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After a while -- if you were tired enough -- all discomforts started to blend together, a little. Pain felt like hunger felt like aching joints felt like stinging cold. She'd grown too weary -- thanks to the zealous attentions of her irritable gaoler -- to remember how many repetitions of a song she'd done, so she'd taken to singing through the score to Les Miserables instead. That, at least, she could manage with a minimum of confusion -- and a fair amount of certainty that the time that had elapsed was within a certain ballpark.

They would kill her. She was certain of it. But even if it was only for Astrophyllite, who'd snuck in to bring her juice and a sandwich, and paid for her kindness, she wanted to put a brave face on it. When no one was directly in front of her, asking questions, she could convince herself that she was brave and unbreakable, and she laughed and sang in the face of her own end.

Maybe, truthfully, it only made her feel better. At this point, she was tired and didn't care.

"On my own, pretending he's beside me -- all alone, I walk with him till morning," she sang low and to herself. Better not to strain her voice with volume; already it sounded slightly creaky to her ears. "Without him, I feel his arms around me, and when I lose my way I close my eyes and he has found me . . ."

She wondered what time it was.

"In the rain the pavement shines like -- "

A thin sliver of light cracked through the darkness. Hvergelmir paused. " . . . is someone there?" she called out, squinting and afraid.

A stranger. A stranger promising cool water and no violence. Hvergelmir looked up sluggishly.

Wisdom counseled that she shouldn't trust the offer or the promises, that part of interrogation was probably changing methods too fast for her to adjust to them -- that this was more good-cop-bad-cop manipulated. Tiredness, though, was less cautious. Tiredness said she was not mentally equipped to play a complex cat-and-mouse game right now, if she wanted to pretend she had ever been.

"Water would be lovely," she said in a scratchy, worn voice. "If you can help me with it."

The rest of it sounded like . . . well, like more interrogation. More questions she couldn't answer without endangering people she loved. That was a dead end, and despite all promises to the contrary, it did in fact end with more bleeding and bruises eventually.

Maybe, though -- maybe if she dragged it out a little, she could get some water before this new visitor realized Hvergelmir was still planning on holding out.

"If you do," she asked, doing her best to look harmless -- helped by the fact that she was fairly harmless, "can I ask you something in return?"

No one here could be trusted to be harmless. Strangers least of all. Even -- or especially -- strangers bearing gifts.

But Hvergelmir really wanted that water.

She drank generously when it was held to her lips. It was like liquid heaven.

"Yes," she said, after taking a break from the water with a momentarily satisfied ahhhhhh. "I've seen a purification before."

She'd seen one fail, been near another that had succeeded, and finally stood alongside and watched a Negaverse captain kneel only to rise as a Knight of Mercury. Her track record was improving.

"What day is this?" Trading an easy question for an easy question -- she hoped it was a good strategy.

This was some kind of joke. This was some kind of sick joke someone was playing with her before they all grew weary of their captives. They had sent this girl to make some kind of a mockery of what Hvergelmir did.

Either that, or this was a young girl who could look at a tortured person mid-captivity and burble excitedly about aliens and ask questions just for idle fun's sake -- which meant she had a remarkable ability to detach herself from the fact that there was a scared, tired person in the chair across from her who was currently spending most of her time trying to mentally prepare to face her own death, friendless and alone.

One of the two possibilities. Either one was painful.

At least she had something to drink. If she had to put up with this cruel young girl, at least there was that. She swallowed generously, despite the girl's warnings.

And it was January fourth. God, it had been four days. She wondered how much longer they planned to let her live.

She'd asked a lot of questions. Hvergelmir would have to parcel out her answers if she wanted to get enough information in turn. She'd have to drag it out.

"Chaos is like a sort of poison in your soul," she started off, voice gentle half with effort and half with tiredness. "It hardens your heart bit by bit -- metaphorically -- until you stop caring about people as much. Things that felt wrong once don't seem that wrong anymore. It makes you less human in the ways that really matter. That's what happens when you become an agent of the Negaverse -- you have Chaos festering in you. So to get it out, you need someone who can burn all the Chaos out of you to let you start clean from a fresh slate. ....start fresh from a clean slate. Sorry, I'm just a little -- tired." She hurt and she was hungry -- not at her best, all in all.

She couldn't ask this girl to leave, though. She had to try and learn what she can. "Is it making sense to you so far?" she asked, to create a break in the answer.

Now to nudge in her own question. "Can you tell me about how many others like me are here? Knights and senshi -- just roughly. I got -- separated from some of my friends at the ball, and I'm really worried about them."

Hvergelmir experienced a moment of deeply unnerved, disturbed shock.

There was a scene -- she remembered a scene -- in La vita è bella. With Dr. Lessing and his riddles.

This felt like that.

Do you understand they're going to kill me? she wanted to ask. Can you possibly imagine how much I don't care about your bored curiosity right now? My friends -- someone I care about deeply -- are being tortured in other rooms right now. How could you possibly thing --

Hvergelmir noticed after a moment that she was crying.

She sniffled, trying to get her wits back together, trying to discipline her thoughts into something productive rather than self-pitying. She had to -- had to build some kind of a rapport with this girl, had to make her understand that this was real, that Chaos was already dulling her thoughts.

"Making the choice to leave the Negaverse isn't easy," she continued snifflingly, carrying on from the girl's 'end of story' question. "A prince or a princess, or a royal knight, helps you. They cast their magic, and there's a bright flash of light." Then, with careful deliberacy -- in case Schörl was behind this little visit, using another ploy, she added, "It is painful to transform one thing into another."

Schörl's words. That was how the then-lieutenant had explained corruption to her, back then. Pain and change.

She frowned. "Do you know what they're planning on doing with us?"

Hvergelmir nodded grimly, still shaky -- trying not to burst into tears again at hearing this confirmed out loud. They'd hurt her as much as they needed to. They'd get what they wanted from her. Then she'd die.

It wasn't much of a life left that she had to look forward to. Each piece of it was bad driving toward worse.

She opened her mouth to speak, but she realized she didn't know this agent's name to lead off with it. Captivity was making her dizzy and mannerless -- how unhelpful.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Hello, Kadyrelite," she said, shaping the name carefully to match the pronunciation. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Hvergelmir Knight of the Cosmos."

This part was a little tricky. But maybe if . . .

"Do you see the tattoo on my shoulder?" she asked, leaning her head that way. "That's the seal of a peace oath. I've sworn on my life not to raise arms against the agents of the Negaverse in their fight to protect Earth from an alien conquest. I'm not your enemy. I . . . I shouldn't be here."

She paused, looking up at the other girl. "Which of your General-Queens gave the order for this mission? Do you think you could get me an audience with her?"

Apatite.

She hadn't really expected this young lieutenant to actually try to get her a meeting with one of the General-Sovereigns of the Negaverse. Sure, it would've been nice, had it actually somehow worked -- she'd never witnessed one of their great field marshals in the flesh, as it were -- but by Kadyrelite's own account, Apatite wasn't even here.

She'd just wanted the name -- just for reference, because you never knew what might be useful if you somehow survived being a prisoner of war. Hvergelmir had gotten that and a little more: insight into their operation. The General-Queen had ordered this sight unseen. She wasn't supervising it in person.

A curious choice, for such a major operation.

Hvergelmir's gamble had put her new companion off, however; that much was obvious. She was backing away.

"Your superiors say a lot of things," she said carefully. "But you did come here anyway. Is it so wrong, wanting to find things out for yourself? To be sure of your choices?"