Mirrorfall

The world is exactly as you know it. No, really it is. Except that your landlord might be a spirit, the tree outside your window may be a nymph, that flash in the sky wasn’t a trick of the light and that guy in the suit might not be just a bored lawyer on his lunch break.

Mirrorfall - Cover Page

[Current version of the WIP cover, comments are welcomed.]

1 - Broken Doll

Chapter One - Wherein we meet our protagonists, and one of them dies...

The child’s scream continued.

Ryan narrowed his eyes and kept his gun trained on his target and by extension, the soldier’s human shield: a screaming toddler. He tried to block out the child’s screams. Although completely warranted on her part, they did nothing but escalate the situation.

Hostages always made a dangerous situation even worse.

The Solstice fought to get his breath back, his grip tightening on the little girl. He took a moment to scan the child. It was completely human, so that laid one of his fears to rest, and gave credence to the theory that the Solstice had only taken this course of action out of desperation. It hadn’t been planned. It wasn’t an attack. It was simply a botched escape attempt.

His target brought his gun uncomfortably close to the child’s head and grinned.

‘Get the hell away from me, Agent, if you want this brat to live.’

He held his gun steady. He had no intention of letting the man escape again. But neither did he make a move toward him; there was no need to put the child in even more danger. He looked to the little girl, and she stopped screaming, settling for holding tight onto the china doll in her tiny hands and crying. Teardrops made dark patches on the fabric as she struggled to get out of the Solstice’s grip.

‘Put the child down,’ he ordered.

Unlike the Solstice, he wasn’t out of breath. Unlike the Solstice, he wasn’t desperate. Unlike the Solstice, he was in control.

The Solstice scowled at him. ‘Putting the kid down’s suicide. You leave, she lives. You stay, she dies.’

He retreated a few steps, to calm the man a little, but doing so also allowed him to block the nursery’s only viable exit. There was a small window behind the man, but it would prove a slow, and fatal, escape.

‘Not gonna let you kill me.’

The image of a bruised and battered fey woman flashed in his mind, a young woman who had looked hardly old enough to have graduated high school: the Solstice’s first victim of the day. They’d been just a little too late and she’d died, but not before putting up a fight. There had been defensive wounds up and down her arms. The Solstice had taken his time with her, fulfilling the sick and twisted goals of his organisation.

He pushed the image away. One life had been taken already, there was no way that he was going to allow a second to be stolen.

Protocol, however, demanded second chances.

‘I’m willing to talk,’ he said, keeping a sharp eye for a clear shot. Dialogue increased the chances that the little girl would survive with no lasting damage.

‘Bullshit!’ the man screamed, shaking the child. The girl choked on her sobs as she was shaken. The doll slipped from her small hands and smashed on the floor.

He fought the urge to fire. He didn’t have a clear shot, and only a clear shot would serve the situation. If he missed, then the child’s life was forfeit, and that was something he couldn’t live with. Too many innocents had already died around him. Too many lives shortened, too many...

Pushing aside painful thoughts, he took a moment to listen to the sounds from the rest of the house. There were no screaming parents, no concerned visitors phoning the authorities – he would have been notified had the local police been summoned – nothing, just the sounds of the party outside. From an emotional standpoint, it was horrible; from a strategic standpoint, it was the best scenario he could ever hope for: the less complicated the situation, the better.

Attempted negotiations were protocol, but there was no driving need to prolong the situation. ‘One last chance. Talk.’

The Solstice grimaced. ‘Never.’

‘Very well.’ He stared at the Solstice for a moment longer, giving him time to reconsider his decision to die. The soldier didn’t waver in the slightest.

‘You brought this on yourself,’ he said, held up his free hand and clicked his fingers. The impromptu human shield disappeared from the criminal’s arms and reappeared in his own. Tipping the situation to his favour was the murderer’s last chance, giving him a few more seconds to save his life.

The Solstice simply howled in anger and spent the last few bullets in his gun, one smashing a lamp, one lodging itself in his shoulder and the rest impacting various parts of the nursery. He fired one bullet and the cultist fell, hitting the floor with an unceremonious thump. A quick scan confirmed that he was dead.

Warm blood ran down his arm and he took a moment to concentrate and heal it. The bullet forced itself out of the hole and fell to the floor. His facade of skin and bone stitched itself back together. A quick thought refreshed his uniform, leaving it as pristine as when he’d left the Agency an hour ago.

Blood dripped onto his hand, and it became suddenly and terribly apparent that the child wasn’t moving. The gun immediately faded from his hand, and he lifted her with both hands. One of the wild shots had caught her in the chest, piercing the inaccurately depicted purple dinosaur on her shirt.

All thoughts froze as the tiny spark of her soul floated past his eyes. The soul hung hesitantly in the air for a moment, then began to fade from the world.

His eyes flicked to the child for the briefest of seconds. Then his hand shot out to grab the soul. Blue light streamed through his fingers, like he was holding a tiny star, and he could feel the soul trying to fade away, trying to be the second life claimed on his watch today. Effort creased his forehead as the soul tried to disappear. The blue light shuddered and struggled, distressed at being held on a level of reality where it didn’t belong.

He stumbled as the soul tried to pull away, but he held onto it, determined not to let the child pass without a fight.

There was a cold breeze behind him.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

He held onto the soul for a moment longer.Then released it without fear. Free of his grip, it spun in the air for a moment, then faded from existence.He’d done what he’d needed to do, he’d garnered her attention. He held the tiny body close. Then turned to face Death.

All he could see of her face was the grinning smile of a skeleton, but her mood was the furthest thing from cheerful.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded again.

He looked at the child in his arms. ‘She’s too old to become a Starbright...’ he began to explain.

‘Far too old,’ she snapped. ‘Your point?’

‘Lady, please, I beg of you...’

The morning sun caught the blade of her unseen scythe for a moment, and he hesitated, taking a step back from her, back toward the playpen. She wasn’t a being to be trifled with, and he was once again stepping beyond his bounds.

She snorted. ‘She’s too young to make the choice on her own.’

‘So she’s passed?’ he asked, afraid of the answer.

The oldest of the three Ladies stood silent for a long moment, each passing second making him more afraid that he’d already failed.

‘Not beyond my knowing,’ she said at last.

Removing her cowl with bony hands, disappointment was obvious on her face. She stared at him with eyes that had seen the stars form, and shook her head at him.

‘One day,’ she said, ‘you are going to have to live with the consequences of your actions.’

Almost unconsciously, he rubbed the blood on the back of his hand onto his pant’s leg.

‘It might not be today,’ she continued, ‘but one day, you will, and there will be no second chance to save you, no backstop, no chance or recourse to put things right.’

He looked to her, and she gave him the barest of nods. He stooped and placed the body in the playpen and felt terrible for abandoning her, but at the same time he knew that he’d literally be back in no time at all; no matter how much time you spent in Death’s realm, no time passed in the real world.

As an afterthought, he grabbed for the broken porcelain doll, then stood and bowed to Death. He began to fade away, thinking only of the cold void that was her realm. After a moment, he felt a gentle tug, and the unfortunately familiar sensation of sinking through Death’s realm.

The utter nothingness around him and the nearness of the void tugged on what he had that resembled a soul, made him feel unsettled all the way to the core of his being. For mortals it was different. If they were scared, that would take over and they would feel like they were drowning. If they’d been calm, they likened it to coming home. The fear could fade, or the fear could take over and since it was the tiniest percentage of mortals that returned successfully from the Lady’s realm, there were very few who spent their time dwelling on, or philosophising about, the feeling.

It was a natural place for mortals to be. All of them passed through it at least once. Even Fortitude’s immortals had to pass through the darkness once, though their embargo circumvented the possibility of them becoming a ghost.

It was not a natural place for agents. Mortals died and passed on. Agents didn’t. Uselessly closing his eyes against the dark, he prayed to gods that weren’t listening that it would be over soon.

An instant, or an eternity, later, he felt solid ground under his feet, and he felt brave enough to look. As suspected, he was in Limbo. The eternal storm clouds swirled overhead in the gray sky. The gray earth beneath his feet let up little puffs of dust as he crossed toward the tree line of the winter-dead forest and two little girls.

One of the girls was the child he was here to save, the other was the gray land’s guardian. Limbo rolled a bright red ball toward the dead child, turned to him, laughed, and then looked away. Limbo was a being that existed entirely in greyscale, her hair silver, her skin ashen and her eyes black. Even her monk’s robe was in muted tones. Limbo, despite her age, despite her responsibility, always appeared as a child.

All he could do was watch them play. The girl he’d failed was happy. All of her fear had disappeared. There were no more terrified screams or tears of pain, there was just the ball and her new playmate. Children adjusted so quickly. It was a quality he was envious of.

He drove his hands into his pockets and for the briefest of moments, doubted his right to take action. Unfortunately, all thoughts, no matter how brief, were known to the Ladies. The minds of all beings mortal, god and agent were as open as books, books with large text and helpful diagrams no less.

‘You’re right to hesitate,’ Death said as she appeared beside him.

She touched his arm, a rare gesture of affection. ‘You do not have the right to do this. It’s not your prerogative to force this choice on her.’

‘It’s my right,’ he said as he curled his hands into fists within his pockets, ‘to try and save her.’

‘There’s every chance she will become a ghost, is that what you wish on her? Is that the consequence you wish on her? Your mistake, your inaction, contributed to her death, yes, but what you’re chancing is worse than death. Is that what you want?’

It took every shred of self-control to keep his voice calm. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then let her pass.’

He looked up at the girl again. In this place, the bullet wound didn’t exist. No wounds existed in Limbo. It was a place of choice, the choice to live or the choice to die. If you lived then the wound would be healed. If you died then you would be beyond caring about the wound.

‘She deserves a chance,’ he said, the words coming easily as the decision fortified in his mind. ‘She has to have a chance.’

‘As is your wish,’ she said. ‘She has to come willingly.’

He nodded, and walked toward the girls. Wilfully or not, they ignored him, content to roll the ball back and forth between themselves. After a few minutes, the ball rolled away and hit his foot. He crouched to pick up the ball. Limbo stared at him for a moment, then blinked her black eyes, stood and joined her sister, leaving him with the girl.

The child clapped her hands and waited for him to roll the ball back. When he didn’t, she scooted away a little, leaving small trails in the dust. He put the red ball down and went to hand her the doll. He stared at his hands and realised that they’d been empty since he’d arrived in the small, gray world.

‘You dropped it,’ Death said as a bony hand passed him the doll. ‘Do you still wonder why I doubt your capacity to see this child home safely?’

‘I would be—’ he began, then noticed that the girl was watching him, staring at the doll in his hand through the wispy brown hair over her eyes. He turned from Death, stood and walked over to the girl, knelt and offered the doll to her.

The child’s eyes grew even wider, then filled with tears, her tiny pink mouth opening to let forth yet another wail. He looked back to Death, wondering what he’d...

His eyes fell on the doll in his hand. The porcelain doll, its head caved in on one side, a hand missing, was covered in blood. He immediately pulled it back, and it disappeared into his long jacket.

He wasn’t in the world, so he couldn’t require the doll fixed, but within Limbo, just as within an oubliette, simple wishes and needs were heard and fulfilled. He concentrated, felt the doll’s head run then re-form. The cloth rippled as the clothes were replaced. With a smile, he pulled the renewed doll from his jacket and held it up to the girl.

The tears stopped. She rubbed her face with a sleeve, then took a step forward and snatched the doll from his hands. She dropped back to the ground, burying her face in the doll’s red hair, her tiny hands curling into the fabric, making sure for herself that the doll was whole again.

He rose and looked to Death. ‘May I take her back now?’

‘She... has not said yes yet. She has to make the choice.’

He opened his mouth to protest. A child this young couldn’t understand the choice she was being asked to make, nor articulate the answer. Words caught in his throat when he felt a pull on his leg. Remembering where he was, he quelled his first instinct, which was to kick the attacker away, and looked down. The girl was hugging his leg. She mumbled thanks into his pant’s leg, the doll hanging limp in the crook of her arm.

‘Now she has,’ Death said with a smile.

He knelt and picked up the little girl and her doll.

‘Time to go home Stephanie.’

2 - Meeting

Chapter Two - Wherein Dorian Gray hires a hacker.

The world around Stef Mimosa had ceased to exist. The only things that were still tangible in the smoky limbo were her screen and her keyboard. The latter was less real, existing only as an abstract, a tool through which her algorithms and codes were inserted. From somewhere in the smoke there was a beep, reminding her to breathe. She took a breath, but didn’t dare to blink, lest the fragile connection she had to her task be lost.

A knock from somewhere out in the smoke made her hands slip from the keyboard. She swore, shook them and began to type again, her eyes never leaving the screen. She was satisfied with the change on the screen. Her hands left the keyboard again, this time of her own accord, one to grab the drink to her left, one to click the mouse three times. After this small pause, she began to type again.

There was another knock, louder this time.

Her nostrils flared, but she made no move to greet the visitor. Whatever they wanted couldn’t be as important as the task at hand. The firewalls were closing in around her, blocking further access, keeping her from her goal.

There was a third knock.

She swore, this time in binary, the steady stream of digits serving only to focus her more.

After a few frantic moments, the last firewall collapsed and booted her from the system.

‘Fsck,’ she swore, pulling the power cord on her modem, insurance against a trace. Like her, it needed a rest. She pushed herself back from the desk, rolling down the sleeves of her shirt, the light purple dark in comparison to her monitor-bleached skin, and shook her legs in an effort to help them remember how to stand.

She crossed the small apartment and groped for the keys on the small entry cupboard.

‘I already put the rent in your box, Mr Jenkins,’ she said as she pulled the door open. The man standing before her wasn’t her landlord, or anyone else she recognised.

‘I’m not after the rent,’ said the man beyond her door.

He was English – his voice gave that much away – tall, blond and probably good-looking according to whatever flimsy standards were being used that month, but she was no judge. A silver pocketwatch, which hung from his hand on an old chain, spun in lazy circles, its hypnotic movement taking more of his attention than she was. Frustration replaced confusion, and she opened her mouth to ask if he had the right flat.

‘Two minutes, thirty-two seconds, Spyder. You nearly missed out.’ Her mouth stayed open, and he grinned. ‘My name is Dorian.’

All she could do was stare at him. He matched the rumours, such as they were, but all the same, he was...

‘Well?’ he prompted.

Her hand slipped from the door and she fled back to her bedroom. There was no time for superfluous questions, no time to be amazed – if you were too slow, you missed out. That was one thing that the rumours stated explicitly.

She tore off crumpled pyjamas pants and left them in a pile on the floor.They would keep the other laundry company while she was gone. The rest had been there so long already that it was already gaining sentience. If she was gone long enough, it would probably rebel and destroy her when she returned.

She pulled off her top, inadvertently smelling it as she did, the smell was...

But I showered on Tuesday.

It’s Tuesday again, Spyder.

She turned to the wardrobe and pulled open the doors, yanked out the closest two items of clothing and tossed them onto the bed, praying that they matched, or at least, didn’t clash too horribly, though given the state of her fashion sense, the odds weren’t in her favour.

A reflection in the mirror made her freeze.

‘A strange man,’ Dorian said as he entered the room, making her acutely aware that she was very nearly naked, ‘appears at your door, and you immediately run into your bedroom and begin stripping.’ Gray eyes surveyed her for a reaction, and she shivered. ‘I wonder what could be said about that?’

All thoughts froze as he came closer, and she quickly wrapped her arms around herself, in an effort to hide her shame. Hot prickles ran up and down her spine, the heat dried her mouth and made her head spin.

The plastic cup on her desk wasn’t much of a weapon, nor were the honey-covered chopsticks. The window was too high to jump from, and he was effectively blocking the door.

He lifted the shirt from her bed.

‘And then,’ he said as he held it out to her, carefully keeping his distance, ‘you choose to cover your scars instead of your breasts.’

‘Out!’ she screamed, the word finally forcing itself hoarsely from her throat, but he remained.

She snatched the shirt from his hands and pressed it to her chest.

‘The rumours say,’ she said, trying to regain her control, ‘that you don’t wait.’

‘At the door, no,’ he said, ‘you only get three minutes. But after that, ample time to prepare is allowed. Unless of course, you aren’t interested.’

‘Of course I’m interested!’ she cried, trying to figure out how to get dressed without exposing herself again.

‘I’ll wait outside then, shall I?’

‘Please,’ she said, relief obvious in her voice.

He turned and exited the bedroom, closing the door behind him. She released a long breath and sat on the bed, staring at her reflection for a moment, trying to process what had just happened.

She began to get dressed on autopilot, mechanically pulling the shirt over her head and shuffling into the pants. She pulled the cord on her desktop and lifted her beloved laptop, Frankie, and stowed him in his bag. Disks and flash drives joined him in the bag. Anything that she thought could help.

The wardrobe stared at her as she moved toward the door, laptop bag over her shoulder. She looked down at herself and realised that although one set of clothes could easily last her ten days, it likely wouldn’t impress her new employer or their... talent scout. She pulled a dusty bag from under her bed and piled some clothes into it without care, then zipped it up, hoping that it would be enough.

Dorian was waiting on her couch, luxuriating like the male model he likely moonlighted as.

‘That was quick,’ he commented, ‘it’s private car, not a cab. The meter isn’t running.’

‘I have what I need,’ she said.

‘Well then,’ he said as he stood.

He smoothed his silk shirt, flattening imaginary creases before he held out his hand for one of the bags, but she simply hefted them and raised an eyebrow.

‘As you wish, Spyder.’

She grabbed her wallet from the table and slammed the door shut as they left the apartment. She dawdled behind him as he confidently strode down the hall, then down the stairs. She half-expected that she was dreaming, things like this weren’t supposed to happen.

She stepped out onto the street, the sun blinding her. She cursed the sun, natural enemy to hacker and geek alike, and blinked until her eyes adjusted. The temporary blindness served one purpose though, it informed her that she was indeed in reality. Heroines didn’t get blinded by the sun in stories. Blinded by the beauty of a prince, perhaps, but that was far more a mental ailment.

The chauffeur of the dark blue town car stepped forward and took her bags as Dorian climbed into the backseat. She joined him, closing the door herself, saving one menial task for the chauffeur, and waited as they pulled out into the traffic.

She looked out through the tinted windows.

‘This part wasn’t mentioned in the rumours.’

‘There was a lot I left out of the rumours,’ he said as he placed a manila folder on her lap.

He caught her neutral expression.

‘You could,’ he said, ‘at least pretend to be surprised.’

‘The most effective rumours are the ones that you start and maintain yourself,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Something this complicated... the right amount of vaguery and precision, it just smelt manufactured.’

‘And you weren’t worried that it was a trap?’

‘No.’

She flipped the folder open, immediately becoming enthralled with the page of code that met her eyes. She flipped through the pages, reading the equations that had been scrawled into the margins and the retrofit sequences that seemed to be trying to express something far more complicated.

‘What is this?’ she asked.

‘That’s the project,’ he said. ‘What do you make of it?’

She stared at it for a few moments, not wanting to jump to any hasty conclusions.

‘No idea,’ she said honestly, ‘and that’s exciting, because I know a hell of a lot and if I can’t make heads or tails of it, then I want in, no matter what.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘One thing that’s missing from the rumours... the goal. What’s the goal?’

‘To get the code working,’ he said, daring her to dig deeper. ‘It’s old, piecemeal and possibly corrupt. We need it in working order.’

‘Just for reference, it’s not some sort of missile defense code thing, or the code to a secret vault of... evil stuff... that’s going to be used to take over the world, is it?’ She took a good look at him and no trouble imagining him as a villain – he already had the accent for it – but she wasn’t ready to play the henchman. She wasn’t a sidekick.

‘Nothing so childish. And you need not worry, it’s entirely legal.’

Her eyes lost focus as she dredged through her memories. ‘One year, five months, seventeen days.’

The Englishman gave her a confused look and turned up the air-conditioning. ‘I prefer to have context for dates.’

‘It’s been that long since I’ve done something above reproach.’

He shook his head, and pulled a bottle of champagne from a chilled compartment.

‘Above reproach according to whose rules, Spyder? If there’s one thing that’s more certain than death, it’s that no matter what you do, you will have broken someone’s rules, or tread on someone’s toes. You may break good form, commit a faux pas, or simply wander into unfamiliar waters and unfamiliar rules. You may not even know that you’re breaking them.’

‘But it’s still legal?’ she asked, not straying from the point.

Her chosen profession was one of breaking the rules on a daily basis, but there was no harm in knowing what she was in for. There was, after all, a difference between breaking the rules for yourself, and breaking the rules for someone else.

‘It won’t get you tossed in jail,’ he said.

Somehow the words weren’t a comfort. He was being honest, she could tell that much, but it didn’t seem like the whole truth. She looked at the code again, and the tiny thrill that she felt told her that it was worth the risk.

‘You didn’t ask what’s in it for you,’ he said. ‘Or did you know that from the rumours?’

‘It’s a million, right?’ she asked as she looked out the window. ‘I’m not in it for the money.’

‘Not many would sneeze at a million,’ he said as he poured some of the expensive champagne.

‘If you break it down,’ she said as she declined the proffered glass, ‘it’s only seven digits, that’s nothing. I’m not in it for the money.’

He sipped the drink with an appreciative noise. ‘We would come to some arrangement, if it’s you we have to compensate.’

‘Working on the code,’ she said as she ran a hand over one of the sheets of code, ‘is the reward. Anything else is a frivolity.’

She watched him pour another glass for himself.

‘You’re the talent scout, right? Are you in it for the fifteen percent?’

‘I’m doing it,’ he said, ‘for the story.’

Her paranoia rose. She’d always believed herself to be good at judging traps, lies and deceit, but if this job was... He shook his head.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Spyder, I don’t mean it in the way you think.’

‘I don’t want my name anywhere. Not a report. Not a news story. Not a tell-all book. Nothing so... tabloid. Literally, for the story. So many lives these days are pedestrian, carbon-copies and attempts at copies, emulation and cliché. The want to be a picture in a magazine... it sickens me.’ He stared at her. ‘It’s a rare chance to be a part of something truly worthwhile. That’s what I get out of this.’

There was something about the way he said it that made her believe it, but the cynic in her couldn’t let it pass.

‘Then sell it for your own shiny million to some publisher?’

‘Perhaps,’ he admitted, ‘it has worked for me in the past. Even if I change the names, the places and the story a little, the truth will remain, and that’s the important thing. In any case, some people find more truth in fiction than they do in reality.’

They finally broke free of the traffic congestion, and drove along much quieter roads until they reached the gates of a mansion. The driver pulled up, leaned out the window and swiped a pass. After a long minute, the large iron gates swung open.

Although she was rarely a fan of the people inside them, she loved large, old houses. There were always small rooms that were unused, or had been blocked off, unseen places and secrets, all the more fun when everything was covered in dust. Notes and clues could be written in dust, carrying messages through the years. She cut herself off from the thoughts. With the monetary amount being thrown around, she imagined a full staff of servants keeping the mansion immaculate, pristine and shining. Boring.

‘The others are on the second floor,’ Dorian said as the door was opened. ‘You’ll have no need of the first, the food is brought up from the kitchens.’ He paused for a moment, ‘And stay off the third floor.’

She gave him a deadpan look. ‘Why, is there a rose in a glass case?’

‘Close,’ he said with a grin. ‘It’s part of the agreement in any case.’

‘I didn’t sign anything,’ she said quickly.

‘Your employer mostly stays up there, don’t expect to meet him. He’s a very private man.’

‘If this is important to him,’ she said as she climbed out of the car, ‘shouldn’t he...’

‘Nothing is more important to him than the project’s success.’

‘Then...’

‘The others will introduce themselves,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Some are choosing to operate under pseudonyms adopted especially for this project. You can too. That’s your prerogative, though I don’t think you have enough of a reputation to tarnish should you fail.’

She opened her mouth to protest, but he turned to the chauffeur. ‘Room five,’ he said as the man walked past with her bags.

She silently followed them into the house. It was amazing. Dark wood and stained-glass windows sheltered a museum of artefacts, art and knick-knacks. A black and white postcard from New York sat in a frame on a table next to a tribal knife.

He quickly snatched the photo from her hand and carefully placed it back on the table.

‘Come Spyder, there’s more to be seen than old memories.’

3 - A Conversation

Chapter Three - Wherein Stef hears a strange noise, and discusses the past with an old man.

Stef stared at the code in front of her, and made some notes on the already-full piece of paper to her right. The algorithm cycled in her mind, failed, spontaneously blew up, then laughed at her. Dutifully, she crossed out her last few notes, then searched for a new piece of paper. Finding none, she stood and walked over to the printer, pulled out the tray and extracted a few pieces of A4 paper.

She lifted the fresh paper to her nose and breathed in the smell, the faint scent of toner, the lingering smell of electronics, the cleaning chemicals that had leaked through. They were all comforting, familiar smells. With fresh paper in her hands, fresh ideas began to form. Not that she was anywhere near exhausting her current batch, but many were immediately shot down by her fellow colleagues.

A scream flushed all ideas from her mind.

She gripped the paper in her hands, and braced for the next scream. The halls were dark, filled only with the eclectic artifacts. All of the staff had long since gone home or retired to their quarters, the only people awake were the ones in the room with her.

There was a third scream, and suddenly its source became all too clear: the third floor.

Creepy mansion, creepy scream… Concentrate, Spyder.

She looked around the room at the other code monkeys, keeping her reaction undecided until she could gauge what they were doing. It was possible that the house was haunted, and that this was perfectly normal. The majority looked worried, and a few looked as though they suspected that they’d fallen from their dreams and into a nightmare.

The room held its collective breath, waiting for a fourth scream, or the revelation of its source. No more screams came, none like the first in any case. Screaming music came again, backed by drums and wailing guitars. Dorian materialised in the doorway, or at least appeared to do so, coming out of the shadows in dark clothes, the dim light failing to chase away all the shadows.

‘I do apologise,’ he said, his voice strained, his hands in his pockets. ‘I was sent some new music. Japanese screamo. I didn’t realise that the speakers were turned up.’

‘It sounded real,’ one of her fellow code monkeys said. ‘I’m jealous of your sound system.’

She fought the urge to groan, to berate them for so readily accepting a lie. Whatever the sound had been, it was not something that had come from speakers, no matter how good the system was. The boys around her, however, seemed content with the explanation, and she had no wish to burst their little bubble worlds.

‘The man who owns this house has good resources,’ Dorian said, ‘I’m not sure he'll share the name of his supplier. He, however, has allowed me to offer an incentive.’

He grabbed an empty bowl from the food cart and threw a dozen slips of paper into it.

‘These are all of your names, whoever I pull out-’

‘Ain’t it a bit late to be doing this?’ one of her fellows asked, ‘I mean, some people are asleep.’

‘...shall win an LCD television. It’s just a little thank-you, something to inspire more great work.’

He turned to look at her.

‘Do you want to pick it, Spyder?’

She looked at the hand proffering the bowl, walked toward him, turned her back to the rest of the code monkeys, and made a great play of mixing the slips of paper around.

‘There’s blood on your sleeve,’ she observed, ‘and under your nails.’

His grip tightened on the bowl.

‘Do you want the TV?’ he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

‘You severely underestimate me,’ she said as she latched onto one of the pieces of paper.

Fate was a cruel being, she realised as she unfolded the piece of paper, only to have her own name stare back at her. She looked around the room and pointed at the boy who sat opposite her.

‘You win. Grats’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, a huge, sleep-deprived grin on his face, ‘I’ll buy the popcorn.’

She pushed the bowl back at Dorian, and turned to her colleagues.

‘Night,’ she said unceremoniously, and walked from the room.

Dorian, predictably, followed her.

‘S...’

She held up a hand to quiet him until they reached her room.

‘Spyder-’

‘That scream,’ she said as she leaned against the heavy wooden door, ‘didn’t come from a sound system. I know this, don’t argue with me. I know it came from the third floor. Don’t bother to refute that either. Whoever was screaming was injured, hence the blood. The TV was a distraction, and a good one: expensive. It did the trick. Congratulations, you placated a bunch of idiots with a shiny prize.’

She caught his expression.

‘And right now,’ she said, ‘you’re thinking “there’s something not quite right about this girl” and you’d be right. But so am I, aren’t I?’

‘At this point, I wouldn’t insult you by lying to you.’

She grasped the doorknob. ‘Go back to whoever needs your help. You’ve got nothing to fear down here.’

‘What do I...?’

‘What you don’t do is underestimate me,’ she said. ‘Goodnight Dorian.’

‘And to you, Spyder,’ he said before striding down the hall and around the corner, toward his room.

She walked into the small room she’d been allocated, instinctively locked the door and collapsed onto the bed. She stared at the plastered ceiling, allowing the familiar passive mask to slip from her face, allowing all the confusion and fear to play across it.

She awkwardly kicked off her dirty sneakers, pulled the blanket up, and attempted to sleep.

Ten minutes later, wider awake than she had been the hour before, she pulled Frankie from the cupboard and caught up on her web browsing. Two hours later, she blinked – her world had been centred by familiar websites, and she was ready to work again.

She made her way back out to the main room, woke her assigned computer from its sleep mode and booted up the code and the manipulator programs.

Hours after that, the world decided to tend towards daytime again. The floor-to-ceiling windows gave her a brilliant view of the gray pre-dawn world outside the mansion. Everything seemed to be so real, even if it was cast in an almost silver light. She just wondered where the dancing marshmallows fit into it, she blinked and they disappeared, confirming that they were just a product of her insomnia.

She called up the calendar on the computer and realised that it had been more than two days since she’d really slept; catnaps on the keyboard didn’t count. Sleep wasn’t important though. When her body needed it, she was sure that she would fall unconscious. It was good at looking after itself in that way.

On the monitor in front of her, the code cycled, testing out algorithms that she’d only written hours earlier. None of them worked. Not that the failure surprised her. She couldn’t read the code, she had no idea what it said, what it meant, or what it would do, should they finally decipher it and reconstruct it.

She sincerely hoped that it wasn’t going to end the world.

A few keystrokes removed the UI and the code was allowed to cycle, unfettered by any means to manipulate it. It looked better that way. Her mind drowned in the overflow of data, and it felt good.

She picked up her coffee cup and huffed the leftover smell. The jug was only twenty feet away, but she was almost certain that her legs couldn’t be trusted to carry her that far. As a compromise, she reached over to the computer beside her – whose operator was safely asleep down the hall – and snagged a block of chocolate. She’d replace it if she remembered, and if not, there were plenty of other snacks that he could make do with.

The sugar helped to rouse her a little. She would have preferred caffeine, but that was a permanent preference, and she sated herself with the knowledge that getting what you wanted wasn’t something that could always happen, even if the object of her desire was only twenty feet away.

She turned and looked at the coffee pot, and realised that she was being watched. For a moment, she thought he was a ghost, he was so frail, gray and thin, but when the old man took a step forward and his cane tapped on the wood, she knew it was the pre-dawn light casting aspersions on the hyper-reality that it was creating. For a moment, she wondered if he was the one who had been bleeding and screaming, but decided against it. The cane was being used due to age, not injury.

‘So... so beautiful,’ he mumbled as he came toward her. ‘I never knew...’

A smile tugged at her lips – she’d had the same reaction when she’d first begun to play with the code – it was broken, but so was the Venus de Milo. She stamped the pins and needles from her feet and stood, extending her hand.

‘It’s a pleasure to...’

He laughed an odd, croaky laugh and lightly batted away her hand with his cane. ‘You’re not doing this for me, child, I’m just letting him use the house.’

‘So, it’s for your son then?’ she guessed.

‘Never had one of them,’ he rasped. ‘Just a beautiful daughter, but she’s long gone, just like the rest of my family.’

Had she not slobbered all over it, she would have offered him some of the chocolate, so she settled for standing awkwardly and waiting for the subject to change.

‘Outliving all of your family isn’t something I recommend. To stand over so many graves, it’s a terrible thing.’

His head wobbled for a moment.

‘He’s lost so much. I just want to help him find her.’

She looked back at the code, unsure as to how it was going to help locate someone. Unbidden, her eyes circled the room, and the prize money floated in her mind.

So much trouble, all to just...

‘...Find someone?’

‘She’s his love, it would be... I can’t say inhuman, but it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t help him find her. I had so many help me find my love.’ He slapped his chest and coughed, then clumsily sat on the chair beside her. ‘In the war...’

‘Which one?’ she asked on autopilot.

‘...I made love to this beautiful girl. We were both terrified, I was injured, she was helping the nurses. The bombs were dropping and we thought the sky was going to fall on our heads. We gave each other that small comfort, and the bombs missed us. After that... I had to go back, to fight, to win.’

He looked away, his eyes focused on the past instead of the present.

‘I knew... I knew I’d left a child in her. When the fighting stopped, I went looking for her. I found her, I married her, we had our little princess, and for a little time, we lived and were happy.’

She looked back at the code. It was her frame of reference. Love, romance and war stories meant nothing to her. They were outside her experience, outside of her interest.

‘How will this help?’

He stabbed a bony finger toward the code. ‘Think of it as all the telemetry of a journey, along with the memories of the pilot who flew the trip.’

‘...Google Earth would be simpler.’

‘Anyone who accepted Mr Gray’s invitation was not after simple.’ He smiled. ‘Goodnight.’

He patted her on the head, and she fought an urge to bark. He tottered off, leaving her alone once again.

Only once alone, she realised what he’d said.

‘Dorian…?’

She reached down to the desk, blindly groped for the chocolate then chewed on it while staring at the early morning light. Once she began to chew on foil, she sat and started to type again.

Dawn came and went and the dutiful cooks brought in trays of food once the others began to rise. They stood by as the eggs and bacon were ignored for waffles and pancakes. She snagged a lonely-looking piece of bacon and added it to her short stack. She would have felt sorry for the cooks, but if there was one thing she’d learned in her youth, it was that in a house this size, food never went astray. The uneaten breakfast foods wouldn’t stay that way, neither would the pate and occasional tray of caviar or other delicacy. The amounts of caviar and pate had in fact, seemed to have increased once the staff had grasped the concept that hackers had no wish to eat fish eggs or a mixture made of parts of the animal they couldn’t identify.

She went back to her computer determined this time not to spill maple syrup on the keyboard. It was terrible to work with delicate code only to have the letter “j” stick and turn the whole thing into nothing but a mess.

There was a wolf-whistle from one of the tables across from her. Currently being the only female residing the mansion, and obviously not the one the whistle was aimed at, she turned to look at the double doors leading into the room.

Dorian was escorting a pair of breasts wrapped in a tight red blouse and a bum wrapped in even tighter black jeans. Perfectly permed hair fell across the face belonging to the breasts in that “messy, but not too messy” way. Several of the code monkeys fell over themselves getting up to walk over and greet the new member.

‘Harvard graduate,’ she heard Dorian say over the rush of greetings. ‘Currently working for... sorry, classified, let’s just say she’s on loan from Silicon Valley.’

She spat pancake all over her monitor and dissolved into giggles, desperately tried to cover up by faking a coughing fit. A passing code monkey slapped her on the back before joining the crowd around the new arrival.

A glass of water was passed to her.

‘Don’t want you choking Spyder,’ Dorian said, his expression telling her that he wasn’t buying the story.

She shrugged and sucked maple syrup from her finger.

‘You know, Spyder, most women can make that look sexy.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘What’s sexy about sucking something sticky off your finger?’

He stared at her, apparently struck dumb by her statement. She looked back at her plate and picked up another pancake and slowly chewed on it until his brain reset.

‘They’re real, by the way,’ he said, picking up his train of thought.

‘I don’t even...’

‘Had enough experience to tell.’ He looked over her shoulder at the screen. ‘Any luck? I have the feeling that a pretty girl was all that they needed to take them away from not achieving anything.’

‘I’ve only been here...’

‘So, no progress?’

She didn’t like the disappointment in his voice, so she decided to throw him the only bone she had. The crazy path she’d been following since the old man’s visit.

‘If I were sane, I’d be afraid to say this but... I’d stake someone else’s fortune that it wasn’t...’

‘Say it,’ he said, sliding into the seat beside her.

‘Not...’ she shook her head and turned back to her pancakes.

‘Not human,’ she said, a blush rising over her face. ‘Looking at it, it’s old, but it can’t be, it’s so much more complex than the new stuff I try and crack. Yeah, there’s probably Nazi tech that the CERN guys still can’t decipher, but if it’s as old as I think, then it can’t be human.’

‘Keep going with that line of thinking.’

She grinned at him. ‘Was this salvaged at Roswell?’

‘Oh come on Spyder, no one believes in Roswell.’

‘I wasn’t...’

He held up a finger and shushed her. ‘You were on the right track. Don’t go off onto a tangent.’

‘How can it be?’

‘Don’t ask “how” just keep it as a mindset.’

He had his secrets, but at least she knew one of them.

‘Well, I guess I should listen to what Dorian Gray says...’

She smirked as he raised his eyebrows, then winked at her. He held a finger to his lips and made a shushing noise. She gave him a slight nod. It was something to be kept a secret,not that she’d had any intention of sharing it with the other code monkeys.

Dorian winked and went back to the pair of breasts. She chewed on the pancake and watched the code attempt to compile in front of her.

‘So,’ she mumbled to the code, ‘should I try and give you a cold?’

4 - 2am

Chapter Four - Wherein Stef meets her employer.

The bleary digits on Stef’s screen informed her that it was two in the morning again.

Across the room, three of her fellow code moneys had given up on the task at hand, instead deciding to form their own little LAN party. A quiet LAN party wouldn’t have been a problem. There was nothing distracting about a bunch of gamers quietly questing toward a reward. Loud rounds of Counterstrike, on the other hand, complete with shouted insults at their fellows and cries of anguish when their soldier was completed pwned, was more of a distraction. She cranked up all of the sound settings, preferring the shake and reverb of headphones working over-spec to the hurled insults of FPS gamers.

Everyone else had given up hours ago. Some were in bed; some were watching movies on the prize television. It was beginning to become a whispered theory that the code couldn’t possibly work, and that the job was instead some form of social experiment.

She had considered it, but dismissed it. This kind of social experiment didn’t have screams of pain that were hurriedly covered up, nor men using the names of immortal characters without drawing attention to it. She was still fairly certain that she was the only code monkey that knew his surname. A name like Dorian Gray, had this been a social experiment, would have been used to plant seeds in their minds: of doubt, of conspiracy, perhaps even of fear. But there were no such seeds. It was an anomaly, one that she hadn’t figured out yet.

She was, however, keeping an eye out for portraits since he had never denied being the real Dorian Gray.

His name, combined with what he had said of the code’s possibly-inhuman origin had kept her going, and had spawned more ideas than she would have had if she’d believed the code to be entirely human. Different circumstances, different solutions.

Being insane sometimes had its advantages.

She stared at the screen until it got fuzzy. The fuzziness turned into little fuzzy animals and invited her into the monitor. Having nothing better to do, she decided to follow them. She brought her face close the screen, and snapped awake when she found that flesh couldn’t travel through glass.

‘Code Steffie get up, get coffee,’ she muttered and pushed herself back from the desk.

It took a minute for her legs to cooperate, then she stood.

The coffee pot was empty.

It stared at her and bared its lack of liquid life without shame. Grasping it by the handle, she lifted it and hurled it across the room at those that had emptied it. They shouted back, but she didn’t bother to listen to them. A cruel thought hoped that they cut themselves on the glass as they cleaned it up. If they cleaned it up.

She swore in binary, and headed down the hall to her room. A lack of coffee was definitely a sign to give up for the day. It wasn’t like she could remember the last time she slept in a bed anyway.

The door to her assigned room was ajar. Wishing she hadn’t thrown the coffee pot, she grasped for a small vase on the table next to the door and lifted it. The vase wouldn’t serve as much more than a distraction but there weren’t heavier things in the room to throw.

The intruders weren’t thieves. Nor were they a threat to anyone. Except perhaps decency. She stood traumatised for a moment while her mind quickly edited what she was seeing.

‘Room five is mine,’ she announced to the mid-coitus couple occupying her bed.

It took them a minute to stop. Her expression didn’t change when the top half – Dorian – turned to look at her.

‘Er…’ he said eloquently.

The bottom half, the pair of breasts, now minus the tight red shirt, gave her a dismissive look, then stared at the ceiling.

She reached down to Dorian’s discarded pants and lifted the key chain from the pocket. ‘I’ll take your room for the night. We will never speak of this.’

‘Can...?’

‘Yes,’ she said tersely, ‘I’ll lock the damn door.’

‘Thank you Spyder,’ Dorian mumbled as he turned away.

She locked the door, replaced the vase, and made it five feet down the hall before giggling. There was no blame to be had. All of the rooms were identical, and in the dark, even more so. Dorian himself had warned her of the fact when he’d shown her to her room.

Dorian’s room was down the end of a long, lonely hall, lit only by the light coming through the picture windows. The night was quiet, lit by a gibbous moon and a few brave stars that managed to shine through the light pollution. She stopped to watch for a moment. There was a high wind, clouds appeared from nowhere and disappeared almost as quickly. Some of the clouds looked like... She turned away from the window and rubbed her eyes.

God, I need sleep.

After a few false starts, she found the right key, and opened the door to his room.

A silk covered boudoir wouldn’t have surprised her. A four poster bed was almost expected. A large portrait hidden under a heavy cloth wouldn’t have been a stretch.

A dark staircase surprised her a little.

She sighed, muttered the binary for a question mark and felt for a light switch. Since this secret passage hadn’t skipped the twentieth century, the bulbs easily flicked to life. A self-mocking laugh escaped her as she ascended the stairs. Things like this were supposed to happen to frail blonde girls in inappropriately see-through nightdresses, not insomniac hackers who were still wearing their sneakers.

The staircase was leading up to the third floor. Her heart caught in her throat for a moment – wondering if she should go back, kick them out of her room and...

He’s not following you, Spyder.

The third floor had been on her mind since she’d arrived. It was understandable that they didn’t want unwashed hackers infiltrating every part of the house, but to say nothing of it and expect them just to deal was a little unusual. And then there had been the screams. The screams had turned every spare though to the third floor.

It hadn’t been the old man. There was no doctor on staff, nor had an ambulance come and although Dorian struck her as the kind to play doctors and nurses, she doubted that he would have managed to keep the title of “doctor” secret. It was always possible that they’d schlepped out a body in the dead of night, but something so humdrum ruined her fantasies a little, so she had decided against it.

She closed the doors, closing off the only way back so that she would have to continue forward. She bit her lip and started on the staircase.

She laughed at how wrong the situation was. In situations like this, it was normal to be afraid and say “Oh my” over and over until you ran around and broke your ankle. No, not broke, sprained – just enough to be ineffectual. You weren’t supposed to climb the secret stair in a crumpled purple shirt while noting the energy efficient light bulbs and the lingering smell of fresh paint.

There was a doorway at the top of the stairs. Light streamed around the edges, adding just a little more surrealism to the situation. She lifted the key and pushed it into the lock – it fit – and turned it.

A monster stared at her as she opened the door, towering, hairy, hunchbacked, with a sunken, barely human face and oddly luminescent eyes.

Buhhhh?

Unable to do anything, she merely stared at it. After a moment, she blinked. It hissed at her, lunged, then roared in her face. She not-so-secretly hoped that the teeth, the sharp, numerous and bloody teeth, weren’t “all the better to eat hackers with”.

She stood her ground. There was literally no point in being afraid. She would leave the room, or she wouldn’t. She was smart enough to know when she wasn’t in control of a situation.

‘Dorian gave me the key. He’s busy shagging in my bed. Needed somewhere to sleep.’

She looked up to meet the monster’s eyes.

‘And it’s nice to meet you, boss.’

The monster snarled and retreated behind a huge desk.

‘I didn’t expect Dorian to be my downfall. I may as well have called the angels for help and ended this sooner.’ His – well, the voice sounded male – accent was strange. She couldn’t place it.

She crinkled her nose and chided herself – she was staring at a monster. There was no chance that the man in front of her was human – and she was thinking about his accent.

This, Spyder, is why you almost get hit every time you cross the road. Over analysis of a situation.

I don’t over analyse. I notice.

Keep telling yourself that.

I...

Monster?

Oh, right.

‘If you haven’t noticed, I’m not screaming. I’m not going to run down stairs and tell the others we’re working for G’Mork. Staying up here is your prerogative. Appearing eccentric seems to have worked so far.’

He snorted and turned to her.

‘Why aren’t you screaming?’ He thumped a hairy fist on the desk, dragging one arm over the top, cutting deep ruts into the old oak. ‘You were warned not to come up here. I’m hungry. You should be afraid.’

‘I didn’t think you were a tame lion,’ she muttered. ‘If you’re going to hurt me, there’s nothing I can do. The only good exit is a staircase, which you could push me down. I’m not screaming, because I’m not an idiot. I’m insane, not an idiot.’

He stared silently at her.

The monster snorted again, then lifted a clawed finger and pointed down an adjacent hall.

‘Dorian’s room is down there.’

She took a step, but stopped. There was one very important question that she needed to ask.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Why does it matter?’

‘The data is degrading.’

Just as the memory of a pilot would.

‘I’m not the only one who has noticed. If it’s changing and degrading, it’s dynamic. If it’s dynamic and degrading, there’s a deadline. If you’re looking for someone, and there’s a deadline, there’s only one possible way it could end well. I don’t care for the Romeo and Juliet aspect – I don’t believe in that crap,’ she caught herself, not wanting to insult a monster that could easily snap her up as a post-midnight snack. ‘This is a lot more... this is a lot bigger than anything I’ve ever done before.’

A cold breeze blew in through the window, and she was happy not to be a blonde stereotype in a thin nightdress.

The monster sniffed the wind, swung itself back and forth as if trying to catch a scent, then stared at her. It moved away from the desk, and came toward her. Its mouth dropped open, taking deep breaths, and its nose twitched. Suddenly, she was very glad that she hadn’t had anything to drink recently.

Shitshitshitshit

Panic when it starts eating you. Just stay still.

I really don’t...

It raised a clawed hand, and the bright points of light caught on its claws were the only thing that she could look at. It would be so easy for those claws to gut her, to leave her a bloody wreck on the floor.

The world spun, and she concentrated on staying vertical.

‘You smell like the void. You know what comes next. You know that there’s nothing.’

‘Buuh-wha?’

‘Just because you came back doesn’t mean she will.’

Please tell me this is one of those moments where you’re imagining things.

Shut up, I’m hiding in this corner over here.

He’s a monster, they lie.

No, that’s trickster gods.

Do you know he’s not one of those?

No...

Then shut up.

He snorted, but didn’t retreat.

‘I cannot rely on chance. I can only rely on choice.’

She took a step back and shook her head, focusing on the matter at hand.

‘My ten fingers, my genius brain and my keyboard are going to do their best. Now tell me her damn name.’

‘Her name is Mela.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, but didn’t make a move toward the door.

He retreated behind the desk again, giving her permission to leave, and space enough to pass. She wanted to run, but forced herself to walk. However much a man the beast was, she didn’t feel like tempting his monster half.

She pressed the key into the lock of the room at the end of the hall and walked in. It was exactly what she’d expected: a large room containing very little furniture, a huge bed as the centrepiece. There were more pillows on it than she could count. She knocked all but three onto the floor. She pulled open the curtains and she looked down onto the same garden. The grounds were well-maintained, if a little boring. There was no secret garden, no maze, no crazy collection of kooky garden gnomes that rearranged themselves on a daily basis.

Most gardens, however, didn’t contain ghosts.

Her weirdness meter already broken for the day, the ghost failed to surprise her. She squinted harder, but then all she could see was her reflection, a pale ghost itself. She took another look and the ghost was gone. If it had ever been there in the first place. She pressed her face against the glass, looking for any sign of it. Nothing. Just a quiet garden.

You do know it’s possible that you’ve lost your mind.

I’m tired. Are you trying to be ironic?

She turned back to the bed, kicked off her old sneakers and crawled under the sheets. The bed was huge, and a lot softer than the one in the room she’d been assigned.

Why exactly...

Worry about it in the morning, go to sleep.

Thoughts of monsters, ghosts and possibly-alien code swimming in her head, she snuggled into the pillow and went to sleep.

5 - Monsters

Chapter Five - Wherein the nature of the beast is discussed.

The smell of coffee permeated Stef’s dreams, and dragged her into the waking world. On autopilot, she lifted a hand and groped for the coffee. Her higher brain, slower to wake than the part that recognised the smell of coffee, wondered why the coffee was coming to her, instead of the other way around. Then again, when it came to free coffee, she rarely questioned it.

‘You’d best sit up,’ Dorian said as her fingers brushed against the hot cup.

‘It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that you’re some sort of pervert,’ she said as she slowly extracted herself from the sheet.

‘I wouldn’t deny it,’ he said as he sat on the bed in front of her. ‘Everyone has their perversions, Spyder, even virgins like you.’

She tried to glare at him, but she was too tired. Instead she growled and grabbed the cup from his hands while trying to ignore the fact that he was half-naked. The sun peeking through the curtains told her that it was still morning, hours before she’d been planning to wake up.

A gulp of coffee dragged some of her still-sleepy thoughts from their comfortable dreams. It was imperfect coffee. That was the problem with free coffee; it was rarely within desired specifications. She handed the cup back to him, dredged some of the sugar packets from her pockets, and poured half a dozen in before returning the trash to her pockets.

He swirled the cup for her, and she caught herself staring at his chest. In theory, it wasn’t that different to the shirtless cheat for a character in a new-gen console game, but in practice, it was a lot different.

‘You’re staring Spyder,’ he said as he handed her the cup.

Her cheeks burned hotter than the coffee in her hand.

‘Confirms your theory, doesn’t it, Mister Gray?’

She pushed a couple of the pillows behind her back and brought her knees up, creating an unstable-table for her coffee. The Englishman sat patient, waiting.

What does he...?

The monster, genius.

Oh right. That happened...

‘So…’ she said as she looked over the rim.

‘The obvious doesn’t need to be said,’ he said as he moved closer.

‘Who else knows?’

‘You, me, Jon. The man who owns the house,’ he said to clarify.

‘Yeah, met him,’ she said. ‘Was it on purpose?’

‘Which part?’ he asked. ‘Did I set the whole thing up as a reveal? No. We genuinely believed we had the right room. I didn’t want to bring her in case she saw him. I rather think that would have ruined the night.’ He sighed. ‘But I didn’t chase after you-’

‘You were kind of busy? If that’s the simple truth, then that’s ok. Shit happens. Please, can I get therapy money?’

‘I didn’t chase after you Spyder, because,’ he said, pointing his finger, ‘I knew you’d be able to handle it. Surely he’s not the first strange thing you’ve seen in your life? I mean…’

‘Well, I’m staring at a fictional character. Where is your portrait, Mister Gray?’

‘Not here,’ he answered simply. ‘But, before this, surely...’

‘Nothing. Nothing like this.’

‘You must have been very young when you die-’

‘Why did you wake me?’ she asked him quickly, not wanting him to finish his sentence. ‘It’s not like I’ve gotten much sleep lately.’

He stared at her for a moment, and she silently implored him to drop his previous train of thought.

‘You were right,’ he said at last. ‘Last night, what you said to him. We are running out of time.’

‘And you expect me to do what?’

‘Nothing, aside from come and meet the new member of the team.’

‘New guy? We have a new guy?’ she asked as Dorian crossed the room to his wardrobe.

He removed a silk shirt from the wardrobe.

‘Friend of one of your colleagues. We’ve had to expand our horizons a little beyond what I had initially imagined. I’ll take recommendations, if you’ve got any.’

‘I don’t know anyone who’d be any good at this.’

He joined her on the bed again.

‘I took back my keys,’ he said as he took her hand and pressed something cold into her hand. ‘But you keep this one, but don’t come up here more than you need to...’

His thumb slid onto her wrist.

‘He is a man. The journey he took, the chance he took, turned him into what he is.’

‘So he’s not a mutie?’ she asked. ‘Not that I’ve got anything against them, although I admit that I’d take Magneto over Xavier any day...’

‘He’s from another world. Another planet. It’s dying. It may as well already be dead. Some people jump into the void, just for a chance at another life. Sometimes they make it to another world, most of the time they simply die. Some just fall forever, trapped in the in-between places.’

She took another gulp of coffee. ‘You’re asking me to take a lot on faith here.’

‘You saw a monster last night, that’s the important thing.’

She shook her wrist. ‘Are you going to let me go?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘because you aren’t as scared as you need to be.’

‘I was plenty scared last night.’

‘But you’re distancing yourself from it. Don’t. He may be a man beneath that visage, but is also a man who was killing to eat before Jon found him. He’s scared, alone and desperate, so don’t come up here more than you need to. He goes out every night looking for her, and I don’t want to think about what he does out there, I want to believe the best. I’m also too afraid to ask. Jon sees him as a last chance to do good and he could never resist helping a starchild.’ With that, he released her hand and rose to his feet. ‘Come on Spyder.’

She stayed still, staring up at him. ‘And you, Mister Gray? What are you?’

‘Trying to decide if I’m man or monster, Spyder?’

‘In the book...’ she began.

‘I am not the monster from the book,’ he said, ‘I came before the book. I am what inspired the book. Well, one part and the name anyway.’ He smiled. ‘Come now, before they run out of pancakes.’

She remained seated; this was the time for answers, not for pancakes.

‘Jon...what’s it short for?’

‘What do you think it’s short for, Spyder?’

‘Jonowoi.’

‘That,’ he said, ‘is the worst pronunciation I’ve ever heard of it. When did he tell you?’

‘He didn’t.’ She brought her legs up so that she could sit cross-legged. ‘It’s in the code, senseless code strings that peel off and lead toward different sections of the code. I mean, I’d almost think it was like graffiti tagging, some ego maniacal coder that wanted his name all over it, but it’s not, is it?’

‘You tell me.’

‘No, it’s not. I don’t know what it is, but ego has nothing to do with it. I think it’s something a lot different to ego. I don’t know what though, and that terrifies and excites me.’

6 - Maestro

Chapter Six - Wherein hero worship leads to a discovery, and the Solstice arrive.

Stef chewed on her pancake, watching the new guy and his flawless infiltration of the code monkeys. He was slick, nowhere near Dorian’s level, but smooth all the same – each name he was given, he seemed to immediately commit to memory – a worrying trait in and of itself.

She pushed the lump of pancake to the roof of her mouth, the syrup making it stick there for a moment, the strange sensation distracting her from the paranoid urge to run from the room. He was personable enough, easily mistaken for just another affable blond boy, but her imaginary Spyder-sense was making her tend towards panic.

New people were trouble…though she suspected that they must have felt the same way when she’d first shown up.

The code sat static in front of her, she hadn’t made one alteration to it since coming down from the Englishman’s room. No one, aside from Dorian, seemed interested in her progress. No one had asked her to collaborate on an idea for a days. No one had asked her what she’d thought of an algorithm.

She sighed and swallowed the lump of pancake. Even if they’d asked her opinion, they wouldn’t believe her. She wasn’t sure that she believed her. She wasn’t sure of anything. It was an uncomfortable feeling, and not one she was used to when it came to dealing with code. Code was usually the one thing that made sense. People never made sense, as they always acted counter to how you predicted. Life always threw curve balls, ones you couldn’t catch, even if you were prepared. Code was ordered. Code was sensible. It was a good frame of reference for the world. Code could be improved upon, life couldn’t.

Dorian swanned into the room, the breasts-in-red on his arm. She looked up at them, half-expecting paparazzi to leap from the very walls to take photos, to give the couple a smush name that would undoubtedly be the key in making the new media darlings. No photographers jumped from the walls, and the only flash was the angry look that the breasts-in-red gave her as she passed.

She sipped at her coffee, and vaguely wondered if she should chance dunking the pancake in – to create some sort of abomination that would rise up and-

A reflection in her monitor pulled her from her B-movie thoughts. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked the newbie.

He grinned widely, despite her done. ‘We haven’t been introduced yet.’

‘I said “hi” already,’ she said as she reached for her headphones. He grasped the headphones, and she yanked back her hand rather than let it make contact with his. ‘Did you want something in particular?’

‘No one here knows your name.’ Another wide smile. ‘Why is that?’

‘Probably because they don’t remember it. I was introduced when I got here. Now, you’ve got work to do, newbie.’

The smile didn’t disappear, though it faded a little. ‘Don’t you?’

She took a huge mouthful of pancake, chewing it open-mouthed in the hope that she could disgust him away. ‘I’m not the newbie,’ she replied, ‘you can’t be here if you’re not useful.’

‘What’s your name?’

The coffee in front of her was too cold to scald him. The pancake would only annoy, not injure. She’d never mastered stabbing someone with a fork, though she didn’t doubt that she could make him bleed. Weapon resources low, she acquiesced. ‘Spyder.’

‘And is that what’s on your birth certificate?’

‘No,’ she snapped, ‘I changed it by deed poll, what the fsck does it matter?’

‘People who hide behind an alias have something to hide, or they’re afraid of something.’

‘If you haven’t noticed,’ she snapped, ‘you’re in a room of people, all of whom have done some pretty questionable things.’

‘Do you know about the power of names?’

‘You’ll know about the power of a keyboard to the head unless you leave me alone.’

‘It’s said…by some, at least, that if you know someone’s real name, then you have power over them. It’s superstitious. It’s stupid.’

‘And you have no power over me,’ she whispered, though the man in front of her was the furthest thing from a king of goblins. ‘And what’s your real name, you’re asking enough questions to make people think that you’re a cop.’ She scanned the room for Dorian, hoping that the man made of stories hadn’t been lying when he’d spoke of the legal nature of the work.

He backed away a little. ‘I meant no offense, it simply interests me.’

She snatched the headphones up and slammed them down on her head. She fixed her gaze on the monitor and listened to the music that wasn’t even playing yet as her hand reached for the mouse to set the playlist in motion. The newbie said a few words more, but she blocked each and every one of them, not wanting to waste anymore time on him. Especially not when she was-

Real music overtook the imagined notes, and she let her mind drown in it. The monitor filled her vision and the world around it went fuzzy, the other code monkeys disappeared and the bright light from streaming in through the windows became nothing more than a background light.

Grounding herself in reality, she felt her hands sliding over the keyboard, touching each of the keys for the beginning of Maestro’s Sequence, though not typing any of the keys, lest it make a mess of the code in front of her. It wasn’t code…it was art.

It was a thing of beauty.

The sequence circled her mind, numbers, letters and symbols twisting and turning in some sort of alphanumeric interpretive dance. She pushed the headphones off and stood, the wheels of her chair squeaking as the chair was pushed back. ‘You idiots,’ she said, addressing the room, ‘have used Maestro’s Sequence, right?’ They all stared at her, the room falling as silent as an Alliance bar just before a Browncoat-initated brawl began. ‘My god…’ She slumped back into her chair, opened a new window, and began to type out the sequence from memory.

‘Maestro was a fraud,’ the newbie said.

‘Like you would know.’ She said as she looked over the monitor. ‘You were brought here to help, you haven’t even touched a keyboard yet.’

‘Doesn’t change the fact,’ the newbie said as he crossed the room, ‘that Maestro was a fraud.’

‘Maestro,’ she said through gritted teeth, unfamiliar emotions stirring, ‘may as well have been The One. He was amazing. His sequence belongs in the Louvre. How can you call a man like that a fraud?’

‘You don’t know him as well as you think. He was a cheat.’

A ringtone by Wagner interupted the argument. ‘Excuse me,’ Dorian said as he walked over to the windows.

She settled back down into her chair – dead or alive, wherever he was, her hero didn’t need someone like her defending him. Dead, his memory was beyond tarnishing, and his legacy was alive and well on the web. Alive...well, he was either beyond frail gestures, or felt him to be so far above them that they wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

‘It seems,’ Dorian said, ‘that we have more visitors.’ He looked to the newbie. ‘They said to ask for you.’

‘I hope it’s all right, I was told you needed all the help you could get. I don’t need a million dollars all to myself, and my friends are quite talented. Better than what you’ve got here.’

The Englishman faltered for a moment. ‘I won’t turn away help,’ he said, but I need to vet any other friends you might wish to bring.’

‘We understand security procedures,’ the newbie said, his ever-wide smile in place. ‘Some of us are in the industry.’

She looked away from the men, and tapped in the rest of the sequence. Code made more sense than people, and she didn’t intend to devote anymore of her mental processing power to the newbie.

The screen, and the code it displayed absorbed her, sucking her away from the world. She was dimly aware of the newbie’s friends coming in and setting up, that they were introducing themselves, that they were noisy and very unhelpful. A few greetings were made in her general direction, but she ignored them, instead following the trails through the code. The random words. The random strings.

The not so random words. The not so random strings.

The alien words in the alien code.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she fought an urge to bite it. ‘Spyder,’ Dorian said, ‘Can you help me with something?’

‘Can it-?’

‘No, it can’t. Besides,’ he said, his voice louder, ‘you’re not getting anywhere, so it’s not like I’m wasting your time.’

The words were a pitch-perfect pseudo-insult, but she read through them. ‘Let me guess,’ she said as she casually dropped the headphones to the desk. ‘You want me to climb all those stairs again.’

‘It might help to work off the pancakes,’ he said before exiting the room without her.

She slipped her USB drive into her pocket and followed him through the old mansion, and up the main stairs. A stray thought made her wonder if the secret stairs were only there at night, but a rational though vetoed it.

Wordlessly, she followed him up the stairs, down the hall and into his bedroom. He locked the door with an ornate key, and ushered her to the other side of the room, away from any possible prying ears.

‘They’re Solstice,’ he whispered, ‘they’re all bloody Solstice.’

‘Eh?’

‘Your colleague’s friend, and the ones he brought with him, they’re all Solstice.’ This was a different Dorian to the one she’d seen the rest of her stay at the mansion – his composure was gone, his confidence seemed shattered – he was scared. He was – probably – an immortal, and he was scared.

‘What’s a Solstice?’

‘How can one who has died know so little about the world?’

‘...what?’

He shook himself. ‘Sorry, but I feel it’s a fair question. You’ve been there, to the grey land, you’ve seen Death, and you’ve come back. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you learn to spot the signs. You must have been young...’ He stepped back, his grey eyes looking her up and down. ‘Very young, given that you seem to have no idea what I’m talking about.’

‘I’m gonna go now...’

His arm shot out and grabbed her. ‘No. Don’t. Too many people leave at once,
and they’ll get suspicious.’

She pulled away from him. ‘What’s going on, Mister Gray?’

‘They’re Solstice.’

‘That means nothing to me! What does that even mean?’

‘The Solstice are...Would you take it at face value if I said “evil”?’

‘Qualify your statement, and I might.’

‘That’s not taking it at face value.’ He scratched his chin for a moment. ‘You saw a monster last night, yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know I’m something more than a good-looking Londoner?’

She went to argue the narcissistic half of his question, but bit her lip and nodded – this wasn’t a time for glib remarks. A scared immortal was an immortal afraid of something that was likely a lot more dangerous to little hacker girls.

‘Would you take a lead pipe to Astrin and beat him into pulp?

She shook her head.

‘Would you chain me and put a meat hook through my heart?’ Her eyes drifted to his chest – she hadn’t remembered any scars, though maybe they- ‘Spyder?’

‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ she said, her voice sounding small and timid to her ears.

‘Would you cut the throat of a child because one of their parents could turn into a tree?’

‘Stop it.’

He reached for her hand, his thumb sliding onto her wrist again. ‘This time,’ he said, ‘you’re as scared as you need to be. This is what the Solstice do. They see the fantastic, and they crush it. They see magic, and they wipe it out. They execute fey. They torture demons. They hunt angels. They hurt anyone whose life has just that little bit of wonder in it.’ He dropped her hand. ‘Now, I’m going to take my son far away from here, so that they can’t hurt him. I will inform Astrin, and make sure that he gets away. They’ll leave after they get what they want, and all of this will be over in a few days.’

A dozen questions danced in her mind, not least of all was the word “son”. ‘So this whole thing’s a bust then? The Beast doesn’t get his Belle?’

‘That depends,’ he said, ‘on whether or not you work out that code. Do it before they do, and-’

‘If he’s gone, I’ll have no-one to give it to.’

‘If you work it out, go home, I left my card on your coffee table.’

‘You’re only telling me, aren’t you? The others don’t know, wouldn’t believe. Why tell me?’

‘So that you keep your ears open, and your mouth shut. Don’t provoke them. I’d tell you to run, but two people leaving is suspicious enough. Leave it until tomorrow at the least. Everyone here is human, not their concern.’

‘So just go back downstairs and act normal?’

He managed a smile. ‘Go back downstairs and do whatever it is that you do that approximates normal.’

‘But-’

‘Go.’

She stared at him for a moment more, then nearly ran back down the stairs.

A man stood at her computer, going through her data, and not for the first time, she was grateful for her paranoia. ‘Can I help you?’

The man turned, and for a moment he looked familiar, the sensation faded as he smiled. ‘Ah, Miss Noname, isn’t it?’

He had the look of a professor who’d been gone too long in the jungle, wild eyes sat in an otherwise calm face, salt-and-pepper hair styled just neatly enough to indicate that he thought himself to be above the rest of the code monkey rabble.

‘Stephanie,’ she said, the whole version of her name sounding alien in her mouth, but it would help her to keep on edge. ‘Just cause I don’t like giving my name to pushy pretty-boys doesn’t mean I’m one of those puzzle-wrapped enigmas.’ She attempted a smile, but aborted it when she felt it tend towards manic.

‘You’ve, ah, got some interesting ideas when it comes to this code.’

‘Not really,’ she said, attempting to sound sorry for herself, ‘I ran out of of ideas three days ago. Since then, I’ve been reterofitting bits of old video games in while scarfing the free food. It’s hard to eat....well, much other than ramen on my budget.’

This seemed to disappoint him. ‘Some of your-’ he began.

‘I’ve got nothing. I’ve over my head here. I wanna keep at it, cause I know one of these guys is going to solve it, and I want to see what the hell it is, but it’s not gonna be me who figures it out.’

‘I could-’

‘I’d rather fail on my own, thanks,’ she said as she pushed past him and slipped into her chair. ‘And actually, I really want to see what happens when I put the code for Pong into this.’

This made him leave.

Dorian and Jonowoi left soon after, the man-who-appeared-older being pushed in a wheelchair by the man-who-was-older. Lunch came soon after that. Numerous flash games amused her for a while, before she excused herself from the room – she needed to be able to work on the code without a dozen eyes watching her, but she made a promise to come back into the main room later, or at least show up for dinner, as to not arouse their suspicion.

7 - Responsibility

Chapter Seven - Wherein Ryan goes to the mansion.

Ryan crouched and grabbed a hold of the corpse, closed his eyes and concentrated on shifting all of his recruits back to the infirmary. The Parkers were on him as soon as they appeared, picking up the body and putting it onto a gurney – the shorter of the two wheeled it away while his twin began to treat the others.

He caught one of his recruits, Enid, staring at the blood on his hands. ‘Sir, what did you do?’

‘What I had to.’ It was the only answer he could give. The girl just stared at him, her own minor wounds seemingly forgotten.

‘You killed him?’
‘It was mercy,’ he said. ‘He was going to-’ He could tell by the look in her eyes that his words were falling on deaf ears. ‘It was what I had to do,’ he repeated, and shifted from the infirmary.

He shook himself from his memories and turned back to incomplete letter his desk held. A condolence letter to the parents of the recruit. The wording had to careful though – he couldn’t exactly word it to say that he’d shot the boy in the head because his wounds had been too great to be healed, even by Agency doctors.

He swiveled his chair to look out the window – he needed another break from the task at hand. Not that looking out the window provided a distraction – it was more of a reminder than Jones’ predicted mirrorfall time line. The parade of ghosts had started – not that they were really ghosts; just echoes, just impressions left by the dying world from the people it had swallowed. The echo of old, alien planes flew through the night sky, some dove and rolled – the buildings around them were no obstacle for them.

There were never any agents among the ghosts – being only ash, they wouldn’t leave a strong enough impression. Either that, or it was part of the same curse that didn’t allow them to pass on, when – or if – they died.

He always took heed of the assumed relative level of technology of the dying world - to try and get an idea of when his world was going to die. All worlds died, it was an irrefutable fact. It was the how, and the when that interested him. In comparison to the technology around him, it seemed that most of the worlds died when they were older than the Earth. Sometimes, he noted as a ghostly zeppelin floated past the moon, it happened a lot sooner. Though, it was a relative assumption, given that some worlds progressed faster than other and not all suffered an analogue of the dark ages, which stifled technology and had held the world back from where it could have been.

He watched the ghosts, he always did. There was little use in learning about a planet that was about to die – at the same time, there was no harm in it. No harm in keeping a few memories of an entire world blinked out of existence.

Ten minutes later, the letter was done. He folded it and placed it in an envelope. He touched it and it disappeared, it would be delivered the next day, as would the details of the pension. Money was simply numbers, so they had no problem supplying the families – or the recruits themselves if they chose to leave – with a pension.

There was a hurried knock on his door. It wasn‘t a recruit, he knew that, there had been no footsteps preceding the knock. It wasn’t Taylor, Taylor almost always barged in, unannounced. ‘Come in Jones,’ he called.

Jones pushed the door open, the prerequisite blue folder in his hand.

‘What is it?’ he asked of the flustered tech agent.

‘A detachment of Solstice, in the same area that Magnolia’s been tracking the leech to. There isn’t a lot of chatter, but...’

He understood. ‘They wouldn’t be working with a leech, but it isn’t a good sign. Do you have an exact location?’

Jones flipped open the folder. ‘It’s a historically-listed house, privately owned, but it’s often rented out to private parties, as the case seems to be now.’ He took the folder from the tech and lifted the location from the information.

‘Dummy corporations?’

The tech agent nodded. ‘As is the usual Solstice operating procedure. Your recruits could-’

‘It’s too soon,’ he interrupted. ‘They lost Adams last night, they’d be dangerous in the field...if they were willing to go. I’ll go. I can always call for backup if I need it.’

‘Not that you would,’ Jones pointed out.

‘I’m not Taylor,’ he said, ‘I know when I’m in over my head.’

‘As you say, sir,’ Jones said, unconvinced.

He ignored the tech’s lack of conviction – stood, took one last look at the parade of ghosts outside his window, and shifted to the old house. It stood mostly in darkness, only a few lights inside betrayed any waking figures.

He gave a moment’s pause before he shifting inside. The Solstice, on seeing him, opened fire on him – he didn’t mind, it meant not having to negotiate. Their shots turned the house into a flurry of activity – all around him, he could hear people running; toward him or away, it was too early to tell. He quickly shot both of the Solstice in front him, and moved on. After a quick shift, there were two bodies. Another shift, another body.

He paused after each shift – he had to give each Solstice the chance to talk – he wanted at least a chance to discover what their mission had been, and what they knew about the leech. He raised his head when he heard gunshots – he gave a quick scan of the mansion, and the number of life signs left – the large pool of them in one of the central rooms – suddenly dropped. For a moment, he stopped, and considered the possibility that the Solstice had broken one of the rules and started to toy with teleportation magics.

Knowing them as well as he did, it was a possibility that he quickly discounted. He stilled himself and scanned for heat signatures. There were half a dozen unmoving heat signatures, all just a little cooler than the normal human body temperature.

‘Bastards,’ he whispered as he shifted.

There were three Solstice left in the room, all around him were the bodies of the the civilians they had been working with. He took a step forward, and his foot landed in something sticky – blood. Some of the civilians had tried to run, some had simply died at their computers.

‘And you call us the monsters,’ he said as he took a step forward. The youngest of the three Solstice turned and shot him – there was no pain, it was a dart, not a bullet. He raised his gun to fire, but the dart shocked him, giving the Solstice time to lob a grenade at him.

It, like every other blackout bomb, exploded with a forceful wall of green light, which made him stumble back a few steps. He stared at the Solstice through the time-distorted air and waited for their attack – he was vulnerable, he was in over his head, it was their time to attack.

They ignored him, turning their backs to focus on the computers in front of them. He looked down, and found that there was a perfect circle of clear air around his feet – he was in a protective bubble, the eye of the storm.

He reached a hand forward, and the cold of the time-distorted air burnt his hand, not enough to truly hurt, just enough to warn him that he was entering a place where agents didn’t belong. Time had not given his blessing for the agents to have control over his domain. Control over time was only something that Time, and his bastard offspring, had.

In an area affected by time – too much, not enough, or stolen seconds from another universe – they were weak, and they could die. It wasn’t a chance that most Solstice would waste – the three in front of him, however, seemed to have discounted him entirely. They’d left him neutered, but had no interest in fighting him – whatever they were doing was obviously a lot more important than fighting.

The youngest – the one that had trapped him – and the oldest, gathered one of the laptops, and a bag of disks, leaving their compatriot alone in the room. The Solstice gave him one wary look, then sat at the computer and worked with the data in front of him.

‘Talk,’ he said through the forcefield.

‘Never to an agent,’ the Solstice spat.

‘You just did. What were you doing here?’ The Solstice ignored him, sending email after email. ‘You killed all of these civilians, why?’

‘I didn’t kill nobody.’

He accepted this – he doubted that the man had actually pulled the trigger on any of them. ‘Did you try and stop them?’

‘Couldn’t have them talking,’ the Solstice said as he stood and carelessly shoved one of the dead civilians from his seat. The corpse of the young man in a ripped black shirt rocked on the chair unsteadily, then fell to the floor, the line of bullets across his chest and the one in his throat painfully obvious.

‘I’m here now,’ he said. ‘We’ll find out what you were doing.’

‘Then why bother asking?’ the Solstice said. ‘We did what we had to, Agent.’

‘You didn’t have to do any of this!’ he shouted. ‘This was murder! Why did you kill them? Why? Tell me that, Solstice!’

The man was silent for a long moment. ‘If you get killed by an agent, you go to hell.’

He didn’t bother to argue that the existence of hell, or even a hell, was nothing but speculation, as all things after this existence were. ‘And where do murderers go?’

‘It was a mercy,’ the Solstice said, ‘we did what we had to do.’

For a moment, he was stunned still – it was the same line of reasoning that he’d given his recruits for what he’d done to Adams. He shook his head and forced himself through the tiny blackout zone – he felt safe enough to do so, the man seemed to have no intention of fighting him.

The Solstice’s expression didn’t change as he stepped back back through into the safe territory and raised his gun. ‘I had a daughter once, she was killed, by monsters your kind protect. We do this so that sons and daughters make it home through the dark, and to see the end to those who would protect the unnatural creatures in the world.’

He swung his arm around, indicating to all of the bodies around him. ‘And these sons and daughters? What of their parents?’

‘Collateral damage,’ the Solstice said. He jammed his head up against the man’s head, but the man made no move to weep or beg. ‘They left me here, they knew it would come to this, I knew it would come to this. I’ve done my part. All the people that remain in this house are ready to die for Solstice.’

‘I sincerely hope that there is a hell,’ he said, and pulled the trigger.

He looked around at the bodies, and made a silent apology that he hadn’t been able to save them. He tilted his head, careful not to take in the smell of blood and scanned the house – there were only two life signs left – one that was running through the house, and one that wasn’t moving.

He shifted to the running one first, and killed the Solstice before they could finish lifting their weapon – Solstice deserved little enough pity at the best of times, and those who would associate with leaders that would willingly kill a room full of civilians deserved even less.

That only left one life sign in the house – one last bullet and the whole mess would be over, and they’d be able to begin to piece together what had happened so that the civilian lives hadn’t been wasted for no reason.

He did wonder why the last life sign wasn’t running – surely they knew that they were alone now, and that whatever they were doing was going to be for naught. A mission that was worth dying for – he’d only had a few of those in his existence, and he’d come back from each and every one of them.

He required a new gun, and allowed himself a moment before shifting toward the last life sign. He appeared in a small bedroom, the only light in which came from a large, open window. The room’s occupant wasn’t visible, they weren’t on the bed, nor at the desk. Confusion overwhelmed him for a moment, until the sound of breathing betrayed the occupant’s position – the wardrobe.

A strange sense of wonder lessened the impact the night for a moment – it was such a quaint place to hide, it afforded no real protection, nor would it slow any agent for more than a second. It had been a desperate act, the desperate act of a Solstice on a mission worth more than their life.

He heard the tapping of keyboard keys and he took a few steps, easily crossing the small room, the floorboards creaking beneath him as he did so. The typing stopped for a moment, then resumed.

The urge to shoot straight through the door came to him, but he discounted it – he wanted the Solstice to see him, to know that they were going to die, and not have a chance to run – just like the civilians.

He pulled the wardrobe door open and looked in – hidden deep within the shadows of the wardrobe, illuminated only by the light of her laptop screen was a young woman. The irregularity of her breathing told him how frightened she was, but nonetheless, she kept her eyes glued to the screen, refusing to acknowledge him in any way.

The fact that she wasn’t sprouting Solstice rhetoric was a nice change, he hated hearing their tired and hateful opinions of the world, the mistaken ideas they had about what was natural, and what was unnatural, and what made a monster.

He took a step closer, blocking all outside light into the wardrobe. For a moment, he stood amazed that she was still obstinately ignoring him while her file loaded, giving him her basic stats. One fact stood out above all others – a cross-reference to himself, he double-checked it as her hands continued to dance across the laptop’s keyboard.

The child?

A rush of conflicting emotions washed over him, but his sense of duty overrode them all; he aimed, and fired.

8 - The Last Moment

Chapter Eight - Wherein a memory is brought to the surface.

There was a strange noise.

Stef looked up from her laptop, taking a moment to process the sound – it wasn’t the same noise of a squib that movies and violent television had made her familiar with...but the screams of her colleagues down the hall confirmed that it had been a gunshot. Another quickly followed it, then two more.

The Solstice in the main room began to shout, and she heard the code monkeys go crazy. The heavy doors were slammed shut, but the shouts continued. She released a long, slow breath and closed Frankie’s lid and sat up, slowly sliding her legs off the bed. She stood, and was thankful that the old house was in good repair – no squeaky floorboards betrayed her movements as she moved toward the door.

There were more shots, and thoughts of running ran through her head, but her sensible side pointed out that as a hacker, her physical condition was not one made for running away from men with guns. Or women with guns. Or horses with guns. I’m only going to tell you this once. Concentrate.

More bullets shattered the silence of the mansion, and the silence it left behind was worse than the one it had replaced – the silence of a murder. She swallowed a scream, and fought the urge the throw up. She swung the door half-closed, her heart skipping a beat as its hinges squeaked. She stared at the door as her hand drifted toward it to slam it shut, it would do nothing but reveal her location to the world, and to the horses with guns, but at least it would be better than the passive nightmare she'd found herself in.

She forced her hand away from the door and looked away from it – not being able to run through the house was severely limiting her options. She looked to the window, crossed to it and pushed it open – there was a garden below, but jumping down to it would at least result in a broken leg or two, and that was if she fell straight, and didn't manage to catch onto any of the sharp edges of the house, or land on her head.

The bed was too low to the ground to hide under, there weren't enough sheets to make an escape rope, and she had no intention of leaving herself out in the open for the problems – shooty problems – of other people.

The small desk was of no use – if she used it to bar the door, then someone would definitely know that she was in there. She held Frankie close, having no intention of running without him and looked around the room. The only other thing in the room was the wardrobe. The old wardrobe in the old mansion with the old man.

The sudden knowledge of exactly what she needed to do calmed her, and she felt her heart slow a little.

She pulled the wardrobe open – pleased that unlike the hinges on the door, these had been oiled. She pushed the few hanging coats aside, hoping for one moment that there might be forest to escape into hiding in the back of the wardrobe, alas there was no forest nor an out-of-place lamppost. Magical escape or not, she hoped it would be good enough. She pulled on the inside of the lock and pulled the door closed – because as everyone knows, it is a very good idea to lock yourself in a wardrobe.

She brought her knees up, and rested Frankie against them, his warmth serving to comfort her a little – and she was glad that he was in a powered-down mode, as his old, loud fans would likely do a lot to betray her.

There was the sound of footsteps and the sound of the squeaky door being pushed open. She raised a hand to cover her mouth, then froze. The footsteps rounded the room, then left. She exhaled a long breath, settled against the wall of the wardrobe, and opened up her laptop. What the hell are you doing, Spyder? Stop it, just lie still until the cops get here. No. This is all about- I’m the one that keeps you alive, listen to me, just stop. It's not worth it. It’s all about the code, it’s got to be, and I'm so close. It isn’t worth your life.

She tapped on Frankie’s keyboard to wake him. ‘Come on Prometheus, dazzle me,’ she said in the softest of voices. ‘We can do this.’ It seemed that the code’s program loaded slowly, but that was likely the fear – it had a habit of changing the flow of time. There was the time that was measured, and the time that was experienced – and she had never believed them to be the same thing.

The code and her nearly complete algorithm stared at her, offering her two choices; the choice to lie dead and wait for the world to tell her what was next, and the choice to do what she’d been hired to do. The beast was gone, so he wouldn’t be able to use the code. The old man and his much older friend were gone, so there’d be no payment.

There was just the code. Just the code that had seduced her in the first place – the payment had been of secondary importance, and she scarcely cared for the love story. There was just the code.

A second stilling decision came over her, and she began to type.

A few lines of code in, there was a sound of thunder. She looked up from the screen – the sky had been clear the last time she’d looked at it, and- The sound came again – it wasn’t thunder, it was the sound of a dozen hackers suddenly being silenced.

The urge to lie still, and wait for the...whoever to find her came again – it was worse than finding the beast, at least then, she could have fought, run or screamed; there had also been someone to blame – Dorian. Here, there was nothing to do but wait – making any noise would only lead them to finding her. Here, there was no one to blame but herself.

She wished that she could sink into the wood, to just be an interesting hacker-shaped stain on the grain, for her consciousness to suffuse into the wood, to share its memories, and to have the pleasure of a simple duty.

The back of the wardrobe strayed obstinately wooden, refusing to give way to a real escape. She doubted that there was a way to charge her laptop in Cair Paravel or even the den of some friendly beavers. She wouldn’t have her laptop, and for the first time ever, she didn’t care. The will to finish with the code dimmed a little as she pressed a hand to the back of the wardrobe. Please.. Nothing happened. Please...I can’t die here. I don’t belong here. I belong-

There was another shot, and it rocked her back from the edge of fantasy. She focused on the laptop, there was no lamppost in her future, no free escape from the humdrum around her.

Her hands flew across the keyboard – finding cheap shortcuts, abusing her ability to copy and paste and doing all she could do to get it finished. It had to get finished, there was no real reason why, but if it was important enough to kill over, then it was a job worth finishing.

‘Compile,’ she whispered to the laptop. ‘Compile.’ The program chugged and retched the code back at her – it was almost done, but her rush had made small errors. Errors that would only take a moment to fix.

A moment that she didn’t have, she realised as she heard the floor outside the wardrobe creaking.

She let go of her caught breath, and began to type again, killing each and every error that the compile had spat at her.

After a moment, the wardrobe door was pulled open. The comforting image of the shining Eastern Ocean and the wonders beyond flooded her mind as she waited for the bullet. It didn’t come, and she typed a few more keystrokes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the man – standing ready with a gun. She couldn’t turn to face him, she wasn’t sure she could handle what would happen – or what she’d see. From what little she could see, he seemed human enough, but with what she’d seen, what she knew, and what she’d heard, there was no guarantee, and she wasn’t sure she could handle any more surprises.

He moved a little closer, and blocked out all the light – leaving her only with the comforting light of Frankie’s electronic glow. The gun moved a little, and part of her died. Part of her flew over the always-winter-never-Christmas world; part of her ran toward the Jolly Roger as it prepared to leave port, her Captain ready and waiting; part of her-

There was a shot.

A thin trail of burnt air was all she saw as the bullet passed before her eyes, the heat scorching her face. There was a second loud sound as the bullet slammed into the back of the wardrobe. The bullets throughout the mansion had been loud enough, up close, the sound was so unlike that portrayed on television that she vowed to never watch it again.

Her hand seized up, unable to type anything more. There was no way that it he could have missed – it had been a warning shot; a warning of things to come. The man moved, just a little, and pushed the gun up to the side of her head, the hot barrel searing her temple. ‘Yes,’ she said as she turned her head a little to look at him, ‘you have my attention.’

It was Astrin all over again, but a hundred times worse – she’d been too sleep-deprived to truly be afraid of the beast, here and now, every second was borrowed, and more real than anything that she could recall. She wasn’t in control, she wasn’t the one who got to decide whether she lived or died.

The bedroom was dark, and she couldn’t see the man very well, but with what she could see, it was obvious he was a narc, a narc that looked no worse the wear for killing an entire mansion fill of people. ‘Four more keystrokes and I’ve done what I came to do, just let me do that, then you can pull the trigger.’

If only she had consumed more coffee, then she would have already pressed the keys. If she had consumed less, her hands wouldn’t have been shaking as hard as they were. Or maybe that’s the fear. She stared straight ahead at the screen, staring at her reflection and that of the gun. Yeah...it’s probably the fear, Spyder.

She kept her eyes on the reflection of the gun, flexed her fingers and reached for the next key.

The gun was jammed further against her head, pushing it into the back wall of the wardrobe, the sharp splinters from the first shot digging into her cheek. She fought a grimace and extended her index finger toward the next key.

The narc’s other hand reached in and pushed her laptop closed. Crap. She slumped as best as she could, her head still effectively pinned to the back of the wardrobe. ‘Fine. Whatever. I’m not going to run.’

‘You brought this on yourself.’

She snorted derisively. ‘A legal job ends my life, there isn’t enough irony in the world for that.’ I’m not supposed to die, I’m supposed to hack something big and make a name and get hired to do securities in a job with- You have very little chance of making it through the next five minutes, will you fscking concentrate? She closed her eyes and waited for him to pull the trigger.

He made a disapproving noise. ‘Working for the Solstice is hardly…’

Her eyes flew open. ‘Wait! What? WAIT! No!’ she struggled to get to her feet, but he pushed her back down. ‘Me not one of them!’ she managed as she struggled to sit back up – the cramped space of the cupboard didn’t assist in this. ‘I…I’m not one of them! I’m not!’

The gun retreated a little. ‘Why are you here then?’

‘For the job. Working with the code. That’s all. That’s all.’

His left hand reached into the wardrobe and yanked her out, she stumbled, but managed to catch herself before falling – appearing clumsy wouldn’t help her case. She clutched her laptop to her chest, but didn’t dare open it. Her eyes had adjusted enough to make out some of the narc’s details – he was younger than his voice betrayed – somewhere in his thirties. Everything from the three-piece suit to the gun indicated she had very little chance of walking out of the room alive. Especially with the gunshots she’s heard – corpses were probably less paperwork than prisoners.

‘Speak,’ he ordered.

‘Woof!’ she barked on impulse. A shot flew past her ear and slammed into the wall behind her. ‘Scare tactics are not going to work.’ If it could have, her nose would have grown an inch.

‘Keep in mind that there is very little you can do to convince me that you are not a member of the Solstice.’

Her eyes narrowed, and she swallowed – the reality of the moment was finally starting to set in. ‘If there isn’t anything I can do to convince you, then why bother talking to me?’

The light flickered on. He didn’t touch the light switch. …like that’s important right now. Of course it’s important, it’s data. You’re the half that’s going to get us killed. No, that would be the scary guy with the gun.

‘Very little,’ he clarified, ‘not nothing.’

She’d already said her piece, she had nothing else to say. She clutched her laptop tight, holding it as a child would a security blanket, or a doll.

…a doll…

All she could do was stare at him, there was something off about him, something familiar, except not. Then again, that could be the fear. Black jacket. Blue vest. Blue tie. Brown hair. Memories stirred, but refused to break through the surface. Doll, doll, doll... Run, you stupid bitch. There’s a garden below the window, jump. Can’t...legs aren’t taking instructions. Say something!

He echoed her unspoken sentiment. ‘Speak!’ he demanded again.

She struggled to say anything – but she kept drawing blanks. He leveled the gun at her. ‘You brought this on yourself.’

Doll. Doll. Why the fsck is he- Because he looks like every narc in every movie ever! Now be a good girl and make a deal. I know him- No you- He took a step closer – not that it mattered , it wasn’t like she could dodge at this range – and she fought a shudder. There’s money in your bank, you could- I’m trying to think! You’re going to get us killed. Shut up!

The memory broke through.

Alexandria.

She swallowed and looked up at him. ‘I remember you.’

9 - The Third Path

Chapter Nine - Wherein Stef's options are discussed.

‘I know you...I remember you,’ the girl said again, more sure of herself this time – none of the fear had left her expression, and she kept looking past him and to the window, as if considering leaping through it.

Ryan shook his head. No. Not possible.

She took a slow step back, as if he were about to pounce her like a rabid dog, and put the laptop on the bed, her hands shaking as she did so. She simply stared at him, her eyes occasionally flickering to the gun he had trained at her head.

‘You’re mistaken, Miss Mimosa,’ he said. Usually, knowledge of someone’s name unnerved them – she gave him no reaction.

She clutched her fists for a moment. ‘I am rarely mistaken,’ she said as she jutted her chin out. She lifted a finger to make a point, but put it down when it began to shake. ‘And I remember you,’ she said, her voice cracking as though she was on the edge of tears.

He kept the gun trained on her, but required the safety back into place – she wasn’t acting like a Solstice, she wasn’t approaching him like even a nascent member of the organisation, it was all the more likely that she was one of the civilians – the fear on her face was the same that had been frozen to the faces of her dead colleagues.

Still, he couldn’t take any chances – they’d been fooled more than once, and he wasn’t going to let one groundless statement – she was of course bluffing, there was no way that she could have remembered that day, she’d only been a child. One day, yes, two, yes, even a week was reasonable. Not twenty years.

The girl shifted uncomfortably for a moment. ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do I remember you?’

‘As I said, Miss Mimosa, you don’t.’

‘Alexandria...I remember Alexandria. Pain, and cold, lots of cold. I remember...you. Then nothing. Black. Just...black. So either confirm my certification of insanity, or tell me why I remember you.’

He kept his expression neutral. ‘Your mention of the Great Library does nothing to further your case.’

‘Not the library.’ She paused and hesitantly took a step closer. ‘My doll.’

He wasn’t able to keep the surprise from his face. The girl smirked, and he simply stared, marveling at her memory. He shook his head – duty was all-important, only duty would bring the situation to a a resolution, whatever that resolution ended up being. ‘‘You are…correct. You still have to come with me.’

She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, still far from ease. ‘Are you going to show me a badge?’

‘Do you really think I need to show you one?’

She shook her head, then went still – she took her eyes off him to look around the room. ‘I can’t hear anyone else, are they all...?’

‘Yes.’

Her cheeks bulged and the tears finally started to come, she backed up to the wall for support. ‘I- Why’d-? You-?’ she stammered, then shook her head. ‘Why didn’t you get me the first time you came in here?’

‘I didn’t...This is the first time I’ve been in this room.’ The implication of her words took a moment to sink in – he hadn’t been in the room before, so it must have been the Solstice, and if they’d bothered to check the wardrobe, instead of looking past it, then-

In his mind, the odds that she was a member of Solstice, plummeted. She slowly moved away from the wall, sank down onto the bed, picked up the laptop and clutched it close. ‘I didn’t like them that much, but why’d you kill them all?’

It suddenly occurred to him that he was still holding his gun. ‘Miss Mimosa.’ It took her a moment, but she looked up, he holstered the weapon and closed his jacket. ‘It was Solstice who killed your colleagues.’

She took a few deep breaths, then looked up, a lot calmer. ‘So what happens now?’

‘As I said, you have to come with me.’

She looked up and shrugged. ‘Okies.’ She gave him a wary look. ‘Just don’t shoot me, ok?’

‘Not without cause,’ he said – it was the best, most honest answer he could give her. He reached forward and touched her shoulder. With a thought, he shifted them away from the mansion.

Her bulging eyes and small gasps of disbelief made him smile – most humans reacted the same way the first time they were shifted. He took his hand away from her shoulder, quietly took the laptop from her loose grip and let her stand in shock for a moment. He rounded his desk and sat in his comfortable leather chair, shifting the laptop down to Jones’ lab. He looked up at her – she was talking silently to herself, staring at the window behind his desk. He smirked and required a couple of files, the standard blue folders appearing on his desk. When she turned to look at him, he required a chair for her. ‘Sit, please, Miss Mimosa.’

The girl looked down at her legs as though she didn’t trust them to move. ‘No…’ she said. She swallowed and looked up. ‘No electrical tingle to indicate machinery, no apparent loss of time – it was instantaneous. No lapse in consciousness to indicate that I was in fact destroyed upon disappearance and remade upon entry. No equipment visible, no transponder, you did that with a touch.’

He smiled, she sounded Jones. ‘Conclusion?’ he asked after watching her stare at her hands for a solid minute.

‘Not technology,’ she said at last. ‘However, in light of recent events, not surprising.’

‘Recent events are what we need to discuss,’ he indicated to the spare chair.

She slowly walked toward the chair – staring at it suspiciously. He wasn’t sure if she’d seen it appear or not, but it apparently gave her reason to worry all the same. She ran her hand along it and then sat, the new leather creaking and settling as she tried to get comfortable. ‘One question first,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Ryan. Now please, start from the beginning.’

She fidgeted it for a moment, then lifted her hands and counted her fingers. ‘Which beginning?’ she asked. ‘I can’t remember my birth. Or my first day of school. Or my first day of high school...that’s because it sucked and I blocked it out. I-’

‘What were you doing with the Solstice?’

‘They were nobody’s first choice. It wasn’t their gig. But the code was degrading, and we were running out of time.’

He raised his head – so it was connected to the mirrorfall – he needed to know how much she knew. ‘Running out of time until what?’

She shrugged. ‘That I don’t know, I’m just a code monkey.’

‘You weren’t with the others. Why?’

She went pale again – something that almost seemed to be a feat, given her normal skin colour. ‘I’d be dead if I’d been with the others, wouldn’t I?’

He stared at her – refusing to answer the question, the answer was all too obvious. Hiding in the wardrobe had been a desperate act, and it hadn’t slowed him for even a second, it hadn’t afforded any real protection...yet it had been just enough to save her from the Solstice’s sweep. A quaint hiding place, a child’s hiding place, but something so simple had stopped her from being just another body on the floor.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ she said as she bit her lip. She stared at the ground. ‘I was warned about them. The others weren’t. But...’ her voice cracked again, ‘he didn’t tell me that they...They killed all of them?’

‘Who warned you?’

‘You’ll think I’m crazy...’

‘Possibly. Who?’

‘Dorian Gray.’

‘Ah. And you believed him?’

‘He freaked me out less than the Sols-ass. I didn’t have a reason to disbelieve him. And I was on the right track, they weren’t. I didn’t want them to get to the Beast’s Belle first.’

‘...what beast?’

‘Hey, you’re the one with the personal teleport...’ she said, then quickly sank back into the chair, trying to hide in the leather.

‘You saw the leech?’

‘He looked more like a wolfman than a leech...’

‘Was he still-?’

‘No, he cleared out. They really were a last resort.’

He required one of Recruit Magnolia’s reports on the leech and pulled out one of the surveillance photos. He slid it across the desk. ‘Is this him?’ The girl took the photo and gave him a nod.

‘Can I,’ she asked in a small voice. ‘Can I have some water?’

He required her a glass, and it appeared just in front of her on the desk. She lifted the glass, stared suspiciously at it for a moment, then drank half the glass without taking a breath. ‘All this,’ she asked after wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, ‘is this all magic?’

‘What do you think it is?’

‘Frankly, I’d like another explanation, but I’m not gonna get one, am I?’

‘There’s no better explanation than the truth.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘So if it wasn’t Solstice that was running the show...?’

She seemed unsure for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Dorian was hiring us, everything was for the Beast, whether or not someone was arranging it outside that, I don’t know. We had the beast’s code, but it was old and crappy, so those bastards came, and no one knew till it was too late.’

‘Why were only you told of them?’

‘Because I saw the monster and didn’t run screaming into the night. Because I accepted the possibility that the code wasn’t human, and because I’m clinically insane and no one would listen to me anyway? Dorian said they were dangerous for people like him and the beast, he didn’t say that they were gonna...’ She downed the rest of the water, and he required it full again. ‘Why would they just kill everyone? Is what we were doing that important? I didn’t sign up for anything bad, I said that at the beginning, that I didn’t want anything to do with anything bad...’

‘I don’t know what you were doing, so I can’t tell you, what was the code you were working on?’

‘I don’t know, got interrupted before I could finish...’

‘That can get remedied. What else can you tell me?’

She shrugged. ‘I think I saw a ghost?’

He spun his chair – the parade of ghosts would continue until the phoenix appeared, so spotting a few ghosts would be easy. Without prompting, she got up from the squeaky leather chair and crossed the room to look out the window-wall with him.

She pressed her face against the glass. ‘Conventionally speaking, I should be able to see my house from here.’ He smiled, but stopped himself from calculating the number of buildings that blocked the view of her home address. She pulled away from the glass and wiped her oily nose print away with the sleeve of her shirt. ‘Assuming you’re not organising another gun and replacement carpet...what happens now?’

He turned on his chair to look at her, but remained seated – he had no wish to frighten her more. ‘That really depends on you, Miss Mimosa.’

‘Meaning?’ She tucked some of her short brown hair behind her ear and stood uneasily for a moment. ‘My number one preference is for not getting shot.’

‘That’s not something you have to worry about,’ he said, hoping that it was true. ‘What will happen will depend on how much you wish to cooperate with us.’

‘To state the obvious,’ she said, ‘this isn’t ASIO. Who’s “us”?’ She crossed back to to her chair, and grimaced at the squeaky leather.

‘The Agency.’

‘Oooh, descriptive... What do you do besides shoot people, scare hackers and kidnap babies?’

He smiled. ‘I never kidnapped you, Miss Mimosa.’

‘Anyway…’

‘You have three choices.’

She looked up at him. ‘Well, if you didn’t kidnap me, then-’

He cut her off, explaining what had happened as a child was a conversation for another time. A much later time. ‘You have three choices,’ he repeated. ‘One, you cooperate and then you leave. Two, unlikely I believe in your case, but I must state it nonetheless, you refuse to cooperate and...things will be less pleasant.’

‘You’ll shoot me.’

‘As I said,’ he said, ‘less pleasant.’

She stared at her fingers for a moment. ‘Does knowing there’s weird crap in the world change the base math to the point where two equals three?’

‘Most people jump at the first, or unfortunately choose the second.’

‘So what’s the third?’

‘Rather than simply giving us what information you know, you come work for us.’

‘So I’d have my own licence to kidnap babies and shoot people?’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Shooting people, right. Did you shoot this creepy bearded guy with, slight aura of GTFO?’ He stared at her, unable to translate the tech-department dialect. She pouted. ‘Fifty-ish, badly cut grey beard, kinda wild eyes, but not in the good Doc Brown way...’

‘Are you referring to David Kane?’

She went absolutely still for a moment, then slowly reached for the water glass. ‘Kane?’ she asked. ‘As in...Oliver Kane, Maestro...that was...that was Maestro’s father? The teacher guy who did all those press conferences when Maestro went missing?’ She rocked unsteadily for a moment, downed the rest of the water and rubbed a fisted hand against her forehead. ‘Can I have some more water please?’

He topped up the glass with a thought. ‘Yes, he’s Oliver Kane’s father, at least on paper.’

She ignored his comment. ‘Maestro’s father is a Solst-ass? Maestro’s father...k- killed a room full of hackers?’ She looked up from the glass. ‘How the fuck does something like that happen?’

‘It’s enough to say that Oliver and his “father” do not see eye to eye on a lot of issues.’

She chewed on a knuckle for a moment. ‘When Maestro disappeared, it made all the conspiracy sites buzz. It didn’t take long for people to work out who he was after his father started doing all of those press conferences. Then there was all that crap with the rusty cars and dead trees and frozen cans and Surprise Fiction and…oh my god…’ She looked up to him. ‘All that was real?’

He nodded.

‘Cool...’

He regarded her quietly for a moment. ‘Should I take that as a yes?’

She nodded. ‘Sign me up.’

10 - Recruitment

Chapter Ten - Wherein Stef meets Jones, and the data is discussed.

Ryan had to smile – though the ease of her recruitment was unsurprising, it was still a rare pleasure for new recruits to be so openly excited at the prospect. More often, it was a case of “yeah, sure, whatever” or “how much do I get paid?” or “anything, so long as it keeps that six-armed-hippo-beast away”.

Stopping an angry agent from committing a murder he would have regretted wasn’t the only advantage that the memory had given her. Persons exposed to the wonders – and dangers – of the world, people who had seen outside the humdrum and the everyday, tended to subconsciously gravitate toward it. Sometimes, it just led them to walking a little lighter, more aware of the world around them, sometimes they joined up with one of the smaller factions, sometimes they joined Solstice, and sometimes the were recruited for the Agency.

He stared at the girl, there was no question that she was excited, but at the same time, she was still uneasy. She hadn’t let herself relax, and he didn’t blame her, though he did hope that her fear would ebb, lest she become another of his recruits that refused to trust him.

‘Follow me,’ he said as he walked toward the the door.

‘Ryan?’ the girl said, sounding unsure about his name. He turned back and looked at her, she was still in her chair, her knees drawn up to her chest. ‘Or is it “sir” now? Agent? Admiral? Grand Moff?’ She sighed and chewed on her lip for a moment. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kinda in my pyjamas, is that gonna be ok?’

He took another look at her – the thought that what she was wearing were pyjamas hadn’t crossed his mind they simply looked like a crumpled outfit, one desperately in need of a wash. He clicked his fingers and required her into a grey version of the recruit training uniform – her purple top, loose pants and dirty sneakers disappearing into nothingness. He gave her a moment to process what to happen, to run her fingers over the material of the utilitarian uniform, before motioning her to follow.

She slowly stood, still unsure about the clothes she was now wearing. After a moment, she buried her hands in the pants pockets and walked over to him. The grey made her seem even paler, but it was a very deliberate choice – it wasn’t a colour seen often in the Agency. Recruits weren’t even unable to require grey training uniforms – it was a colour that would help everyone in the building to immediately identify her transient status.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said as she joined him near the door, ‘if I should feel violated or awesomed by this.’

He stared at her for a moment and wondered if she was always like this, it was a pleasant – if confusing – change from “yes, sir, of course sir, I’ll do that sir” and “no sir, sorry sir”. She nonetheless followed him down the hall, dawdling just a few steps behind.

‘So, is it like a battleship and you navigate by numbers?’

He pressed the button for the lift before turning to look at her. ‘Most recruits don’t have a problem navigating the Agency.’

‘It’s not like the Enterprise, right?’ she asked as the lift doors slid open.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘On the Enterprise, there’s only one bathroom.’

On the off-chance that it was he who was defective, he ran a quick self-diagnostic – everything seemed fine, he didn’t seem to be affected by anything, or operating at anything less than peak efficiency. He replayed her words – unsure as to how one of several decommissioned ships were relevant when...The operative word of her sentence made him reconsider her reasons for bringing it up. ‘We have more than enough facilities.’ He paused. ‘Did you need…?’

‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘just crossing out some possibilities. Abundant bathrooms is good, the lack of elevator music is expected, what exactly what you are is still puzzling me.’

The possibility that she was a Solstice plummeted further toward zero – though other possibilities began to play out in his mind – the possibility that this was a trick by a playful god, or an intrusion on reality by something less than real, however, all reports indicated that everything was normal. He ran another scan of her just to be sure, unfortunately, nothing strange flickered on his display. She wasn’t a fey, she wasn’t a folly, she was just a very strange girl.

Her nature decided, it was time to answer her question. ‘I’m an agent.’

She snorted. ‘Yes, the suit, gun and office kind of gave that away. I meant the literal what.’ She bit her lip and waved her hands. ‘If there’s a more delicate way to phrase that question, feel free to tell me. I’ve kind of begun to accept that you’re not human. If you are, then sorry, and feel free to shoot me. Except don’t, cause it’s a compliment.’

A single thought stopped the lift in its journey. ‘What are your conclusions so far?’

‘You can conjure stuff, but there’s no arcane bullshit so I’m not expecting that this place is Hoggle’s. No runes, no smoke, no wand, no reagents. You arbitrarily clicked your fingers but I don’t think that’s key – it’s no nose of Samantha. Teleportation, you can take at least one person with you, but I don’t know if it has a recharge, hence why we’re taking a lift when you had no problem bringing me across the city in a few seconds. There’s no obvious Scotty, possibly personal, possibly some variant of shunpo. You also seem to have amazing knowledge, hence why you knew my name without stealing my wallet.’

‘And?’

‘I have no conclusive conclusions. And there’s been too many questions lately, so I’d just like a simple answer. Please.’

‘There’s nothing complicated about us,’ he said, ‘the full extent is that we were created to keep order. To protect. To mediate.’

She cocked her head to the side. ‘Immortal?’

‘Yes.’

‘How immortal?’

He gave her the look he gave to recruits he wished to scare off. ‘That’s not something we discuss.’

She raised her eyebrows, apparently unaffected by his stare. ‘So you’ve got a weakness then?’

He shook his head. ‘No, rather, it generally bothers humans to know that we have none.’

‘So why do you need me? Humans. Whatever.’

‘Recruits?’ A thought restarted the lift. ‘Why would you think we wouldn’t need them? New priorities, new perspectives, new ways of thinking. Everyone has something they want to protect, and by being a recruit, you can-’

‘Oh spare me, please,’ she interrupted. ‘If I have to sign up for the whole saving the world rhetoric, then I’m out of here.’

‘You’re a hacker, Miss Mimosa. Data, information, that’s what matters to you, correct?’

‘Yes, but-’

‘Then the only rhetoric you have to believe in is your own.’ The lift doors slid open. ‘This way.’

He kept in step with her this time, wanting to see her reactions to the tech floor. Whilst the hallway walls on his floor were blank, punctuated only by doors, the occasional noticeboard, evacuation procedures and the like, the tech floor was far from plain.

Movie posters in glass frames hung from the walls, charts were drawn up deciding the rounds of games to be played, and embedded LCD screens flashed with images and quotes. There was no harm in letting her get acquainted with the floor – it was likely the floor she was going to end up serving, should she pass the tests.

Jones let them into the his lab, and immediately the girl ran across the room toward her laptop. She ran her hand across the lid and cooed at it, mumbling to it, then looked up, blushing. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I just like to know he’s safe.’ She stood awkwardly for a moment, her proximity to the laptop apparently making her question how safe she really was. Her hand curled around the edge of it, like a child’s hand would clutch a blanket.

He stepped forward. ‘Could you show us the data you were working with?’

She nodded and spun the laptop in his direction – he wasn’t a tech, so the code meant nothing. Jones, however, walked over to the laptop, and investigated a few sections of the code. ‘What were you attempting to do?’ the tech asked her.

‘Find the right castle.’

The tech nodded, as if understanding perfectly what she had said – it was another reason to place her in the tech department – he needed recruits that he could understand, not ones that-

She looked up at him and attempted a smile. ‘Do you want me to finish what I was doing? I’ve got to hit two more keys, then it’ll finish compiling. I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to compile into, it could be nothing, it could be the meaning of life, or a bowl of petunias.’

‘Go ahead.’ Even if something did happen, this was the best place in the Agency for it to happen. The room was completely sealed, and had more sensor equipment than even he could recall hidden away in the walls.

‘You’re still not going to shoot me?’

‘No, I’m not.’

She seemed to accept this, turned back to the computer and dramatically hit the two keys. The screen froze for a moment, then the data aligned itself into easily read lists and quadrants. He felt a pang of guilt as he watched her face fall. ‘Kinda expected something...Sorry. Sorry.’ She quietly slipped into Jones’ chair and stared at the data. ‘All that...All those...’

Jones, however, didn’t seem to share her disappointed feelings. He watched as the tech pulled the laptop close and began to attach several cables to it. Jones typed a few things, then the data appeared on one of the large screens on the wall. The data cycled for a bit, then froze up. After a moment, the data refreshed, when it did, the girl fell off the chair. He moved forward and pulled her to her feet.

He smiled as he watched her look at the screens - what had been simple text and sets of numbers had turned into rotating, fully three-dimensional data, information and pictures. This, evidently, was what she had been expecting.

She pressed a hand to her head. ‘Telemetry,’ she said as she absorbed the data, ‘he was right, it’s telemetry. He’s going to find her.’

‘Jones?’ he said. ‘It’s the mirrorfall?’

‘Yes. The world was Dajulveed. The mirror is falling here, in three days. With this radius, it’s good – shipping yards, no civilians.’

This only served to confuse the girl. ‘Mirror? Mirror falling?’

‘Never mind.’ he said – there was no use in explaining anything until she’d passed the tests. No point in explaining things that she would only be forced to forget.

Jones required another chair and sat, manipulating the data. The girl watched for a while, head resting on her arms folded on the desk. After a moment, she began to snore.

‘So you're going to bring them to me one by one, sir?’ Jones asked. ‘Wouldn't it have been-?’

‘There are no others,’ he said. ‘Solstice killed them all. I didn’t have a chance to… Innocents died because of this, tell me it’s of some use.’

Jones tapped on a few keys, and brought up his data on a separate screen. ‘It’s not telling us anything we didn’t know. It confirms some details, though I find it incongruous that a world whose parade of ghosts started with an airship had access to technology like this. It could have been a design renaissance, but all signs point to it being a relative-negative-three civilisation.’ He shook his head. ‘They died for nothing, sir. How did…’ The tech agent stopped himself and his expression grew serious. ‘All of the others were dead, sir?’

‘It’s possible a few escaped, or were taken, but the rest…All dead.’

‘Not to seem suspicious sir, but-’

‘The idea that she's a plant already crossed my mind,’ he said. ‘I’m not naïve. One survivor that seems to know just enough, is very convenient. I have my reasons to doubt it, but I won’t be letting my guard down.’ The girl made a strange “blorp” sound, then began to snore louder. ‘Either way, I’m not putting her in a cell. Would you please bug thirteen?’

‘Of course.’

He placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder to rouse her, she made another strange noise and shook her head without lifting it from the desk. Her shoulder stiffened under his hand and he felt her pulse increase. ‘Miss Mimosa.’

She shook his hand off and swivelled on the chair, hair over her face. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Tired. And you're a narc, fear is a natural reaction.’

He refrained from pointing out that she couldn't have possibly seen who was touching her shoulder. He scanned her - her pulse was returning to normal, but it was still much faster than it should have been – she’d been terrified. A natural reaction for a member of Solstice. A natural reaction for a hacker. ‘This is Agent Jones’ office,’ he said, ‘you can’t sleep here.’

‘I think I was already…’ she mumbled. She brushed her hair back from her face and stood. ‘Sorry. Just for reference, I’d prefer solitary.’

‘I’ll take that under consideration,’ he said, keeping his face neutral. ‘Come, there’s work that needs to be done here, without interruption. And it’ll be at least a little more comfortable than a table.’

‘Okies...’ She stood, and swayed for a moment before gaining her footing. She dutifully followed him out of the lab, and back through the tech department to the lift, then down and out onto the floor.

‘This looks like the floor we started on.’

‘It is.’

‘This is where the cells are?’

He stopped outside the room marked thirteen. ‘You haven’t done anything to earn me throwing you in a cell.’ It was the truth, and he hoped it would remain the truth. ‘It’s not a cell, the door, however, will be locked. There is no phone, no internet access and no window. You cannot break out through the door, nor the walls, there is no ventilation shaft and no drain. Do you understand?’

She began to say something, though apparently thought better of it, and gave him a solemn nod.

‘Should you pass the tests tomorrow, it will become your assigned room. Any questions?’

She looked around, then back at him. ‘Where’s room twelve?’

It was a keen observation. ‘It was dissolved due to an accident.’

‘What kind of accident?’

He went with the cover story, it generally stopped further questions. ‘Nuclear.’ He wasn’t surprised to see her eyes light up at that. ‘Anything else?’

‘Food? I assume you feed your not-prisoner-but-captive-since-I’m-in-your-custody-s?’

He assigned another point in the tech department’s favour. Relegating her to the tech division would be best – he doubted whether the impending tests would reveal any combat ability. That wasn’t a bad thing, they liked to place recruits where they would do the best work, and not put them in out of their depth where they could avoid it.

‘The room is fully stocked,’ he replied, then opened the door.

She stepped inside. ‘Night. Or early morning, whichever it is.’

He closed the door, and stood watching her heat signature for a moment – most recruits, or potential recruits, would immediately explore the room, finding all the secrets that the two-and-a-half rooms had to offer. In her case, he had half-expected her to fall asleep without reaching the bed. Instead, she stood, staring at the door – for a moment, he worried that she could see him, or somehow sense that he was watching her.

She lifted a hand and knocked, but he didn’t move, she gave a more frantic knock, and he pulled it open. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for not shooting me, and for believing me, and for...yanno, telling me what was going on. And...for whatever it was that you did when I was little, if it wasn’t kidnapping. If it was kidnapping, that thank you probably gets retracted.’

The girl in front of him was the furthest thing from a member of Solstice.

‘You’re welcome.’ He nodded to her and closed the door, saying his own silent thank yous. Gratitude for hiding from Solstice, gratitude for surviving the massacre. Gratitude for stopping him before he’d killed an innocent.

Gratitude for remembering him.

11 - Bedtime Stories

Chapter Eleven - Wherein Stef spends her first night at the Agency.

Stef stood staring at the door for a moment, wondering if the agent was watching her, wondering what he thought of her, wondering if the pleasant room was actually a gas chamber.

Bullets are cheaper than that, genius.

Was that supposed to make me feel better?

Actually yes, if you were going to die tonight, you’d be a corpse, so relax.

Sometimes, I really, really-

Hate me. I know, but you’d be dead without me, so say thank you and check out your new digs.

She experimentally jiggled the handle – it was locked, as expected. She turned and looked at the room – it was bigger than she’d expected, and a lot nicer than the cold cell she’d been expecting the spend the night in. Still, every object in the room held dangers.

The bed could be some sort of secret torture device, or one that subtly programmed people while they slept. The fridge could contain poisonous foods, or worse yet, fairy food that would trap her in this strange, new world.

Wait...is that a bad thing?

The ang- The agent hadn’t seemed like he was a frippy, fey kind of person that was going to be leaping around like the blasted crowing boy, but at the same time, he’d said it was all magic, so the possibility remained.

Poisoned contents or not, she crossed to the fridge and pulled it open. The subtle, new-white-goods smell hit her nose, and a question rose in her mind. She lifted her head and looked at the front of the fridge – it was suspiciously free of any branding, no company logo or name propped out at her. Inside, there wasn’t even a temperature dial.

He’d made water appear out of nowhere, and now it seemed that he’d made a fridge appear from nowhere. It was fully stocked – milk, juice, eggs, water, all the basics – and there were no signs that it had been sitting abandoned for a while, so either they’d been expecting someone else, or they’d prepared it in the short time she’d been there. Or she’d been asleep for far longer than she’d thought.

She pulled the water bottle out and took a drink before opening the freezer. Inside were a dozen frozen meals, each with neatly-labeled contents. She extracted a container of macaroni-and-cheese, and another of stir fry.

Holding the frozen containers close, she moved into the small kitchenette and gently placed them onto the counter. A likely-sinister kettle stared at her, and malevolent hot plates promised nothing but burny pain.

A seemingly-innocent microwave sat on the bench, and she cautiously placed both frozen meals into it, hoping that it didn’t leak radiation as soon as she turned it on. Three minutes later, it announced, with a soft ping, that her meals were done.

Sourcing a fork from the top drawer, she shoveled half of the macaroni into her mouth before even looking for a place to sit. She’d made an appearance at dinner-time at the mansion, but hadn’t stuck around, only showing her face long enough to hopefully keep them from being suspicious of her. She hadn’t eaten much, she hadn’t been hungry for food, only hungry for success, and she’d been close to completion.

Food in her stomach made her feel somewhat better. The wholesome taste of warm cheese abated worries that it was either poison or magic. If it was tasteless poison, then the associated death would likely be quick; and it wasn’t magic, M-word stories didn’t involve frozen dinners, and from-a-packet mac and cheese.

She slipped to the floor, back to the kitchen cupboard, fork hanging from her mouth and food balanced on her knees. She looked out at the room, the overriding colour scheme was obvious – blues and blacks, tempered by white and the occasional dash of silver. It was nice and mute, it was very corporate, it was very narc.

What’d you expect?

Not this.

She took another forkful of macaroni and wondered if she should sleep. Her body was somewhere between falling asleep on the spot, and wanting to climb the walls – too much adrenalin was apparently confusing, especially when it wasn’t used to any.

She moved the mouthful of cheese around and wondered if this was how she was going to live for the rest of her life. That’s what happened. First of all, the magic cat came, then gave you a locket, then you ran around in some little outfit that provided no armour whatsoever, announcing your attacks so that the enemy had plenty of time had to avoid them, still made it to school on time, got the guy and a memorable theme song. Yes. Exactly like that.

She finished the meals, then moved into the main area and stared down at the bed. She was fairly certain that it wasn’t going to open up and drop her through the building and into the secret torture basement where all the freaks lived, or subtly program her while she slept, but still, it bothered her.

And it was a double-bed, she hadn’t slept on one of those since leaving high school. It was impractical, there was too much wasted space. Nonetheless, she crawled up onto the bed, and rested against the pillows, the unexpectedly soft, feather pillows.

She fitfully tried to sleep – on top of the quilt, under it, on both sides of the bed, and at its foot. Nothing worked. She pulled the pillows and quilt over her, like a child building a fort, rested her head on her hands and stared over the end of the bed and into space.

‘All children, except one, grow up,’ she began to recite to herself. ‘They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, “Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!”’

The familiar words calmed her, the comforting story, the well-trodden path, all of it so wonderfully comforting in the face of her brave, new life.

‘This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up,’ she continued, plying the sheet between her fingers, drawing a rough map of Neverland in the ripples and bucks in the fabric. ‘You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.’

‘You must have been very young when you die-’

‘Shut up Dorian,’ she said to the memory.

‘Two was the beginning,’ she stumbled. Had to be that young, otherwise the memory would be clearer. Wendy. Garden. Get back on track. You’re doing my job.

She pulled out one of the pillows that was acting as a fort prop, and chewed on the corner. There was much about the children and their beloved crowing boy, but all of that was terribly boring.

‘He was Blackbeard's bo'sun,’ she said to the pillow with a grin, the clash of swords ringing out in her mind, the scent of sea spray hidden just out of reach of perception. ‘He is the worst of them all. He is the only man of whom Barbecue was afraid.’

Even hidden under the safety of the sheets, the thought of the agent bursting in through the door and blowing her head off terrified her. Even though he’d put her in a room with a five-thousand dollar bed, instead of in a cell. He’d taken away the gun...put he’d still put it there in the first place. A gun to her head. A trigger he was going to pull.

Her world spun, and she gripped the pillow.

‘In the midst of them,’ she forced out, taking refuge in a place she felt safe, ‘the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace.’

You’re not afraid of Jas. Hook. You’ve never been afraid of Jas. Hook. You’re the opposite of afraid, and by most accounts, he’s terrible and the villain of the piece. How can you, a pirate, be afraid of a man in a suit?

‘As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance.’

A gun, to her head. An intent to kill.

‘His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different cast from his crew.’

You were able to stand up to the Captain. You imagined all those adventures when you read the book. You declared war on Peter Pan. Spyder...when you were a kid, there wasn’t anything you couldn’t do. You’re so pathetic now. Maybe this is your second chance to be a child. You’re tired, scared and strung out on adrenalin, go to sleep and everything will be clearer in the morning.

‘A man of indomitable courage,’ she said with a yawn. ‘It was said that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.’

Her eyelids drooped. ‘Let us now kill a pirate-’

12 - The First Test

Chapter Twelve - Wherein Stef wakes late, and taken for testing without coffee.

Stef closed her eyes, the next line escaping her for a moment. There was a noise, and she opened her eyes, and for a moment, there was a pirate standing in front of her.

‘Cap-’ she went to say to the figure, but blinked, and some of the fuzziness disappeared from her vision. It wasn’t a pirate, it was the agent.

For a moment, she was back there, in the dark, terrified, with no way of escape. Frightened, and with no obvious means to attack, she pulled the quilt over her head, and hid. Logic took over after a minute, and she pulled her head out from under the sheet.

‘Well, that answers one question,’ he said as he crouched in front of her

Confusion took over and she sat up, wrapping the quilt around her. ‘And that question was?’ she asked.

‘A disorientated Solstice wouldn’t hide under a blanket to escape an agent.’

She ran her hands through her messy hair. ‘You thought I was...’ she began. ‘Even after they...’ She looked up at him, incredulous. ‘You really think I’d meet their standards?’

He smiled. ‘I certainly hope not.’

Higher brain functions pulled themselves from sleep and the clutches of pirates. ‘You’re here because it’s morning, aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘But I only closed my eyes a minute ago.’ Another thought popped into her head. ‘Shouldn’t you have knocked?’

‘I did,’ the agent said, ‘but you didn’t answer.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Given the circumstances, I didn’t see the harm. It’s nine, it might be noting for reference, however, that my recruits start morning training at seven.’

She crinkled her nose. ‘Seven anti-meridian isn’t a time of day I even like to acknowledge as existing.’

‘Jones has finishes analysing the data on your laptop,’ he said, ‘and we’d like a few things clarified.’

‘Sure.’ She ran a hand through her hair again, stood, and ignored the bed, rather than making a half-hearted attempt to make it and looked up at him. ‘Am I ok like this, or are you going to awesome new clothes onto me again?’

He clicked his fingers, and a moment later, her clothes were a great deal cleaner, and a lot less wrinkled. She was also wearing shoes again. ‘Are you ready?’

She nodded and followed him through the now unlocked door, and down the hall toward the lift. He pressed the button, and a few seconds later, the lift appeared. ‘Is this a magic lift? Last night and now, we only had to wait like five seconds for it, with all the buttons inside, there’s a low statistical probability that it was that close each time.’

He gave her a strange look. ‘That’s a very astute observation.’

She shrugged, and considered telling him the truth, then decided against it – there wasn’t any reason for him to know, and it might colour his opinion of her. ‘I notice things,’ she said dismissively, ‘it’s a thing.’

He grunted and punched the button for Jones’ floor. She quietly followed him out of the lift when it opened again, through the hallway, and into the lab. Once there, he left her alone with the tech, and she answered his questions to the best of her ability, though many of them didn’t make sense, and he was reluctant to explain new terminology.

Fifteen minutes later, there was a cough behind them.

‘We’re ready,’ Ryan said.

Her stomach dropped, extraordinarily-recent fears surfacing again. ‘...for what?’ she asked. ‘We’re beyond taking me behind them chemical sheds, right?’

He looked confused, so she turned to Jones. ‘Our chemical stores are just down the hall-’

‘Not making me feel better,’ she said through clenched teeth.

‘-but,’ the tech said with a smile, ‘we don’t execute people there.’

‘Ready for the recruitment tests,’ Ryan clarified.

Pushing aside thoughts of being dragged behind chemical sheds, she stood, patted Frankie one more time, and followed Ryan from the lab like the dutiful pet she was turning out to be.

‘I didn’t get any time to prepare,’ she said reproachfully to the back of his jacket.

‘That’s the idea,’ he said without turning.

You sure you aren’t- ‘-the bad guys?’

‘What of the Solstice?’

‘Nothing,’ she said quickly, ‘just trying to work stuff out.’

They got back into the seemingly magical lift, went down a few floors, out onto another anonymous floor, and into one of the small, numbered rooms. It was small, functional, only containing a few hard, plastic chairs, a table and a plasma screen.

There was the sound of voices and she turned to look at the other side of the room – along with the plain furniture, there was a young man with a buzz cut, and a mountain.

She stared at the mountain for a moment, before realising that it was a volcano – one that looked like it was going to erupt. The volcano rumbled, it was a deep, rocky sound – one that would have made the residents of Pompeii wish they been thrown in jail. She was pretty sure it was shaking, the red on top obviously burninating fire that would-

Ryan addressed the volcano. ‘Taylor, are we ready to start?’

The volcano – the agent with red hair – grunted, his gaze drilling into her. Volcano or not, an ancient Roman jail seemed a much safer place to be. He took a step forward, and her heart skipped a beat, every bit of her imaginary Spyder-sense screaming at her to run.

He took another step forward-

-and she ran. She turned and ran from the room, down the hall, past the empty room and to the magic lift. The few seconds it took seemed to be an eternity, and she panicked as she heard footsteps behind her, the doors sliding close before a disappointed-looking Ryan could join her in the lift.

She punched the button for the ground floor – it seemed like the safest choice – and slumped against the back wall, begging her pulse to calm down. She stared at her warped reflection in the metal – there was only so much she could take, and she’d reached her limit. Monsters, were fine – especially when encountered while needing sleep. Maybe-not-fictional characters were fine – Dorian only seemed to be an enemy of decency. Tests without warning or preparation, no. Scary-looking narcs that could pass for violent pieces of scenery, no.

The doors slid open, and she ran through the empty lobby, out the revolving door, and onto the street. She stumbled in the bright sunlight, thankful that at least she recognised the street.

She mingled with the morning crowd, knowing that it was pointless – the her outfit made her easy enough to spot if they wanted to come after her – and headed for the closest bus stop. The seat was occupied by two fashionistas, so she slumped against the wall, staying out of the flow of human traffic.

The bus pulled up, and she realised that she wasn’t carrying any money. She stayed against the wall, watching the bus doors slid open and closed again, before it pulled away.

Ryan appeared in the empty place the bus had left.

‘Miss Mimosa?’

She blinked, and looked up at the agent. ‘Yeah, I’m ready too.’ She looked back to the door, knowing that until she signed a blood contract that she could run at any time. Until then, there was no harm in- You’re just too lazy to run to Adelaide Street, aren’t you? No...

The volcano – Taylor – opened the door at the back of the small room, and they all followed him through. The room was significantly larger than the one they’d left. There was no plastic furniture in the room, or plasma screens, there were however, two thirty-foot brick walls.

Two freestanding brick walls.

They had no visible means of support, utterly contradicting several laws of the universe. No. I’m not saying the M word. Have to have to get used to it. I’m not going to live my life saying… ‘…that a bloody wizard did it.’ The three men all turned to look at her. She imagined smoke coming from Taylor’s ears. She shrugged. ‘Sorry. Thinking out loud.’

Taylor walked forward and stood between the two walls. ‘First test. Objective: get to the other side of the wall. There is equipment over there.’ A thick finger was stabbed towards the side of the room.

She walked toward the rack of gear, the buzz cut pushing past her as to get first choice. ‘So, you’re like the joke I’m being tested against?’ he said as he picked through the equipment. She examined a set of suction cups, and dismissed them – they were for climbing glass and smooth metal, not brick and mortar.

Witty responses failed to form, and she just shrugged.

‘Secretary?’ was his second guess. ‘They couldn’t get anyone else?’ He snatched the grappling hook from her hand. ‘I used this in basic, I know what I’m doing with it.’

‘If these tests are based on individual merits, why would they need to test you against someone?’ she asked as she turned away from the gear. All of it was useless to her, there was only one obvious way over the wall.

She ran at the wall and launched herself at it when she was ten feet away, and flew into the air as if it were liquid. The red brick and white mortar blurred as she flew past it. When she came to the top, she spun, her legs reaching over her head as she did a tenuous handstand. It felt amazing. Flipping forward, she fell to the ground and landed in a crouch. Applause came out of nowhere and she was proclaimed ruler of the universe.

She grinned at the thought, as the buzz cut grabbed his gear and walked back toward the agents. She decided against taking anything – there really only was one way over the wall for her, and it didn’t require any gear.

Crossing back across the room, she found the buzz cut already halfway up his wall, in a harness-and-pulley system. The top of the wall gave him some trouble, but he slid down the far side of the wall, then appeared, and saluted. This earned a nod from Taylor, so she stepped up to her wall.

With no gear in her hands, she approached the wall. She stared up to the top, and the heady images from a moment ago swam through her mind.

She took a deep breath, then walked around the wall.

13 - Laughter in the Dark

Chapter Thirteen - Wherein Stef is pitted against a monster on its home turf.

Stef looked back at the brick wall, sure of three things. First, she was sure that the sound of flesh against flesh was her buzz-cut opponent slapping himself in the head. Second, she wasn't the ruler of the universe. Not yet. Third, the volcano-slash-agent was likely strong enough to push the wall down on her head, and leave her as some sort of meaty hacker pancake.

Knowing that she couldn't stay behind the wall forever, she placed one hand on the cool brick for strength, then walked out, trying to keep her expression as neutral as possible. Ryan's face was unreadable - though amused, if she had to guess. Her opponent had his head hung, her method of approaching the test seemingly having caused his brain to reset.

She turned to Taylor. Pompeii was about to blow. Say something. ‘Was that satisfactory?' He gave her no reply. ‘You never said to go over, just to get to the other side. Was it a misunderstand, sir, or was it open to interpretation?'

Taylor tensed, and as he did, he seemed to get bigger. He turned and stalked from the room without a word. Confused, and desperately hoping that he wasn't going to get a gun, she turned back to Ryan. ‘Was that...a pass or not?'

‘A pass,' Ryan confirmed as he walked over to her. ‘Though,' he said, dropping his voice, ‘my suggestion would be to give Agent Taylor a wide berth from now on.'

‘I just asked for clarification.'

‘You acted outside of expected parameters.'

She signed. ‘Um, if you haven't...'

‘Trust me, Miss Mimosa, I have noticed. Outside parameters for you seems to be normal.'

She smirked. ‘I think there was a compliment somewhere in there.'

He looked up, so that he could address the buzz-cut as well. ‘The next test is through those doors,' he said, pointing to the far end of the room.

‘Please tell me you're not locking me and the ADFA dropout in a room with knives and we have to fight for the honour of being accepted?'

He gave her another strange look, as if he couldn't quite believe...well, her. She wondered if it was too late to toss a "sir" onto the end of her last sentence when he spoke again.

‘Jones is administering the next test.'

This brought a smile to her face, and she was less worried that the volcano known as Taylor was going to be waiting behind the door with some sort of large hacker-killing assault rifle. She grinned at the agent, then skipped past the buzz-cut into the next room.

The next room was much smaller, only containing three desks. Two contained desks and the third was empty. Jones stood, leaning against the desk at the front of the room, and motioned to the desks. She chose the one on the left, and a quick swish of the mouse killed the screen saver and brought it back to life.

It was a custom OS, and this only surprised her a little. The theme kept the colours of the rest of the Agency - black and blue, and a brief thought had her wondering if whoever devised the colour scheme was an abused spouse crying out for help. She dismissed the thought, and fought the urge to click on icons, instead looking at the agent for instruction.

‘In front of you,' the tech agent said, ‘is a simulated system for you to breach. You have thirty minutes to get as far as you can.'

The buzz cut raised a hand. ‘This isn't what I signed up for.'

Jones stared back. ‘All potential recruits are tested on all facets. It helps us decide where to place them.'

‘Well, I guess this is what you're for,' the buzz cut said to her.

She glared back and clicked into the test. Twenty minutes later, she'd cracked the entire system open, and was rewarded with a large image of a smiley face. Rewards such as those made life worth living.

She looked over at Jones, who was reading from two blue folders. Likely their profiles. After a moment, he looked up and met her gaze. ‘Finished?'

‘Of course.' She shot a withering look at the buzz cut. ‘And by the number of pop-ups I've been hearing from over there, I'm assuming he's using the internet for what Avenue Q says it's for.'

‘Am not,' the buzz cut said quickly.

‘Do you even have any idea what I said?'

‘...no.'

Jones indicated to a door. ‘You may both proceed.'

The next room was amazing - the first few feet was simply the same white-gray floor as the previous rooms had been, but a few metres in, it blended into concrete and broken tiles. The outside of a warehouse was visible, and above, there was a night sky.

Ryan stood at the point where the gray floor began to segue into concrete. She smiled as she saw him, and the expression froze there after she noticed the guns in his hands.

You. Calm down. Now.

He's got guns again.

Is either pointed at you?

‘The building,' Ryan said, apparently not noticing what had to have been a manic smile plastered onto her face, ‘is split into two halves. There is a door on the left and a door on the right - in each half there is a creature. I expect you to consider the situation, and take appropriate action.'

The buzz-cut took his gun with a curt nod, and headed off to the door on the right-hand side of the warehouse. The agent turned to her and handed her the gun, pushing it into her loose grip. He smiled to her, and pointed to the warehouse.

She exhaled a long breath, then made her way across to the warehouse. The door wasn't locked, and swung open easily when she pushed on it. She wished she had a holster, but one didn't appear, so she tucked it awkwardly into her waistband. This was yet another thing they made look easier on television. Television was evil.

The building was lit well, though all of the pipes and large metal containers reduced the effective visibility. Having seen the beast, it worried her a little as to what other things existed, and which one of them was hiding in the dark, waiting for her. Ghosts, werebunnies, mermaids, vampires. She hoped there weren't vampires - simply so she didn't have to make it a personal vendetta to exterminate every single velvet-wearing emo one of them.

A laughter rang through the room - it wasn't a particularly evil laugh, but at the same time, it was vaguely unnerving. Not human. The voice behind it was too melodic, too modulated. That erased the possibility that they were using existing recruits in sheets to jump out and say "boo".

Gunshots broke through the relative silence of the building. The lack of a bloody hole in her posterior told her that it was buzz cut. Something screeched overhead and she spun. A dark, fuzzy shape ran across some pipes and jumped down behind a metal shipping crate. She heard a shout from across the divide, and more firing, but she fought the urge to reach for her own weapon.

Assess the situation meant have all the knowledge before making a move.

It didn't mean shoot first and ask questions later. There might be girlish screaming and a mad fumble for a gun, but that didn't...Her mind went blank as she saw dark, glittering eyes staring at her from a pool of shadow. The shape laughed again. Up close, the laughter was unsettling - it was the exact kind of laughter you didn't want to hear coming from a dark alley at night.

No badge. No back up. No frame of reference.

A lack of data always managed to piss her off.

‘My name is Spyder. I...'

It lunged at her.

She didn't scream, that was something was sure about. Screaming did nothing except give an attacker satisfaction. The fuzzy shape with the glittering eyes knocked her to the ground, and she had the uncomfortable pleasure of looking up on it with her gun digging into her back.

The safety's on, right? Right?

If anyone could shoot themselves in the back, it'd be you. That...unique mix of talent and utter stupidity.

She focused on the creature. It was male. His hair was looked like a muppet reject. It was a creature of dirty white and black. The black leather it wore was sprinkled with small pieces of glass - sewn in as decoration, rather than the evidence of a defenestration. Its face was wrinkled, like a apple left in the sun.

‘I'm...' she began, after she wheezed a breath back in.

It took a swipe at her, it's long fingernails cutting into her shirt, though not deep enough to draw blood. ‘Intruding. Brooding. Confusing. This is my home, you're not a gnome. Did you have a key. Do you know me?' It's voice was wild, untempered, raising and falling like the roar of a crowd.

‘Didn't need a key. Had permission.'

‘You're not nice, have to pay the price. Have to pay the penalty, you shall see...'

‘Is it your intention to rhyme?' she asked as she attempted to sit up.

A small fist punched her in the face and she was knocked back down. ‘Intruding, brooding girl. Bad!'

You forgot mad.

It jumped onto her middle, and this time, she screamed in pain, sharp shoes scraped her stomach and only dug in further when she tried to move away. It was smaller than a human man - a rough guessed placed it at about two-thirds of a textbook son of Adam - and much lighter than his size betrayed, but it was still an uncomfortable experience.

She tried to push him off, but long fingernails flicked at her wrists. ‘Should make you a statue, like that, will you? Put you in a cave, be your grave? Always watching, never moving, what you get for intruding.'

‘Unless,' she said through gritted teeth, ‘you have some biological imperative that will explode your head unless you do, quit with the rhymes!'

He ran his hand up her face. ‘Moody prudey. Toasty roasty.'

Assess the fscking situation.

I wanna shoot the annoying thing...

That's what the push-up-drunk guy did.

I have no desire to be a hacker kebab.

‘What are you?' she wheezed.

‘Bob, Bob, Bob, not a Bob, hob.' He looked down at her and licked his lips. She slowly slid her hand to her side, wondering if she could get the gun before it struck.

If it strikes.

I thought you hard-erased the optimism from you brain.

...so did I.

‘Hob. Like a brownie? Household spirit?'

‘Kitties and tigers, broody prudey.' It jumped off her laughed again. ‘Kitties and tigers, guess which I am?'

Assess the situation.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘Always here. Always in the city. Like it here. Belong here.'

At least it didn't rhyme this time.

...did you just...?

Shut. Up.

‘This is your home?'

His dark eyes showed no emotion - at least none that she could recognise - as he stared down at her. ‘And my meal.'

Aren't I supposed to have some sort of chocolate to offer? Isn't that how it's supposed to go?

You haven't been attention to your own diet, you are made of chocolate and you bleed coffee, you're a walking, talking mocha.

I hate it when you're right.

‘This is so messed up.' She looked up at the hob and giggled. ‘You're completely ridiculous.'

The hob snarled.

‘What do you eat when you can't get hacker?'

‘Garbage.'

She snorted. ‘That explains the smell.'

‘Moody prudey...'

‘Moody prudey was doing what she was told to do. Have you attacked any civilians?' The hob shuffled, then shook its head. ‘Actively working for anyone...evil?' Another shuffle and head shake. ‘Affiliated with the Solst-ass?' The anger on its face gave her the answer for that one.

She slowly stood. ‘I deem you not a threat.'

The hob gave another high-pitched laugh. ‘Moody prudey thinks that makes all the difference?'

She looked around. ‘Yes.'

The gun was on the floor - and she wasn't so sure in her conviction to turn her back whilst unarmed. She kept eye contact, knelt, picked it up and backed away from the hob. It stayed there, watching her, then retreated into shadow itself.

She released the breath she'd been holding for half a minute, then ran from the building.

14 - Table Talk

Chapter Fourteen - Wherein a snap decision is made, for better or worse.

Stef slammed the door to the warehouse shut, just to make sure that the hob wasn’t chasing her with the intention of turning her into hacker kebabs. She was fairly sure that he wasn’t, but there was nothing wrong with having a barrier between them.

She leaned back against the door, hoping that it wasn’t going to burst into a thousand pieces, took a deep breath – as she couldn’t remember breathing, and walked over to where Ryan was waiting.

The buzz-cut was crouched beside the agent, pressing a very blood handkerchief to his face. She marveled at his condition in comparison to hers – she had a ripped shirt, and some minor scratches from where the hob’s sharp shoes had landed on her, but other than that she was fine. Her opponent, however, had scratches up and down his arm, sweat and dirt hung on him in a filthy film, and he looked exhausted – and angry. ‘What’d you do?’ he demanded as he rose up from the floor, ‘hide the entire time?’

She blinked slowly, then looked to Ryan. ‘I assessed the situation.’

‘And your assessment?’ the agent asked.

‘It, the hob,’ she said, quickly correcting herself, ‘was only dangerous because it was provoked. It hadn’t harmed civilians, and if it was open about its intention to eat me, then I don’t think it would bother to lie about past crimes.’

Ryan’s expression remained expectant, and she scrambled for more coherent sentences.

‘With no further information, I extrapolated that I was to judge the situation independently. It didn’t warrant the use of my…the gun.’

‘I don’t know what you had on your side, geek, but I was dealing with some viscous little bastard who wanted to disembowel me.’

She turned to glare at him. ‘What was it?’

‘Huh?’

‘Eloquent. What was it? What kind of creature attacked you?’

‘Some crappily dressed furry little bastard.’

‘What did it identify itself as?’

‘Didn’t. It attacked me.’

‘Were you brandishing your detachable penis?’

‘Miss Mimosa…’

‘Shoot first and ask questions later doesn’t really work, you know. You went into its home, carrying a weapon, what would you do if someone walked into your house holding a club full of nails?’

‘I would-’

‘Exactly.’

‘Three drinks and a pair of shorts on the angry femme,’ a voice said. There was a coughed response to this.

She turned to look, hearing the sound of a safety click off as she did. The hob she’d encountered, and one that looked similar enough to be his twin, albeit one sporting several bullet wounds, walked toward them.

Ryan turned to the buzz cut and the gun in his hand disappeared. The agent nodded to the hobs, who smiled in return, then faded away.

‘I…killed it.’

‘Mister Stern, killing a fae generally takes more than a few simple gunshots. A fact you should be glad of.’

‘It attacked me,’ he said again, but the arrogance had disappeared from his voice.

‘If you had taken his life, or even attempted to do so, in an uncontrolled environment, you would likely be buried alive under concrete.’

She couldn’t help the smirk on her face. Still, cat-killing curiosity coursed through her. ‘Folklore is wrong?’

‘Sometimes,’ Ryan replied. ‘In the case of the hobs, however, it is simply incomplete.’

‘So who passed?’ the buzz cut – and he was going to remain nothing but a bad hair cut to her, wastes of carbon didn’t deserve a name – asked as he pocketed the handkerchief.

‘The differences in how you handled it will be taken into account.’ He looked to the ceiling. ‘Agent Taylor will be here shortly to supervise the final test.’ He indicated to the side. ‘There is refreshment
over there.’ With that, he faded from view.

She trailed behind the bleeding buzz cut as he made a beeline for the table and the water bottles. Part of her was acutely aware of the fact that she was armed, and he wasn’t, though even that didn’t improve her mood.

He tore the cap off one of the bottles and doused his head. ‘I don’t know what pussy half-assed effort you put in, but I showed I was willing to get my hands dirty.’

‘Let me get the world’s smallest audience for you. You managed to “kill” a creature that in actuality, had done nothing wrong. I don’t think “murder the innocent” is exactly emblazoned across the lobby floor...’

‘I didn’t know that. And had no reason to talk to it, or believe it if had said anything.’

‘Wow, you must be a really repressed self-hating furfag if you wouldn’t listen to-’ She looked around. ‘Milk’s good for the little ones, what do you think the bigger ones like?’

‘What do I care?’ He brandished the blood-soaked handkerchief in her direction. ‘Look what it did to me!’

She kneaded her fist against her forehead, then looked up at him again. ‘You, you were the aggressor? Understand? Some people keep steak knives in the house to stab burglars with, it’s got built-ins, there’s no difference.’

‘Of course there is, it isn’t human!’

‘...so?’

‘If it’s not human, there are different rules.’

‘Same ground rules apply, you don’t shoot someone without talking to them!’ Unless you’re a sniper. Yeah, that.

‘There are things that are natural and things that aren’t. Little furry-arsed bastards with claws aren’t.’

She put her bottle of water down. ‘And you get to decide what belongs and what doesn’t?’

‘I made the choice to save my human life. I made the choice to fight. I made the right choice. ’

‘How about someone with the frame of reference to make the right choice? That’s obviously not you.’

‘Why the hell are you being defending them?’

She fixed a cold stare on him. ‘Because humanists piss me off.’

‘Someone has to look out for our interests.’

‘If you could, would you kill that hob, just in case it attacked you again? Or if one you saw scavenging in a dumpster?’

‘What doesn’t belong, doesn’t belong.’

Suddenly, her gun felt very heavy, and not just because it was making her waistband sag. She took a sip of water, then carefully set the bottle back down. ‘So that’s a yes?’

‘Sure.’

In one awkward movement, she lifted her gun and fired.

The buzz cut looked down at the wound in his chest, gurgled some blood and dropped to the ground. He twitched for a moment, then went still.

‘Crap,’ she said, ‘probably should’ve kneecapped him.’

She waited a moment, then slowly put her gun on the table. There was no point in running, they were too fast, and they could teleport. There was no point in claiming self-defense – it hadn’t been. There was nothing to do except wait.

Hearing no screams or demands that she get on the floor with her hands visible, she picked up the bottle of water and took another drink – there was no point in dying thirsty.

She experimentally nudged the body with her foot, just in case he was somehow alive. He wasn’t, and she didn’t particularly care.

You know, it’s probably a good thing you declared yourself insane. Normal people don’t think like this.

Normal people don’t find themselves in this situation.

The door clicked open.

Time to pay the reaper, hero.

She could see that it was Ryan from the corner of her eye, but she didn’t turn to look at him. The lack of emotion, rather, the lack of remorse, would probably work against her. Though, at least she wasn’t prancing around in a ballerina outfit soliloquising about the Rorschach-esque shapes that the blood splatter had made.

‘What happened here?’ his voice was a monotone. She heard the swish of his long jacket as he crouched – presumably checking the corpse’s pulse.

She wondered what the point was of checking for a pulse when there was a bloody hole in his chest, and a complete lack of movement. Surely those two indicators were enough to pronounce a person as dead.

She swallowed. ‘Look, yeah, mistake, ok? Automatic failure? Just don’t neuralise me ok?’

His voice remained a monotone. ‘Why?’

‘I should have kneecapped him. I panicked, no I didn’t, that’s a damn lie, it felt like the right thing to do, and now you think I’m insane cause I said that, and guess what, I am.’

He put his hand on her shoulder only long enough to spin her to face him. ‘Why did you kill him, Miss Mimosa?’

All the fear slipped away. All of the trepidation. All of the second-guessing. She looked him and gave him a nod. ‘He was thinking like a member of the Solstice.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

He looked down to the body. ‘You tell me.’

‘Yes,’ she said after a long moment.

He didn’t reply, he just stared at the body and the large pool of blood around it. ‘Good.’ The body faded away, and he turned to her.

‘A test?’ she asked, ‘or is that simpler than a body bag?’

‘Of course it was a test, as everything in life is.’

It should have alleviated guilt - problem was, she wasn’t feeling any. On the other hand, that probably wasn’t such a big problem. ‘What now?’

He extended a hand. ‘Welcome to the Agency.’

15 - The Last Suit

Chapter Fifteen - Wherein the hacker gets a uniform.

‘Would you shoot me if I squeed?’ Stef asked, resisting the urge to bounce off all the walls. This was much better than the time she’d hacked…this was better than any hack.

Wow…is that actual happy? You should bottle it and sell it on eBay.

Don’t ruin this for me!

You’re the one who just calculated the shipping cost for empty bottles.

Your logic will never defeat me, now back to-

-the thing where you pretend to pay attention.

There was a cough, and she focussed on the agent. Ryan was giving her that look again. ‘The bathroom is…’

‘Squeed,’ she clarified, ‘not…oh, never mind, the moment’s gone, what now?’

‘I’ll issue a uniform, then to Jones.’

To Jones, of course, professional geek time, this is- ‘-like the cool version of what happens to hackers – I think this is better than Silicon Valley.’

He stared at her for a moment. ‘Recruit Mimosa, did that sentence begin your head?’

Magic power: earth swallowing me whole, go!

…you’re not magic, genius.

The burning sensation in her cheeks told her she was blushing. ‘Yes.’

He gave a slow nod, then turned. They walked back through all of the rooms and she reached for the door leading to the hallway. Ryan coughed, and she pivoted – he was standing in front a door that hadn’t previously existed.

‘Does that happen a lot around here?’

He seemed to consider this for a moment, then gave a smile as an answer. The light inside the room was already one – though she was beginning to suspect that the Agency was a giant fridge. Which made her like some giant piece of sentient mold wandering around hungering for- …wait, what? Like a giant fridge, in that the lights automatically came on when a person entered a room.

The room was huge and cluttered – rows and rows of uniforms were surrounded by shelves of weapons, phones, cables, a small nuclear device, scanners, computers and hats. It was almost like an army disposal store – it had the same musty smell, even though everything was clean, and there was no dust to be seen.

Also, for some bizarre reason, a small container of what seemed like promotional badges. They all contained phrases that were counter to the Solstice beliefs – or what Dorian had led her to believe were their beliefs. She picked the container up and experimentally shook it. ‘Agent Clarke’s idea,’ he explained. ‘It wasn’t something that really took off.’

She stole a pin, then moved to the next shelf. A row of gleaming white lab coats shone at her from the corner of her eye and she moved to those. It was the rule of the caffeine-fueled lifestyle – whatever was shiniest was what took priority.

The material was supple, though she was sure it wasn’t going to stay white for long. ‘So, do I just pick one out, or what?’

‘No, but this one should fit.’

She let go of the sleeve, and turned, silently hoping that was going to be roomy enough, that it wasn’t going to be…She promptly turned away, then back, slower this time, just to be sure that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Her level of confusion was a notch above what it would have been had he been holding purple ice cream and gibbering about kittens.

In his hands was a suit.

A suit, identical to the one he was wearing. Black pants, white shirt, blue vest, blue tie, big black jacket.

Not the uniform of the tech department.

For the first time since her landlord had left a “Santa” present outside her front door on her first Christmas alone, she felt like hugging someone. It was a strange feeling, and she wasn’t sure she remembered where the arms went, so she settled for a smirk.

‘Just so you know,’ she said as she accepted the suit. ‘I make a problematic pet.’

He took the suit from her after a moment and hung it on the hook outside of a changing stall. ‘Weapon.’

‘I, um, left it in the other room. Didn’t want to be holding a gun after just killing a guy, just in case you shot me in self-defense.’

‘That’s-’

‘Over-thinking the situation. Yeah. I know. Want me to go get it?’

He shook his head and beckoned her over to the weapon rack. ‘How was the weight?’

‘Oh, come on, you’re not going to give me a girly gun are you? Don’t tell me-’ she looked at the shelf. ‘Well, at least there aren’t any pink ones.’

‘It’s useless to have a weapon that you aren’t comfortable with.’ He ran his hand along the rack and picked up a gun much larger than the one she’d just used to kill a man. ‘This one, for example,’ he said as he tossed it at her – she caught it with both hands, the weight making her stumble. ‘Is often the first weapon requested.’

‘Oof. I think Lara Croft uses one of these...’ she said as she lifted it with both hands.

‘They like the look,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Or wish to use it for a similarly stupid reason. It’s not a status symbol, it’s not for style, it’s a tool, nothing more.’

‘I think,’ she said as she handed it back, ‘I’d break my damn nose if I tried to use that thing.’

‘You probably would. Would you like the same weapon you just used?’

‘Yeah, girly gun me...’

He flipped open his jacket and removed his gun from his holster.

‘Is that...’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Though I’ve never found anything particulary feminine about it.’

‘Great, first hour on the job and I insult my boss.’

He handed her the gun. ‘Here, take this one. This type is now assigned to you, so whenever you require a gun, this is what you’ll get. Should your preference change, you’ll need to inform me.’

‘So, start with the girly gun and work my way up to the rocket launcher?’

‘Recruit, I actually fear what you’d do with a rocket launcher.’

‘Just...blow some stuff up?’ he gave her a deadpan look. ‘So what, a license to kill, but not a license to blow stuff up?’

‘No, Recruit,’ he said slowly, ‘we generally try to avoid unnecessary property destruction.’ He motioned to the changing room, and she went in, locking the door behind her.

She stared at herself in the mirror – the changing room was large and well lit, and bizarrely normal in comparison to everything that had happened so far. It was just a change room, like they had at…well, she assumed they had at most stores.

Her method of buying clothes was to choose something in the approximately right size and shape and take it to the counter. Clothes were a necessity, nothing more. Her logic was that the less she spent on them, the more she could spent on accessories for her computers.

The suit fit her well, and that was surprising, considering he’d – at least apparently – just grabbed it off the rack. It was comfortable, and surprisingly cool – in terms of temperature anyway. It would take her a little while to get over the “oh crap, narcs!” part of her personality before she fell in love with the uniform.

There was a cough, and then she felt something against her foot. She looked down to see that he had pushed a pair of anonymous black shoes under the door. She looked down at the sneakers on her feet and decided to keep those instead.

She slipped the tie around her neck, and for the only time ever, she was glad of her stay in hell. Five straight years of knotting a tie to go with the ugly uniform was finally coming in handy.

The door was still locked, and Ryan couldn’t see through it. She hoped he couldn’t see through it. He could probably see through it. Crap. ‘Are you peeking?’

‘Recruit…’ was the tired answer.

‘I’ll take that as a “no”,’ she muttered, and lifted her gun.

She struck a pose, then giggled. She struck another and made an attempt to look tough – she was fairly certain it failed miserably. ‘I think I’m going to like this way too much,’ she said as she holstered the gun.

She left her old clothes, and the black leather shoes, in a messy pile on the floor. She assumed some sort of laundry gnome would deal with it. Or not.

Ryan looked her up and down, and his gaze stuck on her shoes. ‘Re-’ he began, but she cut him off.

‘You pulled a hacker off the street and brought her to the heart of narc-dom and the only resistance she has shown is her choice in footwear, is this going to be a problem?’

‘I was simply going to ask – I required those shoes less than an hour ago, how did they get dirty?’

She shrugged. ‘My shoes do that. I think it’s my superpower.’

‘No Recruit, I believe that…’ He coughed. ‘You have to see Jones now.’

‘I thought I was your new pet?’

‘All recruits are given the ability to require, we find it comes in handy.’ He reached over, touched her shoulder and the world blurred.

She slumped a little when the world became solid again. ‘So not used to that,’ she mumbled, then looked up at Jones’ laboratory. It dawned on her that there was something different about Jones’ lab this time. The screens were the same, all the desks were in the same place. The colour of the paint hadn’t spontaneously changed to hot pink. Yet…there was something different. It may have been the three-foot tall crystal on his desk.

May have been.

She felt her eyes bug out, and her face refused to reset itself no matter what she tried.

‘Do I…actually have to ask the obvious?’ she said as she stared at it, unwilling to approach it until she knew what it was.

‘Sit please,’ Jones said, gesturing to a chair that hadn’t been there a moment before.

‘You didn’t answer the question I didn’t ask.’

Jones still didn’t answer her, and instead began to type. The crystal began to hum and glow like a cheap special effect. A beam of warm light shot out and lit up her forehead. An image of her appeared on Jones’ screen.

‘A super-advanced web-cam,’ she said dryly.

‘Not quite,’ Jones replied.

The beam got hot, then clicked off. ‘That’s it?’ Jones nodded and she wiggled her fingers. ‘So how exactly does it work?’

It was Ryan who answered. ‘Simply think “require”, then the object you need.’

Her mind went blank. She’d been given the powers of a genie, and she had no idea what to wish for. A pony. A car. A zeppelin with machine gun turrets. A cookie.

Require…

You’re going…

You’re going to shut up. Require: cookie.

A chocolate chip cookie appeared in her hand.

She stared at it in confusion. The fact that she’d pulled it from thin air was fine, the fact that it was chocolate chip was not. How did…‘…it know to be chocolate chip?’ She sniffed it experimentally. ‘I just thought about a cookie, I didn’t…’

‘Is it what you imagined?’ Ryan asked.

‘Yes. Exactly. Oh…’ He gave her a nod. ‘It’s like…ok, I can deal with that. It’s the command of non-specific request dealing with a brain macro. Ok, I can deal.’ She looked up at Jones. ‘What are the limitations?’

‘You cannot require someone dead, nor the inverse. You cannot heal using it. You cannot require a person into being, and that limitation does extend to animals. You cannot manipulate a person beyond placing clothing on them. If you misuse it, it will be taken away.’

‘So I shouldn’t run through the city and make all of the emos wear pink and fluffy bunnies.’

‘As well as a misuse, that would be a security breach, and subject to punishment.’

‘I haven’t used the internet in almost twelve hours, I am being punished.’

Ryan’s expression was unreadable, and it made her squirm. ‘Sorry sir, not complaining sir.’

His expression remained unreadable. ‘Would you like to meet the other recruits?’

She stared at the cookie, then looked up. ‘No.’

16 - Of Zeppelins and Chaos

Chapter Sixteen - Wherein Stef meets the other recruits, and the parade of ghosts is witnessed.

Stef stared at her newly narc-ed self in the bathroom mirror, and made rough calculations as to how long she could hide in a bathroom without someone inquiring as to her medical condition. It’d been fifteen minutes already, she wasn’t sure that Ryan was enough of a gentleman to keep out of the ladies’ room.

For the thirty-eighth time she looked to the window, and sadly wasn’t able to convince herself that plummeting six stories and having to deal with grievous bodily harm was better than interacting with humans.

The hackers had been different – they’d been operating at least near her wavelength, and many had communicated at least in part through instant messaging. She didn’t expect that the recruits she was about to meet would be in that same wavelength ballpark.

She pouted and required another cookie – the bathroom was sparkly and clean enough to make her feel safe eating in there. She grinned and chomped off the of the star-shaped cookie’s points – there were definite upsides to being a genie and having near-phenomenal cosmic powers. She wasn’t sure, however, that being a genie trumped having to interact with humans.

I don’t wanna-

Come on Spyder, you knew this part was coming.

What part?

The part where they rip out your brain, dye your hair blonde and turn you into a useful member of society.

I really would jump if they try and do that.

Be a team-player and all that…

Might not be like that.

You gonna chance that?

She stared at her cookie, then placed it on the sink. Yeah, why not?

She walked toward the door – wondering if her expression mimicked that of someone walking to the gallows. She swung the door and found Ryan leaning against the wall, contentedly waiting for her. She opened her mouth to claim bodily dysfunction, but he interrupted her.

‘Recruit,’ he said, ‘I have read your file, I am quite aware you are not used to social situations. However…’

She felt a real smile tug at her lips. ‘If I promise I won’t maim them with knives, will you promise that I can run away if I want?’

‘You still have to retrieve your computer from Jones if you need a valid reason to leave.’

‘Willingness to conspire is an excellent quality in a boss.’ She turned from him and walked down the hall toward her doom. He cleared his throat, she spun on her heel, and saw him pointing the other direction. ‘Of course it’s down there,’ she said, ‘I think reality was crying out for a cliché.’

The mess hall was messy. Eight other recruits in varying amounts of uniform sat around a large table. Two girls, six boys, all of which looked up when they entered the room. The male to female ratio didn’t surprise her, but it did disappoint her a little. First day of school jitters rose. Say something! You say something! Ryan said something.

‘This is Recruit Mimosa, scored high in both field dynamics and technical aptitude.’

You’re incognito, they don’t recognise that you’re a freak, use it! ‘Hi,’ she said with a slight wave. She didn’t want to like them, but she did want to avoid being burned at the stake during her first week. She was sure that by her second week she would have done something to deserve it, but it happening during the first week wouldn’t look good on her track record. Besides, her hair didn’t do too well around fire. This was a lesson she had learned at least three times. Focus.

A girl with dark, cropped hair banged the empty part of the bench beside her and gave her a curt smile. She then looked across the table and made some furious hand signals. AUSLAN. Ryan gave her an encouraging look, then left her alone without another word. Alone. With humans.

Her urge to run, or risk the six-story plummet, grew, but against her better judgement, she sat down at one of the empty spaces around the table.

‘So,’ the boy at the head of the table said, ‘what’s your story?’

Voilà! In view, a less than humble vaudevillian voyeur…

No, that’s not right.

This is the winter of our distant content?

Spyder, they’re asking about you.

‘My name is Stef, I’m a hacker,’ I was hired by Dorian Gray to help a Beast find his Belle, I think a world is ending and…‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place and time, depending on how you look at it.’

‘Dancer?’ the girl with the ability to speak asked.

She gave the girl a confused look. ‘Stopped going to dance class when I was twelve.’This made all of the recruits laugh, “at” laughter, rather than “with” laughter. She hoped she wasn’t blushing. She hoped she wasn’t hallucinating calmly sitting at the table while maiming each and every one of them with spoons.

One of the boys across the table, with hair as plain and brown as her own, shook his head. ‘She’s a newb, she doesn’t know the jargon yet.’ He looked at her. ‘If you were chasing a bad guy through Southbank, would you rather scream “dancer” or “demon”?’

Her confused expression continued. ‘Huh?’

‘Deeeemon,’ he said, drawing out the word. ‘Demon or dancer, one’s gonna draw a lot of attention, the other’s going to leave people confused. We don’t like drawing attention to ourselves.’

‘Oh.’

The boy at the head of the table focused his gaze on her. ‘Let me guess, you squeaked through by not killing the hob?’ She nodded. ‘Ah,’ he said with that disappointment, ‘that kind of field aptitude.’ He looked at the other recruits. ‘Bets in.’

‘In days, right Brian?’ the talking girl said.

‘Of course.’

Her desire to run off and get Frankie was rising, but she was glued to the spot, wondering exactly what it was that she’d done wrong. She cleared her throat. ‘If I might inquire…?’

Brian held up three fingers. ‘You got the geeks, the black ops and us. You never, ever get into black ops unless you deserve to be there. I envy them,’ he added after a moment. ‘Most of the time, it’s pretty obvious who goes into the brain trust, especially if you partake in more than your fair share of Dew and nachos.’ He required some sort of energy drink and drank some before continuing. ‘The line between us and the brain trust can get a little blurred sometimes, like if you have tactical planning abilities, or some power that would go to waste in front of a computer.’ She decided that a non-committal blank stare was the best idea. ‘So, newb, do you think you should be here, or go see Jones?’

‘I was placed where they thought best, until it is decided otherwise, I will stay.’

‘Sure you don’t want to reconsider that? Arrogance gets your killed you know. And speaking of which...Jones doesn’t kill his recruits.’ The AUSLAN girl immediately got up from the table and quickly walked from the room.

Another layer of confusion was added – she was beginning to feel like an onion. ‘Now what’re you talking about?’

‘The guy you replaced, Ryan killed him. He was hurt, yeah, but…’

She pushed aside still-terrifying images of a scary narc pushing a gun to her head. ‘So why are you still here?’ she asked.

‘The perks outweigh the constant threat of death. Taylor’s scary yeah, but Ryan is…’

‘Is what?’ she demanded.

‘Unstable. He killed Adams. A human. One on his side. The rhetoric is that they’re supposed to protect us. He killed Adams, a damn fine recruit, and it hasn’t affected him in the slightest. Plus,’ he said as he leaned forward, ‘there’s this story that he had a girlfriend and he killed her too. We don’t know how much is truth and how much is rumour cause no one will say nothing, but if it’s true, how safe are any of us?’

‘Gotta pee,’ she said in a monotone as she stood from the table. She walked from the mess hall, towards the magic lift, into the lift, and into Ryan. She looked up at look – she didn’t bother to question why he was in the lift, considering she’d only left him minutes before. Maybe he just likes riding up and down? ‘Does this place have a roof?’ she asked. Of course it’s got a roof, are you deficient?

He silently pressed the “R” button and waited for the doors to slide closed. ‘Recruit…’

‘Not yet,’ she said quietly, ‘can’t breathe yet.’

The doors slid open and she practically ran out. She made a beeline for the edge, and held onto the railing. ‘City’s no so ugly when you see it from this height, I guess. Maybe.’

‘Recruit…’

She looked out at the buildings, at the reflections in the glass, at the trash on the wind, anything except him. ‘Did I lose my name when I signed up for this gig? And you didn’t give me a lexicon either, are we supposed to get a handbook or something?’

‘Mimosa…’

‘Closer. It was so hard to breathe in there, humans make me feel like I’m choking. They thicken the air with bullshit and lies. You know, if the ability to tell the truth was removed from the world, I think like exactly seven people would notice. Seven’s a good number, days in the week, sins, colours of the rainbow, sins, lucky seven – good number.’ She held up seven fingers and stared at them for a moment. ‘Wonder if there’s-’

‘Stef,’ he said, taking a step towards her.

Least he got it right that time. She shook herself and balled her hands behind her back.‘You’re not human.’ She let it sink in for herself for just a minute, just to make sure that she understood what that really meant. ‘You’re not human,’ she repeated. Of course he’s not, he’s your a- I don’t want to hear from you right now! ‘You put a gun to my head. You were going to kill me.’ She swallowed. ‘Say it.’

‘Until I found out who you-’

She shook her head. ‘No. Say it. It’s not real till you say it.’

He fixed a stare on her. ‘I had every intention of ending your life, Miss Mimosa.’

‘Good. Thank you. What have we got so far? Not human. Was going to kill me. I know for a fact you murdered people last night. You pretty much expect me to handle all this stuff without blinking. And, and I think you’re secretly mad that I’m still wearing sneakers.’ She went quiet and stared out over the cityscape.

‘I hate to ask,’ he said after a moment, ‘but are you continuing this conversation in your head?’

‘No, just trying to find an eloquent way of…’ she rested her head on the railing for a moment, then turned to face him. ‘They said you killed your last recruit. I don’t know you, not really, not at all, yet…yanno...I’m not buying their perspective on the story.’ Kiss-ass.

He gave her his patented narc look, the one that she was sure was supposed to intimidate her. ‘I did kill my last recruit.’

Her heart skipped a beat, but she ignored it. ‘Yeah? What’s the other half of the story?’ If there is an other half. Maybe the other recruit was a douche, you’d use that excuse to shoot somebody.

He hesitated for a moment, then spoke. ‘A member of the Solstice shot him first. The injuries caused by it…the doctors would have been unable to do anything, it was better than him suffering.’

‘Do you know for certain that they would have been unable to help him?’

‘Parker confirmed.’

She leaned against the rail again. ‘Enough time for a diagnosis, not enough time to get him to the hospital?’

‘The diagnosis took three seconds. Not even our doctors could have done anything in that span of time.’ He looked away for a moment, fixing his gaze at some far point on the horizon.

‘So it was a mercy killing?’

‘The other recruits do not see it as such.’

‘They’re human, they’re flawed.’

‘So are you.’

She pouted. ‘Human or flawed?’ She shrugged. ‘I guess I just have a different perspective on stuff.’

He stared at her for a moment, then buried his hands in his pockets. ‘That…would be my fault. If not for me, then you-’

‘…wouldn’t be looking at zeppelin floating over Brisbane?’

She continued to stare at what she was sure was a zeppelin – although it could have just been the bright sunlight catching some smog. There wasn’t a lot of detail, but it was the right shape.

He followed her gaze. ‘You can see that?’

‘...sort of? Yeah? I didn’t notice it the first dozen time I looked up. Why is there a zeppelin?’ More importantly, where can I get tickets?

‘Mirrorfall. The mirror is the last thing to appear in the sky. The nearby worlds always see ghosts, memories and dreams from the dying world. They’re not really there, they’re just an echo. The airship is probably the last happy memory of a pilot from Dajulveed.’

‘There’s really...sad. It’s like stargazing, right? A lot of stars up there are already gone, we just see the echo.’

‘Exactly like that,’ he said.

‘Why can I see it? Something to do with you kidnapping me?’

He sighed, but relaxed a little, and moved over to the railing to join her. ‘For the last time,’ he said, ‘I did not kidnap you.’

She stared up at the airship, and for a moment, wondered how a monster like Astrin could drive it. ‘So tell me,’ she said as she tucked some hair behind her ear, ‘what did happen.’

He leaned on the railing, drummed his fingers for a moment, then looked down at her. ‘I was pursuing a Solstice. He went into a house for cover – no one noticed, there was some sort of party-’

‘Probably a family meeting, if I’m as young as I think I was, then it makes sense, they would only bring out the babies when they were being cute. Rest of the time...’ She shrugged. ‘Kind of surprised the younger generation didn’t end up all Lord of the Flies-ish.’

The agent hesitated for a moment before continuing. ‘He took you hostage. He tried to use you as leverage. I shifted you away from him but he got desperate and fired. You died, instantly.’

Memory of blackness, and a coldness that chilled deeper than bone flooded her mind. She blinked and focused on the relative warmth of the city around her. ‘So there’s some sort of second-chance scenario built into the world?’

‘Not so much. Not in the way that you might think. And not in this case. I stopped you from passing, I begged the Lady, and I went to Limbo to see you. You chose to come back. Apparently, hugging the leg of an agent who gives you a doll is a “yes” in that situation.’

Wow...you owe your life to bribery, Spyder. You were corrupted from the get-go. ‘I still have the doll. She’s broken, someone stepped on her.’ She turned away, to look at the city again, just in case she was showing too much emotion. ‘So you do that for every fat-faced toddler that gets killed? You’re some sort of superhero who saves babies?’

‘I felt it was my responsibility to try. If I had handled the situation differently, you might not have died in the first place. You wouldn’t have your different perspective on the world, you…’

‘Would probably be dead. Past is past. Present is present, and I still don’t know what a mirrorfall is. End of the world thing, I get, but...the finer points, I’m more fuzzy.’

‘The mirror is the heart of the world. Every planet has one, they’re what’s left over of Chaos – they’re his presence in reality while the universe lives.’

She held up a finger. ‘Ok, creation myth, continue.’

‘Recruit, it’s not a myth.’

‘I’m a fscking hacker, you start talking about that kind of stuff, and I’m going to call it a creation myth. Continue.’

He shook the confused expression off his face and continued. ‘Gods and demons exist, and they can die. When they die, they are buried in the heart of a world. Sometimes there is an energy left over, a resonance – and when that is the case, they can come back.’

She held up another finger. ‘Zombie gods-slash-demons, gotcha. Continue.’

‘They can come back, only so much as a ghost can, but if that happens, their insanity tears a world apart. The god and the world they gave life to, die.’

‘Think you skipped a step there, but I think I got it... Blob of mirror equals planet. Blob of mirror plus planet plus dead god equals life. Blob of mirror equals planet plus insane god equals death. Blob of mirror leads to dead planet leads to ghosts. Vis a vi, blob of mirror is mirrorfall. Right?’

He gave her the confused look again, and she wondered how many of those she was going to get a day. ‘Your verbal flowchart is...mostly correct.’

She looked up at the zeppelin and watched it hover in the sky for a moment, imagining what kind of- ‘Astrin, the um, monster at the mansion. Not trying to racist – or possibly species-ist – but his big scary claw hands didn’t exactly look like the kind of things that you use to build a beautiful machine like that.’

‘It’s safe to assume that he didn’t look that way on his world. Making the jump through the void...it mutates a person, their mind, their body, or both.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s the price they have to pay.’

‘Second chances for some, horrific mutations for others, doesn’t seem fair.’

‘It’s not. It doesn’t have to be.’

‘If I have urges to kill the other recruits, do I have to transfer to Jones?’

He turned to her. ‘Will you act on those urges?’

She smirked. ‘I’ll…try not to?’

‘Those in the tech division do not usually carry weapons.’

‘I’ll really try not to. Plus I like the suit. I always wanted to be a Turk.’

He handed her a card. ‘Your security clearance has been activated. This is your security card, field ID and credit card.’

‘What’s the limit?’

‘Recruit, you could require a hundred trillion in any currency into a bank account, what would the point of putting a limit on it be?’

‘I like asking questions.’

‘The mirror is falling the day after tomorrow, Solstice activity is going to be on the rise, if you are not going to give in to those urges, then you’d best go practice. It is unlikely the next person you pull a gun on is simply going to stand there and let you shoot them.’

‘Doesn’t that mean…’

‘No, you can train on your own, though you may wish to try at least being civil with the other recruits, as you will not be allowed to go on missions or patrols by yourself until you have proven ability.’

‘Couldn’t I just go with you?’

‘Go train, recruit.’

She gave a lopsided salute, then went back to the lift.

Please use the link below to access the next chapter.
17 Objectivity

17 - Objectivity

Chapter Seventeen - Wherein Stef tries to shoot, and Curt reveals a secret about his past.

Stef found the gym easily, aside from the fact that the doors were labelled, it was the biggest room she'd seen yet - even bigger than the warehouse testing room. Typical gym equipment occupied the middle of the room, to the left there was a shooting range set into the wall, and to the right was other equipment - sparring mats, balancing beams and the like. At the back were a set of bleachers, bookended by vending machines.

And I'm supposed to do what exactly?

An arm wrapped around her shoulder, and for one moment, she considered flipping whoever it was and stomping on their face. ‘Don't be scared, newbie,' one of the boy recruits - the one who had tried to defend her n00b status - said. ‘None of this equipment has eaten anybody for ages, and Taylor's not here, so you're not gonna get thrown out a window.' She shook his arm off, and stepped back, out of arm's reach. ‘And if you're going to train change out of the suit.'

‘Not scared,' she replied, ‘assessing. As to changing, what's the point?'

This seemed to confuse him. ‘To be comfortable?'

‘Do you go into the field in what I'm wearing, or what you're wearing?'

‘We train in training uniforms, but, pun intended, suit yourself. Curt, by the way.'

‘Sorry if my manner offends.'

‘I meant, it's my name.'

‘Ah.'

‘Now, did you pass the bonus round of your tests?' He noticed her confusion. ‘Did you shoot, kill or otherwise maim someone?'

‘Yes. It was the logical thing to do at the time.' She enjoyed the look on his face. ‘If you're asking if I know how to shoot, not really, point-blank is easy for anyone.'

He swept his arm wide and walked over to the shooting range. ‘Standard paper targets,' he said, ‘when you want something more complex, go into the holodeck. Sorry, the training simulator. You can set the level of difficulty, though it doesn't let you do a mission more than once.'

‘Just like in real life.'

‘You're unlikely to run out of missions though, I think there's maybe two dozen recruits in history who have done them all.'

‘A lot are similar, and you're graded on each of them. Just remember, all results get CC'd around, so don't go in with the intention of losing. Looks bad for you.'

She nodded.

‘And...if you're planning on sticking around, we might want to know who we are. Me Curt, remember. The girls are Enid and Lisa,' he said, pointing, ‘if you want to be nice, you could pick up a bit of AUSLAN for Lisa.'

‘I'll go find my year eight dictionary...' she muttered.

‘Brian is the one with the General complex, he thinks he's in charge. When you get to be the one who's been here the longest, you'll feel that way too.'

‘How long is longest?'

‘Just on two years now. The others are Quart, Lee and Stag - used to be small time crooks, don't listen when they talk big. And Red, well, his granddaddy was some sort of demon or spirit. Has a tendency to burn things when he's being careless. Not people, though, don't worry.'

She attempted to file all of this away, then just gave up.

Curt leaned against the edge of the shooting range. ‘Come on, give it a try.'

She walked over, and after a couple of tries, pulled her gun from its holster, and aimed the gun at the target and pulled the trigger. It missed terribly, and she pulled the trigger again.

The gun failed to produce another bullet, and she lifted it, looking at it to see if it was jammed. There was a scream from her "assistant" and the gun disappeared from her hand.

‘That's a fucking gun, newbie!' Curt said, trying desperately to keep his calm. ‘You understand that, right, gun? Gun. There are ways to treat it, and ways to check what's wrong with it. Looking up the fucking barrel to see if it's jammed is not one of them!'

She threw her hands out, throwing away the gun that was no longer there, and held onto the side of the shooting range. The world spun, and she wondered if it would reflect negatively on her if she passed out.

‘Yo, newbie, you ok?'

She heard a squeak on the floorboards, and she paused in her coding for a moment before continuing. The floor squeaked again, then the wardrobe door was perforated by a rain of bullets. She had a split-second to worry about the blood dripping into Frankie's keyboard before all went black.

‘Newbie?'

The wardrobe door was pulled open, and the huge and intimidating shadowy form of the narc looked down at her. She saw him lift the gun, and didn't hear the shot before all went black.

‘I didn't meant to yell at you.'

The narc pulled from her the wardrobe and threw her out onto the floor, Frankie slid away from her grip, and she was shaking too badly to stand.

‘Speak!' the shadowy narc demanded.

‘Woof!' It had been a stupid impulse, one borne of fear, not of thought.

A bullet slammed into her shoulder, and she heard herself scream. The narc's heavy shoe slammed down onto the wound, and there was too much pain to even think. She beat on the leg, ragged sobs interrupting her screams.

‘I said speak!'

She managed a whimper, and he aimed the gun at her. She didn't say anything, and he fired. Time slowed, and she saw the flash of the muzzle and the bullet on an inevitable path toward her head. There was a hot spot of pain on her forehead as it hit the skin, a longer lasting pain as it drilled through the skull, then sharp flashes of pain as memory and knowledge were burned away. There was a wet splat from beneath her as it exited her brain and made a mess on the floor. She felt her head bounce a little, and then there was only coldness.

She ran. Away from the shooting range, and out of the gym toward the lift. She wanted to scream, to cry, to collapse fetal on the floor, or to slam her head against the wall until everything made sense.

Instead, she calmly pressed the button for the lift and waited for it.

Where are you going?

I don't know.

Go back to your room, sleep it off.

I was gonna die.

I know, I was there. But you're ok now.

I can't handle this.

I'm surprised you've gotten this far, if you calm down, maybe you can get a little further.

‘Newbie!' His voice echoed, so he must have been in the doorway to the gym. She didn't turn to look at him. The doors to the lift slid open, and there were running footsteps behind her. She jumped into the lift, and punched the button for the doors to close, but Curt closed the distance too quickly.

‘This,' Curt said as he leaned against the wall of the lift, ‘is your first day, did you expect it to be easy? Come on, it's like the first day of a new job. Except with more guns.'

‘I don't have a job.'

‘First day of uni.'

‘Don't go to school.'

‘What the hell do you do, then?'

‘I'm a hacker.'

Curt sighed and shook his head. ‘I'm not usually one to question...but what the hell are you doing down here then, it's not the like tech department's full. You can ask for a transfer, you know.'

‘I didn't get much sleep last night,' she said, keeping her expression as neutral as she could, ‘and last night was kinda busy for me.'

‘Yeah, surviving a Solstice massacre isn't exactly easy, I get that. And the people who commut them are whack-jobs.'

‘I think all Solstice are.'

‘No, a lot of them do it to protect someone, or genuinely think they're doing a good thing. Kill the freak, protect your family, it's an easy decision to make.'

‘You-'

‘I'm not extra-credit, newbie, I'm ex. I got brought round to the right way of thinking and got given a second chance, and a relocation to boot.' He pressed the button for the ground floor. ‘Now, it's not quite lunch on your first day, this is generally about the time when people go and get drunk.'

Her brain, still unable to reboot, managed a sentence. ‘I don't drink.'

‘Yeah, you look as likely to get drunk as the guy who recruited you. What do you want, then?'

I wanna go home. I wanna go back to sleep. I want this to all be some sort of dream.

No, you don't.

‘Don't tell me what I want!'

‘I didn't newbie,' Curt said as the doors slid open, ‘I asked.'

‘Food,' she managed.

The lift slid open, and having nothing better to do, followed him into the lobby. The lobby was small, the colour scheme was blue - this was expected. The potted plants threw her for a loop, as did the secretary.

‘Signing out, recruits?'

‘Hey Natalie, yes,' Curt said as he accepted the clipboard.

The secretary gave her a smile. ‘Good morning Stephanie, welcome to the Agency.'

‘Stef,' she corrected on autopilot. She dated and signed the form on the clipboard. ‘Do I ask the...'

‘No,' Natalie said, ‘I'm not an Agent, of a similar nature though. Have a good time.'

‘Come on newbie!' Curt called from the door.

She blinked as she stepped into the sunlight, and for some reason, half-expected the building to disappear, or switch to the other side of the street, when she turned back. It didn't, and she followed Curt through the throngs of morning commuters and shoppers. She looked up into the bright sun, but couldn't see the zeppelin - it had faded, or was just hiding beyond sight again. People bustled past her as though she didn't exist.

She curled her toes inside her sneakers, feeling the mundane reality of her dirty shoes calmed her somewhat. It stopped the world spinning, just a little, just enough for her to walk.

After seeing the zeppelin, and listening to Ryan talk, she had expected to see more ghosts, to see them walking through people on their own, personal funerary marches. Wisps of memory and dream, remnants of a dead world.

Maybe even Mela. Not that she had any idea what the Beast's Beauty looked like. The beast...he deserved a happy ending - assuming that assuming happy endings existed. She tried to keep up with Curt, but kept stopping, looking around, trying to see the city with new eyes, expecting to see things she hadn't seen before. It was disappointingly normal - maybe all of the differences were more evident at night.

‘Hurry up newb!' he called as the light flicked from the green-walk-man to the flashing-hurry-the-hell-up-man. He stopped and waited for her to catch up. ‘Stop dawdling.'

‘I'm not,' she muttered.

‘You're looking for...well, for things you didn't know existed twelve hours ago, right?'

‘More like thirty-six.'

‘Knowing this stuff doesn't lift some sort of curtain off the world, then every other barista has purple skin and half of the businessmen are actually spirits. There are plenty of non-humans walking amongst us, but most of the time, they're really hard to spot. There's no masquerade to drop, seeing one thing isn't a free pass to seeing everything, it doesn't work that way.'

‘Oh hell no,' she said as Curt entered a shop. ‘No.'

‘What's wrong newb?'

‘This place is an affront to the purity of coffee.' She looked up at the sign. ‘And it's named after a Battlestar Galactica character. I never liked that show. Even if it did have Ben Cartwright in it.'

‘It's just Starbucks. Now, stop making a scene.' He walked into the stop, she stared at the pavement. The pavement was good, it was safe, it was normal, it didn't use Italian sizing and strange flavourings.

However...the smell of what remained of the coffee's purity was too much to resist.

A girl with auburn hair brushed past her, carrying some sort of iced concoction.

‘Hey,' she said to the girl. ‘Is that good?' The girl stopped and turned back to her, a confused expression on her face. ‘Drink. Icy thing. Fray-pay. Is it any good?'

‘Ah. Frappe,' the girl corrected. ‘It's quite good. Not this combination though. Orange and raspberry do not mix well with peppermint.'

‘Thanks,' she said. The girl gave her a nod, then walked away.

‘Newb!' Curt stood at the register. ‘What do you want?'

She looked to the girl behind the counter. ‘I'd like a...just a mocha please. The big size. Large. Lots of chocolate.' Curt translated this into barista-speak and the girl nodded.

A few minutes later they had their drinks. She stared at hers like it might explode. She hoped it would explode.

Curt sipped at his concoction. ‘It's not evil.'

She stared at the mocha. ‘Everything is evil, nothing is innocent.'

‘Does it get tiring being you?'

‘Humans tire me out.'

‘"Humans"?' he echoed. ‘You talk like you're not one of us.'

She took an experimental sip. ‘Just because I didn't know what "dancer" meant doesn't mean I'm entirely normal.' It was true, not in the way he thought, but it was true. It certainly perked his interest.

‘Parents? Grandparents? Something happen to you?'

‘Mysteries remain that way for a reason. Don't you want there to be a little mystery in life?'

He shook his head. ‘No. I lived with mystery for too long. I like things to be simple and clear. Knowing this stuff...it messes up your world view for a while, you don't know who to trust and who not to trust, who's on your side and who is only playing the part. One simple opinion can break couples apart. Destroy lives. Nearly get you killed...' he trailed off and became very interested in his coffee.

She shrugged after a moment. ‘It's better to have an opinion than be a sheep.'

‘People shouldn't die because of opinions,' he said quietly.

‘No. No one should die because of a wrong opinion.'

‘Truth is subjective.'

‘No,' she said as she pushed the cup around with a single finger. ‘It's really not.'

‘Sure it is. Objectively, you were hanging out with Solstice, hiding from an agent, and not being the most helpful when he confronted you.'

She choked on her mocha.

‘What, you thought he'd get me to be your camp buddy without telling me what happened? I'm ex-Solstice, so I'm his favourite little bitch boy, I'm on permanent probation, so he always gets me to help the newbies out.' He made a finger gun and pointed it at her. ‘Objectively, he should have drilled your skull. Objectively, you're too much of a risk to recruit. We should both thank the gods they're not unfeeling robots. Now, you still want food?'

She nodded.

‘Ok, I know a place, just promise not to puke on me.'

(Link below is broken, please use the following to access the next chapter while we fix it).
18 - Best Laid Plans

18 - Best Laid Plans

Chapter Eighteen - Wherein a disloyalty to the Agency is revealed.

The recruit looked up at the cloudy night sky as, the faint starlight failing to provide enough illumination to stop her from stumbling in the mud. A thought could have had a torch in her hand, but she decided against it – she didn’t want to attact attention.

She got to the small clearing among the mangroves, her shoes sinking into the sucking mud. All logic said she should have been afraid – she was alone, with a huge beast in the trees above her. Its breathing was unmistakable, and he was there on time, quite a feat for a beast without a watch.

She required a huge chunk of meat and and held it out as an offering as he dropped from the tree. He stank – hiding among the mangroves was likely the chief reason for that. His fur was wet and matted, and his hands were covered in what looked like dry blood. The stench of death hung in the air, but she didn’t look around for the corpse – she’d seen enough to ignore them easily.

The beast snatched the meat from her hands, sat on his his haunches and tore into it, taking wet chomps of the meat that had never been attached to a cow. She wiped the blood and juice onto her pants and waited patiently for the beast to finish his snack. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again,’ he said, sinking his claws into what remained of the beef.

‘We didn’t exactly get to finish our conversation.’

‘What more did you to say?’

‘Don’t you want to know when the mirror is going to fall?’

The beast sagged, sadness making him a lot less intimidating. ‘It is close.’

‘The night after tomorrow. If you can manage to stay hidden for that long, and avoid…undesirables until then, you’ll be golden.’

He snorted. ‘You haven’t told me what you want out of this yet. I don’t have access to your currency anymore.’

She sat on a tangle of roots, unworried about the mud on her shoes and pants – one requirement would fix that – and looked up at him. ‘From what I know of the mirrors, you won’t need all of it to bring your girlfriend-’

‘Wife,’ he interrupted.

‘Whatever. Back from the dead. Heart of a whole dead world, you don’t need it all.’

‘All is safer.’

She snorted and drummed her fingers on her knee. ‘If you want all of it, you don’t get my help. If you give me some of it, just enough to make it a good payday, then I’ll help you.’

He paced back and forth, mumbling in a strange language. Alien language. His language. Finally, he stopped and stared at her with his strange, almost glowing eyes. ‘How much do you need?’

‘You take the big part so can make your girl, I’ll take whatever I can get my hands on.’

He knelt and put one of his big hands on the ground in front of him, she watched as it sank into the mud a little. ‘You have a deal,’ he said. ‘You have a deal.’

‘Night after tomorrow, ship yards up the river,’ she pointed. ‘It should appear about ten, need a watch?’

‘No.’

‘Stay hidden until then, and be there early. We’re not the only ones after it, and not everyone has such altruistic reasons for wanting it.’

‘What is…your reason?’

She stood and scoffed. ‘Like I said, a good payday. Money makes the world spin, what else is there to care about?’

The beast looked at her. ‘If you do not know, there is no point in telling you.’

She walked over and stared down at his kneeling form. ‘Just so you know, if you double-cross me, I will kill you.’

He shook his hairy head. ‘I am quite aware this world is without mercy.’

‘Be there, or I’ll take it all for myself.’ She turned to walk away, but a hairy hand stopped her.

‘Not once have you given me your name.’

‘Like a monster needs names,’ she hissed as she shook his hand away. ‘But…fine, whatever. It’s Enid.’

She walked away from the monster, out of the mangroves and back up onto the street. She required a car – something black and sporty, and climbed in. She waved a hand over the steering wheel and felt the engine roar to life, but didn’t have a chance to pull away before a dark shape landed on her bonnet.

‘Black doesn’t suit you, Eeny,’ an unfortunately familiar voice said.

‘Are you following me, goblin?’ she asked of the creature.

Tian, the goblin, flashed her a smile. ‘Sometimes. It’s poor form to lie to a starchild.’

‘That word is so faggoty,’ she said, curling a lip and pulling away from the curb.

The goblin jumped a little and landed in the passenger seat. ‘Madhe wants to see you.’

‘Of course she does,’ she replied as she ran a red light at a quiet intersection. ‘What about? Etiquette?’

‘No, she doesn’t give sanctuary to the violent. Her sniffers found too many bodies that smelled of another world to risk her citizens with this one.’

‘She wants the mirror.’

‘There isn’t a court that doesn’t. Except maybe the Lost, not sure what they’d do with it.’

‘And why does your dear queen need another mirror?’

‘For a rainy day.’

‘She should move out of England if she doesn’t like the rain. I-’

‘What, like you’ve got a better offer? You’re not dealing with Remington are you?’

‘Oh fuck off, of course not. I just don’t want to be tied to Madchester, it’s hard enough to deal with other people now, I’m not one of you.’

‘Not anymore,’ the goblin muttered.

She took a hand off the wheel and made a dismissive gesture. ‘A lifetime ago, not like I remember it. Do we have to have this conversation every time?’

‘Are you going to see her?’

She sped around a corner. ‘Like I have a choice.’

‘You could choose not to work for the suits.’

She shook her head. ‘Sorry, I like being able to pull weapons from air, and the diplomatic immunity, and being able to break whatever minor laws I like with a flash of a badge. There’s nothing in Madchester that compares. I go to Court, and all I’d do is drink and drink until I got trashed enough to sleep with you, no thanks.’

The goblin made no comment.

‘Tomorrow then,’ she said, resigning herself to the meeting. The leader of a Court sought her out for jobs – it should have been an honour, but there was no great honour in serving Madchester. No great honour in serving a Court whose only purpose was to provide sanctuary to crazy people. Had it been one of the Courts actually interested in power, she would have been flattered, and considered giving up the farce of her job at the Agency.

But...so long as they kept paying, she’d work for them.

‘Tomorrow,’ the goblin said, and faded from the car.

19 - Evening Stroll

Chapter Nineteen - Wherein Stef heads home.

Stef stared at the clock. Night. Night was for sleeping.

Especially considering apparently she was going to be woken up only seven hours after midnight. Being awoken at such an hour - and being expected to function as well - gave the entire Agency a new spin. A sinister one.

Punching the pillow until she imagined it crying for mercy, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She paced for a while to no avail - her mind was going over a hundred different things, and her fingers had the urge to type.

This wasn't the kind of night she slept on.

She required the mirror back into existence and stared at it. The pyjama top she'd required less than half an hour ago looked as wrinkled as something that had escaped her laundry basket and went rogue. Which had happened more times than she cared to remember.

Laundry. Dishes. Cleaning the windows. Small tasks like that didn't seem to be something recruits had to worry about. The building seemed to take care of itself. That, or there was a legion of laundry gnomes, washing-up gnomes and gnomes that ate unattended cookies.

She wondered if anyone would get mad at her if she set a trap.

‘Screw it,' she muttered. She looked at the mirror briefly, then closed her eyes.

Require: uniform.

It was an unnatural feeling to feel fabric skating over skin, disappearing, morphing and growing. It was almost instantaneous, but she paid attention to the sensations. Little details kept the world real.

She liked the suit, even though she had no intention of wearing the jacket like Ryan did. Wearing something like that in Brisbane in summer was suicide. She wondered if his jacket had a built-in air conditioner.

Require: laptop bag.

She slipped Frankie into the blue bag, grabbed her ID from the bench and left the room. At least two of the other recruits were awake, and lacking soundproofing in the wall of their room.

The lift appeared as quickly as it always did and she punched the button for the ground floor.
Natalie was still behind the desk. ‘Going out again?' the secretary asked as she handed up the clipboard.

‘Can't sleep, want to go for a walk.' Not quite true, but good enough.

The secretary gave her a nod. ‘Be careful.'

She looked down at the uniform. ‘Yeah, guess I am a walking target.' She shrugged and handed back the clipboard. ‘Not going far.'

The night did nothing to calm her. Urges to run, scream or hack into three banks simultaneously - which never worked, but was always fun - banged against the inside of her skull. She held Frankie close and just walked. There was no point looking for a bus, what busses there were this time of night were unreliable and usually darker than the night they were supposedly safe passage through.

Train it was then.

Central station wasn't far - and the walk, the simple act of one foot in front of the other, calmed her a little. It was normal, so much as she hated it, it was what she needed.

Nothing jumped out and attacked her, there were no ghosts or zeppelins so far as the eye could see, what few people she could see were on the other side of the street.

She didn't wait for the walk signal at the intersection near the coffee shop she'd been that morning, but she did pause in the middle of the street, just to glance up at the sky. A patch of sky that wasn't obscured by buildings, though it was faint from the light pollution - there was no chance of seeing stars.

A car honked and she jumped out of the way. A drunk leaned out the window and shouted something unintelligible then sped off into the night.

‘Die in an alcohol-fuelled fire,' she muttered under her breath, then strode quickly up the hill.

Figuring an all-in-one ID/credit card/licence to kill might still not be good enough for the ticket inspectors, she required a few coins and stabbed her finger at the ticket machine until it responded. Freshly printed ticket in hand, she waved it at the guard as she passed through the gates. The guard gave it a cursory glance and gave a vague nod.

She leaned against the escalator railing down to the platform and sighed at the timetable screen. The next train wasn't due for a while.

Pulling Frankie from the bag, she stared at the reflections on his case until someone blocked her light.

‘Hello Spyder.' She didn't have to turn around to identify the speaker, she'd only heard a voice like his once. ‘Or should I call you "angel" now?' Dorian asked as he sat beside her.

Angel?

‘Assuming that suit isn't just your fashion sense taking a detour. Or your attempt to grow one,' he said with a grimace as he looked her up and down and focused on her dirty sneakers.

‘I thought you would have been long gone by now. Back home, or off in another story.'

‘I never came to this godsforsaken city for Astrin, I was here for something completely unrelated - no, I'm not telling you what - Jon just happened to know I'd like the job.'

‘Is this what you do? Gallivant around?'

He smiled and stretched. ‘It's one of the perks of being immortal. Well, the fun kind of immortal. If you're born to it, you usually don't cherish it. Look at how pathetic the gods are, they don't take an interest in anything.'

‘I wouldn't know.'

‘You will soon enough, work for the angels long enough and you'll pick it up. Well, before you die, of course. The uniform you're so proudly displaying means you aren't using the same talents I wanted you for.'

‘Yeah, field, not tech.'

‘It'll get you killed.'

‘Not planning on it.'

‘You're sitting alone. In Central station. At night. Wearing what may as well be a target.' He pointed to the end of the platform. ‘The Solstice aren't afraid of sniping people. Change your clothes. Now.'

‘That almost sounded like concern.' The look on his face told her he wasn't joking. She concentrated and required herself into something that may as well come from her wardrobe. ‘Better?'

‘Didn't they warn you?'

‘Didn't exactly get issued a handbook.'

‘No bloody wonder there's such a high turn over.'

She pushed the fear aside for a moment. ‘Do you hang around train stations for a particular reason?'

He flashed a plane ticket. ‘There's nothing here for me now, I'm going somewhere else. Take a holiday, escape the world for a while. Any place where a mirror's going to drop is depressing. I hate seeing the ghosts. I hate seeing the echoes, the death throes of an entire world. It's enough to make one want to go join Madchester...'

‘How many have you seen?'

‘Mirrorfalls or ghosts?' he asked. He sighed and stared at the tiled ground. ‘More than I'd like of both.' He looked back up at her. ‘Spyder...' he said slowly. ‘The suit, is that you really want?'

‘Better than being Solst-ass.' She slipped Frankie back into the bag. ‘What, you asking me to come with?'

‘I always book my tickets with a "plus one" just in case.'

‘Never had a fictional character wanting to sweep me off my feet. While awake that is.'

‘You're not my type, but this has nothing to do with that.' He grabbed her bag and placed it on the ground and slid closer. ‘This is...'

The train pulled into the station.

He put a hand in front of her. ‘Catch the next one.'

‘I didn't even move.'

‘Good girl.'

Her heart began to beat faster - being this close to a person always made her nervous, especially when it was by their own volition. He was attractive, she supposed, not that she was much of a judge when it came to that sort of thing.

The train pulled away from the station.

‘There are sins, there are virtues - everyone belongs to one of them. Me, I belong to Fortitude, I was always his, and I impressed him a lot more than most, hence the embargo. It was his idea to sell the story to finance the rest of my new life.'

She nodded.

‘You could belong to any of them, I wouldn't like to hazard a guess as to which...but you also belong to Death.'

‘I...wait, what?'

‘You've already died once, Spyder, how long do you really think it'll be before you go back there? That cold darkness, that's somehow so much like going home that it feels right, how long until you sink back through that and go to whatever's next?'

She opened and closed her mouth a few times. Witty words and cold comebacks had abandoned her. ‘Hopefully a long time. No one knows when they're going to die.'

‘Those that have died once are always drawn back there. I got Jon and myself out of there, Astrin's gone, the rats have left, you're in a suit, I'm guessing the angels rained some hell onto that place, yet here you are without a scratch.'

‘I was lucky.' Almost wasn't, but-

‘How many more times are you going to be lucky?'

‘Considering my luck in other aspects of life, I'd say I have a few more chances up my sleeve.'

‘At the rate you're going, you'll be dead before the end of the mirrorfall. Is that what you want?'

‘I want to live.'

‘Then you're in the wrong place.'

She smiled. ‘No I'm not. Besides, there's someone here I want to get to know. Someone who did more for me than anyone ever has, and he didn't even know me.'

‘Don't fall in love with an angel, it only leads to pain.'

It was her turn to look at the floor. ‘I don't think I know how to love. It doesn't really figure into my world. It's not love anyway, it's more like...' A grin spread across her face. ‘I've found the story I want to be a part of.'

‘Careful Spyder, stories are dangerous things.'

‘Everything is dangerous, some things are worth it.'

He squinted up at the timetable display. ‘My train is in four minutes. Last chance. Literally.'

She required herself into her suit for a moment, then back into the incognito clothes. It was all the answer he needed. He stood and bowed. ‘It was a pleasure, Spyder. Don't screw it up and die.'

She smirked. ‘I'll try.'

He stood and walked away.

‘It's my story,' she muttered. ‘I'm allowed to screw it up.'

20 - Home Again

Chapter Twenty - Wherein a mess is discovered.

Stef watched as Dorian’s train came and went, and her own arrived a few minutes later. The carriage she stepped onto had half a dozen other occupants, a couple only interested in each other, three half-asleep men in team colours and a man with lank black hair staring out the window. She didn’t bother to sit – it wasn’t worth it for the three minutes she was going to be on board.

She stepped off the train at the next station, flashed the ticket to the tired guard and walked out onto the street. There was something comforting about the Valley at night, and it wasn’t a feeling that most people knew – those unfamiliar with it were too afraid, the violent stories of the days when it was less safe hung around like a bad smell. To the the people who worked in the lead-and-glass palaces, it was a place to be hastily travelled through, car doors locked and mobile phones at the ready.

She never bothered anyone, and the favour was returned.

The walk to her flat was usually a quick one – it was a well-travelled route through familiar streets. Tonight though, she kept pausing to look for the ghosts of zeppelins, and to require small objects, just to assure herself that everything that had been real. She was now part of a world where there really could be monsters in the shadows.

As she closed in on the apartment building with a pocketful of required treasures, she finally sighted another ghost in the sky – something that looked rather like a bi-plane, being courted that something resembled an extraordinarily tall woman in a long, flowing dress.

‘Goddesses of the skies,’ a voice said as the concrete beneath her feet rumbled. A hob, smaller than the one that had been used to test her, stepped up onto the cracked concrete. ‘A folly, but a beautiful one.’

‘A...what?’

‘You’ve still got that new-car smell,’ he said as he bit into a rotten tomato, ‘your suits will tell you. There’s not so many of them here now, but my gods, they’re a thing of beauty.’

The bi-plane flew in a lazy circle, and the woman flew neatly around him, coming to rest on the wing of the plane, her long dress flowing and flapping, caught by the breeze, giving the impression that she was of the wind itself.

‘They’re from the time that the sky was still something wonderful, when flying meant something to mortals...they pretty much die out when we reach this point technologically. No more epic dogfights, no more aerial acrobats, no more beauty in the machines. Higher, faster. Faster, higher. No more magic in the skies. No more goddesses. No more pilots pinning their hopes on...’ The hob shook his head. ‘Normal mortals...they always complain that magic has gone, but you’re the ones who kill it. Each and every time, technology wins. Each and every time, it drowns out wonder.’ He pointed a dirty hand at the sky. ‘Flying with the fairies, in their own special way, not leaving them behind. I like it when a world gets it right.’

They watched in silence for a few moments, before the ghosts abruptly faded.

‘Show’s over,’ he said. ‘For now, at least, it’ll all be over soon. These echoes only last so long, then they’re all burnt away.’

She turned to look at him. ‘I keep wondering how I never saw any of this.’

‘Who says you didn’t?’ He placed a thumb to his forehead and allowed the concrete to suck him under again.

She stared at the sky for a few more moments, hoping to the the pilot or his folly again, but there were only clouds, so she continued toward her flat. Reaching the main door, she patted her pockets for a key that wasn’t there.

The door opened anyway. It swung open into the darkness of the lobby beyond, seemingly without any human intervention.

Until her landlord poked his head from behind the door. ‘Forgive my theatrics,’ he said. ‘Forget your key again?’

‘I’m wearing the wrong pants,’ she said as she walked in.

‘I’ll lend you a master,’ Jenkins said as he held up a burnished gold key. ‘Just pop it back in the mailbox as always. Speaking of which...’ he said with a nod toward her overflowing mailbox. ‘And...’

The relisation that she’d been gone for more than a week hit her like a slap from a hob. ‘Oh right!’ she squeaked. ‘Sorry.’ She fumbled with her pockets, requiring more than enough money to cover two weeks. ‘I was...out...’ she stumbled, not wanting to explain the entirely convoluted story to her landlord, and unsure if she would have to kill him if she did so.

‘Out is good. Something we should all do more often. So long as you’re safe, I don’t like the idea of trying rent your apartment again.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, rent you charge, it’d be on the market for a whole eight seconds before someone snapped it up.’

He looked at the notes in his hand. ‘I could always put it up...’

‘I didn’t mean, I-’

He handed her the key. ‘Leave full sentences for someone who needs them to understand.’

‘Night,’ she said, and he retreated to his small, first-floor room. She emptied her mailbox, awkwardly stuffing the mail and junk mail into her laptop bag, before walking up the stairs toward her home. Toward what had been her definition of normal.

She pushed the master key into the lock, turned it and silently welcomed herself home.

The stink was the first thing to hit her when she opened the door. Smells of rotting garbage and moldy food. She dropped the bag to the floor and slammed the door with her floor. ‘Great…’

Require: all the garbage gone.

The smell remained.

You should have taken out the garbage before you left, and you needed to get the seal on the fridge fixed.

Oh shut up...Require: all the garbage gone.

‘Some magic power you are.’

She flicked on the light. Nothing happened. She flicked it off, required a new bulb into it and tried again. Suddenly, the smell wasn’t so important anymore.

The apartment was a mess, and not kind she was comfortable with.

There was graffiti on the walls, the couch had been ripped apart, its stuffing strewn around. There were broken jars of sauce and jam on the carpet, there were muddy boot prints all over the cream carpet and the rug. The curtains covering the glass door the balcony had been torn down. Someone had broken the screen of the television. There was still a small hatchet in the DVD player.

She took a few experimental steps toward the kitchen. Her fridge was open, its contents all over the floor. Cabinet doors were off their hinges. Spices and herbs coated the floor along with the rotting food.

Stepping over the broken remnants of her life, she made her way to the bedroom. The bed was upside down, her few boxes of possessions had been torn apart. Her clothes were piled onto the floor. Her computers were missing. The black curtain that hid the sunlight so well was gone. As was her secret stash of chocolate-covered coffee beans. The bathroom was flooded, the shampoo and soap covered the floor.

She slumped against the bedroom wall and slid down onto one of the only remaining patches of carpet, staring at the piles of clothing. Wow, I own that many clothes?

She knew the “who” – Solstice. She knew the “how” – the balcony door was open, and it was possible to get in from the outside, this she knew for sure. It was the “why” that escaped her.

She had very few things that meant anything to her. Photos counted for very little – and most of them could be replaced with a few phone calls and minor bribes. She had no…

‘Alexandria…’ the word tumbled from her mouth before the thought finished itself.

She pushed herself up and ran back into the lounge room. The bookcase where she usually sat, appraising the world with one ice-blue eye and faded red hair, lay on its side, its back broken. She pushed it aside, onto the corpse of the DVD player and found most of her CDs and DVDs missing – they were easily replaceable.

A small glass vase that she’s bought as a place to store marbles – as proof that she really hadn’t lost hers – was broken.

Alexandria lay face down, crushed into the carpet.

She crouched and gently picked the doll up and winced as she heard small pieces of the head drop back to the ground. One hand was nothing but ceramic dust, the other was almost complete. She swallowed and turned the doll over.

Alexandria’s head had been broken for years now, but the half face she’d had for a decade was better than the ruins of the one she had now. Only a small piece of the face remained, and as she lifted her, the last blue eye fell away, and rolled onto the floor.

Moisture slipped from her eyes, and she fell back against the wall, on top of broken disc cases and vase fragments.

21 - Angel

Chapter Twenty-one - Wherein Stef admits a secret, and ice-cream is had.

Stef clutched the broken doll tighter, the sharp edges of the shattered porcelain head digging into her skin, threatening to break it, threatening to make her just as broken. Crying on the floor, that’s really mature. She stared down at her doll through its faded red curls and wished that there was some way to make it all better. That there was some way to-

A hand appeared in her vision, and she panicked. When she saw that the hand was attached to a suit, however, she calmed down. The hand gently tugged the doll from her hand, and she let him take it away. It just a toy, just a-

He crouched in front of her and handed Alexandria back, perfect as the day she’d been found in the store. Perfect as she was in her memory. There were no cracks, no faded paint, and no missing pieces. She was whole again.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered as she clutched the doll. ‘Thank you.’ He smiled at her and a question formed. ‘How…how long have you been standing there?’

‘Not long,’ he said as he proffered a hand.

She let him pull her to her feet, held Alexandria under one arm and indicated to the complete sty that used to be her flat. ‘Why would they do this?’

‘To see if you had anything of value. Any information. You haven’t made your presence known on the net since I-’

‘Been kinda busy.’

‘Therefore,’ he said, ‘it’s their assumption that you’re dead. They…in all honesty, probably thought they killed you with the others.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ she said, ‘seriously, don’t remind me. So much could have gone wrong that night. Anything. Any one piece out of place and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I wouldn’t have…’ Her eyes went wide and she pushed the doll at him. ‘Hold her for a moment.’

‘Recruit-’

‘Hold her for a moment,’ she said again as she stepped over the piles of stuff and stumbled into her bedroom. Ryan, predictably, followed her. She stepped up onto a tall pile of clothes and leveraged herself into the wardrobe.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said, the remorse obvious in his voice, ‘but you’re safe here, you don’t need to hide.’

She smiled as she pulled shoes off the pegs that lined the inside wall of her wardrobe, then used them as steps to get higher up into the wardrobe, then used the shelf to balance herself. ‘I’m not hiding,’ she said, ‘I’m checking something.’

She punched the roof of the wardrobe until one of the panels came loose. Gripping it, she twisted it and dropped it to the floor. Reaching deep into the roof, she grasped the edge of a large biscuit tin. Once she had a grip, she pulled on it, then jumped down from the pegs.

Looking away from him, she pulled open the lid. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered before stepping out of the wardrobe. She looked up at him, staring at him through her messy fringe. ‘I guess I must seem pretty pathetic like now.’ She quietly stepped out of the wardrobe and placed the biscuit tin on her empty desk. ‘If I’d said “no” to you. If I’d been here. Would they have…?’

‘Do you really want to hear the answer?’

She shook her head. ‘No. No, I don’t. Does this whole world have a “shoot first” policy?’

‘The difference is, we take responsibility for what we do, the Solstice don’t. We take care of the bodies, the evidence, we arrange for widow’s pensions or placement for orphaned children – so they as they don’t follow in the deceased’s footsteps.’

She stared at him. ‘Yeah, but some of that is to protect you, er us, as much as it is them.’ She ran a finger through the dusty imprint on her desk. ‘So my computers are just casualties of war?’

‘Though the tech recruits would like to convince us to do differently, we don’t mount rescue missions for computers, especially when it’s likely that the items have already been taken into a blackout zone. When it comes to blackout zones, we don’t even mount rescue missions for-’ He cut himself off, and focused on one of her piles of clothes.

‘For recruits,’ she said, finishing his sentence for him.

‘Yes, that,’ he said.

She yanked on the upturned bed and sat on the corner of the mattress. ‘So if I get snatched, policy dictates you let them take me?’ He continued to stare at the pile of clothes. ‘Then I guess I’ll try and not get snatched.’

He looked up. ‘That is…always the best course of action. Recruit, you’re-’

‘That’s not my name.’ She picked up the biscuit tin again and placed the lid on the desk. ‘Everything that’s happened to me is because of you, so you can at least call me by my name. I couldn’t really remember you, but I…’ she looked away, pushed Alexandria off the tin and slowly opened it.

‘Stef….’

She pulled a dusty book from the old tin, flipped the back cover open and held it up to him. On the inside of the back cover was a blue crayon stick-figure, a small brown stick figure and a little red circle. ‘So sue me, I’m not an artist.’

He took a step closer and looked at the book. ‘I assume…I’m the blue one?’

She closed the book and stared ashamedly at the cover. ‘I thought you were an angel.’

Ryan shrugged. ‘Technically, I am.’

She stared at him, an eloquent inquiry formed, but it somehow failed to translate when she opened her mouth to speak. ‘Buh-what?’

‘We were created by the gods, we act as their proxies.’ He tilted his head. ‘Though…not like those in your book there.’

She snapped the book closed and placed it back in the biscuit tin. ‘You remember that thing where you said you’re not gonna shoot me?’

‘Of course. Are going to give me a reason to change my mind?’

‘Maybe.’

She hugged him.

She was sure that it was a hug – it was different to hugging a doll, or a pillow, or even a laptop. For one thing, she couldn’t fit all of him into her arms, and then there was the question of where to place her arms. It was an inexpert hug. She was sure she was freaking him out, and she was convinced that he’d been half way to requiring a gun – sudden movements around magical narcs probably weren’t such a good idea.

‘Thank you,’ she mumbled into his suit. ‘Sorry. Thank you. Sorry.’

He lifted an arm and wrapped it around her shoulders.

Ball. Light. Laughter. Sadness. Darkness. A neverending night. A scary darkness that wanted her. Safe. Someone was holding her and keeping her safe. Keeping her safe from the darkness.

She broke away from him, and knuckled away a few tears before they had a chance to form. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, trying to keep her voice as monotone as possible. ‘You probably don’t recruit many emotional cripples.’ She looked away, and wished that the abandoned laundry would choose this moment to strike – to punish her for letting it gain sentience, then abandoning it.

‘A facade of strength can only serve so many purposes. Sometimes it’s necessary, other times, not so much.’ He pressed a handkerchief into her hand, but she still couldn’t look at him. ‘Now, are you planning on leaving your apartment like this?’

‘I’m not sure if you’ve seen my sneakers, but I’m not exactly a whiz at cleaning.’

‘You don’t have to be,’ he said. He held up his hands and the bedroom slowly pulled itself back together – the bed turned the right way up and the sheets replaced themselves, making the bed better than she ever had. The clothes disappeared into the wardrobe, and the door slid shut. The carpet beneath her feet brightened by several shades and the curtain appeared back on their repaired rods.

‘Um, wow,’ she said as she tried to force her eyes back into their sockets. ‘You know, you’d make one hell of a nanny.’

He smirked, then walked from the room, quietly cleaning the rest of the living room, and the dining room while she walked into the kitchen. ‘Okies, this can’t be that hard. Bad foods disappear nao!’

Nothing happened.

What, you didn’t really expect that to work, did you?

Require: all rotting food gone. A lot of the smell in the kitchen disappeared. Require: all the rubbish gone. The rest of the scraps disappeared from the floor. Require: clean floor. The floor rippled for a moment, then sparkled in a way that it likely hadn’t done since before she’d taken the flat over. Require: fix the cupboards. The doors on her kitchen cupboards replaced themselves, the cracks and holes in the wood disappearing in seconds. Require: new fridge. Her old, noisy fridge disappeared and was replaced by a new one – a small part of her took note that it looked exactly the same as the one in her room at the Agency.

She pulled the fridge open, enjoying the strange “new white goods” smell, then opened the freezer, enjoying the cold breeze against her face.

‘Are you all right?’ Ryan asked from the entrance to the kitchen.

She continued to stare into the empty freezer, small curls of breath dissipating as as they appeared. Yeah, expect that now you know exactly how screwed up I am. ‘Yeah,’ she said slowly, ‘expect for the fact that I had ice-cream and it got all meltified.’

‘It’s quite easy to get some more.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know I can just require some, but...’ A hand touched her shoulder, and she fought the urge to brush it away, to shudder, or to jump into the entirely-too-small freezer. The world blurred, and her new fridge disappeared.

‘Still...not used to that,’ she said as took a stumbling step after the world became solid again. Teleportation was always a lot easier when there was a helpful Scot or Irishman there to let you know that you were indeed all there and that you hadn’t left behind one of the smaller, but still important, organs. The lights of an ice-cream parlour stared back at her. ‘Huh?’

‘This was,’ he said as he walked toward the door, ‘the closest open establishment. And it will take some time for the smell to clear out of your apartment.’

‘Am I supposed to ask how you knew exactly where to come?’ He simply raised his eyebrows and opened the door. ‘It’s ok,’ she said, ‘it’s not like I’d make fun of you for liking ice-cream, or think of ways to exploit that like for my own gains, and be currently drafting plans in my-’ There was the tinkle of a bell, and she realised that he’d left her outside, talking to herself.

She pushed open the door, and smirked as she caught the expression of the clerk – she suspected he wasn’t used to late-night narc invasions. This, finally, was something she could understand. This time of night, it was more a time when vampire-wannabes came out to get red gelato, or goths asking for blacker-than-black licorice ice-cream, or stoners getting very happy at the prospect of rainbow flavour. Narcs and ice-cream weren’t exactly something that were supposed to mix.

Somewhere in her head, a heavenly chorus sang as she approached the freezer, all the colours of the sweet, frozen rainbow danced in her mind and congealed into something delicious, topped with a cherry. Silently, she began counting on her fingers, then grabbed Ryan’s closest hand when ten weren’t enough – somewhat to her surprise he let her use him as an angelic abacus. Four fingers later, she was done. She looked up at the server and began to list off each flavour and topping until it culminated into a monstrous sundae.

‘Is that...all, miss?’

She looked down at her fingers, then the fingers that weren’t hers, then up at Ryan. ‘Was that all I wanted?’

He shrugged. ‘It seems to be sufficient.’ She opened her mouth to protest, but he smiled. ‘You can always go back for seconds...if your stomach doesn’t explode first.’

‘Yeah, it’s not fun when that happens.’ She looked back into the freezer. ‘So what are we getting you?’

‘We’re here for you, I don’t want anything.’

She pressed her nose up to the cold glass and spied the perfect thing. ‘And he’ll have a kid’s rocky road.’

A tiny contrainer of ice-cream, accompanied by a small pink spoon joined the enormous sundae. She went to fake taking money out of her pocket, but he simply swiped his credit card/ID and signed the docket. She grabbed the desserts and found a seat by the window.

‘Just for your information,’ Ryan said as he sat on the stool beside her. ‘I’m not eating that, I have no need of the sugar or approximations of nutrients that it contains.’

‘Don't you have some sort of angelic directive to enjoy all the sweet things in life?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not one of the angels from your book, the term is simply applicable.’

She pulled the cherry from the very top of the sundae and ran it through the melting fudge. ‘I have to ask, do you have...?’ She held out her hands out to the side and flapped them.

‘A motor function disorder?’

She pouted. ‘You know what I mean.’

He shook his head. ‘Not anymore. Once we did, and it’s the form we’re best remembered for.’

She swallowed the cherry with a gulp. ‘You’re not like, Lucifer or something, are you?’

He shook his head. ‘We take the form that serves us the best. At one point that was to appear as angels. We’ve been any number of secret organisations and orders. The guise of a government agency has served us well for decades, and will likely continue to do so for a while yet.’

‘So were you-?’

‘Don't ask.’ He paused. ‘We are essentially...reset every time we move into a new incarnation, we retain facts, knowledge, records, but not our memories.’

She took a spoonful of ice-cream. ‘So after the inevitable apocalypse and the world turns into some bad eighties movie and you’re not the narc you are now, you won't remember me?' Great Spyder, he tells you something insanely big and you want him to validate your existence. She grimaced, and stared intently at the sundae, hoping that her “magical earth-swallowing power” would actually activate this time. ‘Sorry, forget I asked.’

‘If I thought being remembered was some great evil, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

‘H-’

The world exploded.

22 - Standstill

Chapter Twenty-two - Wherein lies are told, email is sent and blood is shed.

For a moment, her world was a series of still images. There was a flash from somewhere outside the ice-cream parlour, the impression of being grabbed, the somewhat harder impression of hitting the floor with a narc on top of her, shielding her from the rain of falling glass.

Stef shook her head. ‘-uh?'

Ryan pushed on her shoulder. ‘Blackout bomb, stay down.' He stood, and fired out to into the night.

‘Miss, miss, miss! Behind here!' the clerk called from behind the counter, before getting a bullet to the throat.

Nonetheless, she rolled onto her stomach, and crawled behind the counter, trying to ignore the urge to stand and run. Standing, running, screaming...any of the things she truly wanted to do would surely be bad. Ending up dead bad. The shooty problems were no longer problems of other people...they were her shooty problems.

She made it behind the counter, and carefully ignored the body of the clerk.

Ryan continued to shoot - and she panicked, knowing that the girly gun didn't hold an unlimited supply of bullets. She looked around - trying to see anything that could help. There was a tiny office at the end of the counter - which she crawled into. A set of keys gleamed in the fluorescent lights, and she snatched them up.

Sneaking past the counter, and hopefully staying out of the shooter's line of sight, she crept along the wall and slipped the key into the lock for the security gate, and twisted it - the metal grate grinding as it slid down.

She breathed a sigh of relief, but it was cut short as she heard a bullet impacting flesh. Ryan took a few stumbling steps as the security gate fully closed. He pressed a hand to his chest, then turned to her, his body shaking in pain. ‘Heart, or lung?' she choked as she watched blood pour out through his fingers.

‘The latter,' he whispered as he slipped to the ground.

She ran to him as he hit the hard black-and-white tiles. ‘Come on,' she said, ‘do the teleport thingy.'

‘I can't,' he said through clenched teeth. ‘We're in a blackout zone.'

Require: gun.

Nothing happened.

‘You mean we're neutered in here?' He gave a wobbly nod before collapsing. Oh...really bad swear words... There was a crash against the security gate - the shooter obviously wasn't done. She looked down at the agent - wanting to berate him for lying to her. There was another crash against the door, this time, the gate gave a little.

She crouched and grabbed him by the arm. ‘Come on,' she urged, ‘you can't stay out here. Cover, you have to at least get behind cover.' He groaned and tried to push himself up, but failed to stand, so she grabbed his arms and dragged him behind the counter. ‘This is not good for you, I know, but I don't want you shot in the head!' She helped him sit up against the counter, and felt her heart skip a beat as she saw how pale his face was.

‘You sure you can't angel-magic us away?' she asked. The look on his face was all the answer she needed. ‘Ok then-' there was another crash against the metal gate, and she heard it slip a little.

He grabbed her arm. ‘Back door. Go.' He coughed up blood, and for a moment, an expression of disgust masked his pain.

‘There is no back door,' she said. She looked to the office, then back at him. She grabbed his tie and wiped the blood from around his mouth. ‘Just do me a favour and shut up, okies?'

‘Stef-'

‘Ryan...' she said, saying his name aloud for only the second time, ‘please, stay quiet.'

She stood and ran into the little office - she'd seen the tools of her hasty plan when she'd grabbed the keys.

With trembling fingers, she pulled the spare apron from the back of the small office's only chair. Tying it with the precision of someone forced to take home ec for three years, and fastened the strings, then perched the small white hat on her head.

Aside from the blood on her hands, she looked just like a scared ice-cream purveyor. Oh gods let this work. Forget the gods, worry about the angel. There were footsteps on the broken glass and she shifted nervously, letting one shoulder poke out of the office door - to make an obvious target, rather than taking the chance that the shooter would notice the struggling, bleeding narc.

‘Come out!' the shooter demanded.

‘All right mate,' she called, letting far more of her mother's accent slip into her voice than normal. The English accent that she suppressed. The accent that she felt no connection to. The accent she only felt contempt for. ‘All right, I'm coming out. Nobody has to do nothing crazy, all right?'

She stepped out, and there was a sudden pain. Looking down, she saw a knife protruding from her shoulder. She looked up and saw the Solstice that had thrown it: Kane.

‘What the bloody hell did you do that for?' she screamed, imitating her cousins and their nasal whines. Lurching forward, she distanced herself from the small measure of safety that the counter and the office provided, and slumped over one of the small tables. ‘Why did you do that?' she cried at him.

He looked down at her, apparently trying to discern if she was a recruit or not. ‘What did I do to you?' she asked, forcing tears from her eyes. Panic raced through her as she stared up at the Solstice - logic demanded that he recognise her, unless of course, his memory resembled that of a goldfish...or if he genuinely believed that he'd killed all of the code monkeys at the mansion. She doubted Solstice chased ghosts.

‘I thought-'

‘That I was that MI6 reject?' she said, choking on false cries. ‘I was in the office, then I heard all that noise, and then Bruce was dead, then that...that...secret agent man ran out the back door. Why did he kill Bruce?'

Shifting the blame from him seemed to relax him a little. ‘He's evil,' the Solstice began, ‘I'm trying to stop him.'

‘By stabbing a fucking innocent person? This is why my family avoids the bloody colonies.'

‘Where did he go?' Kane asked, raising himself to his full height and taking a step toward the counter.

‘Useless going that way,' she said, focusing on the pain so that she didn't panic more than was believable for her "character". ‘That's the end of the alley. Out the front door, two blocks down, then left, then you'll meet up with where the back door leads. He was hurt, but he was moving fast, must have had a bullet-proof vest on.'

‘I can't leave you like this.'

‘Bruce tripped the silent alarm,' she said, forcing out another few tears, ‘help is on its way. Go, stop him from hurting anyone else.'

Kane nodded, then ran out the front door.

She stayed still for a few minutes, making sure that he was truly gone, watching the drops of blood pool onto the white table, then made her way behind the counter again. She crouched next to her injured boss and hesitatingly placed a hand on his shoulder - the small force that it exerted made him slip to the floor.

His eyes were barely open, his breath was rapid and he'd given up all hope of trying to hold the blood in - both hands lay at his sides.

‘Stay here,' she whispered to the barely conscious narc, ‘I'll be right back.'

She stepped over him, and over the body of the clerk, to a chest freezer. One-handed, she pulled it open, then she reached for a bag of ice, but it fell closed on her arm. Again, she lifted it open, then pushed her head forward to keep it open, lest it fall closed again. She lifted the bag from the freezer, its weight jerking her injured shoulder as t slipped free of the freezer. Awkwardly, she half-dragged and half-carried it the few feet back to the agent, and pressed it against his chest.

Two more bags joined it, freezing the area around the shot - hopefully it would slow the blood flow until help got there. If help got there.

She resisted the urge to lie down and numb her own wound against the ice, knowing that if she was weak and tended to her own injuries, that they would drag her...that they would drag Ryan out in a body bag.

Removing herself from the temptation of ice, she stepped quickly back into the office - here, it held the last item needed for her haphazard plan: a computer.

In comparison to the ones she was used to using, it may as well have been a doorstop - it wasn't that old, but it was far from top-of-the range, even for it's age. The blessed internet took almost a full minute to load, from there she quickly logged into her email account, and began to compose an email with bloody fingers.

As far as narcs went, they were friendly, they were nice, and they seemed to serve an actual purpose in the world...all that being said, she had no doubt that every piece of external communication she was making was being monitored.

Abusing caps lock and the ability to copy and paste, she filled the screen with very, very libel matter.

-----
From: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com
To: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com

I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! PLANS TO DESTROY THE AGENCY!!1!PLANS TO DESTROY THE AGENCY!!1! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! EVIL EVILNESS MWHAHAHAHAH!!! SOLSTICE!!! FEY FAGGOTS!! AGENTS ARE TEH DUMB! I AM A SOLSTICE!!!!!! SOLSTICE SOLSTICE SOLSTICE AGENCY QUEEN STREET MIRRORFALL MAGIC AGENTS LEECHES SOLSTICE HOBS RECRUITS
-----

Then she hit send, and waited a tiny eternity for the email to disappear off into the net.

She slumped over the keyboard, the butt of the knife scraping against the desk while she waited for a response. It had to work. It had to work. Even if all outgoing communications were only monitored once, at the end of the day, one filled with so many keywords would certainly set off some sort of alarm.

Probably.

She sat up, and gripped the handle of the knife, wondering if this was one of the situations where it was supposed to be pulled out, or left it, lest she bleed to death before getting a response.

A new email appeared in her inbox.

-----
From: <withheld>
To: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com

...Recruit? Did you need something?

-Jones
-----

She hurriedly clicked reply, pushing aside the urge to collapse, to join Ryan and the ice, to numb the pain and hide in her mind until rescue came. She swooned, the screen in front of her becoming fuzzy, so she steeled herself, then reached up and moved the knife, the jolt of new pain rousing her from the edge of unconsciousness.

-----
To: Jones
From: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com

Sorry for keyword email. Blackout bomb. Ryan hurt. Send cavalry.
-----

The reply was almost instantaneous.

-----
From: Jones
To: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com

What's the situation? I ran a trace - the blackout covering the area will last another five minutes. Can you last that long, or can you move back into a safe area? The closest edge of the blackout is 100m away.
-----

She looked back to Ryan, slow struggled breaths assured her that he was still alive...if only barely.

-----
To: Jones
From: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com

We cant move. Bullet in his lung. Not like couldnt carry him anyeway. Well be hre. Hurry please.
-----

She bit her lip until she tasted blood, then clicked on the next reply.

-----
To: Unseen_spyder@yahoo.com
From: Jones

Four minutes now. We'll shift you out as soon as it drops.
-----

She slid out of the chair, and made her way back over to Ryan. The blood had puddled out around him, and he looked much worse for the wear. He opened his eyes to look at her as she sat beside him. ‘You're hurt,' he said.

‘I've survived a lot worse,' she said. ‘And help's coming. We're gonna be ok. You're gonna be ok, right?'

He looked away for a moment. ‘I-'

‘We'll be out of here in four minutes.'

He forced a smile onto his face. ‘Then yes,' he struggled, ‘I'll be fine.'

‘Then if it's ok,' she said as she slowly rocked back and forth, ‘I'm gonna pass out.'

23 - Stardust

Chapter Twenty-three - Wherein the story of Dajulveed is told..

Astrin looked up from his meal as the wind whistled through the cracks of a building. It wasn't a pretty sound, it was strained, hurt, and distorted by metal. Everything in this world was so harsh, so angled, so confined.

It was an ugly world. Cities here were such ugly things. At night, the sky was filled with so much unnatural light that it blocked out the stars themselves. He'd seen pictures - he knew that the entire world wasn't like this.

Part of him hoped that if she fell to this world, that she would enter it in a prettier place. A park. A beach. Somewhere that wasn't angles, boxes and dirt.

He wept as he ate, he was hungry, he was always hungry. His transformation had changed his metabolism for the worse - at least at the manor house, they had kept him fed. Out here, alone, he had no such help. The angels had found the mansion, so he wasn't able to go back there, all he could do no was wait, and hide.

The followers of the sun, or whatever that group called themselves, would be after him. They were going to kill him, use him or destroy him utterly - it didn't really matter, all that mattered was staying away long enough to see Mela again.

He gulped down the last of the meat and huddled back in the corner, hoping that the ugly building could at least help to keep him warm. He stared at the dog's carcass for a moment, seeing if there was any viable meat left on it, then forced himself to try and sleep.

He would survive the night - at least, he hoped that he would.

His stomach stirred.

His baby kicked.

Dajulveed - a year ago

The sun looked purple as it went down. The moons were the same pale green as his skin. Stardust fell through the air. It was a beautiful night, but the only Astrin could look at was Mela. It was a schoolchild crush, something to discuss with his friends after much prompting, it was nothing more, it could be nothing more. She turned and smiled, and it was a perfect moment.

He followed Mela further down the path around the lake - the distant lights of the main house were dimmer than that of the stars above. The still water was still like glass, still enough for a spirit to dance upon it. Mela cried out in delight - something she rarely did in the confines of the main house, twirled in a circle, then ran back to him.

To his surprise, and his pleasure, she grabbed his hands and danced with him. She led the impromptu dance, as was wont for women to do. He allowed himself to be pulled in lazy circles, following whatever imagined music she was listening to, following her lead. She smiled at him, and laughed again.

He gathered his courage and kissed her.

She returned the chaste kiss, then pushed him to arm's length. ‘How long have you been waiting to do that?'

He's kissed her.

Slowly, he raised a hand to his mouth, unsure of what had been real, and what had been his dream intruding upon reality.

‘Astrin?' Mela said after a moment. ‘You poor boy, shall I do it again to wake you up?'

She kissed him on the cheek, sat down, and patted the sand beside her.

It had to be a dream, this moment only ever happened in his dreams. Things like this did not happen in real life. Ladies of standing did not fall in love with their help, they didn't come into the noise of the city and go on an adventure like in a children's book. They didn't stand up to their mothers and cut themselves off from their money.

She tugged on the leg of his pants and he nearly toppled on top of her. ‘Well?' she asked him, ‘how long?'

‘Longer than I wish to admit,' he said, ‘is how long I've been wishing to kiss you, my lady.'

‘Unless you want to compare me to the sad lady or the cold lady, call me Mela, as you've always done.'

Dajulveed - Six Months Ago

Astrin looked down at Mela as they walked through the market, she was a creature of pure beauty - even in comparison to the jewels and fine silks all around them, there was nothing that could make him tear his eyes away.

The few coins and bank bills in his pocket felt heavy, weighted by guilt, rather than by mass. An entire month's pay, but still not enough to buy her more than a trifle. He'd seen suitors come by and gift her presents a hundred times more than what he could afford.

She slipped her arm through his and pulled him toward a hole-in-the wall food stall, the smell of curried meats and herbed eggs tantalised his senses - the mind may be able to live on love alone, but the stomach would always crave food.

He bought their meals and they found a spot under a tree in the small park at the intersection of the four market sections.

‘Not feeling well, Astrin?' Mela asked as she sipped from a red bottle.

He stared at his curry. ‘I haven't found you a gift yet.'

‘My birthday isn't until next week.'

‘A present for today, I mean, not, um...' he blushed as she scooted over to him. She lifted his arm and draped it over her shoulder. ‘I want to...'

‘Kiss me?' He did so, then sighed. ‘Astrin...I don't want you to be a source of gifts. You aren't a boy of standing trying to impress my mother, you're the one who wants to give me something you can't - or shouldn't - put a price on.'

‘Is that always going to be good enough?'

‘I'm going to give something, then you tell me.' She sat up. ‘Now close your eyes.'

He obeyed, and wondered what it was - he'd been eyeing-

‘Here,' she said, and placed something cold in his hands.

When he opened his eyes, he felt the world shift under him. In his hand was a large, egg-shaped piece of orange quartz. He was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open as he looked up at her. Mela's expression was pinched into one of fear and worry. ‘I didn't want to do it like this, I...'

His gaze swung back to the egg. ‘Me? Are you sure?'

She stroked the egg, as was tradition, it was her birthstone. ‘You are a good man, Astrin. That's all I need from you.'

The quartz was slowly warming in his hand. The invitation to father a child - a proposal much more serious than simple marriage.

He calmed his heart and stared straight into the eyes of the woman he loved. ‘I would be honoured, Mela.'

Dajulveed - three months ago

Naked under the stars and the moons, Astrin felt more at peace than ever before. Mela lay curled up on his chest, her soft hair tickling his chest whenever she moved.

Their child was growing inside him, with no problems - at three months into a six month gestation cycle, this was a good sign. His belly had swollen, though it was no match for his over-inflated sense of pride.

Mela's mother had been unhappy - in his opinion, marrying a servant, someone below her station, was not the kind of thing a young lady should rush into. However, his future father-in-law had relented when Mela's mother had reminded him that their branch of the family tree existed solely because a young lord had taken an interest in a scullery maid.

Since then, there hadn't been any hiccups, and for that he was glad. A lot of times, the egg failed to take the first time - in the past, old women had used this simple biological reaction as a reason to break up relationships.

He twirled Mela's hair in his fingers, and listened to a dryad sing - he wasn't sure where she was, in the lake, in a tree, one with the air, but the melody was enough to make him sleepy.

As he closed his eyes to sleep, the dryad stopped singing, and everything went quiet. He couldn't hear any of the evening birds, any of the insects, or indeed, the lake's waves lapping at the shore.

It was as though the world had stopped for a second. He gently removed Mela from his chest and stood...nothing was moving. Above him, a bird was frozen in the air, the ripples on the lake were frozen, and leaves on the wind didn't move.

Then it started...low and deep at first, like an earthquake, then higher and higher, like the screaming of a steam train.

Laughter.

It seemed to permeate the very air around him. The warm evening air vibrated with the insane giggle. He felt cold, and the memory of being buried in a snow drift came back to him. His fingers began to burn with the cold, and he watched as they turned a deeper shade, and ice crystals grow on the hair on the back of his hand. He screamed, and the warmth returned to him.

The laughter remained.

Mela stirred and pulled the blanket around her as she sat up. ‘Astrin, what is...?'

He didn't know, and that frightened him. He dropped down beside her, and she pulled him into a tight embrace - he clutched her, hoping that her touch could drive the terror away.

The laughter continued.

There was a hiss from the sand beside them, the image of a woman's face and her curly hair formed in the grains. ‘Go to your families, this is the last song of the world.'

‘What?' Mela screeched at the apparition of the dryad.

‘Pushawn, Dajulveed's god, he's dying. Escape if you can, only if you can handle the consequences, else hold each other while the world ends.'

‘How long?' he managed to choke, his brain fighting the information.

The dryad's sandy eyes flickered to his belly. ‘Long enough for you to name your child, short enough for it to become a Starbright.'

The laughter continued.

Dajulveed - two months ago

Astrin stared down at his love - she'd been quiet for a while now, still trying to come to grips with the dying world outside the windows.

The laughter had subsided somewhat, drowned in the cries of the anguished citizens, their screams of protestation and the ever-present roar of the void. The world was going to end, and there was nothing anyone could do. No hero could save them, no bargains could be made, no legend would help them.

A week to the hour after the god had begun to laugh, the void had opened up. It was giant black gaping maw in the middle of the world. It a pit into nothing or into everything - which, when seen from an objective point of view are the same thing.

‘I still don't understand,' Mela said as she stirred in his arms. He kissed her on the head and sighed.

‘No one does, it's unfair.'

‘The dead do not come back. Not after they pass through the cold lady's realm.'

‘Gods are different Mela, they're a different kind of life to us.'

‘The dead aren't meant to destroy.'

He shook his head. ‘The dead always destroy Mela, always. The dead destroy friendships, families, communities, marriages, lives. The dead can have more impact on the living than the living can.'

She buried herself deeper into his chest. ‘That's not making this any better.'

The baby stirred within him. ‘What do you want to call him?'

‘Him?' Mela asked. ‘I thought you asked the doctor not to tell you?'

‘Mysteries can only stay that way for so long. The underside of my belly turned dark this morning.'

Mela mulled it over for a moment, idly stroking his belly. ‘Natenal,' she said.

‘Your grandfather?'

She gave a nod. ‘Is it all right?'

The baby stirred again. ‘I believe he likes it.'

‘I just hope that when he-' He heard her clap her hand over her mouth. ‘He's not going to grow up is he?'

‘The dryad said the Starbright god will take care of him. It is better than nothing.'

She stood and walked to the window, her naked form beautiful in the moons' glow. He stood and followed her over, and hesitated for a moment before speaking. ‘We could go to the void.'

Her expression turned to horror. ‘I want to see my baby, at least once, I don't want to...'

‘It's not death,' he said quietly. ‘I've was told that it isn't death.'

She turned to him and shook her head. ‘It is death Astrin. It's cold. It's dark. What else could it be?'

‘A chance.'

‘That's a story!' she shouted. ‘You can't-'
\
‘Trianna did.'

This stopped her anger, and her frown turning into confusion. ‘Who?'

‘She runs one of the markets. The old lady who wears a hood because of her burns? She's not burnt,
he's not from this world.'

‘Astrin...'

‘I am telling you this, because I want to give you the option. It is one chance in a million, but if you would rather take it than sit here and wait to die, then...'

‘What would happen to us?'

‘I don't know, she said no one can know. You fall and fall and fall, sometimes you land, sometimes you simply pass into the death you believe it is.'

‘If we fell to another world, we'd be aliens.'

‘I'll go first. Maybe I could-'

She shook her head. ‘No, I won't let you.'

‘I don't want-'

‘I won't let you take my child!' She shrugged his hand from her shoulder and walked away, found her discarded robe and wrapped it around her body. ‘If he didn't have me to protect him, what would he have? You're just his father, what use would you be on your own?'

‘Then we stay. We will watch our world dissolve around us, our child will come into the world long enough for him to smile, then we all die.'

She looked at him as though he had grown an extra appendage. ‘How can you be this cold?'

‘I'm sorry.'
‘No you aren't.' She stared out the window, then deflated a little. ‘I know when you are sorry.'

‘Mela, isn't one chance for him to live, to grow up, worth chancing a fear? As a Starbright, he'll have a year of experiences, on another world, he could have-'

‘It's not worth the risk.'

‘I do not wish to sit here and wait for the end. I can't just give up.'

He shoulders dropped. ‘We'll go together,' she said quietly.

‘Mela...'

She looked up at him, her expression a mixture of fear and determination. ‘Are you sure that this is what you want to do?'

He stood silent for a long moment, then nodded.

‘Then it's what we'll do. Together.'

‘Tomorrow then. You need to tell your parents.'

‘My mother will approve. My father...he worries too much, he'll try and stop us.'

‘Nonetheless,' he said as put on his pants then lit the oil lamps. ‘I could not live with myself if I stole their chance to say goodbye to their daughter. And their grandchild.'

‘I'm sorry-' she began.

‘Don't be,' he said with a dismissive wave - a momentary image of his own parents flashing into his mind. ‘If they hadn't died, I never would have been apprenticed, and our paths would not have crossed.'

She opened the door to their wardrobe and began to pull out winter clothes. ‘Will it be cold? What will we need? Will our possessions survive the trip if we do? Wh-'

He pressed a finger to her lips. ‘I don't know, love.'

‘You should go ask your friend. Some of the markets are still running.'

He pressed a hand to his belly, feeling his baby kick. ‘As you wish. I'll also try to bring back a curry.' This seemed to satisfy her. He slipped on his shirt and reached for his bag. ‘I'll ask her what I can, but I'm not going to push for information. I don't think she had anyone to ask before she made her jump.'

‘So she should be all the more willing-'

‘I won't force her. Can you imagine how she feels right now? Escaping one world just to die in another?'

The Next Day

The void was a thing from a nightmare. The world around it was warped, there were bodies of those who had taken their own lives in the face of the horror it represented, and there was the terrible wind that was slowly sucking their whole world into it.

The reports had been right, it was like looking at everything and nothing all at once. Had it not represented the end of the world, Astrin was sure that philosophers would have looked for the meaning of life in it.

Mela took his hand and they pushed forward - it was too late to go back. Weren't they past the point of no return?

‘Mela...' he said as he slowed his pace. ‘We don't have to do this.'

She refused to look at him. ‘It was your idea.'

‘We can bring Natenal into the world, then go.'

She let his hand go. ‘If I see my child, I will never make the jump. If he is here, alive, smiling at me, I would never take the chance.'

He stared at the void, his teeth chattering and his mouth dry. ‘What if it...what if I'm wrong, what if we're wasting our only chance?'

She turned, stood on tiptoe, kissed him then smiled. ‘I believe in you.'

They ran for the void.

Mela

Mela leapt into the gaping maw of the void and felt it pull her away from the world, from her husband, from her unborn son. Away from everything she knew, and towards absolute uncertainty.

The entirety of existence lay open before her, planets and moons twirled, they whipped around aliens suns, spun then shot off into the distance.

She watched a sun explode, destroying the solar system it had sustained and protected, and in its way. Rainbow stardust filled the void and surrounded her, twisting her u p in a storm.

The stardust formed into flowers and faces, impish grins and pixie kisses stole glances and touches. A baby's laughter rang out like a bell as a new star formed.

She felt very small, and the death of her world seemed so insignificant in comparison to the wonder in front of her. At the same time, it gave her hope, her world was dying, but there was so much left in the universe that was alive.

She felt content, then she felt nothing.

She opened her eyes, and found herself wondering if she had. The darkness surrounding her wasn't simply an absence of light, it was an absence of...oh.

She felt herself come to rest against something, as though she had been floating. She felt warm hands on her insubstantial shoulders and looked up. Who she saw did not surprise her.

‘Do you know where you are?' the cold lady asked. She looked like she did in all of the stories, long black hair entwined with precious metals and stones, a long deep purple robe and a silver mask covering her face.

‘Yes, my lady, I do.'

Death looked to the endless blackness in front of them. ‘A lot of your kin went to my sister. You're one of the last to come, your world is dying alone.'

‘Others...went into the void?'

The mask nodded. ‘Most do, most prefer to take the chance.'

She felt a pang of regret. ‘My lady, my husband, is he?'

‘I have no seen him yet, Mela, he made it to safety, such as it is.'

‘And my child?'

‘His future is uncertain.'

She should be afraid, she knew she should be trying to bargain, or begging to become a ghost, she knew she-

‘Are you ready?'

‘Is anyone ever truly ready?'

Death nodded. 'Yes. Many.'

She looked to the blackness. 'What...what is...?'

The lady shook her head. ‘I do not know, I am simply the gatekeeper. May my father's blessing be with you.'

She turned to look at the void. ‘My lady, could I ask one thing of you.'

‘Mortals always ask for boons, I rarely grant them.'

She bit her lip. ‘My husband knows I love him, he knows my last thought will be of him. My son...could you tell him that his mother loved him?'

The mask considered this for a moment, then nodded. ‘I can do this.'

‘Thank you, my lady.'

‘Are you ready now?'

She reached out to the void, it didn't radiate fear or despair, it felt...it felt like home.

She said her last silent goodbyes and stepped through into the infinite.

24 - Duty

Chapter Twenty-four - Wherein Ryan gets treated, and a memory is expanded upon..

Ryan bit back on a scream of pain as his recruit slumped onto him. He turned his head a little to look at her – she was unconscious, bleeding and very, very pale. As pale as he was, he presumed. He lifted the arm from his uninjured side and pushed her a little – her injured shoulder was still touching the ice, but the weight was gone from him. Weight that only would have made him bleed out faster. Weight that would bring him closer to death.

Three minutes now.

The ice had done a lot to stem the flow of blood. It had done a lot to...

A lot to save his life.

He dropped his head back to the floor, into the pool of his own blood and did all he could to concentrate on slowing the flow of blood. He had enough time, if the rescue came when it was promised, and not long after, then they would both be fine. If it came much after that...then perhaps not.

It’d be fitting way though, a bullet to the lung, just like Carol. Bleeding out in a blackout zone, just like Carol. Except that she had been alone. She had died, alone in the dark, and he hadn’t even known she was missing.

Stef shivered, the small motions reverberating through the bags of ice.

Two minutes now.

The Solstice had looked right at his recruit and not recognised her. He’d bought the accent, and the fear. He hadn’t recognised a girl that he was willing to kill only a couple of days ago. That was what bothered him the most about the Solstice...they were so willing to dole out the death penalty – without thinking, without remorse, and without considering the effects.

They had killed a room of computer geniuses to stop them from relaying information about the code. Information that the Agency already had. They killed for no reason, then immediately forgot about it.

It was different for the Agency. They killed specific targets. They killed honest threats. They killed those who refused to back down from their ideals and cooperate. They killed those that wasted their second chances.

Then sometimes...they...he...nearly killed those who hadn’t done anything wrong. Those that... ‘I’m sorry Stef,’ he whispered to his unconscious recruit. She continued to shiver, and he foolishly hoped that the remaining time would go faster than it should.

One minute now.

He focused on the ceiling tiles, counting them to keep his mind active. Anything to keep himself active. Anything to keep himself alive.

This was different to dragging his broken, constantly glitching body out of a blackout zone. It was different, this injury had taken the fight from him, and there was no way that he could even attempt to drag himself to safety. It was worse, because he couldn’t fight it, couldn’t struggle through it, could only wait for rescue, or death, whichever came first.

Suddenly all the worry dropped away. The blackout zone disappeared and they were safe again. He concentrated for a moment, but they were shifted out before he had a chance to think the command.

He blinked, and found himself in Jones’ lab, naked and in a tank full of stabiliser liquid. His head bobbed in the viscous liquid, and he saw the blood spiraling out from the wound and into the fluid, like ink in water. A shock went through the tank, and he felt the bullet forcing it’s way back out of the entry wound.

The bullet clattered to the bottom of the tank and he let himself feel a little better, knowing that the worst was still to come. A large amount of the fluid drained away, and he took a breath of fresh Agency air.

Jones appeared in front of him, a large tray of medical instruments and vials of brightly-coloured liquids in his hands. ‘Don’t try and move yet, sir, the injury is still quite bad.’

‘Where’s my recruit?’ The rest off the fluid drained away, a thick mesh net covered his lower half, then the bottom of tank rose, effectively turning it into a surgery bed.

‘In the infirmary, getting surgery. She got out of it better than you did, sir. How long did you have left?’ the tech asked as he buttoned up his lab coat to avoid getting splashed by the blue fluid.

‘Not long, Jones, not very long at all.’ He looked away. ‘A lot closer than I want to admit.’

He stared at the tool in Jones’ hand, it was a simple, flat, roughly square piece of steel with a small round button at it’s centre; below the button was a serial number, his serial number. Jones pressed the button and a thin wedge of light appeared above the tool.

Jones leaned over him and gave him an apologetic look before cutting into his chest. There was no pain, but it always felt as through there should be pain – it was a mortal assumption, but one that most agents came to have. The tech agent neatly carved out the section of flesh around the bullet hole, then quickly disposed of it in the bin behind him.

He kept himself calm, despite the huge hole in his chest – there was no danger now, and he’d had the operation more times than he cared to remember. The tech loaded the first vial into the long hypodermic needle, and injected it into what was left of his right lung. After a moment, he felt it begin to regrew, but he kept his breath steady, not wanting to burst newly-grown alveoli.

Carefully, and with an instrument that looked very much like a pair of pliers, the tech removed all the bone fragments from his shattered ribs, then injected the second vial straight into the bone. The bone regrew – the sound was similar to the sound of a tree growing, if it was sped up a million times, but quietened down to barely above a whisper.

The next vial made the flesh regrow, then the last covered it back over with skin. The tech placed the hypodermic needle down, then tore open a cloth-backed gelatin patch, which he placed over the newly regrown skin, and affixed with blue tape.

The gelatin would help the regrown area to set, to heal properly, and to seal the skin against the microscopic chance of infection. Then, in a couple of hours, it would fade away into ash, just like the lump of flesh that had been removed, just like any blood in the store that the clean-up crew didn’t take care of, just like any dead agent left in a blackout zone. Ashes to ashes, no traces left behind.

No traces. No memories. No evidence. No impact. There and gone, just like ghosts. There and gone, leaving as little a footprint on the world as possible.

‘There you go, sir,’ Jones said, ‘hopefully as good as new.’

‘Thank you,’ he said as he required himself back into his uniform, ‘thank you, Jones.’

‘Your recruit is still in surgery,’ the tech said, ‘but she’s stable. And I’m not the only one you should be thanking, without her emails...’

He nodded to this information – the knowledge that she was stable lifted a weight from him, though he had expected no less from the Parkers, there were very few situations that they couldn’t pull a recruit back from, and their survival rate was among the highest of the Agencies, even if some of their patients had problems with the bedside manner of one half of the team.

He shifted back to his office. He ran a check – the clean-up crew had been sent to the shop, and were taking the appropriate actions, and they would deal with all of the resultant issues – like informing the family of the dead clerk.

A dead clerk that could have just as easily have been a dead recruit. A dead clerk that very nearly was a dead recruit. He slumped in his chair and spun his chair to face the window, wincing at the phantom pain in his chest – no ghosts haunted his vision, and he was grateful for that.

The image of his injured recruit flashed in his mind – the pain on her face, how pale she’d been in comparison to the blood that had stained her clothes, but behind it all, the same determination that had made her strong enough to ignore him when he’d had a gun to her head.

The same determination that was surely a factor in how she’d managed to hold onto the memory of him for so long.

The memory that...

The memory that had changed her life.

He looked down at the little girl and the doll he’d handed her – she was ignoring him now, content to play with the newly-repaired doll. He stared at her for a moment, amazed, even with all that she’d gone through, even with two of the most powerful beings in the multiverse within ten feet of her, even with no idea where she was – other than the calmness that Limbo suffused into a mortal – there seemed to be nothing more important than her doll. Mortals were amazing...and their children even more so, in truth, he envied them a little.

He looked up to Death. ‘May I take her back now, my Lady?’

Death stood silently for a moment, staring down at the child, then frowned with her “human” face. ‘No, she has not said yes yet.’

He began to form a protest – a child so young could barely form sentences, let alone voice a decision like that, the magnitude of the situation was so far beyond her that- Something grabbed his leg, his initial reaction was to kick, but he stilled the instinct and looked down. The girl was hugging his leg, the doll hanging limply in the crook of her arm. She mumbled something that sounded like “thank you”.

He looked back at the Lady, she was smiling. ‘Now she has,’ she said.

He knelt and picked up the girl, holding her close – he had no intention of letting go of her as he had done her doll. ‘Time to go home Stephanie.’

‘Don't say that,’ Death said. ‘You know there's a chance she won't make it back. Are you still willing to take that chance with her life?’

He stood this ground, and held the girl a little tighter, as if he could protect her from the situation. ‘This was my mistake. I need to correct it.’

‘You're doing this out of guilt.’

‘I could have handled the situation better.’

‘Not guilt about this,’ she clarified. ‘It’s nothing to do with the child in your arms, and everything to do with the other girl.’

He swallowed and simply stared at Death there was no point in arguing the sisters knew everything – your motivations, your choices your thoughts. It was impossible to keep anything from them. A small hand reached up and pushed on his face. ‘Dun cry!’

Death stared at him. ‘I just don't want you to make another mistake out of guilt.’

‘We couldn't,’ he choked. ‘Have predicted what happened with Carol. I can't undo that mistake, I’m not trying to make up for it-’

Her stare cut through him. ‘Yes. You are.’

‘My Lady, I am going to take this child home.’

‘By their traditions,’ she said after a long moment, ‘you'll be responsible for her.’

‘No,’ he countered. ‘Everyone is responsible for themselves. Their own mistakes. Their own choices. Their own lives. To imply outside responsibility implies they lack the will to be responsible.’

‘This is still your choice?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have to know this will affect her.’

‘She's a child, she won't remember.’

‘Believe what you wish.’ She lifted a hand and a door into the darkness appeared.

He felt the child tense up and hold him tighter. ‘Don't be afraid, Stephanie, I'm taking you home.’ He bowed his head to the Lady and stepped through the door and into the darkness. He hated the darkness, the disassociation and the urge to sink through it. Slowly, but surely, the made their way “up”, sometimes walking, sometimes floating, sometimes simply drifting. The journey always seemed to be a slow one, even though no time existed in Death’s domain.

The child tensed in his arms, her small hands grabbing handfuls of his shirt. She made small noises, but didn’t cry out – as if too afraid to make that much noise in this place of eternal silence. She pushed herself against his chest, and buried her head there, hiding in one darkness to save herself from another.

They broke through the surface into the living world and the child screamed. He'd had the experience described to him, it was like living and dying in the same moment, it was like all of the pain of your life all at once, it was like being born again.

For a moment, the child stopped screaming – he’d heard that there was a sudden peace that came with your soul finally reattaching itself fully to the body. The silence didn’t last long, however, as she the pain soon took back over. He clutched her, and could feel warm blood leaking out against his chest.

The bullet wound was now nothing more than a flesh wound – survivable, but still painful. He took a fleeting glance at the nursery – it was still devoid of parents, or people of any kind. With a thought, he shifted to the Agency infirmary, and placed the girl on the closest bed. He looked up for the doctors, but they appeared without a word.

The taller twin pushed him back. ‘How bad?’

‘Flesh wound,’ he answered, as the girl’s top was snipped away, revealing the ugly wound in her chest.

The shorter Parker injected the child with a tiny needle, and she calmed. ‘That’ll stop the pain. What’d you tell the parents, or are they waiting in the next room?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the morgue.

‘Nothing,’ he answered honestly, ‘there was no time. They...don’t know anything.’

‘Are you wanting stealth, here, boss? Or you ok giving the kid a scar?’

He thought back to the house, to the lack of response to the shots fired, to the lack of parental concern. ‘Quick and quiet,’ he said, ‘skin swatch if you have to, if we’re lucky, we can get this done under the radar.’

He stepped back to let the doctors do their work, and felt the material of his shirt catch against his chest. He looked down and found the child’s slowly drying blood.

‘So their kid nearly gets killed, gets kidnapped and operated on, and mumsy and daddy are completely unaware?’ the taller Parker asked. ‘Shiny, let’s be bad guys.’

‘There’s no evil in saving parents from a trauma,’ his shorter twin reasoned. ‘How would you feel if she were your child?’

This earned a smirk from the taller doctor. ‘So let’s be glad we can’t get burdened with sprog.’

‘You...’

He touched a hand to the blood, then shook himself and required his skin to refresh itself, and for a new shirt to appear. One quick refresh later, it was gone, but part of him could still feel it, so he refreshed his skin another dozen times, the each so quickly after the other that he could see the skin on his hands rippling.

He walked away from the doctors, retreating to their small office, and sat in one of the chairs, watching them operate on the child through the window. He lifted his head and dropped into communication mode, the world in front of him taking on a soft gray fuzz.

[Jones?]

His tech agent’s face appeared in his vision, obscured slightly by the same gray fuzz. [Yes sir?]

He sent the address of the house he’d taken the child from. [Any emergency calls from that address?]

[One moment, I’ll check.] The tech’s face turned away, and was lit by the pale light of his monitor. Lips pursed as the sound of keys being tapped and a mouse being clicked filtered through. Jones looked back to him. [No, nothing. Only call in the last fifteen minutes was to a car phone. Are you expecting trouble?]

[I’m almost hoping for it,] he admitted. [Could you keep an eye on it for a little while, I’ll let you know when you can stop.]

[Of course.]

He dropped out of communication mode, and the world regained its hard edges. He looked up and out at the doctors, who seemed to be nearly done with what they were doing. He slowly rose from the chair, and walked back out to them.

‘Ready as you need her,’ the taller Parker said. ‘Fixed the damage. Used one of your skin swatches, and a gel patch over the top.’

‘Why...mine?’

The taller Parker gave him an incredulous look. ‘Yeah, not protocol, I know, but since when is anything we do? Regular could look a little weird, especially on a babe, not the same colour. Yours will fade in a couple of hours, and babies get messy. No harm, no foul. No evidence. Bowie got something right.’

‘I don’t like that song,’ his twin remarked as he injected the girl with another needle, this one serving to wake her up. ‘Should take her back now, sir, lest you get called a changeling.’

He moved forward, and pulled the little girl into a sitting position, she blinked a few times, and sneezed on him, before dropping her head and trying to go back to sleep. He lifted her and shifted her back to the house.

Still, no one had noticed.

He put the girl back into the playpen, one thought replacing her clothes with clothes identical to those that she had begun the day in, another shifted her doll into the playpen with her. She grabbed the doll, and looked up at him. ‘Play?’ she asked, awake-again wide blue eyes looking up at him.

‘I can’t,’ he said, feeling self-conscious at talking to a child.

She pushed herself up and reached a small, pudgy arm through the playpen bars and grabbed hold of his jacket. ‘Play,’ she said again.

He crouched down to her level, and stared at her through the bars. He smiled, and opened his mouth to speak when he heard footsteps in the hall. He quickly stood and shifted away, leaving the child to her family, to her constants, not to those that were nothing but ash.

25 - Infirmary

Chapter Twenty-five - Wherein Stef wakes up, and Death sings.

Ryan blinked, and took in the buildings outside his office again, the lights in them small defenses against the dark. The moon above, plainly visible despite the clouds covering the rest of the sky. Something tugged on what he had that resembled a soul, and he looked up, watching all of the clouds disappear as the coda began. The song always came after the last ghost had danced its way through a living world. There were no more echoes to come, only more death.

He shifted to the infirmary, and found the shorter of the two Parkers in his small office, his lab coat still covered in splatters of what he could only assume was his recruit’s blood. ‘How is she?’ he asked, announcing his presence to the unaware doctor.

The Parker paused his pen, then looked up from his recruit. ‘Stable,’ he said, ‘as I reported to Jones.’ The doctor stood and handed him the unfinished report. ‘We removed the knife, stopped the bleeding, and stitched her up. We also took a skin swatch. She lost a lot of blood, good thing you got out of there when you did, otherwise you might-’

‘-have actually made things interesting for us,’ the taller Parker said as he walked into the office. ‘She’ll be fine. Mother Goose here still wants to give out band-aids to combat recruits, ignore him, hell, if he wasn’t so good with his hands, I’d probably ignore him too.’

‘You don’t mean that,’ the shorter Parker said.

‘Any permanent damage?’ he asked, before the doctors could break out into another argument.

‘We got things done quick,’ the taller Parker said, ‘so there might be a scar, though that won’t mean much to her. Seriously, boss, can you get her stabbed in some of the existing scar tissue next time? Not exactly a small target we’re talking about. You can-’

‘I don’t plan on my recruits getting injured...this was an unusual situation.’

The shorter Parker reached for his twin’s hand. ‘The Lady’s singing, can we go listen?’

The taller Parker growled, then looked up. ‘Last bag of blood’s being administered now. You can unhook her in three, and so long as you’re not planning on any vigorous activities later, she’ll be ok.’ The tall Parker gave him a serious look. ‘No vigorous activities. If you’re feeling the need, find a workaround, or be real gentle.’

‘Like you know anything about gentle,’ the shorter Parker remarked. ‘If we may sir?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I plan on doing the same in a moment.’

‘I hope not,’ the taller doctor said, ‘because I meant what I just said, no vigorous activities.’

‘I think,’ the shorter said, ‘he meant he was going to listen to the coda.’

‘Exactly,’ he said, then nodded – giving them permission to leave.

He stood still for a moment, and stared at his recruit through the Parkers’ office window. The infirmary was dark, the only illumination coming from a low-wattage lamp above her bed. Bathed in the pale light, she looked like a corpse.

He shifted to the foot of her bed, and looked up at the machines hooked to her – one monitored her vitals, one pumped a nearly-empty blood bag into her veins, and one stood silent, on duty in case her heart gave out.

‘By their traditions, you'll be responsible for her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, truly unsure if was apolosing to Death, or to the girl in front of him. He rounded the bed, switched off the IV, and gently removed the needle. He stared at her unconscious form for another moment, then quickly moved forward and gently shook her good shoulder – unwilling to see her in a state so close to death for another minute. Her breath caught, and she snorted, then her eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay closed as she began to wake up. Her eyes opened a little, and she screamed. Her lids still half-closed, she thrashed at him, attacking him with weak fists.

‘Re- Stef!’ He moved forward, and restrained her arms, not wanting for her to pull open her barely-sealed wounds. She continued to scream, kicking her legs at a target she refused to look at. ‘Stef.’

He pulled her up, hoping that a more vertical position would help her come to her senses. She opened her eyes all the way, and her screams turned into ragged breaths. She caught a glimpse of him through messy hair and fell forward. He caught her lightly, then sat on the bed, allowing her to rest against his shoulder.

For a moment, she was the child again – burying her cold, sweaty forehead against his shoulder, small hands resting against his chest. Her breath slowed, and she pushed herself away. ‘Sorry, dizzy...I think I lost some blood...are you ok?’

He stared at her for a moment, shocked silent that her first question was about his condition.

‘Are you ok?’ she demanded again. She pulled her knees to her chest. ‘Say something! I’m not dead am I? Is this that thing that happens when you die? I don’t think that happened last time, but I don’t remember much of last time, and I don’t think I’d had enough of a life for it to flash before my eyes.’ She looked around the infirmary. ‘Why is it so dark? Require: lights.’ The fact that the lights came on at her request seemed to calm her somewhat. A cookie appeared in her hand, and she shoved it into her mouth without hesitation. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all my fault. I guess that means I’m useless and fired , right?’

‘You nearly died,’ he said, finally finding his voice.

She tugged on the thin sheet, and he shifted his weight a little. She pulled up over her knees and crumbs fell onto it from the half-eaten cookie. ‘I kinda thought I wasn’t gonna wake up.’ She looked away after saying this, and swallowed the rest of her cookie. She finally brushed the hair away from her face and looked at him. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Don’t you want to know how you are?’

‘You’re the liar who got shot in the lung.’

‘I’ll be fine, I got the attention I needed. You-’

She held up a hand, then looked at the machines on either side of the bed. ‘I’m fine.’ She crinkled her nose. ‘My butt kinda hurts though...oops, sorry for the TMI. I’m more worried about the fact that you lied to me.’

‘And when exactly did I lie to you?’ he asked, handing her the glass of water that she was hopelessly grasping for.

She took a moment to drink the water. ‘When you were claiming to be Superman. Immortal, no weaknesses. That was a lie. You lied to me, Ryan. But...’ she said as she shook the glass. ‘Turn this into coffee and I’ll forgive you.’ He tapped the edge of the glass, and it turned into coffee. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

She stared at the glass. ‘This should be hot,’ she said, biting the top of the glass. She shrank back, and curled up further, as if wanting to disappear inside of herself. ‘It’s hot coffee, the heat should be transferring through the glass and burning my fingers.’ She took a sip. ‘Nice and hot, but my fingers are fine. Why is that? That doesn’t make sense. But nothing makes sense anymore. He didn’t recognise me, why didn’t he recognise me? It’s hot coffee, but the glass isn’t hot. It’s magic isn’t it? I never expected magic, I always wanted it, but it’s not real, right? Magic can’t be real. But of course it’s real, I’ve seen it. Can’t disbelive my own eyes, unless they’re lying to me.’ She shook her head. ‘Jesus. Sorry. I think my brain got a bit scrambled. Ignore me.’

He stared at her for a moment, and she seemed to calm down a little, resigning herself to sipping on the glass of coffee.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘I hate to put more on you tonight...’

She brushed some hair behind her ear, looking at him with a sober and resolved face. ‘Anything.’

He extended a hand. ‘Come with me.’

She reached for his hand, but withdrew it and looked down at herself.

‘Not wearing this.’ He nodded, and required her into a loose pair of pants, and a loose shirt – not wanting to put any pressure on the bandage. He extended his hand again, and this time, she took it. ‘Is there a price to pay?’

‘For what?’

She leaned back against the pillows and indicated to her injured shoulder. ‘I may as well have been put back together by an EMH. This is Star Trek-fast. Real people in real hospitals don’t get better this quick. It’s the same night isn’t it, it’s still the same night, and I’m awake, and the only reason I know I’m in any pain is because my shoulder’s numb, and it wouldn’t be numbed if it didn’t hurt. Hell, people on TV on those shows where their only purpose is to sticky-icky with the “hot” surgeon don’t get better this quickly. I know these things, I’ve read the entirety of wikipedia.’

‘Recruit-’

‘Is there a price? I can get better quick, but the price is that it eats away at my lifespan or something equally M-wordedly ridiculous?’

He hesitated for a moment. ‘There’s only...the cost that you choose to pay.’

She set her glass of coffee aside. ‘What?’

He looked her up and down. ‘On the whole, you feel fine now, don’t you?’

‘...yeah.’

‘Less than half an hour ago, you were lying beside me, dying.’ He softened his look as the fear crept into her eyes. ‘It’s true, I’m sorry but it’s true. You can’t concentrate on slowing the flow of blood like an agent can, you can’t heal yourself like a fae, or even a halfbreed, can – you’re only human.’

‘I take offense at that, I’ve never self-identified as human.’

‘Recruit.’

‘Narc.’

‘You’re here, you’re fine. What would you do, would you do it again?’

‘I don’t like getting hurt.’

‘Would you do it again?’ She looked up at him, then gave a small nod. ‘Even if there was no guarantee that the medical resources would be available?’

‘Why wouldn’t-’ His recruit promptly shut her mouth, and looked away.

‘See?’ he said. ‘You’re already paying the price. You’re already relying on the safety net. It can make you reckless, knowing that you can receive medical treatment so far beyond what mortals can offer...it makes some take chances that they would otherwise not take. To put themselves in more danger, because it can be wiped away if they get out of the situation. Some recruits die, because they expect that we can pull them back once they’ve gone over the edge and into Death’s realm. We can’t. We can’t, Stef. Once you’re gone, you’re gone.’

‘I came back,’ she said in a small voice, ‘you brought me back.’

‘That was...an unusual situation. We don’t do that when recruits die. We don’t stand up to the Lady, we don’t travel through death and carry them home. What happened...you were a child, and you needed a second chance, what happened to you was my fault, and I was simply rectifying that mistake. You...could have easily died tonight. I need you to understand that I can’t go back in and pull you out again, I doubt she would let me retrieve you a second time.’

‘I don’t want you making a big deal out of it. I did what I had to do. Consider it repaying the favour, and just try and not get shot in the lung again.’

He extended his hand again. ‘Come with me.’ This time, she took his hand, and as she did, he shifted them too the roof. There were recruits up there from every division, and there were a few pure humans among them, but mostly it was those with a little bit of fey in their family histories.

Stef’s hand tensed before she pulled it away. ‘Too crowded,’ she whispered, and he immediately shifted them again.

‘Is this better?’ he asked as they appeared on an empty roof.

‘Yeah,’ she said as she walked to the edge, ‘yanno, people, bad.’ She looked around. ‘But...I’m an idiot, was what you wanted to show me back there?’

‘No it’s everywhere.’

She gave him a quizzical look. ‘If this is-’

He cut her off. ‘You’ll understand in a moment. Listen, what do you hear?’

‘If it's the 1812 Overture, I'm out of here.’

He stared at her for a moment, failing to see how a piece of classical music could be bad. Music was never inherently good or bad, there was only ever the intent bound to it, it was the listeners who decided on the meaning. ‘Just listen, please.’ She straightened herself, closed her eyes and tilted her head up.

He handed her a wine glass and pulled a small hip flask from his jacket pocket and poured the tinted liquid into the glass.

‘You’ve already had me in bed tonight,’ Carol said, ‘there’s no need to get me tipsy.’

‘You never knew magic before me, and I want you to hear what’s happening.’

‘Ryan?’

‘There’s blood in it, don’t ask me what kind, I don’t want to tell you, it will help to hear...to understand.’

‘Ryan...’

He placed the empty hip flask back in his pocket and took her spare hand. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘I love you, and that’s your answer,’ she said as she nervously put the glass to her full lips and drank down the fae wine.

The coda was so loud that it was like an experience in stereo for anyone who would hear it. Concentration creased his recruit’s forehead, them suddenly her eyes snapped open. She stared for a moment, then looked around for the source. ‘Singing, who the hell is singing? Why- What? Why couldn’t I hear that before?’

‘You weren’t listening for it.’

‘Who is singing?’

‘Death. This is Dajulveed’s coda. She's singing for the end of the world. The dirge. She sings every time a world dies. The parade of ghosts has passed, all that remains is for Death to do her duty.’

‘Am I...’ she asked hesitantly, ‘hearing this with my ears?’

‘No,’ he answered, ‘and yes. It’s not just sound.’ He leaned on the railing next to her and watched as she experimentally covered her ears with her hands, then covered her eyes, her mouth moving as if speaking some equation to work everything out.

He kissed her, tasting the remains of the wine on her lips – it was a strange, old taste, only natural as the wine had spent several centuries aging in the depths of an oak tree. Almost immediately, her expression changed.

‘That song...’ Carol whispered, ‘it’s so terrible. All the death, all the hopelessness, all the-’

He pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Listen, beneath that, to the beauty, to the memory, to the endurance. There is no world whose story is only death and pain.’ She closed her perfect blue eyes, as if that could block out the reality from around her. ‘Make it go away, please. I don’t want to hear it anymore.’

‘It will be over soon,’ he said as he wrapped his arms around her.

‘Is it just over the city?’ Stef asked him as she rubbed at her injured shoulder. ‘I mean, shouldn’t every rooftop be covered with funeral-goers?’

‘No, like I said, it’s everywhere. All across the world, anyone who can listen, whoever knows what to listen for will be able to experience this. It’s a mark of respect, it’s a small prayer against the same thing happening to this world. Voices in the dark, being spoken to ears that cannot hear.’

‘You’re really cheerful, you know that right?’

He ignored the comment, and looked to the sky. ‘Everything is coming to an end, look up,’ he said as he pointed to the bleeding moon.

26 - Coda

Chapter Twenty-six - Wherein a bird is born, and messages are sent.

Stef shook her head and kept her eyes from the sky, the song was enough for now - she wasn't sure that she could handle any more surprises. The song that she wasn't quite sound, and that seemed to play the listener as much as it did the unheard instruments.

The singing grew louder. The words of the song weren't English - she wasn't even sure they were language at all. She could feel the sounds pushing and pulling on emotional triggers, dredging up old memories and emotions as though it was being heard by her soul. It was the saddest thing she'd ever heard, and at the same time, a celebration of past glories and hope for those that remained.

‘Stef,' the agent said again, ‘look up.'

She swallowed and looked up. She expected ghosts, she she expected zeppelins, there was nothing, just the moon, which she easily looked past. ‘I don't-'

‘Look again,' he said.

She looked up again, there were no shapes hiding in the clouds, no ripples in the sky, nothing expect for the moon. She looked at it again, it hung heavily in the air, large and tinted, like a harvest moon. She kept staring at it, there being nothing else obvious to focus her attention on. She chanced a look at the agent, who simply nodded back at the moon. She sighed, then looked back up, trying to see whatever was really there, but saw nothing. It was just a harvest moon in a sky with a dwindling amount of cloud cover.

The tint was wrong. It wasn't a harvest moon. ‘What's going on?' she asked as she turned her head to look at the moon from new angles. Slowly, but surely, the tint began to crawl away from the edges of the moon's face, coalescing and growing darker, becoming nothing but a dark, rough oval in the centre of the bright moon.

‘We're going to need another Surprise Fiction episode,' she muttered, tightening her grip on the railing.

‘This can't be recorded,' he said as he straightened his jacket, ‘by any means other than memory. People don't look up anymore, few will notice, fewer will pay attention, and the tiny portion that watch this and see will understand that they've seen something amazing, or assume that they've gone mad.'

‘Or just scared and join the Solstice.'

‘Or that,' he said. ‘It's happening.'

The bright glow of the moon dropped away, leaving only dull, muted light - enough to highlight the dark oval in its centre, but not enough to chase away the fears that lived in the shadows. The oval shook violently, and began to crack apart.

I don't want to be here. I don't want to be here. This is too big, too big. I can't handle this. I can't handle...Take me home. She looked over at the agent as bright streams of light shot from the oval. Take me home. Take me- ‘-home.'

The agent didn't hear her, his attention fixed firmly on the sky above.

The oval stopped shaking, went still, then exploded, bursting into flames. The explosion's wave hit, and she raised her arms to hide her face from the heat. The force behind it drove her away from the railing, but a strong hand steadied her back to stop her from falling.

Shaking, she slowly lowered her arms - the dark oval was gone, replaced with a much larger ball of fire. A shriek pierced the night, and she wished that teleportation was one of the phenomenal cosmic powers that they gifted to recruits.

‘There's no need to be afraid, it's not meant for our world.'

‘What isn't?' she demanded. Against her better judgement, she looked back up at the great fiery ball. Two thin lines of blue flame ran across it, and two sections peeled way, spread themselves wide, shook, flapped...

‘Oh my god.' With another explosion, the last section pulled away from the centre, a head. A proud, fiery head. With a cry, the rest of the body formed. ‘Oh my god,' she said again, sitting down very quickly on the cold concrete roof, the impact making her shoulder twinge with pain. Her head spun but her eyes locked on the creature in the sky. She shivered, unable to handle seeing the... ‘Tell me that isn't what I think it is. Or that it is. I don't know... Is it a...?'

‘Yes,' the agent said, ‘it's a phoenix.'

The bird was massive. This was no professor's pet, it was a force of nature. Its wings spread the width of the moon's face, and head to tail, it was nearly as tall. It flapped its wings, and the few brave clouds that had remained were blasted away by the heat. Red and gold flames pulsed, its heartbeat echoing across the night.

One of Ryan's fingers came into her vision, and she turned her head to see what he was pointing at. For a moment she saw nothing, then she saw it, standing on one of the rooftops was a figure in a dark robe. The phoenix descended toward the figure, managing to glide past the metal-and-glass buildings without melting them.

The figure stepped up into the air, and met the phoenix, pressing her tiny head to its massive one. ‘Death,' Ryan said, answering her unasked question, ‘the phoenix is one of her beings, it carries out the duties she cannot. It will cleanse Dajulveed, ending everything, so that the mirror can fall.'

‘Stop it,' she whispered. ‘We're the good guys, right? Aren't we supposed to...? Can't we...? I dunno, do something?'

He smiled. ‘I thought you had no interest in saving the world.'

‘I don't, I'm just trying to understand what's going on.'

‘There's nothing to save, Stef, this is the funeral, and the phoenix is the pyre's torch.' He reached a hand down to her. ‘You're safe here, it can't hurt you.' She stood, but shied away from the railing, not wanting to be any closer than necessary. The phoenix wheeled up into the air, shrank in size a little, then perched onto the building that Death had come from. ‘It's always the same,' he said, ‘no matter the world, the same ceremonies are observed. Sometimes, worlds bring it on themselves, others are just victims...in either case, there are always innocents, and every life is always lost, so we have to respect the dead, just as we hope that someone will respect us.'

‘I can't handle this,' she whispered, the words tumbling out before she had a chance to consider them.

‘It's always too much the first time.'

‘Like you'd know.'

‘I know the reactions of those around me. And...consider it from my perspective, agents are always the last beings to die on a world - except for those that take their own lives. They have to stand, watch and wait, with the knowledge that they failed, that everyone they care about is dead, or so far away that they may as well be.'

He pulled an envelope from his pocket, then stepped up onto the railing. ‘What the hell are you doing?' she cried as she rushed forward, grabbing for his jacket. ‘You're gonna-' He looked down and smiled. ‘You're...not gonna fall are you? Stupid narc.' He held the envelope aloft and the phoenix turned its head toward them.

No, no, no, don't bring that thing over here. Keep it away from me. I've been dead, it's gonna burn me. Oh god, I don't want to burn. Please don't-

Then run, if that's what you want.

What if this is a hallucination?

Then run away, if that's what you believe.

Why aren't you telling me what to do? You're supposed to help me!

You aren't going to be happy with anything I have to say, you want to decide this on your own.

No, I don't, tell me what to do!

Make a choice.

‘So it's a messenger service too?' she asked, planting her feet so that she didn't run for the fire ladder.

‘In as much as it can be. It burns the letters, rendering the ashreaders the only ones who ever read the words, but it carries the intent.'

‘What's in the letter?'

He shrugged. ‘It may as well be a prayer. Prayers don't get answered, things happen, or don't - the gods are utterly indifferent, hence why agents exist in the first place. But...sometimes you just have to say the words. It's going through the motions, but if the words make you feel better, or make someone else feel better, then they've served their purpose.'

The phoenix flew toward one of the other groups of mourners, accepting another letter. ‘Is it going to burn me?'

The agent turned back to look at her. ‘What?'

‘I can reconcile the fact that I might be imagining all of this, that it's nothing but dream and shadow brought around by the fact that I've finally gone more insane than I can handle. But...if that isn't the case, and all of this is real, then I've died, and I don't think I've reconciled that yet. I've had two strangers look at me and tell me that I've died, ok one was a monster, and one probably had some experience with the matter, but they knew, and I didn't.'

‘You were not supposed to remember. You were so young, I never dreamed that you would remember anything, let alone as much as you did. I could have wiped your memory, but I didn't think it was necessary. I'm sorry, I should have.'

‘No!' Wow, Spyder, unexpected. ‘If this is real, then it's amazing. I mean, all I ever wanted to do was find Narnia so that I could escape. This...well, it's not as good, but as the king said to the Shetland pony, it's good enough.'

The phoenix moved toward the next building, one mighty flap of its wings propelling it most of the distance. In one quick movement, he crouched and grabbed her by the back of the shirt, then he lifted her up onto the railing, keeping a hand on her shoulder. She clutched his jacket, her feet slipping on the thin, round pipe that served as the railing. ‘Oh god, don't let me fall. Shoot me if you want, but dun let me go splat!'

Ryan moved toward it, letting her go. She shrieked, images of both of them plummeting to their respective deaths dancing in her mind. She clenched her feet in her shoes, trying to buy more purchase on the pipe...pipe she was no longer standing on.

Her grip on his jacket slipped a little as he moved out toward the phoenix, away from the building, away from anything to stand on. With both hands, she grasped the end of his jacket, and tugged it a few times, and he tuned back to look at her. ‘If I look down, will I fall?'

‘The world is not made of such flimsy magic.'

She looked down, and saw that she was no longer standing on the railing, rather floating a little above it. ‘Are you doing this?'

‘No,' he said, ‘we haven't been able to fly for a long time.' He turned and pulled her hands from his jacket, holding one of her tiny, trembling hands. ‘You're not going to fall.' She nodded, but kept an iron grip on his hand - if this short madness ended, he'd at least be able to shift her to safety.

Another worry popped into her mind as she tried to come to terms with the fact that she was, in fact, flying. She kicked her feet and rose a little, looking down at him. ‘Don't tell the Captain, ok?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

She felt colour rush to her face. ‘Captain Hook was my imaginary friend when I was a kid, he woul dhave made me walk the plank if he caught me flying like Peter.'

He gave her the confused look again, then smiled.

She slowly let go of his hand, and tried to dredge up her memories of ballet, then pulled a few rusty movements - which were a lot easier now that gravity was on her side, and she didn't have an angry woman threatening her with a riding crop.

Slowly, and terrified that she was pushing her luck, she pushed on the air beneath her feet and rose away from him. With a giddy giggle, she pushed her arms forward - intent on pulling the supposedly simply maneuverer of flipping in a circle.

Unfortunately, she only made it halfway.

Knees hanging on an invisible monkey bar, she looked down at the street from the wrong way up. Hair fell past her face, as did the front of the four-sizes-too-large shirt. Holding the shirt with one hand, intent on at least keeping her modesty, even if she couldn't save face, she tried to swing herself back up.

A labored grunt as she tried to grab the air caught the agent's attention. ‘How,' he asked, turning his head to look down a her, ‘did you manage that?'

‘I'm special?' she squeaked. ‘halp plz. Help me, please.'

He grabbed her free hand and pulled her upright, her body traveling easily through the air, then let her go when she regained what constituted balance.

All thoughts disappeared as the phoenix approached.

She fought the urge to throw her hands up and Superman it away from the bird, or to jump back down to the rooftop and take the ladder away from this flying-burny-birdy madness.

Shut up. Give in. This is magic.

I...

The phoenix reached them and Ryan moved forward. He reached the envelope toward the phoenix. Immediately, it burst into flames, the ashes disappearing before they had a chance to flutter of into the wind. He ran a along the phoenix's breast, his fingertips slipping into the fire. He jerked his hand, pulling away a piece of flame, then lifted it and shook it until the fire disappeared. It was a feather, a gold and jeweled feather. With a flick of his wrist, he signed his name in the air, a thin trail of fire burning his name into the night.

It looked to her, its eyes the brightest flames she'd ever seen, and she felt like an ant. ‘It's not going to hurt you,' he said, ‘now, hurry, others are waiting.'

‘No, it's ok, I'm ok, it can go somewhere else.'

‘Sign.'

‘Ok then, give me your quill...'

‘You know I can't,' he said as he slipped it into his pocket.

No I didn't. She stepped forward, and stared up at the wall of flame that was the phoenix. Beneath the rippling fire, she could see its heart, each beating pounding into her as easily as the song had. She closed her eyes and reached one hand forward, preparing herself for third-degree burns.

All mental preparation made, she reached a hand up to the phoenix, expecting pain, expecting heat, expecting it to realise that she had been among the dead, and to send her back there as a gasp of ashes.

She only felt soft plumage.

Running her hand upward, all she felt was soft, warm, feathers. She released her other hand's grip on the agents coat, smoothing the ruffled feathers back down. She opened her eyes and looked up at the bird, her hands no longer shaking, her urge to run quelled and only a strange sense of peace. The peace of a graveyard.

Dajulveed?

The voice was loud, and old...and definitely wasn't one of hers. She thought of the world that she knew nothing about, save for a few ghostly images, and a man that was now a monster. A man that had done everything to escape his fate, and to find the woman he loved. A sappy, Disney story, but one that he'd sacrificed so much for.

I hope the Beast finds his Belle.

Her fingers touched on something hard, and she pulled on it, a piece of the fire coming loose. As Ryan had done, she shook it, extinguishing the flame, leaving only the golden feather behind, a smattering of opals set into the metal. She lifted the quill and felt it catch on the air, then signed her name, the letters of her name burning brightly before being whisked away by the breeze.

The phoenix shrieked, the flew toward the next building.

‘Oh...wow...'

‘Most recruits have to wait years to see a phoenix,' he said as he moved back toward the railing. Turning, he sat on it, letting his legs dangle free, kept slightly buoyant by whatever was allowing them to fly.

She sat beside him, hands resting on the cool metal. Cool metal that began to slip and change. She looked down as the railing lost its rounded shape, grew flat, wider and softer, morphing into a seat. A front row seat to the end of a world.

She stared at the quill in her hands. ‘Is this going to crumble into ashes as well?'

He looked down at his own quill - where hers was set with opals, pieces of garnet glinted in his. ‘No,' he said, ‘it will likely outlast me.'

She held hers aloft, the light of the phoenix catching on the gold. ‘So what do I do with it?'

‘Secret it away, you may need it for trade one day. Keep it as a reminder of a dead world. Write words on the air for an ashreader. Do what you wish with it.'

She twirled it, the opals catching the renewed light of the moon. ‘I don't think I'll need a reminder of today.' She settled herself into the chair, drawing he knees up, and stared at him. ‘And never apologise again for not wiping my memory. My life was so simple a week ago, but I couldn't go back to it. I wouldn't trade this for anything.'

The phoenix wheeled into the sky, moving off toward the next group of mourners, small pieces of flame breaking off and dwindling into nothingness.

‘Thank you,' the agent said quietly. She looked over to him, confused. ‘In the store, before everything happened...Wanting to be remembered is no evil. You aren't the only child I've rescued. I've pulled some from hostage situations, others from collapsing buildings that regular emergency crews couldn't get to, halfbreed children literally from the hands of Solstice on the borders of their territory. I have saved dozens, if not more.'

‘You should get a medal.'

‘It's part of the job. It is the job. This is what we do. This is why you wear the uniform, even if makes you a target. That wasn't my point. It didn't have a profound effect on any of them. I am sorry for whatever negative consequences it has brought around, but I do not apologise for being remembered.'

She smiled, and stared at the phoenix over her knees, cool breeze chasing away the bird's warmth.

Magic.

*****

Ryan smiled as his recruit began to snore. It wasn't surprising in the least - she shouldn't have out of the infirmary, let alone having the extra pressure and stress of a phoenix added to her day's experiences. Sleep relaxed her posture, and she fell forward, nearly tumbling from the building. He caught her by the back of the shirt and pulled her toward him, one thought extending the seat, the other shifting her around so that she was lying down, head leaning against his side - which had to be more comfortable than sleeping sitting up.

Another thought shifted his jacket from his back, and over her like a blanket.

‘There were eight dozen worlds, ‘ Death said, ‘where you pulled the trigger on her.'

He looked up at her, only the bottom half of her human-seeming face visible beneath her cowl. ‘I don't care what other versions of me did. I didn't here, and that's the important thing.'

‘You said you weren't going to be responsible for her. You were telling the truth at the time.'

‘This was never my intent,' he said, ‘it just seemed to happen. She remembered me, she wasn't supposed to remember me. It...changed everything. I am an agent. This is what I am, this is my life. We save people, we rescue people, and then they're gone, back to their own lives. To see her again, to actually see the effect of one of my actions, to know that she grew up, and has lived a life, I am so glad I did not let her go.'

His recruit moved, turning over to face the back of the impromptu seat, wrapping his jacket around herself.

‘No regrets?'

He looked up to watch the phoenix shoot toward the sky, the night seeming to catch on fire. ‘None.' When he looked back, Death was gone. He sat for a moment more, keeping a hand on his jacket, lest she unintentionally commit suicide again.

After the smell of ash faded from the air, he concentrated and shifted them back to her room - he'd articulated the shift so that she landed in her bed. Another thought brought transposed his recruit and her quilt - he left his jacket in her clutches though, not wanting its absence to disturb her.

Not seeing the need to shift back to his office, he simply walked out of the room, quietly closing the door behind himself.

Across the hall and to the left, another recruit was leaving their room - O'Connors. The ex-Solstice had a towel wrapped around his neck and a bottle of water in one hand - obviously heading for the gym.

‘Checking on the newbie, sir?'

‘Not quite,' he answered honestly.

This brought a look of confusion to the boy's face, which was quickly dismissed. ‘Still need me to keep an eye on her, or are we putting her upstairs?'

‘No, she's staying with us.'

O'Connors took a step toward the room. ‘Then I might get her to come run laps, or run a scenario. I trust you, sir, but she needs a lot of work.'

‘Not tonight,' he said, raising a hand to halt the boy's movement. ‘She's asleep.'

‘Sorry, should have figured that. If I'm excused.'

‘Of course,' he said with a nod.

27 - Doublespeak

Chapter Twenty-seven - Wherein two conversations are had.

‘Nurg,' Stef muttered as she knuckled the sleep from her eyes. The urge to go back to sleep was strong, but the strange urge to get up and do something was stronger.

Damnit, knew they'd be programming me in my sleep.

You're paranoid, you know that, right?

She pushed the blanket back, not bothering to be surprised that she was no longer on the roof's edge - knowing that if she'd slept there, then she would have woken up in a morgue. Except that she wouldn't have.

The fact, however, that she seemed to be wrapped in Ryan's jacket, was a little strange, and made extracting herself from the sheets even harder. Shaking herself and the sheets like an angry child, however, she managed to pull herself free, and stop herself before falling from the bed.

Require: chair.

With considerable effort, she tossed the jacket onto the chair, unsure if she should return it, or just banish it back to where it had been required from. She stood on unsteady legs and crossed the room, one hand on the wall for balance. The cool tiles in the kitchenette did nothing but annoy her.

Require: fluffy slippers.

Fluffy white slippers appeared on her feet. She slapped at the kettle until it went on, and dug the instant coffee and sugar out of the cupboard above.

Require: chocolate.

She crumbled four squares into the cup and munched on the rest while she waited for the water to boil. She made the mocha on autopilot and sat on the end of the bed.

Require: more chocolate.

She stared at the mocha. ‘You aren't going to work fast enough, are you?'

Require: caffeine IV.

Nothing happened. She made the request again, but again, the coveted lifeline failed to appear.

‘Crap.'

A gulp of the burning liquid began to dredge her higher functions from unconsciousness. She let her head droop, and tried not to fall back on the soft bed, no matter how inviting it was.

There was a knock on the door, and she jumped, spilling some of the mocha over her knee.

‘Owie...' She looked up at the door. ‘I have a license to kill, you know!'

There was a click as the door unlocked and Curt poked his head around the corner. ‘Yeah, but you're not supposed to use that against people on your team.'

She required herself into her uniform, and felt the coffee stain on her skin evaporate. Curt, dressed in a sweaty training uniform, shook his head disapprovingly at her suit. ‘C'mon newbie, no-one's gonna get mad at you if you don't walk around in full dress the whole time.' He gestured at his own uniform. ‘This is really comfy.'

She stared at him, shrugged, and drank more of her mocha.

He looked past her for a moment, likely at the jacket, and gave a shrug of his own. ‘C'mon newbie, you missed training, you can at least take some pot-shots at the paper targets.'

She required her drink away - there were worse things to do first thing in the morning than fire weapons. And guns were loud - she was sure they would drown out at least some of the sounds he made. He insisted on making those. Mouth words. Mouth words aimed at her.

He whistled at her like a dog, and she followed him out, wondering if she could get away with making the roof collapse on his head.

They slipped past the mess hall, and the rest of the recruits, who were noisily eating breakfast and laughing at some joke. Once into the gym, she found she had a question of her own. ‘Is it your job to baby-sit me right now?'

‘Not specifically,' he said as he approached the range and required his gun - a make a lot more solid-looking than her own girly gun. ‘Why?'

‘Why aren't you eating breakfast with them? It's where you were yesterday.'

He took aim at the paper target and fired off three shots. Two to the chest. One to the groin. ‘You remember that thing I told you yesterday?'

‘The Solst-ass thing?'

‘It makes the uncomfortable, really uncomfortable. I've got the approval of multiple agents to, well, be alive, and to be serving here. I might be on perma-probation and half a step from the grey list, but they accept me for what I am, and are giving me a solid second chance. Recruits, on the other hand, always look at me funny, like the don't know if I'm going to snap or not, like they can't trust me. Like they don't want to trust me.'

One shot the shoulder. One shot the neck. One shot to the heart.

There was a sound of thunder, and somehow, she just knew that everyone else was dead.

She looked up at Curt. Hanging around Ryan was beginning to make her less scared of people taller than her, but this guy...The Solstice at the mansion had committed mass murder for no good reason, and would have killed her with the rest.

And right now, the ex-Solstice had a gun. One he was very proficient with.

He finished emptying the clip, and turned to look at her, as he ejected the clip into his waiting hand, disappointment flooding his face as he looked at her. ‘Oh c'mon newbie, not you too. You're cuddly with an agent, how the fuck can you be scared of me?'

Her cheeks flushed with memories of her weakness - of needing a hug after confessing her childish thoughts, and of practically throwing herself at Ryan after waking up in the infirmary. She grimaced, not knowing that it was so obvious how weak she was, but, by the same token, Ryan didn't seem the kind of person to bad mouth a person behind their back, no matter how-

‘How'd you know?' she asked at last, folding her arms across her chest.

‘I was gonna get you to run laps with me last night, but you were unavailable.' He slammed another clip into his gun. ‘I'm safe, ok? Do you really think he'd hesitate to cap me if I put a foot out of line? So, come here, pull out your girly gun and shoot, you need the practice.'

She required her gun, visions of dead hackers dancing in her mind.

‘Tell me that you never killed a bunch of people for no reason.'

‘I didn't.'

‘What did you do then?'

‘I was just a red shirt. Never did anything of importance.'

‘How'd you get your second chance?'

‘You might be a newbie, but it has to have filtered down that the Solstice will kill anybody, even babies.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Yeah, well, I rescued one. I just picked it up and ran, all the way to the Adelaide Agency. Just threw myself on the floor, in front of their Natalie - Cynthia - and gave up.'

Somehow, this only made her hate him more. Starfish. She lifted her gun toward the target. It's only the starfish story. Made a difference to that one kid, but what about the rest. What about the rest?

‘No,' he said as he looked at her stance. ‘Feet wider apart. You need to be solid to take a shot. No good taking a shot if it's just going to throw you off-balance, it's stuff like that that gets you killed.'

She lifted the gun again and fired - this time, the bullet very nearly hit the target.

‘Better than yesterday at least. Seriously, don't look up the barrel of a gun, not unless you mean it.'

She nodded.

He leaned against the side of the range. ‘So last night...'

‘I feel stupid for falling asleep,' she admitted.

Curt shrugged. ‘Some girls do, it's not like it's a big deal.' He moved a little closer though. ‘Inquiring minds, however, want to know how it was.'

The phoenix was there every time she closed her eyes, phantoms of its soft plumage graced her hands and memories of nothing but air beneath her feet made her giddy. It hadn't been a corporate building and the functional conjuring of weapons, it had been magic, the kind that had made her hide in wardrobes for an escape out of the humdrum. She looked over at Curt - she'd be damned if she'd say that to him. ‘Awesome,' she said - it conveyed what it needed to, without making her sound like a weak little girl, ‘it was awesome.'

‘That's all you're going to say?'

She shrugged. ‘I was flying, what else is there to say?' She took another shot, and it hit the edge of the paper target and she allowed herself to grin at the small victory.

He made a neutral noise. ‘Explains a couple of things at the least.'

‘Hm?'

‘Your aim seems to have improved,' he said.

Phantom pain echoed in her shoulder. ‘Yeah, well, what we were talking about wasn't the only thing to happen last night. And...I think I finally grokked onto the fact that I need to learn to shoot straight. Running laps though, not gonna happen.'

‘"Injury" or not,' he said, wiggling his fingers, ‘there's only so much training you can get excused from. You want otherwise, you go upstairs.'

She gave him an incredulous look. ‘Getting stabbed in the shoulder an damn near bleeding to death gets me sarcastic air quotes? Sorry, I'll get shot in the head next time.' She made a quick requirement. ‘It's probably minor on the weekly injuries list, but it bloody hurt, ok?'

‘Huh.'

‘What?'

‘Nothing,' he said quickly, ‘I thought you were getting special dispensation, cause of, yanno. Stabbed, huh? Welcome to the Agency.'

She scaled back on the amount of sound that her ears were able to take in, then turned back to the paper target, wishing that it was as easy as auto-targeting and hitting a familiar little button. Curt was still making mouth words, but she managed to not hear most of them.

She put her gun down, flexed her left hand, feeling the impression of the gun still there, then lifted it again, and shot - what had been intended as a headshot slamming into the paper target's shoulder.

You really suck at this.

Curt echoed the voice's opinion. ‘Newbie,' he said loudly, cutting through all of her ability to block him, ‘maybe you should-'

‘Already gone,' she said, requiring her gun away, and heading for the door, for the lift, for the tech department.

28 - Respite

Chapter Twenty-eight - Wherein Stef meets Merlin, and a truth is revealed.

Stef walked quickly from the gym, and made a beeline for the lift. She pressed the call button, and predictably, eight seconds later, the lift arrived. She took a quick look at the panel of buttons before her, and stabbed the one for the floor above, the tech department.

When the doors slid open, a pair of Goggles looked up at her. It took her another moment to realise that they were attached to a slight, pale-skinned young teenager. He stood directly in her path, and stared at her, seemingly having no intention of moving.

‘Um?’

Slowly, he extracted a hand from his labcoat, and lifted it. He held his hand up, the fingers slowly spreading into a Vulcan “V”. ‘Klaatu Barada Nikto.’

She grinned. ‘Good to know all those years spent practicing to look like Gort didn’t go to waste.’

The goggled-boy smiled. ‘Oooh, one of us…’ He grabbed her hand and dragged her down the hall.

She allowed herself to be pulled along by the young tech. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You’re here to see Jonesy, he’s in the games room.’

She didn’t bother to question how he knew – then again, it was probably obvious. She looked down at her uniform, and made a guess that they weren’t all that common a sight on this floor.

The young tech pushed open the door to the common room. Inside was a plasma screen half the size of the back wall, with a game paused on the screen. The walls were covered in posters and printouts. There was a green couch, a purple couch and a rainbow couch with half a dozen recruits lounging on them. Another stood in front of the TV arguing with Jones about physics.

Goggles whistled and everyone turned. The lounging recruits turned away after brief waves and smiles, Jones handed what looked like a hybrid controller over to the recruit he had been arguing with and walked over. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Could I speak with you for a moment, sir?’ Jones just smiled, and the sound of his recruits’ laughter filtered up through her self-induce static. The urge to run flared and quickly died when she realised that it was “with” laughter, rather than “at” laughter. ‘What’d I do wrong now?’

‘Nothing, really,’ Jones said. ‘It’s just that no-one calls me sir.’

She smirked. ‘Sorry sir.’

He gestured to a table on the far side of the games room. ‘Frankie’s data,’ she began as they sat opposite each other, which caused the tech agent to smile. ‘What?’

‘I assume you’re speaking about your laptop.’

‘Yes. I named-’

‘Him Prometheus, I noticed when I was testing him. How many people get the joke?’

‘Not many,’ she admitted. ‘Frankie’s data, please level with me here, it was all stuff you guys knew already? All of it? There was nothing that was of any use?’

‘It did nothing more than confirm a few things. A parade of ghosts, well very rarely means anything other than a mirrorfall. After that, a little checking, and we knew it was landing here. Approximate landing point is easy when we see where the ghosts are radiating from.’

‘And it didn’t tell you anything useful about Astrin either?’

‘The starchild, the leech? No. Blood that clean-up and forensics helped somewhat, but whether by design or luck, he’s mostly been staying in blackout zones.’

She snapped her head up to look at the tech. ‘What?’

‘Well, after last night, you have some idea of what a blackout zone is.’

More phantom pain flared in her shoulder, and she rubbed it, half-expecting the wound to open back up and leave her bleeding out on another cold floor. ‘Yeah,’ she said flatly, ‘some idea.’

Jones sat back in his chair. ‘That was a very clever idea you came up with, especially under that much pressure. Did you know we were still monitoring you, or did you just bank on paranoia?’

She shrugged. ‘Paranoia has never steered me wrong before. I still don’t get how an area can be blacked out from magic.’

Goggles tapped her on the shoulder. ‘We do ok in the first three, it’s the fourth we have trouble with.’

Three what?

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

‘Dimensions?’ she said slowly. ‘They’re using…time?’

Goggles nodded. ‘Blackout zones are where the timey-wimey ball gets all messed up and everyone can break.’

The image of a bloodstained and pale Ryan flashed in her mind. ‘Yeah, I know that part. So what happened, someone take off with the Delorean and figured a way to use it for evil?’

‘Unfortunately, dealing with Time is not as easy as dealing with Emmet Brown. The gods created us, so we have control over the physical.’ He demonstrated this by requiring a small bag of boiled sweets for the goggled recruit, who was hovering around their table like a small, lab-coated helicopter.

The recruit pushed his goggles up, popped one of the red sweets into his mouth, hugged the agent, then retreated to the rainbow couch, its colours shifting slightly as he sat.

‘The Ladies control their respective elements, we do not have control over life or death. Time is the only other factor in this equation, and he does not choose to allow us control over Time, and he’s also rather vindictive, thus, if we are in an area that is even a half second out of step with the rest of the timestream, we are cut off. That’s what most of the blackout zones are, just a second or two out of step with the rest of the world.’

She scratched her head. ‘So...what, he’s working with the Solst-ass?’

Jones shook his head. ‘No. His children also have the ability to manipulate time.’

‘The Children of Time,’ she said flatly.

‘Not those ones,’ he said. ‘He fathers very few children, and usually the mother has no idea, at least, until their powers start showing themselves. The Solstice don’t have Time on their side, they have Maestro locked up.’

It was a statement that Jones said easily. It wasn’t one that was given particular gravity or ceremony. It was stated as fact. And, after everything, it was the one that made her mind snap. She stared at the tech agent for a moment, then closed her eyes, as if a frail layer of skin could protect her from the strange world that seemed intent on shocking her at every turn.

Someone tugged on her chair, and the world spun.

She opened her eyes, and found herself in Jones’ lab. She blinked and gave him a quizzical look. ‘Huh?’

‘You were unresponsive for five minutes,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I thought you knew about Maestro.’

He rose from his chair and handed her a white cup, without looking at it, she drank it. The urge to retch came as the unfamiliar taste washed down her throat. ‘What’s wrong with this coffee?’ She looked down, and took in all of its pasty-white glory. ‘Milk? Warm milk?’

‘Your brain went AFK for five minutes, I figured you needed something to calm you down.’

‘Ok, so not only is Maestro the son of a guy who murdered a bunch of hackers for no good reason, he’s not...or is David Kane Time, or is...fscking hell. I’ve spent my entire career hero-worshipping this guy, am I supposed to turn around and hate him now?’

Jones shook his head. ‘No. In this whole thing, Maestro is an innocent. We were trying to save him when his powers manifested. The rumour of the two bodies in the Botanical Gardens? True, but a complete accident. He sent this city into chaos because he could not control his power, and that is not his fault. We don’t persecute the innocent. He’s with Solstice because of David Kane, the man he thinks of as his father. He’s their prisoner. So, no, you don’t need to worry, he’s not flagged for PvP.’

‘I can take Solace in that at least.’

‘The situation with the monster bothers you, doesn’t it?’

She just nodded. Her milk disappeared, replaced by a small headset. ‘I don’t think that’s a liquid.’

‘Quick,’ Jones said, ‘put it in.’

She slipped it over her ear, and tapped the button on the side. ‘Um, hi?’

‘Please report to my office.’

She hit the button again. ‘Sure.’

With a wave, she hurried from Jones’ laboratory.

29 - Mission

Chapter Twenty-nine - Wherein the monster is found..

Stef quick-stepped through the tech department, and hit the button for the elevator - which again, took exactly eight seconds before appearing. Requiring, she was used to, shifting, she was getting used to, the elevator on the other hand remained just as disconcerting as when she'd figured out that it was magic.

She took the elevator down, back to the field department's floor, and immediately missed the tech floor - the walls here were too Spartan, not that she expected the latest update of xkcd to be regularly flashing across the walls, as it was upstairs, but something other than neat little number plates on the doors and the occasional noticeboard or emergency evacuation plan would be nice.

And nowhere had the "emergency water and sandwiches room in case you get lost" room marked on it. It had to exist, she was sure of it.

‘Hurry up newbie,' Curt called as he exited the gym just ahead of her, a wet towel wrapped around his neck. ‘You've got to be faster to report.' The towel disappeared, and a suit replaced his sweaty training outfit as he walked.

‘I was upstairs, I can't teleport, you know.'

‘I know, it'd be marked on you file if you could.'

The door to Ryan's office was open, and he ushered her in first - Enid and Lisa were already waiting for them, Curt closed the door behind them, and they fell into line next to the other recruits.

She took a moment to notice the varying degrees of uniform that they wore - Curt's full, fresh uniform was impeccable, she wore everything except the jacket, but it was far more rumpled than Curt's was. Enid wore her training uniform, a soft pink shirt replacing the normal blue one, and Lisa wore what looked like hardly more than a bra under her open jacket.

‘The leech that Magnolia has been tracking has resurfaced,' Ryan said. ‘You'll be moving out in five minutes.'

‘What's the location, sir?' Curt asked.

‘There's a cannery up the river, near the port, we had a triple-o call routed to us - they're evacuating now. You shouldn't have any civilians to worry about.' A large map appeared in his hands. ‘I've marked your entry points on here, and its last known location.'

Curt took the map. ‘Sit room, now,' he said to them, and the other two girls immediately followed him out. ‘Newbie!'

‘Gimme a sec,' she said without turning to look at him.

The door was closed, and she looked up at Ryan. ‘You know I still can't shoot straight, right?'

‘So far as first field missions go, this one is relatively easy.'

‘Yeah, except for the fact that Astrin is big and scary and has teeth all the better to eat hackers with, and I don't think you want us to give him tea and biscuits when we find him.' The world wasn't built for fairy tales, she knew that, the world wasn't built for fair tales, she knew that as well, but this...this was just a little too unfair.

‘It's always hard the first time.'

She pressed a hand against the side of his desk. ‘I was working for him first, you know.'

‘I know that,' he said. ‘But there's something you don't understand about leeches. For every leech that comes to this world, no matter the kind of person they may be, or how pure their intentions may see, they tip the scales towards chaos. Those that escape their own dying worlds can cause the end of others. Chaos was the beginning of all things, but is also the end of everything. This world is a lot more fragile than most. Anything could tip the scales out of our favour.'

‘I...'

He rounded the desk and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘We do what we do to protect the world. So that humans can continue to be human. It's not evil, it's simply serving the interests of the greater good.'

‘It's just one life...'

‘One extra keystroke can spin a program out of control. One missed command can ruin a hack. One extra kilo can sink a ship.'

‘Why aren't you yelling at me for thinking like this?'

‘Do you think I relish taking innocent lives? To destroy those brave enough to journey between the worlds?'

‘No...'

‘I do not shy away from my tasks, but I do not enjoy them all.'

She looked at her dirty shoes for a moment. ‘I think I'm feeling respect, I don't really know what that feels like though.'

He smiled at her. ‘Go join the others.' She nodded, and he moved away, to sit behind his desk again. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror - and it showed her what she already knew: a hacker in a suit, something that was only supposed to happen for court appearances. The world was full of contradictions, oxymorons and inequities.

Sometimes the innocent had to die.

She turned and walked from the office, and walked toward the only other open door in the section of corridor. Astrin had to die...and she was going to be a part of that, whether she wanted to or not.

The man or the monster, Spyder, you can only choose one.

Which is which? How well do I know either?

Oh don't start with this - you've known Ryan your whole life.

As a spectre in my dreams, some faint-

Angel. Just say the word.

The Beast just wants his Belle, that's not a crime.

You're going to give up the whole world so some freak can have his fairy tale ending? Fairy tales don't contain clones.

Love makes people do strange things.

Like you would know.

I'm just going to pick up my gun and do my job. Come what may and all that.

Good girl.

Don't I get endorphins?

Not this time.

She entered the sit room and found Curt pointing out various things on the map, she tuned out most of what he said, instead trying to recast Astrin as a bad guy in her mind. Imagining him as dangerous wasn't hard - the only reason she hadn't run screaming into the night when she'd seen him had been her lack of sleep, and the fact that running and screaming into the night would have taken far more energy than she'd had.

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch. The tear that tear flesh from bone. The weird eyes that can probably burn a hole in your soul.

‘He may be a man beneath that visage, but is also a man who was killing to eat.'

‘He eats people,' she said quietly. The other three - well, other two, fell silent and looked at her.

‘What?' Enid asked.

‘He eats people,' she said again. ‘Someone told me that he was killing to eat before he found refuge at the mansion, and I was given the direct impression that it wasn't meant in the "culling the rat population" way.'

Enid lifted one of the fuzzy surveillance photos and stared at it. ‘I'd believe it.'

‘It's just a leech,' Curt said, ‘put enough bullets into it, and it'll fall down, just like everything else.'

You're a very pleasant person, you know that, right? She looked up at him, and waited for an equally sarcastic response, then realised that she hadn't spoken out loud.

The world blurred and spun. She fought the urge to reach out and grab something as everything came back into focus. She wasn't sure that she would ever get used to it - fiction always portrayed teleportation as something seamless - Star Trek crews didn't fight nausea when Scotty/Chief O'Brien/random bad guy of the week transported them somewhere. Shifting was entirely different - then again, thing in reality usually were, reality wasn't able to gloss over the inconvenient details.

Curt slapped her on the back and earned a glare. ‘You'll get used to it,' he said with a jovial laugh. ‘We're in a sub-level, the girls are above us. Like Ryan said, no civilians. However, if you like cheap canned fruit, watch out for the collateral damage.' She looked at the ex-Solstice as though he grown a second head - he almost sounded competent, it was a little unsettling.

She looked up at the pipes and noted the lack of lighting. The layers of shadows covered more than they showed, it was going to be a nightmare to find anything.

Require: night-vision goggles.

The world was bathed in fluorescent green light, but the tangles of wires and pipes still concealed hiding spots and boltholes. A mocking laugh stripped away the joy of using a technology she'd always revered. ‘What did I do now?'

‘Every newbie FBI agent asks to see the X-Files office. Every NSA recruit asks to be reassigned to something off the books. Every member of ASIO wants to know why most people don't know who the hell they are. Every Agency recruit requires night-vision goggles. Exactly how many time did you see Jurassic Park?'

‘Four,' she answered in a hiss. ‘This place is the armpit of hell, conjure some spotlights, or let me use the goggles.'

The attack came from nowhere. One moment, she was fine, the next, the side of her head was stinging. ‘Did you see that?' he asked.

The goggles clattered to the ground. ‘Exactly why did you do that?'

‘Did you see the attack coming?'

‘No, cause you smacked me in the head.'

He hit her again, this time, she saw stars. ‘Did you see it that time?'

‘Hazing. I get it. But touch me again, and you'll lose that hand.'

He set his jaw and shook his head. ‘It's not hazing, I'm teaching you. Goggles might help you see in the dark, but they put blinders on you. They take a lot more lives than they save.'

‘And you couldn't have just told me this?'

‘This method is more effective.'

This method makes you look like a jerk.

‘I...' she began, then a pipe beside them exploded. The force flung her backwards, into a guardrail and over it.

She had a moment to realise she was aloft before she fell into the darkness.

30 - Measure of a Monster

Chapter Thirty - Wherein Stef speaks to Astrin, and the Parkers are introduced.

Fsckfsckfsck!

To her shame, Stef heard herself screaming as they fell over the railing and toward the dark pit below.

Require: mattress.

The impact was painful, and it forced all of the air from her lungs - she lay still for a moment, the constellation Orion dancing in her vision. She fought to get breath back in her lungs and sit up, but her head spun, and she decided to stay where she was for the moment.

She heard Curt wheeze painfully, then heard nothing further from him.

There were other sounds down in the dark pit, however, a third person breathing for one. Large, deep breaths, probably consistent with his size. Astrin, it had to be Astrin.

She heard something sliding over the metal floor, something that could have been... A large clawed hand grabbed her and dragged her off the mattress.

‘I'm sorry,' she heard the monster whisper as his claws dug deeper into her skin - the wet sensation telling her that he'd drawn blood. She found herself once again aloft, and could do nothing to stop herself from being slammed into the wall. ‘I'm very sorry,' she heard as her head hit the floor with a sick thunk.

Thoughts swam, and the blinding pain in her head made it nearly impossibly for her to open her eyes.

She felt claws scrape across her throat.

‘He may be a man beneath that visage, but is also a man who was killing to eat.'

‘Astrin!' she screamed, and threw up a little. ‘Stop!' The claws didn't sink into her throat, but neither were they removed. She forced herself to open her eyes and look at the monster. ‘Astrin,' she whispered, tasting puke. ‘It's me.'

Yeah, and who are you to him? You look different, and you were hunting him!

‘From Jon's house, I was one of Dorian's hackers.'

Not enough Spyder, give him more.

‘I broke your code, I decrypted it, I can tell you what you need to know, just don't kill me.'

The claws left her throat, but as a compromise, he pressed one heavy - and also clawed foot - onto her stomach. It was a message, it was a warning - he would listen to her, but wanted her to know that she wasn't in control.

And that's different how? You're never in control, Spyder.

Please don't yell at me, just help me, please. Please.

Ok, ok, shh. For starters, stop reaching for your gun, he'll gut you with his big foot before you can even get it out of your holster.

She stopped moving the hand she hadn't even noticed was creeping toward her girly-gun.

And now tell him what he wants to know.

‘The mirror is falling tomorrow night,' she said slowly.

‘You are angel-kind now, I can't believe anything you say.' He shifted his weight, and his clawed foot dug deeper into her skin. ‘And that is something I already knew.'

You already knew?! You already knew?! Then- ‘-why the fuck did everyone die then?' she screamed, unable to help herself, ‘every other hacker, working on your stupid fucking broken piece of shit code died!'

Then he said it. ‘It wasn't my code, just my memories.'

What?!

Then whose-?

He opened his mouth, all the way for once, and she shuddered when she realised that it was wide enough to take her head off with one bite - there would probably be some gnashing and chewing involved, but-

‘Do you know where it's falling?' she asked, fighting the urge to the just scream and scream and beg for a rescue.

‘I do.'

‘You're not the only one after it, you know.'

The claws on her stomach drew blood. ‘I'm killing anyone who gets in my way.'

‘I'm not in your way,' she whispered.

‘No, but I'm hungry, and the child I carry is hungry. And I need strength enough to fight angels.'

‘Please don't...'

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to beg. Screw this, I want the blue pill, I want the blue pill!

Are you still listening to me?

Yeah.

Flashbang, one second fuse.

She required the grenade.

Pull the fscking pin, Spyder.

She pulled the pin, dropped the grenade, and for what it was worth, closed her eyes. A small supanova went off to her left, and she threw up again. She heard Astrin scream, and felt him fall backward.

What now?!

The world spun, and she felt relief flood in. The smell of recycled air met her nose, and she slowly sat up, not even bothering to open her abused eyes yet. She fought to steady herself - her spinning head wanting her to stay horizontal.

‘What the fark, newbie?' Curt called from somewhere to her right. ‘Flashbang? Where the hell did you learn to use a flashbang?'

‘I'm a gamer,' she whispered.

Strong hands pulled her to her feet, and helped her onto one of the beds. She opened her eyes and looked around at the still-fuzzy world. ‘Oh crap,' she muttered as she looked at the doctor, ‘I'm seeing double.'

The doctor brought up a hand. ‘How many fingers.'

‘Three,' she mumbled, ‘and a thumb. But there's two of you.' She waved at him, and made a vague gesture at his echo across the room. That was treating Curt. And making completely different movements. ‘I'm not seeing double am I?'

‘I thought you got stabbed, newbie,' Curt said.

‘She was unconscious,' the twin in front of her explained, ‘and we weren't here when she left. We're the Parkers.'

‘You're both named Parker?' she asked as a wave of nausea hit, and she stifled the urge to puke. ‘How do we tell you apart?'

He injected something into her neck, and pushed her down onto the bed. ‘You'll figure it out, if you live long enough.' He closed the curtain between the beds, required away her shirt and began to treat the scratches on her stomach. ‘You're not shaping up to live that long. I know you're new, but it hasn't even been twenty-four hours since you were in here last. Try to be more careful, we really don't need another Magnolia.'

‘What's a Magnolia?'

‘Shit newbie,' Curt said from the next bed, ‘you've been more than twenty-four hours and you don't know about Magnolia yet? You'll know her when you see her.'

‘Same could be said for the invisible man,' she muttered. She looked up to the doctor. ‘I'm pretty sure I have a concussion, confusion is not good right now.'

‘She's one of Agent Taylor's recruits. Her injuries are rather...frequent, and not all of them occur in the field.'

Curt's doctor poked his head around the curtain for a moment. ‘Girl's a masochist, so much so we keep a running tally on the injuries that happen during missions, during training and during foreplay.'

She fought the urge to retch again. ‘I guess you don't adhere to the Hippocratic Oath,' she muttered, ‘thanks, my poor brain did not need that.'

‘We couldn't do our job if we had to listen to that archaic piece of mortal bullshit,' Curt's doctor said. ‘And when it comes down to it, medical knowledge makes us all the more dangerous, the blokes downstairs can shoot a gun, sure, but I can make someone shit out their intestines, and if someone threatened what is mine, don't think I wouldn't, so "do no harm" can kiss my ass.'

Her doctor smiled, then applied a few cold gel patches before wrapping her stomach. ‘Give these a couple of hours, then take a shower.'

‘Ok,' she said.

‘You decent newbie?' Curt called.

Her doctor required her into a nice, clean uniform. ‘Well, I'm dressed,' she said, ‘decency's kind of-'

‘Dressed will do,' he said as he pulled the curtain open. He had a bandage wrapped around his head, and another around his wrist. ‘Come on, let's go downstairs and check in on the techs.'

With the assistance of her doctor, she slid off the edge of the bed, and walked the few feet to meet Curt.

It was then that she noticed the three doors. They were all the same size, lined up next to each other. ‘Do I really need to ask the obvious?'

‘See if you can work it out yourself,' Curt said as he leaned back against the wall.

She experimentally walked out the left door. It wasn't a floor that she recognised. It was basically a clone of the other floors - just in the same way that the field floor and the tech department had the same basic layout. ‘Choice three?' she asked.

‘Combat floor,' Curt replied, ‘protip: stay the hell away from there unless you've got good reason or a death wish.'

She walked through the middle floor, and the familiar field floor greeted her. The door on the right, to no surprise, was the tech department. ‘But why,' she asked, ‘are there three doors that are kinda bending the laws of space-time?'

‘So that when you've got something less than a missing limb, you can drag your own ass in here,' Curt's doctor said. ‘And it's always amusing to point drunk combat recruits at the tech department, just to have them attacked by the lolcat squad.'

‘Again,' she muttered, ‘the Hippo-'

‘Hippocrates,' Curt's doctor said, ‘can suck-'

She quickly stepped out into the tech department, the whoosh of the automatic doors chopping off the end of the slightly taller Parker's sentence.

There was the sound of a volcano rumbling behind her.

31 – Interrogation

Chapter Thirty-one - Wherein no phone calls are demanded.

Stef fought the urge to run back into the infirmary - because trying to outrun a volcano was pointless after all.

‘Where is the other leech?' she heard a girl ask.

She wasn't going to run, but the fear stopped her from turning.

‘Where. Is. The. Other. Leech?'

Think, think, think! ‘Lich? Northrend, I believe.'

She was only a little surprised when her legs were kicked out from under her, and she landed heavily on the floor. A bloody girl wearing an outfit that belonged on the streets of Harajuku stamped a foot on her chest. ‘Don't mess with me.'

It seemed too obvious to ask the angry Lolita why she was standing on her chest, so she waited for an answer - she could be patient, at least for another eighteen seconds before she started to claw at the shapely leg.

Somewhere behind the girl, the volcano rumbled. ‘Bring her,' Taylor said. The angry Lolita crouched and pulled her to her feet.

What did I do this time? The question was jumping up and down on the tip of her tongue, wanting to escape, but the emergency brain-mouth filter had engaged, and for once, she was glad.

Just answer questions, and you should be safe. Answer, don't ask.

Yeah, thanks, got that.

The world blurred and came back into focus as a small, dark room with a small table and a plastic chair. Clearly what he wanted wasn't a cup of tea and a chat.

I'm just flip him the bird and demand my godsdamn phone call.

Do that, and you'll lose that finger, and probably consciousness.

She twisted her head to look at him. Agent Taylor. The volcano. ‘What can I do for you sir?' Ryan's words about what he was capable of haunted her - people disobeyed the rules, so what if was going to-

‘You can tell us what you omitted from your initial statements, fill in any facts you may have left out.' She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out - the filter was still engaged, and she hadn't thought of a reasonable reply. He slammed his hands on the table. ‘Now!' he demanded.

‘I didn't leave anything out!'

‘We know you're full of shit,' the Lolita said. ‘If you want to live through the night, stop protecting the leeches.'

‘I'm not protecting Astrin, I know what's got to happen to him. And..."leeches" - like more than one?'

Taylor hit the table again, and this time it bounced off the floor a little. She fought a nervous giggle - these people weren't the type to appreciate a nervous giggle.

‘Again,' he growled, ‘tell us what you know.'

The Lolita leaned against the table - seemingly oblivious to the fact that blood was running freely down her sleeves.

High pain tolerance, that's-

Scary.

Yeah, that.

A possibility jumped to the forefront of her mind, despite the obvious fashion follies, the pain tolerance seemed to indicate- Getting off-topic here.

‘I don't know anymore than I told Ryan.'

A stack of files appeared in his hands, he began to slap them onto the table one by one. ‘These are the Solstice that were executed at the address of your arrest.' She stared at the files as they were slapped down - she recalled most of their names, not that they'd been very communicative. Still, they were all dead. All killed by- ‘All of these...criminals,' Taylor continued, ‘were human. Name the other occupants of the address.'

Her own file - a mug shot clipped to the front was slapped down on the table. She nervously reached forward and pushed it to the side. ‘I wasn't among the dead.'

‘You should have been,' the Lolita said. ‘You were just another criminal.'

‘I wasn't doing anything wrong.'

‘You were working with a leech!' The girl brandished one of her bloody arms. ‘You're to blame for this.'

‘Contain yourself, recruit, your injury is your own fault.'

‘Yes sir.'

Well, that answers one question at least.

‘Other occupants,' he repeated.

‘There were other Solstice - David Kane was there, not that I knew who he was when I saw him.'

‘We already knew that.'

‘Astrin, obviously. I don't recall seeing any other monsters, but we were kept off the third floor, presumably so that we didn't see him, or them, or whatever.'

‘Who else?'

Got to give up Dorian, Spyder, don't feel guilty. ‘Erm, Dorian Gray?'

‘A hacker alias, or the immortal?'

‘By what he was saying, I was presume the immortal.'

‘It was your duty to report that.'

‘I didn't know that!' And I'm pretty sure I mentioned him at least once... ‘So is that it, is he the other leech?'

The other recruit sneered at her. ‘Ignorance really is bliss, isn't it? Fortitude's souls are not leeches, they have an embargo, but their transgressions must still be noted.'

‘Who else?' Taylor asked again.

‘Just the old guy who owned the house, I don't know his real name though, I'm sure it's on the rates bill.'

‘What do you know about him?'

‘He was an old guy. He smelt like an old guy. He wore old rich guy clothes. He thought I was a puppy. He was a professor of something, or that might just have been a nickname.' And his wardrobes are useless and don't lead to Narnia.

‘And that's all?'

‘Yes.'

‘What was his interaction with the Solstice?'

She groaned. ‘I don't know. It's not like I wired up the whole house for sound and video so I could pretend to be omniscient and be able to give you all the answers.' The slap across the face came as no surprise. She grimaced and stared at the other recruit, trying to hold back dominatrix jokes. ‘Can I go now?'

‘No,' Taylor said. He stood back from the table and faded from view, along with his recruit.

She looked around the interrogation room and sighed. ‘Wonderful.' She stood, grateful to not have to sit on the uncomfortable piece of molded plastic anymore. The walls were brick, painted the ugly green of a government building a few decades old. There was a door, but the window was frosted, so there wasn't any hope of being seen from the outside. If there was anyone on the outside. It was possible the room was on one of those floors normal people couldn't get to, or even tucked away in the corner of one of the garages.

One look at the door told her that trying to pull it off its hinges would have been a pointless, muscle-straining exercise. She knocked on the frosted window - the dull sound told her the glass was too thick to smash with anything in the room.

She pulled the chair away from the table and emptied all of her pockets onto the table. There wasn't anything much of use - cookie crumbs, a USB drive, a bouncy ball, and a marble. She regretted not being one of those prepared people who kept sensible things in their pockets.

It didn't matter anyway, it wasn't like they could leave her in there forever.

Of course they can, you stupid bitch, that's what people have been trying to tell you from the beginning. They're the godsdamn MiB...well, MaWiBWaB, they can do whatever they want.

Oh, shut up.

Make me.

She scooped up the cookie crumbs and the bouncy ball and sat on the floor - the cold concrete was more comfortable than the hard plastic chair. She threw the bouncy ball against the far wall, and waited for it to roll back towards her - she'd never mastered the art of bouncing small plastic balls - it was one of those hidden arts.

She threw it again, and again. When she threw it for the fourth time, it bounced away from her and rolled into the other corner of the room. ‘Fine,' she mumbled, ‘be that way.'