"and you.. who are you?" ( for my boy @homelander-rp-blog for any of your muses! for apocalypse au! )
Six months ago, during the war, Gaya fell and broke. Shot in the stomach, ejected through a window that cracked open, twenty floors high. Her spine shattered, her left arm snapped like glass, and her iliac wings were pulverized. She bled out on the pavement, dead. Technology had advanced in this new chapter of the world, enough to piece her body back together, enough to merge flesh with steel and thread her nerves through circuits. Her left arm and her spine were fully replaced, bionic. Neural pathways were rerouted through a matrix of living code. Her body healed, but she was no longer just human. Half a woman, half a machine. That same technology is what tore the world apart. It began in secrecy, in government labs chasing transcendence, trying to rewrite the limits of the human condition. But the secret didn’t stay buried. Titan, a terrorist syndicate with no face and endless reach, stole the research before the government could even lie about it. By the time Titan was found, it was too late. They were out for blood, and they got it. Gaya always believed humans shouldn’t play God and she was right. Sadly, she still failed to stop what came next. The war that followed wasn’t just civil, it was apocalyptic. Titan’s stolen tech created HumanAIs, hybrids built for war, programmed to kill who inevitably start killing regular humans. What started as a silent war became a global one, spiraling out of control. Now, what's left of humanity hides. Scattered. Starving. The cities belong to the HumanAIs who operate for Titan, soulless, and ruthless. The rest of the world is a crumbling wasteland of rusted skeletons and toxic air. Humans live in exile, in otarcy, a kind of existence where survival is a full-time job and trust is extinct. Many wander the red deserts, where wind doesn’t blow and the sky forgets to rain. Gaya hasn’t awakened yet from her recovery and surgery, she still lies in a bed made of glass, intubated, in a room that’s kept hidden. A room watched over by Kaeleena.
Kaeleena stands like a ghost wrapped in ivory, a vision so pristine it feels offensive. Her dress is immaculate, the color of untouched snow, stitched from something too soft to be real, yet too perfect to be fabric. It clings and drapes with eerie fluidity, a high-collared robe that splits open like a ceremonial blade down the front, revealing thin bands of gold coiled along her ribs. Ornamental and useless, like jewelry meant for gods. Her feet are bare. Clean. Silent. She moves like she’s never touched the ground. The room she inhabits is an aberration in this post-collapse world. A sanctum of impossible luxury carved into the bones of Titan's supremacy. Glass walls rise around her like cathedral windows, refracting artificial light into dancing gold across the marbled floor. A single desk dominates the room, sleek and angular. Behind her, a massive screen displays with schematics, pulse maps, surveillance grids, and living files. One of them is labeled simply: Gayane. Cables slither from the ceiling like lazy serpents, some plugged into her desk, others drifting, whispering data and venom. The air smells of antiseptic and something older, like ozone or blood. Kaeleena leans against the edge of the desk, absurdly at ease in this sanctuary of horrors. Her eyes are pale, too pale to be fully human anymore. She was once, like all of them. When she smiles, it is with the slow satisfaction of someone who has already won. Her presence is cold. Where Gaya burned, Kaeleena freezes. She doesn’t need horns or claws. Her power is in her poise, her intelligence, and the certainty that she knows everything. Every path, every death, every betrayal. She watches John with the look of someone who already knows how the story ends. He is being escorted, not dragged or restrained, merely shadowed by the men who guard Titan’s inner sanctum. She has been expecting him. When he enters, she smiles, the curve of her lips dangerous. He asks who she is. Even if she would love to kill him, she doesn’t. Not yet. For the love of the game. “I do wonder,” she says, voice smooth as oil over glass, “if Gayane ever spoke of me, darling. I sincerely hope she did. If not... I shall be very disappointed. And I do not wear disappointment well.” They look exactly alike, Gaya and Kaeleena. Same eyes, same bone structure. But where Gaya kept the storm in her dark hair, Kaeleena bleached hers into light, so pale, almost white. Their auras, however, could not be more different. Gaya was the flame. Kaeleena, the frost.
“Who am I?” she repeats, stepping closer. Her voice is steel. “I am the villain in your precious narrative, John. Welcome to Titan. Our empire is sacred, and I…” She smiles again, this time with teeth, deranged and proud. “I am its High Priestess.” She knows exactly how far he’s come. Crossed the red deserts. Walked through cities infested with soulless machines. All for her. “Don’t tell me,” she purrs, circling him now, like the serpent in Eden, “you came all this way simply to meet your sister-in-law.” Her tone turns mocking, cruel in its sweetness. “What is it, then? Have you come to steal my beloved Gayane away from me… instead?” She leans in, eyes wide with exaggerated sorrow, a hand drifting to rest against her heart, as though to calm some violent flutter within. “I have peered into her mind, you know. I have seen the two of you, watched those fivelong years unfold like pages in a sickeningly intimate little novel. The investigations, the dates, the whispered conspiracies, the moments where death breathed down your necks and you clung to each other like lifelines. And then, of course, the sweet, sweet love-making. I love yous in Missionary aren't as cute as you think they are.” Her lips curl with disdain, like the very memory leaves a taste of ash on her tongue. Psychotic and jealous? “She loves you. More than she ever loved me. Can you fathom that?” A low, brittle laugh slips from her throat, somewhere between a sob and a knife dragged across silk. She's deranged. “It shattered me,” she says softly, with a tragic little tilt of her head. “I’m terribly sensitive.” Then, just as quickly, her gaze turns. The softness evaporates, replaced by something cold and merciless, something that cuts. “So tell me, John,” she murmurs, voice tightening. “Do you want her back… or not?” She steps back, just slightly, her hands clasping behind her back, posture impeccable, like a queen awaiting terms of surrender. “Because I am not above bargaining and I always enjoy a good negotiation. That's how we can get to know each other.”
