GEMINI

  Tabitha//

  Somewhere in the black of an empty dream, a red light blinked. There one moment, pressing against the void, and then swallowed by it, in the next.

  Over and over, it slowly flashed.

  “No matter what,” Agent Harris said from the darkness, “the light is always red.”

  As the light faded in and out, it slowly grew. Through the growing tunnel of light, the pain of reality slipped in, until it was agonizing, and impossible to get away from. Expanding with her awareness, the red light suddenly burst into dazzling, fluorescent white.

  Tabitha’s eye snapped open to escape what she was sure was a tortuous nightmare. Dreaming of the frying pan, she woke up in the fire. She screamed and fought to get away from what felt like red hot needles plucking at every nerve in her left arm. Struggling to see the source of her pain, Tabitha found she could not turn her head far enough to see it out of her right eye. When she attempted to open her left it was met by a bolt of lightning firing through her head. Restrained, she cried out for mercy from whatever hell she had woken to, before shock pushed her back into the dark.

  There, Tabitha found the red light, again, momentarily holding back the nothingness, before it disappeared. Then, reappearing, like Sisyphean hope, it hung there, rising to a crescendo, only to tumble back into the black, before it could complete its task.

  “You remember, don’t you?” Agent Harris asked from somewhere in the void. “The light is always red…”

  Once again, the light reached out, this time, pulling shapes from the darkness. When it retracted back into the bulb, the dashboard it protruded from remained, painted in deep red hues.

  Overhead, the streetlights took turns illuminating the interior of the car, as the two agents sped down the highway toward their first investigation as partners. There one moment, and gone in the next, the stark yellow lights were spaced in such a way that the unlit patches between them created a strobing effect, when the car passed through them. Out of rhythm with the blinking red indicator, the two sources of light worked in discordant tandem to further Tabitha’s nausea.

  “Should I check?” she asked Agent Harris, reaching out for the terminal between them. “Maybe it’s a lower hazard level?”

  Agent Harris chuckled through the unlit cigarette in his mouth. “You know…”

  Another, really? Tabitha cringed at the anticipated smell.

  “…no matter what…,” one hand on the steering wheel, he used his free hand to fish a lighter from his pocket. Unable to find it, he let out a groan, and began looking around for it in the center console. He glanced at Tabitha. “Do you see it?” he asked her, pointing at his cigarette. “My lighter.”

  It took her only a moment to find it, as she had been holding it since he last used it. After the fifth cigarette in an hour, Tabitha was contemplating throwing it out the window to spare herself the torment. She had always hated the smell of smoke, or the person it often followed, and a part of her did not want that hate to cling to her new partner, like the smell did.

  When Agent Harris’s frantic searching nearly took them off the road, Tabitha sighed. “Just watch the damn road,” she told him, as she clinked the lighter open, flicked the flint, and held the orange flame up to his cigarette for him.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he told her, rolling his window down to let the smoke billow out. “What was I saying? Oh…”

  Suddenly, Agent Harris’s voice was not his voice. It was a woman’s, and it was coming from miles away.

  “…not too much morphine, we want her lucid.”

  The red light on the dashboard blinked, and the dream faded out with it.

  “…Agent Hale?”

  “Tabitha Hale…”

  With the next flash of red, fluorescent white poured back into her perception.

  “Agent, can you hear me?”

  “There she is,” a woman said warmly. “How are you feeling, Tabitha?”

  Tabitha did her best to blink off the blinding light. Her right eye adjusted slowly, until she could just barely squint. As her vision went from smudgy mess to a blur, she saw four figures standing in front of her. Clearer, her eye focused, tracing the edges of the giant window they stared at her through. Then she followed the wall to a heavy blast door, until something prevented her from turning further. And then her eye fell upon her restraints.

  High tensile black straps held Tabitha’s right arm out in a line away from her reclined body. Another across her forehead, and one across her neck, kept her from rotating her head. Straps at her chest and stomach made it difficult to breathe. If she could see out of her left eye, she was certain she would see more straps across her left arm, too tight, she thought, and what must be the cause of the dull ache in it.

  “Wha…,” Tabitha wanted to fight, but the urgency slid past her. Her mind, her body, everything was loose and distant. A fog stretched from her head down through every limb and appendage, blanketing reason and muddying sensation. Thoughts like move and scream were lost to a hazy labyrinth, only to be replaced by confusion and thirst. “Wa…water,” she choked, as she tried to swallow dryly.

  “Send in the Null-Class,” someone said in a gruff voice.

  Null-Class? Tabitha wondered. She knew the term, just like everyone in Blackwell. A classification saved for the lowest of the low, the scum of society, which only a fate worse than death was owed. With the Blackwell Foundation, they would at least serve a purpose beyond taking up space and tax dollars. In that moment, the meaning of it danced around her.

  “We’re sending water in now,” the warm voice told her. “Please refrain from making any sudden movements. They’re skittish.”

  The heavy door next to the observation glass disappeared into the wall with a hiss. On the other side of it, a man stood in an orange jumpsuit, taking up much of the doorway. His head was shaven, and he was chalk pale, like he had not seen the sun in years. The prospect of even walking through a door seemed foreign to him, standing there, fear in his eyes, as they traced the threshold in front of him.

  What’s he so afraid of? Tabitha thought. Is there something behind me?

  Prodded from behind, the man cautiously stepped into the room, a small cup of water in his hands. His eyes swept over Tabitha, face fluttering from fear to awe, and then back terror, when he saw her staring back at him. He averted his gaze, refusing to look at her, again, as if it would be too much to bear. Instead, he stared at the floor, or the walls, or over his shoulder at the person spurring him on. Before he took another step, he held the cup out between him and Tabitha, trying his best to aim the bent straw at her through side-eye glances.

  Should I be scared too? she wondered, as she watched him approach. Her eye fell on the cup being held in front of her by shaking hands and arms that could not stretch further. Water? What if… She wanted to care, had been trained to care, but her thirst took over. A lick of her dry, cracked lips, and an attempt to swallow filled her mind with the image of an arid desert. Tricks or mirages be damned, she tried to reach out for the cup, despite her restraints. After a frustrated glance at the straps, she resigned to taking the straw in her lips and drank. She desperately sucked down what she could in one gulp, then let out a harsh, refreshed exhale.

  The man in the orange jumpsuit flinched.

  What are you… heh… water you so scared of? The bliss of quenched thirst mixed with the induced haze to push down the nagging, screaming voice in the back of her head. Taking the straw in her mouth, again, she eagerly drank more. Eye closed, and a satisfied smile on her face, Tabitha imagined herself drinking directly from a glacier.

  “That’s enough,” the gruff voice snapped.

  Tabitha was suddenly sucking in bubbles, then air, as the cup was pulled away from the straw. Her eye snapped open to protest, but she was immediately thrust back into reality by a gruff question.

  “What happened to your partner, Agent Hale?” the rough voice asked impatiently. “Field Agent-0928, Agent Issac Harris, your partner.”

  There was a moment of hushed arguing behind the glass, as someone protested.

  “Director Charming, please…,” the warm voice said.

  Agent Harris? Confused and still thirsty, Tabitha watched the Null-Class slink out of the room, prized water in tow. The door hissed closed, and her attention fell on the observation room. She lazily spit the straw out onto her lap, as four figures, obscured by shadow and reflections, stared back at her.

  The smallest of the silhouettes shifted in their seat.

  “Agent Hale…Tabitha,” the warm voice said, “do you know where you are?” She gently cleared her throat. “Or remember how you got here?”

  Where? Tabitha’s eye danced around the space in front of her. Cold metal walls holding security glass, and an automatic blast door. She could not see much to her side, or at all behind her, but assumed there was more walls, and no other exit. No natural light, only harsh fluorescence, spoke to no windows, which likely meant they were underground. An interrogation room? she wondered, though, that only further confused her. Am I on the wrong side of the glass?

  Her eye darted from the window to the straps holding her right arm in place. Struggling weakly, it finally dawned on Tabitha that she was being held in a safety restraint chair. Straps on a cruciform bar kept her arms out at her sides, some ran down her chest and across it, then across her lap, and even more held her legs in place. She was on the wrong side of the glass, a prisoner. How?

  Swallowing dryly, Tabitha questioned the shapes on the other side of the glass. “Wh-why,” she croaked, before clearing her throat, and trying again. “Why am I in—being h-held?” She tried her best to shake free of the restraints, but she felt sloppy, almost drunk, like everything was happening two seconds before or after she felt it. The dull ache in her left side, now rising up to her covered eye, seemed to object to her struggling. “What…what did you do to me?”

  Someone scoffed.

  The man seated next to the small woman leaned toward the glass, his rough face just barely visible through the glare. “What did you do to yourself, Agent?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice.

  “Director, please,” the woman fussed. She turned back to the glass, and her voice cooled. “Tabitha, what is the last thing you remember?”

  The question rolled off Tabitha’s mind. “What?” She wanted to panic, to fight and scream, but the feeling was diluted by the fog. “Where the hell am I?” she asked, not nearly as loud or threateningly as part of her wanted. The dichotomy of wanting to drift off to sleep, but also thrash about in terror, and the ability to do neither, made her head swim. Questions poured out of her from the sea of hazy feelings. “Who are you with? Blackwell? What happened? Where is Agent—,” but his name caught in her throat, with a clink of a flip-top lighter.

  “Yes, where is Agent Harris?” The man’s cold voice grew louder with impatience. “Or VIO-893 for tha—”

  “Enough, Elias,” the woman chided, before correcting herself. “Director, do I have your permission to conduct this interview, or not?”

  Someone standing behind the two coughed awkwardly.

  The director took a moment, then casually leaned back in his chair. Tabitha saw the suggestion of a hand wave through the glass. “Go ahead then, doctor.”

  The doctor’s silhouette grew with a long exhale, then shrank with a heavy sigh.

  “Okay.” Returning her attention to Tabitha, she continued. “My name is Dr. Nagano, Tabitha,” the doctor said, gesturing at herself, then to the man sitting next to her, “and this is the site’s director, Director Charming.” She turned to gesture at the two faint shapes behind her. “Joining us are Warden Cutler, and one of my research assistants, Lily Schwartz. And, yes, we are with the Blackwell Foundation, same as you.”

  Only certain words of the doctor’s introduction stuck, the words that came with their own undertones and implications within Blackwell. Site…warden…research? Tabitha tried to make sense of it. She had the biggest pieces of the puzzle, the edges and then some, and it was more than enough to guess at the final image, even through the fog. No, it can’t…I can’t be. She struggled to look at the whole picture, fought the realization back with flickering hope. “What happened?” she asked the room, as panic cut through the haze, and began to set in. The closer it got, the more she started to hyperventilate. “What happened?!” Faster and faster, each inhale and exhale came, until she felt the rise of her chest being hindered by the straps restraining her. Until comprehension of her situation became a fetter of its own. “What’s—what’s going on?! Where is…where is…where is…”

  “Sedate her,” Director Charming said sternly.

  “No, she’s already…,” Dr. Nagano tried to argue, while attempting to get through to Tabitha. “Tabitha, please, I understa—”

  And then Tabitha was screaming through her rapid breaths. Through fog and dull pain, she struggled to shake off the drugs, the restraints, the moment itself. The chair rattled violently, as she helplessly fought against its grip.

  “Let me out!” she screamed at the observation room. Over and over, a plea or command, to each observer. “Let me oooouuuut!” With each repetition, as the haze faded, the throbbing in her arm grew, snaking up and into her blind eye, where it glowed warmly, pulsing in the darkness. “Let me out!!”

  “Put her under, doctor,” the director commanded. “Now.”

  Dr. Nagano’s silhouette leaned forward, allowing the worry to be seen playing across her face through the window’s glare. With the press of a button, the white lights in the room snapped to red, and a klaxon sounded.

  When the tranquilizer flooded Tabitha’s veins, and darkness pressed against her vision, she saw a familiar figure standing in the corner of the interrogation room. Red, shaggy hair, like hers, but a duller color, and not nearly as long. He was wearing the same glasses she always swore he only wore to make himself look smarter than he was. The man held an antique gold lighter up to a cigarette in his mouth. That’s not yours, she thought. And, as if in reply, he lit it and the flame painted him a different face, suddenly becoming Agent Harris.

  “Let me…out…help…,” she begged, as an induced darkness took hold of her consciousness.

  In the black, hollow dream, a red light blinked.

  There one moment, then gone in the next, it flashed, neither fighting, nor submitting to the darkness. Permanent in its impermanence, it simply was or was not, until it was not or was, again.

  “We knew the job, kid,” Agent Harris’s voice echoed through the darkness. “Signed right on the dotted line.”

  As it faded out, and then back in, the red glow fell across the car interior it was part of. A scarlet dashboard, vermilion terminal, a carmine center console all returned to their usual hue, with the indicator light’s retreat.

  Still, ruby red dripped from the black steering wheel.

  Tabitha’s door slammed closed, and the din of a downpour outside crashed around them. It drowned out her gasping for breath, and muffled the pained groans of Agent Harris. They had both been drenched by the rain in the brief time it took them to get from behind the car to inside of it. Half in shock from the attack, half disoriented by the escape, Tabitha tried to shake off the adrenaline, staring wide-eyed at the hole in her partner’s side.

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  “I-I-I don’t know what happ—it came out of nowhere,” she stammered. “I-I’m sorry, I panicked. Didn’t expec—I should drive, right? Shouldn’t I?”

  In their rush to safety, the two of them had defaulted to routine. Rather than the uninjured Tabitha taking the wheel, Agent Harris sat in the driver’s seat, bleeding all over it. Leaned back in his seat, one hand squeezing the wheel, to brace against the pain, he kept the other on the wound that caused it, despite it doing little to stop the bleeding. He was in no shape to sit there, let alone drive.

  Agent Harris opened a pained eye to look at Tabitha, as he coughed a laugh. “Don’t worry…just call it in. Tell ‘em…upgrade VC-722 hazard…Level 3 to Level 1…that oughta get us some help.”

  Tabitha did as she was told, as she was trained. Taking the terminal’s keyboard in her lap, she frantically typed in the overwrite code. The shake of adrenaline made what should have been a simple task, a herculean one. As she went through the steps to send out the distress call, she thought she might cry in frustration.

  “I’m sorry, I should’ve…Harris, I don’t know what—”

  “Hey,” Agent Harris coughed. Putting his bloody hand on Tabitha’s forearm, he squeezed. He spoke through pained breaths. “No more…of that. You…did good…you got that thing…good. Saved…me…”

  His voice became a rasping wheeze, and his grip on Tabitha’s arm loosened.

  She turned to him, letting out a soft cry, just as she slammed the enter key to confirm the distress call.

  And then, suddenly, a bright light washed away the scene.

  “You sleeping on the job, kid?”

  The white gave way to the sterile fluorescence of Site-17’s medical bay, as Tabitha startled awake in the chair next to Agent Harris’s bed. Her momentary annoyance at being called kid despite her objections was quickly overcome by the joy of seeing her partner’s weak smile.

  “Harris!” Tabitha let out a heavy sigh of relief, almost a whimper. “Oh, thank god!” She stood up, contemplating running to get the doctor, but instead took the moment of privacy to apologize. “I-I’m sorry. If I hadn’t hesitated, you—I’m going to put it in my report. They should know. I need more training, or…”

  Agent Harris groaned into a pained laugh. “Come on,” he winced, and held his bandaged side, “if I was with anyone else, it would have likely gone down the same way, if not worse. We knew what we signed up for.” He weakly waved his finger around at his injured body. “This isn’t so bad.” Then he gestured at the room. “A bit of time in here is better than a long time in the ground.” Finally, his finger landed on Tabitha. “You saved me. And, even if you hadn’t, I couldn’t pick a better person to try.”

  Tabitha fought back tears with her disappointment. “But I messed up. I hesitated. Panicked. I panicked.” She turned away to hide her face as it contorted. “We can’t do that—I can’t do that.”

  “We all panic, Hale,” he told her, stifling a sympathetic laugh. “The best of us would, in that situation. Nil Sect is no Level 3 hazard.” He shifted uncomfortably in his bed. “Hell, what do you think I was doing when that thing was on top of me? Not doing what I should have. Not reaching for the lighter, that’s for damn sure. Not until you—”

  “How could they get it so wrong, though?” she asked, spinning around to demand answers. “Level 3? How was that a Level 3? How could they be so fucking dumb?”

  Agent Harris laughed hard in agreement, until he was coughing in pain. “What did I tell you that first night?”

  All of Tabitha’s anger, her sadness, left her, as she deflated at the question.

  “When that indicator blinks, it doesn’t matter if it’s Level 5, or Level 1. I—we knew what we signed up for,” he reminded her. “No matter what, the light is always red.”

  With the word, a flash of red struck Tabitha’s left eye, causing her to blink, and the dream fell away into the void.

  Again, only the red light remained, pressing out against the black in unfaltering defiance.

  Over and over, it expanded from nothing, then slowly disappeared.

  “I still owe you, ya know,” Agent Harris said. “Left one burning for ya back there.”

  Once more, the ember appeared. This time, it burned bright with inhalation, unveiling his face with an orange glow. When it shrank, again, the cherry of Agent Harris’s cigarette remained lit. It floated there, like a timid sprite in the dark.

  The clink of an old flip-top lighter echoed through the emptiness.

  “Just say the word, kid.”

  ~~~

  Sebastian//

  Through what was once a supply closet door, Sebastian followed Lord Tredici out into the oppressive cold of a snowy, moonlit landscape. He had never felt such low temperatures. The kind of subzero chill that pierces through every layer of clothing, skin and fat to stiffen your muscles, and bite at your bones. The kind that immediately chases all the warmth from your face, replacing it with a numb burning of its own, freezing your eyes shut, as you squint against the wind. It pressed in on both of them, forcing them to shrink into their jackets, hands diving into pockets to better bundle themselves in the useless fabric. If not for Lord Tredici having a similar unprepared reaction, Sebastian might have thought the parka was a cruel joke.

  Blinded by the stinging wind, Sebastian kept his eyes mostly shut, and tried his best to follow the crunch of the advisor’s footsteps. Not far from the door, but what felt like a mile through the frigid hell, Sebastian walked right into Lord Tredici.

  “S-s-sorry,” Sebastian said, nearly convulsing from his shivering. Forcing his eyes open, he saw the chilly lord had turned halfway around to gesture at the door behind them.

  “The door, boy!” he hollered. “Dio mio! Close the door!”

  Turning around, Sebastian saw they had exited the cafeteria through the door of a small, rundown house on the outskirts of a sleeping village. Still sitting wide open, he could see the bright dining hall through the door, and people shuffling about as they went about their day.

  Suddenly, it dawned on him how that might be problematic. Did you grow up in a barn? he asked himself in his mother’s voice. Driven by ancient shame, he stomped back toward the door, doing his best not to trip in the deep snow.

  Reaching it, he stepped across the threshold, and was instantly overwhelmed by the warmth of the room beyond. He paused with his hand on the doorknob, bathing in the heated air. When his eyes landed on Greta, and she looked back at him, confused, he instinctively shrunk away, like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Leaning back out into the cold, he fought the rush of exchanging air, and pulled the door shut with a groan.

  His shoes and legs caked in snow, Sebastian nearly fell, as he turned around. When he recovered, he saw Lord Tredici had kept going without him. Certain the way back to the Monolith was gone now, and not wanting to be left behind, he ran after the advisor. Unsure if the man would vanish in much the same way he had appeared in his life, Sebastian’s chest tightened at the thought of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Carelessly, he raced down the trail Lord Tredici had broken, tripping, then falling once, before cursing under his breath, and popping up to frantically continue. Not far from the edge of a snow-blanketed conifer forest, the advisor stopped. It was only when he drew nearer that Sebastian saw what he was standing next to.

  A tiny, well-kept shed sat near the treeline. Painted in such a way that it was camouflaged against the forest backdrop, and almost invisible in the moonlight, it looked far more modern than any of the village’s other buildings. To Sebastian, it was a peculiar contrast. Someone had gone so far as to hide it in that location, but could not bear for it to look substandard. Anyone looking for it is just gonna freeze to death, he thought, a shiver ripping through him. Seems like something Blackwell would do.

  “Wh-wh-where are we?” he asked, trembling. “It’s…so…c-c-c-cold.”

  Lord Tredici ignored his question, instead, choosing to run his hand along the frame of the door. “Hmm, it should be somewhere around h—”

  “S-sir…L-lord Tre—”

  “Ecco!” the advisor interrupted, finding the corner of a panel beside the door. He dramatically flipped it open, pulling his hand back to present it to himself. “There we are!”

  Sebastian shook uncontrollably, as he watched over the man’s shoulder.

  “C-c-could be anything, I-I-I s-s-suppose.” Lord Tredici spun his finger around in front of the keypad. It looked like he was playing eeny, meeny, miny, moe, again, with the code.

  “Y-you don’t know it?” Sebastian asked, eager to get inside. The blood had long left his extremities, leaving him to crumple in on himself, as he stood there. “L-Lord Tre—”

  “Perhaps…,” Lord Tredici slammed a stiff finger into a button, then another. And then ran his finger up and down them haphazardly. “…yes!”

  To Sebastian’s surprise, a beep sounded from the keypad, followed by the sound of hydraulic locks releasing. “H-h-how?” he asked, watching Lord Tredici push open the heavy door.

  Behind it, a set of stairs waited, leading down into the permafrost.

  ~~~

  After the stairs, a tunnel, more stairs, and two more security doors, which Lord Tredici somehow, again, bypassed through random chance, the two men stood in an elevator, as it gently fell into the earth. Sebastian had shaken off most of the snow, but little of the cold he accumulated on the way in. Still shivering, he watched Lord Tredici take off his coat, check it for stray snow, then fold it over his arm.

  The dapper man shuddered out an exasperated sigh. “Oymyakon…dio mio…you hear a place is hell, then walk into an icebox.”

  “H-how’d you do it?” Sebastian asked, trying to distract himself from his convulsions. “The security codes. It-it didn’t look like you knew them.”

  Lord Tredici shot a brief, side-eyed glance at him. “You tell me, Dr. Hale.”

  Sebastian raised an uncertain eyebrow at the man. Addled by cold, it took his brain a moment to circle the obvious answer.

  “It’s your variance?” he asked, when it dawned on him. “You said earlier you’re a variant.”

  A slight smile cracked the corner of the advisor’s mouth.

  “And the ‘13’ on your forehead has something to do with it?”

  Without looking at Sebastian, Lord Tredici raised an eyebrow, as if to silently say he was onto something.

  Is he testing me? Sebastian wondered. It made sense to him that an advisor might do something like that, but Lord Tredici was the puckish type. He seemed to be having fun. It reminded Sebastian too much of himself. He knew that to be annoyed by it meant the advisor won. So, he chose to play along, and pass the test.

  “Thirteen is unlucky in a lot of cultures, and lucky in some. Something to do with bad luck, then? But it’s not that you have bad luck, obviously”

  Lord Tredici continued staring at the elevator door, poker face intact.

  “If AB1 gave you that mark as a warning, then I’m guessing it’s a warning to others.”

  The lord’s eyebrow twitched. His thin smile cracked further.

  “That’s it, huh? You’re bad luck.”

  Lord Tredici’s head spun toward Sebastian, eyebrows raised quizzically. Almost impressed.

  “But it’s not just that you’re bad luck. You’re able to increase the likelihood of success for your actions at the detriment of others. Your good luck becomes someone else’s bad luck. That explains the warning. And, as a constant, I actually negate that effect?”

  The advisor’s face finally broke into a wide smirk. “Bravo, Dr. Hale,” he said, while he golf clapped at Sebastian’s success. “You can see then at least part of the reason I have you joining me, yes?”

  “Part of the reason?” Sebastian asked.

  Just then, the elevator door slid open, with a ding, and Lord Tredici was off.

  “Better to be a part of something, than apart from, doctor,” he told Sebastian, waving off his actual question.

  “Better to be of use, than useless, you mean,” Sebastian replied, half distracted by the branching network of cold, metallic halls they were in. Every fifty steps, a new path intersected the one they were on, no matter how many turns they made. Eventually, heavy blast doors, with who knows what behind them, appeared along the walls at random intervals. Trying to map out the maze of it made his head spin, so he hoped his guide knew the way out. “This is a containment site? They’re keeping my sister here?”

  “Somewhere around here, anyway,” Lord Tredici said, stopping to eye the hall to their right, then the left. His head swiveled back and forth between the two directions. Then he continued straight ahead, in the direction they had been going. “We can’t be far now.”

  Can’t be far now? Sebastian wondered. Does it really work like that?

  And, just like that, they rounded a corner into a short hall, with a single blast door at the end of it. Two heavily armed SecCon members guarded it.

  The guards raising their guns did not slow Lord Tredici in the slightest, but stopped Sebastian in his tracks.

  “Ciao, gentlemen! Ciao!”

  “Sir,” they both said, lowering their guns in unison.

  “Apologies, Lord Tredici,” the one on the left said, higher rank of the two. “We weren’t told to expect the Advisory Board.”

  Without breaking stride, the advisor casually walked up to the blast door. He stopped between the two guards, and patiently waited for one of them to open it. “Come along, Dr. Hale,” he said over his shoulder. “These two are harmless.”

  Harmless? Sebastian did as he was told, but did so cautiously.

  Massive, and clad in heavy, black tactical armor, full face helmets, bandoliers with ammunition and grenades, and three different weapons: an advanced rifle, a high caliber pistol, and a knife that could double as a small sword, the SecCon members looked more like machine knights than anything human. Office gossip did nothing to help his apprehension as he approached. Their entire role was to shoot first, ask questions later. The last resort types, who you were happy were on your side, until they showed you they were first and foremost on the side of Blackwell’s interests. If they were sent in to contain a situation, you could guarantee it would get done at any cost. And if they were guarding something, or someone, you could be certain that thing was dangerous, and they would fight tooth and nail to keep it locked up.

  What the hell did you do, Tabby? Sebastian thought to himself.

  Stopping behind Lord Tredici, he kept his eyes locked straight ahead on the man’s gray hair. Standing there, he felt the two glaring at him, though, there was no way to be sure, with their faces covered.

  When the door hissed open, Sebastian’s heart momentarily jumped into his throat.

  “Grazie, gentlemen,” Lord Tredici said, unceremoniously stepping into the room.

  Pressed forward by awkward fear, Sebastian chased after the advisor. After he entered the room, the door shut behind him, locking with an ominous thud.

  In what looked like a holding cell, poorly lit, and poorly maintained, another SecCon member stood in the corner, guarding a man seated on a bench. Null-Class, too? Sebastian wondered. Dressed in prisoner orange, and a cup sitting next to him, the Null-Class gave the two of them a forlorn look, before returning to twiddling his thumbs. What are they testing?

  “Bah!” Coming to a stop in the middle of the room, Lord Tredici shrugged. “This isn’t the observation room!” He glanced over his shoulder to roll his eyes at Sebastian. “I guess this is what we get for using the back entrance.” Turning to the guard, he pointed at the door opposite the one they entered. “Is the new object through there?”

  New object? Sebastian thought he could hear someone yelling through the next blast door.

  All of sudden, the dim white lights were replaced by the red of emergency lights in the corners of the room. A loud klaxon sounded once.

  “Oh god,” the Null-Class said, mirroring Sebastian’s inner dialogue.

  “Lord Tredici?” Sebastian asked, fighting the tremble of adrenaline in his voice. “What—”

  And then, as quickly as they had changed, the lights returned to flickering, fluorescent white.

  Satisfied with that answer, Lord Tredici stepped up to the guard. “Open it.”

  “Sir?” the modern knight asked, standing stoically.

  Lord Tredici scoffed dramatically, and placed his palm against his forehead in feigned disbelief. “You will address me as ‘Lord’ when you question me, and think twice before doing that a second time.” He flung his other hand over his shoulder to point at Sebastian. “If I have to ask, again, my ward here will be forced to pummel you.”

  “Uuuhh…,” Sebastian was dumbfounded. Ward? He did not know whether to be offended more by his new title, or his new role as supposed muscle for the careless lord. Pummel? This time, he was certain the SecCon member was glaring at him, sizing him up.

  After a moment, the armored man chuckled quietly, then pressed a button on his forearm, and the blast door slid open, with a hiss.

  “Grazie,” Lord Tredici told him, laughing with or at the guard. As he walked by, he sat his coat down on the bench, then reached up to pat the giant on the shoulder. “Watch that for me, yes?”

  Unencumbered, the advisor glanced at Sebastian, and gestured at him to follow, before stepping into the interrogation room.

  Sebastian hesitated, at first, not knowing what to expect. It had been nearly a decade since he last saw his sister. He did not know if he would recognize her, or if she would recognize him. Surely, neither of them could change so much as to become strangers to one another. Their paths through life, one a paper shuffling pencil pusher, and another an active field agent, could not be so dissimilar that the difference became an insurmountable chasm.

  As twins, even fraternal, their similarities ran deep. Yes, she had been half a foot taller, but they both shared the same shaggy red hair, though, hers a shade brighter. They both were spitting images of their father, all cheekbones and eyebrows, much to their mother’s chagrin. And despite their dueling dispositions, often being played up by maternal machinations, the two of them never reached the level of competitive loathing their upbringing intended. Their parting of ways had simply been a mutual, beneficial detachment. At least, that was what Sebastian told himself, when the reality of the red smudge she had become to him, reared its ugly head. You did nothing wrong.

  A look around the room at his company, a prisoner and a faceless guard, set him back in motion. Not far from the door, he heard someone’s voice burst over an intercom.

  “Excuse me!” Director Charming growled. “Who let—we have a security br—”

  “Sir,” Dr. Nagano interrupted. She continued in a whisper betrayed by the observation room’s microphone. “His forehead. 13.”

  “Oh god…what…”

  Sebastian peeked through the doorway to see Lord Tredici waving at the window taking up much of the wall to his right.

  “AB5?! Who let you—,” Dr. Charming cleared his throat, in order to change his tone to something more accommodating, “—I mean, Lord Tredici, we did not expect…”

  Just beyond the heedless lord, in the center of the room, Sebastian saw someone held in a modified restraint apparatus. Head shaven poorly, leaving some clumps of hair longer than the rest, they were dressed in an orange hospital gown, with a black patch over their bandaged left eye. Arms splayed out at their side, the person was half-crucified by straps to the T-shaped contraption. Lateral supports on the headrest and seat held them snugly, like a mold they had been cast in. And while their right arm was only restrained by straps, their left was encased in a shell of black, porous metal, which had been strapped down, then wrapped in chains for support.

  Sebastian had seen unvarite before, the anomalous form of iron, which simultaneously looked both processed and unprocessed. It was unmistakable, somehow dull and rough, yet still shimmering iridescently, in the presence of variant radiation. Its ability to absorb the radiation, without being affected by it, made it a mandatory component of all of Blackwell’s containment efforts. He had been told it lined the walls of every containment cell, like lead, and in extreme cases had been used to make entire rooms.

  In Archive VII, it was used in the drawers of storage cabinets, to render the artifacts safe, and in the personal protective equipment of the staff who handled them. The novelty of it captivated most, even Sebastian, for a time, until even that wore off. There was even a rumor that a layer of it interlined the mountain which housed The Monolith. However, he had not seen or heard of it being used to make what looked almost like a crude gauntlet, covering the person’s arm up to the elbow. Even more peculiar was the eyepatch, contrasting against the prisoner’s pale skin, had been made of the same shimmering black material.

  “…highly irregular, sir—my lord—Lord Tredici.” Dr. Charming’s gruff voice burst over the intercom. He was standing with his unkempt face as close to the wall mounted microphone as possible, so that he sounded like he was yelling despite his apprehensive tone. “As director of Site-02, I’m going to have to ask you to allow my staff and I to—”

  Bringing his index finger up to his lips, Lord Tredici called the man to silence.

  Dr. Nagano attempted her own warm, frazzled objection, from the other side of the glass. “Please, Lord—”

  Lord Tredici’s free hand rose in a halting gesture. His hushing hand reached out to join it in front of him, like a conductor orchestrating silence.

  “Good,” he said, when he was satisfied with their obedience. “Now, tell me everything about dear Tabitha’s misfortune.”

  “Tabitha?” The name struck Sebastian in the forehead. “Where is she? I thought you said we were…,” but the look on Lord Tredici’s face, a contorted mix of disbelief and delight, punctuated by a side-eyed look at the restrained woman, burrowed into his confused mind. His eyes shot back to the prisoner. It only took a moment then for newfound light to reveal the familiar in the stranger’s face.

  And then, out from an old wound, the realization washed over him.