by O. J. Lowe
The eighth day of Summerdawn.
It was happening again, and she could do nothing but watch it unfold. Torment wracked every sight that befell her, no matter where she looked, she saw things that broke her heart. Wherever she gazed, she felt a little piece of her die inside, so much so she felt hollow. She’d have been sick if she had anything left to purge. Slowly, she stepped through the wreckage of what had once been civilisation, her bare feet brushing through the spongy green undergrowth. All of this had once been cities, towns, villages. It had been a time of prosperity. So much had been hers, but now it belonged to them.
Them…
She’d not seen them. Nobody had since that first day, but their presence had been heavily implied. They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t need to be. Not when they had a weapon to use to such devastating effect, one which had come from everywhere, spread with all the uncompromising mercy of a tidal wave and consumed everything in its path. There had been those who’d stood against it, man and spirit alike, bringing all manner of weapon to bear against its insatiable force and yet they’d failed.
Everyone had failed. She was the last one left alive. The last of humanity. Sole survivor. Alone. More afraid than she’d ever been before. Far in the distance, she could see the Senate building, it should have been on Five Point Island, but she hadn’t crossed any water. The great vines ripped through the brickwork, tore through the outer defences as if they weren’t there, cutting a formerly majestic building into great chunks of useless wreckage in a matter of seconds, bricks and rubble piling high amidst the dust. She thought she could still hear the screams.
Far to her right, the ICCC building had already gone the same way, Ronald Ritellia strung up outside by a tangled web of thorns, his eyes still twitching, blood breaking from the corners of his mouth. On her left, a Unisco building was burning in a green fire, faceless individuals trying to save themselves. It felt like they hadn’t realised their fate was sealed yet.
And amidst all this, they were coming for her. She narrowed her eyes, tensed up. She needed to run. Not that it’d make a difference, she already knew you couldn’t outrun a force of nature.
Sooner or later, it’d catch her. It’d consume her. Painfully.
Then she’d wake up.
She didn’t like to waste time in bed. Sleep normally came soundly for her, no matter where and when, it would sate her. She’d slept as soundly on a boat ride in rough seas as she had in the best hotels around the world. Wasting time struggling to sleep didn’t figure into her way of life. It was a decision she’d made, training she’d put her body through to ensure that she dropped off as efficiently as possible. Why waste time with it restlessness, with nightmares? They were for people with lesser problems than her.
Her worries were few, those she did have weren’t the sort she wanted to worry about in her sleep. Focusing on them while awake was enough. The wedding, for one thing, coming up on the horizon and it was taking much more time than she’d have liked. It was, if she was honest, more trouble than it was worth. But her daughter was insistent. Paying for it was never going to be a problem. Presenting the right image would be the challenge, always the problem with events like this. The right image. She scowled in the dark. Children. If she’d known they were going to lead to this much trouble and stress…
No regrets. It was possible to love someone without necessarily liking them, her entire life was a case in point. With that in mind, why did the dreams continue to haunt her? Every decision she’d ever made to run her life and yet she was still at the mercy of her subconscious. The first time, it had terrified her. The first bad dream since she was a child and she’d been disgusted with herself. Still she’d chalked it up to a bad meal of shellfish the night before and put it out of her mind, determined not to let it haunt her longer than it needed to. That had been ten years ago.
Ever since then, they’d been recurring, at least one a week, often more. She’d seen a sleep therapist, thrown down a medley of prescribed medication to blot them out, not that done a damn thing. If anything, they’d gotten worse. Every time she closed her eyes and surrendered to unconsciousness, her dreams plagued her with terrors of the unknown, visions of the end. The end of everything she’d come to know about the kingdoms, everything she’d taken for granted, all torn down in moments.
Except they hadn’t stayed unknown for long. She possessed a fine mind and she’d put it to work, eventually working out the recurring factors in the dreams, everything she saw and put it all together. She’d seen the pieces, managed to work out the whole picture with what she’d managed to pry from her own memories.
That was when she’d realised what she had to do.
It was time to rise. She threw back the covers and sat up, pressing her toes into the deep red carpet as she did every morning, finding the divots and resting for a moment. Once awake, there was no point in lingering between the sheets. Time waited for nobody, rich, poor or indifferent. That was what dear old dad had always said and she’d tried to live by it. Caution was fine, while hesitation was a deadly foe, even a fatal one. Time was there whether you wanted it to be or not. Gravity had been conquered to a fashion. Physics can be twisted and challenged with enough will. Time could not be fought. Nobody had ever broken it.
She’d always wondered though. Why? Why couldn’t the laws of time be shattered? Stranger things had happened. Just. So why could this not be the case? Time couldn’t be stopped but a watch could. Of course, the watch was only a small part of time. Not even a true representative, no more than a DNA sample represented every single person in the five kingdoms. Time was one thing. Reality was another. Both felt like lofty goals. She thrived on challenges. If there was to be a riddle, then she would somehow find the answer. Whatever it took.
If there was to be an answer, it would not be one she found in her sleeping clothes. She was awake now. No point in staying in bed.
Some of the people she’d moved in the same financial circles as kept more servants than they needed. In those circles, it felt like everyone was an equal or beneath her. Where she stood right now, kings and presidents were wary of her. Wealth on her scale meant she could cause problems for anyone. Not that she had the inclination. Not yet anyway. Things were still in their infancy.
She didn’t like to flaunt her wealth more than she needed to. She had an exceptional bodyguard, all the protection she’d ever want, but she could never rule out the chance that someone would want to make a name for themselves in history. Always there were revolutionaries wanting to string up those better off than them. That couldn’t be allowed for her, not yet. She still had her own history yet to complete and she didn’t want it to be an abridged version. Hence the lack of servants where others had dozens. Less resentment. Less chance of attack.
It was a quirk she’d always found amusing in a dry sort of way. Why? She could afford a thousand servants a day for the rest of her life. Why? Why waste the credits on such an extravagance? The rich didn’t stay rich by frivolous spending. If there’d ever been one lesson she’d tried to teach her daughter, it would be that, though it had taken time to sink in, longer than she’d have liked. Make your own mistakes; you pay your own way. Those so-called friends of hers at that school had turned her head briefly; it wasn’t a turn she’d experienced twice. One of the things she’d excelled in in her life was exceptionally creative punishments. Making her work back the money across half the year, punishing twelve-hour weekend shifts at a time had broken any desire to rebel for the time being.
There’d been seething resentment at the time, Meredith had even threatened to run away. She’d never given into threats, suffice to say she wasn’t starting here, and Meredith hadn’t fled. She wouldn’t dare. Their life had been very comfortable, damn near close to luxury in most eyes. And to go from that to nothing, she doubted Meredith had the character. She wouldn’t dare risk being disowned.
The wedding was the exception. Getting rid of her only child? That was worth the expense. Even in her
head that sounded cynical and more than a little unfair. Meredith wasn’t that bad. She thought she’d done a good job with what she could. Parenting had been the greatest challenge she’d faced and perhaps the only one she couldn’t have claimed a unanimous victory on. The working off her debt part had probably been simultaneously the high and low point of it all. High because she’d won. She’d laid down her authority, gone through with what she’d promised would happen if she was defied. Low because she’d seen that look in her daughter’s eyes, hurt and betrayal with just a hint of hatred.
She’d seen the reproach every single day she’d sent her off to Reims to work. If one day she was to inherit the company, she could at least find out how it worked. It hadn’t been the glamorous jobs either. It had been with the cleaners and the cafeteria staff and the fetchers and the carriers. If regulations hadn’t prevented it, she’d have had words for her to be sent into the ventilation system for some deep cleaning. A real shame she’d thought at the time, but perhaps for the best. It was possible to go too far. If a drone could do it twice as well in half the time, then perhaps it wasn’t the best thing to do, even in the case of teaching her spoiled bitch of a daughter a lesson, no matter how enjoyable as it she might have found it deep down.
What she wouldn’t do under any circumstance was pay for someone to get her clothes out, something she did regard as a frivolous expense. She dressed quickly and casually. Today she could deal with matters at home; she wasn’t going into the office. Truth be told she rarely needed to go to the office at all these days. Yet she wanted to, didn’t want to be one of those owners who left it to everyone else and spent her entire life in somewhere a lot hotter.
Work had always been her drug, a hard habit to kick, one she’d indulged in ever since she was fourteen years old, some roles had been more instructive than others in the greater picture. Besides, there were always tasks which had nothing to do with the running of Reims. The greater picture was something she could never forget about. Still, it would be nice to see sun on a day to day basis.
Maybe she shouldn’t have set up in the capital of Canterage, home to some of the worst weather she’d ever experienced, a place where it did nothing but rain. Retire to Vazara, spend her days in the villa… For someone else, it’d be bliss. She’d bought it, rarely used it, not since the whole Quin-C bid there had kicked into overdrive. She loved that kingdom, wished she could spend more time there. The villa had been her way of giving herself an opportunity to do that, yet it hadn’t yet materialised so far. Impulse purchase? Absolutely. Who said she had to obey her own rules? That was the beauty about being a parent. She could afford to be hypocritical.
Meredith wasn’t here right now. Out with her partner to be? Perhaps. Or those ghastly friends? More than likely. With her away from home, she had privacy. Nobody needed to hear what was going to happen. Her big venture loomed, she didn’t want anything to compromise it for that would be fatal in so many ways. Too much planning had gone into it for stupid errors now. She’d made that clear. Anyone who screwed up would have nowhere to hide. She hadn’t made her reputation in the business world by being forgiving. Hard as it might be to believe, her daughter was her blind spot in that regard. Blood was blood. If you couldn’t forgive your blood some minor transgressions, what were you coming to? Sometimes, forgiveness wasn’t an easy thing to find in a heart as tired as hers.
She did keep a chef on employ, just one of her few extravagances, one she freely admitted she didn’t mind spending out on. Perhaps it should have bothered her more she couldn’t cook worth a damn. Her food was more likely to kill after it had been prepared than before. Yet, she could live with that. As much as it had pained her to admit in her younger days, nobody could be an absolute master at everything. Her father had later told her that it was better to be the top dog in one or two regards rather than merely passable in several dozen areas. Spread yourself thin and you will never know who you are. She’d worked out who she was not long after he’d spoken those words.
Her father had died, and she’d risen to inherit the company at a tender age. Destiny had a way of working out you played the part you were meant to. Her part had been to take the top seat and although it had been initially uncomfortable, she’d found her way into it, was what she’d been trained for. That was the role she’d thrived in. Destiny was subjective though; she couldn’t help but feel that. The life she’d grown up in gave her more chance of being the boss than the average man off the street. Not that she was complaining. Reims had more than doubled its annual profits on a consistent basis since she’d taken the helm. Things were rosy. She had more credits than she could ever realistically spend. Maybe that was the driving force behind the Venture. With everything she had, she might as well do some good with it.
On the other hand, she could have taken the approach her daughter looked to be taking, one away from her and from the company. Once she’d wanted Meredith to take her place one day. Now, she dreaded where that would leave the family business, though thankfully it looked less likely with each passing day. And although she couldn’t approve of her choice in partner, it looked like Meredith would be happy. There’d be somebody within the business more suited to the role, surely. It’d mean that control of the company went out of the family for the first time in its existence but sometimes to survive was to change. Rather the right person who didn’t bear her name than the wrong person who did.
She took all her meals at home in the giant dining room with the great table, long enough to seat thirty and fashioned from heavily polished oak. It had been here since the days of her grandfather, she liked eating alone at it, the sensation made her feel small and anonymous, an unusual enough feeling to be novel. Four generations of her family had lived here, helped build the name. From small acorns the company had grown into one of the biggest in the five kingdoms, one who could count the immediate competition on the fingers of one hand. Especially now Matthew Prince was dead, his business finally being folded into hers. He’d been scheduled to die six months earlier in Belderhampton, had rather rudely wriggled free of the trap she’d set to close around him. No matter. In her world, there was always a tomorrow to try again.
Breakfast was already on the table, a platter of hard cooked eggs, a selection of cold local meats and salty Serranian cheeses, all for her choice. A news pad had been left next to the food, remained untouched from her musings the previous night. Already it was uploading the morning news for her to pore over. Still in the news was the disappearance of Selena Stanton. That spirit dancer had gone missing, last seen leaving a restaurant in her home city and nobody had seen her since. Not technically accurately, somebody had to have if she’d been kidnapped. That was being pedantic. Not really in her field of interest. She’d show up sooner or later. The whole spirit dancing thing was ridiculous anyway.
Calling, she could understand on some certain level. At the very least, she could appreciate the bottom line. The company made plenty of the various bits of equipment sold to all those aspiring champions around the world, there was always a consistent market for products, even if they were getting cheaper every year. Soon, it’d cost more to make them than it would to sell them. But spirit dancing as a fad didn’t resonate. Suffice to say her daughter had practiced the art to some proficiency, she was sure it was to spite her, the selfish little bitch. Let it never be said her judgement wasn’t to be coloured. There had always seemed to be little point to it, more of an art form than any actual credibility. She’d always liked her art to be with purpose rather than be shallow and flashy in all the wrong ways.
It was over breakfast that she went over the rest of the daily news, her food sating her appetite. Alphonse, her personal chef, could never be faulted. Nor should he be for the salary he was paid. He’d once owned a trio of restaurants in Serran, a renowned master chef until there’d been some unpleasantness. He’d never spoken about it, but she’d known the story. The tabloids could be so cruel, especially where food poisoning was concerned. Privately s
he was sure some of their colleagues had been eating there the night in question if the way they’d gone after him was any indication. If anything, it had benefited her. She’d studied the case, had decided that there really wasn’t anything Alphonse could have done about it. That it wasn’t his fault didn’t make him down as any less of a food artist.
Either way, he’d done quite well out of the whole thing. Scandals didn’t stick too long. In another few years, he’d be gone, she already knew for he’d told her as much. He wanted to open another restaurant down the line when everything was forgotten, and he’d been forgiven in the cruel circuit of the food world. Good on him, still having ambition. So many didn’t these days. Happy to coast along on the crest of a wave and see where life took them. He could have continued to cook for her for the rest of their mutual lives, pocketing the exorbitant amount of credits each month but no, it wasn’t enough for him.
She appreciated those who had direction in their life, she didn’t begrudge him his ambitions, would probably help him with finance if he needed it. To know where you were going was tantamount to satisfaction in her book. Finishing her morning tea, she put the pad down and got up. The day’s work was about to start.
The morning memos were the usual stuff. Largely it consisted on checks on the various upcoming activities to be engaged in by the company, new lines to be released, promotions to be confirmed, an upcoming charity event and the imminent retirement of one of the board members. She finished them off, moved onto the correspondence of the day. For the first time in recent memory, she found her mind wandering from the task at hand. Maybe she hadn’t slept well, unlikely for she didn’t feel overly tired. Or maybe the hour was almost at hand. A venture riskier than anything undertaken since she’d become the head of Reims, one not entirely legal and certainly immoral.
She rested her elbows on the table, leaned her chin into her hands, let her mind wander. It wasn’t just the company at stake. She’d never considered she could end up in jail. She’d never considered she might die. Should she fail, both were real possibilities. Distant ones but possible regardless. It was her entire future at stake here, yet didn’t that make it worth the risk? If you couldn’t fight for the future, then was it worth it?