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The punch comes sooner than you anticipate.
The thud that follows is your body crumpling to the ground.
“Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.”
A remark, smug and full of disdain, looms somewhere above your head. You ignore it in your haste, only focused on escaping this hellish nightmare of a confrontation that you had very unwillingly found yourself in.
— — — — — — — — — —
In hindsight, you’d been an idiot. The streets of Zaun weren’t the safest of places even during the day, what more in the dead of night— which you had very stupidly decided was the perfect time to go gathering intel and spying on rumoured locations of illegal Shimmer production plants.
It was still supposed to be safe. As a trained undercover agent, you weren’t supposed to get caught.
But then you were definitely not supposed to bump into Sevika, either.
This day, this crossover was never meant to happen.
Yet here you both are, Sevika winning a fight you’d so desperately tried and failed to avoid.
Your eyesight strains, unused to such darkness, but you manage to scramble forwards on all fours, whipping around to press yourself into the furthest corner of the warehouse Sevika had ambushed you in.
Stupid move, of course. No escape.
Sevika doesn’t even bother with the chase, knowing you’ve just backed yourself into your doom. She simply fiddles with the cogs and screws in her arm, adjusting and repositioning its hissing mechanisms, as if to let you know she fully intends to use it later.
“Y’know, Princess, it’s unfortunate you weren’t there when they were fixing me up after the explosion.” Her voice is nothing short of a drawl, her posture torturously laid back as she examines her Shimmer arm with exaggerated movements. “You should’ve seen the look on Silco’s face when I told him his engineers programmed my arm to be able to impart fifty pounds of pressure.”
She holds it up so the moonlight catches on all its sharpest, deadliest parts. You wince.
Slowly, you brush the dust off your trousers and rise to your feet, careful to make the action look purposeful instead of desperate. You can at least pretend to emit an air of confidence, especially trapped in a room with a woman who looks like she pounces at the slightest hint of weakness. Taking a deep breath, you force yourself to change the subject. “Is there a reason you were out tonight?”
“It’s (Y/n), yes?” Her predatory grin doesn’t waver as she speaks, light and suffocating simultaneously.
She knows your name.
More importantly, you know she knows your name.
It’s enough to send goosebumps prickling down your spine, but you keep your expression as neutral as you can. Sevika knows your name, so what? She doesn’t know about your actual job or where your loyalties really lie, and you sure as hell aren’t going to be the one to tell her.
Two years. Two whole years it had taken you to dupe Silco and his men into thinking you were one of them. It had been a challenge, but there was a reason you had been the one selected for the role. Those shiny medals, awards and badges lining the walls of your room back in Piltover weren’t there as decoration. Over time, you had been the cause of more than a handful of Silco’s production plant raids and shutdowns. You used that momentum to eventually earn yourself a seat at Silco’s table as one of his most trusted allies.
“You’re kinda new around here, aren’t you?” Sevika’s voice slices through the air, tearing you from your thoughts. “Silco introduced us the other day, but…” She trails off, cocking her head to the side and eyeing you like a hawk. "I wouldn't say we know each other very well. Would you?”
You swallow, wetting your dry throat. “No. I wouldn’t say so.”
Sevika chuckles, making a show of rolling her shoulders back before reaching into her trouser pocket and revealing a piece of equipment that drains every last bit of colour from your face.
You behold the small, black cube being held between you.
That doesn’t belong to her. How the hell did she get her hands on it?
You gulp, subtly, but Sevika notes it with a sneer.
“Two years you’ve been with us… you should be well seasoned in the way we operate. Still, I suppose I can forgive rookie mistakes here and there. Hell, I’m even willing to believe that Silco somehow forgot to debrief you on how things are run down here. But I’m sure, however—”
Sevika pauses, flipping one the switches on the side like she was the one who owned it. The pounding of your racing heart amplifies until it swamps your entire being. You can barely hear the unmistakably deep, masculine voice echoing from the device’s speakers. It’s Silco’s, the voice, but you already know that. It’s your mission, after all. Your legs threaten to give out beneath you as your commanding authority’s demands fill the room, listing all the information they would require from you, all the names and locations that needed to be uncovered and documented. But where you really can’t stop yourself from cringing is when you hear your voice, clear as day, reporting— no, coincidentally reiterating coordinates of the major production plants that had been shutdown by Piltovian forces.
Sevika’s smile drops like it had never been there. She shuts off the device unceremoniously and lets it fall to her feet with a clatter that makes you jump. And with a sickening crunch, you see your hard work crushed to bits under the heel of her boot. Her eyes find yours again. “— that even a rookie like you know knows that this, is unacceptable.”
Bile soars upwards into your chest that you desperately try to subdue. You shake your head, fidgeting, attempting to look like you aren’t planning on making a run for it, even when your pupils dart from ceiling to wall in search of an exit. An exit besides the one Sevika is standing right in front of.
“Sevika…” When you finally speak your voice trembles, the flowering cracks in your mask becoming more and more evident to the both of you. Words spill out faster than you can process them. “You don’t— you don’t understand, I swear, it’s not what it looks like, I would never betray Silco.” The lies are just digging you in deeper, but it doesn’t stop you trying to level with her. “L-Listen, this has all been a mistake, if— if you let me go I swear I won’t tell them anything, I won’t—”
Before you can finish, Sevika catches you by the throat and slams you back into the wall you were pressed against just seconds ago. An excruciating pressure clamps around your spine and a sharp pain splits at the base of your skull, throwing the world out of focus in an agonising headspin. You’re dazed and helpless, the brute force of Sevika’s mechanical arm across your neck keeping you tight against the smooth concrete.
“Tell me if it looks like I’m in the mood for your excuses…” She spits, all playfulness vanquished and replaced with something harsh. She pauses for a minute before leaning in, hot breath tracing the shell of your ear. “Deceiving Silco is one thing, but I don’t appreciate being lied to. And what a shame, too. I had such sweet plans for you.” Her rough human fingers trace the delicate curve of your jaw, over the flexing muscles of your neck, ghosting across your heaving, panic-stricken ribs till they come to rest over your hamster-beating heart. It’s a demonstration of your powerlessness, her ability to roam your weakest spots at her leisure and your complete inability to do anything but pray she doesn’t find your fear too delicious. “Still, plans change all the time. It’s not like I have any problem adapting.”
“… p-plans?” You gasp out, fighting not to close your eyes as this killing machine leers over you. You’re only half aware that it isn’t your legs that are holding you up anymore, but the armbar across your larynx. “W-What plans…”
Fortunately or not, Sevika ignores you. “The engineers asked why I needed fifty pounds of pressure in my arm, when it only takes four point four to permanently damage the human jugular.” Suddenly, your airways constrict and you choke miserably. Sevika’s fingers are wrapped around your throat.
“This,” she squeezes harder, “is four point one.”
Heat blossoms first in your chest, then radiates through the rest of your body. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe and you can’t fight back. You frantically try to push her away but your arms quickly lose feeling and dangle uselessly by your sides. Tears prick at your waterline as the room spins like a broken carousel, bright moonbeams dancing across your waning vision.
Then, all at once, the pressure ceases. You cough loudly and furiously gulp for air, expanding your starved lungs with as much oxygen as you possibly can, unsure of when the privilege will be robbed from you next. You’re a detective, not a soldier. You’re supposed to be gone by the time anything dangerous really happens. This is wrong, all wrong. You’re not supposed to be ambushed, cornered, threatened or choked to within an inch of your life.
It’s hopeless, but you find the voice to plead with her anyway, terror cutting your words short. “Please, Sevi— I don’t— I don’t know anything, I can’t help you, I can’t give you anything—”
Sevika clicks her tongue, sympathetic. “Don’t worry that little head of yours. You’re gonna give me some damn good entertainment tonight.”
The punch comes sooner than you anticipate.
The thud that follows is your body crumpling to the ground.
“Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.”
A remark, smug and full of disdain, looms somewhere above your head. You ignore it in your haste, only focused on escaping this hellish nightmare of a confrontation that you had very unwillingly found yourself in. With whatever little energy you possess, you manage to prop yourself up on your elbows. At this point you should be grateful that Sevika is kind enough not to burst out laughing in your face with how pitiful you look trying to grovel away from her like that. She closes the distance in a couple steps, dropping her hips heavily onto yours and putting an end to your escape attempt.
“You should feel your heart beating!" Sevika only mocks as you shake and shiver at the mercy of an impenetrable chemtech arm, its owner almost twice your size and strength. You’d never realised how small one person could make you feel.
“Think of what an obedient little thing you’ll be when I’m through with you,” Sevika muses with a sadistic lilt. “You’ll tell me aaaalll those dirty secrets like a good girl, won’t you? After that, you’ll be useless to those bastards. And when they discard you like the disgrace you are, I’ll be waiting to snatch you up all for myself. To keep you, play with you when I like, how I like…”
She’s going to keep you. No, she’s going to hunt you, then claim you like a deer head above the mantelpiece.
Your heart drops to your gut like an anchor. And it’s only when you feel air colder on certain parts of your face that you belatedly realise you’re crying. Through the rivers of tears, your eyes crack open only to see Sevika’s face hovering above yours. She’s smiling again, grinning. It's just as bright as before, just as diabolical.
“We don’t know each other very well, do we, darling?”
You don’t respond at first, too busy trying to calm your nerves at what you’ve just heard. This can’t possibly be your fate. Sevika sighs, forcing your attention back to her with a metallic grip around your jaw. “Answer me, puppy, or I won’t be as understanding this time.”
You can’t tell if you shook your head or actually said the words, but you must have done something right, because the next thing you feel is Sevika’s grin pressed against your cheek. “That’s gonna change real soon.”
You breathe a shocked gasp when the tension in your jaw relents, trying to blink the neverending blur from your eyes. Your relief is short lived. You let out a broken whimper when those cold, steel fingers slip downwards to find purchase on your terribly bruised throat.
Sevika squeezes just enough to pull a feeble splutter from you. It seems to satisfy her immensely when your head lolls to the side, body limp with exhaustion, completely vulnerable and open and defenceless. Wrung of all your strength, all you can do is twitch involuntarily as Sevika begins to choke you again. It isn’t a warning this time. You know you’re not going to wake up in the comfort of your own bed. She leans over you while doing so, pressing the softest kiss to your forehead as you audibly gasp for air.
Black dots pepper your vision, the smell of blood and broken capillaries cloying your nose. Sevika is still talking to you— at you, her voice is muffled, but so, so loud.
“Filthy little double crosser,” Her lips curl into a cruel smirk as she watches your struggles grow weak. “I’m going to have so much fun making you scream.”