6
OLIVIA
My phone lit up again on the workbench, vibrating just enough to make it rattle against the metal frame.
Lark.
Her name flashed across the screen, followed by a string of messages that kept stacking on top of each other.
Come out tonight.
It’ll be fine.
Nathan said it’s handled.
Another buzz. I didn’t reach for it.
The last time she’d said it was “fine,” I’d ended up on the ground with a fairy’s hand around my wrist and a room full of supes watching to see how it would end.
My grip tightened on the wrench.
Nathan’s name sat in her messages like a safety net she kept trying to throw over the memory, but it didn’t stick. Not whenI could still hear the way the room had gone quiet. Not when I remembered who actually stepped in.
Calix Winstale.
The thought alone made my stomach pull tight. Not because he’d saved me, but because he didn’t have to.
That night replayed in flashes I couldn’t quite shake. The way the crowd parted without question, the way Manshu stepped back when Calix spoke, the way no one argued.
His power didn’t announce itself. It simply moved everything else out of the way.
Setting the wrench down harder than necessary, I reached for my phone, flipping it onto the rag so the screen faced the bench.
Later that night, after I got home, after the adrenaline wore off, I opened my laptop and searched. One search turned into ten. Ten turned into hours.
Calix Winstale. The Syndicate. FangTech Labs.
Article after article filled the screen, all interviews clipped and edited for public consumption. Grainy footage pulled from underground sources. Forums filled with speculation, arguments, and theories stacked on theories.
Each new tab led to another.
Photos of crime scenes cleaned too quickly. Stories about disappearances that never made it to official reports. Whispers about how the Syndicate handled problems, quietly, efficiently,permanently.
I’d sat there scrolling, the glow of the screen the only light in my apartment, clicking link after link until the words started to blur together.
Some videos I couldn’t finish. Others, I watched all the way through, even when I shouldn’t have.
By the time I closed the laptop, my stomach had turned enough that I had to sit there for a while, staring at nothing, letting the silence settle back in.
Not everything painted them in blood.
Tracking all the data, it looked like when Calix and his sisters took over, a lot of the public killings and wars took a back seat. There was a larger jump in the number of missing people who were never being found, but nothing that would make splashy headlines.
The only Syndicate name that continued to pop up again and again in my searches was Ezra Desmond.
Articles showed polished photos, clean buildings, smiling children, headlines about outreach programs and support systems for supernatural kids who had lost their families. Entire networks of orphanages were funded by the Syndicate, offering structure, education, and integration for those supe children that had no adult guidance or supervision.
There were interviews from the kids from the orphanages too.
