I might also try to be a spy—if I don’t get caught, which I will.
Whatever happens, there’s absolutely no chance I make it out of this alive.
Chapter Nine
Taranis
Standing in my tuxedo in my office, I stare at the objects lying on my desk, still unable to make sense of them.
They don’tdoanything. At least, not anything interesting. Sharp, they might make for good fire pokers if they weren’t such an unusual shape.
Even though the Wyvern has tried to keep his weapon close to his chest, everyone has seen the images Monika caught of him wielding a sword when he fought off the Marduk. A skinny, dinky little strip of metal it had appeared to be, until it caught fucking fire.
A viral meme went around from one of the pictures Monika took of the Marduk squinting at the Wyvern like he’d never seen anything more outrageous before in his life. The meme was captioned with everything from how shoppers look at the price of their grocery bills to how parents look at their toddlers. Though no one seems to remember how violent the battle had gotten after that. The Wyvern had been in sorry shape, though it was the Marduk who’d run off in the end. He’d sustained injuries I wouldn’t have wanted to come back from. Which is why he contacted me so shortly after that.
I frown, my deep irritation with the Wyvern and his reversion and the COE and the VNA and the fucking Marduk at an all-time high. Ihandle the weapons again, and like every other time, they remain static, useless, ancient-looking things.
Frustrated, I throw the weapons onto the bookshelf behind my desk, collapse into my office chair, and lean back with my hands laced over the top of my head. Time for a little pick-me-up.
With a flick of my powers, I turn my monitor on. A series of notifications beeps in the upper right hand corner of my screen. They’ve been going off all day, just like they have since the first of Monika’s images hit the internet. I have the files she sent me open in another window, and swipe over to them, surprised by the sensation that comes over me. It’s the same shock that makes my stomach constrict and my throat work. I swallow a few times, feeling a little ... bashful.
Most of the photos Monika took show the battleground. Bia and her fucking bat and rat army. The Meinad and her claws. But in one photo in particular, unlike the rest, it’s just me, surrounded by a background so black it looks like the depths of space. I’m alight in electricity, lightning bolts crackling along every inch of my skin, blurring my silhouette. But it’s my eyes that she captured.
I don’t know the first fucking thing about cameras, so I don’t know if it’s that particular lens, its ability to zoom in, or what, but she managed to get a shot of me from the shoulders up, and my eyes are fucking blazing so bright they look like the sun. A purple sun. There’s a scratch on my face, bifurcating my eyebrow, tearing down my cheek, and blood spatter covering so much of me. I look like a Titan, one to be feared by the gods.
I don’t know why I like this picture of myself so much. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit, I like looking at photos of myself. Anybody with a face like mine fucking would. But this? This is different. In this photo, I look like somebody I’d want to live up to.
I flip through the rest of the archive she sent me—all photos, no videos, thank fuck. If she’d seen more of what transpired after she locked herself in the electrical closet, I’d have had to kill her and leave her corpse there with those other two idiots.
I grunt, frustrated and annoyed at the lingering paperwork the SDD wants me to fill out documenting the deaths of the guards they sent. They already took my statement. I gave them nothing. What was surprising was that they weren’t able to get much more from Monika, who insisted there was nothing that could have been done to save the two men. I’d say she was protecting me, but she also didn’t suggest that I did anything to try to help the bastards either. She was just ... neutral.
I don’t know why, but I must have read and reread her statement and watched her recorded interview a dozen times. She was so straightforward. Hard, even. She didn’t even complain that she’d been trapped in that electrical closet alone, fighting for survival. She just said it. She’d just done it. And in her interview, she showed no signs of frailty or fragility. She never stuttered once. It was such a contrast from the way she’d fumbled at my feet in the elevator, but jibes with everything I saw of her actions back at the Old Sundale Station, fighting in the dark. I sit up straighter, shaking it off, annoyed at myself for dwelling on it.
I fill out the forms required of me, though from time to time, I swipe back to Monika’s pictures, feeling some kinda way about her for taking them. And then I do something I never thought I’d do in a million fucking years.
I open my email and type one out myself. I don’t ask Simone to do it, or the less competent Simon. I type and then retype when I’m unsatisfied, until I have:
Monika,
The pictures you took from last week’s heroics were satisfactory. You no longer need to collect my sign off before sharing them with the PR team.
Taranis
I look at the draft in my inbox and frown at it. My temples feel itchy and hot for some reason. I scratch the top of my head and then huff, adding one last line to the email.
P.S. Looking forward to tonight. Meet at my apartment at seven pm sharp. We’ll leave from here.
It’s six forty-five now. No way she’ll be on time, but I’m looking for a reason to yell at her. I can’t let her think that I’mnicenow that she knows otherwise, can I? Yet within ten minutes, I see a fresh notification pop up on my computer screen. I click it open, brow furrowed. It’s an email from Monika, and it reads:
Here.
Re: photos. Acknowledged.
—MN
I frown, even angrier than I was, because I have no reason to be angry. Still, I did agree to go to this event, and even though I know itshouldplease me to leave her waiting downstairs for hours, it doesn’t. It coats me with a stickiness, like I’ve rolled around in syrup and can’t get it off.
Shuddering off the strange and annoying sensations, I get up, leave my office, lock the door, and meet my photographer downstairs, only to be shocked. She’s waiting for me in the lobby and—what the fuck is she wearing?
