“They’re planning on introducing my project at the gala. I can’t let a flyer advertising my work look like that ugly. It had to be fixed.”
“Hah,” said Marley. “Did you sign it, too?”
Branwyn gave her a little smile but didn’t answer.
The sign on the outside of Alejandro Martinez’s door read, “Associate Director.” Marley wasn’t sure where he fit into Senyaza’s org chart, other than belonging to the vast and possibly misnamed Information Technology department.
Information technology was, after all, the entirety of Senyaza’s public-facing business, what with all the cellphones, televisions and computers. Radios had been incredibly important to some of the Senyaza victories. Even the Hush itself, that field that suppressed the celestial ability to influence humanity wholesale, had only been possible with the assistance of nephilim radio-like magic.
Marley knocked on the semi-closed door and Alejandro looked up from his desk. He was a short, slim man with immaculately groomed dark hair and a tiny beard. He dressed in the kind of business casual that was, according to Penny, worth every cent. As soon as he saw Marley and Branwyn, he smiled. “Marley! Of course you’re here; we were just discussing you upstairs. You know these things, eh?”
Marley blinked. “Not really…?”
The smile became a roguish grin. “No? Well, I’ll be recording the coincidence just in case. Sometimes talents do expand, you know. And I see you brought Ms. Lennox, who has been doing such stellar work on integrating the Nakotus system. I did not expect to see you before the gala! So what brings you here? Did I miss a message, or were you just in the neighborhood?”
“Branwyn wants gossip,” said Marley. “I wanted to check in with you before I go see Special Investigations, since everybody gets grumpy if I don’t. Why were you talking about me upstairs?”
Alejandro picked up a tablet and tapped its edge on the desk, like he was aligning a stack of papers. “We were going through possible resources for an upcoming operation. Nobody’s made any decisions yet.”
He was older than the mid-twenties he appeared, Marley knew. She wondered how much older. That tablet tapping maneuver certainly predated the paperless office. “Do you know if Simon’s in? I wanted to find out if anybody’s heard from Corbin Adair lately.”
Alejandro fumbled the tablet and caught it before it landed on the carpet. “I think he is. Would you like me to check? Give you an escort over there?”
“I know the way,” Marley said, watching him closely. Alejandro wasn’t a strong-blooded nephil, but the gift he’d inherited from his ancestor manifested itself as universal mastery of human languages. He’d told her he was pretty good with animals too. “I never asked before; do you know Corbin well?”
“Director of Security’s grandson, yes?” He glanced at the ceiling. “Not well, but we’ve met. Intense guy. Why is he on your mind?”
The back of Marley’s neck prickled. “No reason. It’s just been a while since we talked.” The approving smile Alejandro gave her was… puzzling.
Branwyn flopped down in Alejandro’s guest chair and pulled her feet under her. “I can tell there’s all sorts of interesting drama going on.”
Alejandro nodded at Branwyn. “There is. And you know exactly who to talk to for all the answers.”
Branwyn crooked a smile. “I think I do. So what’s going on between Senyaza and the feds? I hear I missed quite the company meeting.”
“Oh, Ms. Lennox, I would love to chat with you but I do have another meeting soon. Perhaps we can schedule something? Lunch next week? I know a lovely little cafe.” Alejandro looked at his wristband, which did have a small digital display and so could probably be called a ‘watch’. “You can tell me where the Nakotus project is going. Only what’s appropriate, of course.”
“What? But you said—” Branwyn’s legs splayed out from where she’d tucked them. She narrowed her eyes and stood. “All right.”
Marley shifted her weight, uncomfortable. Alejandro was acting odd. He was usually cheerful and casual. He was always up for a lingering chat. She had some guesses as to why he’d been strange with her, but his response to Branwyn bewildered and worried her. She wondered if he was getting himself into trouble. Her head hurt again and without any conscious effort, her vision shifted to her danger-sight.
When her intrinsic magic had first started manifesting, it had felt like looking at a person through a kaleidoscope. Who they were and what they were headed toward fractured into multiple images, all connected and reflected. It took focus and experience to understand what she was looking at, and it was hardly ever worth the effort.
The future was variable. A stray thought could change it. Nearly everybody had something unpleasant on the near horizon, as one of many possibilities. Unless it was imminent, dominant, or clearly indicated as the result of a specific choice, there simply wasn’t anything she could do about it—and often she didn’t need to. So she tried to suppress it most of the time. Unless she was working, or somebody asked, or she just couldn’t help herself.
Once upon a time she’d taken medicine because she couldn’t stop worrying about what was going to happen next. She didn’t take the medicine anymore and sometimes that was okay. But sometimes, her mind didn’t obey her. Sometimes the fact that she could know exactly what to worry about was a curse she couldn’t resist.
Like today, apparently. Her danger-sight fully activated without conscious effort.
Alejandro’s aura was a scattering of images, but all of them showed him bleeding or broken or burned. Something bad was coming for her colleague, something that he had little likelihood of avoiding. If she knew more about what his plans were, she might be able to nudge him into a safe direction. Then again, she might not.
She always had to guess at the details: when, how, what. Here all she could gather was ‘soon’ and ‘violently’ and ‘bad’. ‘Where’ was entirely beyond her ken. It wasn’t much to base a warning on. And if somebody was planning on stalking and shooting him, changing when he went out for after-work drinks wouldn’t matter at all.
Still. This danger was too omnipresent to be the result of a stray thought. “Hey, Alejandro? Be careful.”
He furrowed his brow as he looked at her, understanding her instantly. He’d been one of those who’d evaluated her on little predictions, when she’d gone through the Senyaza intake processing. They’d played games that involved mild injuries, both self-inflicted and externally imposed, and tested whether she could predict them. Alejandro knew as much as she did about how her precognition worked; he knew how it tapped into intent and bad luck, and he knew she didn’t bother with frivolous warnings.
“All right. I’ll look both ways as I cross the street.”
But his avowal of caution didn’t change what she saw at all. He raised his eyebrows and she shook her head.
“I see. Well,” he said, looking down, “I don’t have any plane flights planned. I’ll do my best to stay alert and perhaps it will sort itself out. If not, we can talk again at the gala. You’d might as well go find Mr. Mitsukuni before it gets much later in the day. Happy hour and all, you know.”
Marley’s shoulders slumped and she left the office. She hated leaving people with her apprehensions; she hated being a doom-warning worrywart, but her fear of the consequences of silence was too strong.
Branwyn fell in beside her. Marley glanced over at her and the danger-sight flared again. Then she recoiled and forced it down, because Branwyn’s future was as blood-filled as Alejandro’s.
Chapter Five
Branwyn
Marley’s face went ashen and Branwyn knew exactly what had happened. She sighed. Taking Marley by the arm, she moved her down the hall to one of the office lounges. It had mauve walls and cream-colored plush chairs and a television with a game console attached. Branwyn was sure it was supposed to be ‘relaxing’ but she could only ever relax in a place like this if she redecorated it first.
“You know you’re not supposed to do that with
out asking first.”
“I couldn’t help it. And it didn’t work at all on Corbin earlier.” Marley rubbed her forehead.
“Didn’t it?” Branwyn asked, intrigued despite herself. “How clever of him.”
“I was jumpy,” Marley went on. “And Alejandro was being weird. He was trying to warn us about something and I wanted to know if it was going to get him in trouble.”
“You wanted to know, so you just looked.” Branwyn clicked her tongue at Marley. “We’ve talked about this.” They had talked about it. And she knew better than to expect Marley to always resist her information-based power. But Branwyn was hoping that by changing the subject to the Philosophy and Ethics of Personalized Precognition, she could prevent Marley from telling her what had made her go pale.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” began Marley, and Branwyn thought, Mission accomplished. “And I’m not sure privacy rules can be applied to information the subject can’t possibly have. It’s not like I’m digging through somebody’s trash or spying on them from far away.”
“Speaking of spies, I thought Alejandro seemed like he was expecting the secret police to burst in any minute. I wonder if somebody was listening?” Branwyn grabbed one of the lounge chairs and turned it toward the mauve wall. Then she sat down and leaned her head against the wall, tracing her fingers lightly over the awful paint.
With what Branwyn thought was unnecessary sarcasm, Marley said, “Isn’t it convenient you have a contract explicitly allowing you to explore the systems of the building?”
“They knew what they were signing.” Branwyn had spent most of the last year improving her skills at magical artificing. It was the art and craft of changing an object’s nature with her touch and will, or using magical aids to actually bring an object to awareness. Most magic, she’d learned, made people magic. Some celestial magic made places magic. She made things magic, made them into people, magically speaking. And one of the first things she’d woken up had been the skyscraper called Titan One.
Originally, she’d imbued it with the desire to be her ally. It had helped her escape when she’d displeased its owners. But once Senyaza had paid her an appropriate deposit as a peace offering, she’d gone back in to work more with the building, giving it more magical nodes. Natural-born people had seven nodes in the magical Geometry that tangled together to make them unique. Three artificial ones were about the maximum Branwyn could manage right now, which seemed to make it about as responsive as a well-trained dog. A well-trained dog with instincts created by her. And while she’d taught the building new things, it was still eager to be her friend.
She’d worked on quite a few projects for and with Senyaza, because they were willing to pay for her experiments as well as their own commissions. She’d made a self-rooting staff, a mechanical portal, some enchanted lenses, a belt for Mr. Black and a handful of other toys exploring the limits of what she was currently capable of. Her latest big project for Senyaza was integrating a computer interface and database with Titan One’s intelligence. She wasn’t really a computer person and her experiments had suggested that enchanting them was way beyond her current abilities. There was something about the Geometrical complexity that she couldn’t quite grasp. Yet.
But she could follow along with the diagrams that George relayed to her from Leonard the Senyaza programmer, and teach the entity she called Titanone to use the wires laced through its skeleton to communicate with the nephilim. They called the entire network ‘Nakotus’ after some old fictional library. George and the others were very proud of how advanced it was. But so far, neither she nor Titanone were impressed, because ultimately the database was still a piece of machinery. It was just a tool, without will or desire. They’d built the pathways so it could be Titan One’s tool, as well, but the database ‘Nakotus’ was no more Titanone than Branwyn’s hammer was Branwyn.
Hi, Titanone, she thought at the building, feeling the strands of energy that flowed through it. She’d actually woken up several parts of the building back at the beginning, which made the work she was doing these days complicated. It was one building, but it had complex, sometimes conflicting goals. Kind of like a natural-born person, really.
Hi, Branwyn! said the tower back. Branwyn blinked. Before today, the building had communicated with imagery, odd surges of emotion and the occasional word-as-image, but it hadn’t used clear sentences.
You’re using language, she accused.
That was why you build the interface, wasn’t it? The query was calmer, less excited than Titanone normally was.
You weren’t talking last time. I didn’t expect you to start talking while I wasn’t here. I feel like I’ve missed a milestone.
No. Leonard has asked me to remember everything that happens. Would you like to see? Leonard is still teaching me about video feeds but I think I can show you.
A chill ran down Branwyn’s spine. Maybe later. How do you mean ‘everything?’
Everything, said Titanone happily, with a surge of the personality Branwyn expected. Everything within me. I watched you talk to Alejandro and now I remember that. Alejandro has been acting differently lately. He looks at the walls more.
Branwyn sat for a few moments thinking, until Marley stopped being patient and touched her shoulder. “Do you mind if I go on ahead?”
“One more minute,” Branwyn said absently, and thought to Titanone, Who else would you share your memories with besides me?
So far only Leonard and Mr. Black have asked, said Titanone, sounding a little annoyed. Are we going to do more work soon? I’ve been exploring the Nakotus system. It’s actually pretty cool. I’m excited about what I’ll be able to do if I get bigger.
Maybe, thought Branwyn. I have to go see Simon now.
Poor Simon. He needs some special attention. He did badly on his latest performance report. They’re thinking about reassigning him. I read it on Nakotus.
Branwyn couldn’t help herself. You shouldn’t tell people things like that, Titanone. Next time you talk to Leonard, ask him about privacy. And stay out of Nakotus. She lifted her hands from the wall.
The lights in the lounge flickered and Branwyn said aloud, “I’ll talk to you more later, Titanone, I promise. But Marley is in a hurry.”
“What was that about?” asked Marley, following as Branwyn stalked of the lounge. “You’re upset.”
Branwyn shrugged. “Titanone discovered how to go through everybody’s records when he’s bored, and Senyaza is using him to monitor everybody in the building instead of the traditional cameras.”
Marley’s mouth opened and then closed. After a moment she said, “Oh, Branwyn, I’m so sorry.”
Branwyn’s hand closed into a fist at her side. “Let’s discuss it later,” she repeated. She’d be angry then, where Titanone couldn’t see and be confused about who she was angry at.
Marley was an old friend. She understood what Branwyn meant. But she stayed quiet as they went to the Special Investigations office, four floors underground. The elevator went down to S13 and none of it, Branwyn had been told, was parking. She’d only been as far as S9 herself. Everything required special access and Marley’s own keycard didn’t go below S4. Keycard limits hadn’t stopped Branwyn when she first visited S9 but she was doing her best to play nicely with Senyaza at the moment. She had schooling for her siblings to pay for.
Branwyn liked the Special Investigations floor more than the rest of Titan One’s interiors, anyhow. The hall had a more lived-in look than the reception area above, with framed horror movie posters on the walls. Some of them were signed. She and Marley walked past another lounge, this one with a rather more elaborate video game setup. A racing game waited for players on the big screen.
As Branwyn recalled from her communion with Titanone, there were only a few traditional offices on this floor. Most of the rooms were larger, and spaced farther apart. Many of them were only rarely visited. Special Investigations and Threats performed a number of services for Senyaza. Some o
f them related to mundane business. More of them related to problems with celestials. Branwyn and Marley were here to visit the monster hunters.
Senyaza officially called the monsters ‘kaiju’ even though they were only like Godzilla in destructive capacity, because both Senyaza and the monsters were much older than metaphorical fire-breathing lizards. The kaiju that the monster hunter team dealt with were destructive fallen angels: far less principled than demons and far more nihilistic than the faeries. They preyed on humanity, torturing and killing some people, and turning others into copies of what they imagined themselves to be. They had to be dealt with.
But it was a quirk of celestial nature that celestials could almost never be truly killed. Even when the nephilim hunters used an ancient magic to bind a celestial’s three-part spirit to its physical vessel, the best they could manage was sending it back to the celestial source, where the same entity would reform, amnesiac but just as malignant.
Nephilim, on the other hand, died like any human, without the benefit of souls to bring an afterlife. And the monsters were very, very dangerous.
Thus, the men—it was all men, Branwyn had noticed time and again—in the office were all the sort of people who were willing to risk their potentially very long lives to fight an endless war for little reward. Willing, or in some cases eager. They were each tough enough or dangerous enough—or both—to make a biker gang take the long way around.
They were planning a joint operation, clustered around a table holding a map of a building and dotted with little figures. None of them even glanced at the door where Marley and Branwyn peeked in. There were five of them: Ice, Grendel, Mack, Finn and Simon. Branwyn didn’t know most of them well, but Simon was a friend.
Branwyn knocked on the door frame but none of them looked over. After a moment of being unnoticed at the door, Branwyn went on into the room, tugging Marley in after her. She sat on one of the four ancient, heavy wooden desks that supported sleek computers and started fidgeting with a brace of throwing knives. Marley sat in the chair beside her, watching the men gravely. The men kept talking, pushing figures around and arguing about the best way into the building.
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