Chapter Text
Reisha hated school. It was just a waste of time, doing busy work and memorizing facts to regurgitate later. Not like any of those things mattered, because her life was already decided for her. She could remember her clan head’s face looking down at her with pride and expectation when she had become of age. She was meant to be a soldier, like her mother, and her mother’s mother. She would defend the nation against threats, both mundane and mystical, external and internal. That was her purpose, as stated by the matriarch of the Gaol family, nothing less, and nothing more.
So yeah, she hated school. It was functionally pointless. What was her favorite subject? What did she want to be when she grew up? Irrelevant. She was going to be a soldier whether she wanted to or not. To go against the clan head was to go against the clan.
At times she missed her papa. He was a human, a medic that her mother had met during the war in the west. He had always told her to follow her dreams, no matter what her mother, or the matriarch said. He had promised that he would stand up for her, that he would work things out so that she could have her choice. Then he died. And that was that.
She sniffed angrily, strangling her emotions down.
“You seen Carter yet?” Her packmate drew her attention as they finished changing out of their gym clothes back into casual dress. “It’s almost time for Burkhill’s class, right?”
“Little guy was absent last week. You think he’s coming in today?” Her other lackey questioned, knowing that Reisha’s grades had started to take hits for late and lower quality work.
Daniel Carter, the honorary member of her posse and lowest in the pecking order. When she’d first met him he had an attitude. He was a class clown, always looking for attention, always cracking jokes, often at other people’s expense. His school before was Moulton Primary, which was known for being a largely prey demographic. He must have thought he was hot shit, coming from a place where even he could push a bunny or two around.
They’d been put on a group assignment and he’d proceeded to heckle her mercilessly for not knowing anything. Saying that she was dragging down his grades and that she needed to pull her weight. So she’d taken him down a peg or two behind the bleachers after gym class, and suddenly all that bravado was gone and she was left with a meek and blustering baby man. He’d become a lot more reserved after that. He had turned so soft, and so easy to push around that she started to notice others looking to take a piece. So, she decided to keep an eye out for him. He’d do the pointless school work for her, and she’d make sure no one else took advantage of him.
A year later, something happened to him and he just sort of withdrew into his shell. She wasn’t sure if it was because had chickened out of his first deal, or what. He’d do her work with barely a complaint, he’d keep quiet in class, and he would leave in a rush every day. He had the look of a dead fish for a while. And then he skipped school for a week. Not many people noticed, but she did. Apparently he was supposed to be back in today, but so far she hadn’t caught him. Honestly she didn’t even expect him to have any papers for her. Burkhill had put out the assignment last week when he was gone.
The bell rang, and as they walked out of the changing rooms and into the main hallway her packmate craned her head over the crowds.
“There he is!” Her friend said over the din of the hallway traffic. There he was, putting his backpack into his locker. She waded towards him, pushing through the crowded commonway. He didn’t seem to notice her, from what she could see of his face he had a troubled look and his lips seemed to be softly moving. The boy was talking to himself in public. He smelled a bit off too.
"Spacing out, Danny boy?" She asked from behind him. He usually would jump in surprise when she made herself known, but today he didn’t even flinch. Weird. He didn’t have any headphones on, so she was sure that he’d heard her. He turned around and looked up at her, a perplexed expression on his face.
“Good to see you back in class, humie. I was starting to worry that you weren’t coming anymore,” she broke the ice with her usual banter, grinning at him. Normally he couldn’t look her in the eye, but today he kept his gaze steady. He looked like he was studying her with a focused and predatory eye, uncharacteristic of the human. She recognized that glare. She’d seen it at home when disputes were settled in the ring, which confused her as to why she was seeing it now. His lips moved and he said something in a small voice that she couldn’t quite catch.
“What?” She craned her head lower to hear him better.
“I hate you,” he repeated. It wasn’t said with any passion. No rosy cheeks flushed with rage, no choking sadness, no quiver of fear. Just a statement of fact. It felt like she had been slapped in the face. He seemed surprised at his own words, oddly enough.
“Aw, c’mon, Danny boy. I thought we had a good thing going,” she tried to brush it off. She gave her two friends a cursory glance to see if they had heard what she had heard. They seemed equally stunned.
“You have made the last two years of my life an absolute hell,” he stated again with that same clinical tone. She had never heard him talk like that.
“And you know what the worst part is?” He continued, “It’s that I let you. You were right about me. I was all talk. I’m not scared to admit it anymore.”
“Danny, what are you saying?”
“No more,” he cut her off, his face as stone.
“No. More.”
The words hit her like a bucket of cold water. One of the only levers she had left to pull had decided that it also didn’t want her in control. She hated cold water. She growled.
“Where do you get off?” She shoved him against his locker. He winced, but still held eye contact, goading her, challenging her.
“I’ve been keeping your ass out of trouble for years and this is the thanks I get?” She shouted, her composure cracking a bit. Class was soon, and the crowds had thinned, but what few remained gave their confrontation a wide berth.
He only glared, the sputtering little human no longer. Her packmates looked on, unsure of how to help. She continued to growl, her forehead almost meeting his. She expected him to break like he always had, but instead his gaze was steady. Even with his body overwhelmed by hers, he still refused to back down. He was daring her to escalate, to make even more of a scene.
She huffed an angry sigh and pulled away from him, waving her packmates to follow. She didn’t know that would be the last time she would see Daniel Carter in school. He was arrested the next day.
She’d thought about those days a lot, looking back and wondering what could have been if she was stronger. More comfortable in her own fur. Maybe she wouldn’t have built up a facade of uncaring brutality. Maybe she could have made some real friends. Maybe Carter wouldn’t have grown to hate her.
Her stay at the hospital had been awful to say the least. Her mother came to visit a few times, but they had never really had the same rapport that she had with her papa. Mostly she had just asked some gruff questions about how she was doing, about how work was treating her outside of getting mauled. The Matriarch had sent her regards. Aside from that, she had nothing to do but think.
She hadn’t expected to find Carter again. For the longest time he was just a bad memory for her, but he’d resurfaced out of nowhere and as an officer no less. She hadn’t expected that either. He still smelled off, and his temperament had changed. Where once was a manic young man, easy to shake, now was a stoic professional who seemed unflappable no matter what was thrown at him. Like a superhero, but without invincibility.
And now he was bleeding out on the concrete.
She urged herself to stand. The wretched creature’s screams still echoed in her ears, making her fur stand on end. She’d nearly blacked out each time it made that sound, its shriek raking up her spine and causing her muscles to seize. Her heartbeat was frantic, she needed to get up.
Sowah was already moving, raising up her ballistic shields and relighting her flamethrower. Reisha grit her teeth and pushed herself up to her feet, wincing in pain at the dozens of tiny punctures she could feel in her shoulders and other chinks in her combat armor.
The outsider pulled Carter’s knife from its side, tendrils convulsing in pain. It looked up at the advancing agents with milky eyes reflecting in the dim light. It tensed up and slowly rotated itself to face them, its large wings spread out low along the ground make itself look even more threatening. As Reisha studied the monster she couldn’t see even a hint of civility; it was looking at them like a vulture sizing up a carcass.
Sowah broke the standoff, raising her weapon and spraying a stream of burning fluid at the giant carrion bird. The shrieker leaped to the side, some of its tendrils catching flame. It screamed again at them, the horrible grating noise piercing at their eardrums and shaking them to their cores. It bolted towards them with a speed uncharacteristic of its size.
The two agents were ready this time, only flinching for a couple of seconds. Sowah had kept her finger on the trigger and pulled the stream of flame back into focus on the outsider. The profane avian dove into the air, wings burning, its tattered wounds writhing and knitting themselves back together in real time. Reisha raised her pistol and drew a large knife from its sheath on her thigh as the monster twisted through the air around them.
Reisha heard a clatter from above and dove to the side as a hail of gunfire flashed down from the catwalk at the agents. She rolled to the side and lined up a shot in the flickering light before unloading her pistol, its heavy caliber booming through the complex. One of the figures above jolted back and fell limp against the railing. She smelled blood.
Another shrill shriek. Her muscles tensed in on themselves as her gut fell in terror. She forced herself to relax, and looked up to see a whirling mass of feathers and pointed tendrils spiraling towards her. A tongue of flame darted from her left, clothing the outsider in a cloak of flame and smoke. It squawked an otherworldly squawk and broke its dive away, its trajectory twisting back towards the destroyed locker room entrance. Sowah kept her weapon trained on the outsider, coraling it as though she were using a fiery whip. It fled into the dark tunnelway, the smoke trailing its exit.
The flamethrower sputtered, signaling that Sowah’s weapon was running dry. Great swathes of concrete and structural steel were blackened by the fallout of their battle.
“Gaoul! Get Carter and pull back, we need to get out of here,” Sowah barked the command, keeping her eyes trained on the smoking exit of the locker room; the area was speckled with bullet holes from the gunners that were in the rafters earlier. Reisha jumped to her feet and bounded over tables and conveyance towards the smell of Carter’s blood.
But he wasn’t there, only a small puddle and some drag marks remained.
She followed the bloody scrapes on the floor with her flashlight, finding that they went back the way the creature first came. Her heart fell as she realized that he had been taken. She stood and made to follow the wretched creature.
“Gaoul!” Agent Sowah shouted as Reisha stepped into the smoking locker room, blood dripping from the dozens of puncture wounds she had accrued, “Get back!”
“He’s gone!” Reisha responded with a frenzied shout.
“There’s no chance we can finish that thing before it finishes us, pull back!”
Reisha turned slowly to look at her tattered comrade, growling. Sowah met her with a grave stare. The wolfess could smell Carter’s scent weakening. It hurt more than she cared to admit. As the adrenaline of the desperate fight had faded, the pain of her wounds began to make itself known. Her posture slumped a bit as the loss of blood pressure began to set in, and her own vision began to lose focus. She started again into the breach, but was tackled to the ground by her squad leader.
“This just in: Shots were fired at the Orrin Coleman Steelworks in Lowfenn this afternoon. Witnesses say that they saw law enforcement enter the building before the conflict began,” a smartly dressed mustelid reported, with several live feeds pulling up on the other side of the screen showing an assortment of angles on the fenced building and the squad cars blocking the entrances.
“Live at the scene is reporter, Jamie Khoren,” one of the screens panned to a panther in semi-casual dress with a bulletproof vest strapped over her chest.
“Jamie, can you tell us more about what’s happening on the ground?”
“It’s chaotic out here, Eilene, we’ve got steel workers who have evacuated the building, but are only being let out one by one by police officers, who are taking statements. We’ve got two officers who’ve come out of the compound in critical condition, one unconscious. The ambulance just left with them. I’m approaching the barricade to ask for an update from law enforcement,” the cameraman followed Jamie as she pushed through a crowd of onlookers, holding her microphone up out of the way.
“Hey, fuck CRTF!” A coyote, dressed in grimy overalls shouted as the Jaguar reporter passed. Jamie locked eyes with the steel worker and changed her trajectory.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” Jamie said as she held the mic closer with a challenging stare.
“You heard me! We were just doing our jobs, and then they come in and start shit,” the female coyote spat into the mic with disgust. The reporter started to pull the mic away, but not before the worker added, “Mark my words, everything CRTF touches turns to shit!”
Jamie turned away and ignored the disgruntled steelworker as she pushed the rest of the way through to the officers. A hyena and a rabbit seemed to be guarding the rear of the barricade with rifles drawn.
“Hello, officers, we’re live with National News. What can you tell us about the situation here?”
“We’ve got outsider activity in the complex, beyond that I can’t comment on ongoing investigation,” the leporine officer answered over the din of the crowd.
“What about the two officers? How are they faring?”
“They’re stable, and we’re hoping for a full recovery. We’re waiting on army reserves to get here and help clear the building and bring our man back,” the hyena replied, not realizing the slip she had just made.
“Wait, officers, did you just say that there’s a man still inside the danger zone?” Jamie latched onto the loose thread in the officer’s answer. The Hyena held a poker face, and coughed slightly before turning away from the reporter.
Her partner gave her a dirty look, before answering “no comment. Please, no more questions until the situation is resolved.”
“Wait! Officers, is there, or is there not, an officer missing in action?”
“Can’t comment on ongoing investigation, now back away from the danger zone!” The hyena officer shouted over the interaction, ushering the protesting reporter back.
The live feed froze for a moment before it was removed from the screen. The news host coughed a bit, her long thick neck bobbing at the motion.
“Well, you heard it here first, folks! It would appear that there is a CRTF operation underway at the event site. Officers are containing the danger and moving to apprehend the culprits at large. We’ll have more on tonight’s program as the details unfold. If you are a resident of the surrounding area, first and foremost you should take shelter until Outsider activity is neutralized. If you have information to report, then please use our hotline at 1-600-NAT-NEWS. This has been Eilene Chatner, signing off!”
The screen transitioned to another Host who began talking about the recent push for legislated mating assignments in lieu of the population crisis and other political drudgery that was easy to tune out.
Bronwyn clawed at the remote, taking deep breaths. She didn’t want to believe it, but the evidence was staring her in the face. The steelworks was in Lowfenn, which fell under Precinct 9. Her precinct. She dropped the remote as she half heartedly placed it on the coffee table in the living room, its plastic clattering on the hardwood floor.
“Bron?” She heard Pops call from the kitchen. A few footsteps later and her dad was in the room, looking at her with concern on his scrappy face. The old red fox was starting to turn gray, but his physique betrayed the dedication of a worker and a fighter.
“It’s nothing, Pops,” Bronwyn tried to shrug his gaze, but he noticed her hands nervously wringing in her lap. If she could feel her tail, it would be curled around so she could hold it.
“Ain’t nothing, Kit? Spill,” he commanded in a thick accent. He came and sat on the couch next to her, green eyes trained on her every movement. A hard life had forged the man into a natural bullshit detector, she knew.
“Carter’s missing,” she started, “Sounds like Sowah and the other girl who replaced me are down too.”
Her Pops pulled her into a tight embrace. He smelled like engine grease and bacon, but it was a smell that was familiar to her. He rocked her gently even as the arms of her chair dug uncomfortably into her side.
“ . . . Damn that boy,” Pops sighed, “Always biting off more than he can chew.”
She wanted to defend her old partner, but she knew her dad didn’t mean anything by it. He was always tough on Carter, especially in the ring. Old stock, he’d called the human Old stock from an old world; hard, tough, unyielding. Something she secretly wished could be attributed to her.
They stayed that way for a little while until she got her breathing under control.
“I’m going to take the deal, Pops,” Bronwyn said with resolve, despite her shaky voice. Her dad stiffened his grip at her statement.
“Kit . . . “ he said softly with his storied voice, wordlessly begging her to reconsider as he pulled away from the hug. He looked at her with a hard stare, something she was scared of as a child. She met it this time as an adult.
“I can’t stay like this, Pops. I won’t do it,” Bronwyn hissed with a tortured voice. She hated the idea of spending another moment helpless; she’d already had nightmares of living out her life crippled, broken, useless, and then finally alone. Pops kept quiet, his stoic look shifting slightly as he saw his daughter bare her pain.
“But you won’t be you anymore,” he said softly, his gray fur feeling just a little grayer. “I don’t want to watch that broker change you.”
“It’s my choice, and you know that’s not true. There’ll just be a little extra, that’s all,” she tried to assuage their fears.
Gideon Faulks’ face fell at her decision.
“I can’t let you do that. I won’t. I won’t take you there,” he stated firmly, an edge to his voice.
“Then I’ll wheel myself,” Bronwyn matched his resolve, a fire in her eyes.
Carter awoke in a dark room, tied to a chair. His wounds were dressed and numb and his head was a little foggy from whatever anesthetic his healers had used. An IV bag was dripping to his right. He wasn’t clothed in a real hospital gown, and the familiar weight of his gear wasn’t there. His left upper arm felt stiff, like it was tied in a splint; probably broken.
There was a television set up on a gurney across from his chair. The CRTV buzzed and a spotty black and white image faded into view. It was an old interview, the voices distorted with the crackle of the aged medium. The camera was zoomed in on a man in a fine suit as the interviewer asked questions off screen. The man’s eyes were distant, but he had a kindly smile on his face. Carter realized that this was the Guiding Star himself, who looked the same age as when the agent had seen him last.
“-And this ‘Many Sided Scale’, how exactly does it work? I’ve talked to a lot of skeptics about the fairness of contracts as you have described them, and this comes up quite a lot,” the male host asked in a light British accent.
“The mechanics of the scale operate on principles that are not just beyond mortal comprehension, they are physically inobservable to your senses. That may change as time progresses, but for now, I’m afraid I can’t give an explanation as to its operation,” Lucian said in a gentle bass fry.
“I can’t lie, I’m a bit disappointed in that answer. But, I suppose you’re in a better position to understand than I,” the Host made to change the topic with grace, but Lucian kept speaking.
“What I can say is that the scale was made as part of a deal with this nation, which is contractually binding to my kind. The terms it abides by are actually embossed around its base and at the fountain monument at Magnus center. ‘That each heart may be measured against its desire,”
“-And each individual reach to touch their dreams,” the Host completed the quotation, before clearing his throat sheepishly.
“Thank you. In all actuality the scale is more of a compass, which determines the trajectory of one’s existence. Frankly you mortals don’t know how much potential you really have--power even, to exert yourselves on the unseen world,” Lucian continued, but was interrupted again by the interviewer.
“Now, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I think it would mean a lot to our viewers if you went over what defines a contract and how that adds validity to what you’ve said in regards to fairness,” the Host took a quick breath midway through his request, punctuating the transition of ideas.
The Guiding Star took a moment to answer, looking ponderously up as he formulated his response.
“ . . . I think I have an explanation that will translate well to your understanding,” Lucian began, his voice crackling on the old film slightly, “Some of your ancient tribes had a practice when forming an agreement of great importance. They would take sacrificial animals and they would butcher them in half and lay them out, forming a sort of path between them. Then the two parties would walk through that path together, accepting that if their end of the deal wasn’t kept, they would be destroyed in a similar fashion to those animals. That is how important contracts are to my kind, to break the terms is to break ourselves.”
The interview was silent for a few seconds, as though the host had lost his words.
“I’ll be honest, in some ways I miss that sort of thing. Not so much the blood and viscera of it, naturally,” Lucian smiled, and the Host laughed nervously. “It’s just so much more honest. Commitment like that is hard to come by these days.”
Carter recognized this exchange. He had watched it a few times in his research of old documentaries and interviews with the Seven. He’d been trying to find references to the Gardener, but the name was never found in any of these sources.
A dark furred hand reached out from the shadows and turned the dial to click the TV off. As the screen’s glow faded, the room sank into a pitch black.
“Hello Daniel,” a voice lilted to his side, its mature and feminine cadence raking over his senses. He felt like he had heard her voice before, but didn’t recognize it well enough to identify it.
“Who are you?” Daniel asked in the dark. He tested his bindings slowly, but firmly, feeling the straps flex a little around his arm and legs.
“Just a loathsome traitor,” the voice replied with mirth.
Daniel widened his eyes, craning his head towards where the voice came from last. This didn’t sound like the specter from his dreams, but the possibility was there.
“Although, I suppose that’s just a title given to those who fall out of favor,” the mysterious voice continued, circling his chair.
“Your real name, then,” Daniel pressed. There was another set of footsteps clacking on the tiled floor, but its owner was silent.
“You haven’t earned my name,” his captor chided him. By the amusement of her tone, she seemed to enjoy the control she had. His mind raced like a machine, combing through the details that had led him to this point. This had to be the Diplomat that Mateo mentioned.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage then,” he replied, his heart steady.
“I do, don’t I?” He could feel her breath in his ear. From the smell, she had just eaten something spicy.
“What do you want?” He cut straight to the point. His captor huffed a sigh at his unwillingness to play her games.
“No need to be so stiff, mister Carter,” she lectured. “I don’t want anything from you. In fact, I want to give you something.”
“Oh, really, and what is that?” He asked, skeptically.
“Perspective,” the voice said with a tone that betrayed a smile.
He didn’t respond, waiting for her to continue.
“I know a thing or two about you. You’ve been curious your whole life, what it is that we ‘outsiders’ are really after,” she was circling again, the second set of footsteps doing the same on the opposite side. Someone else was in there with them, but they were keeping quiet.
“You want to exist,” Daniel asserted. He’d spent many nights researching what little public records there were about outsiders and this was the meager conclusion he had made.
“Exactly, but more than that, we want to experience,” his captor gave that last bit a throaty emphasis, as though the very word itself brought her pleasure. She breathed heavily for a moment before continuing. The way her throat rattled, purred, was enough evidence for him to know he was playing a literal game of cat and mouse.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like for an ant to trade lives with a bird?”
“Not really,” he said in a deadpan voice.
“It would be ecstasy! The ant would experience life in a whole new dimension. Think of it, mister Carter, to fly when you’ve always crawled, to think when you’ve always obeyed,” she gushed with adoration for the idea.
“Birds have their own problems,” Daniel poked at the analogy.
“True enough, but I don’t think the bird would ever willingly go back to being an ant. The same is true for us. We came from nothing, we will not return to it,” she finished with a threatening tone.
“So what? I’m supposed to suddenly disregard all the violence? All the murder your kind has done?” Carter scoffed at her speech.
“You wound me, Daniel. Lucian has robbed us of our right, him and the Gardener both. Violence is merely a symptom of oppression,” the voice rebutted, “Tell me, if you knew someone was trying to kill you, wouldn’t you fight back?”
“Tell that to the innocents who die every day because of you. If violence is all you do to get what you want, then perhaps you deserve to be stopped,” Daniel fired back with poison on his lips.
“A bold statement from one with blood on his own hands,” the voice replied sharply.
“My hands are dirty to keep people safe. We are not the same,” Daniel declared forcefully.
“Perhaps, and perhaps not,” his captor seemed to lose interest in the conversation as they butted heads.
“Why are you here?” Carter sighed, “You could have just killed me, but obviously I have something you need, so out with it. What do you want?”
“A deal, of course,” the Diplomat replied evenly, “You hear me out, let me show you the truth about the Seven, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know about the Gardener.”
How had she known? Daniel wished he could see in the dark, just so he could look his captor in the eyes and gauge their trustworthiness.
“What do you say?” The diplomat asked and Daniel was certain there was a smile on her lips.
It was obviously a trap. A way to lure him into another deal. That was a pattern amongst outsider and broker alike. She hadn’t answered him fully, either, so perhaps he had some bartering power that he didn’t know about.
“Yes.”
“Excellent,” the Diplomat quipped.
The lights flickered on, and Carter found himself staring into the face of Ambition, who was looking down at him with a smirk.
“You? ” Carter’s composure slipped and his face contorted in confusion.
Viata nodded.