SANITY LINE
IV. Best Laid Plans
I once saw a field of brass,
where the weavers spun;
A field of chains in place of grass,
where our fates are won.
-Couplet attributed to King Hayden of Galba Dea,
First Monarch of the Independent Kingdom
To live in Galba Roy Centre – particularly on our near the Royal Quarter – was to be inundated with the sound of clockworks. It was a heritage-controlled district, a city of brass and iron, of sooty windows and thick ashen clouds of chimney-smoke.
Valerian stepped out into the chill day – they were all chill, these days – clad in his usual wandering clothes of grey woollens, cap pulled low and face downturned into the upturned collar of his pea-coat. He was anonymous, in this way, and could skulk about at his leisure. Just this morning from his salon, as he listened to a Faberge Nightengale whistle out a wonderful rendition of God Save the King, he’d set down his cup of hot tea and glanced out the window to spy the peculiar silver line.
From the street-level he could now see it more closely, and the silver line was, in fact, a bit of wire inlaid among the cobblestones that ran from the gate all the way, to… well, that was the point, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t know where this silver path was running until he had followed it to the extent of its course.
The would-be King would have to admit to having been more than a little bedevilled, this morning, which was why he disregarded the newsboy on the corner rather more coldly than he otherwise would have. He had tossed and turned all night, and set out now, so early in the morning, in the hopes he might return tired enough to have slept properly. The streets were heavy with pedestrian traffic, today – not a car or cart to be seen, to his relief. Crowds were both boon and bane – providing anonymity and chances for discovery.
He picked his route as carefully as he could, considering he was following a road picked for him (or perchance another). The silver line passed down Bull Lane, a quiet little passage in the ancient heart of the city best known for the lurid displays put on by the various dispensaries, brothels, screening rooms and cabarets that lined the lane. The light of the sun, dappled in the cloudy sky, was here twisted to a lurid red that added a twisted, over-sexualized quality to the mannequins, posters, and buskers.
Valerian determined to pay them no head, and chased the silver through. He crossed King’s Court, where he came upon the most lonely and empty scene the busy square had ever faced, and for a moment he found he could not help but linger, gazing at the empty bandstand in the center with its dead fountain beneath. The trees had unsurprisingly shed their leaves in response to this unseasonable chill. Even the grass seemed to have died back.
He sipped the tea he’d forgotten he was carrying – still warm, in spite of a good half-hour hunt at less than ten degrees – and resolved to move on. He had to hunt to find the silver again – it seemed to have tarnished, somewhat, and by the time he’d chased it back out of the lawn, it had faded to a dull, brassy tone.
Silver wire, he realized belatedly, must be very expensive. It was probably bronze all the way back, and here the finish was just worn down. Regardless, he continued to chase it, turning onto Sun Road, whose cobbled steps took him up a hill the surrounding buildings had hidden. The brass had lead him all the way to a door in a cul-de-sac at the end of the road. The door was polished oak, set into a home of tudor construction, which stood out jarringly against the brick buildings to either side.
Dauntless, he soldiered on, and as he opened the door he found himself stepping not into a house but onto a grand catwalk, over a great mill of turning gears and axels. The smell of metal and grease was overpowering. Hot air and orange glow wafted up from below. The catwalk ran off into a yawning hall of this great mill he’d uncovered. The cut-mesh grating of the catwalk echoed under his footfalls as he advanced along it. The far wall was dark, but there was a set of French doors there – cool white wood and frosted glass. He reached them, drew his jaw tightly against his upper teeth, and passed through.
He had stepped into a softly-lit library. The air was cool, here, and calmer. Machinery whirred and buzzed – he recognized a bank of typewriters that seemed content to churn out text themselves, bereft of operators, and a small machine behind each one that seemed to have no other purpose but to turn the pages that fell from each machine over, and keep them in orderly stacks. As he watched, one or two of those stacks were bound with a paper band and suctioned off through ductwork, heading to god only knew where.
“Your Highness. I was wondering when I might expect you.”
Startled, Valerian turned, retaining enough dignity and composure to do so slowly, and to mask the shock that followed. He was meeting an impossibility. The other figure was well-dressed, if not casually – tweed jacket, white dress shirt, wool dress slacks, et all – this was about where the normality ended. His skin was sections of alabaster plate with silver seams, articulated about the face in a way that allowed for the simulation of expression. His eyes were black and seemed filled with some fluid Valerian could not identify, with long black “hair” of what looked like fine chain pulled back behind his head.
“And,” Valerian said, swallowing. “You are?”
“Oh, we haven’t met yet.”
The Alabaster Man took the book he was holding and slid it onto a shelf that was passing by – part of a system of articulated shelves that must have been attached to a great wheel they stood at the edge of, which span out of view behind the walls and constantly swept away old shelving and brought in new. Valerian glimpsed the spine as it was dragged out of his peripheral. Valerian ap Dougal.
Shouldn’t that be ‘ap Sussex’? The thought nagged on his mind. Both names sounded equally right, and they should not have. They hadn’t the right to. “… Aren’t we meeting right now?”
“I’m not ready for you, just yet, Valerian. I’m not yet sure if I’m meeting the King, or the Prince. Do come back when you’ve made up your mind.”
Valerian rolled over and struck his alarm clock with such force that, for the second time this week, he was greeted with the mechanical grind of the striker between the bells snapping free inside its housing.
---
Cool water could only do so much to replace a proper night’s sleep, no matter how much of it you splashed onto your face. It didn’t stop Vidcund from trying, and drying himself off with the coarse towel that was, apart from his bed, the only “soft” thing in his holding cell. He did not sleep well anymore – when it was not his mind keeping him awake, it was the severe contrast in comfort between the immersion tanks he had been spending his nights in as far back as he could remember, and that damnable mattress.
Through his small slit of a window, he could see enough of the skyline of Tererra to get a good understanding of where he was. He was in the park-like university district, which meant that the building they were in must only have recently been added to the Agency Roster.
He was somewhat amazed, then, to find his cell as professionally equipped as it was. Time must have passed faster than he was aware, judging by how heavily denuded the trees that made up so much of the skyline had been. There were signs of frequent frosts. It had to have been late October, mid November. But his paperwork told him that he was wrong. It was only July.
It was possible that he was viewing some kind of projection or monitor, but... why lie about that type of thing? Why not just leave a blank, windowless wall?
He folded the towel carefully, and hung it, before he rolled his sleeves back down. His timing was almost immaculate – he was just finishing buttoning the front of his shirt back up when he heard the food port on the door being opened.
“Därk. Breakfast.”
Vidcund blinked a couple of times as he walked to the door, and stared blankly at the guard on the other side for a moment, until the other frowned. “Aren’t you going to take it?”
Vidcund picked up one of the sealed packets on the tray. “Wrong tray. I don’t take Anipro. I’ve never even heard of it.”
The guard checked the number on the tray against his list. “... This is your tray. Take it.”
“I want to see the medical officer.”
“Can’t say I blame you, sir. I’ll get her for you.”
Vidcund glared at the back of the man’s head until it was out of view, and then sighed, taking the tray back to bed, where he could sit and try to enjoy his toast, powdered eggs, and vegetable hash. Seeing as nothing was seasoned in the least, enjoying it was a tall order.
Not ten minutes later, the cell door itself hissed open on its pneumatic controls. Vidcund stood up at once, rather energetically and deftly dodging a bit of egg that would have otherwise wound up on his shirt. It earned him something of a smirk from Agent Valkoinen, who sipped from her bottle of protein shake. “Nice moves.”
“Lots of practice, Agent,” Vidcund quipped. “... Don’t tell me we’re wasting Agents-in-White on answering medical issues?”
“Alright. I won’t.”
Valkoinen paced into the room a bit, looking around at the stark detail. “... I’m the one who ordered the changes to your medication. You aren’t taking anything to address medical issues. Everything you’re on has been by agency mandate.”
“You switched my Amnesiac to Anipro?”
“I replaced your amnesiac with Anipro.” Valkoinen held out Vidcund’s confiscated AR glasses and an autofile page. “The drug information sheet. Anipro’s not an amnesiac. It’s an antipsionic.”
Vidcund keyed immediately on what was happening. “You’re concerned about my... quirk.”
“You’re useful enough to me that making more of you is not a terrible idea, but I need to be able to keep an eye on you all the same. Anipro will keep you inside your own head.”
The Agent wasn’t convinced. Locking him down to one body – seemingly the last body – would be a good way to start making another set of clones and still be able to kill him, hopefully leaving them with a more malleable personality to elevate to the top. Call it paranoia, but it was an occupational hazard.
Vidcund nodded slowly, and tore into the package of it. “... If I’m not on an amnesiac anymore you’re running the risk of me remembering whatever was in my Oldlife that you felt I’d be better off not knowing.”
“You’re more useful to me in one piece,” Valkoinen replied. “I’m pulling you out of the standard ops cycle, Agent. You’ll be working with us from now on.”
“Us?”
Valkoinen sipped her shake carefully, deliberately keeping him waiting for his answer. “Welcome to Team Kether, Agent Därk. Let’s go back to my office and talk specifics.”
---
“Let’s start with messages from abroad.”
Edward leaned back in his chair – less comfortably than he might have hoped, though he chose to take that simply as a sign he should spend less time in it, and listened carefully to the ship’s intercom. A functionary – attached to his security unit from the crew of this Maritime Self Defense Force vessel – was dutifully reading from the radio logs. “Coded order packet from Tererra, addressed to you. It’s been delivered.”
“I’ve read it. What else?”
“Message from your brother. He can’t give details but he’s being moved out to a project in Razeland.”
Edward pondered that. Razeland was a vast, arid island in the south of the archipelago, almost as large as Zaxti, though far less populated. Other than Newhaven and the Lipan traditional homelands around Enotekka, there wasn’t much there. “Archeology?”
“He didn’t say. I get the impression he wasn’t meant to.”
“… Anything else?”
A sigh – the man must have had to consult his notes. “Message addressed to you from Brigadier General Coultier of the 32nd Razeland Guardians Brigade. A relation?”
Edward smirked. The military boys loved to poke fun at him (and his brother, to a lesser extent), over this. “My twin sister. What did the General have to say?”
“Her unit is being mobilized into the Blasted Bay area. Their naval transport will stop in Zvanesburg before carrying on to their final destination by way of Figaro.”
“Message back. Figaro looks forward to hosting our famed Guardians unit.” Edward turned in his chair, leaning forward again to rest his forearms on the desk. “Now. Local messages. Refugee transports are safely over the horizon?”
“Yes sir, without incident. There’s also two more cargo vessels arriving intending to offload medical supplies and fuel. They have agreed to take the next wave of refugees back with them.”
Edward nodded. “Alright, thank you. Please connect me with Lieutenant LeBlanc.”
There was a pause – an opportunity for the self-styled knight to take in a bit more food. Like many others on the island, and everyone in his employ, he was languishing in the relative meanness of post-Cataclysm Figaro. Breakfast was rationed. Well, all food, really, but rationed not in the sense of limitation of quality but in the perhaps more literal sense of being comprised of vacuum-packaged, reheated food provided by the Self Defence Forces. In a self-serving gesture of charity, Edward had ordered that priority for civilian, familiar foodstuffs should be given to the civilian survivors who remained on the island. His men, even moreso than the military personnel who were transporting food from the mainland, were eating from bags just the same as he was.
The call went through when Edward felt his scrambled eggs crunch between his teeth – must have been a bit of shell. Unavoidable, really. “Forward Station. LeBlanc here.”
“Coultier here,” he answered. “How goes the north?”
There was a noise in the background like a car backfiring and then the rustling of rapid movement. “We’re proceeding apace,” Francis said, when he’d returned the satelite phone to his ear. “Turns out part of the old Regent Crocus Mall is standing. Unfortunately, it’s the south end of the mall, and that’s where a fairly large number of the looters are holed up. That bang you just heard was no doubt something pilfered from the outfitters.”
Edward rolled his eyes. If they’d made it as far north as the mall, they’d pretty well conquered all but a small fraction of the island. To be held up now by men with varmint rifles wasn’t his idea of military professionalism. “Any injuries?”
“No. The gunmen have more bravado than brains. We’ve fallen back about 250 metres, though there’s good cover right up to the last hundred metres or so.” Francis cleared his throat. “Eddy, most of us aren’t combat veterans. Those of us who are could probably press the assault, but…”
He didn’t have to finish. Edward knew the problem – counting himself and Francis, the total number of people who could have been considered honest to goodness combat veterans (informally in his own case) couldn’t have been more than 18 in the entire company. “Leave off for now. You have a forward station, obviously?”
“Yes.”
“Fall back to it. Set a picket for whatever position feels best defensible for you. We’re being reinforced with NPF and Agency personnel soon. No sense in risking all for a brief bite at the apple.”
“Understood. Forward out.”
Edward leaned back in his chair, tipped the last of the eggs into his mouth, and pulled open his desk drawer. All things considered, civilization was advancing nicely. It was time to take another crack at that notebook.
---
Niles was pleased by how dry – and relatively warm – he found himself in the morning. Few structures still stood on the compound of what James and the other Angels called the Sepulchur, but the longer building – a low-slung house in traditional Tererran architecture – had a small central room that was both relatively well insulated and free from leaks, the latter being an important consideration in the Terrwald. When Niles made it outside in the predawn gloom, the mists were thick. The altitude was not all that high – yet – nor were they close to the coast. Mist plagued these woods. It probably would for years, until the skies finally cleared and a proper sunbeam could burn the fog away.
James was doing the next best – setting up a small camper stove on the hood of his car to boil up hot water for instant coffee. Neither man addressed each other beyond a nod. James knew damned well, with or without telepathic help, that he was not to mess with a decaffeinated Clayton.
The pair did not utter a word to one another until Niles was well into the bottom third of the cup. By then, they had already donned quite a bit of equipment from the trunk of James’ car – Niles tucked his revolver, baton, and a few other tools under his coat, while James coiled rope over one shoulder and checked the charge on a high-powered flashlight.
“Just what is this place, anyway?” Apart from the most cliché hideout possible, in Niles’ view.
James lead them over to a small, broken plinth, which he examined with his flashlight. The surface was well worn, but showed signs of considerable inscription – in places, lost entirely to the elements. “The whole damn thing is basically the Sharona family homestead. There’s other smaller cabins and what-not scattered all through the Terrwald, but the direct line of the family lived, trained, and almost always died here.”
“I vaguely remember something about that,” Niles agreed. “Sharona means “Shar’s Brood” or the “Sons of Shar” or something like that in Terik.”
James nodded. “So the locals tell me. I take it that Shar was an important figure in Tererran Mythology?”
Niles considered that at length, again reaching into the mental cabinetry he’d constructed to furnish his memory. He’d spent many of his formative years in Kraterburg, granted, as a ward of the state, but if he thought back far enough he could remember living near Zvanesburg and growing up, hearing the old stories. “Well, not important per-se. Shar’s… mentioned. Sort of an anti-hero in one of the old legends about the White Keepers. He had a student who made a deal with the devil, basically, and killed her, so he wound up in exile.”
He shrugged. “I’m reaching a bit. Just because I’m Terreran doesn’t make me an expert on the myths of the Terrwald.”
This earned him a philosophical smirk from his companion, who reached down and depressed a spot on the obelisk. Immediately, the stone fountain-basin in which it stood began to lower its segments, falling into a spiral stair. “Fortunately for you, I am, or at least in this particular story. The Sharona – at least, the family line Eli belonged to, claim direct descent from Shar.”
“Implying he was real.”
James looked behind him as the pair descended. “If Jesus gets to be real, Shar gets to be real, at least for the purposes of this conversation.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on that one, too.”
“Ah, yes, I keep forgetting… you only accept objective reality.”
James paused at the foot of the stair, and Niles subconsciously knew to stop as well, even when James moved on to the doorframe. “Anyway, the more elaborated version of the story is relevant. Both to your question and to what we’re doing.”
“How so?”
James pressed his face against the stone door, listening carefully, or perhaps feeling, as his hands smoothed over its surface. “Shar’s apprentice – his lover, actually, in the oldest versions of the myth – was a novice training to be a white keeper, who was seduced by Shar’s sorcery, which offered a whole different set of myths and powers from what the Keepers taught. Her name was Creena.”
“Gloria’s ancestor, then?” Made sense. Eli was precisely crazy enough to play the Hatfield to her McCoy.
“To hear Eli tell it, Gloria herself.”
James backed up, gesturing with the flat of his palm as he did so. Niles immediately realized why he did so – as the door swung open, a guillotine-like blade concealed in the lintel dropped down. That would have been a missing limb, or worse.
Niles nodded slowly. “We must be after something good. You wouldn’t go to all this expense if you weren’t hiding something valuable.”
James nodded in kind. “Something useful, I hope. Particularly given the greater threat.”
“What’s that?”
James stopped, turning to face the detective. “Isn’t it obvious? If we survived, she might have, too. There’s a sobering thought for you.”
Ever the realist, Niles did his best to discount it, and would follow James onward, trying actively to ignore the elephant in the room.
---
The sudden realization that the script in question was shorthand and not some subtle substitution cipher came, as all the best ideas did, in the shower. Edward hurried from the showers aboard ship back up to his stateroom, in the relative undress of an undershirt and slacks, and had settled down again to work with swiftness unrivalled among students of any kind.
Edward didn’t know many shorthand scripts – being neither a journalist nor a scholar he had no need to quickly take down notes that couldn’t be achieved with recording voice clips on his phone. It was, however, a point of origin.
Within half an hour, an officer in communications had pulled him up brief primers on a half-dozen common varieties of the hand – which turned out to be Teeline – and Edward was away. Some license had to be used in translation – filling in blanks, guessing where spelling was poor or words were outright omitted, and intuiting what various abbreviations could have stood for.
The Knight worked late into the night, until his hands were shaking from an inability to temper his virtue with any of a variety of vices. Night, for some reason, was always when the cravings returned. He dug through his pockets from some remnant of the gum from his dinner pack, and, finding them barren, chewed on the inside of his cheek instead.
The first several pages were highly prosaic – a plaintext note explaining the book belonged to an officer Niles Clayton, Detective NPF, #107, followed by several pages in shorthand detailing small matters of petty crimes. Then, things began to get interesting. “Called [to]Abject re hside [homicide?] Gloria Creena.”
He followed the tale through, engrossed, as more and more seemed there, hidden in the gaps of Niles’ memory. The notes were incomplete – horrifying in possibility but merciful in ultimate harmlessness – suggesting only the barest structure of a narrative. Immediately, Niles began to distrust his agency attaché, who “knows too much” about the cult Creena quite famously began to. It only got weirder, with a call to a precinct morgue to investigate how the body could have gotten missing. Then came a “masked man” and a “gilded lily” which were references too lateral to understand completely.
Niles writes of an Archangel. Edward needed a moment or two to reconstruct the reference – he knew the detective to be a lapsed catholic, having met him once before and spent some time working alongside the man, who was conducting the Crimson Knights licensing inspections that year. A second reference to Scion, however, cemented the reference clearly in his mind. Archangel, the elusive commander-general of the Grey Angels. Half military contractor, half terrorist, season with self-importance and bake in a cult of personality until legendary in the subculture. “Made a deal with Archangel. Därk (spelled in full) is coming.”
Edward followed with rapt attention through the remainder of the tale – which picked up with the improbable quotation “I have looked behind the veil and seen the emptiness beyond”, scratched out twice, and then related the most improbable idea that Archangel “restored [him to] life”. Several pages followed where Edward could tell they had been pulled out. Then “Därk at the library. I killed him before, but he was there anyway. All of him.”
Taking a pause, Edward set the notebook and his transcription down, rising up to put the kettle on. Powdered coffee would have to do – it was late, but there was plenty of work left to do.
---
With his watch having died and no way to charge his phone, Niles had lost all sense of time, though a reasonable guess of “several hours later” crossed his mind more than once. Above ground and outdoors, he could’ve seen enough of the sun through the firmament to have taken an educated guess at the time, but down here all he knew was that it felt to be about time for lunch, and had felt that way for a few hours.
Finally, though, with enough adventures to have filled many a teenage-Niles’s afternoon gaming sessions, the pair had come to a stop. The mazelike corridors under the Sepulchre had given them more than one wrong turn, and Niles’ half-hearted hope that the trapped door was the only such pitfall was quickly and frequently dashed.
Finally though, James gave a triumphant shout and hustled across the last few feet of corridor, having managed to land his light on just the door he was hoping for. It was newer than much the rest of the recent construction, clad in or else completely made of cast iron, and, unlike all others, had a plaque that had yet to tarnish. “Here lies the Last Firstborn.”
Niles couldn’t help but scoff, all respect for Eli aside. “Bit presumptuous. His sister’s still alive, isn’t she?”
“Hard to tell. She left the country years ago, so it’s probable.”
James opened the door from a considerable distance, and seemed almost disappointed when nothing happened. The small room inside was easily lit by his flashlight, once he’d snapped the plastic cone which diffused the light in a more lamp-like fashion over the lens. Slowly, the pair made their way into the room. There were two pedestals in the centre of a room no bigger than a cupboard. James inspected them carefully, as did Niles (under magnification, at that), before either dared to touch anything.
Niles, at least, did not want another face full of pepper spray.
“We busted our asses all afternoon, spent what I’m sure was a small fortune on fuel, and put ourselves in the position of possibly having to walk at least half the distance back… for a book and a box.”
“Don’t be so short sighted,” James chided, handing him the torch as he picked up the box.
It was heavy – that much Niles learned when it was handed over to him for a second look. The box had a smooth, polished finish, and was comprised entirely of two kinds of metal, bolted together in places, welded in others, and seemingly wrought in other places. There were markings on the surface – in no language with which either man was familiar, if indeed they were writing. There was no place for a key, and when tried it was clear the bolts themselves were little more than interesting features, either welded in place after the fact, or sculpted in place as a deliberate deception.
For Niles, the sight of the thing put the hair on the back of his neck up. As soon as he touched it he could immediately perceive both of them as being watched, and, like all his basal instincts and gut feelings, no amount of logical inspection could completely banish the thought. He put it back down and was glad to be rid of it. It felt no more right to behold than a corpse.
Evidentially, James felt much the same way, wincing at it. “… Best just leave that here. We’ll take the book.”
Niles nodded. It was closer to what they had expected to find, and for him, at least, access to part or all of the lore Eli considered important would point him in the right direction of repaying the madman’s favour.
Continuing the tradition of his new life, a day had yet to go by where he didn’t have that strange feeling that the whole thing could be a dream.
---
It would not be wholly honest to say Edward was not used to such unsatisfactory conclusions. He had, after all, spent a considerable amount of his youth chasing artificial highs. It was only natural that he should miss the mark in reality as well.
The conclusion of his transcription didn’t bring the closure he’d expected. An initial pique in Edward’s interest confirmed a suspicion he’d held onto for years – that Eli Sharona was Archangel – and inspired feelings only understood by those who desired very deeply to bring harm to others finally seeing their opening. It was that much more of a fall, then, when he discovered a note from evidentially just after the cataclysm that Archangel had died in the cataclysm itself. As had, Niles suspected, the many Vidcund Därks, forever banishing the suspicion that Edward had harboured for some time, or at least rendering it moot.
Years ago, in the fire, the smoke, the hail of lead and broken glass, lived a memory. The one time Edward could recall himself having failed in valour – and there was Vidcund, running into the fire.
His frustration was sufficient that the notebook was subjected to a second reading, this time from his bunk. Something yet nagged him; there had been a reference, when talking about the events in the National Library, to Maria Frost.
Edward remembered that name. Depending on which paper you were reading, she was either a missing victim or the missing perpetrator of one of the most violent attacks on a public school in years. That it should have come up in Niles’ text was alarming.
“M.Frost found at National Library. W/ many followers it seems. All masked. Extensive combat ensues between them and Agency Division. Masked Man from morgue with her. Archangel engages and the tide begins to turn. When the masked man falls, her followers [unintelligible] her into the sky.”
Idly, he lowered his hand until he found the switch for the intercom. “Lord Protector to Communications. Put me through to Agency Division Headquarters in Terrera.”
Like hell he was letting something that obvious pass by on his watch. At the very least, Agency would have the information he needed on the incident. Then, God Willing, it would be time to go hunting.
---
Vidcund was impressed – Agency had contingencies for just about every disaster, but no amount of planning could reduce implementation time any faster than you could work. The planners had known that, and planned accordingly. Paper signs taped over the original signage of this building to indicate direction and purpose had a slightly aged quality about them – he’d stared at one for a moment when reading its rather dense notation and noticed the edges were a bit bent.
While that would normally irritate him, he had to give credit for the speed of the conversion, as he pushed his way through a double door that lead into a gymnasium that had, once, been a large storage room. He paced into the room, draped his jacket over the back of a folding chair whose job seemed to be holding jackets, and watched from the sidelines of a game of football he’d not expected to see.
It seemed to be one-sided – a single figure defending a makeshift goal against the others – but what made it singular was the composition of the teams. Even without the overlays displayed on his Auspex glasses, he’d have had doubts about the humanity of the attacking team. The ball never got far away from the goal, and when it did, it was launched with ferocity, along impossible curves or outright skipping sections of space. Even more shockingly, the goaltender was always there – not merely diving for the ball, but squarely in its path, catching it against his chest with his hands. Vidcund’s eyes couldn’t quite follow his movements – there was a suggestion, perhaps, but the man blurred as he passed.
A human moving fast enough to trigger visual persistence?
The door opened and closed behind him, and he was on the point of saying something when Valkoinen interjected from behind him. “When are you guys going to make it interesting and use more than one ball?”
The tender landed from his latest catch, and tossed the ball blindly into a bin which formed one post of the goal. “Where’s the fun in that?”
“Well, we could probably start betting on the outcome, for starters.”
Valkoinen joined in the chuckles as the group turned around to face both of them, and broke the seal on her bottled shake. Vidcund frowned slightly – food being rationed for damn near everyone, and here’s a woman with a warehouse full of Boost. “Alright, kids, gather ‘round. This here’s Special Director Vidcund Därk. He’s taking over as Field Group Head for Team Kether. Director, your new field staff.”
Vidcund frowned, glaring from one to another behind his glasses. Every single one of them – including the supposedly human goaltender – were aurically unusual. Still, with half the hardware needed for the building yet to be fully installed, and no good cell signals in the basement, he had no way to pull up their records on the fly. His gaze returned to the human. “We’ll start the introductions with you.”
“Zephyr Agyris,” the man said. Suddenly, too suddenly, he was within hand’s reach, extending it for a shake. “I’m your Heavy Support Specialist.”
Enforcement. Vidcund nodded. “All that armour must slow you down in the field.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Another stepped forward as Vidcund removed his glasses. The man was huge – pushing the boundry of seven feet – and his skin had a gaunt, thin appearance, as though it were more stretched over his frame than had grown there. Vidcund’s eyes flicked to the base of the man’s neck, and the folds of flesh there. “Hey. Lysander Dagonvic.”
Vidcund smirked slightly. “You’re my resident diver?”
Valkoinen cleared her throat. The room’s mood had fallen dramatically. Everyone was frowning at Vidcund, as though he’d passed great insult. “Lysander’s a technical expert. He’s a qualified diver, yes, but he’s on the team for his generalized occult expertise.”
She took a step forward, quite suddenly, glaring down the youngest-looking member of the team, who had bleach-blonde hair peppered with streaks of every colour Vidcund could think of. “Special Director Därk was not adequately briefed on the nature of this team. That was my fault, and I apologize. This meeting was as much a test of his ability,” she said, shifting her gaze to the room at large. “As well as your restraint.”
Vidcund folded his arms somewhat deservedly, and watched her turn to face him, taking a swig from her drink as she did so. “Vidcund, why did you ask Agent Dagonvic if he was the resident diver?”
His gaze tracked up to the tall man. “There’s a few reasons for pregill folds on the lower neck. He could be, like me, part of the Human Bioweapon development program. However, his size, physical appearance, and the suggestion of a nictitating membrane on his –forgive me – rather large eyes… it’s all highly suggestive of, at minimum, Deep One heritage.”
Dagonvic smirked. “Did that without pulling up my file. Not bad.”
Vidcund gave an appreciative nod, and gestured to Zephyr. “Only having one Kirillian signature threw me. You’re a wind spirit trapped in a biological lattice.”
“Homonculus,” Zephyr said, with a slight smirk. “But good for a hunch.”
Vidcund smiled, at that, and shook his hand again, looking to Valkoinen. “You’ve solved the uncanny valley problem.”
“No. Somebody else did.” Valkoinen folded her arms. “Like the rest of Kether, Mr. Agyris is something we’ve found that was probably quite dangerous until they joined the winning team.”
Vidcund nodded. Right. Kether was ultimately a punishment unit – they were all here for no other reason than there was no other place to put them. Too useful to discard or destroy, they’d been put into one unit where they could at least be kept on what would presumably be a very short leash.
The young man with the rainbow hair stepped forward. “This’ll be good. You won’t even be close.”
Vidcund stared at him for a long moment, taking advantage of every reading his glasses could give him. “… Auric redshifting. Spectral reflection of aura on nearby surfaces yeilds right-angled lines. What’s more…”
Vidcund removed his glasses. “You like to gamble, right, agent?”
“Very much so.”
“I’ll bet you fifty dollars I can guess your name and what you are.”
The young man smirked, extending his hand. “You’re on.”
Vidcund shook firmly. Aggressively so. “Pleased to meet you, Asmodeus McKim. I’m so glad to have a demon on the team.”
Asmodeus laughed, and Vidcund felt a knot form in his stomach. If he was to work among the monsters, was that how Valkoinen and the others now saw him?