Broker

The party had, obviously, been delayed a little.

Sonya paced back and forth in front of the door to the room that Doctor Da-Som had set aside for his own work and experimentation below deck. With Sonya’s Nectar and Ambrosia, most injuries to her people were easily dealt with, but this went beyond anything she was able to handle. Something was wrong, very wrong, and her gut told her to be prepared for bad news. Even so, even as mentally prepared as she was, it was hard to keep her cool.

She stopped in front of the door again and glared at it. “Go over it again,” she commanded, not looking back at Blackrazor, whom she had portaled in to give a full, detailed report. Pulling him away from France, even for a short period, would delay her, but she wanted to hear it directly from him.

“Understood, Mistress,” he said quietly. His own tone held traces of frustration. She knew it wasn’t directed at her, but at the situation as a whole. “As you ordered, Mikayla, like the others you’ve put under observation, was tagged with a chip in her neck. My people followed her when she went to Greece and noted her kidnapping.”

Sonya nodded. “And you delayed retrieval as ordered in anticipation of a ransom demand so as not to aggravate the hostage taker.”

“Correct, Mistress,” he said flatly.

“No communication came?” she asked. “Mimir didn’t contact any of our people?”

“No, Mistress,” he confirmed.

She clicked her tongue. “So her tag went off after her vitals entered the alert zone. What happened next?” she asked. She knew she was repeating what he’d told her just a few hours ago, but she wanted - no, needed - to hear it again.

“Two six-man teams engaged the armed men defending the building. There was an associate professor leading the attack with two aides in subordinate,” Blackrazor said quietly. “The defenders put up significant resistance. They appeared extraordinarily well-versed in the usage of their abilities and applied creative tactics as well as unique applications. It was sufficient to hold off my men for a full two minutes.”

“How many of them are still alive?” she demanded coolly.

“The old man fled,” Blackrazor growled. “The man in robes is the sole survivor. As you know, the Vigilantes are a cell-based organization that utilizes memory wipes and drop sites to deliver orders. The footmen were useless beyond their abilities. Capturing them was an unnecessary risk.”

Sonya nodded gravely. “The robed man?”

“In custody at one of our black sites,” Blackrazor said.

“Good,” she growled. “Then what happened?”

“Mikayla appeared in a flash of light in front of me. How she was transported from Greece to France is beyond me. I did not sense her breach my field of awareness or the layer of shadows I maintain to detect teleportation,” Blackrazor continued. “She was in serious condition and already completely incoherent. I contacted you immediately.”

“And Mimir?”

“He fled as well, Mistress,” he said. “The only evidence of his presence was these two items,” he said and held up a small plastic bag. Inside was a gun and a lighter. She turned to face him and looked the dreary supervillain in the eyes before walking over to take the bag and look inside. “The gun was discarded beneath a shelf in the storage room near…” He cleared his throat. “...near Pandora’s box.”

She flicked her eyes up at him and narrowed them. “Why was he there? Does the robed man know?”

Blackrazor shook his head. “We are applying advanced post-Pandora interrogation methods. If he knew, he would have told us. All we have gotten from him is the name of the operation: Burned Maiden.”

Burned Maiden. A sacrifice? Human sacrifice? What were you trying to do, Mimir? Sonya looked down at the lighter, the one she’d sent to him as a jab and a joke. Her lips curled in disgust, and she handed the bag back to him. “Where was the lighter? It’s unlike him to leave it behind.”

“On the ground near a burn mark on the floor,” he said quietly. “Standing up and closed as if placed intentionally.”

She stared at the door again and crossed her arms behind her back. “He wanted me to find it.”

“It would seem so,” Blackrazor said.

She sighed and nodded slowly. “Good work, Blackrazor. Your people did the best they could. To think that Mimir would do something so… out of character. Getting civilians caught up in his messes is normally an accident with him,” she said thoughtfully. “Collateral damage. This is blatant. He’s either sending a message, or…” She closed her eyes and exhaled. “I can only hope that Mikayla wakes up.”

“Were you unable to retrieve her memories with that violet light ability?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It just comes up blank.”

“...I see. My condolences, Mistress.”

She rankled at the words, not wanting to accept their meaning. She turned to him with a glare before catching herself and letting out a breath. She reached up and ran her fingers through her hair. He was one of her closest allies and a true loyalist. He most certainly didn’t mean it as an offense. She chewed her lip and forced herself to calm down. Getting emotional would do her no good at this moment. She let the feelings pass through her instead, working through the rage and compartmentalizing it. It would be useful elsewhere, but not here.

“Maintain the hunt order for the members of the Vigilantes. Mimir has run out of chances with me,” she said finally. “I will handle Astaroth myself since Mimir’s usefulness has come to an end.” She paused for a moment and rubbed her chin, thoughtful. “I won’t be sending you back to France just yet, though. I have another job for you.”

“Mistress?” he asked, tilting his head to the right.

She sent out a quick message through her cybernetic phone uplink and waved a hand. “It’s a simple task; we’ll make it quick after this. I just want you present to observe and listen.”

He nodded. “Understood. I-”

He was cut off by the door to Da-Som’s lab opening. He and Amos stepped out, looking pale and tired. They’d only been in there a few hours, yet it looked like they had been working for days. They both looked at her wearily, and she felt her heart sink into the floor. Amos rubbed his neck. “This is going to take some explaining, and even I don’t know what’s going on…” he said finally. “Come inside. We’ve got her stable, I think.”

“You think?” she asked and followed him in. “What do you mean, ‘you think’?”

Da-Som stepped up, the Korean doctor rubbing his hands together uneasily as he looked towards a table they’d built at the far end of the room. It was sealed inside what looked like a variation of her Hard Light and surrounded by rings of metal that pulsed and flashed occasionally. Inside, Mikayla lay very still, her chest rising and falling. Her eyes were shut, and the glowing cracks on her skin had receded somewhat. “Her chest is rising and falling, and she appears to be breathing, but... her lungs are not taking in oxygen, ma’am. There is no evidence of any biological function going on in her body. More to the point, there are no neurological signals.” He hesitated. “Also, there is something I really must discuss with-”

She held up a hand and moved to stand over Mikayla, the cute-as-a-button face still and peaceful, even with those terrible cracks around her eyes and mouth. She looked up at him. “I know, we’ll talk later. Are you saying she’s dead?”

“Yes,” Da Som said with a heavy sigh. “For all intents and purposes, that is a corpse. I am sorry.”

Sonya nearly gripped one of the rings surrounding the girl but pulled away before she broke it. “Then why is she still moving?”

“We don’t know,” Da Som said, shaking his head. “This is something we’ve never encountered before. Whatever’s been done to her has caused her body to simulate the actions of being alive even as nothing is happening inside. It has even stopped rigor mortis from setting in. She’s ‘preserved’ by it. We amplified this effect with the device around her, and it caused those cracks to recede. We suspect if those cracks spread completely, she will break down.”

Sonya ran her fingers over the barrier protecting the girl’s body. “Something is in her, is what you’re saying? Could it be something Mimir wanted?” she asked.

“It’s possible,” Amos cut in. “But I’ll be real with you, we’ve seen some of the weird magic shit his people do, and this is way beyond them. The only reason I came up with the field there was because of some of my research in Asgard and studying your abilities.”

She looked at her friend and gave him a faint smile. “Thank you for doing this much.”

He shrugged. “I liked her,” he said with a sigh. “Whatever that asshole did, she didn’t deserve it.”

She nodded. “Fortunately, we have at least one way to get some answers,” Sonya ground out. “Mimir may have gone to ground, but his second-in-command is in Pandora custody. I just asked Carla for some time alone with her.”

“It’ll look really bad if you kill her,” Amos said. “They’ve really tightened things up at their prisons. I don’t think there’s a safe way to get in without them knowing someone came to visit.”

Sonya nodded gravely. “I know. I won’t kill her yet, but I was planning a visit anyway. This just pushed up my timetable,” she said sourly and traced her knuckle over the barrier before pulling away. “Da-Som, keep an eye on her.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll let you know the moment something changes,” the doctor said.

She turned away. “Amos, you’re joining me for my visit to the Pandora Maximum Security Prison. So are Blackrazor and Marta,” she said, walking past him towards the doors to the lab.

She felt him frown behind her. “You know she wants you to visit, right? She’s probably got something planned. She surrendered really easily.”

“Yes, she probably has another trick involving mistletoe prepared,” Sonya said blandly, opening the door and stepping outside. “It would be a shame not to find out what it was, then crush her little trap and show the girl playing at terrorist what fear really means.”

“...You’re not going as Sonya, are you, boss?”

Sonya smiled curtly. “No. No, I am not.”

–

Addison Kelly had been to prison before. She knew what to expect. Even if she’d never seen the inside of the more stringent Pandora Committee-run facilities, she wasn’t too surprised. The escape of Graff, assassination of Liberty, and the rise of more and more powerful Light-Touched had created the necessity for fairly extreme procedures. Not a single light-touched individual was permitted within the building without mana-suppressing cuffs unless they were part of the apparently brutally vetted security force.

The prison had also been moved from The Hague to an artificial island at the dead center of the North Sea. Apparently, the construction of the island was being heralded as a modern marvel and testament to the ingenuity of engineers following the flash. The entire facility had been built in a matter of months, and it was already demonstrating its effectiveness. With freezing waters all around, heavy winds, high reinforced walls, advanced technological security, and ability-wielding guards, escape seemed impossible.

To make matters even more difficult, the solitary confinement containers for high-level criminals were kept elevated and isolated. Transparent cylinders were attached to one another at each end, with the only way to enter or exit one being to move the entire setup around and detach an entire cylinder.

Ruefully, she felt like a prize in a gachapon machine.

I expected her to visit sooner than this. So did Mimir. What’s happening out there? she thought quietly, her eyes fixed on the distant floor far below. She looked up at one of the cameras watching her, and it swiveled to focus on her a bit more intently at her movement. At the same time, a pair of emplaced weapons beneath the cameras moved to match the camera’s attention. She exhaled and scratched at her neck. Do I use it now? Mimir said it would work with the cuffs on since it isn’t my mana being used, but…

A loud buzz rang through her cylinder. She knew that the other high-security inmates would be shouting and groaning at the abrupt noise. It was a warning that one of the cylinders was being called for. She grabbed onto the molded plastic bench beneath her and held on as the cylinders started to move and rotate, shifting down along a predetermined path as some were moved up and others down. The shuffling continued until she realized that she was at ground level.

Her eyes widened. Is this it?

As if to confirm her thoughts, the cylinder she was in was grabbed by a large pair of metallic grippers that pulled her out of the line and lowered her cylinder to the ground. A low pneumatic hiss announced that the door to her capsule was being released, and then a chime preceded the door opening. She stared at it for several seconds before getting to her feet, her baggy prison jumpsuit hanging off of her as the cuffs on her wrists hummed and snapped together magnetically, restricting her hands.

<ADDISON KELLY, PLEASE EXIT YOUR CAPSULE SLOWLY. KEEP YOUR HANDS AT YOUR WAIST. DO NOT SPEAK. KEEP YOUR EYES FORWARD.>

She opened her mouth to correct the bastard. “My na-”

<ADDISON KELLY, PLEASE ADHERE TO THE INSTRUCTIONS PROVIDED. DEVIATION WILL TRIGGER THE AUTOMATED SUPPRESSION SYSTEM.>

She shut her mouth and scowled. My name is Major, you dystopian bastard, she thought angrily as she stepped out of the cylinder. Every Vigilante leaves their name behind when they join his cause. We are not bound by our connections or past. We become our true selves - what he sees in us. She kept her eyes forward but made note of where several of the wall-mounted turrets around her turned to point in her direction. One word, and there wouldn’t be anything left of her. A light flickered on the ground beneath her feet before stretching out in a clean line away from where she was standing to a door that was normally concealed by the darkness of the containment chamber.

<PLEASE PROCEED TO THE DOOR INDICATED>

She frowned and walked, head up, shoulders back. She wouldn’t let them scare her. She knew she was in the right, protecting humanity’s future from the autocracy of the Pandora Committee. This place was evidence enough. The door opened with a hiss, and she stepped into a room where half a dozen armed Pandora soldiers stood, weapons trained on her. Among them was another man, rail thin with narrow glasses over a hawkish nose. His lip curled.

“I am Head Warden Hensley, Miss Kelly. You have a visitor,” the man said shortly, looking her up and down before turning away. “Why anyone would want to visit a murderous villain like you is beyond me, but here we are.”

“May I ask who?” she pressed, glancing at the guards. They didn’t even tense when she spoke; all of them were far better trained than the ordinary foot soldiers the Committee fielded. Elite troops, then.

“You can find that out when you meet them,” Hensley said with a shrug.

“...You don’t know, do you?” she quipped.

He turned a steely-eyed gaze on her, and for a moment she felt a chill rise up her spine as she realized that his eyes were an unnatural metallic silver. He was Light-Touched. “No one enters this facility without my knowing, Miss Kelly. It is my domain. I am well aware of who has come to meet you, and you should count yourself fortunate they are even bothering with you, scum. I am merely here to make sure you are presentable for a VIP guest.” He wrinkled his thin nose before adding. “Some of you don’t bother bathing in those chambers.”

“Maybe if you-” She started, but the man was already walking away.

“Take her to the interview room,” he said flatly and disappeared through a side door.

Addison’s shoulders fell. She had slightly hoped that Mimir’s predictions about who would be staffing a facility like this were false. He’d suggested that once Carla Mint took full power over the organization, she’d root out nepotism and cronyism and install the best people in each position. A warden who took his job seriously was… a problem. Especially if her sole route out of this place didn’t pan out.

She didn’t have much time to think after that. The guards marched her down the hall and to an inconspicuous metal door on the left. One held up a keycard, it opened, and she was ushered inside. They locked her wrists to the table, her ankle cuffs were attached to binding rods affixed to the chair, and she was left alone with a single bright light hanging over her head. A single empty chair sat across from her, and she waited. And waited. And waited.

She’s playing games with- Google seaʀᴄh novel fire.net

The lights flickered.

Addison looked up.

The lights went out.

TICK… TICK… TICK… TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK

It reminded her of a certain crocodile in a children's movie. An eerie, steady ticking of a clock or gears. She felt something cold wash over her - a chill in the air that shouldn’t be there. A breeze. She couldn’t see a damn thing. She looked up at where she figured the cameras would be but didn’t see a single red light indicating a recording going on. The pressure mounted. It pressed down on her chest and slowly stole her breath. It felt like someone was stepping on her and pushing one millimeter at a time to drag her suffocation out.

TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK TI-

The ticking stopped.

She looked around, her heart pounding in her ears, before she finally looked at where the empty chair had been. A pair of hot-pink eyes, glowing brilliantly in the dark, stared back at her. The lights flickered, and three figures briefly revealed themselves in the dark. One was Amos Carter, or at least some twisted variation on the man. His hair was metallic, as was his skin. His body was gaunt and skeletal beneath his lab coat. Then there was another man with dark eyes and a bland, pallid look on his face. He had the feeling of death around him.

Then there was the last figure standing in the room - Marta Daphne stood with her chin up, her body completely unblemished from their fight just days before.

Handmaiden! she thought and opened her mouth to-

Pain exploded in her jaw, and she gasped, struggling against her bindings as something appeared inside her mouth. She tried to pull her head away, but whatever it was held her fast. She felt the brief agony of her false tooth being removed and watched in horror as a tiny pair of glowing yellow-white tweezers floated out of her mouth and into Sonya Chernovna’s outstretched hand as the flickering lights steadied.

Sonya was pale as a ghost, as always. Her skin sparkled, her hair was perfect, and she wore a simple white shirt that exposed a little shoulder. Flashy, pretty, mundane. Yet the look in those mechanical eyes made even the Major’s blood run cold. The smile made it even worse.

Sonya lazily examined the false tooth in her hand before passing it off to Doctor Carter, who snickered. “A highly compacted particle spray of mistletoe,” he said, and it dissolved into his skin. He wiped his hand off dismissively. “Kind of anticlimactic. I expected more.”

She looked away from him and then back at Chernovna, trying to catch her breath, trying to regain her calm and composure. She had to think. No, now was the time to escape. She just needed to activate the tattoo. If she could just-

The dark-eyed man was gone.

Something cold touched her throat before sliding down to press an icy chill into where her eye tattoo sat on her neck.

“Thank you, Blackrazor,” Sonya said. “I’m not sure what her cute little tattoo does, but I would prefer to not find out for the moment.”

Blackrazor? Then… It's true.

Sonya - no, Ishtar - smiled coldly. “Judging by your expression, you had an inkling, Major. Very good. It’s a shame you won’t be remembering this conversation.”

What?

The supervillain rose to her feet, and that pressure came back, strangling her, choking the life out of her. “I have questions, Major,” the woman said and started walking around the table. Her eyes were unblinking, glowing, wide, and focused. “And once I’m done getting them out of you, I will squeeze you for whatever use you have left.”