SANITY LINE

XI. Enemy at the Gates         

Though the Blasted Bay was an obstacle that, to mortals, was insurmountable without wings or hull of steel, for those who walked with a foot on either side of the Arcadian border, the Dreamlands of the Bay were more passable, though forboding, with their uncharted and shifting nature, sections of swamp and lake and flash-flooded field. Holly had actually managed the journey from Galba Roy to Fen Ridge on horseback, riding mostly at night or under the shade of a suede cowl.

 

She had expected the town to be a hive of activity, given it was the reputed target of Duke Adron. The assassin had meant to join up with the Duke's court in Figaro, but had missed them, and was now, by her tracking sensibilities, about a day behind their rear-guard.

 

What she was not expecting, though, was the activity in question to have been construction. Fen Ridge was entirely overrun, and being rebuilt. Boggans were scattered everywhere, among fully-human laborours, reconstructing the city in an almost tudoresque manner that was befitting of her taste, the knives that bristled in their hidden catches all around her body, and the horse she had rode into town on. Banners waved on every available surface – the black field and argent mask of the Duke himself.

 

Nobody looked at her. This was not unusual; slaugh were notoriously cantankerous, even by the standards of fae, and were therefore often given wide berths. It became clear as she rode further into town that the bulk of the military force had moved on. Fairy Armies were not professional, standing units. They were more akin to dogs of war, and a skillful commander knew to keep them moving, lest boredom contribute to the enemy's efforts at attrition. It was a disappointment, then, to go ignored and avoided once she actually wished communication.

 

Her wanderings eventually brought her into a large square, the surrounding buildings all of fresher make. A fountain stood undisturbed in the centre of the space, save that the superstructure had been recently replaced with fresh statuary in the form of a large and abstract figure. As she rode around it, the statue drew her eye, until, all at once, as she must have reached the precise angle at which it was meant to be viewed, the world came crashing to a halt.

 

The sky – previously overcast in the brownish haze of the regions nearest the former Kraterburg Metropolitan Area – yawned, flushing to a deep and pure white illuminated by pinpoint-perfect stars of hungry blackness. The buildings around her became impressive in their vastness, seeming to go on and on forever. As her brain attempted to contain the moment in which all had changed, her ears rung painfully, through which she could hear the faint refrains of a woman's ghostly voice.

 

She came to in hungover agony, having struck her head against the flagstones when she had fallen, her horse having bolted to parts unknown. Slowly, she levered herself half-upright, disturbing the pall of ash that had fallen like snow over her. She inhaled deeply, looking around. The surround stank of brandy. Something aged, and decadent in what must have been rarity.

 

She looked up at the alien sky at the sound of leathery wing-beats overhead, and was startled to find a rider on the back of the strange chimera, gazing down upon her as he guided his steed down with martial swiftness.

 

---

 

Though he often spoke against such tactics, the Knight-Captain of the Crimson Knights had some considerable proficiency in certain elements of spycraft. Once upon a checkered pass, they had been of some use, and, as it turned out, there were some skills you never quite forgot.

With the current geopolitical tensions and the court drama of the missing Crown Prince, it was unlikely that he would go unnoticed in the Dean capital for very long, given his highly memorable and unique appearance. However, he couldn't simply go straight after his target, either. Viscount Rainwright was a key figure in the Dean courts. He enjoyed a certain familiarity with Galba Dea's highly-empowered monarchs, and what was more, he headed Special Branch, the loose collection of agencies that operated the espionage of the state.

 

However, Rainwright had his own Inner Circle, some of whom were less careful than others. It had taken less than a week for the pair of Crimson Knights to fully work out the schedule of the Viscount's houseman, a man named Walter Smith-Jameson, who they were presently waiting to re-emerge from a hospital in a recently gentrified neighbourhood. Their rented car was just the right age, make, and model to belong just about anywhere in the city.

 

For Francis, the novelty of a stakeout had worn off some days ago, and he nervously sucked from a bottle of sport drink while he glanced once again at Walter's parked car. “... He's got to have a driver, though.”

“Well, yeah.” Edward glanced as well, turning the page in his novel. “Which is about the only way you could even begin to call this sporting.”

 

Walter emerged, glancing, if you could say as much, up and down the street before retracing his steps back to the waiting car. Francis stopped his watch, while Edward took down the stated duration of the visit, frowning slightly.

 

“Didn't he have a briefcase when he went in?”

Edward considered that for a moment. “... Yeah, he did. Love to have known what was in it?”

 

As the butler's car pulled away from the curb, Francis restarted the engine. “Should we follow them?”

“Why? We already know where he is going.”

 

---

 

The persistent and unseasonable rain of the post-Eruption climate beat softly on the windows, and Walter's keen focus on the matter meant that he could even hear it bouncing upon the leaves of the rhododendron bush beneath the open panes. The window of his office at the Townhouse faced the side-yard, which was narrow and shielded from wind, meaning that he could let the fresh and fragrant garden air in through the window even in the downpour.

 

Still, the suggestion of rain carried with it an intensely psychological chill. Without distracting himself from his calculations, he reached out his left hand to gently pour a bit more tea from the pot to the cup, sensing the fill in the weight of the vessel as he set it back down upon the candle-holding warmer on which it rested. Outside of his usual habit, he deposited a sugar cube into the cup, giving it a lazy stir while he manually set the next number in the sequence into the machine, adjusted the operation toggle, and pulled the crank. Such mechanical adding devices were increasingly rare. This one had been custom made for him some time ago, with a display that cycled through braille-marked digits.

 

He sipped the tea – an oolong he was sweetening to make up for the fact the cook had burned it – and used a stylus-and-tablet to mark the output of the calculator on a sheet of cardstock for his later reference.

 

The shrill elecromechanical ring of his desk phone disrupted the lazy, carefree aura of the moment, jerking him painfully back into the realities of business, as he snatched up the bakelite handset.

 

“Galba Roy Residence of the Viscount Rainwright. How may I direct your call?”

The Viscount's own familiar voice hissed down the line. “Bex.”

“Ah, Good Afternoon, my Lord.” Walter strained his ears for the telltale tones of a heart-rate monitor on the other end of the call, and found that he could not detect it. “I take it your recovery proceeds?”

“Thanks in large part to your efforts. It was clever of you to get in touch with Master Scott. He always did have an aptitude for the human machine.”

 

Walter smiled softly. Rainwright's injuries would easily have killed a lesser man, and while the Viscount's own considerable mastery of the Order's rites had no doubt saved his life in the short term, it was the continued efforts of further magic that had allowed such a rapid return to business. Just a few short days ago the man was bedridden. Now, from the sound, he had managed to find a quiet place in the hospital's private wing from which to call.

 

“One is always happy to be of service, my lord.”

“I trust the remainder of our business today went smoothly?”

Walter sat back, reaching for his cup, which he took up by the saucer upon which it rested, tucking the phone against his shoulder in a practised way. “Exceedingly. I took the liberty of attending your conference call with the Five Eyes. Everyone is in agreement that the Zaxtonian Self Defence Forces were responsible for the attack. Recommendations for reprisal are to be presented to the War Minister and Princess Laurel immediately.”

 

“And the fugitives?”

 

Walter was silent for a long, frowning moment, as he sipped from his teacup and gathered his thoughts. It seemed these days they were chasing more people than they had close associates to do the chasing. The missing contingent of Zaxtonian officers were doing well to cover their tracks, leading to certain paranoid members of the Five Eyes security council wondering if the Zaxtonians weren't still heavily infiltrated in Galba Dea, providing them with support. What was more, the Grey Angels which were meant to have been destroyed were now off the grid and loose. None of them were in the hotels that had been arranged for them, nor were they travelling using any of their known or guessed-at identities.

 

For Walter, however, the greater fear was delivering bad news to this man who didn't need it. The Viscount and his Butler had been together far longer than even family sometimes adhered. To disappoint Rainwright now was to invite anxiety for the balance of the evening. “The Military Police and the Constabulary agree that both the Grey Angels and the missing officers are still in Galba Roy, though they both seem irritatingly vague on where they could be. I believe they are relying too heavily on the assumption it would be impossible to leave the city without detection, or to leave the country from any other point.”

 

Rainwright gave a low hum. “You have an alternate theory?”

“The entire contingent the Zaxtonians used to wreck the Fleet were able to escape, minus the one squad we know they themselves killed. Whatever method they used to affect their escape could surely be repeated.” Walter turned in his chair in order to depress a switch that closed the windows. “I would be surprised to learn that the Grey Angels were still in the country. My network offers no corroborating evidence to the theory of their presence.”

When Rainwright spoke again, he sounded faintly amused. It took quite a bit to work Walter up. He wondered what the Comissioner of Police or the Colonel in charge of the Military Police had said in the conference call that had so wounded the butler's pride. “... And Miss Bell?”

“Entirely without a trace, as you predicted,” Walter tried hard to keep the dismissive tone from his voice. He had warned Rainwright quite firmly against engaging her in the first place. “I still keep in touch with people who keep in touch with her people. I could make enquiries.”

“And alert her to the fact she failed in her attempt to kill me?” Rainwright tisked. “I should think not. Let her keep her anonymity until we are in a position to deal with her adroitly.”

“As you wish.” Walter set his cup and saucer back down. “If I might, my lord?”

“Yes?”

“There was one other small matter, reported to me by my driver. She suspects that I am being followed. Different vehicles, but consistently for the last several days.”

 

Rainwright considered that for a long moment. “I want you to use my driver from now on. Instruct him to be circumspect in his navigation.”

“Of course.”

“I believe you have a contingency plan to move us back to the country house?”

“As a matter of routine. However, given the current state of affairs, your lordship's household is rather immovable. I would need to solidify my planning to suit.”

“Please do. Good Afternoon, Walter.”
“Good Afternoon, my Lord.”

 

Walter set the handset back down on the receiver for only a moment, before lifting it again and dialling an internal extension. “Erich? Would you be so kind as to bring another pot of tea to my office? Yes, I think I shall take my dinner here as well. No... the Viscount will not be joining us this evening. Let the others know I would like a meeting of the heads of department as possible.”
 

---

 

Alexis leaned back out of the crowded huddle of faces overlooking the stolen tablet which needed to pass for a map, sweeping her hair back as she looked for the cache of bottled water. “If you had told me a week ago that getting a plane in and out of hostile airspace was the easy part, I'd have laughed in your face.”

Banker straightened also, his set-back shoulders betraying a layer of personal offence. “Hey, if it wasn't for your company's notoriety, getting on the plane wouldn't be that much harder.”

 

With the tension in the room as palpable as it was, Prince was almost relieved behind his inexpressive mask, when Scion stepped in from the periphery to offer his two cents. He wondered how such tension and aggression must have felt to the psychic – if they impressed themselves on his mind as forcefully as a smell or a sound might. Perhaps that was why Scion was rapidly becoming known as the peacemaker of the Horsemen. Why he was evolving into the natural leader.

 

“If wishes and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a Merry Christmas,” he said, summoning a bottle of water into his hand from across the room. “But tragically I live in the real world, and I would settle for making it home by then. We have less than seventeen hours before the no-fly zone is enforced. If the flight is coming from Banker's operation in Hong Kong, it needs to be in the air now.”

 

Prodigal straightened from the table, taking a long step away and wishing he could just take off his mask and smoke already. “Then call it in. Worst case scenario it leaves without us when we fail to come up with a plan to infiltrate the airport.”

 

Airports. The idea conjured up long lines to pass through security checkpoints. Behind his own mask, aching for his own nicotine, Niles became fixated on the idea. How much worse would such a press be with the tide of tourists and expatriates from the Union trying to return home?

 

Then again, there hadn't been a non-chartered flight across the Bay or the Straits since the Kraterburg Eruption, and even chartered flights to Union-held territories were grounded since the subsequent declaration of war that had made Alexis Coultier and her band of officers prisoners of war. It was then that the penny dropped for the flatfoot, who entered the fray with his characteristic tone that skirted the line between thinking-out-loud and just plain sarcasm. “How are the refugees travelling?”

 

“Ah, now, there's an idea.”

 

The unlooked-for introduction of an extra voice into their conversation set everyone immediately on edge. Prodigal and Banker span to the source of the noise with their hands hovering at the hip. Alexis turned sharply, raising her hands defensively in fists before her. Niles actually cleared leather, bringing his stolen snubnose revolver up to textbook position at the source of the voice.

 

Only Scion seemed to remain calm, turning around slowly, almost casually, and folding his arms indignantly before him. “... You don't call, you don't write...”

 

Niles's breath caught in his chest as he studied the figure under his proverbial cross-hairs. At the sunken posture, the too-narrow waist line suggested even through tattered and dirt-stained clothing that hung on the figure, rather than being worn by him. The mask was unmistakable. As was the stench.

 

He lowered his weapon as Archangel stepped out of his shadowy niche, gesturing dismissively to Scion. “We all have work to do.”

 

---

 

Vidcund used to find refuge in these moments – the long, boring intervals between action. He did it, he supposed, by retreating from the boredom into his professionalism. The root of professionalism was loyalty, though, and at the moment, he was running on fumes. So he projected the aura of the professional anyway, sitting stock upright at his workstation, drinking minted mocha and cruising, dutifully, through all the video footage he could get his hands on with what was left his clearance and a name that, he was learning, no longer officially existed.

 

Character assassination was one thing, but to list him on the duty roster as KIA and shuffle him off to the “this is where we keep the monsters” punishment unit? Fuck a bunch of that, as Edward would have said.

 

The flicker of reconnecting memory put a small smile on his face that was quickly replaced by a frown as the door opened, admitting Zephyr and Asmodeus to what had been his and Dagonovich's perfectly silent work session. They were, as ever, fired up, and as Vidcund saw it, must have shared a brain, since they always did their thinking out loud.

 

Dagonovich looked up over the edge of the book he was consulting. Loud was the operative word.

“Man, this is some bullshit!”

Asmodeus took a moment away from posturing in order to examine his nails. “I know, right? We're the meanest, toughest sons of bitches outside of Enforcement.”

“I can literally run circles around any unit in the whole Self Defence Forces.”

“Ain't a force on earth can outshine me, darling.”

 

Vidcund sighed, throwing some theatrical emphasis behind it, and adjusted the nest of monitors that surrounded him. “The two of you against a whole legion of multidimensional expansionists. That'll fucking work.”

 

Asmodeus turned on a dime. Vidcund had him pegged pretty well. Quick to anger, haughty, as prideful as the proverbial First. And once Vidcund had a read on you... “Yo, nobody asked you, fish.”

Dagonovich adjusted his glasses slightly. “Did I miss something? Have you been blinded? I'm over here.”

“Man, this dude been a cold fish ever since we got saddled with him.”

 

Vidcund held Asmodeus's gaze evenly over the edges of his augmented reality sunglasses. The pause was too long for the Demon, whose shoulders dropped, eyes lowering to the floor as Vidcund stood up in a slow and controlled manner, buttoning the front of his jacket again.

 

“The assignment, Agent Spectra, is to find a means to break the back of the advance, and to do so as quickly and efficiently as possible, before the Regular Forces figure out that something is deeply, deeply wrong with this scenario.” Vidcund turned his gaze from Asmodeus to Zephyr, who shoved his hands into his pocket and looked anywhere but Vidcund. “So unless you two magnificent bastards feel like fighting the entire Carcosan Host by yourselves, this unit is on research detail.”

 

“Fuck,” Asmodeus countered, breathlessly, as he turned his gaze to Dagonovich. The Deep One had never seen Asmodeus cowed by force of will alone before. To be honest, he was impressed. “I thought you were Second In Command?”

Dagonovich chuckled with uncharacteristic mirth, sparing a glance to Vidcund. “I'm delegating.”

 

The agent unbuttoned his jacket and lowered himself back into his chair. That felt good.

 

---

 

At the kind of run Edward could carry, the chain-link face halfway down the alley was no obstacle. Even less with the debris before it. A milk-crate was a good springboard for the dumpster, which had no lid, but the edge was as good a balance beam as any, and from there he only had to touch the top of the fence and vault over it, landing hard on the far side and continuing his run from there. Francis was only a pace or two behind him, though he had elected the more direct route, taking the fence at a leap, scaling one arm's reach before throwing himself over and closing the gap between him and his boss.

 

“I don't like this plan!”

The characteristic doppler whine of a bullet streaking past Edward's ear was enough to send the both of them around the corner. “I'm open to your suggestions, Francis, but this isn't exactly the time.”

 

The pair slowed at the corner, Edward leaning just barely around the corner. Their route had been too circuitous to call a circle, but come full circle they had, and halfway down the next block waited their sedan, with their weapons in the trunk. Not that swords were going to do much good against active shooters. He edged back a bit, swapping positions implicitly with Francis while he pulled his knife from his pocket. “Alright, you were right.”

 

Francis peered around the corner, too, sighing as he leaned back. “They posted a guard. Fucking brilliant.”

 

Edward chuckled slightly, opening a second knife. “Well, in for a penny... Okay, here's the plan.”

 

Code Crimson – the great guidebook to members of the Crimson Knights that adherents hailed as a seminal work in the morality of armed conflict and critics derided as self-important musings from a street thug turned para-militarist made – held very specific guidance on the use of “arcane means” in combat. Though they remained dwindling admonitions in the age of Agency's increasingly severe oversight and proscriptions against anything remotely dangerous in the arcane sciences, they had seemed relevant to Edward's experiences in the Infernal City. In his attempt to leave that chapter of his life behind, he had allowed himself the luxury of forbidding others the practices he himself had found most repugnant there.

 

But the fact remained that a latent talent for magic lingered in his family, coming to him honestly down his mother's line, and expressed most brilliantly in his younger brother, Malvolio. Though the use of magic always rose eyebrows among his confederates, and thus was rare, the fact remained that some situations existed in which the playing field need to be levelled.

 

He darted out from around the corner he and Francis were using for cover, giving a sharp, slashing gesture of the knife in his hand. From the perspective of the agents who had spotted him, this must have looked singularly odd, as one further step carried him literally out of view, vanishing into thin air even as they raised their handguns into a ready, standard position. Edward tumbled through the slit he had torn in the fabric of the world, emerging onto the back of the trunk of the rental car, behind the men guarding it. His now-considerable momentum carried him, his karambit knife, and the guard on the left inexorably to the ground.

 

The other guard began to pivot on a heel, bringing his weapon to bare when Francis swung around the corner, bringing his left arm down in a straight, fluid, and precise motion. Edward's spare knife whistled through the air from his lieutenant's hand to the remaining guard's neck.

 

The self-styled Captain was cleaning his face with a handkerchief when Francis arrived to unlock the trunk, revealing their small cache of equipment. They grabbed it on the run, failing to close the hatch of the trunk as they hurried themselves into their vehicle, even as the team originally pursuing them rounded the corner.

 

“You're going to have to teach me that one some time.”

 

Edward stared straight ahead as they rounded a corner at considerable speed. There were worse places than hell. “Mm... It's a pretty niche trick to have. You don't really need it.”

 

---

 

The Deans, at least, still had some concept of hospitality. The abandoned townhouse that the Angels and their unlikely ZGSDF allies were using as a hideout was equipped with an old and all-but-opaque greenhouse in the back garden. It was as good a place as any, and Niles had sort of taken the shed as his own. The diffuse sunlight trapped behind the glass made the weather feel almost seasonable in spite of the dead tangle of hay-like young plants that filled the periphery of the room. He'd added a lawn-chair he found in the ovegrown garden, and came out here with his daily cup of instant coffee and a cigarillo to decompress far enough away from the others that he could unmask.

 

Sometimes he had work to do, calculations or deduction or what-have-you. Today, he needed to think. He sat there, coffee long gone cold and cigarillo burned out in the tray after only a few drags. He held the mask – Prince's Face – in one hand, periodically turning it so that he could stare at it, usually around the same time he came up close enough to the here-and-now in order to realize he needed to light the cigar again and take another draw.

 

His own personal brush with death, while unbelievable, was at least persistently-real enough to have become the new normal. Indeed, his experience with death was so brief and his memories of what immediately followed his rebirth so hazy that he felt no different about the matter than many others had; those who had slipped through icy rivers, suffered catastrophic failure of the muscles of the heart, fallen from great heights, or otherwise met death's icy glare and been brought back by the guiding hand of proper medical science.

 

The deeper disturbance was the return of Eli Sharona. Niles had reasoned that the Grey Angels' pseudo-religious mysticism was a cover and a psychological screen. After all, Eli had, however he managed it, access to the likes of James Derrida. The Archangel was certainly an accomplished student of medical practice – Niles had deduced that even before. James was no exception. Between the two of them, a back-alley surgery against bullet wounds and a few weeks or months of half-comatose recovery didn't seem outside their reach. But Eli Sharona had been dead. Niles had seen the body himself, lying battered and broken after a creature the would-be Prince of Angels had no name for, thrown down city blocks as a child throws toys from the pram. Eli wasn't dead in the sense of Grandpa Clayton keeling over at the Thanksgiving dinner table or Little Jo Smith falling through the ice while skating. The machinery that powered his life didn't need restarting. It would have needed heavy reconstruction.

 

That Eli had apparently affected such a reconstruction himself, in spite of being very, very dead, was deeply disturbing. It further jostled Niles' deep-seated disbelief in the arcane, and set his not-inconsiderable imagination off exploring possibilities he usually preferred to leave on the shelf. Hell might be verifiably real, but so far as this lapsed catholic was concern, the bible and catechism belonged on the low shelves with the rest of the nursery rhymes.

 

The door opened and closed silently, and for a lingering moment, Niles considered trying to replace his mask before the gaze of the person entering arrived on him. Before the scent arrived, and Niles other senses simultaneously resolved the figure who had entered to have been the very subject of his thoughts.

 

“... You seem to have a great difficulty in being rid of me, Detective Clayton.”

Once upon a time, Niles thought, I considered killing you myself. “The difficulties make the men, Archangel. Though, to be fair... I can think of worse problems.”

 

A gesture was exchanged, and Archangel brought himself to sit on what was left of the planting-benches that lined the walls, folding his good arm in his mechanical one. To Niles, he seemed like a mask peeking out from so much empty clothing.

 

“You must have many, many questions.”

“The practice of Necromancy doesn't concern me,” Niles feigned. Of course he had questions. He was a Questioner by his very neural design. If he had all the answers, he supposed, he'd probably go into some kind of cranial arrest and die. “... Though I must admit, I figured even conquering death for others didn't make you immortal.”

 

Eli chuckled, a deathly, rasping noise that sounded more forced and plastic than even his usual shows of levity. His motion in the laugh was exaggerated – shoulders moving too much, chest expanding too far. “Immortal's a strong word for what I've done to myself. But you should know. You have my book.”

 

The detective shrugged slightly, gesturing with his mask as he discarded it to the table with the ash tray, so that he could pick his lighter back up. “Haven't had much time to study, I'm afraid. Nor do I have it with me. A few hand-copied selections, maybe.”

 

The air in the room grew physically colder, as though the greenhouse effect was suppressed. “I hope you didn't leave it anywhere too vulnerable.”

“Hey, Scion hid it, and you seem to trust him fairly well.”

 

The Archangel considered that, sitting motionless for what felt an interminably long period, before nodding. “Very well. Listen, you need to know about-”

 

A footfall outside the door brought Niles snapping his mask up over his face even as Archangel slowly turned his head to the portal, which opened shortly afterward, admitting the unlikely-looking Major Coultier. The Military Families Act was a waste of time, Clayton thought, which lead to pointless nepotism, leaving people like Alexis in charge of whole regiments when the position should be based entirely on merit.

 

“We need to go,” she told them, “Now.”

 

---

 

“Please, tell me this isn't the exact tactic they used in that stupid Battle of Thermopylae movie.”

 

Edward slammed the door behind him, turning on a heel to seize the leading edge of the armoire and help Francis throw it down, adding some resilience to this household bedroom door that could not possibly have been any better than plywood for stopping determined intruders, like government agents or copper-jacketed lead. “Alright, this isn't the tactic from Thermopylae.”

 

Francis took up Edward's opposition position – being ambidextrous, he tended to take the side of a doorway that lead to him using his left hand, when breaching doors. He supposed this was just the same in reverse. “Then, what in the good goddamn is it?”

 

Edward sheathed his long and delicate rapier – why he'd chosen to bring this weapon along over his more-utilitarian sabre was as-yet unclear to him – and transferred the Crocea Mors to his right hand. “Counter-boarding trick they used to teach in the Maritime Self Defence Forces.”

 

There was a great concussion from the next room – the primary room of their hotel suite – as the door was not merely knocked from its hinges or unlocked, but explosively demolished. The technique, though well-understood, and indeed common in drama, was rarely used. That these Special Intelligence agents were willing to use breaching charges in a public hotel signalled they had no intention of taking either Knight alive. Edward and Francis instinctively slid a few metres along the wall away from their chosen door. Neither man was quite sure what another breaching charge could do to that softer door, and they certainly didn't want to get caught by whatever was left of that door when it went off.

 

The pause that followed was pregnant. A clock ticking somewhere in the room would otherwise have marked time had it not slowed to a crawl. The intervening silence erupted into a cacophony of gunfire in the main room of the suite. The firefight that followed was brief, and ended in a ringing, deaf silence for Edward and Francis, whose hearing was of course entirely unprotected against it.

 

The two knights emerged into the conflict as quickly as they could have, swinging the furniture out of the way and emerging into the living room with the intent of making straight for the door in the chaos, assisted by Edward's abilities, when they recognized the situation in the room. There were but three figures left standing.

 

A man in a long, light coat with a deep hood, which obscured his face with some kind of veil, was standing nearest the window and balcony. He wore no shirt beneath his jacket, and had considerable luck, it seemed, to judge by the highly-perforated nature of the wall behind him. Nearer the door was a masked man in a grey duster, who was reloading a small, silver revolver of the type Edward imagined could be hidden rather well.

 

Standing in the centre of the room, some manner of military rifle in her hand, and a combat-shimmer on her brow, was Alexis. Edward double-took before coming to a stop, and Francis had to nimbly dance around him, so that neither man quite looked graceful, nor completely stumbled over one another, as they tried to come to an abrupt halt.

 

“... Alex?”

 

---

 

For Valkoinen's part, the surreality of quiet moments with Team Kether never fell flat. Seeing her little brood of reformed monstrosities keeping themselves respectable, behaving all professional-like, seated comfortably at work terminals while paging through whatever plans they were individually hatching filled her with equal parts pride and unease. It was the team's greatest strength that they were all so very different from one another. None of their proposals for tackling this latest problem would be similar to another. All would be useful in their incompleteness, once suitably combined. All she would have to do is stitch the many plans together and come up with a coherent plan of attack.

 

For Vidcund, this planning meant looking for the most credible threat. He spooled through volume after digitized volume of battlefield records, crime scene photographs, civilian twitter feeds. Anything from the earliest hours of Figaro on forward. Somewhere in this mess, there was a coherent clue, a recognizable kingpin. Cut off the head and the body would -

 

A keystroke paused the feed. Two more went back two slides. Vidcund's opalescent eyes danced over the screen, looking for the thumbnail that had tickled whatever sense it was a person had when they were good at their job and something was amiss.

 

When he found it, what followed was involuntary. “It's her!”

Standing, his chair thrown obnoxiously backward, he pointed at the monitor, shouting as aggressively as he could manage at Valkoinen. “She's alive and you didn't fucking tell me!?”

 

With a calm that was betrayed by the robustness of her grip on her drink, Valkoinen turned to face the out-of-line agent. Most of the others glanced up before resuming their work, with only Dagonovich leaning visibly back from his tack of books in order to watch the proceedings. “... Perhaps we should speak in the hall, Agent Därk?”

 

Vidcund smoothed his jacket in the same motion as buttoning it, stepping around his workstation to move out of the room, taking merely two steps before spinning on point, rounding on Valkoinen like an angry dog. “We have been ignoring the most obvious Primary in Agency history. This threat is cognitohazardous and Maria Frost is patient zero.”

 

Valkoinen nodded slowly, eyes slightly down, as though she was refusing to fully engage Vidcund while shaking and opening her drink. “There were no shortage of attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but if any of the ones after mid-36 or so had succeeded, the war would have progressed regardless. Expending energy hunting Maria Frost is pointless.”

 

“This isn't a conventional war,” Vidcund stressed, through increasingly clenched teeth. “Destroying a 'summoner' before mopping up their summoned creature-of-interest is standard industry practice.”

 

“You are presupposing that the Carcosan Host is a mere conjuration,” Valkoinen countered, though her tone was softening. The Host was powered by its cognitohazardous properties and the shared delusion it inspired in its victims. A substantial subset of the population had to be “converts” who had fallen into the Host by virtue of exposure. But much of the deadliest components of the Host were more unusual, and quite possibly could have been transdimensional entities easily returned to their proper place once the summoner who had anchored them was destroyed. She sipped her drink. “Suppose for a moment you were correct, at least in part, and that Maria Frost's role in the affair is so significant that her loss would seriously hamper, or even outright reverse, this outbreak. There are only five of us.”

 

Vidcund drew himself up imperiously. “There are four of you, madam. I contain multitudes.”

 

Valkoinen turned away from Vidcund, pacing a step or two before she paused, and turned to him. “... We shall discuss this further in my office. I think it's high time we re-evaluate your position in my Operating Group.”