A soft glow emitted from one of the cells as Red and I moved through the corridor filled with the fetid stench of death and infection and the dying wails of captives. I felt myself inexplicably drawn towards it, like a moth to an open flame.

To say I was shocked at the discovery of what was inside would be a vast understatement.

Before me stood this amazing machine, dotted with various lights that blinked their messages silently in the darkness of the pits. What were they? This was technology that was far more advanced than anything you'd find in Alerar. Was it from far across the ocean, in the lands to the east? Or did it have some other origin entirely? It looked like how I pictured one of the suspended animation setups from all those science fiction novels I read.

All evidence pointed to it being exactly that. The centerpiece of the whole thing was a giant glass tube, roughly eight feet tall and another three in diameter. Inside, floating in a vat of some clear gel-like substance, was an almost ethereal figure. She wore a skin-tight suit with an array of tubes and cables coming out of it, presumably to keep her alive and functioning but in a constant state of sedation. Her hair was silver, almost white even, and pulled back into a neat ponytail that floated messily around her head. She was thin, almost scarily so, appearing more like a life-sized porcelain doll rather than a living, breathing human being.

But the one thing I noticed more than any of these details was the birthmark on her, ah, her chest. The bodysuit was consciously unzipped low enough to expose her, um, parts of her breasts, and the mark sat squarely between the two.

It took a second to recognize it through the distortion of the gel, but it immediately set off alarms in my head.

That was the same birthmark that Red had on her back.

I'd only seen it once, and that was the day that I gave her a physical examination and a round of vaccinations, before I split from the Hands. It came up several times in that musty old book that Red asked me to translate.

Was this another one? Another of her kind? These... these Ar'Tuel people?

I suddenly had a thousand questions burning a hole in my stomach, but before I could let even one of them go Red called me over to the adjacent cell. Reluctantly, I took one last look at the suspended figure, and tore myself away.

Red had already produced the key and swung open the door on its rusty hinges. She was droning on emotionlessly about this particular prisoner, but I didn't hear a thing she said. My mind was back with the other one, the waif with the tattoo. She must have been of some importance to Red if she threw down the gold to have that life support machine set up this far north.

It wasn't until Red put a boot into the gut of the prisoner she wanted me to take off her hands that I started paying attention. In the dim light of the torches in the hallway, I made out a figure dressed in tattered rags writing on the ground. She was, like the other prisoner, extremely thin. Her hair was dark, with a pair off cat-like ears protruding from the top of her skull, caked with dried blood and nailed into the stone floor of the dungeon. Likewise, her tail had been restrained in the same matter.

I knelt down next to the neko to get a better look at her. The soft amber glow of my eyes illuminated her features just enough for a pang of recognition to creep down my spine.

Oh, shit.

"I know you," I hissed at the sad little creature.

Her eyes were wide and frantic, searching for any hint of salvation in my twisted features. The neko struggled against her bonds, the shackles chafing her wrists and ankles while the nails in her ears tore their wounds open once more. Slowly, I raised a briar-knit finger up to the dirty cloth that served as a gag and pulled it away from her mouth.

"You're that little shit who took my soul."