Fate, and Its Compounding Interest

118

That opaque acoustic totality, the impacts of the wind-whipped torrential rain: the weather that was preluding the storm. The wind whistled, and Tleirn heard the phone booth groan. He felt the frigid bite of the vehemence-soaked clothes. He could hear, and he could feel; he could fill his starving lungs with a gasp of air. Fear—he finally felt its claws tear through him, gut to heart. He was free of absence, the holes in reality plastered over.

117

As soon as his eyes would open, he inspected his glasses. The effect of the sigil had dried his lenses and meticulously removed all the caked-on spots. It had cleaned, from its arms, the grease from behind his ears. The right lens had been rendered indistinguishable from when it was new without its barely unignorable scratch. Even that sharp, rusted piece of paperclip that had remained gnarled through his right-side hinge for half a year had been completely replaced by a screw identical to its freshly-polished twin. He fiddled with that arm; it opened and closed freely. Perfect alignment, fully tightened, nothing taking up the same space as anything else. The reliable sigil had cleaned his lenses, just as it was supposed to, just as it always did. Every unexpected favor lashed his heart with ice.

116

He put his glasses back on and raised his hands, palms up and fingers splayed. It would be inconvenient if her were missing them, or if any had been turned backwards or upside-down. He’d heard the stories—

115

He had to condition his gloves. He usually couldn’t see the cracks in their material—he’d spent the past three years dodging calls from his optometrist. He’d have a hard time explaining how he’d managed to get his prescription updated by himself, not to mention he’d survived the process (and he didn’t exactly have any answers he could give). “Shoot me in the fucking head!” Tleirn frantically searched for what payment the storm had taken. Clearly, not blood—he’d have been completely exsanguinated. He finished checking his fingers: he still had the eight fingers and two thumbs he’d brought into the world (or something close enough), all of them functional and where they were supposed to be. Everything was the right way around, and he still had both hands.

114

A proper constitution check would cover the rest of his body, but Tleirn couldn’t be fucked to strip to his underwear. Anything that couldn’t pick up a phone and dial, he could live without for the few hours he needed. In a way, that implied the storm had left them alone. That logic was all he needed to move on.

113

Still, he was haunted by the absent consequents. It was basic effectics: something was always taken equal to the desire of an effect. The storm had opportunistically blown his desire for clean glasses completely out of proportion, not to mention how it snapped up that intrusive thought about his prescription. The result was a feat of optometry that should have been impossible, one that was helped him immensly. Whatever he owed, it would be substantial. Sooner or later, he’d pay what he owed; if he gets lucky, he might even learn what it is that he owes!

112

A gust of wind shook the phone booth, rain slammed harder against the windows, and Tleirn screamed. As he waited for his heart rate to return to normal, he checked his watch: 23:40. He had more important things to worry about. He is truly surrendering himself to fate. Don’t we love to see someone succumbing to fate? He will succumb to fate, and with so little fight!

111

He reached for the directory leashed to the phone by a chain rusting at an unnervingly observable rate. He had a partner, once—a capable enough agent, five years before. Sure, she had her crackpot tendencies. Sure, her temper got the best of her. He figured some time served must have smoothed some of that over. She’d been banished to Eltyati—that frigid shithole Holzhyt claimed to be its south-easternmost state. He doubted there was much for her to investigate down there, unless the bears had started committing aggravated chimaery. Its population was largely people who grew up there. Nobody wanted to move in, and there were few opportunities to leave. Eltyati wasn’t intended as a punishment for the clerics assigned to it, but it certainly was not a reward. If there was anything more exciting in that shithole than what he was about to tell her, he’d eat his notepad without sauce.

109

His heart jolted. He snatched up the book, flipping to the area code lookup. In his haste, he tore the page he was looking for straight from the book, sending it tumbling towards the muddy rainwater on floor. With a yelp, Tleirn lunged down, leaving the book to swing from its chain, and clapped his hands together.

108

Squatting on the floor, he examined the floor around his clasped hands. No wet paper—he’d caught it. He breathed a sigh of relief and willed his heart to settle.

107

The chain chose that beautiful moment to snap, and the directory careened into a puddle. It landed perfectly on its top, shuddered, and slumped sideways onto its cover, straight into a puddle. Tleirn’s hand reached to grab the book, to effect the pages dry, to erase the evidence of his trespass–in a moment of applied hindsight (and we shan’t give him more credit than that, nor will we), he stopped himself just short of a second vorteffectic catastrophe. What was done—and what will be done, and what would have always been done, and might not have been done, and what didn’t have to be done—was done. The chain had stopped rusting, and the phone book would continue to soak. He had to let it go. He had to move on. We all know he’s on the right track.

106

He stumbled back up. Through the silt splashed on his lenses, he uncrumpled the map that he’d saved. Eltyati only had eleven provinces; she was in the southernmost one, and in the southernmost district of that, he was pretty sure—it had an area code of 798. He pulled the phone off the hook and crammed his finger into the dial’s “7” hole, spinning it to the stop, listening to the barrage of ticks as the dial returned to its home. Next, “9”, the number with the furthest to travel. Time had slowed with each successive tick; by the time it finished, an agonizing crawl. “8” took longer. Much longer. Far too long. His foot couldn’t tap fast enough to satiate the growing fire in his veins, the dread in his gut.

105

Finally, it clicked into place. He listened to the soft, slow, electric dial tone—

104

Tleirn slammed the phone onto the hook. The operator would log his call. He had to call directly.

103

He yanked a notebook from his jacket and flipped frantically through it. Page after page after page after page after page… The howling cascading through his teeth had flooded the booth past his ankles, with no sign of stopping.

102

The structure threatened to buckle under the force of ecery strike of his fist, groaning as it slammed into the door again, and again, and again—over and over—the sounds crawling through the metal and rattling the panels. He never wrote down her fucking number. Never even crossed his mind. Why would he? They weren’t having a fucking affair! Why should he even think about finding her number? It’s not as if the stakes couldn’t be higher, is it! It’s not as if everything hangs in the balance! It’s not as if his fate hangs in the balance, is it! It’s not as if her number isn’t listed in the public’s phone directory–did you know that? You did now that. How did you not know that?

101

Just before the flooding filled his eardrums, the noise drained away. The dregs left behind formed a pallid, shivering form fixated on the dial before him. His hand clasped itself; his trembling finger rose; it dragged Tleirn’s arm towards the dial, fighting back against his dread. He dialed “7”, then “9”, then “8”; he listened to the soft, slow, electric dial tone.

100

A scratch. A moment of silence, and then another. A horrifically chirpy voice (with some kind of a Dhostyan accent (he’d learned the hard way that he shouldn’t guess where they came from anymore (someone always ended up offended))): “Good evening, station 798. Operator speaking.”

99

“Erras of Sea-Garden.”

98

From deep within the long shadows of his words, he heard them squeak, “Oh! Okay, gotcha. Uh, let’s see here…” He heard some pages flip, one by one. With each flip, they mused: “S… S… S… Ah! Sea…” Another flip. “Sea…” Another flip, then another.

97

“In Final-Port. She’s a cleric.”

96

“In final port. Okay.” A few more pages flipped. The colony? Or the city?”

95

“I don’t fucking—I’m in a hurry. Please.” A gap in the corner of the door caught his gaze. He peered through it, surveilling the darkness outside as best he could through human eyes.

94

“I’m very sorry—ah, there we go. Let me go transfer you, now. Have a good eve—” More dial tones, much harsher this time, beat against his ear.

93

It occurred to him that there was an operator was on duty. The southeastern frozen shithole (being on nearly the opposite side of Holzhyt) wouldn’t have a storm. Erras could pick up the phone. If she could talk back—if she could hang up—she’d ruin everything. Tleirn never knew her as restrained.

92

The line picked up. “This is Erras of Sea-Garden.”

91

Her drawl still sounded so hollow. It wasn’t the same without that hostile mania punching syllables into every nearby ear—

90

“I’m not home—” the facsimile he’d been waiting for, bound in fragile tape, manipulated through the wires with perfect precision. It performed for him alone, flaunting her emotions, crystallized in negative. “If you’re asking about my colony, or the Temple of Eternity, or… or anything about… if you’re asking—” The rest of her sentence was shattered by the heavy emotion that slipped from her grasp.

89

“Oh, come on!” Tleirn muttered. He’d already heard that same message four times since she’d been discharged. “Fucking get on with it!”

88

She cleared her throat, and the words shot out of her. “If it’s official business, call me at my office. If it’s not, just… don’t waste my time. If you must, you can leave a name and number. And, please, wait for the beep before you start talking. I am so sick of writing PSAs…” This was followed by a moment of silence, then a soft sigh, cut off by a high-pitched beep.

87

“Erras! It’s Tleirn.” His teeth gnashed with square syllabic slices at the detritus ejected from his throat. “Don’t erase this message—not yet—because this is life or death. You need to trust me, because everything is going to go to shit, sooner or later.” His desperate gasp was too shaky for his liking. “I’m going to call you back, okay? And I’ll leave the details then. But…” Tleirn floundered to find something she used to say, something to induce his point upon her, but something suitably conspiratorial did come. “Erras, if you really have given up on your search for the truth, then don’t listen to the second message. Don’t expose yourself to it. So, uh, if you don’t hear from me by tomorrow, just give the tape to—you know, to, uh, some of those friends of yours, if you have to. If you still have them. Someone who can do something about this, at least. I’ll call you back.”

86

In slamming his hand down on the hook, he had lurched too far. He tried to course-correct. The booth’s walls had crashed into his back and shoulder. It took everything to keep his legs under him. All he could do was breathe heavily through his mouth. It was finally happening, finally happening. His work was finally paying off. It felt so surreal: nothing had never been this easy. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. Frost never let it be this easy. It should have been impossible. Oh, he’s sealed his fate. We truly have sealed his fate!

84

His shaky knees gained the courage they needed to right him. 7-9-8 on the wheel. Again, he peered through the gap as he listened to the tone.

83

“Good evening, station—”

82

“Erras of Sea-Garden!” he snapped.

81

“O-Oh! Uh—”

80

“It is not my fault your shit fucking phone lines shat out. I am calling her back. Transfer me.”

79

“I’m… Uh—we’re sorry—”

78

“Did you forget her number already? Transfer me! It’s a matter of state!”

77

“S-Sir, please—”

76

“I am a cleric of Sygrad and an investigative agent working for the Chalet Office of Holzhyt! Patch me through before I shove my fist through the phone and patch it up every hole I can find!”

75

“Yes, sir—Cleric. Forgive me, Cleric. H-Have a good—”

74

“Patch me!!”

73

Again, the harsh dial tones returned. Tleirn took the moment to breathe, to relax himself, to prepare for his performance. His words still rang through in his ears, forcing him to relive the conversation over and over. The tactics had not been new to him; neither had his target’s reaction. He still couldn’t stop mulling it over, trying to figure out why the base of his gut was twisting into a knot at incredible speed. His voice had sounded so strange his ears. He couldn’t pin down what it was. He loosened his tie, letting cold air run down his sweaty, chafed neck.

72

The beep snapped reality back into him again. Tleirn gave himself two breaths, shallow and rapid, and refocused his eyes. “Me again. Seriously, stop listening if you still want plausible deniability. I’m going to give you a five-second countdown. Five—” he cleared his throat—“four, three, two, one…”

71

He took another deep breath. “Okay. You were right, the High Court was right. Axye was right. She was just a weird little wannabe wizard. She wasn’t a spy, her lawyers weren’t stooges, whatever. I was pointed in the wrong direction.” Tleirn cleared his throat and forced his teeth apart. “That’s the problem: I got pointed in the wrong direction. The waters were muddied, and nobody noticed. They might could even have gotten away with it! Good thing Tzyensa couldn’t block me completely—shit. I oughta backtrack, since I don’t know if life in the shithole patrol keeps you up to speed. I mean, I did leave you all those messages, but I doubt you’d have told me to stop calling if you listened to them. Well, you need to hear this. It pays off, believe me.

70

Self-satisfied that he’d taken charge of her attentions, he continued. “Okay, pay attention. I’ve been under ChPoH” (this was spoken as a single word, syllables awkwardly smashed together) “for this investigation—not actually directly under ChPoH—never even met them, their secretary always kept giving excuses—but under their office.” He cleared his throat and spoke the name with sardonic majesty: “‘The Office of the Chalet Provost of Holzhyt’ sent me to Eternity maybe a month before I called you that first time. ChPoH wanted me to hit the dry archives, get everything I could about the Scorpion—uh, that’s the nickname they all gave that machine of hers. Just looks like a scorpion, I guess. Never learned why. Well, somehow, it killed Ihczya and Axye in a storm (so they say), so I had to figure out how, with all the administrative roadblocks you could imagine, all by myself. Oh, well, I was working with the person handling Ihczya’s half of the project at the Temple of Good Health—but they stopped answering my calls. So, basically all by myself.

69

“Of course, Frost had had already snatched up pretty much anything useful, called it all heresy, carted it all into that Neuro-Semio-whatever thing—uh, the NSRC, which they also called a heresy, and then just sealed everything away. They even got the autopsy records, all before the bodies were cold, I bet. So, I got about the usual amount of nothing out of Axye.” A hollow chuckle broke through teeth. “Never thought the little canny could have gotten even better at dodging my interviews! But government intervention prevails again.” This time, he’s emitting his laugh so naturally one might think it’s forced! “You know, because she still won’t speak to me. Because she’s dead, this time. Uh, at least…” In the long silence that consumed his momentum, the husk of his joke hung heavy from his neck. “You know, at least I didn’t have to deal with her lawyer, that piece of shit.”

68

As he took a couple breaths, he finally noticed the faint, burbling noise flowing from the receiver, covering a soft, deep, oscillating scratch. He hadn’t noticed when it started. Some kind of static, maybe.

67

“Just so you know, that was a joke. Just to be perfectly clear, I’m not actually calling Axye a cannibal. I don’t know if you’re sensitive about me calling her that after what you… did… uh, don’t worry about that.”

66

He compelled himself to cough. “Anyway, Frost, very generously, said I could use everything they hadn’t deemed a heretic. All kinds of little scraps. Most of it was redacted. Oh, but they sprinkled in a few words. Sometimes, I got a full sentence!” He let out a loud, sardonic laugh. “After all that antiAersa, I was basically stuck ice fishing for anything I could use. You ought to know what that’s like.” He’s a natural performer, in his own way. We all found it funny. Not his audience, of course, we certainly did!

65

He did not hear Erras’s laughter, nor anyone else’s, but that doesn’t mean nobody’s laughing! There is laughter! We know what kind of laughter that the cleric wants. Oh, we’re all laughing. He shouldn’t expect much of Erras’s laughter, never really got much of Erras’s laughter. He should have learned a long time ago to accept any laughter he can get, even when he can’t hear it or hear it for what it is. It’s about all we all will ever give him.

64

“Uh, that was also a joke, just so you know,” Tleirn clarified. “Because it’s cold down by you, and they probably fish—” He sighed. “Look, I don’t have time for you to get you tail in a twist about it. Save it until I hang up, okay?”

63

He stared at the panel for a moment, as if he could wait for her reply.

62

“I guess I’ll just stop joking, then. Anyway, all I got was boring administrative stuff, not nearly enough to get any proof. So, the only thing I could do was to try to find any sort of irregularities that might add up to something, and boy, did I ever! There were these tiny discrepancies in some of the NSRC’s materials orders: they kept receiving less gold than they requisitioned on some of them. Only their gold—not even brass! And it was always some small difference. ‘Chickenfeed.’ That’s what they all told me. ‘The NSRC was working at such a big scale! It’s chickenfeed!’ but I couldn’t shake this weird feeling about it, so I ran the numbers on how much gold was missing.”

61

His set his voice to a peculiar slant, matching what he thought he’d remembered from when Erras got that way—when he could be fucked to pay enough attention to remember—and locked his voice into his well-practiced, gravelly, conspiratorial vocal range. He spoke with motivations so naked he’d risk public indecency charges—anything to draw Erras’s attention. “Well, there’s a big fucking chicken out there, because it ate up a third of all the gold they ordered. I checked that math five times, Erras. It holds up.” As he spoke, his voice fought to produce the rhythmic scraping against the receiver in the way he thought was cool. He grinned to himself while he continued. “You know what struck me as odd? Axye never so much as made a singular peep about it (not that she could make so much as a peep—she never so much as made a singular undergrad make a peep for her). Look, how many stories have you heard about the fits she’d pitch if things weren’t exactly how she wanted them? How many about the dozens of people she fired within their first month because they couldn’t meet her insane standards? When I learned the gold would have gone to isolating the surgical theater and protecting the machine itself, I couldn’t stop wondering if that little cripple was hiding any bodies. Hoh!” That open-mouthed noise—half-scoff, half-laugh—rubbed into the receiver against the grain his vocal scraping had carved into it, grinding away the last of his pastiche.

60

No matter. The voice would no longer be needed, Tleirn decided. He’d probably hooked her by then. “So, I figured I’d see where the shorting was actually happening. For each requisition, I had to track down every redundant copy made by every department that touched it, not to mention copies that went to the materials warehouses when they processed the orders. That’s well over a couple thousand pages of paperwork. Of course, you can’t just grab them all and compare everything at once—of course it can’t be that easy. They’re all originals—signed and certified by Axye herself—and certified copies, kept in secure archives. They’re not on microfiche, so I can’t cross-reference them.” Hardly any theatrics were needed to produce his next groan. “What a fucking pain in the ass. I mean, you accidentally spill a single drop of tea on an original, and its cert pops, and then seven copy certs pop, and then the firing squad yells at you for seven fucking hours, and the documents all get thrown into the incinerator. The tea didn’t even touch any ink! The numbers were all the same! But, apparently, making a certified document ‘look sloppy’ makes it useless! Apparently, it’s just as bad as painting ‘Kio Wuz Here’ all over it in correction fluid with a five fucking millimeter brush! I fucking hate infoeffectics, you know that? I do! I always fucking have!”

59

Again, he was forced to coerce calm from himself.

58

“Anyway, for every requisition I looked at, every single copy matches what got delivered. The only thing that doesn’t match are the originals themselves. Numbers were completely different. It’s so…” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That shouldn’t be possible. We have processes that make perfect copies of an original document and certifications that give us that give us infallible ways to tell us who the author is and whether it has been tampered with (or if tea was fucking spilled on it) that we have made a pillar of our archival security and defining piece of Holzhan fucking Sozha itself—and someone is changing the fucking documents! Hundreds of them! And without popping any certs!”

57

He remembered his audience. “Alright, you can start paying attention again. No more documents. I’m talking about who did it. You listening?

56

“Okay, so think about it. Chimaeras, spies, they’d have left some kind of evidence. We’d know. So, whoever is doing this, they must have a way of altering their paper trail, maybe even removing it entirely—they must have a way of doing this without anybody noticing the discrepancy. That’s not easy to do. They have easy access to the most sensitive parts of Eternity and every warehouse, and they can provide a pretext so strong that nobody questions it. They probably used multiple people to throw us off the scent. And that’s not to mention that they must have some pretty unheard of technology to actually make the changes! So, can you think of anyone that might check off those requirements?” His hand, trying to kill its growing antsiness, started smacking against the door timidly—scared as he was of chasing full relief. “I sure can! How does ‘The good ol’ Holzhan Ministry of Frost’ sound?”

55

An unbearable, almost nostalgic phantom irritation flashed through him as a sudden clairvoyance of the reactions of his former partner seized his mind. In a good world, a just world, he could squeeze the phone like soft cheese and tear at whatever bulged between his fingers with his teeth. “Okay, don’t—I know that you’re fucking thinking, and I can’t play pretend with you anymore! The. Reapers. Don’t. Exist. I would’ve hoped you’d have kicked that during your big ‘vacation.’ What I just said is far less tenuous than your ridiculous Sea-Garden conspiracy theories, and the last thing I need—anyone needs—Holzhyt itself needs is for you to get distracted—” He released an exasperated groan, less intentionally than before, only thinking to put his hand over the receiver when it was halfway too late. “Sorry if you heard that.” He forced the emotion down, beat it until it stopped moving, then sealed over the grave with a facade of calm. “I guess I shouldn’t assume that you still believe in them. I mean, if the loony bin zapped it out of you, good for you—not that I necessarily believe you actually belonged there. I just want you to hear me out without jumping to conclusions, okay? I finally have proof.”

54

An icy white light slammed into him from behind, petrifying his cowering form. An overwhelming, chuggy, sharp, scraping sound drove into his ears, pulsing in and out, in and out, in and out, dozens of times as the light did the same to his eyes. “Fuck!” Tleirn felt himself screaming. Only a few seconds later did it stop, leaving his ears ringing. “Fuck!” Tleirn bounced up and tried to check outside the door. It was sealed tight, again. “Shit! I don’t know if you heard that, uh…” The light in the booth was still on, and he thought he could just barely see the glow of another streetlamp. “Something electrical just blew, I guess. I’m going to assume you can still hear me.” That would have made for a good contract! But our special boy is destined for a fate more becoming, if he can make it.

53

He took a moment to breathe, then another. “Okay. I’m okay.” He took one last breather. “The proof. I got a call from someone—don’t tell anyone what I’m saying, okay? Ultra, ultra secret. Someone working inside the NSRC blew the whistle! Contacted me directly! Nobody else knows. Uh, different than the one from before the trial, that female cleric that wouldn’t talk to us—this was a male. Maybe an actual inquisitor! He knew a lot about what was going on in the NSRC. Couldn’t say much on the phone, of course, but it’s very fucking compelling. He said there were discrepancies between some of the plans and some of the components! Couldn’t give any details over the phone, but tiny discrepancies. He’d been told it was chickenfeed—sound familiar? Someone is trying to hide something. You have to admit only Frost has the access to to cover this up!

52

“After this, everything falls into place. We have to assume the technology exists to alter documents after a seal has been applied, because that’s clearly what happened. So, they force Axye to sign and cert the requisitions and the plans. They wait for everything to be delivered. Then, they go to every copy—those archives are lower security, so easier to get into, of course—and alter it to look like less was ordered. This covers their tracks, but, in reality, the Scorpion has more gold than everyone thought it did! It has a higher density than every other building at Eternity that’s not a shelter! Why? Fuck knows! Fuck knows what Frost is getting up to. Something a lot fucking scarier than the original purpose, that’s for fucking sure. Why else would they be hiding that much gold?

51

“Of course, I did find it because they didn’t touch the originals. Well, who cares about the originals? Not Frost! Apparently! It was probably too much time and effort to get at them—way tighter security. But, they knew that, by the time anyone caught on, the Scorpion would already be sealed away, and nobody could investigate it. And, even if someone did, well—good news!—they’d already gotten rid of the only two people who could help expose them!

50

“I mean, come on. Ihczya and Axye were dickheads, but they didn’t get themselves killed. That whistleblower—he said that the control console for the machine couldn’t be operated by one person. There must have been two, maybe three more people—not including Ihczya, obviously. Whatever happened, Frost killed the both of them and left them to be discovered. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t realize Axye was still alive until she’d already been found. Who knows what she managed to say to anyone. All I could find out was that her eyes were burnt out and that she was crying about Ihczya or something. Good cover, I guess—”

49

A sharp whack against the roof make Tleirn wince. He caught a brief glimpse of the shadow of a small stick tumbling off one of the panels it before it fell away, clacking against the ground nearby. “I’m okay!” His nerves refused to calm down. “Just a branch! This shit keeps happening to me!” His heartbeat drummed against his ear. “Look, Erras, if this isn’t crystal clear to you, if it’s not plain as day, you’re fucking full of it.” We all are full of it. Isn’t that right? “It’s the only answer that makes sense!”

47

A shriek sheared the veil around him, joined by more and more in every direction, lower and lower in pitch, further and further away, until he was surrounded by the pack of them. The sirens pulsed, loud to louder to loud (the pulses closest to him being the fastest), joining into a writhing, dissonant chorus that tore into him, digging for his brain and his heart. Finally: the sirens cry! They sing! Does we think that means his time is nearly up?

46

Overwhelmed by adrenaline, he only became aware of the sudden hysterical cackling erupting from his throat well after it was too late to save face, not that he has much left to save these days. “Finally!” he spat into the receiver. “Fucking finally! I’ve had to wait for a storm to clear everyone from the doors! I had to! Because I’m going to get in there! The whistleblower slipped me a key! It’ll let me get through all of Frost’s locks…” He groaned, rubbing his temple. It felt like the skin above it had buzzed, crawled, like a wasp had burrowed beneath his skin. “Fuck knows how! But I’ll be able to look at everything they tried to hide!”

45

He’d felt increasingly suspended, held up by some forces through his gut, heart, and head. He could, in every way but literal, gaze down the bottomless precipice below him, that tenuous force being all that separated him from his fate. It had all felt so familiar, somehow—though he was still conscious enough to see the phone booth around him. He chose to see it as a sign—if he let himself fall into the feeling, he’d find himself in a new world. A better world.

44

“This is my chance! I can get that proof… If I can get…”

43

The skin above his temple buzzed.

42

“I’ll, uh… Did you—” He had to catch his breath. “Did you ever see a folding-door phone booth at Eternity? I didn’t think they even existed. There was so much rust… I feel like I’m being cannibalized. They made it so much worse than what we used to go up against, Erras. I… I hope this is going through.”

41

Tleirn found himself, at the worst possible time, suspended between desires: for action, and for the alleviation of guilt. He made his choice with an awkward clearing of his throat. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened! They never told me that you got committed until after…” He swallowed, rather uncomfortably. “I should’ve seen how you weren’t doing well! What you did to her… you know, before you got arrested… I mean, I knew it wasn’t really you. I read your file, and, yeah, it sounds like you were going through a lot. But, no matter how bad it was, you can’t give up! You’re stronger than that! I know you are! Like a dog on the scent! It’s okay to feel bad that you were wrong, but that’s part of the job! I’m sorry your conspiracy theories about Axye didn’t give you the answers you wanted, but you have to move on! I know your heart is in the right place. Just get over the conspiracies and do some good, okay?”

40

If the static was still in his ear, the siren had drowned them out.

39

“Okay, I need to get going. I’ll let you know how it goes!” Tleirn remembered his conversations with the operator. “Oh, fuck me!” he muttered, a little too close to the receiver. “I just remembered! You’ll probably still get some questions your way! But it’s just some station operator’s word against yours, so you’ll be fine!” Better hope she heard that! Better hope the sirens didn’t overpower the siren song he’d sung! “Okay, good luck! I trust you!” He dropped the receiver back onto the hook.

38

The next-to-useless hood of the jacket crawled back over Tleirn’s head. He grabbed the door handle and pushed as hard as he could—

37

The door refused to budge.

36

Shrieking wordlessly, he shook it hard enough to rattle the structure; together with the rain’s assault, they threw the phone booth into complete turmoil. Finally, he backed up and slammed into it. The rusty hinges crumbled into dust, and he spilled outward, landing onto the front panel, barely managing to keep his footing as his feet smashed through the glass of the booth’s regular door (that familiar, non-folding door (the one that had always been there)).

35

“I was right!” He cackled at the remains of the door. “You fucking an’isy!” He had raised his gaze to cackle at the storm. The rain slathered his glasses and ripped the hood off his head, collecting at his feet and sweeping small shards of glass away. The turmoil from his throat spilled out of the corners of his grin. His mouth formed words that not even he would hear over the sirens: “Cannibal! I knew it! I fucking knew it!” Consumed as he was by his small victory, by his passions, he had allowed his feet to pull him forward, his fate to guide him past the glass of the door frame. He had advanced on rails, blind to nearly everything else—even his dirtied glasses. He cackled, secure in his certainty of victory.

32

The sirens wailed—frantic, raw, shearing through reality itself, piercing his eardrums. He hadn’t noticed the closest one becoming so loud, so shrill. He had found himself standing where the absent soldiers had stood, some half-dozen meters away from that featureless slab. And yet, is it not the only thing worth looking at? The concrete bore an aura of dark gray and golden light. The color was stronger (Tleirn hadn’t noticed colors become stronger) than the shimmers he’d seen through the rain. It glowed in all ways but physically, threatening to singe his retinas. But, what else was there to look at? He’d have laughed at the potential irony of he and his longtime target sharing a fate, if he weren’t so entranced. If his gaze had locked onto the center, he could see the whole slab. Why look at anything else? It felt so surreal—and that, so surreal—and it all feels so surreal, and everything feels so surreal, and nothing feels so real—

30

Gold-glittery gray had encompassed his vision. Something in Tleirn had sounded some alarm about something, but you know that’s insignificant. Something about how the slab had grown felt off as he had grown nearer, as if it had strained the laws of perspective, but you know that’s not worth fretting about. It had been taller than itself. It had stretched higher and higher, stretching up to pass the sky’s threshold, to pass the clouds themselves—not that Tleirn had moved his eyes to verify that, but you know that doesn’t matter anymore. You’re finally at the rubicon. He’s at the rubicon—we all can see that. His fate is waiting so patiently, so patiently, so patiently. It was only when brilliant gold spots, a fantasy’s night sky, had wrapped around his vision, consuming everything, invoking enough pain to all but convince him that he’d lose his sight at any moment, that Tleirn could reach out—finally!—and run his hand along its surface. His gloves caught on layers upon layers upon layers of the complex curves of the esoteric sigil carved into it, so thin as to be invisible. He could only catch glimpses of them where the stars had died out in his peripheries, black embedded in wet dark gray. Why Frost carved a useless sigil into aneffectic concrete was completely beyond his comprehension (though we know he ought to be used to considering what he could not comprehend, as we do all know). Nevertheless, Tleirn had to admit its beauty. The intricate patterns within, the lines he felt curving in every direction, enraptured him. He searched for any distinct piece of the sigil, consumed with wonder, ideas of the purpose they may serve consuming him with wonder as he tried to find their boundaries—but there were no discrete pieces for him to find. Everything blended together, unlike anything he’d seen before, not that all his time served as an accountant (which we all know was not a waste of time) had showed him much.

27

He snapped back to awareness. He had a conspiracy to conclude. His fate awaited.

26

Gaze unwavering, Tleirn fumbled into the collar of his jacket, returning with the thick, solid, silvery-white pentagonal pendant that hung from the leather strip around his neck. He held it in front of his unwavering gaze. The rope strained against the back of his neck hard enough to hang him, so too bad for Kio that the key isn’t crueler than the hangman! Its exterior bore no identifying marks yet fascinated his eyes. It had coerced from him an pulsed effect through it vectored by the instinct to unlock a door. Only an instant after did he realize his deficiency in hindsight.

23

The sirens still burned into his eardrums, threatening his brain. He still felt the frigid rain, the wind whipping into him, the fire of his chafed skin. His dread was still all too apparent, weighing on him heavier than his soaked-through clothes. His lungs struggled against every exhale, only to be filled again with heavy air. He realized that he’d shut his eyes faster than he could comprehend. He didn’t care to open them.

22

He felt fine. For the second time, he felt completely fine, physically speaking. Not even a threat of unreality, this time.

21

A chill flooded through him, annihilating the chill of the rain. It should never have been that easy, not to operate a transformative door (and Tleirn knew one when he saw it, even if he had struggled with 4th-dimensional geometry in secondary school). That sort of thing didn’t happen, not in a storm. Not according to the kinds of stories that survivors told.

20

Questions flooded his mind. How badly had he fucked himself over? What was the cost? Why hadn’t it hit him yet? The last, he couldn’t refuse to entertain: was it waiting for him in there? Clever boy with clever thoughts!

19

The key might not have worked, he tried to reassure himself. That would be disappointing, after everything he’d gone through—but half of him hoped it didn’t. He could go home completely unnoticed, dry off, effect some skin back over his rashes, drink some tea, and cook up his excuses for not showing up on a shelter roster. Perhaps he’d paid for his glasses with his passions. He’d almost be okay with that.

18

It is time to face the music! He begrudgingly opened his eyes.

17

Tleirn noticed the relief first—a physical one, a relief from pain. His focus had cleared of gold, that and gray, in the shape of the immaculate, rectangular void that had filled the space. Half a meter past that had appeared a door, incredibly mundane. Most buildings, soon to be every building, on that campus had the same exterior doors: stainless steel handle, painted a solid color to match its defining Thema. This one was painted Dolao black, once a source of Tleirn’s perpetual amusement (Axye being one of the only Dolao clerics somehow taken even remotely seriously as a scientist). His eyes crossed over the downward-facing scarlet pentagram above the door handle. It once marked an identity lock; the original would have been encoded with those of Axye of None, some necessary security-specializing Chalet clerics, and the rest of the facility’s gaggle of managers, and nobody else. Fortunately, Tleirn knew it would be deactivated; he wouldn’t need a warrant to get access.

16

Tleirn was pretty sure that it was deactivated. There wasn’t any reason for it to be deactivated, not behind a seal. However, a vorteffect, he realized, with a sinking feeling and the sirens blaring louder in his ears (he had not noticed them growing louder), could have reactivated it.

12

He carefully stretched his hand out, almost afraid that the entry to the door might bite, that the door might close on his arm. He would have thought he’d be embedded inside the concrete if the door materialized, but his mind had presented him with images of a paper cutter punching through him on its path perpendicular through reality, the new momentum of his severed arm launching it away entirely, his blood and torn flesh and screaming and bloodless corpse documenting his mission. Or, if his arm simply broke on its way out—his imagination conjured images of his lower arm as an invisible, immaterial, floating weight he’d have to drag around, with no way to relieve the worsening pain, no way to quell any bleeding until he could see a doctor again—and he’d have no good answers for the questions he’d receive. Even worse, if his jacket didn’t tear—and Tleirn feared the material was strong enough not to tear from such a brief impact—how much of him might be so painfully propelled away? How much would remain? Enough to be found? Enough to survive? Enough to recover him? What if he disappeared completely? It wasn’t easy to imagine, but he shuddered at the thought.

6

The force of his grip around the door’s handle had bleached the skin around his knuckles into a shade of white that looked ghostly even compared to his ultra-ultra-pale skin. It turned. Adrenaline coursed through his body. It was too good to be true. He pulled, tentatively. The door resisted—it was merely heavier than he expected. He pulled harder. It opened, just a crack. It was surreal. It was almost too easy. After all this time spent searching for truth, it was almost an anticlimax. He pulled more. It kept opening. A cackle escaped his lips through his triumphant gritted grin. He yanked it open with all his might—

3

Tleirn had disappeared through the threshold. The door had clicked shut, the hole in the slab had been filled again, its sigil having writhed in reverse. The rain had halted in an instant, and the most distant sirens had ceased their wails.

0