Chapter Text
There are many times in the Enforcers when she's not her own. She is but her Chief's word and direction, of course, always and above all else. He wields them: his laspistol, his shock-maul, his authority, his psyker.
More unnerving are the moments when she doesn't recognize her own hands. The nails, with their bruised beds and chewed ends, no longer seem to belong to her. Worn black boots obey her in numb and distant ways. To move feels like a dream, or watching a pictfeed. She is the blue sparks spiking through the air, boring their way into the victim's skull and mucus-soft tissue, her own brain left bereft.
"Ermengarde."
The name, like her physicalities, is an ill fit: a uniform hastily scrubbed and handed down, hanging strangely on her frame. She, Ermengarde? She, the named?
"Ermengarde!" Less a statement than a warning, now. Ermengarde blinks, psy-sparks dying on her eyelashes. The interrogation subject slumps against the alley wall.
Chief Durak's eyes are cold. Not quite grey, not fully blue or green, they remind her vaguely of old rockcrete, hard and algae-stained. "I said maintain life. Did you get the information?"
The ache in her head and throat lingers despite the cut mental connection. Ermengarde gazes down at the cultist, and imagines him shackled. Iron around his wrists, his ankles, heavy cold chains binding him away from Ermengarde. Holding him deep deep down in the bowels of a cage or a hold. The air smells like sweat, and the acrid sweetness of burnt synapses.
She flexes her fingers, and the knuckles finally feel like her own.