by V. St. Clair
She stripped out of her nightclothes and pulled on some lightweight black leggings and a matching long-sleeved shirt that fit snugly but was made of stretchy, lightweight material. Over this she donned her custom-made armor, intended to be as unobtrusive as possible while still providing a respectable amount of protection from attack.
She pulled on mid-calf black boots, drew her hair back into a bun in an attempt to look less disheveled, and returned her shield stick and dagger to their spot under the mattress before leaving her rooms.
There was more movement on the top floor than usual at this time of night, and more lights were lit, but given the emergency going on, this wasn’t really surprising. No one attempted to slow her as she moved through the residential area of the top floor to summon an elevator from the main foyer.
It took longer than normal for one to arrive—doubtless the heightened traffic of people flocking to the High Chamber—and she was just considering taking the stairs down instead when it finally appeared.
“Hold the door,” her father’s voice startled her, and she turned to see him taking long strides to catch up to her. She was surprised he wasn’t already downstairs in the High Chamber by now.
“Father, what’s going on?” she asked as they entered the elevator and the doors shut behind them.
“I’m not sure yet.” He didn’t look pleased by the fact, either, and Jessamine saw him attempting to flatten a cowlick in his hair and checking his appearance in the reflection of his communicator.
“You mean you didn’t call this meeting?” she asked him, stunned. “But I was told the emergency beacons were activated and all the Majors were returning.”
“Then you know as much as I do,” he said with a bite of displeasure. “I do not like being left in the dark on the goings on of my own government.”
Jessamine kept her mouth shut because she knew there was nothing to gain by speculating; they would find out soon enough what the problem was, and who had called the meeting. They stepped onto the two-hundred-and-ninetieth floor when the elevator doors opened and found themselves at the far end of the High Chamber. The Chamber was circular, though the Augenspire itself was rectangular. Jessamine knew this was because the Chamber had been built in the middle of these two levels, giving it the tallest ceiling of any room in the whole building, and most of the excess void space between the circular room and the rectangular walls was filled with soundproofing and explosion-proofing materials.
The periphery of the room had high risers of wooden benches built up from the floor like stadium seating, but the majority of the room was open floor space because anything from advanced war planning to actual combat training to private executions could occur here.
At a glance, it looked like most of the Majors were already assembled, though the elevator beside theirs opened to admit Topher and Kristoph a moment later. Jessamine was surprised to see that Shellina had beaten her and their father here, but her little sister was still wearing a frilly nightgown and silk slippers rather than taking the time to get dressed.
Father says there is someone within our own the government that is trying to kill him and you walk around without armor on, you foolish girl?
Jessamine pursed her lips and approached her sister to take the seat beside her in the place reserved for the ruling family. The Viceroy, of course, set himself in the slightly-raised bench to her immediate left.
“You should be in armor,” she whispered to her sister in greeting.
“Why, do you really think a terrorist is going to burst into the High Chamber and murder me with all sixty Majors inside?” Shellina replied sarcastically.
“Your armor is the best defense you have against an attack,” Jessamine insisted.
“Our Majors are the best defenses we have against an attack, and at the moment they’re all here with us, well-armed and looking ready to do their duty if the occasion calls for it.” Shellina stuck out her tongue in defiance and turned away.
Not if they’re part of the problem…
She didn’t dare voice that worry out loud. There was no hard evidence to suggest that any of the Majors were working against them. The only thing they knew for certain was that someone with high-level access was scheming something, based on the scant evidence her father had shown her so far.
She scanned the room, trying to get a sense for what had happened based on the movements of the others, but it was hard to tell. Something bad, was all she could gather from the tense faces of those sitting down on the benches below, which was hardly helpful since the emergency beacons wouldn’t be activated for anything good. Her eyes found Topher’s, and she cocked an eyebrow slightly in question. The flat look he returned her was even more unsettling than her father not knowing what was going on. Who had activated the alarms?
Technically, any of the Provo-Major could do so, but in the past, no one had ever dared to take such a liberty without consulting with the Viceroy first. She was just taking a quick count of everyone in the room to see how many people they were still waiting for when the elevator doors opened one last time to admit the final two Provo-Major.
Fox Augen was being half-carried into the room by Andro, one of his peers. The former looked worse than Jessamine had ever seen him: dried blood caked on his face from a possible broken nose, which was swollen and purple, armor scuffed in several places and his hair a sweaty mess. He winced slightly as his colleague helped him to the center of the room, where he was forced to stand for a lack of portable seating.
Shocked and outraged whispers immediately began to fill the room at the sight of him, echoing eerily in the high-ceilinged Chamber. Even Shellina—who normally found anything work-related to be boring—leaned forward with wide eyes and said, “Oh my…”
The Viceroy stood up.
“It has come to my attention that one of you called this emergency meeting. I assume it must have been dire to prevent you from notifying me first.”
Andro looked slightly uncomfortable by the obvious rebuke, but stood firm beside his colleague and said, “It is, Excellency. Major Fox was savagely attacked by a prisoner of the Augenspire, who has escaped justice and gone to ground.”
Jessamine raised her eyebrows as a new outbreak of outraged exclamations began. Topher was sitting very still, staring silently at Fox with an unreadable look on his face. Of course, most of Topher’s expressions were unreadable; Jessamine often wished he was a little less opaque.
“Silence.” The Viceroy spoke softly but the room still fell quiet at once. Her father was one of those people who didn’t need to shout to be heard. “Fox Augen, tell the assembly what happened. Succinctly.”
Fox touched a hand to his injured nose gently, winced, and said, “It was the Gifted I was holding on two-eighty-one, Excellency—Maxton Mercuria.” His swollen nose made him sound severely congested. “He’s been holding out information about Hera this whole time on me, playing innocent and acting weak and pathetic in the hopes I would release him. Tonight I had a feeling I needed to check on him, and when I went into his room, he had summoned a door and was getting ready to go through it and escape.”
This caused another outburst of surprised commentary, and Jessamine stood up now and said, “I thought it was impossible to use Gifts on two-eighty-one. Some of the most powerful Gifted in history have been kept there in the past and were unable to escape the protections on the place.”
Fox looked slightly uncomfortable when he said, “I don’t know how he managed to work a way around the defenses there, Excellence, but he did.” There was silence for a moment following this.
“Hasn’t he been here for weeks?” Jessamine continued, straining her memory to call up the vague details she remembered hearing about this prisoner. “If he’s been housed here for so long, why didn’t he use his Gift to escape before now? And besides, I thought you chemically interrogated him in the past and he didn’t give up any information about Hera.”
Fox and Andro both looked mildly shocked and alarmed that she knew this last par
t. Well, good. That would teach them to assume she wasn’t paying attention when they gave reports to her father…or when they talked amongst themselves in places she could overhear them.
Jessamine sat back down, but the Viceroy remained standing and said, “Well? An answer to the Vicerina’s questions?” He sounded impatient. She worried for him. He was probably still not sleeping well; he’d been too busy recently, working all day and trying to quietly unravel the attempt on his life at night without his own people knowing about it.
“I don’t know why he didn’t use his Gift before now. I didn’t get the chance to ask him,” Fox grumbled unhappily, coughing on a trickle of blood that stained his teeth when he swallowed it. Jessamine wondered if she should recommend he get treatment before continuing this meeting, but her father didn’t seem concerned so she held her silence as Fox continued.
“Maybe it took him a while to figure out a way around our protective barriers on two-eighty-one; it’s hard to know what some of those freaks are capable of. As to the other…yes, I did interrogate him with Veritan, but tonight he told me Hera’s people had found a way to lie through it, and they are teaching the other Gifted how to do it.”
One of the Provo-Major cursed audibly at this.
“We need a more powerful truth serum immediately if this is true, or it’ll be disastrous for us,” Kristoph spoke now from the left side of the room.
“None of our information from interrogations will be any good if we don’t know who can bypass the effects of Veritan and who can’t,” Parl continued from the other end of the Chamber. “How the hell did Hera’s people find a way to get around Veritan of all things, when even our scientists haven’t—”
“You said the prisoner told you this tonight,” the Viceroy spoke over all of them, holding up a hand for order. “I thought you entered the cell just as he was preparing to go through the door he had created. Are you saying he stopped to give you this piece of information before he departed?”
Fox’s eyes widened in alarm and he said, “No, Excellency, I misspoke. He told me earlier in the day, during my previous interaction with him. I—forgive me, Excellency, I am not feeling my best at present.”
The Viceroy’s expression softened slightly and he said, “You may sit if needed.”
“Thank you,” Fox let Andro help him over to the nearest wooden bench amongst his peers.
“So you encountered the prisoner as he was preparing to travel through the door…” the Viceroy prompted.
Fox blinked and said, “I grabbed onto him to keep him from escaping, but he pulled me through the door with him instead. We ended up in a women’s restroom at a place called Club Roxx, downtown. The door opened from the ceiling of the restroom and we fell to the ground. I was momentarily disoriented from the shift in perspective, and the prisoner was joined by allies there.”
“He had accomplices waiting for him?” one of his peers asked, though Jessamine didn’t catch who spoke.
“Five or six of them,” Fox admitted. “I don’t see how he could have gotten a message out of one of the most secure rooms in the Augenspire, but I also didn’t think he’d be able to escape from that cell.” He let that hang uncomfortably in the silence for a minute before continuing. “His friends jumped me the moment we landed in that bathroom.”
“How do you know they were friends of his?” the Viceroy asked.
“They were Gifted for sure, and they all jumped on me and started attacking before I could get up, so I assume they knew each other and planned the whole thing. Most of them were wearing masks, except for the prisoner and one of the others—a girl. I fought them, but they had an early advantage and got a few hits in on my face.”
“No one has an advantage over us in a fight,” one of his peers interrupted, clearly annoyed at the idea of a Major being injured in combat.
Fox gave him a scathing look and said, “Six Gifted at close-range who were on me the second I fell from the ceiling isn’t an advantage?” He didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “I wasn’t wearing my heavies since I wasn’t expecting a fight, so my head wasn’t protected. If you think you can do better, go down to the Academy in your light armor and pick a fight with half a dozen of them, and we can see how well you do against gravity-manipulators, spatial-distorters, and whatever else they throw at you.”
“Enough,” the Viceroy cut him off, refocusing the discussion. “While uncommon, it is not unheard of for one of you to be injured in battle, given the right circumstances. That being said, I fail to see how this warranted the emergency beacons. In future, I expect to be notified directly if a prisoner escapes this facility, and the clinic on two-fifty will notify me when one of you show up for treatment. There’s no need to call the whole assembly together in the middle of the night unless one of you dies,” he reprimanded them, his impatience evident.
“That isn’t the worst of it, Excellency.” Fox had sounded indignant and angry before, but now he sounded almost frightened.
“Oh?” the Viceroy asked with a bite of annoyance.
“The prisoner and the girl—they grabbed my—they took…” here he seemed to be grieved beyond words, because he didn’t finish his sentence.
“They took…?” the Viceroy prompted, less patiently.
Fox looked furious and worried when he said, “While I was clobbering three of them, I didn’t realize the girl and Mercuria had moved behind me. I cracked a guy’s ribcage and broke another’s jaw before I realized they had pulled them off my belt.”
“What did they take?” Jessamine wondered if Fox had any idea how much danger he was in when her father was this angry.
Just answer the damn question, before he orders you locked up in the cell the prisoner just broke out of.
“They took my ion-sword and my Talents, Excellency. All of them.”
There was a violent outburst at this: Provo-Major jumped to their feet in outrage and began screaming for retribution, Topher’s eyes had gone wide with genuine surprise, and even Shellina’s cheeks flushed angrily at the indignity of a Major having his weapons stolen.
“SILENCE!” the Viceroy barked a moment later; he too was obviously shocked at this shaming of a member of his elite fighting force. It took several moments for him to restore order to the room and force the others to return to their seats.
“These two managed to remove some of your critical weapons, and then what?” he prompted, clearly determined to get the whole story out before making any sort of decision. “They fled?”
“Yes, Excellency,” Fox admitted, face still red with shame and anger. “The girl broke my nose and gave them time to grab the others and make a door out. It closed behind them so I couldn’t follow.”
As far as Jessamine knew, no Provo-Major had ever lost his Talents before. She felt a stab of sympathy for him, this imposing figure who looked so small and broken on the bench at the front of the room.
“Do you know who they were?” Kristoph asked now. “What did they look like? What were their emblems? Did they use their names at any time?”
Fox looked like he just wanted to sink into the floor and disappear, but he plowed on valiantly through the pain. Jessamine felt another surge of pity for him, and was glad to see Shellina seemed similarly moved. It was good to know her sister did actually care about the people who served them so diligently.
“Most of them were masked and their emblems were tucked into their shirts, so I could only see the gold chain at their necks,” he admitted angrily.
“But the girl—”
“She had very blond hair, chin-length maybe. Green eyes, ugly black vinyl jacket and tight pants. Bright purple lipstick that made her look like a cheap sex-worker. No one said her name while she was there, and her emblem was hidden like the rest of them.”
Gareth said, “Are you sure it never fell out of her shirt at any time? Think, now! Knowing her emblem will make it much easier to find her in the Academy—there aren’t many duplicates.”
“I’m sorry
I didn’t get a good look at it when she and her friends were stomping on my face,” Fox snapped out angrily, and his colleague fell silent.
“Your Excellency,” Andro spoke now from the middle of the floor. “We can’t let this stand. This was a strike against the heart of the Augenspire by Hera’s people; retribution must be swift, public, and devastating.”
Shellina startled Jessamine by standing up and saying, “It will be, Major Andro. The Provo-Major are our most loyal, powerful allies, and an attack on any of them is—”
“You forget your place, Vicerina,” their father said coldly and firmly. Jessamine knew it was not her or her sister’s place to decide what kind of justice to mete out in these extraordinary situations, but Shellina obviously didn’t. She looked red-faced and embarrassed when she said, “But Father, we can’t let this stand. The Provo-Major strike fear into the hearts of all our enemies because they can’t be beaten. If we let the Gifted think we are weak…”
Several of the Majors looked like they heartily approved of Shellina’s course of action. Of course, one of their own had been attacked and overpowered, and they were badly shaken by the loss of invincibility. But it made Jessamine nervous to see the naked rage on their faces, and she made a mental note of which ones looked the most consumed by it.
“Your sentiments are appropriate, and I share them, but I cannot turn loose the full breadth of my elite commanders on the Academy without cause.”
“Without cause?” Andro asked in disbelief. “They stole his weapons and tried to beat him to death and—”
“And they will pay for it, believe me,” the Viceroy interrupted. He had been tolerant of previous interruptions, but he did not sound tolerant anymore. “We have a full dossier on Maxton Mercuria, but the girl is—as yet—a mystery. We have no description of the masked assailants, but we will alert all hospitals in the area to report any Gifted with injuries consistent with Major Fox’s report.”
“They may not seek treatment in a hospital, depending on how well-connected they are, or if they have a Gifted who can heal them with their powers,” Andro argued. “There must be something more we can do than wait for a hospital report that may never come.”
