"Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura," the Duke said. "I, therefore, cultivate an air of bravura."
—DUKE LETO ATREIDES
A plastic sack dangled from his right hand. Two contoured memory-foam pillows, bought cash on the Boardwalk. Paul unlocked the padlock of Unit DF-12, let the corrugated door roll up with a throat-clearing rasp, and stepped into his little demesne of concrete, dust, and latent ruin.
Bakuda lay as he had left her: flat, eyes unfocused on the single bulb. Her breathing shallow, her demeanour a study in inert despair. The soul that cannot act consumes itself, he thought, recalling an old Fremen admonition about nafs turned inward. He offered no acknowledgement of her state, answering her silence with his own.
Wordlessly, he retrieved a soft-bristle toothbrush, toothpaste, and a few other things from the supplies. A coffee-stain-colored tarp was laid out first and all else followed after. Moving carefully to avoid jostling her injured spine, he shifted Bakuda, propping her head and torso against his own body, achieving the prescribed forty-five-degree inclination. Then a kidney tray tucked under her chin to catch wastewater.
Retrieving the toothbrush, he dampened it before applying a measured amount of paste. Circular strokes, gumline to crown, outer then lingual, he washed her mouth. A rinse with warm water followed, then the drying of her lips, and the application of a soothing balm to prevent cracks.
A minute later, after undressing her and wiping her body clean, he redressed her in a clean, loose fitting garment, then arranged the newly acquired pillows to support her in a slightly inclined position that alleviated the stress on her joints: one under occiput, one supporting thoracic curve, raising her by thirty degrees.
Examining her, Paul confirmed that the saline drip required changing. He spiked a fresh litre, checked the flow rate, then injected a pre-measured dose of opiate and NSAID into the line. Lastly, he performed a regimen of Passive Range-of-Motion-Exercises on her body; each limb moved through its arc, preventing contracture, stimulating circulation, followed by a brief, but firm massage to her extremities.
Throughout the process Bakuda stared, a void behind pupils. It's been fifty-two hours since her last word to him. Paul offered her water, a few sips to moisten her throat, then some puréed calories in the form of nutrient paste through a 20-millimetre syringe.
Finished, he meticulously tidied the supplies, restoring order to their designated places. He stored medical waste in red bags, stowed toiletries, washed gloved hands with ethanol gel. Then he chose the folding chair opposite her and unsheathed a screwdriver to resume the task he had begun the day prior.
Bakuda's armoured mask lay on the workbench, lenses gutted. The mask, with its integrated breathing filter and vocoder dismantled to their core components. Today however, he began by setting these aside, and reaching for one of the weapons he had seized along the rest of the villainess's gear: A bomb sealed in a compact, glossy, carbon fiber cylinder the size of a soda can—as he brought down the screwdriver, however, a rusty laugh cracked the air. Derisive. "Pop that shell and we're both red mist," she rasped, voice hoarse from disuse. "Go on. Do me a favor."
Paul looked up to meet Bakuda's gaze. He could see some spark of emotion returning to her eyes. She hoped he would do it; accidentally kill them both. Death, she believed, was preferable to this. And the death of her captor, a worthy price for her own. Fana, annihilation, yet tinged with a final, spiteful victory.
Paul smiled without teeth. Amused, he slid the driver beneath an invisible seam, twisted. A soft click as the cap popped free. He arrested a tensioned pin with forefinger, flicked it clear, disengaging a micro-tripwire designed to detonate the device upon unauthorised tampering. A simple but effective safeguard. Bakuda's breath hitched, surprise momentarily overriding her despair. Paul didn't look up as he pried open the clamshell halves.
"It has been two days," he mused, eyes on the manifold of crystal capacitors. "Have you finally found your voice again?"
Bakuda huffed, a sneer twisting her lips, but she offered no reply. Silence resettled, thick and expectant. Her pride was still breathing, then. Good.
Paul continued his examination. Mentat focus unfurled layer by layer: tripped relay, micro-tachyon sink, quantum corking lattice not dissimilar to the sort used in producing the sound-deadening fields of Cones of Silence. At the core, a singularity of purpose—but it was oddly unclear. Hidden deliberately from understanding. Layers of obfuscation behind stochastic routing. Critical components that defied immediate understanding, functioning as cognitive black boxes. Even still, patterns emerged and logical deductions could be made. Walkarounds. Paul made them, and the implications he perceived were… significant. This was no mere explosive. It was designed to warp a localised sector of reality, to freeze a moment, to hold reality like an insect in amber. Time, space, causality – its targets were the prime fundamentals."
"Impressive," he murmured, almost to himself.
Bakuda shifted, a minute rustle of fabric. Smugness flickered across her features. "Of course," she said, unable to resist the implicit praise, "it's my creation after all." Her voice gained strength, fueled by pride. "Not like you would understand, but the stabilisation matrix alone took weeks to calibrate. The temporal displacement charge…" She launched into a technical diatribe, a torrent of jargon and boasts.
Paul let her speak, absorbing the data. A localised stasis field. He noted her methodology, the assumptions in her calculations. When she finally paused, breathless, he offered, "A minor flaw in your charge sequencing. Had you inverted the initiation pulse for the secondary resonance coils, the field duration and stability could have been enhanced by a factor of three. Perhaps four. Also, while fault tolerance is acceptably to the third order, your damping coefficient would lag by eight nanoseconds at super-critical thresholds. Changing just that would see further efficiency gains and increase the overall yield of the device."
Her face flushed. "What would you know? Mercenary scum. The gall to assume you can lecture me on—"
"The energy decay cascade in your current configuration creates harmonic interference," Paul stated, his voice flat, reciting complex equations as if they were simple arithmetic. He sketched a notional formula in the air with a finger. "A phased inhibitor, synchronised with the primary discharge, would negate this. The mathematics are elementary; I am rather surprised you even missed it in the first place."
Bakuda paused, her jaw working as she considered the problem. Calculation flickered behind her eyes, and quickly, Paul realised she had grown absentminded as she grappled with the unexpected critique.
Ignoring her, he turned his attention to another device. Shorter, thicker. Different trigger mechanism. This one, he recognised. The black, light-absorbent goop that hardened after detonation. The Purity neutraliser. He dismantled it mostly the same way he did the first.
Minutes passed. He was examining a fourth device—a grenade that seemingly exploited some esoteric effects to create explosions that are far too big for its size—when Bakuda finally spoke, her voice barely a whisper.
"You're right," she mumbled.
"Of course." Paul hummed noncommittally, not looking up.
Silence again, broken only by the soft click of components as he disassembled her rocket launcher. The weapon was more conventional, though with a seemingly Tinker-enhanced targeting system considering some of the migraine-inducing components in the HUD.
Unable to bear the quiet, the disinterest, Bakuda blurted, "What do you want with me?" The words were a torrent of confusion. "You haven't killed me. You haven't given me up to the PRT, or some other gang. You haven't even made any tangible demands. Why? Why take me?"
Paul paused in his reassembly of the launcher. He considered her, this broken Tinker, this fountain of destructive ingenuity. "A whim," he stated, the truth delivered with utter neutrality. "If I am being honest, I am still contemplating what to do with you." Her eyes widened. Stunned. Then, insulted. He could see the thoughts racing through her eyes. A whim? Was her capture, her fall, so… trivial? A faint arch touched Paul's left brow, gone as quickly as it appeared. He continued working on the launcher. "Your parents did not name you Bakuda, I presume." Of course, he was already familiar with her civilian identity. Following her attack on Cornell, the archives on the internet had been thorough. Unsurprisingly, not that many civilians lend much credence to the "Unwritten Rules" upheld by the capes of their communities. Even fewer seemed rather eager to aid in concealing Bakuda's former identity.
In the end, Paul didn't need to ask Bakuda this. Yet the ritual of dialogue, of exchange, had its purposes. Easing the path to freer disclosure of personal information was incentive enough for him to consider indulging in this mummery, however tedious it might be.
In response, Bakuda scoffed. "Why should I tell you anything?"
"Because I asked," Paul replied, the statement simple, self-evident.
Her sneer returned.
Paul sighed, a sound of mild weariness. "Why must you be stubborn?" He preferred not to cultivate reliance on the Voice. Subtler means were often more effective in the long jihad of wills. "Alright, then. I'll humour you. Cooperate, and you may have a book. To occupy the silence when I am not here."
Her laughter was sharp, brittle. Incredulous. "A book? For what? You crippled me, asshole!"
Paul sighed again. "Audiobooks exist, you know that right?" he pointed out, his tone carrying a shade of condescension that was, perhaps, not entirely feigned. "For all your prodigious intellect, you seem rather incapable of expressing even a modicum of common sense ."
Bakuda bristled again, but her venom could not hide her emotions entirely from Paul's gaze. He saw the flicker in her eyes, the internal debate. The solitary confinement, the monotony, the sheer, crushing boredom—these were potent allies. Sabr, patience, his was greater.
To tilt the scales, he retrieved the MP3 player from his pocket. Oscar's former trinket. He tossed it lightly onto her lap, well out of her physical reach. "This contains some classical Japanese literature… I even tossed in several rather discordant songs you might appreciate." He listed a few titles, artists—selections aligned with what he intuited of her intellect and temperament. The silence stretched. The desire for stimulus warred with defiance. The need for something to break the endless, grey expanse of her current existence.
Bakuda stared at the unreachable object. Isolation pressed on her like the bomb's own vacuum. Slow seconds.
Then, voice small, "Keiko…"
"Keiko Ayase."