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“I don’t think it’s safe to remove it, no.” Dr. Calloway sat across from Four, the sterile fluorescents of the clinic shining off his bald head. He looked over a clipboard, scribbling down notes. “It’s tapped into your spine. I’ll need to call in a specialist in parasitic extraction.”
The clinic was normally a plastic surgery center, but Dr. Calloway also had deep ties with Wolf, and dropped everything to see Four. He was one of the few surgeons comfortable working on False Roots.
The doctor flattened his white mustache, dark eyes looking over the results. “So, have you been seeing any more visions since you noticed it?”
“No.” It was only a half-lie. Four wasn’t sure if the phantom movements she had been seeing out of the corner of her eye were from the fungus or her usual post-adrenaline crash. She decided not to mention them. “Are there even experts for people like me?”
“Criminals?” The doctor blinked, then realized what she meant. “Ah, False Roots. Oh, yes, yes. Though not many in the Cities.” He waved his hand. “I know of a good surgeon in Egypt-”
“Egypt?” Four leaned forward. “Look, we don’t know what this thing does. I can’t wait for the travel ban to lift.”
The doctor sighed. “Four, Four. Impatience with these things is more dangerous than inaction.” He spoke slowly, but not condescendingly. “We’ll keep it on ice to slow its growth, and nurses can cut it down for you if it grows too much.” He flicked over his clipboard. “I would want to see you in hospital care for a few days at least, even if we did have an expert in the city. Get a study of your condition before the surgery.”
She shook her head. “I… look, I’m not going to the hospital.” She said. “I’ll keep it on ice and take it easy at home. Okay?”
Dr. Calloway narrowed his eyes. “I have already talked to Mr. Wolf,” he said. “His orders are for you to get better. Do that at home if you need to.”
Four flicked her ear. He went behind my back? She wondered. It must be bad if the doctor was getting Wolf involved. “Shit, doc, don’t do that. He could fire me.”
“Wolf won’t get rid of you. I’ve heard he quite likes you.” Dr. Calloway insisted. He handed her the prescriptions he’d filled out. “Here, the usual blend for your misadventures, and a little extra. You take that one every other day for a week, to dull your reflexive cycles.” She looked at him blankly. “Ah, yes. The fungi has wrapped around the interneurons on your lower spine, where they connect to your tail and legs. I don’t want them to be activated on a reflex.”
“It’ll make me slow?”
“No, no. Just your reflexes, not your reactions.” He explained. “Just don’t be jumping around or kicking mafiosos or whatever it is you do all day.” He raised a hand when she opened her mouth. “No, I truly do not want to know. Wolf is a good friend- it will break my heart to know what he is really up to these days.”
Four folded the prescription into her lap. “Alright.” She finally said. “I’m good to walk home, though, right?”
“Yes. But, do stop and call a ride if that new socket begins to chafe.” He shook his head. “I swear, you just burn through those legs of yours…”
Four lived in one of the worst apartments in the nicest part of the Dim City- the Trellis. Two floors beneath the surface, light still filtered down through an artificial canyon of metal grates and bars, where leafy vines crept up between strings of white lights. The floor was carved into crystal tiles, and restaurants lined the edge of the canyon- taking advantage of its romantic atmosphere.
On the opposite side of the street from the restaurants, gated apartment complexes loomed to try and take advantage of the view. Four walked by all of them, past the Spanish music and a crowd of curious tourists, until she reached a stout, half-shuttered building between the apartments. An engine revved inside, and old, American country blared on the speakers. A greasy ball of a man worked away at the side of a low-seated motorcycle, his few strands of hair slicked over his scalp. He flicked his goggles up as Four approached, and slammed the side of his fist into the stereo. It warbled into silence.
“Hey Cody.” Four leaned against a workbench. The new socket had hurt- she couldn’t wait to get back upstairs. “I’m, uh, going to be in for a while. Maybe a week?”
“Mmhm.”
“I got some headphones if you want them.” She pointed towards her rabbit ears. “Didn’t work out with my head.”
“Mmhm.”
“Yeah, I’ll leave ‘em in my mailbox.” She looked over. “Is that a new rig?”
“Mmhm.”
“Sick.” An awkward silence. Four inched towards the door to the back. “Uh, I’ll just be going now.”
“You got a guest.”
Four froze. She honestly hadn’t known he could talk. “A guest?”
“Yep. Real pretty like. Had a key.” A fat thumbs up popped up from behind the engine. “Nice going.”
“Right… Thanks.” Four slipped through the red door, into a hallway, narrow stairs leading to her apartment above the shop. Her revolver was in her hand before she took her first step. Who could it be? Beech? Not that Four would consider her friend pretty, per se. She wasn’t even sure he was a mammal. And Nekera wouldn’t be seen dead in the Trellis.
Her door was red, painted wood. She heard someone humming on the other side. Testing the knob found it unlocked.
She kicked the door, leading with her grip on the gun. One woman, having turned the couch to face the door. Tall, white skin, a halo of yellow hair around her shoulders. She was holding a glass of red wine- and an ivory pistol rested across her lap.
Four couldn’t squeeze the trigger. She blinked dumbly. A thin film of reflective material held the gun’s mechanisms in place. Frozen?
The woman on the couch jolted in a surprise that quickly faded. “Ah! You’re finally here! Close the door, would you?” Her voice was deliberately sweet, but her manicured hands held the ivory pistol level towards Four.
Four scowled, but even she couldn’t run faster than a bullet. She tentatively stepped inside, and slipped on her leg, falling sideways. A sharp pain shot through her back, and stars danced across her vision. “Fuck!” The frozen gun scattered from her hands. She looked at her leg, noticing that it was also covered in a cold sheen.
The woman on the couch tensed, then realized what happened. “Oh, dear. My bad.” She gestured towards the top of the doorframe, where she had inscribed a glowing, light blue array of tiny, arcane runes. “It triggers on metal entering the door. Your leg slipped my mind.”
Four propped herself up onto her elbows, then her knees. There was a familiar, haughty air to the woman. “Sleet Scythe?”
“The one and only.” The Vigilant smiled venomously. She tapped her cheek, brown eyes glittering. “A wig and colored contacts. With all the magic and technology flitting about, nobody expects the mundane anymore.” She took a sip from the glass, and looked over it approvingly. “A dry red. Pre-collapse New York. I hadn’t taken you for a connoisseur.”
“It was a gift from a dear friend.” Four felt a rage as she recognized the bottle beside the intruder. “Caught a bullet on one of your raids. Wasn’t even on the fucking job.”
“Oh.” A strange look fell over the Vigilant’s face. Something between curiosity and pity. “A shame. I suppose even the cultured can be turned into beasts.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Scythe leaned down, sizing up the kneeling assassin. “If you had asked me earlier this day, it would have been to find the slippery assassin who took out the Nahuatl ambassador a few days ago. Oh, but that bullet wasn’t meant for him, was it?” A razor-sharp grin split her face as she looked knowingly down at Four.
Four ground her teeth, and her eyes flicked across the room. The window was blocked by her tipped-over bookshelf, and the doorknob to her bathroom had been bent to avoid opening it. Her normal lockbox beneath the bed had been moved somewhere out of sight.
“Now you’re playing strong and silent? Doesn’t work too well on your knees, dear.” Another sip of wine. It was slow and cruel. “That’s fine. I’ll never tire of my voice.” She stood, walking to the door and closing it. She wore sturdy boots, cleaned before entering. It didn’t match with the rest of her outfit- a fitted, light pink coat and a long skirt. She stood back in front of the couch. “Now, you must surely be wondering- ‘oh, why has the great and beautiful Sleet Scythe come to my door? What is it I could possibly have that would require this perfect subterfuge?’”
Four rolled her eyes.
“Well, my dear, little, lame rabbit.” She knelt, a hand under Four’s chin. Her eyes seemed to pierce through the contacts. “You remember.”
A jolt. The fungal wound shot a painful spike through her spine. Bryce imposed himself over the sneering woman. Then, he was gone. Sweat cooled on Four’s neck.
“My, my. What is that reaction?” Scythe’s voice was elated. Her hand flicked with magic, and Four felt a sharp cold of ice under her chin. Scythe’s words reverberated through it, shaking her brain with a magical resonance. “What do you remember? Where? Who is the Wolf? How did you free yourself?”
“Stop it.” Four felt sick. She slumped forward.
“Did it occur during the assassination? Surely you had a clear shot on me.” Sleet Scythe beamed. “I knew I was onto something. If you testify, Apocrypha will have to listen. We can offer protection.”
Four gripped the side of her head. She felt a whispering. White faces, crawling at the edges of her vision.
“What do you remember?” The question blended into her own voice, the white dots sprawling across her vision.
Remember, Alison.
“That’s not my fucking name!” Her bedsheet went flying- scattered across the white tiles. A monitor sounded behind her, high-pitched and unyielding. The air smelled like chlorine and dust.
Someone rushed into the small cubicle of a room, shoving aside the blue curtains. His face was long, and eyebrows arched with worry. A shadow of a beard held up his jaw and black creases held up his eyes. “Apolline! Oh gods! You’re awake!” He turned to the too-bright hallway behind him. “She’s awake!”
Soon, the room was crowded. A nurse wrestled to fit an IV bag and port, while another took her blood pressure. A young boy peered past his bowl cut beside the man, and an older, teenage girl stood just outside the room, hands cupped over her mouth and holding back tears.
It was more than a few moments before Apolline was able to get a nurse to explain what happened. “It’s normal to be disoriented.” She explained slowly. “You have been unconscious for four days. You were in a diving accident.”
Apolline furrowed her brow. That the feeling in her limbs was coming back through a thousand little needles. “Gilles?” The name was out of her mouth before she remembered why.
“Your friend? He’s alright.” The nurse assured her. “I believe he’s in physical therapy, but wasn’t hospitalized. You were the worst off.”
A relief washed over the woman. Gilles was okay. That was good to hear- it had been her idea to go boating over the ruins. She’d thought it would be romantic. He liked those places so much.
She turned to talk to her father, to assure him she was alright. He was so pale from worry… had he been wearing that suit? Where were his eyes?
The world jerked with dreamy revelation, and Apolline was running across uneven flagstones. She had been for minutes. Her breath stung in and out of her throat- it wasn’t long since she was discharged, and she hadn’t worked out for a while. She winded through the thin streets that bordered the island’s waterways. Soot and broken wood clogged the trickle of a canal beside her.
A blaze rose ten yards away, hot as the sun. A crowd of people were held back by two firemen and a local mage- a sidekick from a Sub-Vigil. Only three women were being treated by paramedics inside the line. The sidekick stopped her from rushing the building. “Whoa, lady, calm down. We have this under control.”
“Where’s Gilles?!” Her voice was raw. “Where is he?”
The man’s face paled. “There’s only three residents-”
“The basement! He… he studies there!” Apolline’s clawed at the man’s chest. “Please, let me through!”
The man called out to a fireman, who grabbed Apolline’s shoulder. He turned, the label of the Vigil fluttering in the wind. “Reports of a basement resident! I’m going in!” He called into a lapel microphone. He tossed away the earpiece as it buzzed with his colleagues' protests. He was gone in an instant, past a curtain of flames.
Those eternal hours passed in seconds within the dream. The sun had fallen, and the cinders had long since died out. The sidekick never returned.
A hand fell on her shoulder. She was in a desk now, bleary-eyed and bent over scraps of papers. “Apolline.” Her father’s words were tender. The woman didn’t look up. She turned the page. “Ma fée. Please go to bed. The letters will still be here in the morning.”
“I can’t sleep.” Apolline finally said. “Might as well read.”
“Your eyes will get tired.” Her dad came into view, leaning against the desk. He lightly squeezed her shoulder. “Even if your mind isn’t.”
Apolline grumbled a protest.
“Come, I’ll make you tea.” Her father slid his hand back on the desk, pushing the papers away. “For me?”
She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes. Her next exhale blew over her tea as it steamed on their small countertop. Her father sat across from her. “I just know there’s something there.” She said. “The fire didn’t start on its own.”
“There are many terrible people, Apolline. They do not need a reason to do evil.” The man took a long sip of his own tea. “Gilles kept many old documents in there. Just one cigarette-”
“The fire started on the ground floor. The exit to the basement was blocked- deliberately.” Apolline leaned forward. “Someone did this to get to him.”
A sadness ran across her father’s eyes. “Ma fée-”
“Don’t call me that! I’m not a child.” She growled. “And neither was Gilles. He made enemies. And those enemies are mine- mine and the Vigil’s. If I find proof, a lead, anything, they’ll act. Or, at least the sidekicks will.”
“Ma- Apolline. What would they even want with Gilles?”
The sleep-deprived girl snapped her fingers, reaching into her back pocket for her notebook. “Now that, I know.” She said quickly. She’d always loved a mystery. “During our accident, Gilles found something in the flooded ruins of Pittsburg- either a circle or a cycle. His handwriting is gods-awful.
“Whatever it was, it was covered in old carvings or runes, and was held in a vault. He narrowed down the runes to two potential languages- a Texan dialect of Mixal etchings or a maritime cipher used by Nightfolk conscripts during the War of ‘69. Either way, it's an alien dialect developed on Earth.”
She looked back up from her notes, and Bryce stared back. He sipped the tea impossibly through his blank, round head. He nodded. “A relic of the war, created by alien conscripts. The Nightfolk are more likely than the peace-loving Mixal, I’d imagine- their militant factions hadn’t yet made Earthfall by then.” It spoke in a mixture of her voice and her father’s.
Four looked around. “What- what are you doing to me?” She asked. “Are you spying on me?”
“Spying? Ha!” It was her father’s laugh, but Four’s voice. “Not any more than my right eye could spy on my left.” He gestured to his blank head, then somehow conveyed the feeling of a frown. “Or, something to that effect. Apolline, hm? Pretty.”
“What is this?”
“They were your memories. Those that remain unbarred, at least.” He leaned forward. The teacup disappeared, leaving only the bare wood of the table. “These memories have merely been forgotten, but those past this point? The Wolf has actively twisted them. Bent your emotions and history. How, I do not know. It is not from his Root or monastic training, I know that much.” He scratched the part of his face where his chin would be. “Perhaps that pre-war relic had something to do with it?”
“How do I know you aren’t… injecting these memories into me?” Four said. “I never met that man.”
“That was your father, I believe.”
“Bullshit.”
Bryce shrugged. “Regardless, these memories- while interesting- are unnecessary. We have yet to uncover when and how you came into the Wolf’s clutches.” He gestured to the table. Cards and casino chips fluttered across the tabletop covering the table, then uncovered a portrait of a stern, older woman with electric blue eyes. “Cordelia Reese. A soothsayer, gambler, and a general charlatan.” Bryce explained. “And, unbeknownst to most, a veteran of the Canoe Wardens.”
Four knew of them, of course- lightning mages, and protectors of the native Coalition in the west. They rivaled the Vigilants in individual strength, though they are still dwarfed by the international organization’s numbers. “A Warden? And how is that helpful?”
“Memory blockages result from electro-chemical compounds in the brain. Cordelia studied their manipulation- before her experiments drew the ire of the Council, and she was exiled.” Something about Bryce felt insubstantial and fading as he spoke. Four began to notice the room around her- the familiar, dented roof above her bed, and the fur-covered pillow behind her head.
She was waking up. Bryce’s voice slowly faded. “A light sleeper, hm? Alright- look for her in the pits of Lowharf, Apolline, around the House of the Mohn family. That was the last any of my hosts had seen her. Good luck.”
Four jolted upright in her bed, and slammed her chest onto a hard bar. She felt the wind escape her lungs, and she fell back. Blinking, and looking around her room, she saw nothing much had changed. The door was closed, and Sleet Scythe sat at the end of the bed. Three rings of ice bound Four’s chest and waist to the wooden bedframe, with less than an inch of room to spare.
The Vigilant seemed surprised to see Four awake. “Oh! I expected you to be… well, frankly, I didn’t expect you to survive.” She put away her nail file back in her coat pocket. “The other beasts who I’ve forced to remember didn’t survive the feedback.”
You tried to kill me? Four bit back her retort. “Can you get these off of me?” She growled. Her prosthetic was on the other side of the room, and the Vigilant was still armed. The bindings seemed unnecessary.
Scythe didn’t seem to agree. “It never hurts to be careful.” She said, pulling out her phone and a stylus to take notes. “Now, can you report on what you remember? How the Wolf exerts his control, or imposes False Roots?”
Four scowled. “I’m not talking until I’m free.” She wiggled futilely in the restraints. “I can barely breathe.”
A moment of hesitation, and Scythe finally waved her hand. The three rings of restraints crumbled into a dusting of snow, which Four brushed away. She leaned up in her bed. Most of the room had been put back together- although the bathroom handle was still busted. That’d be a pain to fix. She had managed a few deep breaths before Scythe spoke again. “I saw the thing on your back.” She pursed her lips. “Some of the corpses in the Cage had the same growths. The few that weren’t missing.”
“A gift from a controller-type Rooted. And not Wolf, so you know.” Right? “It’s tied in with my nerves.”
“Hm. Unfortunate.” Scythe continued to jot notes. “That will make telling Wolf’s controller abilities apart from this one difficult. Tell me, what did you see when you fell asleep? You were muttering something.”
Four looked the woman over. For all her pomp, a drive burned behind the Vigilant’s eyes that Four couldn’t quite place. “This isn’t official business, is it?” Four spoke the thought as it bubbled up.
Scythe raised an eyebrow. “What gave it away? The breaking and entering or the interrogation under duress?”
Four gritted her teeth. “Why?”
Scythe’s stylus stopped. Four could see the gears working behind her eyes- on how to respond to her captive. “Personal reasons.” She settled on. “A close friend of mine was caught in the plots of a controller. After entering the Vigil, and seeing them ignore Wolf’s clear control over his beasts…” She shook her head. “Look, I’m not a good person, and neither are you. But these controllers are something else, and nobody is doing anything to stop them. So, I’ll repeat my question- what do you remember?”
She seemed honest, and that scared Four. With Bryce, and now her… just what was Wolf doing? When Four thought back to her meeting with him, where he had held her so close, she could only feel a vague disgust. Was that what she felt then?
“I remember a name. I lived somewhere with canals that spun great waterwheels. Another Metro City, I think. Or… maybe France?” Four felt a pit in her stomach. The memories felt nostalgic. Real. “I was in a boating accident. Shortly afterwards, my friend was burned alive after coming in contact with an alien relic from the ruins of Pittsburg.” She shrugged. “My memories stop after that, while I was looking for a way to uncover who killed him.”
“An active blockage. Interesting.” Scythe nodded. Her phone buzzed. “Shit. HQ needs me.” She looked back up to Four before standing. “You know the truth- to some extent. Know that I’m the only person who will help you in this city.” She walked towards the door. With a wave of her hand on the bottom of the door frame, the series of freezing runes disintegrated into snow. “If you discover any more, leave it at a dropbox in the Bright City. I put the details in your mail.” Her outline paused at the doorway, the flickering light of the hallway shining around her. “Sorry for the wine.” The door shut, and she was gone.
Four flopped back onto her bed- then winced as she fell on her back. She stared blankly up at the bent wooden boards on her ceiling. Her breaths came slowly. She should report this to Wolf, that a rogue Vigilant is hunting him down. Get Beech and the others on it. She should scrounge around for her phone and call.
Four chose to fall asleep.