Chapter 157: Work For Me

The pounding in her skull was the first thing that brought her back to consciousness.

Her neck throbbed with a dull, heavy ache where the steel butt of the pistol had crushed into her nerves. Her mouth tasted like copper and stale dust. She tried to lift a hand to touch her sore throat, but metal clinked sharply against stone.

She opened her eyes, blinking against the harsh glare of an electric light bulb hanging from a raw wire overhead.

She was sitting on a cold, damp bench inside a vaulted stone cell deep within the palace’s lower substructure. Heavy, matte-gray steel chains wrapped around her wrists and crossed over her lap, locking her firmly to an iron ring bolted straight into the granite wall. Her leather armor, boots, and throwing daggers were gone. She wore only her black undershirt and training trousers. Even the dark iron Torment Band around her left wrist had a heavy clamp locked over it, dampening her mana flow to a sluggish crawl.

She tugged at the chains.

Clank.

The high-grade alloy didn’t give an inch.

She raised her head, looking through the heavy steel-barred gate of the cell.

Outside the bars, standing under the bright white glow of a temporary utility lamp, stood two soldiers in full combat gear. They wore modern helmets with night-vision mounts, ceramic plate carriers, and carried short, black assault rifles held across their chests. They stood like machines, stone-faced and silent.

The soldier on the left shifted his gaze slightly, noticing her stirring. He leaned his head toward his shoulder, pressing a small black button on his chest rig.

"Subject is awake in holding cell three," the guard said in a calm, flat tone through his radio. "Notify the Commander."

A quiet crackle of static answered him through his earpiece.

The girl glared at them, her dark eyes burning with pure hatred. She gathered saliva in her mouth, preparing to spit, but her throat was too dry. All she could do was glare, her breath hissing between clenched teeth.

Five minutes later, heavy footsteps echoed down the stone corridor.

The two guards immediately stood a little straighter, shifting their rifles slightly to clear the way.

John Smith walked into the pool of white light outside the bars.

He wasn’t wearing his tactical vest or a helmet. He wore a simple gray long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his forearms, dark cargo pants, and his service holster at his waist. He looked relaxed, holding a metal clipboard in his left hand and a plain plastic cup of water in his right.

He stopped directly in front of the iron bars, looking down at her with calm, steady eyes.

"Head hurt?" John asked in English.

The girl glared up at him. She opened her mouth and spat out a string of furious, venomous words in rapid Japanese.

"Kisama... naze ikiteru...!"

John didn’t react. He reached forward and set the plastic cup of water down on a small shelf near the food slot.

"English," John said, his voice flat, firm, and authoritative. "We speak English here. If you want to talk, use words my guards and I understand. Otherwise, you sit in the dark."

The girl’s jaw worked furiously. She understood basic conversational English from school back home, even if the accent was foreign and harsh on her tongue. She swallowed hard, coughing slightly on her dry throat before forcing the foreign words out.

"Water... is poison?" she croaked in stiff, heavily accented English.

"It’s clean tap water," John replied, switching back to an easy, conversational tone. "Take it or leave it."

"I... not want your water," she hissed, her English clumsy and strained, but clear enough. "Dog."

John didn’t get angry. He simply pulled a folding metal chair from the corridor wall, set it down two paces from the cell door, and sat down. He rested his elbows on his knees, studying her face.

"Do you remember me?" John asked.

The girl stared at his dark eyes, his short black hair, and the sharp, emotionless set of his jaw. The memory was old, buried under months of grueling training, beatings, and forced obedience under the imperial court, but it was there.

"John Smith," she muttered, struggling with the pronunciation but getting the syllables out. "The... trash summon. You have no mana. The crystal... not shine for you. Goddess Viona call you insect."

"That’s right," John nodded, completely unbothered by the memory. "She threw me out because I was powerless. Said I had no value in this world."

He leaned forward slightly, gesturing with his thumb toward her heavy chains, then toward the two armed guards standing behind him, and finally to the palace around them.

"So tell me," John said, a faint, cold edge in his tone. "At this exact moment, sitting in this cell... who is more powerless? You, or me?"

Her jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped under her pale skin. She pulled at the chains again, making the metal links rattle loudly against the granite.

"You are coward!" she yelled, her English broken by pure fury. "You have no magic! You use our world’s weapons, cowardly weapons! You come back to kill everyone!"

"I came back here to win a war," John said flatly. "And you came sneaking through my hallway with a poisoned blade trying to take my head off. Why?"

"Why?!" The girl let out a harsh, bitter laugh that ended in a cough. She leaned forward against her restraints, her dark eyes wide. "You killed Miyuki!"

John’s eyebrows raised just a fraction.

"Miyuki?" he repeated.

"Miyuki was my friend! My best friend!" she screamed, stumbling over her English as tears of rage built in her eyes. "From our home! We come to this world together!"

Tears of pure frustration and grief cut down her cheeks, washing pale tracks through the grime on her face.

"I come to cut your neck! For Miyuki!"

John stared at her for several long seconds. The anger, the grief, the desperate fury—none of it was feigned. She genuinely believed her best friend was dead.

John let out a slow, quiet breath through his nose. He flipped the first page on his clipboard, pulled out a small glossy color photograph, and stepped up to the bars. He slid the photo through the narrow slot, letting it drop face-up onto the stone floor right by her bare feet.

The girl flinched, glancing down instinctively.

Her breath completely stopped.

In the photograph was a clean, brightly lit hospital room.

Lying in a modern adjustable bed, hooked up to a clear intravenous drip and a digital heart monitor, was a teenage girl with long chestnut hair. Her face was pale, and she had a white medical bandage wrapped around her ribs, but her chest was rising and falling steadily. She was asleep, looking peaceful, without a single cut on her face.

"Miyuki...?" the girl gasped, dropping back into Japanese for a second before catching herself. "She... how... she is not dead?"

"She’s alive," John said calmly in English. "She took a severe concussion and internal bleeding when the blast wave hit the pier. My field surgeons stabilized her three days ago. She’s resting in our naval hospital ship out in the harbor. Three meals a day, clean sheets, and pain medication."

The girl stared at the photograph, her trembling fingers hovering over the paper as if touching it would make it vanish.

"You... you not kill her?"

"We don’t execute prisoners of war," John answered. "Especially not enslaved teenagers who were forced to stand on a pier as human bait while their goddess fled out the back door."

He pointed to the purple glow pulsing under the metal clamp on her wrist.

"Are you under her mental control right now?" John asked. "Is Viona manipulating your mind?"

"No," the girl said quietly, her head hanging low, her long black hair falling forward to hide her face. "Viona did not force me to come here. I... I asked to come. She told me you killed Miyuki. I wanted to kill you."

"Viona lied to you," John said, his voice hard as iron. "She used your friend as a disposable distraction so she could save her own skin, and then she sent you on a suicide mission to fix her mistake."

The girl didn’t argue. She slumped back against the cold stone.

John watched her for a moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brass key.

"Here’s the deal," John said.

She slowly looked up.

"Work for me," John stated.