“I know. I’m somewhere on the list of the last people that you need to explain yourself to, I know, you told me. I’m here to give you this,” she said, placing a piece of crumpled paper in his hand.
“What is this?” he asked, unfurling the paper, eyes narrowed when he read it, the loopy writing of his aunt glaring up at him. “No way in hell.”
“Jan, whatever she did was horrible. I think I understand, but that’s your choice whether you want to tell me or not. But give her a chance.”
“Do you think she gave me one?” he snarled, leaning in towards Fey, close enough that he could see her jaw shift as she swallowed. “Both of my parents died from Scorchen, Fey. I don’t even remember who went first and who closely followed, but that’s why I have a tolerance for the disease. I watched as it killed my parents, but I didn’t even realize that they were dead. Not even when they took their bodies into a truck loaded with corpses from the epidemic.”
Jan took in a small breath, feeling his eyes prickle with unshed tears, hot and heavier than anything January had ever known. “Aunty Ann was all I had. We moved across the ocean, from Port York to here, promised to a great future full of all my childish dreams. Barely over a week in, she left me in front of an orphanage with the pathetic excuse of that ‘it was for the better’.” He let out a bitter laugh, a tear spilling over his vision. “I wasn’t lying when I said that I cried every day for her; I did, Fey. Every single damn day, the 5 year old me cried for Aunty Ann to take me back because I hated it there. Then I couldn’t cry anymore, and she never came. After a year, I started to become what I am today. And she had the chance to reach out to me, in all this time, and she chooses now?”
“How?” Fey asked, walking backwards until she hit one of the walls, slowly sinking down against it. “She just-?”
“That’s how I felt too,” Jan said weakly, tears that refused to flow this freely before, falling in long awaited anticipation. “Happy you got to witness me crack?”
“Honestly? —kind of. You’re human, Jan. You are supposed to cry at things like abandonment, but at the same time, it’s so disconcerting. There are so many things that I’ve learned to associate with you, but orphan?”
“I don’t want pity.”
“Good. I won’t waste mine on you.”
Jan stayed where he was, in the middle of the hallway, clutching the piece of paper with Ann Tormont’s address on it tightly, wondering if he would use it, had she met him a year ago.
“You know,” Fey spoke up after a respectable silence, looking lost in her own world as well. “My family sucks arse too. They were going to sell me.”
Jan’s head shot up. “What?”
“Yeah. They did actually, so I’m not sure if I can even call them my family. They couldn’t afford my meds anymore, and I was too much of an expense, so they sold me to a buyer here for labour.”
Jan felt his mouth go dry. “Surely that’s not legal.”
“Put some terminology on it, and it apparently is. I was lucky enough to never be in danger, my employer was exceptionally kind. They were dying from Scorchen by the time the news of the king wanting a problem solver went around, so they gave me their consent and blessings. It’s my parents, that I have the main problem with.”
“What they did… that’s not right.”
Fey shrugged, pulling herself from the ground. “Barely anything in this world is. So as long we live, we hold each to our confessions so we stay forever silent?”
“It’s a deal done.”
“Good. Now wipe those tears away; we have to go see how bad Z and Hollingsworth are messing up the-”
Suddenly, Fey was doubled over, and January put out an arm, there if she wanted to take it. She didn’t, but January didn’t feel jilted in any way; it was there if she needed it, and he knew better than to impose himself in a situation where it wasn’t needed or wanted. “You okay?”
“You’re asking me that? After you’ve just confessed something I doubt you’ve ever told anyone before, as well as just meeting your slug-in-for-an-aunt?”
“Coming from the dying girl whose parents sold her because she was a financial burden.”
“Touché,” she muttered, though she smiled. “I’m fine, really.”
Jan wanted to really make sure she was fine; he figured it was a polite thing to do, seeing as she came to her aide with the whole Ann fiasco, but he figured the best help he could do, was drop the matter completely.
“So; what about Z and Hollingsworth royally screwing up?”
“You’re not going to say anything?” she asked, eyes wide.
“Trust me, we’re talking about this. Later, though. There’s been enough emotional trauma for one afternoon.”
“You might regret those words when the evening turns out to be boring,” she singsonged, starting to walk towards the meeting room anyway.
“When have we ever had a boring evening?”
Fey rolled her eyes at him, and they walked down the halls, side by side, and oddly enough, January felt as if they had come to an agreement. They called a temporary truce with the Stel operation, but since Jan let the weight on his chest go, and she unloaded some of her emotional baggage as well, he really felt that they came to some sort of equal ground.
And then, Jan shoved the paper with Ann Tormont’s address in his pocket, because really, what if the evening became too boring?
Fifty
IT was surprisingly easy to be Arleyene Crawford. At first, Stel had been terrified, frozen in shock as she processed the entire situation she was in. But as soon as she realized the severity of messing up on the boat ride there, it shockingly brought her immediately back to her senses. She could not screw this up.
It was easier than she expected for her to be integrated into Elix. She supposed jumping seamlessly from the streets of New London to becoming a spy in the Royal Palace made it not too farfetched for her to be now roaming the paved marble pathways of Elix.
And bloody hell, it was hard, but Stel Hathaway didn’t crack under pressure, so she instead became a diamond much like the twin jewels elegantly studding the entry of the Citadel.
And then there was the Citadel. If the Royal Palace was opulence, the Citadel was bloody splendour. It was the building of the head of government of Elix, though Stel knew better than to assume it wasn’t a palace, because it was. This was how a castle would have looked back on NNR during the Golden Ages when the world was thriving and utopic. Elix was what NNR could have been if the world didn’t fall to the ground by the mercy of scientifically modified beings.
There was something so artificial about it all, though. This was how life would be if it never ended, an undefined line that stretched beyond the limits of time; all undying blinding smiles that never really saw the sun, strides never full of the urgency of life.
Because living forever, Stel figured, meant not really living. What did life mean if you wouldn’t one day die? —because if it went on forever, there would never be a need for anything because it went on forever and past that, even.
That’s why the Citadel looked the way it did; the perfect balance of old architecture, and glass and chrome interior. Because you could always tweak the small things, improve the fine details for perfection, because the world could decay around them but they would still have time to chase perfection.
Stel still felt part of her yearning for it, however. She still felt that tug in her gut, the tightness in her heart when she knew that this was a perfect place for Fallon. Fallon, who would never die, be well, and be forever be protected and preserved in this little pocket of what seemed to be Eden. Long after Stel would disintegrate into the fine dust of bone, Fallon could be safe here, could build a home here that would never erode with the sands of time. She could be invulnerable to pain, and really, wasn’t that the most that Stel could do for her sister?
Just cut out all the unpretty things in their life and place her on the highest shelf where she could always love.
But
Stel was here on a mission, a highly dangerous one, so she put up her walls once more, composed her perfectly crafted façade, and started down the streets to where she was assigned a room to stay in to start sending back all of the files she stole, back to Home Base, all while pretending to play General Kessia’s puppet.
(The yearning never really went away though. It was steady, like her heartbeat; tha-thump dully echoing everywhere.)
…
Stel would forever remember the moment she met General Kessia.
She was a woman of myth, that Kessia. She seemed to be made of shadows and the whispers of the people discussing her golden days during the Battles of Carandoc, when Elix pushed into NNR territory once more, slowly attempting to edge into what was once their land. Even now, long past the days of the fights, the land was still under dispute, a strip of grey land that belonged to neither mortality nor never-ending life. People whispered about how she was the lead in that siege under a Queen that nobody spoke a word more of, of how ruthless she was, and how now, under her rule, the land of Elix could rise to its full glory again (and it made Stel wonder just how glorious Elix ever was).
Before, she was reporting to Major Jae Parks, a man with a feral smile and chiseled features. Before she had arrived on Elix, there was the mystery of what happened to Hawthrone O’Fathaig, Arleyene’s previous handler. One look at Jae Parks and his insufferable smile about his elevated position after a mysterious incident made the entire matter transparent to Stel.
But even as she reported to Jae Parks, she knew that she had to work her way to get to Kessia as soon as possible. Luckily for her, the General took interest in her by the fourth day she was on Elix, Major Parks telling her the news with a sullen expression. She was to report directly to General Kessia starting tomorrow morning.
When she commed in that night, she got sounds that were close to ecstatic squeals from the team, and actually did get a loud squeal from Z.
“Be careful, Hathaway,” was her warning from Jax. “We don’t know what we’re up against.”
…
Kessia looked young, probably around Stel’s age, but her eyes gave away the fact that she was no 16-year-old. Everyone on Elix looked timeless, a sort of undying beauty that Stel had learnt to associate with immortal beings, and Kessia was no exception. While she wasn’t one to have eyes that couldn’t possibly be the hue they appeared to be, or those with ever surgically-changing faces, there was no way that her blonde hair with a perfectness that could only be compared with Celine Hollingsworth and bright blue irises could be completely natural.
But Immortales had time to chase perfection, and Stel did not, so she swallowed her fears down, pushing back a strand of her unnaturally straightened hair behind her ear as she stood before the General in the Grand Hall.
“Agent Crawford, SO-1576. You’ve been a powerful asset on NNR, and you should be proud of your work. I knew I made the right decision that day when I pulled you out of training to assign you your first case; you’ve integrated yourself perfectly in NNR’s court. I’ve said it a million times, but I’ll say it once more; you have the most potential out of every agent I’ve seen in all my life.”
“You humble me, General,” Stel said, her body kicking into autopilot as she stood straight, looking down at the floors that exactly resembled the floor and walls, making Stel feel like she was suspended in virtual nothingness.
It almost scared Stel, how well her body knew how to become Arleyene, how her brain almost knew exactly how the spy would react in any situation imaginable. “Well, Crawford, as you know, this would usually be your time-off. And as much as I know that you need time to recoup strength before facing those pesky Earthenerns again, I was going to ask for your presence in court.”
“My presence, General?”
“Yours,” Kessia confirmed, her eyes glinting with what Stel supposed made her immortal, a sort of shrewdness, harshness, and unflinchingness that wasn’t humanlike. “You’re a fast-climbing spy, Arleyene. You’ve seen what King Jaxcon has been doing, you’re a powerful resource, and I think it’s time you see all the politics as well. You might become my trusted confidant, and it’s always best to know how to hold the reigns, right?”
Stel nodded, her mind racing to figure out what Kessia was playing. They didn’t know enough to fill in the gaps; first it seemed that Arleyene was already in Kessia’s ranks, then she wasn’t, and now Kessia wanted to show Arleyene the Immortale Court?
It wasn’t adding up.
“It is, of course, your choice. You deserve a break, and there will be no hard feelings if you don’t wish to join.” The words were nice enough, but Stel knew better than to assume that she actually had a choice, because she didn’t.
The Strategists needed a way in. Stel found that way. And hell, if she let that go.
“I would be honoured, General.”
…
If Jax were to be right of only one thing, it would be that they had no idea what they were up against.
Days fell like grains of sand between her fingertips. Hours spent in Immortale Court and with Kessia bled into days, with lost seconds spent in the Archives, depositing information that she found while scrounging other files for the Strategists. In the other minutes that Stel managed to sneak past Kessia and the Immortales, she spent comming in Home Base, carefully transferring the information and finding a moment to be Stel Hathaway, even if it was in the dark, whispering to herself that she wasn’t Arleyene Crawford and Arleyene Crawford wasn’t her.
These late-night confessions, of course, were only ever heard by her pillow, and she appeared in court again the next day, speaking up when asked, eyes listening always. Kessia seemed pleased, and soon Stel was sent out on small missions. It was only to investigate suspicious activities, sometimes of people that could be Eartherner spies, and it always made Stel’s intestines twirl into knots, because these wide eyes were just like hers, fighting for the betterment of a nation.
(Stel told herself that she was Arleyene Crawford in that moment, so she reported back to Kessia who greeted this information with a blinding smile, and Stel reminded herself that this wasn’t just saving her own skin; this was saving NNR’s skin. The difference between Stel and those people that were dragged down the streets of the undying city—eyes frightened because of her—was that they were fighting for something that they weren’t ready to die for yet, but they were anyway.)
But sometime amidst playing the role of Arleyene Crawford and swearing to herself that Stel Hathaway wasn’t lost, she found a journal strapped underneath the bed that was now her’s and used to be Arleyene’s. She hadn’t meant to find it, but as soon as she did, Stel opened it and consumed the words faster than she breathed air.
The writing was familiar; while it might’ve belonged to a dead girl, the calligraphy stared back at Stel hotter than the sun, because Stel knew those curves and lines all too well. It was the writing that she made her own, just like everything else about Arleyene Crawford’s life.
But what she didn’t know, was how the Immortale spy felt. It never mattered anyway; Arleyene had a surgical job that never required feeling, so the Strategists had essentially dodged a bullet with that one. But Stel had in her possession, a collection of pages of how exactly the espionage agent of Elix had felt, so Stel read.
What Stel saw was the tip of the iceberg. It was the barest of the full, ugly truth that was buried from everyone else’s sight, and Arleyene Crawford had somehow unearthered it.
If Stel thought NNR was dying, the city of Elix, for all its undying pearly buildings and people, was built atop a graveyard. And the reaper was Kessia herself. With her iron fist and unflinching cruelty, Kessia had methods of torturing that Arleyene felt the need to describe in great lengths, and that Stel felt were going to make her throw up. There were penalties for the most juvenile crimes, and the punishment for things that could actually be considered serious crime? —Stel stopped reading at that part.
Stel, for all of her desire to d
rink knowledge like water, wanted to know no further, because she didn’t know what to expect.
There were still a few of the original Immortales, of those who could repopulate. Stel knew of a few after listening out for conversations in crowded areas (“I need to leave as soon as I can; I never meant to have the baby. Who knows what will happen to us both if we’re discovered?”), and Stel already had a few of her hunches as for why the system was so prejudiced against their strand of immortals, of why Kessia’s eyes always hardened when someone spoke of the original Immortales.
The journal only convinced her further, but for some reason, Stel didn’t really feel anything the way she should of.
No; instead, she was flailing in quicksand, sinking and sinking and sinking.
…
It took only a week more for Stel to really earn her place in court, sitting in the Grand Hall by Kessia, helping the General make decisions when needed, and to always watch what she was doing.
Stel still thought about the journal, about what fates she was resigning these people to, but she had to (she had to, she had to, she had to). It was the only way she could get home alive and ensure that the war wouldn’t start any sooner than it had to.
“What do think we should do, Crawford?”
There was a glint in Kessia’s eyes, and Stel felt her stomach drop. The two of them were collected in the Grand Hall to discuss battle plans and new technology, and Kessia had only began to talk when the door opened to reveal the newest arrest, a man who was shaking in his boots.
“Accused of being an Eartherner spy, General,” the guard said, after prodding from Kessia, who was leaning forward in her chair with something akin to delight in her eyes.
“Really? Does the accused have any defense?”
Kessia was drawing circles on her armrest with her metal gloved finger, the metal leaving carvings that the man was trailing with his eyes which were blown wide. “I am not a spy, my General. I can swear it; I do swear it. Please don’t kill me, I have-”
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