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Briar Rose, space pirate extraordinaire, captain of the star ship Aurora, was staring at a man.
Well, she's staring at the clone of a man, to be precise, but she isn't going to get into the ethics of whether or not a clone is technically a person.
He's floating in a tank, suspended by wires that run underneath his skin and feed out of the tank to presumably power the defense grid Briar had just cut her way through.
Uncountable amounts of soldier clones were defending this place, all them genetically engineered to be the perfect warrior.
Unfortunately for them, Briar was also genetically engineered to be a perfect soldier. And she was much, much better than them. Being immortal gives you an edge.
Briar takes a step closer to the man. The wires in his face are closer to the surface, thin black lines around his eyes that almost look like jagged lightning bolts.
His mouth is set in a scowl, breaking the illusion of a peaceful sleep. She wonders, distantly, what he'll do when he wakes up.
Speaking of.
"How do we wake him up?" She calls over her shoulder, not looking away from the man.
Her engineer, Red Hood, has no apparent interest in the man and is busy poking around at the computer terminal.
"You could try kissing him." She suggests, head popping up over top of the computer.
Briar fully turns around to stare at Red Hood for that, raising a judgemental eyebrow.
"What!" The engineer exclaims, "you could!"
"I'm not gonna kiss a sleeping stranger Red, that's fucking weird!" Briar throws her hands up and turns back to the man.
Red Hood makes a face at Briar's back and looks at the computer screen.
Briar stares at the sleeping man. It was Red Hood's idea to go on this rescue mission in the first place, going on and on about "biomechanical organism" and "distress signals" and whatever the fuck. She'd only agreed to go because the prospect of killing her way to the center of the most heavily defended planet in the system was exciting.
Now that she's here though… Some part of her is intrigued by the mechanical heart of the defense grid. She can see it, beating in his chest. A golden heart, thick wires running to and from it to keep him alive and asleep.
Red Hood is still playing with the computers, muttering to herself about connections and hacking and a bunch of other techno-geek things she loves to go on about, but patience has never been Briar's strong suit.
"New plan. I'm going to shoot the machines until they explode." Briar says.
"That's always your plan." Red Hood grumbles, but reluctantly abandons the computers to stand by Briar's side.
Picking up a machine gun from one of the bodies on the floor, Briar grins maniacally and opens fire.
Bullets spray everywhere, ricocheting off the walls and making the computers and the machinery explode. Finally, she turns the gun on the glass tank and the sleeping man within.
If the glass is reinforced, it still doesn't hold up against the torrent of bullets Briar unloads onto it, and the glass shatters.
The gun clicks empty and Briar throws it aside, far more interested in what the sleeping man will do.
He wakes slowly, then all at once, his eyes snapping open as he tears the wires out of his skin. There's no confusion on his face. Only bloodlust as he opens his mouth and lets out a scream of rage.
Briar smiles.
"Hello, Beauty." She whispers, before the man slits her throat with a shard of glass and she knows no more.
A thought, before the temporary darkness of death takes her:
It was worth coming after all.