by V. St. Clair
To underscore how badly things were going these days, there had been an ominous uptick in the number of intrusions from the strange voice in his brain recently, mostly regarding the countdown. Unable to sleep with his Talents in, he kept waking up at all hours of the night after strange thoughts filtered into his dreams, and now they barged in on his brain almost constantly throughout the day. Just this morning it had informed him he only had two more turns of the glass remaining before whatever was going to happen finally happened.
The worst part was, Topher had no idea how the voice was quantifying time, because the duration between each of the numbers of the countdown was uneven and seemingly random. It didn’t correlate to any set number of hours, days, weeks, or a combination of anything else he could come up with, so he had no idea how much longer he had before time was up.
Not long, he worried.
The heightened number of intrusions into his mind was particularly concerning to him, because if it was a sign of some sort of technology-induced madness from having enhancers installed into his neural network, then the stress of recent events was clearly making it worse. If it was an external hack by terrorists, then they were clearly fine-tuning their process and he would have to turn himself in for evaluation soon. If he could manage to convince himself he wasn’t going mad or being hacked…then who the hell was talking to him and what were they trying to say? None of the options were good.
If only the messages were helpful, I wouldn’t mind them half as much.
He had spent weeks trying to rack his brains for what the voice wanted him to remember, but it was impossible to tell what he had forgotten without more clues. He tried asking it to be more specific: a time, a date, an event…anything that would help him narrow down the part of his memory he was supposed to be searching. The voice never answered his thoughts, no matter how many times he asked. It seemed to exist only to drive him mad with panic of the unknown.
Topher removed his Talent and snapped it back into the slot on his key ring of similar ones, staring down at the city below him once more. Without the enhanced vision, he could only see the buildings of the Academy far below him and the skyscrapers from downtown Silveria, tiny floating dots swirling around them that denoted the sky-level traffic patterns of the aerial vehicles.
You forgot…you forgot…the voice whispered tauntingly in his mind. You were never meant to forget…
“Topher,” an annoying, slightly nasal voice called out to him from behind. Topher wiped his face of expression before turning to acknowledge Darius Hamish’s overly-familiar greeting.
“‘Major Augen’ is the most formal type of address for a member of the Provo-Major, and is therefore always correct in any social situation. ‘Major Topher’ would be an acceptable form of greeting for a casual acquaintance or coworker of mine, whereas the use of my first name only is reserved for my most personal of acquaintances,” he explained by way of greeting.
Darius looked slightly affronted at this and said, “Are you telling me to show more deference to your rank when I speak to you?”
“I’m merely pointing out that in this level of the government, political niceties do matter. Many of my peers—and superiors—are likely to be offended if you disrespect them, whether intentional or not. Consider it a friendly piece of advice.”
“Shellina told me I can call her by first name. She lets others call her ‘Shelly’ in private.”
“Whatever she has asked you to call her in private is her business. In public, she is still Vicerina Shellina until you have married her sister.” Topher ignored the pang of nausea the thought invoked.
Darius raised his eyebrows at this and said, “Thank you for the warning.” Then, after another moment of consideration he added, “Jessamine calls you by your first name, even in public. So does her father.”
“The Viceroy and Vicerinas are in a class of their own, and the rules become more flexible where they are concerned,” he said.
“Well, Major Topher,” Darius amended pointedly, “I’ve been in this fortress for two days now, and I think Shellina has shown me every square inch of the top floors by now.”
“That was kind of her,” Topher allowed, thinking that if Darius told him he was bored and wanted to hang out with him, he was going to have to come up with a nice way of conveying the message that he would rather roast in the fires of eternal damnation than spend his free time with the worthless lout.
“Yes, Shellina has been very welcoming,” Darius agreed. “She’s a bit chatty, especially when she’s nervous or excited, but she’s called some of our mutual friends to set up an official welcoming party for me, which is more than anyone else has done so far, and she’s taking the reins on planning out my wedding day with her older sister, which seems like a good idea as well.”
Jessamine has more important things to do than plan her wedding to a whiny lump of flesh like you.
“Vicerina Shellina does excel at event planning and hosting, so you are in good hands there,” Topher replied agreeably. “She seems to be trying to get more involved in the government as of late, which will make her a powerful ally to her father and sister—and to you.”
Darius nodded at the implication.
“Actually, she suggested I spend some time getting to know the Majors who defend their family—our family—so well,” he continued. “Since rumor has it you are a favorite of the Viceroy, I thought I would begin with getting to know you better, and with figuring out what your exact role is here.”
Lord help me, he does want to hang out, Topher thought with genuine despair.
He would have to tread carefully until he had spoken to the Viceroy about this. As far as he knew, anything he and a member of the ruling family had spoken about in confidence was to remain that way—even from Jessamine’s future husband—until he was told otherwise.
“My role is much the same as my colleagues,” Topher explained. “It is true that many of us have specialties—areas of focus, if you will—and we tend to play to our strengths, so there is some variation in our daily duties. The Viceroy considers me a good strategist—both militarily and politically—and so tends to involve me in discussions requiring great care to present the correct image.”
“Is that why Jessamine also trusts you so much?” Darius prodded gently, watching Topher’s expression carefully.
“She is her father’s heir, and is frequently in the same meetings. As I have never betrayed their trust, they, in return, trust me.”
Darius looked mildly unsatisfied with this answer, as though Topher was deliberately holding out on him. Well, that was true enough, but Topher knew who he had taken his oaths to, and it wasn’t Darius Hamish.
“Shellina seems to think she is going to marry you someday,” he stated bluntly, and it took everything Topher had to react to this only by a slight widening of the eyes.
“No one has mentioned it to me,” he replied simply, wondering if he should broach the subject privately with the Viceroy to express his strong aversion to a union with his youngest daughter. He wanted to avoid any embarrassing public declaration on her part that left him in a bad position.
A few moments of awkward silence elapsed, during which Topher tried and failed to think of a spectacular reason for why he had to go attend to business on one of his days off in order to escape the conversation. He wasn’t entirely sure what Darius was hoping to get out of this interaction, other than to figure out whether Topher was a future rival or an ally to him.
“Uh, so, you’re good at politics and presentation and all that…” Darius spoke at last, fidgeting uncomfortably with his hands.
“So I’m told,” Topher admitted flatly.
“I’ve had it pointed out to me that I’m…maybe not as politically savvy as I should be, here in the capital,” Darius grimaced slightly as he said this, and Topher couldn’t decide whether Jessamine had already scolded him for his behavior or if someone else had done it on her behalf. Perhaps both.
She nearly spit
fire when he called her ‘Jessie’ in public, he recalled.
“Ah?” Topher asked neutrally, sensing the trap he had just set for himself.
“Things were different back on the south continent,” Darius continued candidly. “Politics was still an issue, but the stakes were quite a bit smaller than they seem to be here. My father also handled most of the high-level business negotiations and I…well, I relied on his reputation in some cases.” He looked embarrassed by the admission. Topher was simply surprised the man even recognized his deficiencies. Perhaps there was hope for him yet. “Since there’s more on the line here than there was back home, I thought maybe you would be able to advise me like you do with Jessamine and her father—like you did earlier, with the advice about titles.”
Well, I walked right into that one…
“I—”
“I’m sure Jessamine would appreciate it as well, since she and I are to be tied together soon, and if I mess up it will be reflected upon her,” Darius added hurriedly.
Damn him, he’s right. Jessamine will feel like a fool if her husband goes around acting like one.
There was only one correct answer to his request, though Topher would rather chew glass than give it.
“I would be pleased to help a member of the Viceroy’s family in any way I can,” he answered politely, biting back his irritation at the task.
What deity have I pissed off recently, and how can I make amends? He wondered inwardly. It’s not enough for me to devote my life to protecting a woman I can never have—now I have to train her idiotic, undeserving toad of a husband as well?
He had one of the best jobs on Elaria, but at the moment he hated his life.
“Great, thanks.” Darius looked relieved, and Topher mentally said goodbye to a day spent in quiet contemplation and resigned himself to an afternoon spent with Darius-fucking-Hamish.
Before Darius could say anything more than, “So, do you always wear your armor, even when you’re not on duty?” Topher’s communicator rang.
Wishing the interruption had occurred five minutes ago, Topher fished the comm out of its holder on his belt, wondering who would be calling him on his day off. It wasn’t unheard of for the Viceroy or one of his daughters to call him into a private meeting if they thought he would add value—whether he was on duty or not—but he usually knew to expect those alerts in advance.
He frowned thoughtfully down at the screen, which displayed only a generic Augenspire code used on the lower floors by the switchboard operator.
He palmed the display to accept the call, and the face that appeared on the display was indeed one of the administrators to the Provo-Minor, though not from the main switchboard. The call must have been rerouted from the main board over to the Provo-Minor offices before coming through to him.
“Major Augen,” the woman addressed him formally, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “You have a phone call.”
Unable to keep the surprise from his face, Topher raised both eyebrows and said, “I have a call from the switchboard?” Anyone working for the government would have used a different channel; the main switchboard was only used for people making calls from the outside, for regular civilians…
“Yes, sir,” the lady confirmed. “The main switchboard routed it to our offices, of course, but the woman refuses to speak to anyone except for you. I know normally our office would screen your outside calls for you, but since she is refusing to cooperate with our requests for additional information, Minor Drew bounced it back to me so I could ask what you want us to do with the caller. We could pick her up if you’d like, and bring her here for questioning until she reveals the nature of her pursuit with you, or simply put her on a block list for thirty days to discourage repeat calls…”
Who in the world would be calling me from outside? Topher wondered. Since it was extremely rare for him to get a call from a civilian—no one wasted the Provo-Major’s time with prank calls, knowing they could be fined for non-business-related interruptions—he was quite curious to figure out who wanted to talk to him so badly that they wouldn’t go through the traditional route of relaying a message for him through the Provo-Minor.
“That won’t be necessary,” he informed the operator. “Please send the call through to my direct line.” He looked away from the woman’s puzzled face to address Darius. “Excuse me, I need to take this.”
If nothing else, it gave him a reason to escape his new duties to Darius for a while longer, so at this point he didn’t even care if it was a prank call.
Topher walked purposefully away from the main foyer and moved through the living room towards Jessamine’s side of the floor. She had a small conference room he could use as long as there wasn’t already a meeting in session, and the walls were fairly well soundproofed, which would afford him some privacy. As he had no idea who was phoning him and how confidential the call would need to be, it seemed safest to plan for the worst and guarantee his privacy.
Anyone who knows me well enough on the outside would have had my direct line though. No one he was well-acquainted with would be calling him at the main switchboard.
The operator’s face blinked off of the screen and was replaced by a ‘Please Hold’ message and some terrible music, as she went to inform the caller of his response.
Fortunately for Topher, Jessamine was not using her small conference room at present, so he entered and closed the door behind him, moving to the far window and leaning against it for the background lighting—and because he didn’t like having his back to the door.
He recognized the face that appeared on his communicator next, but he couldn’t fathom why a Gifted would be calling him. The Gifted usually did anything in their power to avoid the Provo-Major, and it was obvious from Topher’s few brief interactions with Ana Crumb that she was terrified of him and had some deep-seated hatred of the Provo in general.
“Ana?” he blurted out, startled into betraying his surprise.
Ana winced slightly, apparently displeased to know he recognized her by name, and bit on a lower lip already chapped from abuse. She must have been holding the communicator close to her face, because Topher couldn’t see the background of the room she was in at all, only her wavy brown hair at the edges of the screen and the worried look in her green eyes. She couldn’t be too much younger than him, but something about her face made it seem like she was—perhaps the way she looked like someone who was trying not to look afraid.
“Ah, Major…I see you remember me from our last two encounters,” she attempted an airy, casual tone that didn’t really suit her.
“I have a fairly good memory,” he returned calmly, attempting to relax his face in the hopes of lightening up his naturally-stern features and putting her at ease.
“I’m sorry to bother you on your personal communicator like this. I promise I’m not stalking you,” another attempt at a joke that fell flat.
“In fact, you did me a favor by helping me escape a task I was dreading,” he confided in her, still trying to get her to relax. Anything that would drive a terrified member of the Gifted to overcome their fears and call one of the highest-ranking members of the Augenspire was information he probably wanted to hear.
“Oh? Well, I’m glad I was able to help,” Ana did seem to uncoil slightly at this. Perhaps she thought he was the type to fly off the handle and have her arrested just for phoning him? He didn’t doubt a few of his peers would do so in his position, but more often than not, Topher found the fearsome image they worked so hard to cultivate was more of a hindrance to them than an asset. People who were afraid he was going to hurt them weren’t likely to come forward with information he needed.
It wasn’t a popular opinion amongst his peers, so he kept it to himself.
“The board operator tells me you wanted to speak to me in person and were not comfortable conveying a message through the usual channels.” He decided to just dive right into the meat of why she was calling him. Casual banter with strangers had never been his strong
suit.
Ana schooled her features into a look he mentally dubbed as Business Face.
“Yes, but before I get down to it…is this channel being monitored right now?”
An odd question, and one that immediately got his interest. Why would she want to avoid being monitored?
She must have sensitive information.
“My communicator was issued by the government, so all transactions that go across it are logged by a secured file server in a protected part of the building.” Two floors below this one, in fact, though he was generally careful not to give out details of the Augenspire’s layout or construction to outsiders. “The data would typically not be viewed by another person unless I was under criminal investigation, or unless I requested it be called up and saved as a permanent file on one of my personal devices, like this comm or my private computer. Why do you ask?”
Ana pursed her lips and said, “Is it possible for anyone to access this call without your knowledge and consent?”
Since Topher had been contemplating many possibilities over who was betraying them—including someone in the communications department—he had an answer ready for her.
“It is technically possible, but there are checks and balances in place to render it highly unlikely. As I am not currently involved in a criminal investigation, the chances are extremely low.”
Ana bit her lip again—a nervous habit, apparently—and said, “Damn, I had hoped this would be a secure channel, and preferably wouldn’t be recorded for future use against me.”
“Do you have something of a sensitive nature to tell me?” he prodded gently, not wanting to scare her off but desperately wanting to hear what it was. He needed something to break this stalemate within his own mind. He had been thinking through the same circular logic over and over again with no new details for months, and since he had no idea what the countdown in his head was leading to, anything might be helpful knowledge for averting it.
