Maidens of the Fall

Behind enemy lines, communications cut, resources depleted, wounds untended. My only ally, a single badly injured zoog, is confined to an animal carrier by a cheap padlock. Scarlet Edge — the most powerful magical girl in the country, who has twice tried to kill me — is the only person who knows where I am.

Not the worst situation I’ve ever been in. Better than a Dream Control interrogation room, or alone with Willow at the hospital.

Scarlet takes a while to return, long enough for me to realise there’s no clock lost in the clutter of her bedroom. My list of options remains thin, and does not improve with thinking. Option one, grab my mobile phone from the desk and turn it on, hoping that Signal is faster than the bureaucratic tag-team of Dream Control and GCHQ. Option two, drag myself out of this room and start shouting, in hopes that Bright is closer than Scarlet knows, and will decide against summarily ripping off my head for sullying her sister. A third option refuses to present itself. Hide a weapon somewhere about my person? A pen or a knife stuck in my waistband? I would laugh if I weren’t awash with ambient pain.

Don’t do anything stupid, that’s what Scarlet suggested. So, I won’t, but not because I’m a good girl; I am, in fact, the opposite. I just don’t think I’d get much further than six paces. I’m not going to have Scarlet find me face-down on her carpet.

And Scarlet was sincere, when she said I’m not her prisoner. She’s not capable of lying, not about that.

My confined zoog and I share a long look through the metal mesh of his prison, one beady black eye pressed tight to the bars. He pulls at the thin mesh with his front claws again, then peels his lips back on one side and lets out a distinct wet click. A pre-linguistic zoog sound, ‘come here’, ‘pay attention’, ‘please help’.

“S’alright,” I croak. “We’re gonna get outta here, just have to … wait. I promise, okay? Promise I won’t leave you behind.”

“Out, outttttt,” he rasps, scrabbling at the mesh again.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Scarlet, she … ”

“Scary. Scary scary.”

“Scarlet?” I almost smirk. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, little guy. She put that bandage on your leg, right? She did that because you’re with me. As long as you’re with me, she’s not scary. Not one bit. Got it?”

The zoog eyes me, deathly uncertain. He rasps again, scrabbles at the mesh, wants out. I’ve no more energy to spend on reassurances. I sit very still, concentrate on my breathing, keeping my eyes open.

Scarlet returns a few minutes later, carrying a tray of food, several fresh white towels draped over one shoulder. She pauses in the doorway again and stares at me like a recurring ghost. Expected me to get up and climb out the window, did you? Regretting your decision to hide a wanted terrorist in your bed? She locks and bolts the door behind her, then carries the tray over and sets it down on the computer desk. There’s a low table in front of the sofas before the massive television at the far end of the room, but that’s very far away and looks awkward to sit at, even without a series of holes bored through my torso. Scarlet hesitates, looks between me and the desk chair and the bed and the tray.

“I’m not going to successfully balance a tray on my lap,” I croak.

Scarlet tuts. “You’d better sit here then. Can you … make it?”

“Mmhmm. Gimme a minute.”

Scarlet prepares the desk chair by draping more towels over the back and seat; it does look pretty expensive, high-backed mesh with fancy supports and plush armrests. Can’t blame her for not wanting my blood all over her gamer chair. She takes the opportunity to feed the zoog, unlocks the padlock with a little key from her pocket, tops up his water, refills his dish from a little bag of dry dog food. He makes no attempt at escape, quite the opposite; he bites the air near her hand a couple of times, then presses himself against the back wall of the animal carrier, hissing and rasping until she closes it up again.

“Huh,” I grunt. “What’d you do to piss him off?”

Scarlet huffs, rolls her eyes. “Nothing! I don’t understand it! Ungrateful little rodent.” She grabs the empty water jug and marches off toward the walk-in closet, then vanishes inside. A moment later I hear the sound of running water. She returns with the jug refilled.

“Bathroom in there?” I mutter.

“Yes? Yes. It’s my bathroom.” Scarlet frowns at me, shakes her head. “Look, if you’re not going to lie down, then you need to eat. Can you make it to the desk, or … or … ”

Don’t worry, Scarlet. You don’t have to touch me.

Standing up is no easier a second time, but at least I know what to expect now, gritting and hissing through the pain that stabs deep into my torso, burned left hand on the wall for support. My prosthetic leg does most of the work, gets me to the desk. I lower myself down into the chair with only minimal risk of a trip to the floor. Scarlet ventures close enough to help me rotate the chair toward the desk, then retreats again.

Spaghetti on toast, with little meatballs. Heinz, by the smell. Microwaved, by the flecks of dried tomato sauce. Dumped onto a plate so the toast is drowning and the sauce is in danger of spilling over the edge. With a glass of water. Fork and spoon.

The scent of food unlocks hard-clenched components of this soft, wet, damaged machine, rekindles the need for material fuel, reminds the processes of eating and digesting that they still exist. All very abstract; my body feels distinctly non-biological, still stuck halfway from transformation, little difference between flesh and metal.

I fumble the fork into my prosthetic hand, pieces of broken forearm scraping beneath carbon fibre tape. Spear a meatball, put it in my mouth. Taste. Chew. Swallow.

“No coffee?” I croak.

Scarlet hesitates, wide-eyed with uncertainty. “Was that … a joke?”

Yes. But also. “No?”

Scarlet shrugs. “I wouldn’t know how to make coffee. Nobody in my family drinks coffee. We drink tea.”

“Figures.”

“What is that supposed to mean? Octavia? What does that mean?”

Heinz spaghetti on toast works like a catalyst; things deep down inside my torso gurgle and rumble and glug and chug back to semblance of biological life. Taste. Chew. Swallow. Can’t eat quickly. Can’t grip anything in my left hand without the skin screaming as if it’s on fire, all that radiation damage still not healed by magical girl physiology. I switch to the spoon, cut up the sauce-soaked bread, shovel mouthfuls of pasta and soggy toast into my face. Taste. Chew. Swallow. The zoog eventually creeps back to the front of his cage, sniffs at the dog food in his bowl, joins the meal. Scarlet busies herself straightening up the bed, laying down fresh towels for me to ruin, then potters about the room, trying to tidy things up, getting nowhere. Eventually she gives up the pretence of cleaning, perches on the edge of the bed.

Strangest meal I’ve ever eaten, surrounded by a magical girl’s shrine to herself. The pair of figurines on the desk watch me with little plastic eyes, while the real thing watches me from behind. The computer desk and the vanity and the mirrors are surrounded by hundreds of images of Scarlet Edge, magical girl, captured in all her most dashing poses, wearing her most imposing looks, recorded and depicted and interpreted in her moments of highest heroism. A promo shot of her looms up from behind the monitor, facing forward, legs planted, both hands on the hilt of her sword with the tip touching the earth at her feet, eyes blazing like sullen coals in a face cut from marble. Low down on the right there’s a piece of fanart — not by Francesca herself, I don’t think — of Scarlet with her eyes closed in prayer or deep thought, body surrounded by a whirlwind of flame, sword like a conductor’s wand, held in a hand as delicate as spring lily.

Scarlet Edge is beautiful; can’t deny that. Guess Scarlet agrees.

Once half the food is inside me, I can’t help staring up at those ruby-red eyes. A glance back at the real thing for comparison reveals the wrinkle; when untransformed, Francesca Fairfax has eyes the colour of a dirty sky, more grey than blue. A hint of deep red lurks in the depths, a dying fire beyond the firmament.

The real thing doesn’t match the grace and elegance of the image either; half of England would lose their minds if they saw Scarlet Edge in jogging bottoms and a baggy long-sleeved t-shirt.

Also, she’s not watching me eat. Scarlet is staring at the posters on the wall, but not the ones of herself. She blinks when I glance at her, caught in the middle of some shameful act. Stares back for a long moment, then looks away, anywhere but me. I return to the food. Chew. Swallow.

“This isn’t like Pastel and Neon,” says Scarlet, soft and distracted.

“Eh? What?”

She fixes me with a peevish look. “I said,” she speaks louder and clearer, “this isn’t like Pastel and Neon.”

“ … like what and what?”

“Like Pastel. And. Neon.”

No point repeating myself, Scarlet gets the gist from my long, slow, exhausted look. She huffs, rolls her eyes, does her best impression of a grouchy teenager, then gets up and stomps away from the bed, over to the opposite wall. She taps one of the posters, large and glossy; a sextet of brightly coloured cartoon magical girls are arrayed as if bursting out from the bottom of the panel, leaping into the air as a group. Stylised text proclaims a title in Japanese, which I can’t read. Scarlet jabs a finger at two of the girls in particular, one dressed in pale pink frills, the other in a garish neon-rainbow half-hoodie-half-dress thing; they’re holding hands, down low.

“Pastel and Neon,” Scarlet repeats, then slips into Japanese. “Mahou Shoujo no Himitsu Kokoro.”

Raise my eyebrows, shake my head.

A great huff peels away Francesca’s composure. “Mahou Shoujo no Himitsu Kokoro! Uh … Magical Girl’s Secret Heart. You’re telling me you’ve never seen Majohiko? You’ve never even seen one episode of it?! You can’t be serious! This is … ” Scarlet closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, folds her arms protectively across her chest. “You’re winding me up, you’re winding me up on purpose. You are doing this on purpose. You—”

“Never heard of it before. Not winding you up.”

Scarlet frowns sharp, caught between disbelief and outrage. She creeps back to the edge of the bed like a deer emerging from the treeline, watches me with a doubtful look.

“You’ve never even heard of Majohiko?” She gestures at the poster again. “Just— just— just look at it, maybe you’re mistaken.”

Humour her. Give the poster a good stare. Magical girls, colour-coded and shiny sweet, cute enough to eat; Japanese anime, probably not based on anybody real, the group is too picture perfect for that. They’ve got the pink one, the wild one, the one with big boobs, the small nervous one, the mysterious dark-themed one, and the smart one who wears glasses. Some kind of ridiculous floppy mascot-animal is perched on the pink one’s shoulder; a few other characters lurk and loom in the background, a stereotypical white-haired professor, another girl who might be a rival, a couple of generic monsters.

“I mean, fine, yes,” Scarlet is saying. “It’s not legal to broadcast on terrestrial television here in England. The BBC wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. But it’s so famous, or infamous, everyone has heard of it. Or, or at least every one of us. I’ve never met a magical girl who hasn’t at least tried the first few episodes, it’s such a … such a big deal. I know it gets a little strange, and it’s very long, but you don’t need to insult me by pretending you haven’t—”

“I’ve never heard of this show before.”

Scarlet hisses through clenched teeth, folds her arms tighter, trying to hold herself together. “I said you don’t need to insult … ”

Raise my prosthetic arm, show off the fractured CFRN plates wrapped in carbon fibre tape. Scarlet goes quiet.

“Do you know why I use two prosthetic limbs?”

Scarlet squints, like I’ve asked a trick question. Unfolds her arms, suddenly aware of her own limbs. “Because … you … lost an arm, and a leg?”

“How did I lose them?”

Scarlet opens her mouth. Wets her lips. “I … I assumed … ”

“Extensive and regrettable collateral damage.” The words grind out from the battered engine of my heart, hotter and more difficult than ever before, wet with something I cannot name. “Shelter collapse. Killed my parents. I was ten years old. The previous Trio of Albion.”

My prosthetic hand slumps back into my lap.

Scarlet Edge is lost between dull amazement and slow realisation. You really had no idea, did you, Scarlet? You had no idea who or what I am, not a guess at the forces which made me; you assumed, like all the rest. And here I thought you were—

Different?

She hasn’t openly stared at my prosthetics; then again, she’s had three days of me lying in her bed, to get her fill of the freak.

Scarlet’s eyes wander sideways, casting back into memory. “The … the Dreamer, Beatrix Ayton,” she says slowly. “Ten years ago, that would have been the Ayton breach, yes. I … I wasn’t a magical girl yet, not back then. I was not graced that young.”

“Mm. Previous Trio.”

“Crimson Herald, Spring-in-Bloom, and Emerald Gaze.” Scarlet nods. “Were you ever informed who exactly was responsible?”

“No.”

Scarlet takes a deep breath; a settled peace comes over her, eyes distant. “A lot of people died in the Ayton breach. Civilians mostly, but several magical girls. Switchback Hexagram, Seventeen Ophelia, World-Wand, and Truth In Light.”

“You know them all by heart?”

Scarlet shoots me a sudden searching look. “And I assume you don’t. You were lucky, Octavia. A lot of people died that day.” She straightens her back, raises her chin. “You probably would have died too, if not for their sacrifice. You owe them—”

“Owe them?” I hiss.

Scarlet doesn’t back down. Her eyes flicker and spark with righteous certainty, dancing motes of blood-red deep behind the grey. Her face masks over with sharp and precise control. Here is the magical girl, England’s severe sweetheart.

“The weak owe the strong a debt of gratitude,” she says. “The mundanes are lucky that we exist, or they would all be swept away—”

“There’s a graveyard,” I say. Not loudly, but something in my voice makes Scarlet shut up. “At our hideout. It’s all magical girls. A lot of the gravestones don’t even have names. One of them is for a twelve year old girl.”

Scarlet blinks several times, like there’s something in her eyes.

“You,” I grind onward. “Or people like you, put them there, in that ground. Me and my ‘companions’, there should be dozens of us. A hundred. More. But you. You and England. You keep fucking killing them. Killing us. You’ve tried to kill me, twice.”

Scarlet is left speechless for a long and gratifying moment. Chew on that, you murdering bitch; how does it taste? My lips twitch; one push and I could have her kneel, bark on command, roll over and play dead. But then she swallows hard, eyes narrowing in swift recovery.

“Those girls were nothing like you,” she says.

“What?”

“They were weak,” Scarlet says. “They were nothing like you, or like me. That’s why they died, they weren’t—”

Strength enough flows from the engine of my heart to make a fist and slam it down against the desk. Scarlet flinches. Cutlery rattles. Water glass jumps. The zoog scurries deeper into his animal carrier. I make a mental note, must apologise to him later. Pain jars through my shoulder and down into my chest and belly, needling the open wounds hidden beneath my t-shirt. I grit my teeth and snort like an animal, keening with pain, hissing for breath, slumping forward.

Scarlet Edge swallows with considerable difficulty. One hand has flown to her mouth, to cup the mark of my teeth on her lips. She glares at me from above her fingers, resentful of the surprise.

We don’t speak for what feels like minutes. Scarlet takes a deep breath, soothes her ruffled feathers, straightens her posture. My pain ebbs down to background. Pull myself up as best I can.

“You bring out a side of me I don’t understand,” Scarlet says.

“Same.”

Eventually she lowers her eyes, looks at my prosthetic arm. “I assumed your limbs were the result of something the Dreamer did to you.”

“Willow,” I croak, still recovering from my self-inflicted pain. “Her name is Willow Finch. But you already knew that.”

Scarlet frowns, not quite caught up. “Excuse me?”

“You were ordered to guard her hospital room. Ordered to feed me to her. That’s why you were there, in the hospital.”

Scarlet’s face hardens with disgust. She refuses to meet my eyes. “I … I didn’t want any part of that. I thought I made that clear, when we spoke before, before that … that clown got in my way—”

“Grimgrave. Saved my life. From you.”

Scarlet huffs. “I broke with my orders! I was trying to give you a clean death!”

“You did.” Even I can’t deny that. “Who gave the orders?”

Scarlet shoots me a dark frown. “That’s classified information. I’m not going to unfold to you the entire internal structure of Dream Control and the MGNR board and—”

“The what board?”

Scarlet hesitates, then relents. “The Magical Girl National Relations Board. MGNRB. Knowing the name won’t help you, it’s not any kind of secret.”

“What is all this, if it’s not you helping me?”

Scarlet stares. I stare her right back down. But she won’t bend on this, apparently.

Another soggy spoonful, slow and careful. Chew. Swallow. Gone cold, doesn’t matter. I let the spoon click against the plate. “You’ll patch me up and feed me lunch, let me sleep in your bed. But you won’t tell me who gave the orders to feed me to a Dreamer.”

Scarlet looks away, like this is beyond debate.

“Scarlet. I said—”

“There are names I can’t speak here,” she hisses. “I’m surprised you spoke yours earlier.”

“My … you mean Dream-God names? You mean Nerys?”

“Yes!” Scarlet hisses, gone stiff. “Are you trying to summon her attention on purpose!?”

“Wouldn’t say no. She’d get me out of here, at least.”

Scarlet sneers. “But she isn’t responding, is she? She’s a filthy little pretender, throwing you away like this. You can’t trust Dream-Gods, any of them. Don’t tell me you lot, you and your … so-called friends, don’t tell me you actually trust her?”

“You don’t trust whatever Dream-God made you a magical girl?”

Scarlet shrugs, folds her arms. “Not to keep your presence a secret. They don’t think like we do, Octavia. They have agendas of their own, they see further than us, and they have no compunctions against the grandest of lies. My … mine would have no sympathy for this … lapse in my judgement.” Scarlet huffs, looks away, swallows hard. “As she shouldn’t, I suppose.”

Having doubts about letting me live? Don’t voice that one. Don’t give her ideas. I’m still near-helpless. If Scarlet decides she would like me better gasping through bubbles of my own blood, with her hands buried in my entrails, then she could have me that exact way, and I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

We’re probably already compromised anyway; likely the room is bugged or watched or there’s a team of occultists keeping tabs on Francesca Fairfax, or perhaps a Dreamer knows all about my presence here. Willow knew about our little late-night cyber-session. DC probably knows where I am. We’re having a lovely little play-date, Scarlet and I, but who are we kidding here?

But then, why aren’t I dead?

“Pretender,” I echo.

“What? Yes?”

“Pretender. One of you called Nerys that once before. Maybe more than once, I don’t remember right now. What does it mean?”

“That’s also classified information, but I’ll tell you anyway.” Scarlet sighs, shrugs, doesn’t seem to care. “You deserve to know what your patron god is up to. She’s trying to overthrow Britain.” Scarlet lets that statement stand, like I’m supposed to react somehow; when I don’t, she carries on. “We think it’s only her, but she might have other god or god-like accomplices. She’s the core of a network of conspiracy, a complex web of plots to overthrow the proper order. She’s trying to usurp the natural Dream-Gods of the British Isles, and place herself on the throne, or perhaps abolish it all together.” Another pause. “Octavia?”

“Who told you that? Your god?”

“You think I’m lying.” Scarlet huffs.

“No. I think you’re right. Because it’s what I want to do as well.”

Scarlet freezes, stares at me with a new kind of surprise, wondering what manner of creature she has allowed into her home and her bed. But then she recovers, her surprise shifts, as if turning inward. She shrugs. “I suppose that makes … sense, from you. I suppose.”

I shovel a few more spoonfuls of spaghetti and wet toast into my mouth, concentrate on chewing and swallowing, blotting out the taste of three-day old dried blood. Drain the glass of water, cool fluid sluicing over the tired engine of my heart. Eating still doesn’t feel right, like my body hasn’t quite remembered how to be meat.

Scarlet clears her throat, speaks with stiff formality. “What is your relationship to the Dreamer?”

“Willow?” I croak.

“Yes.”

“Classified information.”

Scarlet huffs so hard I half expect her to choke; how satisfying to see her flustered. “Oh for— you don’t have— you—”

“You seriously don’t know?”

Scarlet looks pinched with anger. “We were given only the most basic explanation. I can make educated guesses, but seeing as you’re right here, I figured I might as well ask! But if you’re going to be like that, don’t bother. Why do I even bother asking? You’re so … so … ”

Consider Scarlet, trailing off with her haughty little huff, failing to conceal the depth of her curiosity. She’s desperate to know me. What kind of person is offering to take in hand the other end of her invisible leash?

She would gain no advantage by knowing about Willow and I, no leverage that I can see. She is perhaps one of the few people in the world who has nothing to gain over me. She is a butcher of my would-be sisters and an enforcer for the British state, a blood-soaked butcher who has taken visible pleasure in running me through on her sword. But she has no power over me, and that is both baffling and intoxicating.

“Alright,” I croak. “You wanna know about me and Willow. Here’s me and Willow.”

I start at the beginning — the real beginning, the one I don’t remember, when Willow and I met in the hospital at ten years old, both of us disfigured and desperate. Then onto the decade of dreams and the perfect friendship that never really was, the things I believed that Willow shared with me in the private darkness of our hearts, and the true darkness in which I was kept, the false Willow who loved me as more than a friend and less than anything else.

I do my best not to editorialise or censor or soften; truth comes easily when This Machine lies in such tenuous wreckage. Scarlet listens in silence as I tell her about the sex that never really happened, the endless times Willow and I knew each other in quiet places, and how it’s all faded into a mass of rot now that she is gone from the inside of my head. I tell her about Willow Finch, the reality and the dream, the little girl and the Dreamer. My voice is like a puffing steam engine, chugging along with the boiler down low. Pause a few times, to shovel in the last few bites of food. Refill my water glass from the jug, chuck that down onto the ashes.

Willow Finch, the reality and the dream, the little girl I could not save, the Dreamer who kept me as her pet.

Who I have now failed.

“And there’s a whole cabal of them,” I finish. “Dreamers, Lucid Dreamers, whatever you call them. They have her now. Suppose they always did, if she’s one of them. You saw them, yeah? On the Parliament building steps?”

Scarlet has gone very still and a little pale. She takes a breath, doesn’t sound quite awake. “I didn’t … see them myself, no, but … ”

“But you already know they exist.”

Scarlet swallows. “That’s classified information. I’m … I’m sorry.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Scarlet can’t meet my eyes. I press the attack. “Who sent the cats?”

Scarlet’s eyes snap up, confused, alarmed. “Cats? What cats? Where did you see a cat?”

“The big cats. Big grey ones.”

Scarlet sits up, sits forward. “What cats, where?!”

Weigh my options; she’s telling the truth, she has no idea, but she would know those cats if she saw them. “Willow came after me. A pair of massive grey cats came with her, tried to kill me. She claimed she didn’t bring them. Wasn’t her.”

Scarlet goes very still, brows knitting tight, eyes elsewhere. Her lips move through silent words.

“Scarlet. Who sent the cats?”

She holds up a hand, palm out, face hard. A stop.

“Scarlet—”

“Not your Dreamer!” she hisses. “Okay? I can’t talk about this with you. I … I will deal with this.” She puts a hand to her forehead, agitated in a way I haven’t seen yet, as if she’s just realised something that’s been staring her in the face all this time. Her Dream-God?

Hard to care. I turn back to my food, scrape up the last few fragments of toast, let the spoon clatter on the plate. Scarlet can have her crisis of faith by herself, I have to get back to Plato Base; the longer I’m down here the greater my chance of being found by somebody I do not wish to be found by. And there’s so much fallout, the zoogs and Tissy, Willow and the Lucid Dreamers, so much to tell the others. And I want to see Grimgrave, I need a dose of her relentless energy. I want Grimmy. What an idea. Deal with that later.

Isn’t there something I’m forgetting?

“The girl!” I splutter. Scarlet flinches, jerks round, boggles at me. I almost claw my way out of the chair; I would launch myself across the intervening six paces and grab Scarlet by the collar if I could. “Where is she?! Where’s the girl!?”

“Shhhh, shhh!” Scarlet hushes me. “Nobody else is in right now, but—”

“The girl!” I hiss.

“ … who?”

“From the fight, the girl! The young woman. The girl who got her arm cut off. Willow’s new victim.”

Scarlet shrugs. “I— I don’t know where she is now—”

“Then what did you do with her?!” I grab the edge of the desk, feel my engines catching, trying to start, longing to hurl myself at Scarlet. If she didn’t help that girl, I’ll strangle her to death, wounds or no. “I gave her to you, Scarlet! What did you do, what did you—”

“I handed her off, alright!?” Scarlet hisses back at me. “It was the middle of a Nightmare, and you needed assistance against the Dreamer!”

“Handed her off? What?”

“To other magical girls. To … uh … Highwind and Blossom’s Passing. They took her, I don’t know where. She would have been picked up during the cleanup afterwards. She’s probably in some hospital now, or—”

“She’ll be in an I&O cell. Fuck!”

Scarlet squint-frowns, doesn’t get it. “What? Why would she be in custody?”

“Or worse,” I spit. “You really don’t get it, do you? How can you not know this, Scarlet? You’re Scarlet fucking Edge! She was caught in the middle of a Nightmare. She saw a Lucid Dreamer up close. Willow wanted her as a surrogate replacement for me! They’ll probably put a bullet in her, let alone stuff her in an I&O cell. Or maybe just hand her off to those Dreamers. Fuck. Fuck! You really don’t understand? Fuck you, Scarlet. You don’t understand anything. I was starting to think you were … fuck, I don’t know. Better. Better than this.”

Scarlet surges to her feet and towers over me, shoulders back and eyes blazing. I brace, ready for a slap across the face.

But then she turns and marches off across the room, pulling her mobile phone from the pocket of her jogging bottoms. She unbolts the door, throws it wide, and steps out into the corridor. It closes behind her with a soft click.

“Huh.” I share a glance with the zoog, through the bars of his animal carrier. “Think I touched a nerve?”

He replies with a little rasp, goes back to munching on his dry food.

Scarlet’s gone for what feels like twenty minutes, though I don’t have any way of telling, not unless I want to risk my phone. I toy with that briefly, weigh it in my right hand, hope it’s not damaged beyond repair; all those photos I took of my transformed self down in the shelter better not be lost. With a sigh I give up the idea, not worth it. My right hand moves over to the chunk of black steel, so obviously taken from my armour. How can this still exist now I’m untransformed? Scarlet’s made no effort to hide it, perhaps she didn’t mean to take it. I tap it for a moment, but nothing happens, it doesn’t flow like ferrofluid to rejoin my body. Better not leave it here though.

Up to my feet again, I hobble halfway back to the bed, hissing at the pain in my stump, but then I get curious. What’s the view like from Scarlet’s bedroom windows? The skylight still shows a clear blue day. Carefully I inch over to the nearest window, avoiding the mess on the floor, and peek around the edge of a curtain.

A sliver of lawn and flowerbed, a hint of stone wall, thick green woods beyond. Sunlight so bright it hurts my eyes. Could be anywhere.

Back to the bed, careful as possible. The chair is comfortable enough, but Scarlet’s not wrong, I need to lie down and rest and recover, I’m not going anywhere like this, not yet. The food has restarted dozens of suspended processes and cleared out the dried blood in my throat; I can actually smell the room now, thick with unwashed flesh. Ah, that would be mine.

Scarlet returns, still standing tall, locks us in again. She strides across the room, phone in hand. Stares at me with pinched eyes, fire behind her face.

“You were right,” she says, sharp and clear. “I was wrong.”

“About?”

“The young woman. She was taken to hospital at first, but yesterday she was moved to Dream Control Oxford Headquarters.”

“Huh. Well. There you go.”

Scarlet shakes her head, brows drawn in tight. “It’s not that I can’t believe it,” she says. “I’m not a fool, whatever you think of me. But I handed that girl off, personally. I, me. Scarlet Edge.” She taps her chest with a finger. “Highwind and Blossom aren’t half the magical girls I am, yes, but they’re still us. They still deserve respect. And those snivelling little … they just … ” Another shake of her head. She stares at her phone, as if she can make it give up answers. “They can’t do this.”

“Changed your tune,” I grunt.

“What? Pardon?”

“First time we met, you told me to accept my death. Remember? And for what? Because I was exposed? Because I might be a Dreamer? Because I was a rival magical girl? Now you’re angry about one innocent bystander?”

Scarlet straightens up. Fire flashes red behind her eyes. “Entirely different circumstances. If that young woman is now a risk, I would take the necessary steps myself. I will do it gladly. There’s no need for this … this … this sordid grubbing!”

“ … you’d kill her, you mean, for being a weakling?”

Scarlet starts to answer. She must see the look in my eyes, because she stops herself, words unsaid. Corrects herself. “For being a threat. Something that must be removed. I wasn’t lying to you when I said I would make it quick and painless.”

“Ahhhh,” I say. “But you’d love it if she resisted, right? ‘Cos then you’d get to stick her, like you did with me.”

“Argh!” Scarlet grunts through clenched teeth. “You’re— you— it was different with you! You’re unique, Octavia! I couldn’t— you—”

“What’s her name?” I ask.

“What?”

“Her name. The girl. Her name?”

“I don’t— Summer-something, I didn’t pay attention to that part.”

“Summer-something?” I almost scoff, but the motion makes my torso ache. “Call back. Whoever you were talking to, call them back, find out her name.”

Scarlet rolls her eyes. “I can’t do that now, it’s already suspicious that I asked in the first place.”

“Call back. Find out.”

“Later. Later!”

We stare. She tries not to give up. But This Machine is immovable in repose, and she is only Francesca Fairfax. Eventually she swallows and dips her head to her phone.

“I’ll send a text message, alright?” she mutters. “That’s the best I can do right now.”

“Good girl,” I mutter.

Her head snaps up, not quite sure she heard right. She slowly returns to her phone, thumbs tapping away.

Rest. Recover. Sleep. The question is not ‘can I risk lying down and closing my eyes’; with Scarlet Edge guarding me, there is no place I wouldn’t be safe to sleep. The question is will it do any good? This isn’t a Dreamland overlap, no matter how unreal it seems. My body doesn’t feel truly alive, no fullness to my belly, no pressure in my bladder, no need to move my bowels even after three days on my back. Everything is off-line, This Machine running minimal station-keeping, all the food just tossed into the hungry furnace of my heart.

But I can’t afford that now.

“Nerys,” I rasp out loud. “Nerys?”

Scarlet finishes her text message and puts her phone on the desk, next to mine. “Your patron obviously isn’t coming.”

“I’m not talking to you, Scarlet,” I grunt. “Nerys. Nerys, if you can hear me, I need you to go save that girl. Nerys? She’s exactly where I was. Nerys. Nerys! Uh, my throat, fucking … Nerys. I can’t … I can’t let Willow … can’t let them do that to somebody else. Nerys. Please.”

“Lie down,” says Scarlet.

No Nerys, no help, no way out. No way to save my replacement.

Ah, but there is one way to give me a quick jolt of juice. Enough to power translocation, get me back to Luna? Could tell the others about the girl from the fight. Grimmy would understand; Grimmy would fight for her.

“Octavia,” Scarlet hisses. “Lie down. If you don’t sleep, you won’t recover, not with those wounds.”

Scarlet’s lips are thin and pale — still so beautifully marred by the imprint of my teeth, a bruise she can’t forget. I try to imagine the logical next step, but my mind judders to an uncomfortable halt.

“Alright, fine! Sit there if you like. Octavia? Octavia? Are you … you’re not breathing. Octavia!”

Can’t say the words, can’t even think it. Food has inched me up toward coherency just far enough to rob me of carefree courage.

Kiss Scarlet Edge for the sake of girl juice? I’d be as bad as Willow. No, I want something else from her, something sharper and rougher, that I cannot achieve while I’m full of holes and wobbly on my feet. Besides, girl juice transfer apparently won’t work unless we’re both enjoying the process.

Deep breath. Hurts my ribs and half my flesh. “Breathing fine,” I mutter. “Calm down.”

A sharp huff. “Lie down. For—”

“Been lying here for three days already. What did you do all that time, huh? Watch me sleep? What would you have done if I was in a coma, if I never woke up? What then? Kiss me, like sleeping beauty?”

Can’t say it straightforward.

Scarlet steps back and folds her arms over her chest. “You’re a magical girl, that’s not how it works. Lie down.”

Limp and loose, I raise my prosthetic arm, then my burned and fleshy left. “I want to get cleaned up. Need to … take my limbs off, clean out the … the gunk. Wrap up my right to keep it together. Got any duct tape?”

Scarlet scoffs. “You can’t walk to the shower, let alone stand up in it. And your wounds are still open, how many times do I have to repeat that? You think you’re in pain right now? Put those under running water and you’ll wish I’d tied you down. No, you cannot take a shower, Octavia. Lie down.”

“Not even gonna let me brush my teeth?”

A huff so sharp I’m surprised she doesn’t cut her tongue on it, coupled with an abortive little stamp of frustration; one point to me. “It doesn’t matter!” she snaps. “Hasn’t anybody explained these things to you? You’re a magical girl. Infections mean nothing to you now, as long as you still have energy. Tooth decay is impossible.”

“Bad breath isn’t?” I open wide and breathe at her, though she’s too far away for even the most determined halitosis beam attack. That earns me another eye-roll. “Bring me a toothbrush. And a mug with water. Something to spit into.”

Scarlet wrinkles her nose. “You’re serious?”

“Bring me a toothbrush.”

“ … ”

“You want me to lie down and rest. Bring me a toothbrush.” A nasty smirk creeps onto my face, a foreign expression. Feels good. “Your’s will do, if you’ve not got any spares.”

Scarlet Edge regards me with naked disgust. A few weeks ago, a look like that from a woman like her would have had me crawling on my belly in supplication, pleading for mercy, mewling like a kitten, thankful for the touch of her shoe on the back of my head. Now it just provokes mirth, hardens my resolve. If I was well and whole, I would reach out and grab her by the chin. If I could stand, I would knock her down, and she would enjoy it.

I win. Scarlet throws up her hands and stomps off to the walk-in closet again, vanishes into the bathroom beyond. A moment later she re-emerges with a spare toothbrush still in the packaging, a half-used tube of toothpaste, and a perfect white mug like something from a showroom shower. She eviscerates the toothbrush packaging and tosses the rubbish on the floor.

“If you ask me to brush them for you,” she hisses, “I will not forgive you.”

“Later,” I grunt.

She waits with such delicious impatience while I brush my teeth, but she obeys when I hold out the mug for more water to swish around my mouth, and takes the result from me once I’m done, leaving the toothbrush and the mug on her desk.

“Mmmm. Better. Mouth doesn’t feel like rotten leather anymore,” I mutter, running my tongue over my teeth. “See? Wasn’t so hard. Thank you.”

“Lie down.”

The bed of fresh towels is very tempting. Belly still doesn’t feel full, and I’m not sleepy, not like normal exhaustion. This Machine is creaking and grinding, needs repairs.

“Check my wounds?” I ask.

Scarlet goes very still. “There’s … no point. I told you, you’re not at risk of infection, your body doesn’t work like that anymore. I cannot believe your patron or your companions have failed to explain this to you. Your wounds don’t need treating, they need rest.”

“I want to know how long until I’m healed enough to get clean. Just lift my … ”

Lift my t-shirt, look at my back. But you don’t want to touch me, do you, Scarlet? At least not while I’m awake.

I trail off, give up, shake my head. Scarlet straightens up, spared confrontation with her own discomfort.

Instead, I nod at the animal carrier and the zoog inside. “How about you let him out?”

Scarlet wrinkles her nose. “What? No!”

“It’s cruel, keeping zoogs caged,” I say. “They’re sapient, no different to you or me. How would you feel, if somebody put you in a cage?”

Francesca’s right hand flutters upward; at first I assume she’s going for the bruise around her lips again, but her hand goes to her throat. She stares at me, distant, absent.

“ … Francesca?”

An intake of breath, like waking up. “No. No, of course I won’t let that thing out. I can’t have it messing and pissing all over my bedroom floor, don’t be ridiculous. And I expect you to take it with you when you leave! I’m not finding a home for it.”

But you treated his wound and saved his life, didn’t you? Because he’s mine?

Not enough strength left for that argument. Before Scarlet can recover her composure and repeat her entreaty, I slowly draw my legs up onto the bed; if she tells me to ‘lie down’ again, then I won’t, I know I won’t, so I move before she can say anything. Pain draws a sharp hiss from between clenched teeth, deep structures inside my torso displeased by the motion. But then I lower myself downward, prosthetic arm doing most of the work, towels catching and cushioning the aching wreckage of my back. A sigh goes out of me.

Lying down’s not so bad after all.

Scarlet’s face wavers into my peripheral vision, frowning sharply.

“Not as if I’ll be able to sleep again,” I mutter, staring at the ceiling. “Had enough of sleep.”

Scarlet sighs, rolls her eyes. “It’s not as if you have anything else to do.”

“I dunno. Could stay awake. Irritate you, to entertain myself.”

A sharper sigh. “Are you always like this?”

“Only for you, Scarlet.”

“Just sleep.”

“No.”

~~~~~~~

Consciousness grudges me less on second awakening, perhaps because I surrendered to sleep without a rearguard. I don’t recall dropping off, just Scarlet’s frustrated face in the blink before oblivion.

Darkness shrouds the bedroom, surfaces sunk in soft shadow. Curtains show no hint of sun, the skylight black with night. Electric penumbra flickers from the far end of the room, cold ghost-light muttering to itself, throwing half-seen shapes into deeper shade, outlining my feet near the end of the bed.

Voices. I’ve been woken by voices. Whispers barely above hearing, high-pitched and artificial, words I can’t make out.

In … is that Japanese?

Lifting myself from the towel-wrapped pillow is a little easier than before; sleeping through the whole afternoon and early evening has mended my deepest core, transmuted spaghetti and meatballs on soggy toast into more of Octavia. I prop myself up, quivering with effort, and squint against blue-tinted witchlight.

The massive television at the far end of the room glows with brightly coloured cartoon chaos, sound turned down to a trickle. The pair of sofas are cast into stark shadow, a hunched figure outlined by flickering light.

Almost can’t figure out what I’m looking at. Anime characters move across the screen, strange without context. Then I recognise two of them: ‘Pastel’ and ‘Neon’.

Somebody sniffs, loud and wet.

“Scarlet?” I croak.

The hunched shape on the sofa explodes as if hit with an electric shock, scrabbles for a remote, pauses the anime. A dark phantom lurches upright, panting for breath, sweeping hair out of its face, caught side-on by electric glow, stares back at me with eyes glinting wet. She blinks several times, then scrubs at her face, tries to wipe away the evidence.

Scarlet Edge has been crying.

Sitting up takes a while; my insides still creak and groan, broken pieces grinding hard, flesh shivering around knots of unmended damage. But I get there without drooling or spitting blood or puffing like a broken engine. Once I’m up, I carefully manoeuvre my legs over the side of the bed, feet on the carpet. Solid ground, the only real thing in this haze of night and shadow.

Francesca waits, puffy-eyed, dyed down one side with cold blue glow. Her hair looks pale and colourless in the light. When she speaks, her voice is sharp, brittle, distant.

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” she says. “I thought keeping the sound down would be enough.”

A nod at the television. “What’s it called again?”

She glances at the screen, currently paused on a pair of magical girls having some kind of battlefield heart-to-heart in the middle of a bombed-out building. Scarlet’s face is caught in profile, framed by electric glow, eyes wet, mouth uncertain. “Majohiko? I told you about it earlier, you—”

“Don’t recall the name. Kinda tired.”

Scarlet takes a deep breath. “Mahou Shoujo no Himitsu Kokoro.”

Questions are too obvious to voice. Either Scarlet will tell me, or she won’t.

“I was just rewatching … I mean, I don’t know why … I’ve never … it’s never made me … not like this, I … it’s too … ”

Can’t meet my eyes. Can’t catch herself. Tears gather in her voice, choking off her words. She seems so fragile, one arm folded across her belly, shoulders hunched. How can this woman be Scarlet Edge? England’s rose-red heartthrob, the terror with a blade of ruby fire, the beauty on a million posters in ten million teenage bedrooms. The sadistic killer who tried to negotiate my willing surrender, and then ran me through with a sword when I resisted. The berserk monster who almost overpowered Grimgrave.

Crying alone, watching magical girl shows in the dark.

A laugh now would destroy her, leave her with a mortal wound to be exploited later; she has never shown this side of herself to anybody, is not willingly showing it now. This Machine could reach through the crack in her armour and tear out her heart, and Scarlet Edge would never again pose a threat.

I can’t do it. Even if the hottest of my anger had not been spent on Willow, I would not be able to laugh here.

“Francesca,” I croak. “Want somebody to watch it with you?”

Francesca raises her head, eyes wide in the glowing dark, side-lit by the pale television. “You’re just saying that. You aren’t interested.”

“Might be. Try me.”

A long silence. “Would you … would you really like to?” A hard, wet swallow. A sniff. A quiver in her voice. “We can start from the beginning? It’s not much past ten right now. We could watch the start, or maybe more, or … as much as you like, I … I’m not tired … I … ”

“Mm. Slept enough.”

Up to my feet with a mote more strength than earlier, enough to take slow, shuffling steps without risk of falling; This Machine is still battered and bruised and barely functional, but that’s enough for me to cross to the desk, down a glass of water, then turn and plod toward the television and the sofas and Scarlet.

She stares at me, a phantom oozing through the dark. Then she realises this is really happening and jerks into action. She grabs more towels and arranges them over one end of the sofa, so I won’t smear the cushions with blood. She hovers around me, afraid I might fall, hands like nervous birds. But I lower myself down onto the sofa without assistance, a creaking mass of parts held together with scabs and spit.

Scarlet hesitates when she realises her mistake; she’s set me up on the sofa directly facing the screen, the one on which she was sitting, at the far left edge, wedged against the armrest. Awkwardly she sits down on the right, with less than an arm’s length between us.

She picks up the remote. “I can turn it up a bit. My parents are home now, but their bedroom is at the opposite end of the house. They never bother me, not this late. Or not at all, really.”

“Mm.”

“We’ll start from the beginning, then. I think that would be best, you need all the set-up to understand the payoff.” She cancels the current episode, pulls up an animated blu-ray menu, all sweeping pinks and purples, cartoon magical girls peeping from behind the buttons. “Technically there’s a prequel episode, but it’s only five minutes long and it wasn’t made until after the show, so I don’t think it should really come first. We’ll skip that.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Do you understand Japanese honorifics? The subs — subtitles, that is — they don’t translate the honorifics, because honorifics shouldn’t be translated, there’s too much nuance lost, especially when they matter so much to how characters talk to each other, and in Majohiko it really does matter. I don’t think it’s worth switching to the official English Language subs, they’re not as good, they—”

“I’ll pick it up as we go.”

“Right. Okay.” Scarlet settles her shoulders back against the sofa, tense and tight in my peripheral vision. “Let me know if you need me to … pause it, or anything.”

“Mm.”

“Do you want to use the bathroom first?”

Still don’t feel like a living thing, processes on pause. My body has taken all that water and turned it to steam. “No.”

“Are you sure? I don’t mind—”

“Mm. Sure.”

“Well. Okay. Okay. Let’s … let’s begin.”

Scarlet presses play.

‘Majohiko’ — Magical Girl’s Secret Heart, or perhaps The Secret Hearts of Magical Girls, depending on the translation — is, at first, exactly what I expect. I’ve never watched any magical girl shows before, other than a few half-remembered exposures before I lost my parents and my limbs. I’ve less than no interest in the semi-realistic western style — the ones based on real people, the docu-dramas, the Saturday morning cartoons for small children and impressionable teenagers — nor in the broader Japanese tradition of the genre, most often more purely fictional.

Majohiko fits neatly into the latter, with nary a sniff of realism. Colour-coded young women are recruited by a mascot creature from outer space, to fight some vaguely defined interdimensional invasion, spiced up with side-character comedy, complete with a cackling antagonist who dresses like a dominatrix and lives in a secret castle full of trapdoors and sci-fi torture devices. Everyone speaks half an octave too high, most of the outfits show more skin than strictly necessary, and some of the sexualised ‘jokes’ between the girls would fall foul of the censors on English broadcast television. There’s a lot of bouncing; some of these girls need to invest in a decent sports bra.

Some of the jokes aren’t bad, actually. If you like women. And tits.

But the show contains a lot more magical girls than the main sextet featured on Scarlet’s poster. A confusing whirl of two dozen characters, clashing motivations, half-followed subplots, unrequited admiration, unspoken comradeship. Half the girls appear to be secretly working for the enemy, but half the time it doesn’t matter. Three plot lines run in tandem, with seemingly three protagonists; one of them is ‘Pastel’, dressed like a cream puff in pink lace.

My attention begins to slip and waver after a few episodes. The fight scenes are decently animated, I suppose. Night wears on, sofa conforming to the half-dead weight of my body. Scarlet slowly eases forward, to the edge of her seat.

Then, across episodes seven to nine, three quarters of the cast gets killed off.

A clever plan goes terribly wrong; a regretful betrayal is revealed; a minor antagonist is more than she appeared. The first death is sudden and shocking, a bloody rupture with this style of storytelling, a magical girl overwhelmed by circumstances and beheaded by a monster — though the audience is spared the worst by a neat discretion shot of her headless corpse. After that first casualty, girls fall like wheat before the reaper as their world comes down around them. It all unfolds with a terrible inevitability, set up right from the first scene of the first episode, a plot by the true antagonist that suddenly rotates into place, clear and hard and impossible to escape. Magical girls are betrayed, overrun, taken apart, devoured. Blood and guts and gore run crimson.

Scarlet starts to shake as the slow-motion massacre takes place. Swallows dry. Can’t catch her breath. At first I think she’s enjoying it too much, but then she sobs at a particularly bitter death, bites her lower lip.

By the time it’s over, she’s panting, struggling, slow tears running down her cheeks.

Over the next six episodes, as the small hours creep into the black reaches of night, the surviving six magical girl characters draw together in the wake of their losses. Their relationships grow intense, bizarre, fixated. They declare undying love, fight back to back, give in to the need for violence so-long resisted. The show somehow never loses its sweetness, transmuting it into something more genuine.

All idea of sleep has left me, almost as rapt as Scarlet now.

At the emotional centre of the long aftermath stand Pastel and Neon. Pastel is the only protagonist left; Neon began the show as her opposite, a potential rival, a minor irritant.

But their world has changed. In episode thirteen they nearly kill each other in a jealousy-fueled mutual rage, collapsing into shared tears at the end. In episode fourteen they share a bed. Strange domesticity settles in as they wake together in a new dawn, little touches and glances animated with more care than ninety percent of the fight scenes so far—

And Scarlet pauses the episode, wheezing for breath, slow tears running down her face. She remains silent for a long time, hunched forward on the sofa, hands clasped so hard I can hear her bones creaking, eyes fixed on the carpet between her feet.

“Like I said,” she whispers eventually, voice broken. “Nothing like … nothing like us.”

“It’s fiction. Anime.”

“Yes—”

“We’re real.”

“I know!” Scarlet hisses through tight-clenched teeth, wringing her hands so hard she might dislocate a finger. “It’s fiction, it’s all fiction, it’s not ever really like that, not between anybody, ever. Never been really like that, it was all just—”

“Francesca.”

“Mm.”

“Is that what you want it to be like?”

Scarlet Edge — or Francesca Fairfax, I’m not sure which — stares at the floor between her feet in shadow-draped dark, half-lit by the television-glow, drowning in the backwash of Pastel and Neon embracing close and clean in their perfect cartoon world. Her whole body shivers, as if she might fly apart at the slightest touch.

I reach out with my prosthetic hand, so slowly that she could pull away even in her sleep; I have no real strength, still drained and injured and deep in recovery. I will not be whole for days. She could brush me off with a breath.

But she doesn’t. She goes very still the moment I place my hand against her shoulder. The shaking stops. Tears too.

“Scarlet. Is that what you want it to be like, for you? For magical girls? You want life to be like it is in the show? Like—”

“How could it be?” Scarlet hisses through hard-clenched teeth. Tears have fled her voice, replaced with ice-cold fire. She addresses the floor, lips parted, eyes blown wide.

I remove my hand from her shoulder. Feels like I’ve touched a wild animal, chased it into a corner. She might turn and snap, sink her teeth into my flesh.

“How could it ever be like that?” Scarlet repeats.

“I don’t know.”

Scarlet Edge uncoils, turns to me with wide eyes aflame, reaches out and grabs the front of my bloody t-shirt, bunches it in one iron-hard fist. The bruise around her lips glints purple as an old scar.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like,” Francesca Fairfax growls, “being Scarlet Edge?”