Pigrann - Chapter 1: Stela

When Stela opened her eyes, she had forgotten about her arrest. After all, she had woken up in the most elaborately decorated and expensive room that she had ever seen.

It hardly resembled a prison cell.

Not with a diamond-encrusted four poster bed. Or ornate gold foil flower designs that covered the walls and ceiling. Or furniture that had been hand-carved (probably) by the famous Eoilin miners over two hundred years ago, long before Pigrann had been mandated across the colonies.

And Stela had worked so hard to avoid Pigrann. Eight years of hiding, running and trickery had been wasted as she awaited her fate. At any moment they would make her forget her life and force her to become whoever they wanted her to be. Before Pigrann, they called this coercion.

            Her brother, Itri, had taught Stela about coercion long before she could even spell her name. He taught her a lot of things that most people have conveniently forgotten. But not Stela. She remained one of the few left who remembered her life before Pigrann instead of believing the false reality the Emperor had created for them.

One fact had kept Stela alive. Pigrann could be reversed. So she traveled from house to house, planet to planet, galaxy to galaxy with the sole intent to restore memories. Sometimes they remembered immediately. For most people, however, it took time and patience. And in those cases, the PROBers would start looking for her long before she could do anything to help them.

That’s how she wound up in prison. She moved too late.

She looked around the luxurious cell, wishing she could force her body to throw up. This room represented everything she worked against and yet this is where they chose to keep her. An involuntary guest of the Emperor.

She thanked the stars that Itri couldn’t see her like this. His voice already echoed in her mind, she couldn’t bear actually seeing him. She had been reckless. She had made amateur mistakes. She had waited too long. She should have seen the PROBers coming from a distance. She should have been working in a location where she could hear them before they could hear her. Everything had moved against her, and she had no one to blame but herself.

But she wouldn’t have done it any other way. Not if it meant rescuing Lola from Pigrann and helping her escape before the PROBers found them. At least, she hoped, they wouldn’t catch Lola.

She knew they would hunt her now because Lola remembered her life before Pigrann. That mattered to Stela. She stared out the window, wondering if she could catch some sight of her, but of course she couldn’t. Not out of a fake window with a ten minute loop. Even her last memories before she forgot everything would be fake.

She had to escape from this prison. But she had surveyed every surface of this room and had yet to find a weak spot. Not even the fake window helped her. Her cell may not have looked like a prison, but it certainly kept people in.

Despite this, she did another sweep of the room. She hammered the walls, floor, ceiling, but nothing gave way. Nothing even budged under her touch.

What would Abervon do after this? Would they even know about it? Would they search for her and make her remember her past? She hoped so, but the resistance had been trained early on to avoid contact with other members. She hadn’t even seen Itri in two years.

A tear she had not expected fell down her cheek. If she ever saw her brother again, she would not remember him.

After triple-checking the room, Stela slouched against the gold-painted wall and let her head bang against it. No way out. She would forget and become whatever puppet the Emperor wanted her to be and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Another tear ran down her cheek.

The guards did not attempt to be quiet as they approached her room. She heard them before they even knocked. “Pigrann awaits,” their bang on her door screamed as though everyone dreamed of forgetting everything they’ve ever known and replacing it with false memories.

Before the door opened, Stela set her scowl at her visitors. Their knock, of course, had been protocol. They didn’t need her permission, not that she would have ever given it. Coercion was a powerful thing.

Three guards walked into the cell as the door slid open. Stela formulated a plan to run past them and disappear through the hall. She could not really escape this way, but the chances of them killing her instead rose exponentially. She waited for her opening, but when it came, she froze. Not because of fear, but because of the guard who had just come into her view.

Itri.

Instinctively, she wanted to run to him and hug him. But as he looked her over with a cold and unaffected gaze, her heart fell from her chest. He had forgotten her. Pigrann found him before she could.

The tears she had built up and held back threatened to come loose. Quickly, she wiped her eyes, but did not look away from her brother. Or, at least, the shell that used to be her brother. What happened? Did they find him just like they found her? Did he even have a chance?

He took a step towards her and a pointless hope swelled within her. That hope disappeared when he crushed her shoulder in his grip and threw her through the door. Her footing failed and she tumbled to the ground – her shoulder hitting first and then her head banged against the solid steel floor.

Darkness.

When Stela became conscious again, another guard was pulling her by her shirt collar, dragging her across the ground and leaving a trail of blood behind her. She reached for where her head hit the ground and winced as she touched the gash – much deeper than she expected – and her hand returned bright red.

She looked around as they pulled her and tried to concentrate on something other than the throb in the back of her head. Even though she did not recognize the layout, she knew exactly where they headed. Pigrann awaited.

Itri walked next to her, but he faced forward, ignoring her like an ordinary prisoner.

The guard to her right saw her and stated, “She’s awake.” The guard dragging her let go of her shirt and she barely caught herself before her head became reacquainted with the ground.

As she moved to stand up, the same soldier who spoke, slammed his steel-toed boots into her stomach. She fell over and groaned, unable to stop the sound from coming out of her mouth. She immediately regretted it. The same boot came back for a second round, but this time she had nowhere to go. She did not let herself crouch in pain. Biting her lip, she held back the cry that wanted to escape.

 “Get up,” a voice that sounded eerily similar to her brother’s said. Of course it was her brother’s voice – physically nothing about him had changed. Just his memories.

But his voice hurt more than the pain of her stomach and head combined. Her heart ached. She so badly wanted to reverse Pigrann for him. She so badly wanted to make him remember who she was and what they had been fighting for. But there was no time for that.

When she did not immediately stand up, the first guard that had been pulling her joined in the action and kicked her side. “Are you deaf? Get up!”

Through the pain, she forced herself to obey. Every muscle in her body screamed at her. The blood that dripped from her head told her that she needed to lie down. The bruises that were already forming in her stomach warned her to stop. She ignored them all and moved. She needed to stand up before they kicked her again.

Besides, after Pigrann, she wouldn’t remember this anyway.

The guards had enjoyed kicking her and seemed annoyed when Stela stood up at their command. She looked at her brother, unable to believe he had turned into one of them. At least had hadn’t been the one to kick her. Maybe there was some of Itri left in there after all.

A guard pushed her forward and they resumed their walk towards Pigrann.

She should have been thinking about a way to escape. Maybe even devise some sort of plan, but Stela could only stare at Itri. He continued to face forward and avoid her gaze.

A renewed pain coursed through her body as the guard behind her connected his baton with her head. “Face forward!” he shouted and this time purposely tripped Stela before she could react. She focused on protecting her head, knowing it couldn’t sustain any more damage. As her arms covered her face, another hand grabbed her arm and stopped her fall. Or maybe she grabbed him? Either way, Itri helped her back to her feet and continued walking as though nothing had happened. So did the other guards.

Suppressing the pain became increasingly more difficult to manage. She bit her lips, clenched her fists and considered injuring something else if only to make her stomach and head stop pounding. But that would only be worse in the end. She kept walking.

She felt like a prisoner facing death row. In a way, Pigrann was worse than death. No one could manipulate you in death. No, now she would become part of the Empire and a loyal patron of the Emperor.

Risking another blow to her head, she turned back to face Itri. She wanted her last memories to be of him. Especially when she saw a hint of a smile on his face. Itri’s smile. At least that would never change.

She hoped again that somehow in the space between here and their destination, he would remember everything. Then the smile disappeared and she saw his stone-cold, emotionless face staring ahead of them. Chances of him remembering anything disappeared to zero.

No blow ever came to her as they approached a door identical to the one that had locked her in. The guard held a card up to a reader and waited for the doors to slide open to a laboratory. An empty one except for a single chair in the center which she would have to sit in.

The time to escape had gone and now she faced what she had been running from for her entire life. She, like every other citizen in the Empire, would finally undergo Pigrann.

She looked to Itri who had once been in a similar situation. She wondered what he felt when he looked in and saw the single chair that waited for him. She wondered if he thought about her as she could not stop thinking about him. She wondered if he had missed her. Somehow, a single tear slid down her cheek and fell into her shirt. The last tear she would cry as this version of Stela. As the original version of Stela.

Time for coercion.

Itri’s hand grabbed her shoulder, but this time he pulled her along gently and the other two soldiers stayed behind. Fitting that her own brother should be the one to destroy her. The Emperor had probably planned that.

Then confirmation could be seen through a viewing window above them. There he sat, surrounded by his mindless and thoughtless followers. She should have been honored that the Emperor chose to attend her Pigrann, but she wanted nothing more than to spit in his face.

Walking towards her chair, she saw more of the room. A refrigerator – full of the solution for Pigrann she assumed – as well as a table next to her chair, prepped and ready with her own unique serum. Itri led her to the chair and let go of her shoulder.

Motioning to her next prison, he commanded, “Sit down Stela.” Instead of obeying, she could only look up at him, amazed.

Her name.

He had said her name.

“Sit down.” This time she obeyed, but she did not take her eyes off of him. He tied her to the chair, but let the straps rest loose on her flesh.  “Are you ready?”

“I am, Itri,” she whispered back.

“Good,” he said and looked her in the eye for the first time since he had taken her from her cell. “Because we don’t have much time."

In one swift motion, he took one of the syringes from the table and plunged the needle into her arm. He pushed the liquid down until it had all seeped into her blood. Almost instantaneously, her body started to react to the drugs and, as her eyes closed and her body began to shake, Stela wondered what memories she would have when she woke up.

Chapter 2>>>

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