Chapter Text
“The Tenno! The Tenno is outside!”
It was a wonderful way to start his day. Makto was just about done examining his Karak when a lancer, truly panicked in the way only the lowliest of footsoldiers could be, burst into the command atrium and started yelling about the Tenno.
So something was wrong. Makto just knew it. If the Tenno were inside, sure. He would believe that with some chagrin but little surprise. His Adversary could find his way inside with minimal trouble and then avoid detection, for the most part, and even if Makto were to barrel down the halls at top speed the shy, skittish monster would frequently be long gone by the time he arrived. With whatever he’d stolen.
But outside?
Something smelled funny. Makto stood up straight, slinging his Karak over his back, and paced down the halls without sparing the lancer a further glance.
Whatever stood on the edge of the dock was not his Adversary. Sure, Makto noticed the superficial similarities. They both wore a headpiece that looked awfully like horns, and their hair was burned white with Void exposure, and this imposter had brown skin and an arched nose and searingly sharp eyes just like his Adversary, but everything else was wrong.
Businesslike, he said as much as soon as he stepped onto the gangplank.
“You are not my Adversary, imposter.”
Upon closer inspection— and close inspection of his Adversary still made his gut twist when the grip of the Void was tight— silvery spirals of metal, what could be metal, what was trying to be metal swirled up the length of his left arm to swell into sleek, glossy spires rising from his shoulder. The way the harsh floodlights played off of it gave the silvery substance an almost liquid, flowing quality. This was different from the Void that seized his Adversary from the inside and sickened him into helpless misery.
This was something else. Makto ignored it as best as he could to scowl at the imposter, who did not even have the courtesy to look afraid.
“Oh. The kid?”
“My Adversary,” Makto corrected, and tried not to grind his teeth together.
“No. Sorry.” The imposter did not sound sorry. “Or yes, actually. It’s a long story.” He smiled and shrugged. “But I’m not the person you were hoping to see.”
Before Makto could answer, the imposter kept speaking.
“I surrender, by the way. You can take me prisoner now.”
Makto ground his teeth together. “And why should I do that instead of shooting you dead where you stand?”
The imposter’s lip twitched. Not quite a smile.
“Kid said he has something to take care of. Asked me to keep you busy while he was gone. Don’t know what it is you two are up to— and I don’t want to know, don’t tell me— but I am not about to try and fight a galleon from a landing craft. So, uh.” He held his wrists together and offered them up. His left hand was coated entirely in that silvery metal substance and the end of each finger was twisted into a thick prong like the claw of some hideous drahk. “Here you go.”
His Adversary would likely be upset if Makto killed his Imposter. Worse, the Imposter could share certain maddening traits with his Adversary and simply be very difficult— nigh impossible— to kill. It would be annoying because it was the Imposter. Not his Adversary. Makto found it annoying that his Adversary had wandered off and saddled him with this and not even told him. If the Imposter was to be believed.
“You will not keep me very busy from inside a cell,” Makto snapped, not quite feeling the desire to be jovial at this moment. He closed the difference between himself and the Imposter with several long strides and then crossed his arms as he loomed over the slight man. “Which is where you will be.”
The Imposter did not tilt his head to look up at him. At most, he raised his brows and rolled his eyes up.
His Adversary did that too. But in the way of a statue come to life that did not yet know its range of movement, or a soldier at attention not sure if it could move or not, or any other number of endearing and reasonable things and so Makto found it more charming and amusing than anything. His Adversary only truly knew how to move when he was fighting.
The Imposter yelped as Makto seized him around the wrists with one hand and yanked him forwards, hauling him up the gangplank.
“Whoa!”
The Imposter wasn’t struggling, but he was making irritating tugging motions as Makto led him down the halls of the galleon in the direction of the brig. Yes. That was what he would do. Stick the Imposter in a cell in the brig and forget about him and then when his Adversary returned he would have much to answer for– never mind that he never got much out of his Adversary, that he was still a mystery on the best of days. Makto had already decided that his interest in talking to the Imposter was zero. Less than zero.
This did not typically bother him this much. He’d lost his Adversary once before, after all. Dead, they said. There had not been much time to mourn, if that was what Makto was even supposed to do. There certainly wasn’t time to celebrate. And by the time the dust was settled and the system back in typical chaos rather than the new chaos, he was back. Veils and Sentients aside. They could get back to beating each other up as usual.
And now he was gone and this thing was here in his stead.
Makto opened the cipher-lock with absent expertise and shoved the Imposter into the cell. Maybe he should just kill him. It would be easy.
He’d thought that about his Adversary, too.
“Are you serious?” The Imposter crossed his arms. Even his clothes looked like some distorted mirror of his Adversary; deep reds and blacks where Makto would expect to see blue. Patched and stitched leather. It made his stomach turn. He couldn’t articulate why it felt so wrong beyond this not being who he wanted to see. He probably shouldn’t want to see the Tenno, either, considering their storied history and the tithe of pain he frequently dreamed of extracting from him, but there was… something to him. That Makto could not place, and never tried particularly hard to. Whatever it was, he felt it as a keen and sore loss, and the Imposter was not helping the matter.
“Don’t worry.” He attempted a sneer. But truthfully, the easy malice he used to have always within arm’s reach seemed harder and harder to call upon these days. Nothing like the end of the world to put things in perspective, maybe. Maybe he was degrading. There had to be something wrong, and it couldn’t just be that he was getting sick of it. “I’ll give you back to him in one piece.” But he had to… “and only lightly tortured.”
The Imposter laughed. And that was his Adversary’s laugh, a sudden and inelegant bark that seemed to surprise him as he made it. That same squirming unhappiness and discomfort began once more to writhe in the back of his head, in his chest, in his gut, anywhere there was space to feel, and he so badly wanted it to stop.
“Lightly tortured? Kid has got you whipped.”
“Enough.”
He should close the door.
“Do I get a book or something?”
“No.”
His hand tightened around the handle enough to feel the alloy flex under his glove.
“What if I get bored?”
“That is not my problem.”
The Imposter tilted his head to the side. Makto’s heart sank in immediate regret. He really ought to know better by now.
“You really must mi–”
He slammed the door shut with a heavy thunk and stared at the dimly glowing light on the door as the locks engaged one after the other. Thunk, thunk, thunk. No getting out of there. Out of sight and out of mind. And not Makto’s problem. As if summoned, his lieutenant emerged from behind the main brig door with a stack of datapads and a practiced, disinterested, neutral expression.
“Please tell me it’s something good.”
The sooner they could set off, the sooner they could set to stripping some abandoned asteroid base for parts or disrupting some Corpus mining platform. His crew needed to be busy. For the Queens, as rote and hollow of a rallying cry as that had become. For the Lich just didn’t have the same ring to it.
His lieutenant shrugged. Makto grabbed the first datapad off the stack and dedicated as much of his attention as possible to reading it as he made his way out of the brig, and when the heavy door descended behind him to seal off the empty cells– except one– he set a course to the navigation room.