Souki had associated humming with peace.
The predictability of a vocal chords' low vibration, seemed to bring her ease.
Sadly, within the walls of Salaam, even that seemed corruptible.
Inside the glass cylinder, Souki felt the energy pushing and pulling at her pores. Naked against a cold, clinical pressure that made all of existence feel heavy. She was suspended, drifting in a void where the only anchor was the sight of metal through the reinforced quartz.
Shiear Vanqis would spend every second of his day here. Running tests in areas the she could not turn herself to see.
Other than that he seemed to be experiencing high pleasure as he hummed, to himself, a light, jaunty tune.
The kind that a baker might practice while kneading dough. He moved with a terrifyingly casual grace, his fingers dancing over a series of brass dials and glowing seals that lined the base of her cage. Every twist of a knob sent a fresh shiver of static through Souki's skin.
She aligned her thoughts, but her mind resembled more a frantic bird trapped in a cage, than the calm and preemptive machine that she was used to.
She gathered wits and prepared her Iké for extension. She had tried for the last month but had failed every time.
After all, Souki was self-taught.
Everything she knew about her own Iké, existed because she willed it.
What she lacked in formality, she made up for with raw control and quality. For that she was praised by even the staunchest of Alven.
She gathered her Iké until it cumulated into a visible needle-sharp point, aiming it at the seam of the glass, praying for a crack, a flicker, a failure in the seal.
Anything towards her escape would be accepted.
"It won't work, sparkplug," Vanqis said in sing-song. His notepad still held all of his attention. His voice was muffled by the glass, but just permeable enough for sound to travel.
"An impressive skill, but this cylinder was originally designed as a suppressor for high-threat prisoners. Turning it into a battery casing was... well, it was an inspired bit of recycling on my part."
Souki froze. She stared at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of hatred and dawning horror.
Vanqis finally looked up, offering a warm, almost grandfatherly smile. "Oh, look at that. You speak far more than I expected. Your silence is quite loud, Souki."
He pronunced her name as though he hated the taste it left in his mouth.
Vanqis stepped back, wiping his hands on a silk cloth as if he had just finished a minor chore. His eyes twinkling with a strangely warm invitation.
"Guess my age."
Souki remained motionless, the vacuum making it almost impossible to move her eyeballs, let alone speak. Vanqis waited, his head tilted in mock anticipation, before he let out a soft chuckle.
"Five hundred and twenty-nine," he nodded proudly to himself, "It doesn't sound like much, but I assure you it is and was."
Souki found her thoughts hesitating. He looked as though he was less than ten years her senior. Yet she suppressed her reaction, ensuring that he couldn't confuse a reaction with receptive conversation.
"It's," He didn't seem to care that he was being ignored and continued anyway, "It's a lot of time to learn about yourself and the world that you live in."
"I grew up in the Temple, you know. Shahari, Alven, Hurc, all living under the same roof. In my days when we didn't have these cities. It was a mess of uncertainty, but a beautiful one. Being around true scholars of Iké is what made me this way. It made me obsessed with it; this energy and its source."
"One of my oldest memories is me asking a priest where does the energy to make Iké even come from? I remember him trying to deflect. I remember him realising that he didn't have the asnwer. I remember realising that I had lost just enough respect for him that he became my first lab rat. A crude thing that was."
He chuckled aloud as he recalled the thought, seemingly lost in reminiscence of his truly unkind youth.
"I don't regret it. I would take the side of anyone who had come to be enthralled the way that I did. I mean you... You are gifted with a perfect ratio of Iké, surely you must understand perspective. Because for you and people like you... it is seamless and natural. Others have to consciously draw this out of themselves. And even then the effort required by an actual person is probably far less strenuous than for a wild animal.
For Astrans like us it takes less effort than a heartbeat to create and manage such incredible, world-bending feats. It feels like a waste to just... let it float away into the atmosphere. Underutilized."
Souki felt a cold stone drop in her stomach. The uneasinesss he had felt on the Beem was back, now amplified into a screaming instinct to flee.
"I eventually became a priest. A shock in those days, because before me they were all Alven," Vanqis continued, pacing around her cylinder like a professor in a lecture hall. "I wanted it because it was a position where I could study the finer workings of the soul without the distraction of politics. But the Temple proved itself to be a slow beast. Ideas and progress hindered by legislation and contrarians that argue against theory they don't understand. So, I transferred to the frontlines. The East. The Shink-Ra territory."
He stopped and traced a finger along the base of her glass prison.
"That was where I tested my musings. First it was Iké-sensitive materials. I knew that if you treat certain fibers with concentrated solutions, they could remember. They could react with predictability. I turned every 'sick idea'; as those now dead people called them. I focused all my intent toward the enemy. And the Empire? It praised me for it. The Supreme Leader at the time gave me medals for every new way I found to make a soul hurt."
Souki's mind flashed realising that the madman standing before her was the mind behind the most pivotal moment in the war. The moment they moved from beong the hunted to the hunters of Garig.
Every trap, every blade, every comfort of the Empire she had ever envied was built on research by him.
"For two decades I was an unstoppable force of innovation," he paused as he returned to his seat, "however it seemed. My greatest strength became my greatest weakness. I was too efficient. I had reduced the Shink-Ra population so effectively that I ran out of the very thing I based my praise on."
He looked at Souki then, and for the first time, his smile was gone. His eyes were as cold as the vacuum she was floating in.
"But the Empire had grown used to the crutches I provided. They liked the lights. They liked the warm water and the Beems. They couldn't go back to being clothed variants of apes. And so, when the enemy world couldn't provide the power... we had to look inward."
Souki felt a tug on her spirit. It was as painful as it was the first time, but her mind had concluded that too much effort was wasted reacting and ignored it all together.
"Of course Alven are off-limits,'" Vanqis sighed, "if they weren't, I wouldn't need to skim through the population looking for the purest of Iké. The ones who could theoretically produce more than they need. The anomalies of sorts. The children one in ten thousand Shahari and one five hundred thousand Hurc, who had enough fire in them to keep a city or more breathing."
He turned a final dial. The glow in the room intensified, turning a blinding, electric white.
"Don't look so tragic, sparkplug. I know you would rather be roaming Rému on your own volition, but as I learned from youth, for the majority to live in peace a minority needs to suffer."
He paused to inspect one of his screens, "Thankfully, it was never a hard decision to make.