“I’m not really a beta agent, remember?” I said.
He ignored me. “A bane is a physiological reaction to your heightened ability to conduct and manipulate mana. Often, it manifests itself in mental, neurological and psychiatric disorders. Are you having hallucinations, Miss Everglade?”
“I haven’t slept in months, Mister King,” I said. “Hallucinations are to be expected.”
“Yes. But so is death. Sleep deprivation should’ve killed you,” King said. “But you’re beta, and you’re feeding off the mana in the atmosphere to stay alive. Your bane is insomnia, and that insomnia is causing your hallucinations.”
”Oh, you’re a healer now?”
King narrowed his eyes at me. I glared back. I wasn’t even sure why I was giving him a hard time.
He started to rattle: “Imp suffers from a crippling speech impediment. He isn’t just observing the Sprite vow of silence; it takes everything within him to utter a single word. Kay listens to music so constantly because, without it, the voices in his head get so loud that he can’t even hear himself think. Po shoots medication on a strict daily schedule because otherwise, every nerve ending in her body is overloaded with pain. And me, well, let’s just say nobody likes me when I’m angry. Whatever you’re suffering, you’re not special.”
I listened, stunned by the revelations.
King hesitated, before saying, “I read up on you during the week. Learnt that one of the women who died in that station bombing was your partner. Evon Jade, was it?”
Silence.
“Is that what you hallucinate about? Losing her?”
I swallowed, and looked away.
“Imp cracked Kaz,” King said.
My head snapped back. “He did?”
King nodded. “A few hours ago. We know where Massah Tsukr is. We are one step closer to finally finding the Puppeteer. But I’m taking you off the mission.”
I sat up, incredulous. “What?”
“I’m taking you off the mission,” he repeated, “if you can’t get your muck together. The Puppeteer is our most dangerous adversary; I can’t have you sinking into delirium in the middle of a battle. You’ll put the rest of the team in jeopardy, not to mention years of preparation and work.”
“You can’t do that,” I said, my voice getting louder. “Do you have any idea how much work I’ve put it into this? I’m here early in the morning, I stay late every night. I don’t even see my little sister any more. He killed Evon. He destroyed my life. That son of a bat is mine.”
“No,” King snapped back, “he’s mine. You have no claim to him. You’re a guest here.”
“You’ve made that abundantly clear.”
King sighed. “I can help you,” he finally said.
“Help me what?” I asked.
“To move on,” he said. “To get your demons out of your head.”
“I don’t want your help.”
“You don’t have a choice. It’s either that, or I’ll admit to the rest of the team that I know who you really are. I’ll have you taken off the team, completely frozen out. It’ll be like Beta never happened, never existed.”
I clenched my jaw.
“Do you want a piece of the Puppeteer or not?” he asked.
I glared up at him. But eventually, I nodded.
“Good,” King said, standing up. “Then, we’re taking a little trip.”
Even as I said yes, I could see Evon standing behind King, staring at me with eyes that were no longer kind or compassionate. Instead, there was only hate.
Now, even the Evon I had treasured in my memories was gone.
Now, only my demons remained.
CHAPTER 47
The transporter was completely silent as I drove. Inside my head, it was the exact opposite. My thoughts, they tumbled through my head at a throw a moment.
Kattie was sitting right beside me. I had picked her up from the learning centre. Her eyes stared straight ahead at the road. So far, she hadn’t asked any questions; it made me a little uncomfortable.
“I won’t be gone for long,” I told her.
“You already said that.”
“Just want to make sure you know that.”
“I know.”
Soon, we pulled up to our apartment building and stopped.
“I know you’re not really working in public transportation,” Kattie said suddenly.
I exhaled, and turned to face her. “No,” I admitted. “No, I’m not.”
“From the scars you keep coming home with, my suspicion is that what you’re doing is dangerous,” Kattie continued. “My hope is that it’s on the right side of the law.”
“It is, Kattie,” I said. “Of course it is.”
“My worry is that it has something to do with Evon,” she said. “About that, I am not exactly sure how to feel. I just…I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine, I promise,” I said.
“Specifically,” Kattie said, “I would prefer if you were not killed. I may not be one for displays of affection, but I do love you.” She lifted her arms mechanically, and put them around me.
I drew her in, held her tight.
“I love you too, sweetie.” I kissed her on the forehead.
When we were done, Kattie got out.
“Don’t stay out late,” I told her through the window. “Lock all the doors at night. DEB has Crawer’s number, so don’t hesitate to use it if you need any help. Any help.”
“You’ve already been away twice, sister,” Kattie said. “I’m sure I’ll survive.”
I smiled, waved, and began the drive towards the Terminal, where I knew King was already waiting for me.
“He’s trying to make you forget me,” Evon said, in the passenger seat. “How could you?”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “He’s not trying to make me forget you,” I said. “He wants to help me move on.”
“And that’s any different?”
She sounded angry,
“You’re never going to forget me,” she yelled, her voice nearly splitting my eardrums. “I’m never going to forgive you for letting me die.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, softly. “But maybe, I can forgive myself.”
The next time I looked, the passenger seat was empty. I turned back to the road. I had arrived at the Terminal.
PART III
Healing
CHAPTER 48
I had been to the Floris world before. Once. With Evon.
It was after our second year as partners at the Enforcement Bureau. Evon was returning to Floris for the Seedling Festival, and she invited Kattie and me to come along.
The Seedling festival was a celebration of new Phyllian babies, called seedlings. In the harvest season of every year, the mother-trees on Floris would produce several new crops of Phyllian seedlings. The seedlings would then be presented to the world, before being distributed to those eager Phyllian adults who had applied to adopt them.
I remember stepping out of the Terminal, and knowing that I wanted to move to Floris permanently someday. Anthea Capital, the central city of the Floris world, was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
Every building, every street, had been ingeniously integrated within the world’s lush vegetative environment. Every building, from skyscrapers to apartment buildings, was covered in bright green moss, or wrapped intermittently in vines. Bright flowers adorned the pavements and the streets, growing out of boxed soil in even rows. And large toadstool shaped structures—solar harvesters—towered over the city. Even the sun in Floris seemed bigger, and the light it produced was brighter, purer. The skies were bluer, the clouds—whiter. The air was fragrant, and more refreshing. There were a lot of birds in Anthea, and they added even more colour to the city, not that it needed it.
The only downside was the humidity, but even then, some sections of the city were more humid than others. A visitor, for instance, would quickly learn never to visit Anthea’s outdoor markets in the a
fternoon.
We stayed at a modest hotel for the three days of our trip. On the second day, Evon and I had taken a night stroll to the Anthea plaza, where the last batch of local seedlings was about to be presented to the public. Kattie had chosen to stay in the hotel room and observe the ceremony on the screen.
Somehow, we found ourselves at the top of an office building, bent over a metal railing and staring down at the jubilating crowd.
It is only in retrospect that I realize how much I had taken that moment for granted: the way we talked, and teased each other, and laughed, feeling like kids again.
When she reached for my hand, and squeezed it, I should have known there and then that I meant more to her than a friend. Perhaps I had known, somewhere deep inside me. The point is: she deserved to know that the love she felt for me was not unrequited. That I was simply too dumb to realize how much she meant to me. And so, as the fireworks went off, lighting the skies above with a cocktail of brilliant colours, I had simply looked into her eyes, those orbs of purest black, and assumed that she was always going to be with me. She was mine.
I had all the time in the world.
CHAPTER 49
I took in a deep breath, and exhaled. Water vapour rushed up before my eyes, before dissipating in the cold morning wind.
I was standing on tableland, on the farthest north-east fringe of Floris, garbed in thick jackets, pants and snow boots. My neck was wrapped in a heavy scarf to protect it from the biting air, and strapped to my back was a bag heavy with camping equipment and food.
I stared ahead: first at the mountain range just off my left side, its tops thinly frosted with snow and swaddled in mist. Then, I stared into the valley below, hidden almost entirely beneath a canopy of twinkling, frost-kissed leaves.
My eyes moved to Zara, the majestic mother-tree in the distance. Zara’s branches, laden with pale green, caressed the clouds. Even from here, the size of Floris’ thithermost mother tree was soul-stirring.
Finally, my eyes settled on the crisp horizon beyond, where Floris’ Pillar was still visible—a thin line of silver, breaking through and rising far beyond the stratosphere.
According to learners, Floris was the oldest of the five worlds, and by extension, so was its Pillar. In addition to that, mana mining was illegal in Floris; all their technology being powered by solar energy. As a result, Floris had the most powerful Pillar of all known dimensions. Even five thousand throws away from the Pillar, I could feel the rubriq on my face tingling beneath its early morning mana rain.
To my right, Sol King was just finishing some negotiations with a guide we had picked up in a nearby village. The guide was Phyllian, but not the kind commonly seen back home in Aurora. Evon’s kind, the vascophyillians, were numerous in number outside of Floris.
The guide however, was cataphyllian. Though sexless like the vascophyllians, their kind was masculine in appearance, with paler green skin and woody bristles on their scalps and chins.
King seemed to be having a disagreement with the guide. After about five moments of arguing, the guide turned around and started heading back to the village. King came over.
“Where’s the guide going?” I asked.
“He refuses to go any further,” King said, picking up his bag from the ground and heaving it onto his back.
“How’re supposed to navigate the trail then?” I asked.
King pulled a cell-comm out of his jacket pocket, and switched it on. “We’ll have to rely on satellite maps.”
I stood next to him and peered at the screen. “I can’t make out anything.” I pointed. “Is that a trail or just a shadow?”
“We really could have used that guide,” King grumbled.
“What was his problem?”
“Scared. Thinks the Kakiricatura is going to get us.”
I blinked, stunned. “The Kakiricatura? As in: the Kakiricatura?”
“You know some other Kakiricatura?”
Now, I was annoyed. “You’re telling me our guide abandoned us because he’s afraid that a mythical lizard-bird is going to what—peck him to death?
“Mythical to you, very real to him,” King said, sensibly.
“We should’ve rented a hover carrier,” I said.
“Hover carriers are flashy, noisy,” King said. “It would give Massah Tsukr an opportunity to escape. I’d rather we didn’t lose the element of surprise.”
“I’d rather we didn’t get lost on the edge of a foreign world and freeze to death,” I countered. “But hey, who asked me right?”
King raised a brow. “Remember that you’re only here as a courtesy. Don’t make me regret it.”
“Fine. Sorry.”
King nodded, and threw his gaze towards the lofty chain of mountains. “Well, we’d better get moving.”
The first few hours were spent walking in silence. Our course was rocky; inclined more times than not; slippery in places that would cause the worst accidents. The path was obvious in some places, and impossible to discern in others. Where the path grew steep, I followed closely in King’s footsteps, feeling for the surest footing.
Eventually, the path evened out into flat land again and we could tread without fear. We seemed to be walking along the side of one of the mountains now. I looked down the edge of the path, shocked by how high up we were already.
“You want to take a break?” King asked.
“No,” I said, before realizing that I was out of breath.
King dropped his bag. “We’re taking a break.”
I didn’t argue. I placed my bag on the ground and sat against it. Dear Light, it felt good against my back.
“I think so far we’re on the right trail,” King said, after tapping his cell-comm a few times. “If we keep up this pace, we should reach our first checkpoint by late afternoon.”
I swallowed some more air and nodded.
After a few moments of silence, I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking. You don’t think it’s a bit weird, the way the Puppeteer’s abilities have evolved?”
King looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, “I read a lot of the old briefs on him. He could always control other people with his spelling. Other living people. But none of the old files said anything about him being able to spell dead people.”
“He developed his technique. What’s your point?”
“I mean, breaking into morgues for corpses seems a bit bothersome to me when you could just kidnap and spell any old doe on the street,” I said. “In my experience, when a killer changes their mode of operation like that, it’s usually because there’s been some major change in their life. Something is going on with him.”
King nodded. “It’s possible. Or you could be reading too much into it.”
“Also,” I added, “I keep coming back to that calendar. What does it mean? It’s driving me insane.”
“Okay, I’m going to stop you there,” King said, with a roll of his eyes. “I didn’t bring you with me so that you could obsess over case details. I’m the one here to work. You’re here to get your grip back. Relax.”
“Oh, your plan was to get me to relax on the way to capture the most important informant of the last decade?”
King’s smile was small. “We’re multi-tasking. But for now, no more talk of work.”
I sighed. “What should we talk about then?”
“Do we have to talk at all?”
I cocked my head at him. “Do we have to talk to remove the soul-crushing silence of these lonely mountains? Yes, we have to talk.”
“Fine,” King said, looking like this was the biggest bother in the world. “Have you been given an instrument yet? I assume that they’d give you some sort of replica of Fey’s Tundra to keep up the ruse.”
I made a face. “How is that not work-talk?”
Now, it was King’s turn to make a face. “You’re joking right?” He looked offended. Disgusted even. He opened up his camping bag and pulled out a lengthy sheathed sw
ord.
“Getting your instrument is the most monumental part of being a Beta agent,” he said. “It’s a damn rite of passage. When they place that weapon in your hand—that weapon that was crafted specially and specifically to respond to and amplify your bio-mana—and when you swear your allegiance to the agency before the Light, your superiors, and a room full of new trainees and ex-agents, you become more than some mere super soldier, Arra.” He paused, and leaned closer. “You, my friend, become a god.”
I listened to him, amused and incredulous. “Dramatic much?”
“Only appropriately so.”
To my surprise, he handed me the instrument to inspect. It was heavy. It was very heavy. I had to place it across my thighs, because holding it up was beginning to hurt my biceps.
My right fingers danced over the golden hilt, tracing the heavily embossed delineations of fire. My left hand slid down the ebony scabbard. I gripped the hilt, and pulled slowly. The metal of the blade rang softly in the wind, and the gleam of its surface forced me to squint. I pushed the blade back in, and handed it back to King.
“His name is Aiden,” King said, after he’d repacked it. “He’s so important to me that I can’t bear to call him an it.”
I didn’t let him know how weird I thought that was.
“I don’t get it,” I admitted. “It’s nicely crafted metal, sure. But it’s metal. I didn’t get the whole room full of other agents or whatever.” I shrugged. “I got mine handed to me in a leather case in a creepy little office.”
“May I see it?” he asked.
I nodded, and got my instrument case out of my bag for him.
King opened the case, and stared into it for a moment. Then, he took out one of the blades and turned it in the light, inspecting it closely. He stroked its rubriq.
“It’s called the Tundra II. After the original, obviously,” I explained. “Does that offend you?”
King shook his head. “Why would it offend me?”
The BETA Agency Page 25
