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Part 2: The Warlock’s Conundrum
2.1 That You Go Underwater
Pacific Ocean, approaching Site-189
Cardea Gataki struggles through a mental fog like a ship without a lighthouse.
FUCK.
She snarls, the cascade of memories pouring in, static bursts of hateful rage curling through her chest. Shots of residual pain ricochet across her abdomen, circling around the site of the wound as if sharks were gnawing at her flesh. The scent of sweat and petrol swirl in the air; taste of iron lingering on her tongue.
Cowards. Underhanded pieces of shit. Got to move.
As if she is a rat caught in a cage, she tries to thrash, only to realize dozens of polyester straps are digging into her bare skin, binding her down.
Shit. What’s happening?
Her eyes pop open. Instant regret. Blinding light sears her corneas as if she were staring right into the god damned sun, driving the already deepening nail of pain further into her skull. She shuts them tight.
Sounds of an engine, far too close for her sensitive ears to handle without protection, throb against her eardrums.
Ok we’re in the air. But on what?
People are talking all around her.
Half a dozen voices? Gah, the engines are so loud. Nothing else for it, suck up the pain.
Her eyes open, slower this time, wincing but fighting through the pain.
She’s aboard an aircraft of some sort, a VTOL judging by the sound of the engines. The ramp is up, but she can see clouds moving in the sky. Her neck refuses to move, stiff as a board and aching like crazy. Thirteen soldiers — no, not soldiers. MTF operatives.
What the fuck? Our own people?
Perched on the bench across from her, a tired princess is waiting for rescue. Melina, hands cuffed in — she flinches, abstract threads bouncing off nastiness that makes her stomach twist. Nope, nope. Fuck that. Their gazes meet, relief blossoms beyond Melina’s eyes, twirling in the black behind the pupils.
Was starting to wonder if you were ever going to rouse.
Silent communication flicks back and forth between the fluttering of eye motions and a residual telepathic glyph from the previous op.
Blessed be the triple goddess,
Melina’s voice echoes softly in her skull.
Are you ok?
I am unharmed but… shaken. Worried.
What’s the situation?
It is bad.
She's slipped back into not using contractions. That's a bad sign. Cardea can't let her see how nervous that makes her, she's gotta be a rock right now.
Get her to focus on solutions.
Thaumaturgy?
Can’t.
She raises the cuffs for emphasis. Flames lick at Cardea’s diaphragm as she sees the blood around the wrists — flesh red, raw, and angry.
She closes her eyes. Cool it. There’s time for rage later. No robe either, oh this is really not great.
A beat.
Wait, couldn't she use her own blood?
What about your own blood?
Hesitation in Melina's eyes.
That is not how it works.
Of course it's not. Cardea mentally kicks herself for asking. She certainly can't do it physically.
So, plan?
Working on it, limited options.
The light darkens behind Melina’s eye. It feels like it flows across the gap and wraps around Cardea, tightening like a corset around her chest.
Especially here.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Okay, don’t panic yet. She’s not the only one who can make plans.
We’ll figure it out. We always do,
Cardea attempts to reassure her, not fully believing it herself.
Melina smiles, but not with her eyes.
Change the subject.
Uhm, why am I strapped down like an animal?
Ask Temis.
It's only as Cardea moves her tongue in her mouth that she realizes she's muzzled. It cinches her jaw, like a chain on an apartment door, preventing her from opening her mouth.
The immediate and obvious leap is that Temis did something incredibly stupid when the sedatives knocked her out. Which would be on brand for her.
Who knew a long time without a body could make you recklessly bored.
What did you do Temis? Cardea narrows her eyes.
Picked up where you left off.
You wanna elaborate on that? she scoffs.
Well, they didn’t take too kindly to it.
The cryptic answer leaves her wanting to dive into the mindscape and strangle her 'headmate' with her own hands.
Alright, I really don’t have the patience for your cryptic bullshit. How did they handle Melina? She rolls her eyes.
They cuffed her right away. Thought we were unconscious. Thought she was the more dangerous one.
Cardea sighs, knowing exactly where this is going.
And you disabused them of that notion? Eyebrows creep up her forehead.
Of course.
There’s a flurry of motion in her peripherals. An agent points at her like a hunting hound marking game for its master. She's not a fan.
"Hey, look boss, the rabid dog is awake." A half dozen high-caliber pararifles are swiftly leveled at her head, as if at any moment she might break free.
Not the worst way I've become the center of attention.
I'm so glad you can find humor in this moment right now. Should we set up a standup night?
That sarcasm is rich coming from you.
Droplets of spit splatter against her cheek.
"Fucking anomaly, took our co-pilot’s ear off."
She snarls around the muzzle. Really?
Yep.
I’d be more impressed if you had waited until we were on the VTOL and gave Melina an opportunity to burst the cuffs.
Please Cardea, I’m not a child.
She doesn't believe that for even a second.
Uh huh. Sure.
I waited until they were strapping us in for liftoff. As it turns out, I was already rusty from the lack of driving time, and moving you was harder when the sedatives hadn’t worn off. And, as you just learned, that bit of her magic doesn't work like that. If you don’t believe me, just check the shared memory pool.
…
Damn. Guess you really can teach an old dog new tricks.
I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.
Cardea sneers at one of the men staring her down — or, rather, gives her best attempt. Its rather difficult to do with a ton of metal in your mouth.
Focus, forget them. What can you do, what are our options?
Her heart hammers in her chest, the ice of fear pitting in her stomach.
No, don’t let them see the fear. What can you do right now? They didn’t cuff you. You coul—
"I see what you’re thinking, mutt." A revolver presses against Melina’s head, the man holding it cocks the hammer. "Try anything and, well, you can do the math." Their commander, a man with hateful, beady little eyes, stares her down. Daring her to try.
Her heart stops for a fraction of a second, and she swallows, fingers trembling in the straps. This is absolutely not the time for some reckless ploy.
Melina…bastards. I cou—no, even if I took his revolver, the rest would shoot her. FUCK. The walls contract and everything shrinks. No way out.
She slams her head against the back of the metal trolley she's strapped to in frustration. Stars twinkle in her vision, back of her skull aching from the blow.
Her eyes track right, and the clamp around her lungs squeezes in. The ramp of the VTOL lowers and, stretching beyond the frame, is the deep turquoise — the one thing she fears more than anything else in the entire world.
The Ocean.
﹏𓊝﹏
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2.2 Snake in the Grass
Site-189, Eulades Eurylochus
The ceramic of the mug rests cooly in my fingers, steam drifting off the ebony liquid in slow aching waves. Caramel, lemon, and the bitter tang of coffee beans mingle together into a strange but soothing aroma in my olfactory nerve. On the tongue, the sting of the lemon mixes perfectly with the velvet sweetness of the caramel and the sharp bitter tang of the coffee beans.
Photos, newspaper clippings, snipped paragraphs of text, maps, and carefully extracted excerpts of art hang from a perfectly centered bulletin board hung on the false paneling of the office walls. Here before this carefully designed and arranged framework of my life, my memories, my work, and all I have been sailing towards, I stand.
Yet I feel nothing. Well, no, that's a lie, I feel the buzz of caffeine percolating through my veins. I feel the beating of my heart, the beginning ripples of hunger that will claim me later. But those are purely physiological. They wouldn't fall within the definition most people assign to feelings.
That is, they aren't really Emotions unless you'd like to get semantically technical.
I'd love to get semantic and technical, pedantry is a lovely game.
Even then "nothing" is inaccurate, which, shame on me for being imprecise with my language.
I am disgusted. I am furious. I am ashamed, humiliated, righteous and vengeful. Nothing, in a way, is better than this compromised state. Nothing is neutral, unhampered, cold and detached. The perfect emotion for detail and documentation. Neutral is the ideal scientific state.
Some would wonder, if I told them my internal workings, if she feels this, how is she so calm, measured, and composed standing here, drinking coffee?
A small smile spreads across my lips, indulging my own internal monologue.
It's simple really. In my twenties I mastered my emotion through pure rationalization. By embracing the truth of humanity. Emotions make us weak, expressing them openly even Moreso.
The mug flushes against my lips, the cool porcelain contrasting the embers of mahogany liquid. I never break eye contact with the board as the luxurious storm of of taste washes across my tongue.
All these negative things I feel, they are not my fault. No, they've been thrust upon me. Expressing them makes them my fault. Lets those thrusting them on me win. But I am imperfectly human, so vulnerability and lapses will happen.
A step forward, eyes tracing the lines of string down particular connections, caffeine sharpening my focus.
I am a woman of detail. Of focus and meticulous precision. Regularity, schedule, and routine are of utmost importance, defining my life, my whole beautiful career.
Yet, now that I am here at the top, my schedule is mine to make. I must provide my own structure, regularity. A contradiction that eats itself continuously like an ouroboros.
And goodness it is so difficult at times.
Nails rap against the porcelain as I trace the strings, the never-ending network of events. My mind wanders in that oh so dangerous way that leaves me distressed, unable to continue counting the minutes until the next thing I need to attend to. Three raps, in a row, every few seconds. Habit, comfort and a measure of routine in the absence of schedule.
There is something deeply enamoring about the mundanity of the world. About the concept of normalcy, that every single person, place, or thing fits perfectly within a defined set of parameters that explain the universe. That every person should attend, with regularity, a schedule. A perfect, 9-5 order. What a glorious concept; that the universe can be neatly boxed, categorized, documented, and slotted into place like a jigsaw puzzle.
In the distance, waves lap around the struts of the site in uniform, oscillating patterns. It's cathartic.
Metal creaks and groans, likely with disgusting rust that'll need to be chipped off the metal soon. Like clockwork it's necessitated every few months. Sometimes, I wish I could just be those workers, cathartically cleansing the barnacles and rust to reveal the metal beneath. Such things seem so, very, philosophically simple. You rotate rigs in a set order, a job that repeats in the same way every time. Beautiful in its simplicity, really.
Maybe I would have been better off in that sort of profession.
But alas, here I am, dealing with this. Facing down irregularity. I wonder if I'm mad, for choosing this path. Electing to drown in the irregular, unexplainable.
Outliers, things beyond the bounds. I don't inherently hate them I'd say.
Hate, disgust, anger, shame, humiliation, these are all things that are beneath me as a woman of science. These emotions have no place in efficient bureaucracy or scientific utopia. At least, that should be true.
I make a soft hmmming noise, right as my watch hits the quarter hour mark. Another routine effortlessly integrated into my subconscious for when nothing is occupying my precious time.
I reach out to grasp a piece of loose string from the neatly arranged clump at the bottom of the board. I do this every break, look for a new potential connection.
There have been so many recently. It makes these periods of lawless unroutine exciting.
A new connection from a piece of text, a name, to the center. To that thing that makes me feel so very flawed and human.
Neither really does ethics have a place. I'd never say that around other so called "scientists". They'd balk, and lob nasty accusations.
Its so tiresome to walk on eggshells.
A snort of hot air trickles from my nostrils at the ten 'till mark. Another effortless routine integration. I step back again, to admire the newest points in the web for exactly thirty seconds. For emphasis, I take yet another sip of coffee right at 51. How long have I been standing here, staring? The exactly appropriate alloted time in my schedule. Who dictates the schedule? Me of course. My word is god here. And that's enough for my routine.
I return to the philosophical conundrums and ponderances.
The universe is cold, uncaring and cruel.
Why should we, as men and women, and really only those two, of science, heed ethics. Why must we be bound when the universe is not? Why handicap ourselves because of neurosympathic signals? Some would call me cruel, callous, amoral, even a monster.
I frown, and take another small sip at exactly 55 to soothe my aching soul. Right on schedule.
I am none of these things, I am cold and pragmatic. Realistic. Hardened by life and the truth of reality.
The mug rests against my chin, warm and pleasant. Right at 57.
"It's quite cold in here!" the declaration rings for no one in particular. Just me. Always at 58.
At least, this is what I tell myself. But I am human. I am limited by my biology and my, very fleshy brain. This is why outliers are frustrating. This is why I am 15 seconds slower than I should be in turning up the heat.
With a flourish of my skirt-suit, I turn and move to the thermostat. You would think being in the middle of the pacific, things would be warmer. You'd be wrong!
This is why I am 15 seconds slower than I should be in turning up the heat.
Well actually that's the sticky button's fault. Time to get a new thermostat installed.
Again I return to the thoughts. Homosexuality, transgender, nonbinary gender ideologies, neurodiversity, mental illness, developmental disorders— these are all outliers.
Heels click on the tiled floor as I return to standing before the board.
The hour hits, right as I return to the previous spot. At a quarter after, and not a moment before, I shall make a note I decide. One of many.
I also decide I should really should change it to carpet. But we only just swapped away from carpet, it's not the scheduled date to swap back yet. Anyways, maybe I'll take it off the agenda, carpet is such a nightmare to clean up, just like people. Just like outliers.
Frustrating violations and flaunting of the parameters of normalcy, and guiding principles.
I check my watch, two seconds too early. It's time, at 2 minutes past the hour.
"Oh I can already hear the naysayers now, Eulades you're a monster for saying this. Eulades its a thoughtcrime to think this way!" My tone fills with a modicum of venom, before I center myself and return to that oh so golden neutral. It's not time quite yet to descend into venomous ranting. That's for the evening, but she's getting off schedule. "Eulades you should never be allowed near a lab again. What horrible crime have I ever committed besides the betterment of our world, the advancement of our species."
I check the watch again. Now I've really lost the plot, 5 minutes past. My routine is falling apart.
Yes, I've read the peer reviewed papers showing the genetic basis for these outliers. Some are convincing. Some are entirely the works of pure fantasy. Perhaps, in time, science will properly explain them, but they are flex points for both science and especially the beautiful organization of proper bureaucracy.
The handle tightens in my grip as my eyes narrow. 7 minutes past now. Routine is in the wind, might as well embrace it no? Yes, this is the new routine! Chaos. She really should schedule that in more often.
Even if science explains them, outliers require breaking the golden norms. The creation of specific rules and measures, resources, and disruptive complexity to accommodate them into the fold of normalcy.
"We already do it, marr whole organizations in efficiency, hire men and women dedicated solely to these outliers. Whole offices, committees, advisory groups and boards dedicated to 'accommodation' to create a new and far less efficient structure to bring into existence new golden norms!" My voice rises and I have to abruptly stop to prevent a descent into unheard of shouting.
I check the watch again. Wow I've really lost track of time, 15 after. So much for making notes. I continue my descent, ignoring the march of linear causality.
"All of this in the name of diversity. At the expense of sleek categorization and organizational efficiency. What a farce, but at least these things, we can fix. These genetic aberrations, outliers, might, someday, even be correctable, thank the Foundation, by gene therapy. Such a fabulously elegant solution."
My nostrils flare with the snort of indignation as my eyes narrow, staring at the board with righteous wrath.
As I focus on the source of that so very human reaction before me, fingers pressing hard against porcelain, it calls to all my disgust, rage, shame, humiliation, grief.
The room fades back to the front hallway of my parents' home, 40 years ago. The knock of two men in black suits at the door. How innocent I was at 19, how totally unawares I and the world were to how my entire reality was about to crumble down. I knew they were Foundation, I'd been interning with mother since I was 15.
That's the fertile crescent where my fascination with science was kindled. Anomalies, such an enamoring concept, things that defy or eschew the laws of the golden norms. That's what I thought then! Before everything. I was a naive fool.
Reminiscing about the past. No, that's not reminiscing. That's languishing in my own tragedy. Way ahead of schedule. I've really done it now.
Then, my whole idea of the future fell to pieces, when those men told me my parents were gone.
I shakily sip from the coffee cup, staring at the epicenter of the nightmare of my youth. I've been to the coffee machine three times already. I'm only supposed to have one cup per hour. I have truly embraced the chaos. Who needs routine. Science determines routine, not the other way around!
"Somewhere, I know you can hear me. I have a feeling you've always been watching. They gave me a box, said it was found in my parents' office at the old Site-189. Instructions were on the outside of the lid about what to do when this came to pass. Not if, when."
I've told this story to the board so many times. I really should stop, especially since it's not the scheduled day or hour. It's so pathetically human I could laugh. But I don't.
"Someone must have stopped the containment agents from reading the contents, someone higher up. Some sentimental, sympathetic idiot in the administrative staff who knew my parents, but didn't have the balls to put aside their emotions and be objective." My hands shake against the porcelain in rage, voice biting with venom. The sound of music playing over my office's speakers drowns out my words, which is good. What would they think if they knew I was off schedule?
If they knew how human I was, how unobjective and emotional I could be, they'd respect me less. Or perhaps that's just an assumption of my own design. Perhaps I've deluded myself into thinking I need to be an ironclad paragon of objective, scientific neutrality. A creature of rigid habit and routine.
I almost laugh at the absurdity of the idea. Structure gives me purpose!
"No, no I have not." I sip from the coffee, hands quaking and nearly splashing ambrosia on my face. What a pathetically weak specimen I can be in moments of chaos like this. It's not the first, not the last.
"So, I sat on the floor when they were gone and wept. How?" I scream at the ceiling in tears now. When did that happen? Where is my watch? Oh, it's over there. I must have thrown it. "How could this happen? The anomalies, this magical otherworld of scientific potential that they so fiercely believed in and loved. How could it steal them from me? Why was this magical world I once so deeply loved able to wound me so."
Air hisses between my clenched teeth, as the disgust begins to leak out of me, from my face, like blood from an oozing, mortal wound.
"And then I read the letters. Honeyed words printed onto strangely scented paper, dozens of pages filled with explanation and journals of their childhood raised in a magical island paradise beyond the scarlet pink sunrise." I pace back and forth before the board. It's not as calming as it should be.
Humanity has me now.
"Fantastical tales of magical creatures, people, and times beyond imagination. All assuring me that they were fine! That when I was ready, I could join them, lead the way to a better future." I laugh, bitterly as I speak, trying not to cry from the rage.
Trying to keep my voice even and from descending into hysterics.
I fail, of course, because I am not a perfect paragon of neutrality. I am a mortal woman, molded this way by the cruelest jokes in the universe.
I take a long sip of my coffee as tears streak down my cheeks, never breaking eye contact with the epicenter of my board. Oh boo you whore, you made me ruin my mascara.
"It was all a lie. A farce. A lure. But I wouldn't learn that until later. That's way off the beaten path of my life." I pause, tapping my foot three times. Or was it four? I lost count in my increasing agitation. "I withdrew from the semester to get my affairs in order. I owned a house, two cars, a cat and a dog, and a ridiculous retirement accruement all at the age of 19. A teenager's dream right? Wrong." I take three more shaky sips.
Three trips to my coffee machine, but I only remember one, so I do two more. A past version of me put two additional mugs on my desk, and now they are all filled.
"None of that could fill the hole in my heart. Only routine, only normalcy and regularity could. Habit saved me from the pain. Then you had the audacity to include letters and journals from my grandparents, the grandparents I always thought had perished on a noble, huminatarian mission. But apparently, that was my parents lie to protect me from a truth they shouldn't have shielded me from." I laugh.
"A farce! What a cruel thing, to realize my parents were optimistic fools. You set the bait, and lured them to your greedy maw. Then, you tried to bait me." I snarl. I am inexplicably grateful for the walls and the door between me and my administrative staff.
They'd think me mad in this state. They might be convinced they are right.
But I am simply human.
In a brief moment of clarity, I wonder what time it is. Was there something I had scheduled at 2?
"So began my education, what your kind really is. Of the truth about magic," the words come out twisted and mocking. "Anomalies." I spit the words in disgust, seesawing right back in. "You're not some wonderful mystery. You took my parents. Maybe you took my grandparents too! I read your file!"
I shake with fury, head to toe, eyes wide in my skull, lips curled back.
"My Uncle moved in to help me manage the house when his wife passed away from a heart attack. Probably a lie, probably another anomaly. Five summers later, one of you abominations took him in Bethlehem Steel. I was a junior researcher doing my PhD with the Foundation, and you monsters took more from me. The higher I rose, the more this kaleidoscope of wonder became a merry-go-round of abyssal dread!" I'm screaming now. Roaring at the wall. But the music still drowns me out.
"At 30 I learned the truth of what you were, I finally got my fingers deep into your ontological pie, and oh how rotten it is."
The laughs come, pained and flowing with tears.
"But, I will have the last laugh. I've solved your riddle, oh hidden puzzlemaster! You hid the formula well, but I did it, and now you're going to get my horns. I have finally uncovered the key, to rid my world of your bastardizing, predatory hands. Anomalous people are still people they say, no! I cry, they're predators, monsters wearing our shape. No more! I will undo your predatory magic, twisting of reality. Then, when it crumbles around you, oh mystical Witch of that sacred Isle, I will strangle you with my own two hands." My voice fades as I speak, from a roar, into a menacing whisper. "Then I will free the rest of the world of what you built, and I can finally sleep in peace!"
I sip from my mug, finding it empty, and then screech, smashing it against the board.
SCP-8711 wins again, in the end. It always wins. Routine has been my only bulwark and salvation, and even now she knows how to strip it away.
But not for much longer.
Not for very much longer.
I am Eulades Eurylochus! I will rid my world of this greatest of evils and all others very soon.
I'm laughing. Of course I'm laughing, there's nothing else to do but laugh, well except maybe cry about how much it all burns.
Something I didn't plan for happens instead.
My door opens.
And I look up at the wall.
Oh, it's 2.
Its time to reset!
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2.3 You Won't Drown With Your Lover
Site-189
They’re marched down the VTOL’s ramp at riflepoint like prisoners of war. Cuffs burn against Melina’s skin as small rivulets of blood wind down her arm. Her initial concern, much to her own surprise, is not whether or not they're going to be ok, but whether or not what she hides is going to be visible with the blood flowing freely down her arms.
Then she remembers the ontokinetic second skin, and it slips back to being worried about how they are going to escape.
Behind her, Cardea is wheeled down like a rabid dog: trolley, straps, muzzle, and all.
A large oil platform looms up before her. The dark metal drips with ominous intent, bearing all the weight of the millions of years of biological decay it once dragged to the surface from the depths. The shadows cast by its superstructure, seep hateful miasma of shadow. A million tiny black hands crawl across the landing pad with the arcing sun, reaching to claw and drag Melina into the abyss of nothing before her. Like she would have deserved had paths diverged. It shears apart the conceptual threads of her web as they spread, weak as they are with the blinking shackles on her wrist.
Even without the cuffs, it would swallow her. It’s going to swallow her just like she would have wanted her master too. The thought sends a shiver up her spine. Salty ocean wafts under her nose, the cry of gulls distantly ringing as the VTOL’s engines abruptly cut off.
This is deeply vexing. I will never get Cardea out of here on my own. Not without her tricks. Not without the robe. She looks to the side, towards the ocean beyond and considers for a fraction of a moment before dismissing it. The gamut of contingencies is growing more and more desperate by the second, fragmenting.
She lied to Cardea. She hated herself for it. She never lied to her. But she couldn't do it.
She could use her own blood.
But nothing good would come of that.
No I can't panic yet. Think. she jams her eyes shut.
The moment we hit that water, she’ll be helpless. She bites into her lip so hard it starts to bleed. The tang of iron gracing her tongue draws unpleasant memories, that she shoves back down.
On the other end, She looks back forward, eyes tracing between the guards, and the soldiers on the deck of the helipad. At their guns and then their faces.
If Cardea tries to break free, they will shoot me. Then she will be overwhelmed too quickly to finish the calculations, even assuming that she could move us with the cuffs on. I never should have taken off my robe. Melina looks down at her cuffs, trying to keep her breathing even.
SRA cuffs, how could she ever have accounted for that?! She didn't even know it was possible. The mechanisms are too complex, and the pain around her wrists biting.
She would need time that I cannot give. Is there any chance I can slip them off? Do not panic. Not yet. We are not inside yet.
As they approach the platform’s entrance, she tries to subtly wiggle her wrists, inwardly wincing as the hostile material eats into her flesh and concept. The cuffs refuse to budge.
No good. Can’t get them off. She looks up again, seeing the doors just a few meters away. Not enough time before they have us completely nullified to try another method. Not without being overt. Her heart slams in her chest.
Fear. Real, tangible fear creeps up her spine. They could do anything to us here. We're going to be utterly powerless. I'm going to be utterly powerless.
The white-tiled hallways are cold as they are pushed through the doorway. Suffocating reality presses in, stifling her conceptual senses like the static numbness of a limb that’s fallen asleep. Her vision swirls, tilting horizontally, nausea rising in her stomach, sharp pinpricks of pain forming in the center of her forehead. The lingering metallic tang and pungent sulfuric remnants of old crude oil almost bring her to retching.
Don’t panic. Think. Think dammit. Her neck constricts, breathing abruptly difficult like her airways are being pinched closed by an allergic reaction.
She almost misses the man standing to the side in the entryway, his dark hair neatly trimmed and brushed, his bright green eyes tracing her every step. Their gazes meet, Melina’s cold and harsh. At least, that's what she aims for, but the muscles are twitching.
He doesn’t budge. Something flickers behind his pupils. Pity? Sympathy? Empathy? It twists her stomach into disgusted knots.
It's the same sort of look her mother gave her at the end. That her ex-husband slapped upon her as the palace burned behind them.
"Jacobs, why—you’ve got her strapped down, and this one cuffed. What’s going on?"
"Our special guests of honor are anomalies, Ericc. We take no risks. You know this." He kicks Cardea’s leg roughly, provoking a pained noise from Melina’s partner, sparks of hate flaming into a lightning storm in her chest. "This one, it bit off our copilot’s ear."
Dread washes over her. We’re going to die in here. Or worse. We’re at their mercy. How did this happen?
"They’re people, Jacobs." Ericc frowns.
We let down our guard, and they came for us. We got too comfortable, thought we were too valuable, and now the piper has come to collect. Hubris, it kills every damn one of us. Gods, how could I have been so foolish?
"Ah the moral compass. To be so naïve again." Jacobs pats the man’s cheek condescendingly. "You’ll learn eventually."
The man, Ericc, pushes the glasses further up his nose.
She looks down at her cuffed hands. Mentally clawing to gain composure through the throbbing fever rising in her flesh.
No, stay calm. Get it together. You are Melina. You are a rock. A scourge of the world. Fear is the enemy. Do not let them see you panic. Don’t let them see how helpless you feel. She strains to keep her expression fully neutral. A drop of blood runs out of her nostril, blood vessels bursting from the effort.
Her eyes betray her, threatening to spill over.
The storm of thoughts and emotions part like the red sea. Something ripples through the air, snatching against the tiny lengths of her shattered mental webs. Eyes wide, her head jerks towards Ericc. Their glances meet in a sliding gaze, as something else worms behind his pupils.
His words slide off a serpent’s tongue, smooth and honeyed in tone and intonation. "Don’t you think this is a little much now that they’re here? Surely all you need now is the rifles."
Her conceptual fingers reach, but the ripple is already gone. The extending threads of her abstract fingers shear off at the joints, swept away by the drowning field. Spikes of pain streak through her skull. Only immense self-control stops the scream burning in her lungs from ripping into the air.
She almost topples over, only caught by Ericc's hands, much to the chagrin of the accompanying agents.
None of it feels real, like she’s swimming through a nightmare and there’s no shore, like a pool with steep sides and no exit ladders.
His hands leave her, ushered back by the guards.
Did—No, it must have been an echo.
She misses Jacobs’s physical reaction in the moment of agony, but hears his voice. "Sure, fine, I guess. If anything happens, the boss is going to blame you."
Gestures catch between the floating bits of color swirling in her vision from the fraying of her optic nerves, a click of keys sliding into a hole and turning. The cuffs fall away, clattering on the ground, her vision slowly clearing. The drowning crush of too much reality lessens by inches, but in a game where you’re about to be torn apart, inches is just enough to stagger into living.
She teeters in place, and comes to rest against a wall, the cool touch of the tile against her cheek soothing a fever in her flesh that she hadn’t even realized was festering. For a moment, some sense of humanity flickers behind the guard’s eyes, but it’s gone in the next.
Her recovery is sharply interrupted by the barrel of a rifle being slammed into her skull. Alarm bells scream in her nerves. She’s pressed her against the wall, chin roughly grasped by gloved hands and forced to look at Cardea as she’s unstrapped from the trolley.
Her heart leaps into her throat.
She’s frozen in place, hands shakily tracing along her own torso. Despair’s frosty grip curls around her stomach. The instinctual search fails to produce what has always been there before. Of course she doesn't have either of her comforts.
Completely powerless.
"Either of you try anything, when we take these off, and we’ll fry both of you. Right here, right now. Got it?" Jacobs’s voice growls against her eardrums.
She wonders, is this how her people felt in the beginning? Is this what drove them to become monsters?
Gazes lock. The sneer on Cardea’s lips betrayed and shattering by the sudden fear and calculation burning behind her pupils. Ice crawls up Melina’s spine, lungs constricting. She struggles to breathe with the man’s weight pressing her against the wall.
Don’t do it, Cardea. Now isn’t the time. I don’t know if any better will come but now is! Not! It!
Messages streak across the gap. Break the mental blockade of rage. The calculations play out. The sneer and biting snark slide off her markswoman’s lips and she nods.
Monsters.
"Good." Jacobs smirks smugly, and a soldier pops open the muzzle caging her lover’s mouth. Rifles point from all sides as she’s roughly pulled off the trolley and shoved forwards.
Jailers. Oppressive fascists.
Jacobs’s grasps the collar of Melina’s night shirt, and pulls her along, back onto her feet. "Walk." He says sharply in her ear, and with no other recourse, she moves forwards.
Just like mother.
In an endless tide of blooming dread, another nightmare begins unfurling. A group of guards around Cardea sharply veer left down another hallway. She turns as Melina’s group moves past the intersection continuing forward. Melina’s stomach drops completely, dread howling into terror.
"Hey!" Melina shouts, turning as if to run after the other group. A guard grabs her arm and roughly shoves her forward.
"Where are they going!? Where are you taking her?" she screams at the man. He shoves her again, this time the rifle pointed at her forehead.
No, no, no no no. We can't be separated now. I have nothing.
She feels so very small now. Stripped of all the protection, all the comforts of safety and precious control. A lifetime of careful arrangement and construction snatched away in a matter of hours.
"Keep moving, freak," he growls.
Her face betrays her in the moment. Eyes wide in panic, as the guard turns around and marches her down the hall. It is the Snow Queen’s Domain all over again. A million different horrible fates bubble through her skull, terrifying thoughts of what they might do. To herself. To Cardea.
"We never show fear. If we’re caught, they’ll separate us. Try to sweat us. Get us to talk. Don’t let them know how vulnerable that separation makes us." Her own voice rings in her ears, the training they practiced a thousand times rising back to the forefront.
But that training always assumed there was a chance of escape. In this hell of human making, there is none. So, it fails her now.
She falters, hands shaking as they walk, biting her lip, eyes wide and darting.
Contingencies, plans, analysis — all of it falls away. She’s small, vulnerable, and alone. Human. Human in a way she hasn’t been in a long, long time. Maybe that she never even was until now.
Am I nothing without my cloaks and schemes? What can I even do? Will anyone come to save us?
﹏𓊝﹏
﹏𓊝﹏
2.4 Hold Onto What We Are
I, Ericc au Helios, the greatest secretary to ever exist, or so I tell myself, pause before my boss's door. If I'm going to exist in this position, why not take that title?
Anyways, I frown, remembering exactly why I'm here, and push in the pine door. Its rudimentary to step into Site-189’s director’s office normally, but today is different for a myriad of reasons, but the most apparent is fairly immediate.
Eulades Eurylochus stands in front of her bulletin board, mascara streaking down her face, hair all out of place. For lack of better terms, she looks positively unhinged for a few rather concerning moments.
I blink, and she's all normal and business, mascara vanishing into a hankerchief. She smiles at me with that creepy twitch of her lips and eyes that only she can do, despite the shattered porcelain of one of the three mugs she's insists on keeping in the office.
I sigh internally, knowing I'm going to have to replace it with an identical model. It gets more precarious, every time she breaks one, to replace a mug that stopped being made exactly five years ago.
But on the bright side, she thinks I'm a miraculous genius for producing a new one without fail, each time. It's rather bizarre for someone who thinks magic and the anomalous are stains on the universe.
At some point between looking at her, sighing, and then looking at her again, she's produced a compact, and is redoing her mascara.
What a vain little creature.
I almost get distracted again, wondering if there was a time where I was a contradiction to this degree.
"Ah, Ericc. Just the man I was waiting for," She says effortlessly as if I didn't see the nervous breakdown she was having a few moments before. She's, at times, a decent actor.
Or rather, it's probably more appropriate to say that she thinks she's an unshakable paragon of rationality and neutrality. Well, ok, honestly, to be transparent with you, future me of course, I've overheard her muttering that to herself several times when she's not blasting that awful concerto.
Someone really should introduce her to a muse.
Anyways, I'm getting sidetracked again. You spend too long in a different skin and you start to become someone else.
Eulades rises, picking up a stack of folders from the desk. "Have our guests arrived?"
"They just landed. Jacobs’s separated them, as you ordered." My throat clenches tightly, thinking about the manner in which they were treated in front of me.
"Good. Good." She appraises Ericc. Which is a rare moment of empathic observation for her. Or suspicion. I'm not sure which is worse. I don't particularly like having her full attention, for obvious reasons. "Something wrong?"
"I’m concerned by how Jacobs is treating them."
"Oh?" She tilts her head, urging me to continue with her eyes. A bit of nausea strikes from the malicious glee of expectation shining there.
"Yes Ma'am." She really does not deserve the honorific. My voice is dry and serious. "They’re being handled like criminals, battered and shoved around, like they’re livestock."
I tap my fingers against the fabric of the dry-cleaned khakis, other hand pushing the glasses up my nose. The texture of the pants is a comfort, and the learned habit of metal sliding gently up flesh a soothing song.
Eulades smirks. I have to stop the shiver of disgust rolling up my spine, otherwise I'll look like a cowering animal.
"We try to keep you away from this Ericc, but these things are anomalies. They have to be handled a certain way. Standard operating procedure to make sure we’re all safe."
I frown, already having known the likely response, but hearing it, seeing her fall into it. It breaks my heart in a way. Pours a black ick of disgust into the pit of my belly where it bubbles and eats at me.
"Sure, I understand anomalies can be dangerous, but these aren’t just objects. They’re people." And that's the single most important thing. Anomalous people are still people. If she can't pass that test…
Eulades laughs softly. "People," she mutters to herself after a moment. "It’s so cute and naïve. Stick to your work Ericc. You’ll live longer."
I think every part of me always knew this is how it would go. Perhaps I was a naive fool to believe that, until she said it, it wasn't true. The fantasy our minds create for us to live in are truly the most horrible fortresses.
I see.
"Are they not people? Do they not love, talk, live, feel and enjoy life like us?" I ask with a frown. I cannot simply roll aside and not challenge this behavior. I would be unworthy of my title if I were to. Especially after creating this mess.
"Do people bite off each others’ ears like rabid dogs? Rip a piece of wood out of their stomach and try to charge down your colleagues with it?" She clicks her tongue. I want to punch her in the mouth, but that won't get us anywhere, and might just get them killed. "Ericc, you don’t work in the field. They might look like people, mime the things we say and do, but they are not people. They are dangerous animals, predators, freaks of nature with free will and the power to destroy what you hold most dear at the flick of a finger. When given the choice, they choose to kill every time. I’ve learned this the hard way."
So, I have truly thrust them into a nightmare. What a mess.
I stare at her, expression level and neutral on the surface. Underneath, I am a typhoon of anger, disgust. Sadness gusts in my chest, mingling with a fury not felt in many years, all of it threatening to break free.
But I can't afford that, and neither can those two. I will have to find another way, and fast.
Will the ending justify the bloody journey to reach it? Or am I doomed to fail them as I have others.
I decide to try with her one last, futile time.
"Bu—"
But she shuts me down with a raised hand, immediately. Maddening thing to have happen, really.
"I can see this bothers you. Don’t let it. Focus on securing us a transport, Ericc, and leave the worries about our guests to me. I think you’ll be happier for it."
Again I ponder the urge to punch her. But again, that would be foolish. Far too many of their little reality anchors for me to reliably storm the palace, in proverbial terms.
She smiles at me. It’s not the smile itself that twists my stomach into knots, it’s how sincere it is, as if she’s doing me a great service.
I want to vomit.
I want to rip her skull and spine out of her skin, and beat the rest of her to pieces with it.
I wants to pick up the phone and dial the O5 Council, the Ethics Committee.
But if I do any of that, then they're as good as dead. She probably has a deadman's switch somewhere, knowing her.
There will be a window, I believe, a moment of vulnerability at the moment we sail into the rising of the sun. That's when I'll act.
But— I bite my lip. That will leave me with nothing.
I acquiesce.
"Yes, Ma'am."
No, that's not right. What about them? Perhaps, the seeds of hope were right before me so very long ago. Just in the wrong combination. Yes that's it. Brilliant. But, they will need to be tested.
"Very good." She reaches out with rancid fingers and pats my shoulder, staining the suit with all her sin. "Now, if there’s nothing else, I should properly welcome our guests."