Behind a crescent-shaped desk, a levitating orb wearing a plastic visor—an affectation Splice refused to dignify with logic—let out a sharp, audible squeak when it saw him.
“Oh,” it said, the lights inside its casing dimming faintly, like a mood ring powered by anxiety. “H-hello, welcome to?—”
“The Land Trust meeting,” Splice said flatly.
The orb wobbled, briefly considering whether to announce his arrival or flee into the ceiling tiles. “Uh. Right. Yes. Room 407C. Past the—uh?—”
Splice was already moving, the orb’s words drifting away behind him. He took the stairs, not because he had to, but because he trusted elevators even less than humans.
The hallway to Room 407C was lined with municipal portraits of council members, celebrants, and civic stewards frozen mid-handshake or spell casting. He had seen faces like theirs before. Across decades, centuries, revisions of office and rebrands of purpose. He knew the patterns of their smiles, the tilt of their chins.
Right now, he hated every single one of them. Living, dead, or suspended in interdepartmental stasis. It didn’t matter. Theywere all part of the same machine. The same smug, looping cycle. The same infestation.
A nearby water fountain purred as he passed. Actuallypurred. The sound made no sense, which for some reason filled him with incandescent rage.
He reached the door. It was solid, ancient oak, the kind of wood that remembered when the building was just a blueprint. The LED placard beside read: GREEN HOLDINGS LAND TRUST: CLOSED MEETING.
Splice placed one hand flat against the wood, feeling the faint, frantic thrum of anxious magic from within, and thrust the door open.
The chatter in the room stilled. Every head whipped toward him, expressions freezing in a tableau of shock and outrage.
Around the massive alder wood table sat the titans of Bellwether—humans and cryptids who had steered the city’s fate for decades. Splice’s gaze swept the room, quick and deliberate. A dozen seats. Eleven filled. Most were young, in sleek suits and bright jewelry, eyes sharp with greed and hunger. The scent of money clung to them like cologne. Not worth his attention.
Three faces, older than the rest, snagged his focus. Threads of duty tugged at his awareness, marking them as significant. He took in the loosened ties, the bloodshot eyes, and the expressions that ran the spectrum from haunted to hostile.
At the head of the table, a man in a too-shiny suit fumbled with a chaos of papers, his flushed face caught between anger and panic. A lawyer, Splice discerned. And a miserable one at that.
“Who in the hells are you?”
The voice, sharp as shattered glass, came from a woman—one of the important ones—halfway down the table. She was in her mid-sixties, with a severe, elegant haircut. Her face, framed by sharp cheekbones and intelligent, impatient eyes, was a mask ofrefined fury. A name plate in front of her read:Councilwoman Alma Idris.
“Well? This is a closed meeting,” she snapped. “We have no time for gawkers, especially not now.”
Splice looked fully at her and had the distinct satisfaction of watching the woman flinch beneath the weight of his gaze.
A younger man, one not important enough to have a name plate at his seat, cleared his throat. “What my fellow councilwoman is trying to say,” he said coolly, “is that this meeting is for invitees only. If you’re looking for the Public Oversight Forum, it’s three doors down, past the vending machines.”
Splice inhaled, steadying himself. This, he understood. The law of humans. Ceremony dressed up in bureaucracy. Paper trails and procedural bindings. He could anchor himself in this, even if rage thrummed beneath his skin like a second pulse.
Without a word, he moved into the room, rounded the table, and sat in the empty chair.
A flurry of whispers broke out at once. Two of the younger individuals leaned together, shielding their mouths with manicured hands. One hissed a phrase through clenched teeth; the other nodded quickly, sweat pearling at his hairline.
In the far corner, a woman in a charcoal-gray jacket startled so violently that her pencil skittered across her notepad and clattered to the floor. She wore thick-rimmed glasses that had slipped down her nose, and she'd been taking notes with the sort of focused intensity that suggested she was trying to become invisible. Now she scrambled to retrieve the fallen pencil, her face flushing a deep, mortified red as she attempted to shrink even further into her corner.
“Excuse me,” said a man across the table, his voice a perfect blend of false civility and unearned confidence. This nameplate read:Councilman Darren Swale.He had the look of someonepermanently caught mid-electrocution, with white hair sticking out at wild angles.
He hammered a hand on the table with gusto and sniffed, pointing an accusatory finger at Splice. “Are you going to leave of your own accord, or should we call security to throw you out? You’re not recognized here.”
Splice, silently congratulating himself for not leaping across the table and biting off the man’s finger, simply turned his gaze toward the figure at the head of the table.
“Actually, Councilman Swale…” The lawyer cleared his throat and immediately shrank in his chair as every head in the room snapped toward him. “That’s not… entirely true.”
Splice had the brief, icy satisfaction of watching the self-important councilman’s mouth fall open, stunned into silence.
“What?” sputtered a plump woman further down the table, her nameplate proclaimingCouncilwoman Priya Mishra.
The lawyer cleared his throat again, a weak, papery sound.
