---Cell---
---Zuzana’s perspective---
I step through the door and see a woman whose long, scaly, legless body makes my stomach turn in fear, despite the fact that I’ve never seen her be anything other than nice to anyone!
Even though everyone keeps telling me that Terrans are the most formidable people in the galaxy and that, when I’m around nonTerrans, I need to treat them like they’re made of spun glass, for reasons I don't understand, looking at this woman has my instincts screaming that I’m not safe!
Ignoring my discomfort, I smile “Hello Ms Hasiakh… I’m here to see Ratimyr?”
“Of course, Mrs Zuzana…” she says, answering my smile with a curl of her own stiff lipped mouth “…right this way.”
She leads me along a row of empty rooms with the nearside walls made of thick glass.
As I walk (and she moves her body in an undulating glide that does nothing to ease my misplaced fear of her), I see a panel raise itself from the floor in front of one of the cells, stopping at the perfect height to act as a seat for me.
Then, he comes into view.
He looks up and, seeing who’s here, stands and rushes to the glass.
“Zuzana! I…”
“Step back from the divide!” snarls the guardswoman with bloodcurdling ferocity!
Ratimyr wilts in fear and does as instructed.
Then, Hasiakh turns her scarlet scaled face to me and sweetly says “I’ll give you some privacy; the field will be up, the recordings off and I’ll step outside… if there’s any trouble, just press one of the large red buttons on the wall and I’ll be right back inside to deal with it. Is there anything else you need before I go?”
I smile and shake my head.
She nods and turns to leave in that spine chilling, unearthly glide of hers.
I take a seat on the raised panel and say “It’s… good to see you, Ratimyr… you look healthy at least, in spite of the circumstances.”
“Zuzana…” he says, a little desperately “…I’ve been talking with the man who’s going to be my advocate at the trial… He thinks we have a solid case around the legality of my arrest… Even though the council had voted to submit ourselves as a UTC vassal, the UTC hadn’t accepted it yet, which makes the question of whether or not I ought to have been subject to UTC law dubious… He told me that ‘ignorance is no excuse’ so, the fact that I didn’t know she was a UTC representative, or that it was illegal to strike one, won’t be any basis for acquittal… but that it might help to earn me sympathy with the jury if we can sell the idea that I was just acting normally for my culture and didn’t realise the new rules that I was suddenly living under… But, he also said it would be really helpful if I could get witnesses who could vouch for my good character… Would you testify as a character witness for me, Zuzana?”
I beam and answer “Oh, I will definitely testify at your trial, Ratimyr!”
He gives a relieved smile.
“Ratimyr…” I start “…I came here today to ask you a question.”
He looks confused as he says “What’s your question?”
I smile, ignoring the sickening, swooping nausea in my stomach, and ask “Did you kill Lukas, Ratimyr?”
What little colour it has drains from his face as he says “Don’t be… ridiculous, Zuzana!… The zmora killed your husband!… You saw his body!… You think I could have done that to him!?”
Maintaining my sly smile, I answer “Hasiakh is gone, Ratimyr… It’s just us here… Tell me…”
He looks at me for several long moments, his eyes scanning my face for emotions it is not displaying, before he answers “The zmora… did the deed but… I ordered him to investigate the place where it was… when… I’d… already seen it… I should have been ordering everyone into a defensive grouping… but I didn’t…”
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“Why didn’t you?” I say, stalwartly maintaining the smile of a trusting confidant.
“Isn’t it obvious, Zuzana?” he smiles “I did it for you!”
“For me?”
Beaming now, he answers “Yes… I saw the opportunity to get rid of him for you… and I took it!”
Cocking my head, curiously, I ask “How did you know I wanted him ‘got rid of’?”
He scoffs, contemptuously, and answers “It couldn’t have been more obvious!… You’re a Fojtordenter’s daughter… and that farmboy had you picking crops in the fields while you were raising his brats!… I could see the toll it took on you, living in that hovel, working like a peasant… After your parents died, I watched you blossom into a fine young woman, Zuzana, only then to be seduced by that nobody! I watched as the years weathered your face and, every time you saw me, you would smile and greet me… so warmly… I knew I could give you everything you wanted… he just needed to be out of the way first!”
“You mean to tell me, Ratimyr…” I say, standing up and dropping the seductive smile “…that my politeness to you… got Lukas murdered?”
“I… um… I…err… that’s…” he stammers, the pride he had a moment ago gone!
“If I’d been a bitch to you since Lukas and I married, would he still be alive?!” I demand, baring my teeth in disgust “Or would you have killed him to spite me in that case!?… Or would you still have managed to convince yourself that I had feelings for you and, if you could only get my husband ‘out of the way’, I’d swoon, gratefully, into your arms!?”
“But… I’d have looked after you!” he says, still clearly shell shocked from me dropping the façade of being charmed by his murder of the only man I’ve ever loved “I would have given you a better life than he ever did!”
“NO YOU WOULDN’T!!!” I scream, causing him to cower back in spite of the solid 5cm of glass barrier separating us “Sure, I wouldn’t have had to work the fields if I were your wife but, instead, you would have expected me to be a full time cook, maid and baby factory… all while you expected me to flawlessly maintain the beauty you’ve been fucking leering at since I was 15!!!… You don’t think I knew what you wanted when I married Lukas, you pompous, arrogant narcissist!?…The work was hard, living with him, yes! But I did it, because it was so worth it!… That ‘hovel’ is the house he and I built together! Those ‘brats’ are the children I had with the man I loved! A man who respected me! A man who didn’t feel entitled to me because of who he was! A man who, unlike you, earned his rank in the guard, rather than having it handed to him because his daddy was the previous Guardcaptain!”
“But…” he says, limply “…I love you, Zuzana!”
“Your. love. is. fucking. poison!… I. don’t. want. it!” I snarl at the murderer before adding “Tell your advocate that I plan to testify for the prosecution!”
His face falls and his eyes dart back and forth, calculating, before he says “I’ll deny it! You have no evidence!”
“No evidence except…” I pull out my holopad with a spiteful smirk “…a recorded confession!”
His eyes go wide as he realises I was playing him from the start!
“It won’t be admitted! I’m not on trial for murder and they can’t try me for a crime I committed on an independent system outside the UTC's jurisdiction!”
Resignedly, I nod “True, they can’t!… But, when I testify to your character history as a lowlife, murdering scumbag… it is pertinent to support that!… Quite likely to make the jury think yours isn’t the kind of sickness that can be fixed with a six week course and that you might need more comprehensive [rehabilitation]… in the 15-20 year range, perhaps?… Or maybe they’ll decide to [extradite] you back to Nowe Mazury, to stand trial before the Rada…”
His face blanches at that.
“Relax, fucker!… Miyazaki and Yasmin told me they won’t be able to give you the death penalty or… if they do, they won’t be allowed to carry it out… The UTC apparently doesn’t allow ‘judicial murder’ and that’s one of the rules they will definitely enforce, even on a protectorate… But they would be allowed to hand down any length of sentence they see fit, and have it carried out in a UTC medium security… The only court you could appeal to, to have that decision overturned, is the Supreme Court on Earth… You want my advice, Ratimyr?”
He looks at me, dully.
“When you get certified as fit to reenter society, either after your sentence for striking Miyazaki or after your sentence for murdering my husband… stay away from Nowe Mazury… because I plan to spend every day you’re inside making damn sure that everyone knows what you did! Knows that, for the sake of your own vain jealousy, you murdered a soldier, a husband and a father! Your name will be mud!… So don’t come back! Go somewhere else… anywhere else… try to get over yourself… live your life… just keep it the hell out of mine!!!”
With that, I turn and stride away.
“Zuzana…! Zuzana wait…!!!” he calls after me but I don’t stop.
My righteous fury carries me out of the door before it subsides… to be replaced by desolate emptiness…
I tremble as I stand there, my mind blank of any articulated thoughts… just a violent maelstrom of emotions in their place!
“Zuzana…!” comes a familiar voice.
Blankly, I look up to see Yasmin, Miyazaki and Hasiakh, all looking at me, concerned.
I register that Yasmin has her hand on my shoulder, though I didn’t feel her place it there.
The dam cracks… and I burst into tears, hurling myself against the beautiful woman and sobbing, incomprehensibly…