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Tumbling down, tumbling down. Some dreams can only be crushed by a shadow and the truth.

«To Love A Snake With Blue Eyes | Out Of The Darkness |ACT 2 -Pleasure Is Greener On The Other Side Of The Pasture »

January 10th, 1998

A simplebam in the elevator, and with a bullet fired and some blood sprayed, Selena is off.

All she can think about walking into golden, empty halls is that she just wants to go home. She just wants to go home, away from the whiskey and cologne stinking her up like a rotting bouquet, because she needs to get back. She needs to get back to her quaint, dusty apartment, a far cry from this gaudy, over-decorated place, because cramped and gray was comfort for someone who spent most of her days around concrete walls. It was the only tether she had to this world besides her dignity and paying rent, mundanities most took for granted.

As a reward for completing this mission, she gets two days off. She has no idea of how she’ll spend such rare ‘her’ time all by herself, but she’ll find a way. She has to.

There is nothing worse than being alone in her own head without nothing to do.

The sound of merriment and excitement seeps up through heavy carpet floors. The heat of the auction held an hour before has been replaced with something brighter, more garishly distracting, more ravenous to putrefy the air with excess. She pulls out her pager and presses a green button, receiving a light not less than ten seconds later.

That’s her cue to head for the exit.

Her leather shoes hit the ground in a stealth’s pace as she grabs a pocketbook from the body and slips it deep into her thin white suit. As per Foundation policy, traitors would find themselves nameless and forgotten—wiped from the memories of not just friends and family, but the world, too. Selena felt it was a fitting punishment for her target despite how extreme it was, because recalcitrance made her willing to tear up everything she had worked for as a Site Director. She had fallen for that classic motivator, almost as old as humanity itself: money.

What a crock of shit. She was aSite Director of all things, someone with so much power to change and mold, and yet she fell prey to something as simple as avarice?

It makes Selena’s blood boil. Well, it would if it wasn’t so cold in these halls. The air here is approaching polar, as if possessed by northern winds. The walls ache to frost over, unborn needles of ice eager to stab and bleed.

There’s the stairwell door. Just get down five stories and she’s gone.

God, she wishes she had more kit on her. They only sent her in here with a channeler, not much more anti-thaumic equipment than that.

It doesn’t open.

Selena exhales sharply, but tries again once more before pulling out a set of lock-picking tools. Her hands’ steadiness may as well have been iron.

No dice there.

What the hell? she thinks, noticing quickly that her breath is beginning to fog up. When did it get this cold…?

…Oh no.

She doesn’t have time to panic, even though every hair on her body bristles. Back to the body—lo and behold, nothing. Nothing’s there. Nothing at all, except ruby-red blood…

And it's warping into something. Drips rush upward along Baroque wallpaper, smearing in perfect parallel lines.

Selena runs. As soon as red hits the corners of the ceiling, it breaks, shuddering into thick, bulbous eyes that burst open from every seam and corner they could possibly devour within their line of sight. Each pupil is impossibly, disgustingly, pulsatingly blue, so vivid as to hurt and strain a good sense of vision.

Without hesitation, she kicks the handle off the door and throws it open. No need for silence anymore—either she just got found out, or she was in the process ofbeing found out.

This was the reason for the lack of thaumic equipment tonight. Her mission was taking place under the nose of Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd., an org armed to the teeth with the best magic money could buy, and their magic loved company above all else. It loved seeking out the thaumaturgy within other bodies around it, just as a snake loved waiting underneath a rock for a shrew. Just to get in here required three check-ins and two pat-downs—each guest was deliberately chosen for their lack of wondrous experience and capabilities. This would produce a far greater profit margin than hiring guards against those capable of turning a building into cinders, even if they too were eager and willing customers.

Tonight especially did not need such security, for something far darker had come to roost.

Selena descends down the stairs as quickly as her legs will take her, her heart pounding and her hands sweating. Her palms leave cold, damp prints on the railings as she keeps running and running, running and running, running and running, running until—

Until—

Until—

Down, down, down—

…Wait.

She stops. How many flights has she blown past? This hotel only had ten floors, but her lungs are recoiling like she’s burned through forty.

She looks ahead of her, inky blackness obscuring all but ten feet of visibility. There’s supposed to be a door every other story, but so far she’s not seen one.

Did she happen to miss that…?

She leans up against a wall, looking for cameras above her.

Nothing.

Down again she goes, but this time she counts her steps.

Fifty. No door still.

“Goddamnit,” she curses under her breath finally. Speaking feels like it’s forced open a canyon in her chest from the stiff airs she’s had to play nice with throughout this entire detail. Too many people in silk and cashmere so far for her taste.

Someone’s forcing these stairs to repeat. Knowing Marshall, Carter, and Dark, it was likely this wasn’t the result of ontokinetics; they preferred magic above all else, because it was easier to control and less likely to react with an outside force. And that gambit often worked out in their favor—at a certain point, what a reality bender could accomplish wasn’t really all that different from an experienced thaumaturge.

Something pounds beneath Selena’s feet, but she doesn’t hear over the sound of her own thoughts. She’s too busy running the situation: based on the lack of overhead feedback to her footsteps, it was likely whoever was doing this didn’t know she was here. That meant there was a high probability this was a kind of defensive measure, meant to trap and keep out rather than directly assault.

So should she wait this out?

That could be an option, but being in a space like this already meant ceding ground to the enemy. After all, what would happen once they knew she was here? A stairwell was narrow, like a throat—no doubt there would be zero hesitation in crushing her like a fattened oriole upon a—

The pounding gets louder.

She pulls out her gun as she watches the faintest of shadows expose itself out from a downward corner.

Definitely a body—but who…?

She fires as soon as she thinks she sees a head before a flurry of soot and dust manifests behind her.

“Bye, bitch—wait, Cortez?”

The voice is loud, and echoes dizzyingly through the concrete beneath them. Selena whips around with zero hesitation and finds a white-gloved hand shoved into her face.

“…Watts.”

She lowers her gun just as Watts lowers a palm surging with electricity. Both stare into the other with empty, abyssal eyes.

“I see all the gear you’ve dragged along isn’t helping you out of this mess.”Tacky show-off, Selena thinks.

“Your superiors are fools if they sent you into a detail like this so barren,” Watts spits. The outlet reservoir strapped around her neck shines sharply, despite the low light. Same with the sigil crest trailing up her right hand.

“With all that you’re wearing, you must be the one who made them sound the alarm.”

Watts rolls her eyes, just as Selena knew she’s always so ready and willing to do. The two know each other through a diplomatic exchange program the Foundation and G.O.C participated in a year ago—it was the closest thing to a field trip assassins could get, being knee-deep in the training of another normalcy agency for a week, learning how the other lived their lives, packed tightly with the smarmy, empty words of their superiors who insisted the exercise was for some great peace between the two.

“Whatever. Have you seen a door here yet?”

Selena shakes her head. “Nope.”

“Hell on earth,” Watts mutters. She kicks the ground with her steel-toed boots, her security-guard getup looking worse in Selena’s mind the longer she stares at her. How sloppy, but it said something about their hosts that it wasn’t detected until just twenty minutes ago.

“Are you coming, or going?” Selena asks.

“Coming,” Watts responds curtly, sniffing the air. “Gunpowder residue on your hands—you going?”

“Yeah. Already finished what I needed to. I just want a way out.”

“Good fucking luck with that. And I mean it.”

Selena chuffs, internally grateful she didn’t end up as a rat within the G.O.C’s races. A bunch of belligerent buffoons they were, insisting on destruction over preservation. Such was the nobility of the Foundation’s mission, at least in her mind—it was also just cleaner too. Less blood and raw power was needed to put up a fence around something over ripping it from the ground and shattering it to pieces.

Watts looks up towards the ceiling, a sense of silence coming down on the both of them. It’s at that point she finds her eyes at Selena’s waist and points.

“That a channeler?”

“Yes,” Selena answers.

Watts points. “Do us a favor and turn it up to maximum.”

“I’m sorry, us?”

Selena balks, but Watts towers over her with narrowing eyes. 6’1 to her 5’3.

“…Do it. That’s our best chance of getting out of here.”

“You’re insane—” Selena doesn’t sputter but she’s not sure how to process the pressure still. “That’s only going to concentrate whatever magic is making this place—”

“Do you want to die?”

Sharp inhale, pursed lips. No, Selena can’t die. There is a her-shaped purpose still dug into this world, one which required her and only her hands to see it all the way through to the sky.

She wouldn’t say it aloud, but she was actually rather proud they chose her of all people for this. That meant her superiors were beginning to see her as more than someone who went into Internal Affairs for the pay, more than just a mere unrooted cog in a machine. More than some bitch off the street from New Orleans who looked different from all her other coworkers but had to work twice as hard as they did to be seen as meeting appropriate standards.

Rough hands to that plastic again. Watts’s gaze is drilling Selena like a diamond bit.

“Toss it once you’ve turned it to the maximum. That should give whoever is churning these floors out a false positive.”

Like a flare to misguide a heat-seeking missile, Selena thinks. That logic doesn’t sound too bad…

The knob turns. Agent Watts parry-steps a few feet up. As soon as the button screeches, Selena lobs it as hard as she can down a bottomless sea of geometric shadows.

A loudcrack. One that sounds a lot closer than the stairs would suggest, too.

Selena smiles, moving down until the shadows gurgle, mimicking the sound of the channeler breaking. Before she knows it, they rise like a flood, those disgusting eyes popping out among its surface to narrow their gaze at her.

“What—!”

No, she can’t scream—

Bolting upwards, Watts is now nowhere to be found.

“You bastard—!” Selena shrieks, so over all of this and tired of holding back. She keeps scrambling frantically upwards until she trips, busting her nose against frigid stone.

There is no time to think on the pain as that blackness opens its mouth and engulfs her whole.

When Selena wakes up, she’s on the same floor as she was before she got out of the elevator.

She coughs out blood, rubbing her nose. Tears prick her eyes as her chest pounds, thrashes actually, nearly suffocating her.

Getting to her feet isn’t as hard as she thought, but her arms are screaming. Her legs are coursing with lactic acid burnout. The air is still cold, but her skin can’t feel it through the sheering pain.

There’s enough left in her to go on, though. Enough left for a fight, for a mad break, if she is going to be forced to make it.

All of her training, and this is what she’s come to? All of those thirty-mile runs, annual boot-camp sessions, and ungodly noisy firing ranges—is it all going to end like this?

What the hell is even going on? Who…Who is doing this?

Who is evencapable of doing this?

The intel she was given didn’t indicate anyone or anything with this kind of power being present. But, to be fair to her command, they weren’t entirely sure of what Marshall, Carter, and Dark could actually do, either. Their products often suggested potential that made the Overseers prickle: a dead god in a jar here, a baby dragon in a necklace there—it all seemed so mundane until one realized what they were selling required the same amount of energy to manufacture as the G.O.C’s entire stock of paranatural weaponry.

Everything is still now, somehow. The walls, the air, the time, her.

Still enough to unnerve, quiet enough to unravel, unmoving enough to unmask.

Selena nearly pukes until a new chill creeps over her spine like a centipede. With a thousand legs, prickling feet, every contact a violation of her will—

Wait.

Soft footsteps. They’re audible because someone is willing them to be so.

…Who just appeared in the hallway behind her?

Soon, those light feet are joined by the subtle scraping of expensive rings.

“My, my, my, my, my, my, my~” a baritone voice rings out. It is alone in totality, exerting a forceful singularity of authority over these wallowing halls.

“Nowwho do we have here? It seems a little mouse has crashed my soiree…”

Selena bolts upright just as a tall figure strolls into view. With a pitch-black suit, sickly white skin, and deathly blue eyes glimmering as butcher’s knives would, it’s almost as if the sun tried to make love to a shadow but failed miserably.

“How pitiful. How laughable.” She can see long, sharp fangs jutting out of that amused smile. “Surely the Foundation would have thought to send in better, no? I expected more out of someone able to hide that they splashed blood all over these carpets…”

Fuck. Goddamn you Watts, Selena thinks. She should have gone with her gut—the whole purpose of a channeler was to amplify magic, so why did she think turning it to maximum wouldn’t give her away?

I’m so stupid…

Just as she finishes that thought, the stranger taps his foot and a large, clawed shadow bolts up from behind him. It is tall, twenty feet at minimum, unable to be constrained by the height of the walls. It stalks along the ceiling with a single glowing eye, pupil as unforgivingly azure as its master’s.

It bares its teeth with no reserve.

“Do make this fun for me, please,” he asks with a sultry tone, taking off his hat and swinging it like he was a gentleman dancer. “My last three events have been dreadfully boring, so I ameager to see how fast a little Foundation agent can run.”

The notebook. He must be the one who the traitor was supposed to—

When the shadow lunges, Selena bolts.

There wasn’t a hallway to her left a few seconds before, but that’s not on her mind right now. All she can focus on is dodging and weaving her way through gray claws, trying not to be pinned against the walls or a corner. The shadow’s barrages lash deep into the walls, carving wood and wallpaper in animalistic gashes.

Fuck, it’s fast—

Right turn. She has to focus on getting back to that elevator.

Another strike. This time it carves a wooden table in two, spraying splinters through the air like needles.

Do any of these doors ope—

The answer to that is a resounding no as that black form howls and begins another stretch of chase down a hallway far too long to match the dimensions of this building.

No…!

Reaching the end off pure adrenaline alone, Selena rips a painting off the wall and smashes it into a wispy fist. The shadow recoils as she throws its stuck hand straight over her head, hurling it down another corridor too long for its own good.

She hears a surprised howl. “Oh you little—!”

The stranger is pulled into view, nearly tripping over himself. The shadow is attached to his feet like a fishing line.

So it has a range, Selena thinks. She doesn’t notice the hallways shortening as the shadow morphs at its impact site, first from a wolf, then into a snake, slithering behind her slowly as the stranger straightens to attention.

“Wow, clever. The little mouse knows how to—”

Selena pulls out her gun and fires.

One shot to the leg, another to the gut. It’s sloppy, yeah, and she should have hit the chest or head, but she can do that when she gets closer.

She doesn’t notice the stranger covering his heart as she charges—

When she tries to take the clinch position, a cold palm slams against her neck.

“Ack—!”

Spit flies from her mouth as she’s bashed against the wall twice. Her head first as the tipper, but soon that other frigid hand joins to gash nails into her chest and slam.

He’s still standing. Despite how dizzy she is, she can still see he’s standing. The stranger is bleeding, but he’s standing like nothing’s happened.

Did she not—did she not—

“You little Foundation ants are soirksome,” the stranger hisses, pushing her into the wall harder. Selena can feel her bones jutting into splintering wood.

She reaches for her gun again but the shadow lunges and clamps her hands down. She yelps as its intangible teeth grind into her wrists.

“Do you even understand the value of what youstole from me?Me?”

Selena tries to keep her breathing steady, her airways open despite the hand around her windpipe. Painted black nails pinch into her skin along her neck’s major veins and arteries.

Her blood thumps like a roaring waterfall.

“…Ahaha, you don’t. Of course you don’t…” He shakes his head, smiling widely. “How would someone in such a shoddy suit like yours know? Oh, at least they got the hue right for your eyes…”

Eyes…

Selena tries kicking, but there’s no strength left. It’s in that moment, out of a pleading desperation, to a God she stopped believing in when her mother ceased contact with her, that she makes full-eye contact with those snake-like pupils.

His pale fingers loosen.

“You—” she chokes.

“Me? Hm? Don’t you know it’s proper to address me by my name?”

“What—What is your—”

“Call me Percival Darke.” He cackles like a child hiding a secret from a parent. “Consider your serendipitous luck that you have been blessed with such knowledge~”

I don’t imagine I’ll live much longer knowing that, Selena thinks. Her heart is telling her that speaking any more to this man will be futile; a waste of what little precious, empty time she has left.

And she had so much good left for the world…

When he smiles, her heart spasms. Long fangs like acupuncture needles glisten wetly, as forks do soaked in golden duck fat.

This is no vampire. No, those fangs of his are meant to snap bone. He…He has to be…

His hands clench to kill. An index finger pierces her skin and warm blood drips down her skin, hot and heavy.

Hot, and heavy…

Hot, and heavy as the world closes in around them and his other hand runs to her neck to close the loop, to sever.

That smooth face, flawless in its sheen and power, drinks in eagerly as she whines.

July 7th, 2024

“Are you having fun here? Hm?” Percival narrows her gaze, the suitcases under her eyes more obvious now than they’ve ever been. “Messing with me over and over and over again, little dove?”

Little dove. That’s a new one.

Selena kicks the same way she did all those years ago. Not as hard or nearly as forcefully, even though Percival’s grip is the same. Her nails the same length too.

No amount of voice-training will ever sand away the edge of cruelty she is capable of staining herself with.

“…You look…”

“Don’t talk to me about mylooks, you little worm,” she spits, but without any serious force in her hands. “After all the effort I went through for you—”

“Your makeup can’t hide how old you look, Percy…”

Percival freezes, continuing to hold her up. Her arms shake, and her shadow is still.

Selena scoffs, wanting to laugh. Her hands almost tickle, with how loose they are. How the rings are colder than she is, even in this heat. The skin around her knuckles is wrinkled, and dry, with small, almost invisible gray spots.

Percival’s eyes meanwhile, widen quickly, her palms shaking.

“…Are you calling meugly?”

Selena rolls her eyes. “You’re more beautiful than I’ve ever been.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you want to say no? I thought you were immortal, Percival—how come you’re—”

Percival slams her against the pillar again. Lightly, but it still thuds Selena enough to cough up iron into her mouth. “What thefuck are you doing, Selena?! What is this nonsense you’re prattling on about now?!?”

I don’t know. The first conscious thought she’s had in…she can’t remember, actually. Maybe for the first time today? Maybe for the first time this week. This entire meeting hasn’t felt real so far. It hasn’t felt like something that should be happening to her.

Selena laughs. She laughs softly, scattershot. All she can hear in her mind is a bunch of questions, a bunch of dumb, silly questions she wants to ask Percival up close. A bunch of questions with her lips pressed against her ear, with her lipstick smudging against her nape. About how business is going, how she picked out jewelry, what Iris’s future looked like—small talk. Small talk that would be the biggest, most meaningful talk she’d have had with someone in forever, against everyone else she had ever had to mechanically entertain, monotonously catalogue.

Her mind even conjures the idea of them going into the house together to put some kind of lunch together.

What kind of food did Percival like to eat?

Somewhere deep down, Selena assumes she likes seafood.

“…I don’t know,” is the final answer. The final answer to the question which has been plaguing the last five minutes, the puzzle to the solution that’s been choking them both for over twenty years.

“…And here you looked so radiant earlier,” Percival croons with a sigh. Her arms are getting tired too. “What a shame. What happened this time? Did their inane rules and trivial judicature go to your head again? Their promises of a happy world if you cooperate, bow your head to them like a whelped bitch?”

“Shutup, Percival,” Selena hisses weakly. When those blue eyes blink, she finally summons a spike of strength to pry her hand loose from her throat. When she falls, she sprints to the other side of the porch so she can occupy herself with the lactic acid burning in her legs instead of her words.

There’s no going back now. No turning away from what she promised, what she must do for the world now and the Council. They had to be saved…so that they could rest from the weariness of carrying the world on their shoulders.

Her last good deed…

“…Be quiet,” she says between panting. “With…With your concocted fantasies of the eyes you don’t have. With the feelings you pretend to have towards me, the history we don’t share. I’m sick of your nonsense. Sick of it.”

“Tch,” Percival clicks. It hits Selena’s head like a gong. “Blaming me now?”

“Yeah, actually, I am,” she snaps. “You’re a sick woman, Percy, for turning me into this. Someone like you who uses your mouth when your money doesn’t suffice.”

“Stop referring to me by that idiotic nickname,” Percival growls. “And turn you into what? The little sucker you were all along? The babbling baby who wanted to be cradled, who craved to have her hand kissed like thesick romantic she’s always been?”

Selena’s heart cracks, but she digs her heels in, because this isn’t anything new. Someone drilling a truth or misfortune into her while parading around their authority—all good Overseers knew the feeling. O5-01 was quite good at making sure they all knew that.

“You never knew anything,” Selena hisses under her breath, glowering. “Denial is a hard pill to swallow. You’re into this for your ego, for making me a…trophy.”

Is that really true? It’s the only thing she can think to say, because it seems logical. It’s what the deer should say to the hunter.

“I know more than your pedantic little skull has been capable of in its entire existence, Selena Ruiz Montegomery Cortez.” Percival puts so emphasis on her name that Selena feels like she’ll pop a vein. Her makeup’s certainly been ruined enough with sweat and exertion to make her angry.

“I know what I saw when you kept my letters, when you were so entranced by my radiance you couldn’t keep yourself away from me. You still can’t, can you?”

Selena bows her head, shaking it and holding back tears. “Do you like stroking your ego as much as you get off to me, Percival?” Crazy how she can still talk. “All I’m seeing here is a jerk-off competition with yourself that you’re winning.”

That seems to do something.

And it does something because Percival sputters, slamming her heel down so hard onto the porch she breaks a hole into the wood, her face running blood red.

“You came here to me, you little whelp!” she screams. “Me! ME!!!You wanted me to fuck you so badly because nobody else would!!!”

Selena gasps, and stumbles backwards. Percival doesn’t close that gap, only collapsing into her hands as she too struggles to stay upright.

Her shadow stumbles with her. It snags on the sheering sunlight, as it pinks, folds and quickly shatters before coming back into itself and hooking onto a stray stair.

“You wanted me!!! Youstill want me, and you’re trying to embarrass me now for it!”

That voice collapses like a house of cards. Selena’s hand shoots for a holster, the only reaction she can have to a display like this coming from all people like Percival.

But there is none. She left it and her pistol at what she was supposed to call home as her agreement as to come here.

So now her teeth clench as hard as the metal chair beneath her felt ass at every council meeting.

She clenches her teeth as hard as she did watching Percival’s eyes begging for mercy underneath Watts. An act so simple and painful it seemed want to divide the universe in two.

That did happen, right? That wasn’t something she just…made up in her mind, alongside Iris?

“…Pull yourself together, Percival. You’re not losing anything of value.”

“Bequiet, you little maggot!”

Selena refuses. “No. For once I get to do the talking—”

“I knew it,” Percival says through tears and through heavy breaths, interrupting her anyway. Her mascara is staining her satin blouse. “You and I are really are twins in fate…”

“We are not,” Selena snips. “Stop it, stop pretending I’m anything worthy of this chara—”

“We are!” Percival yells, pointing at her like an accuser in court. Her shadow shudders, faltering. “We are as much as you may say we are not. Our hands have been, or, in your case—were—loaded with opportunity. You were given a slice of the world and yet you still refuse to wear the fruits of your labor upon your soul! How do you expect me to justaccept that?!”

The…fruits of her labor?

Where…is this tangent coming from?

“You could have had an army under your command like your colleagues,” she continues, gesturing wildly to herself from her chest and then backwards. “You could have branded hundreds of thousands of anomalies to work their magic for you. You could have emblazoned your reputation into the walls of the Foundation, so thoroughly that they would have never forgotten you—but no. No. No!”

What…What the hell is she doing…?

“You took the quiet way out! You took a coward’s legacy, and now you will be buried as the giant everyone else shall stand on!”

Tears break again, and Selena hunches over. She bites down on her lips to keep herself from saying anything, from giving Percival any ground, any satisfaction, because there’s no way this can be genuine. Itcan’t be genuine. If it was, that would mean her life’s work was actually worthless. That all of the denial of the self, of the vacation days she didn’t get, of the child and spouse she never would have—she was no lesser than those she ruled over, the civilians whose numbers and minds she had to protect.

No love, no love. No love for her because of who she became.

It’s then when she realizes there’s a fundamental disconnect in intentions between her and Percival.

Selena doesn’t want this to be a one-time affair. But…what about her? Can Percival even imagine love like this? A commitment like that, a selflessness in rose-colored pumps? Is she evencapable of it?

This denial of sex is not of a good time, but of a mother and a child. Of the mother Selena could have become, of the wife she could be if she threw it all away and ran into the arms of the enemy.

This denial of sex opens itself up further then, most likely a forceful acknowledgment of a subconscious voice she buried deep down within her that was trying to always tell her the truth to her questions, her fantasies.

Selena collapses and begins wailing too. Percival stands to attention in the meantime, her shadow finally standing straight.

“…Aren’t you tired, Selena?” Percival finally says, after collecting herself from what Selena knows must be a horrible shame. Her makeup’s probably not been this much of a mess since she began transitioning. “Aren’t you tired of consistently living like a snake defanged of its poison?”

Aren’t you tired, Selena?

Those words. If she could rid them physically from existence, she would. There would be no question about it, none. Those were the words O5-12 asked her ten years into the job, when Selena let her requests for bio-augments lapse. Of course an O5 needed to replace every part of themselves eventually—the soul was willing, but the body was weak. No mortal flesh could ever hope to withstand the never-ending flow of cortisol and epinephrine needed for the daily function of an Overseer, so the best choice was to get rid of it completely. What a wonder Mehkanite technology could be, how glorious it was their god could be profaned by such mind-numbingly alterations of the flesh.

She didn’t want that.I’ll do it later, she said, knowing the fate of the ones who didn’t. It was either suicide or supplanting your body into that of horizontally adjacent creatures, exhausting their telomeres out until you moved onto the next one.

Why did she…? Perhaps it was because she wanted to make sure she knew who she was in the mirror. Luckily, she was enough of a leader to never be questioned about it. But such complacency led to the death of all will, so now it would forever remain a nowhere memory, kept afloat by vague reminiscences of what could have been, displayed on her skin what wasn’t.

“Enough, Percival.”

She slams a fist weakly on the side of the house. It echoes throughout its emptiness senselessly.

“…Enough. Please.”

Her voice dies like a poisoned deer. The air chills, a sandpaper breeze forcing its way through the porch. Her scarred skin forms goosebumps.

“…Don’t you dare speak to me like I don’t have the power to put you down.”

The tears are choking her endlessly. Her nose is closing up. Selena hasn’t cried like this in years.

She feels lucky she can still speak straight, honestly.

“But will you…?” Percival asks.

It sounds like a genuine question.

Selena looks up. Sure enough, she was right—Percival’s face is absolutely smudged with black. It looks like someone ripped up a piece of paper and then drowned it in ink.

Selena’s glasses fog.

“…You underestimate what influence I have off the council. I’m no shot doe—I could make them update your description, construct a new photo for you, catalog this property to trace your buyer—we’ve found your bank account network once before, and I don’t think we’re beyond doing it again.”

Percival narrows her gaze. Despite how bright the sun shines, her eyes are always brighter.

“…And yet you wouldn’t dare do that…” Her voice saunters into an iron tone. “Because I’m positive that if I forwarded the council copies of the letters we’ve shared together—well, let’s just say your retirement would be ending early. Isn’t that right?”

Teeth flash. Selena’s are just as white as Percival’s, bleached of their history too.

“You little—”

Percival shrugs when Selena doesn’t finish her statement, wiping her tears. “Why does it even matter to you? Hm? Just fuck me and get your life over with already, if that’s what you think will happen.”

Percival’s pointedness rings along the open wetlands. Selena whimpers, her eyes burning with so much frustration that rusty thorns shred themselves in her throat and chest.

Her fists clench deeper, nails puncturing skin where they have the same way over and over again for years. They way they did whenever she had to make a decision, a decision she would never be sure of was right, because there was no way out of not knowing. No way out of the uncertainty of every political move, of every gain she made, of every perilous loss.

There was no way out of the hundreds of D-Class executed under her watch, the thousands of terminated researchers, the millions of dead civilians.

There was no way out of the over seven thousand Council voting sessions that led to such decimation, no way out of the nights when her conscience bore itself on her palms as a razor as it did when she was fifteen.

There was no way out of the vote that terminated O5-12, not after a too-close Broken Masquerade scenario under a MTF she personally greenlit. No way to save her, no way to bargain with O5-01 and O5-06, who fought Selena’s until-then hidden savior complex trying to fix it all again, because maybe this time it would work out.

She would have been suspected of sabotage if she didn’t agree to her termination. She would have been under fire again, forced into an interrogation chair all over again, and this time there would bereal psychics on the council asking about her motives. The ones she insisted they hire because she was appalled by the lie she once got away with.

“What do they even have you doing now?” Percival continues. Her shrillness is ringing cacophonously. “Is the rest of your life going to be spent waltzing up and down the American East Coast, surrounded by the inane chatter of their boots marching on without you? Never more than fifty miles from a facility, a police station they secretly operate, some kind of outpost they pathetically insist on maintaining?”

Selena’s nails blister. It stings with the sweat forcing its way through aching creases of her palm.

Percival says nothing, finally. She sighs, shaking her head as she watches Selena with eyes that finally seem warm, the kind of skin-melting warmth that blue fire offer, anyway.

Selena wonders if she’s going to pass out soon. She can’t breathe or see straight anymore. If she gets attacked again, she won't be able to fight Percival off, even if she does hold back even more than before. Her heart is screeching, her tongue stabbing itself, her stomach putrefying the butterflies making her head spin.

…She can’t lose her life here. She can’t lose that, she can’t lose it again. Not again, please.

This body she was carrying now was all she had as proof of her convictions. All she had as proof of her bravery, her determination, her willingness to defy herself over and over again, in ways more countless than the number of infinities that existed.

She may have died a thousand soul-deaths, but it meant something that she was still here. It had to.

Percival rolls her eyes when nothing happens and grabs another cigar to light it. Selena straightens herself again like a newborn foal.

“…I’m leaving now,” she mutters.

“Do so,” Percival replies. “Go on and do whatever it is you are expected to do now. I expected your life to come to a more grandiose close than this…but at least Vermont has lush landscapes.”

This cigar smells putrid, like a burning pine forest. Resinous soot popping, staining the atmosphere with turpentine that will never be cleaned properly, tumbling down into the lungs. It will desecrate the towns over, and they will need to be condemned.

“Twenty years…” Percival mutters to herself. “Twenty years… What’s wrong with me…?”

Selena wants those eyes back. She wants back the longing looks, the cedarwood, the alcohol. She wants Vegas back, she wants Percival gently whispering in her ear that they find somewhere private to get comfortable, she wants the way she put her hand on her neck and ran it nearly all the way up. She had locs back then, and it wasn’t until Percival that she ever seriously considered ornamenting them. She deserved to look plain, didn’t she? Nothing fancy, nothing extravagant. No putting on airs of possible corruption, no dressing like a mirror for someone to imprint their impressions onto. That was for researchers, for the press people. For the ambassadors, for the termites allowed to fraternize with each other.

But Percival said her hair would look beautiful dressed in gold. A night sky painted with the most wondrous of stars.

“…You’re a demon, Percival,” she says, a hiss blending with a cry.

“No, I know demons,” she replies, cocking her head. “Those fortuitous, mercurial mouths scuttling beneath the ground we stand on…no, I am something greater.”

“You’re not. You’re a damnation wrapped in whitewashed tombs, a snare written in two-faced decorum.”

At least she can get one last jab in. It’s a half-thought that blisters with the crucifixion of a closing sunset. It’s a sentence she doesn’t believe in at all, but maybe Percival will appreciate the articulation.

“You’ve never done anything for me except serve as a distraction. That’s all you are—that’s all this has ever been.”

Silence again. These keep filling in the dragging seconds, but there’s no other way to digest the growing canyon of emotions. No other way for Selena to pick herself back up and stand how she’s supposed to, tall and towards a safe future.

Percival’s face darkens with the heaviest shadow the world can vomit and Selena does not see it.

“Again with your blindness…what a shame. For someone who once called themselves ‘Overseer’ you lack critical overview of the big picture.”

“Stop referring to me as that.”

“It’s a past title—there should be no debate as to who you once were.”

When Selena fully recognizes the shame burning in her head, her entire body blanks. Hands numb, feet numb, chest running on fumes.

“…Snake,” she whispers.

“No, because no snake kills another.” she replies, voice still carrying a heavy weight. “I know snakes because I burned their bodies in piles so vast they could bury that pathetic little library they worship.”

Zero emotion. Selena slots this new information in a vast, gray filing box, to go in with everything else running with static right now. It’s just another brick in the wall.

“…I butchered them for your sake, you know,” Percival continues, her voice wavering and breaking for one last stand. “For your…Foundation. I spent so much time and money tracing their steps back to their nests, stringing up their organs so it looked like Sarkic maniacs attacked them. What a brilliant way to scare them out of their ideals—I wish I had done it sooner for a worthwhile ally, instead of someone so ungrateful.”

“Do it for Iris then, instead of me,” Selena says like a heart monitor flatlining. “The Foundation hasn’t considered the Serpent’s Hand a major priority in over a decade.”

Percival sneers.

“…Insect,” Percival spits at her. The smoke drooling from her mouth smells vindictive. “Worm, mosquito of the lowest kind—I don’t know why I even bothered with trying to please you, in all of your recalcitrant—”

“Thank you,” Selena interrupts, standing up, facing the direction of the boat she came here by. A wolf-like snarl digs itself deep into Percival’s mouth, indignated by the empty mirror craning her head back at her until she realizes there is waterfall breaking.

Ah, so this is what crying feels like…

“…Thank you. I’m sure your effort won’t go unnoticed, if that is what you are insulting me for. But this must be goodbye for us, since I have places to be.”

“You said that earlier, and yet you stayed here to chat with me a bit longer. Do you actually want to leave, Selena?”

Selena can only smile weakly, her tears evaporating as soon as they hit the concrete. Even the humidity cannot give her sadness a grave, somewhere marked that someone will care for.

“…Perhaps in another life we could have had something,” she says, walking back down the road she came. “If the Foundation didn’t ask what it does of me.”

She smiles with clenched teeth, her chest begging to heave.

And yet Percival has to dig the knife in one last time.

“If you were never an Overseer, Selena—our first meeting would have been our last.”

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