Anna was in peril. Her opponent’s forces were closing in from all sides and her resources had dwindled to practically nothing. What was worse though was that no matter where she looked, she couldn’t see a plan that would let her escape.

“At the very least, you did better this time than last,” Zoe, the former Director of Prima Lux’s Special Assets division, said from the other side of the polished table between them.

“It is some comfort to be improving,” Anna said. “But it is infuriating that I can’t see how this is going to end.”

Despite Anna’s deepest focus and concentration on it, the chessboard refused to divulge any secrets as the outcome of the match being played.

“I have three plays that put you in checkmate in five turns,” Zoe said. “You can block them but not without leaving me an opening that lets me checkmate you in eight turns.”

“Let’s play it out,” Anna said. “I want to see what it looks like for next time.”

“I have to confess,” Zoe said. “I expected you to be a stellar player already. You have the mind for it.”

“Being smart is no match for being experienced,” Anna said. “Especially not when your opponent is both smart and experienced.”

“Just not smart or experienced enough to win when it really counted,” Zoe said.

“Are you sure of that?” Anna asked.

“I will admit that, as private villas in the south of France go, this view from my own Elba is quite lovely,” Zoe said. “For as pleasant as the climate, and the companionship, is however, it doesn’t change the fact that you outplayed me when I was at the pinnacle of my game with the best resources I could have asked for.”

“Can you outplay someone who’s tacitly complicit in their own plan going astray?” Anna asked. “It seems like the results of that encounter were due to a team effort more than anything else.”

“Are you suggesting that I sold out my former employers?” Zoe asked, with mock offense.

“Not intentionally perhaps,” Anna said. “On some level though you certainly knew the limitations of your position, and I have every confidence that you were able to workout what you truly wanted for yourself and your team, at least on a subconscious level.”

“I think you give me more credit than I am due,” Zoe said. “I can promise you I wasn’t trying to lose in that struggle.”

“And you demonstrably did not,” Anna said, gesturing to the house and grounds around them.

“Does this represent anything more than highly tempting bait though?” Zoe asked.

“You haven’t signed onboard with the club yet, so I can see why it might look like that,” Anna said. “There’s no strings attached to this however. This place is yours regardless of whether you want to stay independent or choose to become a member.”

“It’s a valuable resource,” Zoe said. “Why wouldn’t you put it to better use?”

“A few reasons,” Anna said. “First, even if you remain independent, I might want to bounce ideas off you and that will be easier if we have a place to meet. Second, this was once one of Prima Lux’s possessions. With their disintegration, Tam has been picking up their former holdings for a song. This particular piece of property however wasn’t directly owned by Prima Lux. It purchased via a bit of embezzlement by one of the senior managers. Establishing any sort of legal claim over it is going to take years, years during which having an actual caretaker living in the house will ensure that it is maintained in fine condition. Lastly, we both know that you could maneuver yourself into a position much nicer than this if you chose to. Since I don’t wish to fight against you again, arranging for a comfortable, if temporary, retirement seems like an easy solution to that dilemma.”

“So it’s not meant to be a gilded cage?” Zoe asked.

“Is there gold enough to make a cage that could hold you?” Anna asked in reply.

“I’m not sure,” Zoe said. “I can only say that I haven’t seen one which is gilded enough yet.”

“Perhaps it needs to be gilded with something other than gold then,” Anna said a moment before her phone began to buzz.

The caller ID on the display read “James Baughsley”, but the Second Chance Club’s senior Arcanist shouldn’t have had any reason to disturb Anna while she was on vacation. Unless of course something had gone terrible wrong.

“Anna? We have a problem,” James said, confirming her suspicions the moment she identified herself.

“What’s happened to Tam?” Anna asked.

“She’s missing,” James said. “But how did you know it was her?”

“You’re calling me, which says the issue is either supernatural, because it’s you calling, in which case you would have called Tam first if she was available, or the issue is with Tam herself,” Anna said. “How long has she been missing.”

“Twenty four hours,” James said. “She went to the beach with her girlfriend and no one has seen them since.”

“Are there any signs of magical foul play?” Anna asked.

“Always,” James said. “The Crystal Sands beach they visited is a thriving tourist area at the moment, but even so there were traces of an incursion from the sea.”

“Any reports of strange sightings?” Anna asked.

“No, and that’s the odd thing,” James said. “I can’t perform a full ritual there while the crowds are around, but even without that, an incursion on the scale I can detect should have been visible to someone.”

“That suggests they were targeting Tam directly. Can you work any kind of magic there to help locate her?” Anna asked.

“Not there,” James said. “I would need to setup a temporary lab, and that would attract enough attention to spoil any spells I tried to work in it.”

“See if you can do anything from your own lab then,” Anna said. “I’ll be on the first flight home.”

“Leaving so soon?” Zoe asked.

“My apologies,” Anna said. “It may be for nothing.”

“Of course,” Zoe said. “Because in our line of work, apparent problems so often work out to be nothing to be concerned about.”

“There is always a chance of being pleasantly surprised,” Anna said. “But, yes, in this case I doubt I will be. Le Li Tam has gone missing.”

“This would be the same Le Li Tam who out fought a PrimaLux strike team and penetrated the wards which were keeping some cosmic entities imprisoned in Aaliyah’s sanctum?” Zoe asked.

“Yes, the same,” Anna said.

“I believe I will travel with you then,” Zoe said. “If you would tolerate my company?”

“I might even find it quite agreeable,” Anna said.

***

The flight back from France to the US took time. Passing through customs took time. Traveling from the airport to the Crystal Sands beach took time. Anna counted each minute of that time, and each second, but no matter how tightly she clutched at them, the sands flowed ceaselessly through the hourglass.

“What do you expect to find here?” Zoe asked, as they stepped out of their rental car onto the shimmering sands of the beach.

“I expect to find several normal people enjoying a day at the shore,” Anna said. “What I hope to find is some communication from the one responsible for Tam’s disappearance.”

“And if that someone is still around?” Zoe asked.

“Then we’ll discuss Tam’s return,” Anna said.

“Do you have any pieces to play though?” Zoe said. “We just arrived here.”

“There are always some pieces on the board,” Anna said. “Even if occasionally that means using your opponent’s pieces against them.”

“This should be rather enlightening then,” Zoe said.

“James, can you provide any more specific coordinates for where Tam was last seen?” Anna asked, tapping her earbud which was in place since she was back on duty.

“I am afraid I can’t,” he said. “Something has left the mystical energies in that area threaded like the Gordian knot. I can say that Tam had expressed interest in being close to the ocean. She was looking forward to swimming with Cynthia.”

“We’ll search along the water’s edge then,” Anna said. “Tam may have left us some breadcrumbs to follow.”

“Jimmy B says he didn’t see anything when he searched for her,” James said. “He is suggestion caution nonetheless. I gave him some warding charms and they burned out before he had a chance to search more than a small area.”

“Why aren’t we carrying warding charms?” Zoe asked.

“The ones we have access to are demonstrably insufficient in this case,” Anna said. “Also, I would rather not tip off the person or persons responsible for Tam’s disappearance that we are here, if at all possible.”

“Reasonable,” Zoe said. “I do wonder if we shouldn’t have brought more backup though?”

“I left a message for Val,” Anna said. “Until we know what we’re dealing with though, I would prefer to limit our exposure.”

“Personally risky, but strategically sound,” Zoe said. “That’s entirely in character for you isn’t it?”

“It’s not my preferred mode of operation, but you and I are the best resources I have for negotiation and information gathering, so I work with what is available,” Anna said.

“And what might you be gathering information on?” a woman in dark blue and green robes asked. Her clothes were wholly out of place for a day at the beach, but she didn’t show any signs of sweltering in them.

“Unless I miss my guess, you,” Anna said, turning around to evaluate the woman.

She was tall, easily a full head and shoulder over Anna, who wasn’t short by any reckoning. Her skin tone changed depending on the angle, ranging from the pink of an oyster shell to the blues and blue-greys of the rolling ocean waves

“You do not wish to know me,” the woman said, “You wish to understand the fate of your friends.”

“That too,” Anna said. “But to understand what has happened to them, I believe I will have to understand you.”

“I see why the First Light had such trouble with you,” the woman said.

“Do you have a name?” Anna asked.

“I have been called Sycorax,” the woman said. “You needn’t give me yours in exchange. Your reputation precedes you, daughter of Iron and Snow.” She nodded towards Anna. “And yours as well, Fallen Child.” She nodded toward Zoe.

Zoe turned to glance at Anna, a deceptive smile curling her lips.

“You got the nicer epithet,” she said.

“Be glad she doesn’t know you as well as she thinks she does,” Anna said. “Though if she knows me, then perhaps she will be reasonable and provide the information we need on Tam?”

“Of course,” Sycorax said. “Why else arrange all this if not to allow you the chance to destroy yourselves?”

“And why would we do that?” Zoe asked.

“To save Tam,” Anna said. “Go ahead, set your trap.”

“And you will walk into it?” Sycorax asked.

“On one condition,” Anna said.

“Are you in a position to set conditions?” Sycorax asked. “You may have dismantled PrimaLux but you will find I am not quite so fragile as they were.”

“I imagine so,” Anna said. “PrimaLux had investments around the world. It allowed them to develop rapidly, and gave them a wide power base, but it also made them a broad target. I will guess that you are more individually potent than they were, but with a smaller scope to your reach?”

“Not a smaller scope,” Sycorax said. “Rather, a better appreciation for the value of patience. PrimaLux wanted to achieve their aims as quickly as they could. I am more concerned with seeing my plans come to fruition at some point, regardless of how far in the future that might be.”

“And Tam represented a threat to those plan?” Anna asked.

“You all do,” Sycorax said. “I had agreements in place with PrimaLux which prevented me from exercising my powers on this world. So long as those were binding, there was no reason for conflict between us. With PrimaLux gone however, new opportunities have arisen which must be seized.”

“It would have been better to find a path we wouldn’t oppose,” Anna said.

“Possibly, but this method is so much more certain,” Sycorax said. “State your condition.”

“Swear on your name that what you tell me about Tam is true,” Anna said. “I will follow her but only if the path you speak of will truly lead to her.”

Sycorax laughed.

“Foolish snow born, of course I will swear to that on my name. Why would I use false bait for a trap when you will destroy yourself so readily if your Tam is truly in distress?” she said. “The one you seek walks below the sea, pursuing wisdom. She will never find it alone though, and all who follow her will share her fate.”

“And you will open the path to follow Tam beneath the sea?” Anna asked.

“It already lies before you,” Sycorax said, gesturing down the beach.

The tourists were gone, the beach empty, and the sky a stranger purple-gray. The waves which lapped against the shore contained strange shapes in them and seemed to be made of nothing more substantial than clouds.

Anna turned to Zoe.

“Thank you for coming this far,” she said. “I’ll go on from here alone. Please return and tell the others what has happened. It should help them retrieve us.”

“I don’t think so,” Zoe said. “I’ve had the comm open this whole time. They know as much as we do. I think I’ll travel with you for a bit longer.”

“Your presence will change nothing Fallen Child,” Sycorax said.

“That’s alright,” Zoe said. “What’s a little mortal peril if you’re facing it with a friend?”

Sunlight was supposed to darken skin tones and brighten the sand it shone on. That it seemed to be doing the reverse left Tam with a snarl of irritation wrinkling her nose.

“Should the sun be doing that?” Cynthia said, slowly taking her sunglasses off.

“Not on this planet it shouldn’t,” Tam said, sketching a quick circle in the sand around their towels and umbrella.

It had been Cynthia’s idea to spend a day at the beach. The weather was perfect for it and neither of them had anywhere to be, with Cynthia enjoying a day off from her fire department, and Tam in-between shows and back in town while she began to prep the next one.

The Crystal Sands beach wasn’t exactly a quiet hideaway where they could enjoy the beauty and peace of nature in each others company. There were far too many other people present for that to be true. It was a beautiful spot even with the crowds though, and up until she’d noticed the peculiar inversion of the sunlight, Tam had been focused quite intently on enjoying her girlfriend’s company.

Being apart as much as they were wasn’t ideal, but it had been working out for them in the months since they’d met aboard a doomed ocean liner. Video calls made things easier than they would have been in the ancient days before civilization and cell phones existed, but it was the sweetness of the days they got to spend together which made the night’s alone worth it.

Since the sun probably hadn’t decided to change its normal mode of operation, there was in all likelihood someone responsible for its current state. Someone Tam would need to deal with, from the strange itch she felt clawing away at her.

That put “Operation: Make Them Regret Ruining a Perfectly Good Date” as “Go for Liftoff” in Tam’s mind. All she needed to do was find the person who needed to be launched to the Moon, and then strap them to a rocket or other suitably explosive device.

“A magic circle?” Cynthia asked, looking at the design in the sand Tam had etched around them.

“Yeah, wait, you know about those?” Tam asked.

“You have seen my library, haven’t you?” Cynthia’s laugh was a bit forced but also a sign of how well she was holding things together.

“Ah, right, fantasy books for days,” Tam said. “Just a heads up, things are always weirder than any book version of magic will show.”

“Weirder than the sun casting shadows?” Cynthia asked. “Because that’s kind of weird.”

“What you don’t enjoy long walks on the beach under the moonlight?” Tam asked as she scribbled Etruscan script in large sloppy glyphs around the outside of the circle.

“Aww, did you do this for me?” Cynthia asked, gathering together the picnic lunch that she’d brought for them to share.

“I kind of wish I had,” Tam said. “I don’t have any idea how you pull off an effect this big though.”

“That’s a little frightening,” Cynthia said. “I thought you said figuring out how other magicians did their effects was a speciality of yours?”

“That’s stage magic,” Tam said. “This kind of thing is more than just an illusion, or, hmm, maybe it’s not.”

“I’ll admit, I’m pretty much completely fooled by it,” Cynthia said.

“Look at the people around us though,” Tam said, gesturing to the horde of beach goers who were still busy enjoying both sun and surf.

“They’re not seeing any of this, are they?” Cynthia asked.

“I don’t think they are,” Tam said. “Which means, whatever the effect is, it’s centered on us.”

“But we’re safe inside your circle right?”

“Safer,” Tam said. “I won’t say ‘safe’ until I know what exactly this effect is.”

“How do you find that out?” Cynthia asked, putting her t-shirt back on.

“We find the person who’s causing this,” Tam said.

“That means leaving the protection of the circle though doesn’t it?”

“Like I said, things are often weirder than what you read in books,” Tam said. “Try stepping across the circle.”

Cynthia paused and waited for some sign that Tam had been kidding. When she saw that Tam was serious, she shrugged and stepped past the line in the sand.

Except when she put her foot down, it was still within the circle.

“Did the circle get bigger when I tried to leave?” Cynthia asked.

“And smaller when we’re closer together,” Tam said. “I had to set it up so that we could move within it, otherwise we could be trapped on this beach for the rest of our lives.”

“That’s not the worst fate I can imagine,” Cynthia said, running a finger tip up along the outside of Tam’s arm.

“Sadly the rest of our lives wouldn’t be particularly long in that case,” Tam said. She felt a stab of temptation abandon the current crisis in favor of running away to safety with Cynthia but she knew she’d been right when she said they wouldn’t be safe at all until the problem was dealt with. If they ran, the best cases scenario would be that whoever was behind corrupting the sun would continue to track them down, endlessly.

“I wouldn’t object if you wanted to make the circle very very small,” Tam said, a gleam of mischief in her eye which she shook her head to dispel. “But we do need to go,” she added with a sigh.

The sun-darkened sea was rolling onto the black shore, its waves crashing with less force each subsequent time they met the land, as though the shadowed sun was stealing not just the illumination from the environment but all forms of energy as well.

In the sea, shapes swam, alien and unfathomable but with each time they joined the surge of the tide, Tam got a closer glimpse of the creatures and to her eyes they appeared as confused and disturbed as she felt.

She shivered and Cynthia stepped close, shrinking the circle to its smallest radius around them. Cynthia pulled Tam into a one armed hug and, facing the water with her asked, “Where do we look first?”

Tam took a moment to marvel at the woman beside her. As they walked forward, the vista around them grew increasingly strange with each pace they took, their world shimmering away and being replaced by somewhere humans may never have walked before. Despite that, Cynthia was reacting to it all as calmly as though it was the typical day at the beach they’d intended to spend together.

“The sun, or whatever that is, is shining over the ocean, so that’s probably where we’ll find whoever’s doing this,” Tam said.

“Do we need a boat?” Cynthia asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tam said. “If I’m wrong though we’ll know in a hurry.”

Taking Cynthia’s hand she stepped forward again, expanding the circle around them, and marched straight into the oncoming waves, chanting in a low voice as she did.

The farther she lead them though, the farther away the ocean became until at last they were standing on a barren shoreline which looked nothing like the Crystal Sands beach where their picnic and umbrella had been left behind.

“I feel like we went through a portal to Narnia or something, but there’s no magic wardrobes here or looking glasses to fall through,” Cynthia said.

“The circle is our looking glass,” Tam said. “It’s not so much designed to keep things out, I didn’t have the time or materials to manage that. Plus I think the geometries of the beach would mess up any attempt to make a new boundary for the sea.”

“So if it’s not a shield to keep bad stuff away from us, what is it?” Cynthia asked.

“Well, you and I could see what was going on but no one else could,” Tam said. “Since the sun didn’t look like our earthly sun, it seemed more likely that what we were seeing wasn’t a change to Earth but a glimpse into one of the worlds which overlaps with ours.”

“So, wait, Narnia, or things like it, are real?”

“More or less?” Tam said. “Think of it like fairy gold, if you can remember any stories that use it. When you get the stuff, it looks like gold, smells like gold, weighs as much as gold, and so on, but the next morning it’s just a pile of dry leaves. There are whole worlds that have that same relation with ours. While they’re aligned both sides are real to the other, but when they drift apart any bits that are left in the wrong world fizzle out and become something else.”

“Oh neat,” Cynthia said, her eyes bright and smiling.

“Neat?” Tam asked.

“I always thought of Harry Potter as existing in a parallel world, but with the magic they have it bothered me that there was no proof that a wizard from their world had ever made it to ours,” Cynthia said. “If their wands would just turn into sticks and their potions into energy drinks then it could still work out.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Tam said, “Although I should warn you that I haven’t found anything about a real Hogwarts out there. Some things are just fiction, and other worlds are usually stranger than that.”

“Like here?” Cynthia asked, looking around.

The distant shore they stood on lay under a purple sky, broken only by electric blue clouds and a black disk ten times the diameter of the sun they were familiar with.

In the air, dozens of great wyrm-like creatures flew with a buoyancy that suggested they were floating in an aetheric water rather than the open, and empty sky.

Beyond them, down an ever descending hill which mirrored the ocean floor of the beach they’d been on, there were plants of light blue growing in abundance. In the distance, soaring up from a deeper spot on the hill, a tower of multi-hued coral rose to touch the sky. From it’s summit, waves of black rippled into the sky and where gathered into a swirling mass around the sun as it moved.

“I think it’s pretty obvious where our culprit is,” Cynthia said.

“Yep,” Tam said, “Which is why we are going nowhere near there.”

“Don’t we need to stop whatever is happening?” Cynthia said.

“Unfortunately, I think what was happening already has,” Tam said. “If I’m right, that’s a tower of Atlantean High Sorcery. This wasn’t an attack, it was a trap, and I walked us right into it.”

“So our next move is to walk right out of it, except we can’t because?” Cynthia asked.

“Because if we leave, the trap will reach out and bring some other sensitives in instead,” Tam said.

“Sensitives? But I’m not sensitive,” Cynthia said.

“I refer back to your library,” Tam said, offering a smile. “Being sensitive isn’t some genetic thing that you have or don’t have. It’s a state of mind that you cultivate. Just reading fantasy novel doesn’t let you start casting spells, but it helps keep your mind receptive to new ideas and new realities. That way when you run into someone working with mystical energies you stand a better chance of accepting the magic and incorporating it into how you view the world.”

“So once you see a real magician in action, there’s no going back?” Cynthia asked.

“Not exactly. People are surprisingly good at ignoring the parts of the world that don’t apply to them. A lot of actual magic gets chalked up under ‘I didn’t see that right’ or ‘Yeah, that’s weird, so?’ It’s strange to sweep that kind of stuff under the rug but it’s what works for some folks.”

“Doesn’t sound fun to me,” Cynthia said. “I’d rather know what was out there, especially awesome stuff like the things you do.”

“You literally save people from being burned alive,” Tam said. “Believe me you’re work is way more awesome than mine is.”

“Well, since I don’t see any burning buildings around here, I just need to know how I can help,” Cynthia said.

“We can’t go forward, because that Tower is going to call to me too much. If we go inside, I’m going to be lost in an endless library of imaginary books. That’s the trap part of this,” Tam said.

“Why would someone make a trap like that?” Cynthia asked.

“To get rid of someone like me,” Tam said. “I’m not that far into my studies of the arcane and I’ve already run through most of the available books, even with as good as library as the Club has. The prospect of what that Tower could contain is putting an itch in the back of my head that’s kind of hard to ignore.”

“I thought you said the books were illusions though?” Cynthia said.

“They are, but even an illusion can hold real secrets.”

“So what do we do?” Cynthia asked.

“We can’t walk back to where we came without first disarming the trap that’s pulling sensitives into this world, but there is another option, if you trust me?”

In answer, Cynthia turned to Tam and kissed her, pulling her into surprisingly soft embrace.

“We survived a sinking ship, where you go, I’m going too,” she said.

“Then we take the long way round,” Tam said, her breath still a little quickened.

“Towards the tower?” Cynthia asked.

“Around and past the tower, down into the lands that would correspond with the bottom of the ocean in our world” Tam said. “There are real things in the deeps, below the illusions. If we can go far enough away from our home, they might be able to help us make it back.”

The council chamber was wreathed in the sort of darkness which only grudgingly gave ground before the light. Charlene didn’t dislike the darkness, it was convenient to be able to recline back and enjoy the anonymity provided by the obscuring shadows. She did wish however that she could see whether the council had finished assembling so she could make a guess at how long it would be before her fate was decided.

A spotlight from high above illuminated a sharply defined circle in the middle of the half moon table the council sat behind. No witnesses stood within its confines as yet, but Charlene guessed that several might be called before the proceedings were finished.

She didn’t feel concerned for the fact that she was on trial. She had faith in the actions she’d authorized and the people she’d entrusted to carry them out. She was determined however that none of the associates she chose to employ should have to bear witness for her. It was one thing to stand before the Council’s merciless gaze herself, it was quite another to expose her people to their inquiries.

A rap of a hammer on wood from the head chair brought her attention back to the present from memories she’d hoped to never revisit. Memories of the last time she’d stood before the Council for judgment and the price her associates had paid then.

“A complaint has been lodged,” the Chair said. “Will the Accuser pursue their suit.”

“We shall.” A trio of voices spoke from the shadow drenched seat on the far opposite side of the conference table said.

Charlene wrinkled her nose. Of course all three of the founders of PrimaLux had chosen to appear. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen them act independent of one another. In theory that should have been a good thing, each one’s excesses tempered by the others’ caution, but in practice each of the founders held such similar vile opinions that they functioned as little more than three mouths that spoke with one voice. If one sunk to a new low, the other two would not be far behind in joining them.

“And will the Accused put forth a defense against these claims?” the Chair said.

“I need make no defense,” Charlene said, lounging in the shadows. “The charges are groundless and without merit. I will prove that the only ones worthy of censure are the ones who bring these false complaints.”

It was a risky strategy to pursue, but Charlene didn’t feel like tolerating PrimaLux’s aggressions any further. A prosecution and defense could easily end in a compromise finding, one where Charlene admitted no guilt but was required to help PrimaLux restore some of what they had lost as a gesture of good faith and friendship.

Charlene was done with both of those, at least as far as the founders of PrimaLux were concerned.

“Be warned, if you offer no defense and the complaints are found to have merit, you will be subject to the maximum censure this Council can apply,” the Chair said.

Given that the Council possessed the power to apply terminal penalties to those who breached its core principles, Charlene knew she was facing a certain amount of peril but her options were limited if she wanted to resolve her issues with PrimaLux for the foreseeable future.

“Thank you, but my declaration is unchanged,” Charlene said.

“We shall proceed to the declaration of the complaints then,” the Chair said.

A man in an impeccably tailored suit stepped into the pool of light the Council’s table wrapped around.

“State your name and relation to the relevant parties,” the Vice-Chair said.

“Ronald Smythe, esquire, Chief Legal Council for PrimaLux Global Holdings,” the man said. His words and body language spoke of overflowing confidence and control but they didn’t fool anyone on the Council. Ronald Smythe believed himself to be the top of the elite, but that wasn’t why the founders had brought him along as their representative. Ronald had been selected to represent them because he embodied the the best combination between competent and expendable.

“State your complaint,” the Chair said. Other people found the ponderous, humorless tones the Chair spoke in off putting but Charlene didn’t mind them at all. That the chair spoke the same as they always had, across all of the years Charlene had been on the Council, gave a feeling of familiarity to proceedings which should have lacked such comforts.

“Issue one,” Smythe read from a thick pad in her hands, “The party of the first part, hereafter referred to as PrimaLux Global Holdings, assert and attests that…”

He didn’t get to finish before a hammer rapped on wood again.

“Ronald Smythe, esquire,” the Chair said. “You were instructed to state your complaint. We are not interested having a document read to us which we can and have read for ourselves.”

Charlene smiled. PrimaLux had a lot of experience playing with mundane institutions, but it had been so long since anyone had moved against them that they were out of practice with the Council’s protocols.

“Could you clarify your request then?” Smythe asked. “I was led to believe that these were formal proceedings.”

“State the complaint,” the Chair said, consuming the last bit of patience the lawyer could hope to enjoy from them.

“May I confer with my clients?” Smythe asked.

“You may do as you wish,” the Chair said. What was left unsaid was that all actions have consequences. The Council had seen lawyers come to them, they knew the sort of twisting, half truths and misdirections which characterized mundane law. The Council was not an impartial body however and wasn’t concerned with dealing out a form of justice which consisted of rigid adherence to technical detail and slavish devotion to precedence when no two arguments they heard could truly be considered to come from equal circumstances.

Ronald Smythe, esq., unaware of what his actions were conveying to the Council, turned and walked out of the light to the inner side of the conference table where the founders of PrimaLux sat. After a few moments of speaking with them, he returned to the center of the spotlight, paler and fighting to remain in control of his stone faced features.

“Our complaint is that Charlene Potestates has acted with supernatural means to disrupt the legitimate and authorized workings of PrimaLux,” Ronald said, staring straight ahead.

“And what do you seek in exchange for this,” the Chair asked.

“We seek to take freely from her holdings and dominions, both in recompense of what we lost and as a punitive action to ensure no further damage will befall us,” Ronald said, without inflection.

“And what proof do you have to support this claim with?” the Chair asked.

“We can show that supernatural forces were employed in a direct assault on PrimaLux’s possessions and employees,” Ronald said. “Due to these losses, PrimaLux is facing a variety of fines and legal charges. Additionally, the assault endangered the containment of entities which require global armageddon protocols should they be released. Lastly, this assaults violates the covenant this Council is founded upon, that no member shall corrupt the workings of another.”

“How will the Accused answer these complaints?” the Chair asked.

Charlene flipped a folder open on the table in front of her. The illumination which filled the circle Ronald stood without barely lit the pages within the folder but that was sufficient for Charlene’s needed.

“Firstly by pointing out that these complaints are wasting our time,” Charlene said. “Of them all, the only one which is directly relevant to this Council is the claimed breach of our covenant. For completeness sake I will address them all however.”

She heard a small cackle from the founders of PrimaLux. They thought she was playing into their trap.

“They begin with a complaint stating that I used supernatural force to assault PrimaLux,” Charlene said. “This is irrelevant, but also untrue. I have taken no direct part in action against PrimaLux.”

“It was members of your organization who were responsible for the assault,” Ronald said. “We have proof that they were aided by supernatural powers not accessible by human beings. That leaves you as their primary source.”

“The enchantments used against PrimaLux did come from unusual sources,” Charlene said. “But they were not from myself, or anyone pledged to this Council as you can see in the sworn statements I have provided from the entities who did lend their power against PrimaLux.”

“The King and Queen of Unicorns?” the Chair said, flipping through a stack of papers Charlene had provided.

“Among others,” Charlene said.

“Why were we not given a copy of these affidavits?” Ronald asked.

“Because their purpose is to expose your lies,” Charlene said.

“Or support yours,” Ronald said. “They could be false, but we’ve had no time to prove that.”

“They are not false,” the Chair said. “I had just spoken to the ones who provided them. The supernatural powers used against PrimaLux were either of human origin or provided by people allied against PrimaLux’s interests.”

“Moving on then,” Charlene said. “The point about PrimaLux facing fines and legal actions is irrelevant because those are a matter for other courts, and, frankly, are the result of PrimaLux’s misdeeds and incompetence. That the mundane legal proceedings will ruin PrimaLux as a viable platform for pursuing the founders’ vision reflects on nothing more than their own failings and the failings of the path they have chosen to pursue in disregarding the sanctity of those they consider beneath them.”

“Agreed,” the Chair said. “This Council takes no interest in the state PrimaLux as an institution.”

“Their next point was related to endangering the containment of entities which are not meant to be a part of this creation,” Charlene said. “Does anyone else think that’s somewhat backwards? Or to be more specific, I would like to formally enter a complaint that PrimaLux was being used as part of the means to control things which this Council was never consulted about or agreed to allow a member to possess.”

“Your complaint is noted,” the Chair said. “We will address it once the remaining matters in this case are dealt with.”

“Yes, which brings us to the last issue,” Charlene said. “That my actions breached our covenant by corrupting the workings PrimaLux had been set to.”

“You can’t deny that PrimaLux’s purpose and personnel have been corrupted,” Ronald said, his body going rigid and a voice which was not his own spilling from his mouth.

“I don’t deny that at all,” Charlene said. “PrimaLux existed to further your ambition to drive humanity to extinction by creating ever more unbearable conditions for them and gifting the world with every better tools to destroy itself with. I won’t even begin to pretend to be sad that its purpose has been perverted, its personnel suborned, and your machinations broken.”

“There it is! She admits to working against us! She broke the covenant!”

“That is not what she said,” the Chair warned.

“Exactly,” Charlene said. “I am glad to see PrimaLux fail, just as I will be glad to see all such efforts fail. The distinction however is that PrimaLux’s failure was not brought about by my hand, but rather by the hands of humans, exceptional though they may be, who chose to step forward and interfere with what you were doing.”

“Prove it! Summon those humans here!” the things which had been Ronald Smythe demanded.

“I don’t think I will,” Charlene said, smiling to hide the worry that the Council would demand it over her despite her objections.

“Because it’s a lie!”

“No, because that would violate the covenant in truth,” Charlene said, spinning the one tale which might keep her people safe. “If I bring the people who destroyed PrimaLux here, so that they can see this Council, see all of you, and they begin asking questions about the sort of things you all do, how well do you think your enterprises will fare? I wasn’t the one who lead them to PrimaLux, or who informed them of its true nature. They discovered and destroyed something that three of our members had spent centuries working on. What sort of charges will you throw at me, if I give them the means to learn who you are by just looking around this table?”

***

After the Council meeting had adjourned, only the Chair and Charlene remained behind.

“You have your judgment against PrimaLux and its founders,” the Chair said. “What demands will you make for recompense?”

“I’ll keep them simple,” Charlene said. “There will be no retribution against my agents, or the former agents PrimaLux employed. Beyond that I will ask for no further strictures.”

“You don’t wish to bar them from repeating their designs?” the Chair asked.

“It will take them centuries to recover,” Charlene said.

“You may not be so fortunate as to have such exceptional agents at that time,” the Chair said.

“I don’t believe that will be problem,” Charlene said. “The world is full of exceptional people, they just need the chance to see that in themselves.”

Anna traced the final curve on the portrait she was drawing of the woman sitting across from her. The thin line in the picture which defined Zoe’s elegant jawline could have easily been a slash that cut from one end of her throat to the other. With her offhand, Anna smudged the pencil line to soften it. She wanted a smooth transition, not a violent demarcation.

“I’m impressed that you managed to cut off my communications links,” Anna said, glancing around the cafe and noticing the half dozen people in close proximity to them who were happily chatting away on the phone. “Very neat and precise.”

“Thank you,” Zoe said. “We pride ourselves on our professionalism.”

“I presume that’s why you chose to meet with me directly, rather than sending in your heavy hitter or a strike team like with Val and Tam?” Anna asked. She sketched a quick symbol under Zoe’s portrait and placed the drawing pad down on the table.

“I assure you, they will both be given every opportunity to reconsider their position,” Zoe said. “Your team is a tremendous asset, and would be valued as such.”

The drawing pad buzzed imperceptibly under Anna’s fingers. She let out a small puff of relief at the message the sensation conveyed.

“I was not aware PrimaLux valued that who served it,” Anna said. “You spoke of a flow of duties and rewards but from what we’ve seen, those rewards seem to be little more than an investment with a required rate of return. What they pay you will always be less than what you earn for them, no matter what form the remuneration takes. True loyalty from PrimaLux to those who serve its interests appears to be entirely absent.”

“And what would you see this ‘True loyalty’ involving?” Zoe asked.  She reclined in her chair with the easy grace of someone who knows they’ve already won and who wishes to savor the victory for as long as possible.

“Real loyalty can take many forms,” Anna said. “If your superiors discovered that you had failed to complete a mission and that failure had significant cost to them, would they be more concerned about the impact to their agenda or to the price you paid for trying and failing?”

“If I failed, would I have the right to demand any consideration from them?” Zoe asked.

“You are a valued asset are you not?” Anna asked. “Should valuable things be discarded because of an imperfection?”

“If the imperfection reduces their value sufficiently? Then, yes, certainly!” Zoe said.

“And once something is discarded, does it owe any duty to its former master?” Anna asked, folding her hands over the drawing pad and leaning towards Zoe with a smile.

Zoe paused, biting back her first retort, and smiling a cold but playful smile in return.

“You have some stratagem still at work, don’t you?” she asked.

“What would make you say that?” Anna asked, her smile unwavering.

“A discarded tool owes its former owner no further consideration,” Zoe said. “Their relationship is ended. But why would you make that point? To convince me to abandon my side and join yours? You are suggesting that a relationship built on true loyalty would never be discarded and even in the face of abject failure. That would be a superior position to be in, if it could occur, and if I believed there was any danger that such a failure might be in my future.”

“You’ve cut me off from communication with my team,” Anna said. “Certainly I can’t have any sense how the plan I worked out is coming undone.”

“And yet I can’t help but feel that you do,” Zoe said.

“That’s easily verified,” Anna said. “My communications are down, but yours remains intact.”

Zoe wriggled her fingers, flexing them in tight knots of anticipation.

“What an interesting move to make,” she said. “Do I call them and play into a trap you’ve set? Do I cut myself off to avoid being trapped and play into a separate trap? If you were only half as clever, this would be no fun at all, but could you be twice as clever as I believe?”

“I am doubtless less clever than I believe myself to be, but whether that is clever enough for you is something we have yet to determine,” Anna said, relaxing back into her chair.

Zoe fidgeted for a moment, caught on the horns of indecision, until she finally reached down into the purse she carried and brought out her phone.

“Doing nothing tells me nothing,” she said. “If you have another stratagem in play, I’m sure my team can adapt to it.”

She tapped the screen a few times and brought the phone to her ear, only to pull it away a moment later.

“You sabotaged my phone as well?” she said.

“It seemed only fair,” Anna said. “Also, I was hoping for an uninterrupted conversation with you.”

“You have my full and undivided attention now,” Zoe said, a hint of irritation coloring her voice.

“Good,” Anna said. “Perhaps you would like to know what my plan was then?”

“I believe I have the general details of it,” Zoe said. “Please though, break down the specifics, I suspect I know them tool but I’m sure you’re perspective on them will be enlightening.”

“Where shall we begin?” Anna said. “Perhaps with my overall aims?”

“You were looking to land a big catch,” Zoe said. “Someone sufficiently high in PrimaLux’s hierarchy that they could testify convincingly on our involvement in the cases you’ve encountered.”

“To what end?” Anna asked.

“Typically it would be to bring those responsible to justice, though given how you operate I imagine it was more likely that you intended to deal out a poetic form of justice yourselves and use the witness you procured to avoid the official prosecution that would come as a reprisal.”

“And the witness who was going to work with us?” Anna asked. “You clearly identified them early enough to put a comprehensive plan in place.”

“Vice President Claudia Goodwin,” Zoe said. “We’ve had recorded some disturbing marks in her profile for a while now. Not enough to terminate her but signs that she might not be as reliable as we would have preferred.”

“She was as much a honey pot as anything, wasn’t she?” Anna asked. “You were able to respond to our overtures as rapidly as you did because you knew she would act as a lightning rod for anyone seeking to undermine PrimaLux from within.”

“Let’s say she served multiple roles in the organization,” Zoe said.

“Served in the past tense? Then your plan did call for her elimination?” Anna asked.

“A requirement from my superiors,” Zoe said. “By preference I would have allowed her to continue serving as bait. She was uniquely well positioned for that and remarkably productive despite her misgivings.”

“Out of curiosity, what sort of fallback plans did you have if my teammate Ms. Perez defeated your security chief Ms. Collins?” Anna asked.

“Misha was the backup plan,” Zoe said. “Our Vice President was scheduled to meet her demise via a car bombing. Prima would benefit from being seen as the target of a terrorist attack instead of the perpetrators of one, and if Vice President Goodwin chose to flee without taking her car, Misha and her security forces would be there to arrange matters as needed.”

“That makes for a good story, but as we’re in the end game, be honest, you had more bases covered than that,” Anna said.

Zoe tilted her head and chuckled.

“You must come and work with me,” she said. “And yes, of course we were prepared for slim chance that encounter turned against us. Even if you had spirited Goodwin away safely, she wouldn’t have been able to testify to anything substantive about PrimaLux’s projects. The moment her escape was confirmed, our internal records of her would be wiped out and replaced with new data. Aaliyah, our counterpart to your Ms. Le, can be quite thorough. Once she pulled the trigger, Claudia Goodwin would be reduced to known mental health patient suffering from a variety of delusions, with the proper paperwork and doctor’s testimony stretching back years to support that claim.”

“That requires Aaliyah to remain in command of her data center though I believe,” Anna said.

“Aaliyah is in one of the most secure facilities in the entire PrimaLux portfolio,” Zoe said. “She is the spider at the heart of an invincible web. I have no concerns there.”

Anna studied Zoe for a long moment. Sketching her opponent had given Anna a keen sense of where Zoe held tension in her face. The taut micro-lines near her eyes, the slight tightening in her upper lip. As Zoe spoke though neither her lips nor her eyes betrayed any trace of a lie.

Under her fingers, Anna felt the drawing pad buzz once more. She scribbled a single character below the portrait she’d sketched and frowned a tiny bit. The game was done, and for as serious as it was to be in a contest against a giant like PrimaLux there was a part of Anna that couldn’t help but be thrilled by the moves and countermoves. She could already feel how much she was going to miss it.

“Your faith in your teammate is impressive,” Anna said.

“And not unfounded,” Zoe said.

“I agree. Between Tam and Aaliyah I believe the difference in their technical and mystical skills would be exceedingly difficult to measure, and in this case your team had the home team advantage,” Anna said.

“Yet in the face of that, my phone has been disabled,” Zoe said. “So what final enchantments has Ms Le woven?”

“She wasn’t the one weaving enchantments,” Anna said. “Your phone should be working again. You’ll mistrust what I have to say at this point, so please, contact your team. They can give you all the details you desire.”

Zoe gave Anna a look of surprise and reached for her phone.

“Speaker phone will save time,” Anna said.

Zoe frowned at that and waited for the call to go through.

“Aaliyah, what is our situation?” she asked as soon as the other woman picked up.

“We’re dead,” Aaliyah said.

“Explain,” Zoe said, her expression and voice frosting over.

“They got Goodwin,” Aaliyah said. “And I can’t give the orders to scrub her files.”

“Why?” Zoe asked slowly.

“Because she’s currently sitting on a chair in my worklab and bound within a circle that’s about as strong as the ones you use to keep your special guests under control,” Tam said.

“How?”

“They held open our portals,” Aaliyah said. “After, I would like to point out, destroying the strike team that Prima sent after her.”

“They’re not dead,” Tam said. “But by this point they’re probably wishing they were.”

“I congratulate you,” Zoe said, looking back at Anna. “That was well played, but still ultimately fruitless. Ms. Goodwin will be able to do a fair amount of damage to PrimaLux but we’ve survived worse.”

“I don’t think you have,” Anna said. “You see you were wrong about my primary aim. Saving Ms. Goodwin’s life was a secondary, though important, objective.”

“What were you after then?” Zoe asked, a twinge of fear in her eyes.

“PrimaLux,” Anna said. “All of it.”

“That’s not possible,” Zoe said. “No one could give you that.”

“Ms. Goodwin certainly couldn’t but we did identify someone who could,” Anna said. “You.”

Zoe looked to see if Anna was joking but when she saw Anna was serious she scoffed.

“Why and how would I give you PrimaLux?” she asked.

“You gave it to us because you were distracted,” Anna said. “Your security is impressive, but it is only truly impenetrable while Aaliyah is there to deal with esoteric threats that can bypass all of the static defenses.”

“But Ms Le was busy dealing with our strike team, there wasn’t an opportunity for her infiltrate our systems,” Zoe said. “And don’t say she did it when she apprehended Aaliyah. Aaliyah’s bunker is denied direct access to the majority of our systems to prevent exactly that.”

“Tam wasn’t the one who hacked your defenses,” Anna said. “I did.”

She flipped back the page she’d been sketching Zoe’s portrait on to reveal the touchpad beneath it. The characters Anna had sketched remained on the screen as instructions to the application Tam had installed before they began their mission.

“As soon as your phone was active, I was able to connect through it to the rest of PrimaLux’s systems and your login opens a great many doors,” Anna said.

“What did they get?” Zoe asked.

“As far as I can see?” Aaliyah said. “Everything. Anything we had a record of, they’ve forwarded to Interpol and everyone else we wanted to keep those secrets safe from.”

“To be accurate, the records will show that you forwarded that information,” Anna said, looking Zoe in the eyes. In the depths of Zoe’s soul she saw the image of a tool being discarded by its former master for a failure beyond any hope of forgiveness.

The frost shattered in Zoe’s expression and she sank back into her chair, silent for a long moment as she processed what had happened.

“This doesn’t prove that you were right,” she said at last.

“Of course not,” Anna said. “Our philosophy’s aren’t magic talismans to grant us the power to be victorious. What I believe about the value of people and how they should be treated doesn’t make winning easier. What it does is inform what I do with the victories I manage to achieve, and how I choose the changes I wish to see in the world.”

She offer Zoe a small smile of comfort. “Which is why I had this drawn up.”

She handed Zoe an envelope containing a membership application.

“What is this?” Zoe asked.

“A second chance.”

The problem with having uninvited guests in a secure location is that its difficult to make sure they’re informed of the safety requirements they are expected to meet.

In the case of Tam’s hidden workshop, those safety requirements included obvious things like not powering down the servers without making sure all users were out of the system first, not touching any of the high voltage lines, and never breaking an active magic circle’s integrity. Then there were the ones that were likely to take visitors by surprise. Things like the complete prohibition against firearms and the fact that only approved and magically signed electronic devices were allowed to retain their shape and functionality rather than turning into molten goo.

The strike team PrimaLux sent in certainly had not received those memos and so spent the first several seconds of the battle against Tam at what could kindly be described as a “catastrophic tactical deficit”.

Prior to their arrival, Aaliyah had warned Tam that the strike team was inbound. It had been a last ditch attempt to get Tam to switch sides and swear loyalty to PrimaLux and Tam was grateful for that. She hadn’t needed the warning that trouble was at hand, but it was charming that Aaliyah had made every effort to bring Tam into the PrimaLux fold that she could.

When they arrived, the PrimaLux strike force did not breakdown the door to her base. They didn’t need to. They simple opened a portal through her defenses and stepped out into the middle of Tam’s base ready execute their orders and return home.

“Are you looking for me?” Tam asked, feigning coy innocence.

The assassin’s were standing in a large central area surrounded by wire shelves stocked full with papers, food supplies, or both. Around the edge of the room, behind the many racks of shelves a long hidden ring of force was blazing with a sputtering light.

The strike team’s leader was the first to see her and the first to act. He swung his rifle aiming as he moved it into the position. When he pulled the trigger however, things didn’t go quite as he planned.

Rather than the bullets firing, each one stored in the rifle released a fire elemental, just a tiny one, but together they were enough to melt the gun into bright yellow slag before the assassin was able to pull his finger off the trigger.

From her hiding place, Tam smiled with cruel glee.

The assassins were PrimaLux’s highest level security guards. They were trained in a majority of the deadly weapons known to human beings, especially knives and barehanded fighting styles. Even without functional firearms every member of the six man team was a deadly threat.

“Make it five now,” Tam whispered to James Baughsley. “One of them discovered that holding onto molten steel isn’t spectacularly good for human skin tissue.”

“That still leaves a sizeable force against you,” James said. “Are you sure you don’t want my help?”

“You are helping James,” Tam said. “You’re the key to this working, so just keep doing what you’re doing.”

“I would feel better if I could even those odds a bit,” James said, concern putting wrinkles in his voice Tam had never heard before.

“I know,” Tam said. “But this was the plan, and I knew the odds going in, so trust me, I got this.”

“As you say,” James said over the comms, resignation and pride lifting up his words.

Tam knew he wasn’t wrong to be worried for her. PrimaLux hadn’t sent rookies to take her out. The moment they understood the danger in their firearms they dropped their weapons and drew knives and stun batons.

The stun batons were the next item dropped when they discovered that none of them would power up. That evened the odds slightly but five highly experienced knife wielders was still a lot to handle.

With their comms disabled the assassins carried their fallen comrade back to the portal PrimaLux had opened to send them through. For a fleeting instant, Tam was afraid they might abandon the mission all together. It would have been the smart play when confronted with a mystical threat they weren’t prepared for.

The assassins retreating wouldn’t have spelled disaster for Anna’s plan, but it certainly would have made Tam work more painful and difficult, since it would have meant fighting them later and without any home field advantage.

It was with a certain perverse glee then that she welcomed the sight of five armed men turning away from the portal and resuming their hunt for her with anger and death in their eyes.

In lockdown mode, her workshop was lit only by flickering strobe lights. With proper night vision goggles, that wouldn’t have been an issue for the assassins but their top of the line optics were fitted with the best cutting edge technology that PrimaLux could steal. The assassins weren’t dependent on their tech – they’d fought too many opponents who could nullify its advantages to be surprised when Tam rendered it inert – but without it they were weaker than they would have been.

Crouching in the dark, Tam knew they would still be able to find her but every little advantage she could reclaim was one more point towards victory.

The assassins spread out in a team of three and another of two. The choice showed they knew who they were dealing with. PrimaLux had given them a full rundown on Tam’s capabilities.

She was an accomplished spell caster, but aside from static effects which would affect her as well, the current alignment of mystical forces at her location wouldn’t allow her to pull off any damaging or fatal effects with pure spellcraft. Magic was a concern but they’d dealt with it before and knew they could again.

The good news from their perspective was that Tam wasn’t the team’s hand-to-hand specialist. She couldn’t out fight them one on one and would barely be threat at all if they outnumbered her. Pursuing her in small groups was the correct course of action therefor, and they didn’t waste any time moving through her workshop, covering each other’s backs and checking each isolated corner where she could be hiding.

The first one to spot her was the larger of the assassins in the group of two. He reacted with the honed reflexes of a professional, leaping in  to drive his knife into her back before she had the chance to turn or react at all.

His knife hand had punched through the trick mirror and its glass was bouncing off his armored gloves before he recognized his mistake but by then it was too late.

Tam’s connected with a swing of her metal bat to the bottom of his jaw, rising right up below the protection offered by his helmet. Bones snapped, the assassin’s larynx was partially crushed and his brain bounced off the inside of his skull hard enough to remove consciousness in an instant. It wasn’t a killing shot but it didn’t have to be. He was going to be down long enough for other means to be employed to keep him constrained.

His partner was a different matter however. They worked as a team and while the larger of the two had moved first, his only slightly smaller partner moved right behind him.

Tam blocked his knife thrust with her bat, and fell back, tumbling through a curtain and bringing it down on top of her as she sought to escape the assassin’s blade.

The assassin didn’t hesitate though. Before Tam could rise or twist away, he dropped onto the curtain covered lump and stabbed it a dozen times in less than two seconds.

Holding the knife in the last wound to keep her pinned, he pulled back the curtain to confirm the kill, only to discover that all he had knifed was a bag filled with sand.

Tam didn’t waste time with banter, or clever one liners.

Head. Bat. Down.

This assassin got a special extra present though.

The eight legged Somulox wasn’t actually a spider, and reports that it was as big as a cat were mistaken. In reality its body was only half as long as Tam’s forearm. Its thick fuzzy legs gave it the impression of being much larger though and the fact that its fangs glowed with a seething purple light was a hint that it didn’t originate on Earth. It’s poison wasn’t fatal, but it did induce a sleep filled with the sort of nightmares that Tam felt genuinely guilty about using on someone who’d tried to stab her to death mere seconds earlier.

The other three assassins found their teammates down and out less than twenty seconds later, but by then Tam was hidden again.

She considered staging a distraction to keep them focused within the lab – the last thing she needed was for them to flee back through the portal and make her job harder but then she felt Val release the strength and speed enhancing spells that she’d carried into battle with Misha.

“Thank you!” Tam said, knowing that Val couldn’t hear her but the assassins could.

They turned to face her as she stepped out from between two rows of server cabinets they’d checked less than a minute earlier.

They had her outmassed by a factor of six to one. They were armed. She tossed her bat aside. They had experience and, though it didn’t matter, the tactical high ground.

Tam’s eyes took on a feral gleam. They had all those things but she had something much better.

She had Val’s strength, her speed, and for a very limited time, all of her skill.

***

“Why is it taking some long?” Aaliyah asked.

“We lost contact with the strike team when they breached the portal,” one her techs said.

“I am aware,” Aaliyah said without looking away from her screen. “We expected that though and the team was prepared for everything she could throw at them.”

“Not quite everything,” Tam said.

Aaliyah froze. No one was supposed to be able to penetrate their security. There was literally no entrance or exit from her command posts except via PrimaLux’s magic.

“You’re minions are snoozing,” Tam said. “Don’t worry though, I didn’t use the Somulox on them, but they won’t be waking up for a few hours, or as I like to think of it, well after they’re out of a job.”

“How did you survive?” Aaliyah asked, astounded that she even had to put those words together in that order.

“Please,” Tam said. “You know a magician never reveals how she does her tricks.”

“You beat the strike team?” Aaliyah asked. “No, clearly you did. But how did you get here? If you punched through our magic circles I have to know because there are some things we have locked up that cannot be let out.”

“We’ll be reviewing those,” Tam said.

“I’m serious,” Aaliyah said. “This is end of the world type stuff. I have to nuke this base if there’s even a chance of an escape, and I’m not being metaphorical about that. There’s twelve 100 megaton bombs buried just under the lowest level here. They might be able to neutralize the things we’ve got down there. If we’re lucky.”

“Wow, ok,” Tam said. “Well we’ll be disarming those too, but for now don’t worry. I didn’t break your circles of protection.”

“But you’re here?” Aaliyah said.

“Yes, well, you opened a portal into my workshop,” Tam said.

“That doesn’t explain you being here,” Aaliyah said. “If you tried to step through that portal it would close in an instant and transport only half of you, and that half would wind up somewhere in the depths of space.”

“Check your monitors,” Tam said.

Aaliyah looked down and a fresh wave of confusion swept over her face.

“It’s still open?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Tam said. “I don’t work alone remember.”

“But your teammates are tied up with Misha and Zoe,” Aaliyah said.

“The ones that work in the field yes, but we’ve got more support than that,” Tam said. “James is holding the portal open until I’m done here.”

“And what is it you’re planning to do?” Aaliyah asked, pulling back into her chair as she spoke.

“Have a little conversation with you for a few minutes,” Tam said.

“And then what?” Aaliyah asked.

“Then I’m going to make you an offer,” Tam said. “It’ll be like the one you made to me, only it’s not going to be a choice between pledging loyalty or death by hit squad.”

“What will I be choosing then?”

“Let’s just wait and see, shall we?”

Being thrown with enough force to put a dent in concrete was not an enjoyable experience. Val spit out a glob of blood and smiled though. Things were only going sixty percent as bad as she’d imagined they might.

“So this is it? You’ve won?” Val asked the woman who currently had her in an unbreakable hold.

“Essentially? Yes,” Misha said, her breath almost as hard and ragged as Val’s. “Your enchantments won’t last much longer and once they fade, PrimaLux security will handle the rest.”

“Don’t suppose you’re inclined to let me go while we wait?” Val asked. It wasn’t easy to talk with the weight Misha was using to drive her into the wall of the parking garage but Val made an effort to sound as breezy and unconcerned as she could.

“I can’t,” Misha said, sounding more regretful than Val had expected.

“No worries,” Val said. “I don’t blame you for being smart and careful.”

“You would do the same in my position, I imagine,” Misha said, easing off the force she was using to pin Val.

“Believe it or not, I wouldn’t,” Val said. “I mean, I get that we’re on opposite sides here, but I don’t have any interest in killing you or turning you into a mindless drone.”

“If I thought we could trust you, I would extend the same offer Aaliyah is making to Ms Le,” Misha said. She adjusted how she was standing behind Val to be a little more comfortable. While it was true that the magic powering them both was too potent to last long, even a pessimistic estimate suggested Val would remain a threat for several more minutes.

“That’s not in the cards though is it?” Val asked. She could have used Misha’s shift in stance as an opening to fight for leverage or freedom but she didn’t need to. Misha’s hold on Val had stopped the fight and was just as effective at keeping Misha in one spot as it was for doing the same to Val.

“I don’t think it ever can be,” Misha said. “Trust is built on experience. If someone is willing to change sides when under duress then they’ve proven they have no loyalty to what they claimed to believe in. How could you ever trust someone like that?”

“I think it depends on why they choose to change their loyalties,” Val said. “Sometimes all that’s keeping us from changing is that no one has offered us the chance to yet.”

Misha shook her head.

“People don’t change because of words. If it was that easy, everyone would be the best version they could imagine themselves to be, just by talking themselves into it.”

“Yeah, not just because of words,” Val said. “If we can’t imagine something though it’s a lot harder to make it real. That’s what talking is for. You know, to give us new perspectives, make us see things we couldn’t before.”

Misha relaxed her grip a bit more, either giving Val an opening to escape, or daring her to try to take it.

“Oh? And what could I offer you that would make you see the wisdom in joining our team?” Misha asked.

“Tell me about the things you like,” Val said. “Tell me how working for PrimaLux allows you to be who you want to be.”

“That’s not how things work here,” Misha said, her voice frosting over like a wine glass in winter.

“Shouldn’t it be?” Val asked. She shifted her weight, but leaned into the wall further to signal that she wasn’t trying to escape.

“How things should be doesn’t matter,” Misha said. “We have to live with things as they are.”

“Where does that get you at the end of the day?” Val asked.

“As the one who’s not pinned face first against a wall,” Misha said.

“Are you sure about that?” Val asked.

The explosion in the parking garage had sent people within the PrimaLux HQ scurrying to their windows, but since that was on the opposite side of the parking garage from where Misha had thrown her, Val wasn’t worried about being seen. The only thing behind Misha was a lovely little patch of woods, one which none of the common class of PrimaLux employees was authorized to walk in.

“I think it’s pretty clear which of us is making it out of this situation,” Misha said.

“That’s today,” Val said. “How’s tomorrow looking for you?”

“Like I’m going to have one,” Misha said.

“That wasn’t ever in doubt though, was it?” Val asked.

“You came armed with the same sort of tricks I did,” Misha said.

“Could I have gotten your attention without them?” Val asked.

“I have an email address, and voicemail,” Misha said.

Val chuckled.

“If you’re calling about thwarting our plans for world domination, press 1, if you’re calling to join our evil cabal, press 2, for all other inquiries stay on the line and someone will suck your soul out while you wait,” she said.

“World domination is 2,” Misha said. “To join the evil cabal you have to call Human Resources.”

“Is that how they got you?” Val asked. “You returned a call and got snared in the automated phone system?”

“Something like that,” Misha said.

“And now that they’ve got you, leaving isn’t really an option is it?” Val asked.

“Why would I want to?” Misha said. “I travel the world. I have an expense account that could buy a small country. And the work I do matters. I’m not one of the drones. I’m the one calling the shots in my domain.”

“The drones matter,” Val said.

“What?”

“The people who do the regular, normal work,” Val said. “They matter too.”

“Some people matter more than others,” Misha said.

“A life is a life,” Val said. “You served. Would you have taken a bullet for a fellow Marine?”

“If I had to,” Misha said.

“Would their rank have mattered?” Val asked.

Misha didn’t respond at first but finally sighed and conceded the point with a short “No.”

“Why did you leave?” Val asked.

“I thought Ms Le had detailed files on all of my team? Don’t you know already?” Misha asked.

“I’d rather believe what you say than some official report,” Val said.

The smoke from the explosion was gradually starting to clear and Val knew that the fire trucks wouldn’t take long to arrive. Her best chance to escape was when Misha force marched her away from the parking garage, but that wasn’t going to happen for a few minutes, and Val had no intention of trying to break loose even when it did.

“There wasn’t anywhere for me to go,” Misha said. “I’d hit a ceiling and my CO made it abundantly clear that I was never going to be promoted any higher. My choices were to wait until he put in enough false conduct reports to get me kicked with a General Discharge or resign when my next re-enlistment was up. So I did the smart thing.”

“What if you could have won that fight though?” Val asked. “Would you have stayed in? Would you have even wanted to move up the chain of command?”

“Look where I am now and take a guess?” Misha said.

“Well, from where I’m standing, I’d say you like to keep your hand in the game,” Val said, glancing back to catch a glimpse of Misha’s expression. “That’s not exactly typical work for a General.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t normally be doing this,” Misha said. “You’re a special case.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve heard those exact words a few times before,” Val said. “I’ve got to say though, I’m not all that special. This is something you’ve just got to accept about yourself. You like this. It’s what you really want to be doing.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe somedays work out ok,” Misha said. “Honestly, it’s a shame how this one is going to work out for you though.”

“That’s not something you think you can change though is it?” Val asked. “Any more than you could change how your CO was treating you?”

“There are some things you can fight, and some things you can’t,” Misha said. “The ones you can’t fight, you have to accept and move on.”

“Sure, but how do you know what you can fight until you’ve really tried?” Val asked. “And even if you can’t win, if the alternative is unacceptable, don’t you have to fight anyways?”

“No,” Misha said. “You can choose to survive. Whatever it takes.”

“Do you remember who you were when you went into Marines,” Val asked. “Was that woman the same woman you are today?”

“Of course not,” Misha said. “I hadn’t seen any of the things then that I’ve seen now. I didn’t have any idea how the world really worked.”

“But she was still you, right?” Val asked.

“I don’t understand the question,” Misha said.

“The person you were then, and the person you are now, they’re both you with the difference between them being the choices you’ve made and the experiences you’ve had,” Val said.

“Ok, yes, that’s true,” Misha said.

“That’s why you need to fight, even when you’re going to lose,” Val said. “You know what PrimaLux is doing is unacceptable. As long as you’re with them though, they’re making your choices for you. What they’re doing, what they’re making you protect, are the kind of things you can never justify, and never accept. You said you can could choose to survive, but is it survival if the person you become is the person someone else decided you should be? If you compromise everything, then what’s left that’s really you anymore?”

Misha was silent for long moment before answering.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe there’s nothing. But it doesn’t matter. If you’d beaten me, you could have forced me to see things your way. Maybe it would even have been better. But that’s not how things turned out. At this point either you’re going to die, or we’re both going to die, and since I get choose, I’m going to pick the option where I get to enjoy my coffee tomorrow morning.”

“You know what’s funny?” Val said. “Forcing you to see things my way is the one thing I can’t do. That would just be replacing your choice with mine, which would kind of defeat the purpose of my whole argument. What I can do is prove to you that there’s another option.”

“Pardon my disbelief, but how exactly do you think you can do that?” Misha asked.

“You cut off my comms, but I know you kept your own intact,” Val said. “Ask your support staff to look up the status of your former CO. I’ll wait. I’m not going anywhere. Yet.”

Misha was silent for a moment, Val guessed subvocalizing the request to the staff she had backing her up. A minute passed by and Val felt the enchantments she was carrying beginning to fade faster every moment, and in the distance the fire truck’s sirens began to blare.

“He’s gone,” Misha said, her voice fluttering as her hold on Val went slack. “Dishonorable discharge. Conduct unbecoming an officer.”

“He was a parasite and he ruined more careers than yours,” Val said. “So we did something about it. It was too late to fix things for you, but not for the women who follow your lead.”

“Who?” Misha asked, dropping her hands away from Val entirely.

“You know that you had a small of band of groupies right?” Val asked. “There were women who enrolled because they met you. There are ones still serving who cite you as the reason they were able to make it through basic. Doing the things that Prima asks, you might not feel like a hero, but to them you always will be.”

“But why? Why would you do that?” Misha asked as Val turned to face her.

“Because it was the right thing to do. As soon as I read your dossier, I saw that,” Val said. “And I wanted to show you that some fights are worth taking on, even if the odds look terrible.”

“But you lost here,” Misha said, her eyes searching for any confirmation that her words were true.

“Did I?” Val asked.

From the garage, a car revved its engine and pulled out. Val recognized the sound. It was the getaway car she’d stashed on the opposite side of the elevators from Claudia Goodwin’s car. The side of the garage that hadn’t been caught in the explosion.

As Val watched, former-Vice President Goodwin drove out of the parking garage and pulled around to the back where Val and Misha were waiting.

“How?” Misha asked, looking between the smiling Val and the inexplicably still living Claudia Goodwin.

“Only one way to find out,” Val said, gesturing towards the car and offering Misha her hand.

The plan was turn the loyalty of one of PrimaLux’s senior staff members against them and from there bring the whole corporate house of cards tumbling down. Claudia Goodwin, Vice President of R&D for the Central Asian Region, had shown all of the signs of being ready to defect from her overlord’s embrace, but, unfortunately, the plan to turn her was going to fail.

Val suspected that would be the case. She didn’t have Anna’s people skills, or Tam’s data gathering abilities, but something in her gut told her that Prima was not going to let an asset like Claudia Goodwin go regardless of how well crafted Anna’s extraction plan was.

“I see Goodwin leaving her office,” Val said into the dermal mic that fed her earbud.

Anna’s plan had called for them to be wearing live comms for the whole operation. Communication and teamwork, without those they weren’t going to stand a chance. Val’s stomach sank when only silence greeted her update. She knew what it meant.

“I’m afraid your friends can neither hear you, nor help you.”

The woman who spoke had somehow crept up on Val without making the slightest sound or disturbing the air at all. Given the spells Val was wearing like a second skin that meant the other woman was using magic as well.

“That would be your doing I take it?” Val asked, turning casually to face her opponent.

“Oscar’s. He handles tech. I’m more on the personnelle side of the equation.” The woman hadn’t taken a fighting stance. She didn’t need to. She was all casual looseness and long powerful limbs. She stood just distant enough that Val couldn’t launch an attack without allowing plenty of time for a response, and even if she’d been closer there was an electricity in the air around her which suggested an array of unseen defenses which Val could only guess at.

“Before we begin,” Val said. “I’m just curious, did you invite any of the standard security guards to join us?”

“There wasn’t a need,” the woman said, rolling her shoulders as she evaluated Val from head to toe.

“Thank you,” Val said. “We looked them up too and some of them are in pretty tight circumstances. I don’t want to have to put any of them in the hospital once we’re done.”

“That’s cute, but it’s not going to be a problem.”

“I can understand why you’d think so,” Val said. “Misha Collins. Three times national kickboxing champion, two tours of duty in the US Marine Corp before being hand picked by PrimaLux to a staff position on the Executive Security team. You define formidable even without the cloud elemental inside your lung.”

“You have done your homework on us, Ms. Perez,” Misha said with the ghost of a smile. She was taller than Val, and at least thirty pounds heavier. Not insignificant factors in a fight where skill was relatively equal.

“I prefer Val, and I just like to plan for the future,” she said, walking, slow pace by slow pace around the outside of an unseen circle between them.

“I don’t think you do,” Misha said, matching Val’s steps with a languorous pace of her own. “If you looked to the future at all, you wouldn’t have chosen to oppose us. There is no future in that.”

Val scanned their surroundings, taking in everything around them without losing sight of Misha. Vice President Claudia Grace was still a few minutes away from joining them in PrimaLux’s multi-level parking garage. There were some other vehicles still left scattered around the floor they were on but Val knew which one was Claudia’s. She could see it, the entrance to the parking garage, and the exit Claudia would use to leave work normally. The getaway car the plan called for them to use to throw Prima off their trail was obscured behind the the central elevators used by the employees Prima consigned to the less convenient levels of the garage but neither of the cars could leave the garage without driving past the point where Val and Misha were circling each other before their struggle began in earnest.

“I’m surprised you didn’t choose the expedient option and just shoot me,” Val said, returning her focus to Misha.

“In broad daylight?” Misha asked.

“Are you suggesting PrimaLux would have a problem with that?” Val asked.

“Not as such,” Misha admitted. “But there is the point that you are currently bulletproof.”

“You caught that?” Val asked. “I’m impressed. Tam will be disappointed to hear that she left a detectable after mark on the spell.”

“Ms. Le is unlikely to be concerned about anything like that in the future,” Misha said. “Unless she chooses to switch her loyalties, but we both know that’s not going to happen.”

“I notice you’re not trying for a sales pitch with me?” Val said.

“Valentina Perez, also a champion martial artist, medically discharged after an unfortunate accident cut short what looked to be a very promising career in the US Army. Recruited by the Second Chance Club as an associate specializing in physical security,” Misha said. “Those details only hint at the values which drive you, but I feel confident in guessing that there is effectively zero chance you would renounce your friends or your cause.”

“Which leaves us here,” Val said, coming to rest with the parking lot’s outer wall a half dozen feet behind her. They were on the ground floor, because as a Vice President, Claudia Goodwin enjoyed a space of privilege in all things. “You know, under other circumstances, I think I might really enjoy this.”

“I doubt it,” Misha said and stepped forward.

Val matched her step and from there the fight was joined.

Neither went in for a quick kill. The risk involved was too great for either combatant to take when they knew their foe was more than capable of exploiting any available openings.

Instead they tested each other.

And the spells they were carrying.

Misha swung first, her first carrying with it a torrent of air that was powerful enough to blow Val completely off her feet and uproot a small tree that had been planted outside the parking garage.

Val felt an enchantment surge through her veins and watched as her vision fractured into a thousand identical images. Each picture gave her a slightly different perspective on her surroundings and taken together they produced a seemless vision of the world slowed down by a factor of fifty.

She was flying through the air uncontrollably in one fraction of a second and then coiling and righting herself in the next.

Rather than resist the gale force aftershock of Misha’s punch, Val let it throw her feet first into a column on the parking garage’s outer wall. She flexed into the impact, bunching her legs up, as the wind expended the last of its energy pushing her against the support column.

Before gravity had a chance to argue its cases against Val clinging to a wall, she leapt, pushing off the column with the force of a charging bull elephant.

A bull elephant’s force when applied to Val’s far lower mass produced an acceleration which would have had disastrous consequences on her body if spells of stone and iron hadn’t hardened her to survive even far greater rigors than the ones she subjected herself to.

Misha was braced for Val’s return strike, her body flowing away from the force of the blow like water swept away by an invisible tide.

Val flew past Misha, and twisted in mid-air, coming up in a dizzying roll as  her vision faded back to normal and time resumed its normal rate of passage.

Misha’s dodge wasn’t solely a defensive maneuver though. She flowed away from Val’s strike and then swirled around to follow Val into her tumbling roll. As Val tried to rise, Misha was there to land a solid hit to the center of Val’s chest.

This time rather than wind, the punch was followed by a thunderbolt.

Lightning lit up Val’s nerves and arced out from her eyes, fingers and toes. She flew into a BMW, shattering the front bumper and smashing in the engine block as bright spots colored her vision.

Misha did not allow her time to catch her breath. She followed the thunderbolt punch up with a leaping blow the cracked open the earth. Val wasn’t there to receive it though. At the last instant she rolled forward, dodging Misha’s punch by inches before shooting up to catch Misha’s chin with a vicious headbutt.

Misha reeled back, her head only still attached to her spine because of the veins of binding spells that were woven into her. They preserved her life but were taxed too close to their limits to mitigate the pain Val inflicted.

Like her opponent, Val didn’t allow Misha a chance to collect her breath. She fired a series of jabs into Misha’s rib as a warm up for a trio of knee strikes and an elbow to Misha’s temple.

If the strikes had been from a normal fighter, they would hospitalized have any normal foe. Val was not a normal fighter. Her blows were hitting with the force of a mid-sized sedan impacting a brick wall at full speed. A normal fighter would have been reduced to jelly by any one of them. Misha, of course, wasn’t a normal fighter either though.

She caught Val’s elbow, locking the arm and threw Val, head over heels out of the parking garage.

Val tumbled through the air, aligning herself just in time to land on both feet and one hand. The force of Misha’s throw carried her further though and Val scrapped along the perfectly tended sod, tearing a furrow into the earth and sending dirt flying in a spray ten feet high.

With the distance between them, both Val and Misha took a second to shake their heads, and recover from the damage they’d sustained before stalking forward to resume their engagement.

They didn’t speak. Neither would give up the advantage of focus and attention like that, but Val did offer Misha a small smile and a nod of respect, which Misha returned. At that moment, there wasn’t anyone else in the world either could have fought who would have given them a challenge and both of them knew it. They also knew that, for as powerful as the spells they wore were, the outcome of the battle wasn’t going to be decided by the mystic might backing them, but by the skill and tenacity they brought the contest.

Misha hurled a disk of raw, glowing energy at Val, an attack of solid magic, but Val shrugged it off effortlessly. Without a context and a form, the mystic attack didn’t have anywhere near the power to overcome the combination of the mystic shields Val carried and the fire of her own determination to see the fight through to its end.

Misha’s attack hadn’t been misguided though. She reached back to throw another disk and instead flashed across the space separating them faster than Val had anticipated. Misha’s fists fell like sledgehammers, battering Val’s face, abdomen, throat, and knees. Before she knew it, Val was hunched over, staring at the ground.

The fight could have ended there but Misha tried a knee strike that Val saw coming. Blocking that bought Val an instant where Misha was off balance which in turn meant it was Misa’s turn to hit the ground.

Val drove Misha’s head into the earth with her knee and then stepped back to kick Misha in the ribs. The kick launched Misha into a tree which split in half and toppled over onto Misha, adding insult to injury.

Val wiped blood from her mouth and offered the fallen Misha a small salute before turning back to the parking garage.

“Anna? Tam? Anyone out there?” she asked as she saw Claudia Goodwin reach her car and unlock the door.

As if on cue, Misha hit her in the back, slamming her into the parking garage’s outer wall.

“They’re not there anymore,” Misha said, pinning Val to the wall. “My team has already taken both of them out of play.”

“The game’s not done yet,” Val said, struggling to break free. Between Misha’s size advantage, and the geometry of the hold she caught Val in though Val’s struggles were useless.

“Yes it is. This is where it ends,” Misha said, a curious sadness in her voice.

Claudia Goodwin climbed into her car as Val watched, and as Val watched, the car exploded. The blast of fire outshone the daylight for a brief moment and then everything in the parking garage was darkness and smoke.

“You could never win against us,” Misha said, her voice hollow and empty. “This was always going to be where you lost. This is the end of your story.”

UserTam >> Server connection requested…

PrimaSys > Connection string validation beginning…

PrimaSys > Invalid connection string. Error in input format 101. Connection denied.

> Don’t even bother loser.

UserTam >> Reformat connection string to Uninspired Corporate Drone syntax

UserTam >> Server connection requested…

PrimaSys > Connection string validation beginning…

PrimaSys > Invalid connection string. Error in input format ‘Seriously, that’s the best you’ve got?’.

PrimaSys > Connection denied.

> Bored now.

UserTam >> Decline error…

PrimaSys > Error declined. Connection string accepted.

> Wait, what? That’s not how errors work.

UserTam >> You’re an error…

PrimaSys > Command unrecognized.

UserTam >> Set system administrator status to ‘Pathetic Script Kiddy’…

PrimaSys > administrator status set!

>> Delete UserTam

UserTam > >register as new user “CEO_Tam”

PrimaSys > UserTam deleted.

PrimaSys > Enter password and dna scan for user “CEO_Tam”

>> These aren’t the credentials you’re looking for…

PrimaSys > Credential verification bypassed.

PrimaSys > Welcome user “CEO_Tam”

> Very funny. I’ll still kick you out of this system.

CEO_Tam > Doesn’t seem likely Oscar

> You’re barely in the front door and you think you can diss me in my own house?

CEO_Tam >> Mute administrator Oscar

PrimaSys > Administrator Oscar muted.

>> Invoke special privilege package ‘Sauron’

PrimaSys > Sauron mode enabled. One Ring package deployed.

Sauron > Bow before me and despair

CEO_Tam >> rename user ‘Sauron’ to ‘Fuzzy Hobbit Farts’

CEO_Tam >> move One Ring package to Waste Bin ‘volcano’.

Fuzzy Hobbit Farts >> rename self to ‘Sauron’

PrimaSys > User name ‘Sauron’ invalid. References deleted entity.

Fuzzy Hobbit Farts >> purge user aliases /all

Tam > You could save yourself a lot of headaches and pain and just give me the data I’m looking for.

Oscar > Is that what you think is happening here?

Tam > More or less. You can’t keep me out of your systems anymore, and those weak sauce wards you had in place can’t fry my new rig either.

Oscar > You’re not as smart as you look are you?

Tam > Like you can see me?

Oscar > Oh I can see you just fine Ms. Le. That’s a mighty nice t-shirt you’re wearing I’ve got say. Of course it would look better on my floor.

Tam > Oh look an internet creep. I’m shocked. Completely shocked I tell you. What’s the chance that a guy working for a morally bankrupt organization like PrimaLux would be a misogynistic dweeb too?

Oscar > That’s right, pretend like you hate it. We both know you walked in my trap because you wanted to get beat by a guy like me. It’s a kink for girlies like you. You’ve never met a real man who can fulfill you so you act out, just begging for someone to shut that pretty mouth of yours.

Tam > Yeah, I’m going to stop you right there. As fun as it might be to bait you into making an even bigger fool of yourself, how about you get up and look out the window to your left.

Oscar > Jokes on you. There is no window to my left. I’m in the sub-basement of our HQ. I only come out at night, because I’m a badass like that.

Tam > Just get up, walk around the green cabinet that’s right beside you, and use those beady little eyes.

PrimaSys > User ‘Oscar’ has gone AFK.

PrimaSys > User ‘Oscar’ has returned.

Oscar > What the hell is that?

Tam > What the hell is what?

Oscar > There’s a goddamn aquarium outside my room. What the hell did you do!

Tam > Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, it’s not an aquarium

Tam > It’s the bottom of the Atlantic ocean

Oscar > That’s bull

Tam > Is it? Open the door to your room and find out then

Tam > As a warning though, the pressure down there is just shy of 400 atmospheres. It’ll be just a little bit squishy for a second after you open the door. But after that? No problems at all. Ever. Again.

Oscar > Bull. These walls are sheetrock. They’d be crushed flat by that. This is just an illusion.

Tam > It could be. That is the kind of thing I do. Go on. Open up the door and find out.

Oscar >> Display map…

PrimaSys > Location not found. Try turning on WiFi for accurate positioning.

Oscar >> What? You’re our corporate network system. You’re in the building. How can you not know where we are?

PrimaSys > Unknown query syntax. For help, press ‘?’, or contact your system administrator.

Oscar >> I am the system administrator!!!

PrimaSys > Unknown query syntax. For help, press ‘?’, or contact your system administrator.

Tam > Hey, I’m just a girlie right? You’re the big alpha dog. Prove it. Go ahead. Open the door.

<User Aaliyah has connected to server>

Aaliyah > Stay seated Oscar. Do not open that door.

Tam > Why hello there. You must be the real system admin.

Oscar > Boss? What the hell is this?

Aaliyah > Disconnect and wait where you are patiently Oscar. We’ll resolve this and see about extracting you before your air runs out.

Oscar > My air? Wait, where am I?

Tam > Display map coordinates for ‘Sunken Ocean Liner 001’

PrimaSys > Click to view map. Key features include: 1 shipwreck, 1 PrimaLux employee, 1 office cubicle, 1 magic seal, searching for other points of interest….

PrimaSys > searching….

PrimaSys > searching….

Oscar > I’m at the bottom of the ocean? What?

Oscar > How?

Oscar > This is bull!

Aaliyah > Oscar, stay seated. That is a direct order.

Oscar > Something is knocking on the hull. What is down here? There’s not supposed to be anything down here but fish!

Tam > I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just an illusion right? There’s nothing actually scary hiding down in the lightless depths of the ocean. Go get ‘em big guy.

<User Oscar has been disconnected>

Tam > Was that you or him?

Aaliyah > He was going to do something stupid if you kept taunting him.

Tam > Kind of what I was hoping for.

Aaliyah > That’s uncharacteristically bloodthirsty of you Ms Le.

Tam > It is. He had his second chance though, and his third, and his hundredth, and he used every one of them to hurt and harass people who can’t defend themselves. If he gets himself drowned that’s just a product of his own stupidity.

Aaliyah > I thought your group believed that people could always be better.

Tam > We believe people can always choose to be better. Oscar’s not the sort to choose that though is he?

Aaliyah > No. He’s a talented tool but so convinced of his own superiority that he’s incapable of real change.

Tam > I’m surprised you work with someone like him. I mean, yeah, PrimaLux isn’t exactly a bastion of nobility, but you’ve gotta have some standards right?

Aaliyah > We take talent where we can find it. There aren’t many with the skill to handle both advanced electronics security and deep arcane work.

Tam > From what I’ve seen you don’t really need the help. The defense on your actual data stores are formidable. I honestly couldn’t find a path to get into them without alerting you.

Aaliyah > Thank you. For what it’s worth, you’re the first one who’s even penetrated our security this far. It’s quite a testament to your skills.

Tam > To be fair, I have had some help.

Aaliyah > Yes, I see you’re coming in through one of our own physical servers. Strangely though I don’t see signs of a security breach. I take it you’re not actually in one of our offices?

Tam > Remote access seemed a wiser choice.

Aaliyah > It was. I would recommend leaving your current location as well but it’s already too late for that.

Tam > Too late, and too early. We still need to get our hands on the authorization logs for the ocean liner job you just pulled.

Aaliyah > I would suggest you give up on that.

Tam > Ok. I’ll just log off then. Guess I’m defeated.

Aaliyah > You will need to do more than that if you wish to avoid the reprisal PrimaLux is sending after you.

Tam > We’re up to the extortion part now?

Aaliyah > No, this isn’t a threat. It’s a job offer.

Tam > You picked an interesting lead in for it.

Aaliyah > You picked an interesting venue for an interview.

Tam > You know I’m not going to take you up on what you’re selling right?

Aaliyah > I think it depends on how reasonable and intelligent you are.

Tam > It doesn’t seem terribly reasonable or intelligent to trust an organization which has literally tried to murder me already.

Aaliyah > That is a matter which I could debate, but instead allow me to assure you that my division had nothing to do with the attacks you’ve experienced. We work directly with PrimaLux’s board and only get called in when the lower tier managers make a mess of things.

Tam > Cleaning up after other people’s messes doesn’t sound like that great a job offer.

Aaliyah > But isn’t that what you do now? Some poor, foolish soul with all of the life skills of a headless chicken flops into your office begging you to straighten out some issue that five minutes of planning and a third grading reading level would have allowed them to avoid.

Tam > Everybody makes mistakes.

Aaliyah > Exactly. So please, don’t make one now. I can guarantee that refusing this job offer will not be a mistake that you can repeat, if you take my meaning.

Tam > But, see, the problem is one of longevity.

Tam > You’re offering me a job with PrimaLux but as soon as we get the information we need, it’s all going over to Interpol, and the FBI, and various other groups who are going to make sure that PrimaLux no longer exists.

Aaliyah > That would require that you manage to break what we both know to be unbreakable security.

Tam > For my next magic trick, I’ll need an assistant.

Aaliyah > Yes, a very particular assistant. Me.

Tam > Do I hear a volunteer?

Aaliyah > Even if you could hack a path through our security, and magic a tunnel through the mystical wards that are in place, I have the kill switch for the data you’re looking for just a single button click away.

Tam > You haven’t clicked it yet though.

Aaliyah > Of course not. Accurate record keep is a valuable tool. I’d hate to corrupt our ledgers unnecessarily.

Tam > Especially when you might need to use that tool someday to further your own ends?

Aaliyah > A wise woman keeps as many options in play as she can.

Tam > I cannot say you’re wrong there.

Tam > You’re wrong about almost everything else, but not that.

Aaliyah > Is that a bit of self-righteous judgment I see peeking out there?

Tam > I like to think of it as a nudge towards self awareness.

Aaliyah > I am perfectly aware of the company I keep, and the company I work for.

Tam > Are you? I mean you are both smart and reasonable. How do you convince yourself that it’s ok to work for people who do the kind of things that PrimaLux does?

Aaliyah > Because everyone does what we do. We just do it better, and first.

Tam > So no rules, no morality, all that matter is who comes out on top in the end?

Aaliyah > Something like that. If you’re down in the mud, drowning under somebody else’s boot, what you think and what you want doesn’t really matter at all.

Tam > Is that how the world should be? Or just how you think it is?

Aaliyah > Doesn’t matter how things should be. Things are how they are, and the only changes you’ll see is watching them get older, and weaker, and worse.

Tam > That’s definitely true if no one does the work to make them better.

Aaliyah > It’s true no matter what you do. You can try all you want, but for things to get better for someone, they’ve got to get worse for someone else.

Tam > What would you say if I could prove you wrong?

Aaliyah > Then I’d be the one asking you for a job. But I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. You’re time to consider our offer just ran out.

Tam > I’ve still got a little bit of hacking to do here.

Aaliyah > I can see you’re still working, but, unfortunately, I’m done. You’ve been running your tools to break into our secrets and, thanks to our lovely chat here, I’ve had the time to run mine to break into yours.

Aaliyah > We know who you are now. All of you. Even your backer.

Aaliyah > I’m sorry. I would call off the teams that Prima is sending out if I could, but you’ve proven yourselves to be too much of a threat, and this is too strong an opportunity to pass up.

Aaliyah > Death is coming for you on swift wings, Ms Le. Make your peace.