cult probably already know,” Xia replied. “They seem to know everything. If they want to save her, they will. Regardless of us.”

The pair sat in silence, glumly listening to the sounds of the children playing in the next room. There was nothing they could do; two Daughters of the Council were not capable of infiltrating the RR, especially to break out a prisoner accused of affiliation with DKS. The laws banning anyone from aiding, or even being associated with, a member of DKS had never been repealed. Regardless of position, if they tried to help Veronica, they’d likely both be executed. At best.

*

PRESENT DAY

Veronica Penners had spent over two years in the Restricted Region. It was said that the longest any individual could survive, before their brain broke irreparably, under the harshest regime of the RR, was five years. Most would break long before that. Some, very few, would be the exceptions that proved the rule. Veronica, as an Aurora, had more chance than most to last longer. She did not, however, want to.

It was said, back when the RR operated openly, that when a Kerlian on trial expected she would be sent to the RR, and instead received a death sentence, she would thank the judge profusely, begging for her death. The rumours had merit. Five years. The quicker your mind broke down, the quicker they’d get it over with and kill you. Too much strength led to suffering.

Councillor Pierre had tried to protect Robinson’s Auroras. She’d failed. Veronica and the others loyal to the Robinson family had been here, in an officially-closed facility in the Restricted Region since May 2021. This was not interrogation; it had been, at the start. This was punishment, and there was nothing Veronica could do about it.

Veronica was bitter. She felt little else but hatred. And pain, but that was a given. They’d come in again soon for another torture session. No amount of begging, pleading, apologising, confessing, information-giving… nothing stopped it. Nothing. Nothing would. Veronica was more aware of this than most, but it didn’t help.

A scream rang out from the next cell. Alyssa. Her fellow Lauchenoiria-assigned Aurora, and now her fellow captive in hell on Earth. There were three of them here, the Robinson Auroras. The third was Bin Zhi, who had once been Fern, and prevented a massacre in this very Restricted Region. The others, their supposed compatriots in their plot, rested easy in Huenya, their friends forgotten to rot.

The door to her cell opened, and her day began like all her others: painfully.

And then suddenly. It stopped.

[Lauchenoiria]

Previously, in Crucible of Chaos (24 Sept 2023)...

---

Riley Nelson jolted awake, sweat pouring down her face. She remembered what had happened and panic rose inside her as she attempted to jump to her feet only to fall back onto the bed as pain shot through her limbs.

“You’re not in the RR, it’s okay, this isn’t Kerlile,” a familiar voice soothed her, its cadence encouraging her breathing to become more regular.

“Renee?” Riley asked, blinking up at her friend from training. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s Veronica now. You were about to be taken back to Kerlile when you got rescued, like I did from my time in Hell. By Zichitla’s cult,” Veronica Penners informed her.

“Um…” Riley said, still uncertain.

“Stay lying down, you’ve got a head injury. They patched you up, but you should still rest. Not like you’ve got much of a choice; unless you agree to join the cult yourself. This might not be the RR, but we’re prisoners here too.”

Riley looked around, seeing another plain twin bed like her own, and a door without a handle on the inside. There were no windows in the room, which was artificially lit. The walls were plain concrete, with no indication of a particular architectural style. Veronica was sitting on the other bed, wearing a plain grey t-shirt and leggings. Riley was now wearing the same thing, she noted. There were no other signs in the cell of where they were.

“Right, so Zichitla rescued us from Kerlile only to lock us up herself?” Riley asked.

“She’s trying to recruit all of us. If we don’t agree to join her, we get locked up until we do, or until she establishes whatever post-apocalyptic paradise she’s aiming for. If you ask me, I think she’s insane and that we’re safer waiting it out than involving ourselves at all.”

“What about Nelichē and Tlālzixiuhxa?”

“I don’t know about the latter, but Nelichē is still in the infirmary; she had some kind of abnormal reaction to their knockout drugs. She’ll be fine, and they’ll let us see her. Zichitla’s trying to recruit us by being nice, relatively speaking,” Veronica shrugged.

“Shit, Veronica,” Riley exhaled. “How are you still sane? After the RR? And this?”

“All the best torturers moved to Xiomera,” Veronica shrugged. “It was hell, yes, but no more so than our training was. Zichitla’s not wrong that our whole lives have been one horrible thing after another, but she’s wrong that the solution is destroying the world.”

“Wait, she actually wants to destroy the world!?” Riley blinked.

“And build a new one from its ashes. Proper comic book supervillain stuff,” chuckled Veronica grimly. “Not sure on the specifics, cause I keep telling her to piss off when she asks me to join her.”

“Where exactly are we?” Riley asked.

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Veronica shrugged. “Deep underground. This whole place is completely artificially lit and climate controlled, not a sign of where we are. And for all I know their routine doesn’t match the actual time zone. Not that we have a reference point to use that, anyway. We were all brought here unconscious. Only those who swear loyalty to Zichitla get to know where we are. She makes them perform some kind of blood oath.”

“So, we’re captives of an insane wannabe supervillain? Great, just great.”

“Better than the RR.”

“Lowest bar in the entire universe,” pointed out Riley. “Do you know what happened to Stella and the others the Council sent to take me prisoner? Before Zichitla’s people swooped in and - I guess - saved the day?”

“They took them too,” Veronica said. “She wants to recruit all of ‘Aurorakind’, according to her. Doesn’t care if we were Robinson or Pierre, if we obeyed the recall order or not, if we tried to defect to another country or what. All of us. Each and every one.”

“Well,” Riley remarked. “That can’t be good.”

[Lauchenoiria]

Zichitla tapped on the side of her tablet as she read the article. Though her face gave nothing away, inside she was allowing her anger to build up without even a cursory attempt at preventing it. The rogue Aurora was most displeased by the latest news from Huenya. She despised Calhualyana, of course: it was her whole reason for threatening the Councillors in the first place. But Huenya allowing those Necatli males to dictate their form of government, especially removing the family that had saved so many Auroras from power? No, that simply could not be allowed.

“The Necatli are a problem,” she said to Layla, aka Mackenzie Walhorn, her second-in-command of their burgeoning army of rogue Auroras. “Not to sound like a Xiomeran, though ethnically I am one, but they have always been troublesome. They have always been the most patriarchal people of the Huenyan landmass.”

This was not necessarily true; there were no statistics nor academic studies with these conclusions which Zichitla had read. But why should one allow truth to get in the way of convenient propaganda? She had to convince her fellow Auroras to do something about the Necatli, and the only other ethnic Xiomeran in the vicinity, Nelichē, was still refusing to side with her and thus was safely locked up.

“What do you intend to do?” Layla asked.

“I intend to send a message,” Zichitla responded calmly. “The Council are weak, and are merely reacting to current events. They have lost their way; they are no longer the vanguard of the women’s revolution. We are.”

Layla, who was in this for money and power rather than ideology, nodded along noncommittally. “Right, but what kind of message?”

“A bloody one,” Zichitla replied, allowing a slight smile to cross her face.

[Lauchenoiria]

Undisclosed Location
Three days ago

Zichitla tapped her fingers thoughtfully. Her plans were beginning to come together in multiple areas, though the world had not yet noticed. There had been snags, of course, but she had found a way to turn the majority of them to her advantage. All except one: Huenya.

The behaviour of the Huenyan government was a problem, in multiple respects. A number of Auroras still refused to pledge loyalty to her cause due to their infatuation with Yauhmi and the country she founded. The news about the abolition of the monarchy had sent a number of them wavering, but they still would not commit. And Zichitla herself was angry at Huenya for this reason. Yauhmi, after all, was the only non-Aurora she held any respect for.

If Yauhmi still led Huenya, they would not be a problem for Zichitla. She would have left them alone even as she burned the rest of the world. But Yauhmi did not lead Huenya; a conspiracy of Necatli did. At least, that was Zichitla’s position after seeing how easily the Necatli had managed to oust the royals from power, and with them Huenya’s last hope of escaping Zichitla’s wrath.

All this meant that Zichitla, aka the Aurora Nelly, aka someone willing to threaten a good third of the Council of Kerlile just to get across how much she hated her, was considering approaching Calhualyana for an alliance.

Of course, if Zichitla was to do this right now, from the shadows, the Xiomeran Empress would laugh in her face. Zichitla knew this fine well, and she also knew that her group could not yet reveal the extent of their strength, or their plans. Which meant that Zichitla had to find a way to show the Xiomerans, little by little, that she was a threat to their common enemies. This, she could do. And would.

*

Itlacan Federal Prison, Itlacan, Huenya
Today, 3am

The CCTV cameras were still running; there had not been any attempt to either hack them or erase their tape. The intruder who broke into Itlacan Federal Prison had not gone to any efforts to hide her presence. She would be too quick for it to matter. And when the tapes were reviewed after the incident, she wished for the story to be crystal clear. Huenya would know who she was, and what she had done.

Huacue was asleep in his cell, miserable but oblivious to how much worse things were about to become for him. There was the faintest click in the door as it unlocked, not enough to wake him; but four seconds later he was awake anyway as a severe pain shot throughout his body, causing him to sit up and scream at the top of his lungs in shocked pain.

It was the screaming which drew the attention of prison authorities to the fact that something was wrong. Those watching the cameras had not paid sufficient attention to the shadow who moved throughout the prison. Later, it would be questioned if they had been slipped something before the incident, but nothing would be conclusively proven one way or another. Regardless, the screaming quickly set the crisis response machine into operation, though by then it was too late and the intruder was no longer on the premises.

*

Macochu’s Residence, Huenya
Today, 6am

When Macochu, tlatoani of the Necatli, woke this morning, he would do so to a most unpleasant sight. Next to him on the bed, sitting in a pile of blood, was his imprisoned father’s severed finger.