Seething at the Stars - SCP Foundation

"We can't be suspicious of every meeting. They do important work for the Foundation too. It isn't all knives and squirrel games."

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"Well, if you insist. Don't start any wildfires without approval."

Dark offices serve many purposes for the initiated. To nap between twelve-hour bouts of calculation stabilizing several blacksite phylacteries, for instance. To avoid superiors who want nothing more than chatting about mundanities that were better left forgotten once sacrificed upon the altar of employment. To, most commonly of all, stare at the darkness and will away any gnawing doubts about paths already taken.

Amitha Sanmugasunderam was regrettably familiar with them all after a decade of work at the Foundation, but the shroud she found herself immersed in—inside an unmarked suite; past secretaries whose faces masked molding most extensive; behind another door, impeccably warded—served a different purpose entirely. To obscure that Overseer-6 still didn't trust her enough to appear in person.

"Your concerns about astral realignment have been noted," said a voice tuned for forgetfulness. Young, old, rough, smooth, every possible feature had been scrubbed by meticulous hands.

"And?" asked Amitha.

"While appreciated, they are unnecessary. Consider this a problem of scale rather than uncertain effects." As it finished, a hand that might as well belong to some mannequin pushed a manila envelope across the desk. Bulging at the seams, stapled with layers of classified cover sheets from decades past, it was hardly the strangest tome to ever fall into her hands.

"My program manager will object if I start missing deadlines on PEARBLOSSOM."

"You need only focus on expanding the ritual without compromising its integrity. Distractions will be… addressed as necessary."

"Then I will deliver a timeline once I've finished reviewing the material." Such a polite word for the bundle that throbbed with potential in Amitha's hands, if not outright squirmed. Just as polite as the Overseer's own implication.

Tome in hand, she exited the suite—past analysts blinded to the world, past terminal after terminal connected to classified networks. Two guards stood posted outside, relaxed stances belying a serration to their presences, a sensation of fangs extending from gingiva sheathes. Amitha nodded at the otherwise unassuming men, received nods in return, and set off for the cargo aircraft tasked with returning her to Site-24. Wizards were never more comfortable than in their own studies.

While known as a hub for repairing specialty vehicles that broadcast amnestics, harvested hostile signals, or simply carried MTFs into harm's way, Site-24 had many basements that suited employees with sufficient autonomy. In her den of crumbling drywall and exposed girders, Amitha laid out the ream of yellowed documents with care befitting any archivist. With equal care, she organized them on a tackboard now labeled To Twist the Hand of Fate. A private joke, if one exposing persistent worries.

Was Overseer-6 placing her in this position to avoid a measure of causal backlash? Such games often stemmed from the most middling of middle managers; surely the Foundation's leaders had higher concerns, and surely they were better protected against such forces too. Wasn't it more likely that the Overseer, while clearly formidable in their shared field, simply didn't have the same specific expertise? Yes, far more likely, and not only because of the mental construct prodding lobes and neurons back into line, but Amitha's slippers still kicked up dust as she plodded back and forth across the concrete floor. Possible motivations, prognostications… how could an existence seated so high atop towering chains of command eliminate any distractions down below?

After several hours pacing, rearranging, and charting boundaries of conceptual space to little avail, a knock on the door came so suddenly that Amitha nearly dropped her fifth cup of lukewarm coffee. Too late in the evening for one of her basement contemporaries to be seeking advice about their own strange projects. Too early in the morning for someone to be collecting trash that was classified due to stray DNA. Seeing only one person on the security camera, she unlocked the heavy door and eased it open.

Her visitor was a tall, tanned woman in fatigues whose feathers of mud-brown hair fluttered in the artificial wind always blowing down that maintenance tunnel. Such garb was hardly rare at any facility, save for its complete lack of insignia. Even the most secretive projects typically couldn't resist displaying in-jokes that threatened to reveal the whole mess.

"Dr. Sanmugasunderam?" she asked, voice scratchy in the dry air.

"Are you from the P-MOG? Because I told them, it's absolutely impossible to–"

"No, the boss sent me." Of every word that could have sprung from chapped lips, that one was closest to holding thaumaturgic weight. An overseer. Overseer-6, specifically, but not only that. The boss, as though embodying the Foundation and sublimating its might within themselves. The boss, an emperor for modern times who was supported by legions of their own.

"You're from Alpha-1?"

"Probably not the part you're used to dealing with," said the woman with a grin that showed the faintest sliver of teeth. "You can call me Wren."

Suppressing a sigh, Amitha stepped aside to allow her through the door, duffel bag and all. A peculiar haze followed, numbness extruding through pores and suffusing the air in a way few were likely to perceive. It clung tight, refusing to disperse even as Wren put her bag down and surveyed the cramped, cluttered room for threats.

"I'm afraid I don't have any problems that need solving right now," said Amitha, returning to her long-suffering coffee maker for another cup. "Not unless you have any expertise with… this."

This had expanded into a conspiracy theorist's wet dream of interconnected papers hung on wash lines. Under her care, the seed provided by Overseer-6 had sprouted into a ritual for realigning the shape and position of constellations, for defeating seers, prophets, and astrologists past; staving off every secret empire's fate of falling into graves of its own design. Or, at least, it would assume that shape once certain problems were solved—first and foremost, the matter of how many roots needed to be removed for the rest to rot. Wren cocked her head like a puppy while examining the disassembled tome, but that was to be expected.

"I'll leave you to it," she finally said. Fifteen minutes later, the Overseer Council's loyal hound was sleeping against her duffel bag on the concrete floor, chest rising and falling, hand never moving more than a few inches from her holstered pistol. With how calloused fingers twitched there, the subject of her dream was obvious: fire and fires, arson and artillery, a kind of wizardry entirely baser than Amitha's own practice.

Having been left to it, she returned to Overseer-6's pet project. Progress was all the more important now that a spy rested in her midst.

"Dr. Sanmugasunderam isn't available right now," said Wren to an earnest request for review by one of her intellectual hangers on.

"Dr. Sanmugasunderam has been given a different portfolio," said Wren to a superior who specialized in stealing work.

"Dr. Sanmugasunderam will call you back when she can."

"Dr. Sanmugasunderam doesn't need any. Ask someone else."

"Dr. Sanmugasunderam has been exempted from regular facility reviews."

So persistent were Wren's denials at the door that Amitha was able to deliver her timeline without delay. A day became a week afterwards. A week became a month. The ritual developed unevenly all the while, fits and starts carrying it from leyline junction to field distribution, then from causal engine to retrograde slide. Achieving sufficient precision in this project was a feat unlike any undertaken at the Foundation's behest. To not only achieve the impossible, but to do so within such strict limits… the only shame was how classified it would inevitably become. Yet another accomplishment buried deep.

Although more secretary than watchdog, Wren's wariness never wavered for a second. No one was allowed over the threshold into her office. No one was allowed near the industrial shower that she bathed in or the sparse bathroom nearby. No one was allowed to interrupt the mundane rituals of protection that would have driven her stir-crazy were the project not all-consuming.

"Concerning noise on the serum scope today."

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"I noticed the same pattern. Could be a play to distract us, could be more significant."

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"Let's see what bubbles up before making any decisions. We can afford to not snap at every provocation like the Committee and the Council do. It's what keeps us in the game."

On one of many days that blended together, Amitha looked away from her design—now flattened across an arc of additional tackboards that vanished beneath paper coating. At the door, Wren was muttering to a man in matching fatigues whose trimmed beard ill-matched childish eyes. Cash and a styrofoam contained changed hands, then a salute so lazy that only laughter followed.

Wren sat on a folding chair, opened the container, and began scarfing down strips of brown meat from within. "Liver stir fry," she said after meeting Amitha's gaze. Without swallowing first, naturally.

"Liver and…?"

"Just liver. Want some? You didn't answer when I asked before."

Amitha turned back to work as the sounds of open-mouth chewing continued. The whole container couldn't possibly be liver. Nevertheless, more brown was being shoveled into Wren's maw when she retreated from the tackboard for more coffee ten minutes later. "Was that one of your colleagues? I hadn't expected to see another in this site any time soon."

"Oh, we're all over the place." Wren smiled, disquieting as ever despite the chunk stuck between two teeth. "Ferret got off lucky. I had to drive across Utah with a case of fancy mineral water last year, and I'm not even on overseer duty."

"Isn't that demeaning? They are more than important enough to have other people make deliveries. Especially considering your task force’s reputation."

"We do it because they're important," she said, snapping up the last bit of dinner like a bear trap closing around some hapless hiker's ankle. "To us, to the Foundation, to everyone. But what about you? Never made deliveries as an apprentice? I figured wizards couldn’t help but boss underlings around with how the Serpent's Hand does business."

"My doctorate is in applied mathematics actually. Thaumaturgy stems from it once the flaws of a few principles are acknowledged. Frankly, I'm surprised how few students manage to identify them."

"Downright embarrassing!"

"I thought it resulted from influence operations at first, but it may simply be a failure of imagination. Though mathematics is portrayed as a boring field, being able to visualize and implement is as important for a practitioner as any artist. Perhaps even more so."

"Quite undoubtedly!"

She looked up to see those sharp eyes glinting with one-sided glee. Of course. Why shouldn't genuine interest be met with mockery? She sipped her coffee, found it staler than usual, and discarded the cup in an overfull trash can. "You should get back to minding the door before any trouble sneaks in."

"Amitha, I didn't mean it that way."

"I find myself inundated with those nuisances the Overseer warned me about."

"Ami!"

The more Amitha mulled over the problem of safely amplifying Overseer-6's work, the more it felt like trying to shift stonework beneath a trillion-ton edifice. She practically wrote the playbook on identification, validation, and deviation—at least in modern times—but there was a distinct difference between prophecies and prophecies. Cold suffused its bones. Iron twisted through its spine. 'Every empire falls,' it repeats in a thousand tongues stretched throughout history and reinforced by actuality. Every empire falls, every emperor dies. No wonder the Foundation's own council of them so desperately wanted to divert that river. As to whether their desires should be enabled, well, such questions were answered at higher levels by higher powers. Not for the lowly court magician to question anywhere but inside her head.

"I think that's enough," she mused, stepping back from the supply closet whose rummaging had occupied her hands during idle contemplation.

"You think?" asked Wren from behind. Amitha turned to see her selections arranged in an ungainly fashion: bottle necks sandwiched between fingers, miscellanea piled onto crooked arms, a drawstring hung from sharp teeth, and a tome older than either of them sandwiched between cheek and shoulder. Barely-tamed eyebrows rose as if challenging her to make another addition. And why not toss the old pocket watch on top? Tinkering with its unusual geometries was more of a pet project than anything else, less applicable to momentous workings than party tricks, but inspiration often stemmed from unlikely sources.

At her direction, Wren arranged items on a circle adapted from some of the oldest recorded divination rituals. Chalk sketched out apex and nadir, formed bridges between past and future along every possible path; brute forcing solutions felt nothing but inelegant, but such were ancient practices. Following more dignified philosophies? Living in more elegant societies? Ridiculous. If her predecessors truly achieved mastery, they would have first perfected this method of shunting burdens elsewhere. Patches of distant seawater boiled as Amitha took her place in the circle, completing its circuit and placing herself at its helm. Several individuals teetering at the brink of heart attacks finally succumbed. The chaotic noise suffusing existence ordered itself ever so slightly, countless thumbs put on countless scales, all balanced such that her only personal aftershock was a headache.

Not that she was conscious of such happenings. Amitha's mind was a line of fire tracing backwards through time, pinballing between invocations of that unnamed prophecy whose sights were now squarely trained on the Foundation. "Every empire falls" declared a man sending his IED's detonation code from a burner phone. "Every empire falls" was the collective agreement within a dissident coffee shop in the dead of night. "Every empire falls" proclaimed the tract on fundamental freedoms after its author had already been executed. Backwards, backwards, backwards, charting a tree of otherwise disconnected lives that finally arrived at its deepest root.

There, stone cracked against stone as a figure cloaked in the shadows of ancestral memory fashioned the head of an axe. Their words weren't intelligible, not by any modern mind, but the meaning was clear even in an era before civilization assembled itself into such grand, imperious forms. Every empire falls, every emperor dies. The stone edge agreed, hungry for split skulls and shed blood. The future agreed, itself swollen with both. Amitha's consciousness simply noted its coordinates on all observable axes as sparks flew from stone. By the time that precursor shade looked up from its work, her presence had long since vanished into the future created by such declarations.

Warmth swept through her mouth as consciousness returned. Coughing blood onto smudged chalk, she twitched on the concrete, struggling up onto all fours before collapsing again to clutch at her clogged windpipe. What went wrong? Not the circle, not her linkages… Even a keen mind could only race through so many possibilities when hounded by asphyxiation. Wren stared from above throughout it all. Although early in adulthood, her impassive gaze made no secret of what death meant. Nothing. Less than nothing. She shifted from foot to foot, boot to boot, continuing her watch as Amitha reached out.

"Oh, was this not supposed to happen?" she asked. More muted coughing was the only answer.

Calmly, confidently, Wren scooped up her ward by the armpits and lifted her into a nearby chair. A single blow to the chest broke up whatever had formed there. Amitha's next cough brought it up in chunks, a bloody mass suffused with bits of flint and splintered bone. Impossible amounts splattered onto the floor with each subsequent expulsion, but impossibilities were merely matters of course in that field.

"Isn't this why we stop people from learning magic?" asked Wren while opening a water bottle. Amitha made to accept it, only for half to be gulped before her eyes. Washing down whatever blockages lingered offered much less relief afterwards.

"They find ways to hurt themselves no matter how many guardrails are in place," she finally answered. Plastic crunched between tightening fingers.

"But it's right in the motto, isn't it?"

"I didn't realize Alpha-1 put so much weight in marketing. It's been a long time since containment and protection balanced out."

"Oh, none of us care much. We serve the overseers, not the Foundation. Some true believers would be appalled though."

"I'm sure they wring their hands over firearms just as thoroughly. To think, a device capable of delivering death at vast distances in the blink of an eye." She waved her hand, as if striking down one of many foes for transgressions past and present. "Humanity would be far safer without such things floating around."

Another disquieting smile followed, lacking all but the slightest traces of humor. Wren set to cleaning up the bloody mixture—scrubbing diligently, then picking with chewed fingernails—and Amitha massaged her sore throat. Perhaps she had underestimated the scope of those roots despite enjoying a healthy respect beforehand. Perhaps it wasn't a prophecy at all, but instead a primal truth bubbling in the depths of humanity's mire. Did Overseer-6 understand as much when setting her to this task? Was this, finally, the reason it had been left to her instead of an expert within their council's closest circle? Anyone could be excused for giving up after such an experience, for telling them that her loyalty had reached a generous paycheck's limits, but neither money nor loyalty were truly in question by then. Fate had delivered the first punch, but she was intent on having the last.

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"No, they haven't submitted any responses to the FD-303. Is that ever anything but a challenge? At least they don't lie to our face as much as the Committee's."

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"Will your people be sufficient? Parts of Site-24 have been dark to most methods for two months now."

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"I'm sorry, your agents. Have someone prepare the paperwork and I'll put it on her desk myself. Why have fingers if we don't put out an eye every now and then?"

"So, Ami, about this whole project," started Wren. She had achieved a truly precarious position in her chair, balanced on two legs at the exact angle to be toppled by the slightest nudge. Near-continuous cohabitation in that sub-basement left the watchdog feeling more like a piece of furniture herself; if not entirely comfortable, than at least familiar. "I can't help but notice you haven't told the boss much lately. Especially not since, you know…"

"Yes, the 'you know.' Of course"

"Since the bout of blood barfing then?"

Amitha rubbed the bags beneath her eyes instead of considering the tackboards any longer. They had taken on a malignant aspect lately, an atmosphere that even progress failed to dispel. "I never enjoyed turning in half-completed homework. Is there a problem?"

"Just wondering if you're embarrassed about spilling your guts in the middle of an audition."

"Is that how this seems?"

"Oh, definitely! They'll put the gun in your hand, but you have to pull the trigger. Whether or not you know whose head is on the other end is a whole different question."

"They must have said who was holding the bucket for your audition, at least. Our leaders would never dare seem inconsiderate."

A genuine laugh followed, distinct as possible from her usual cackles, followed by a playfully tossed bottle. It landed so off-mark that it couldn't have been honestly aimed—not from the three-time Alpha-1 knife throwing champion, if sleepless boasting was to be believed. It was easy to forget the joys of companionship when surrounded by fake smiles and grasping hands. What was a body count compared to their absence?

Something approximating silence crept back into the workshop in their conversation's wake. Wren's chair creaked slightly beneath her rocking, and the dense network of pipes, girders, and wiring surrounding them groaned in its usual fashion, interspersed with distant footsteps whose vibrations carried far and wide.

"I figure it's liable to piss people off," said Wren just as Amitha began dozing in a chair inherited from long-dead grandparents.

"It couldn't possibly. I didn't even get any blood on them."

More laughter followed, cradling a tiny spark to kindling inside. That the Alpha-1 agent nearly fell again despite protests to the contrary upgraded her from furniture to housepet at the very least. When finally composed, Wren rose from her seat, stretched, and promptly began pacing from crowded cabinet to coat rack. "Pissing people off though. Pissing people off… This is all about changing the future, right? Making sure stuff doesn't happen that was supposed to?"

"In a way. I would phrase it as letting events transpire that couldn't otherwise. Opening up a possibility space that would have naturally narrowed to a single point."

"So, theoretically, if there were standing orders to not aggravate people who care about making predictions, we might be in violation?"

"If you phrase it that way, I suppose–"

Wren nearly dived over the couch Amitha had taken to sleeping on in pursuit of her duffel bag. A great clatter sounded back there, and she emerged with a secure cellphone already ringing.

"Whose orders are you worried about? This assignment came directly from the top, and it's barely applicable research besides that. They will bury it if need be, just like they always do. No one should hold you responsible for my work."

"Sometimes we have to protect the overseers from themselves." She hunched further on the couch as the ringing stopped, nearly hugging her knees in the process. "Wren speaking. Palisade perennial six seven two slate serene. Requesting any information on unusual RAISA activity in Site-24, high priority. Uh huh. Yeah, standing by." Guns emerged as she nodded along to whatever words came through. The one from her hip, first and foremost—standard issue, matte black, and all the more ominous for how unassuming it had become. A similarly standard rifle from her duffel bag, quickly unfolded and checked, then an antique revolver that seemingly emerged from empty air. Perhaps from the air in truth with how it reeked of power beyond gunpowder.

"You can tell me if we're in danger," said Amitha once the call ended.

"Danger is such a loaded word," she said while fishing out a handheld radio that was cradled with more trepidation than any firearm. "How long do you need to move this project? Most of it must be in your head by now."

"Fifteen minutes." Nervous energy suffused the haze that followed her minder, leaving no doubts about how serious she was. Wards would protect the study from most meddling anyway. Layered documents from her board became fresh stacks, diffusing its energy as she precisely dissected the behemoth grown there.

Not ten minutes later, a knock came on the reinforced door. Whatever nerves were burning within Wren didn't stop her from glancing at the security display, waving Amitha further back, and cracking the door. A shove from outside opened it halfway to reveal an intruder uniformed in blacks and grays.

Holographic noise wrapped everything above their shoulders in an ever-shifting, ever-twitching shroud of faces who looked outwards in a singular panopticon. No matter how they were examined, a new set of eyes stared into Amitha's own—personalized recognition that would give anyone pause. Features similar to her mother's watched intently. Those approximating an acquaintance from undergrad, then a janitor frequently seen in the halls outside. Hundreds more followed, discernible only by vestigial instinct as passingly familiar faces smeared together. Was its wearer watching as intently as those projections? Did they notice her at all? Hesitation sprang from uncertainty, a concern that any motion would be filed away in RAISA's endless archives, every slight or sign of hostility an entry itself. That their gloves cradled a short-barreled rifle seemed insignificant compared to the havoc that institution could wreck when wronged.

For her part, Wren seemed entirely unconcerned despite the pistol held along the small of her back. Cocking her head to the side popped several vertebrae in a particularly gruesome fashion, masking the weapon's own click.

"Where is Dr. Amitha Sanmugasunderam?" came a voice equally distributed across countless intonations.

"She's busy right now," said Wren, maintaining the same mix of arrogance and aloofness that staved off so many less-authoritative inquiries. "I'll take a message if you want to back up a little."

"Ms. Cooper-Hughes, our office is aware of your affiliation. Produce Dr. Sanmugasunderam and stand by for questioning."

"Well, if you're going to use my name…"

Wren started turning, and for a dire moment it seemed she might really give Amitha up to whatever aggravated forces were at work. Shifting, twisting, she instead fired twice from the hip. Sharp cracks echoed as the RAISA agent fell back, and two more followed as Wren shot down into the flickering haze. If either hit, it didn't stop them from firing back, a tight cluster of bullets smashing into center mass and flinging her backwards even as the projected faces kept constant eye contact with Amitha—assembled ghosts threatening to drag her into their ranks at the slightest hint of intervention.

Although assigned a guard, she was no helpless apprentice. Force of will connected a circuit painted under the welcome mat, filling the corridor with fire. A whumph swallowed all other sounds for a moment as hungry flames licked inside, but both soon faded, leaving behind only a charred body whose helmet still flickered with ghostlight.

"Fuck!" groaned Wren. Amitha rounded the bank of cabinets to see her pawing at her chest with both hands.

"Do you need help? My doctorate isn't medical, but…"

"Helped plenty already." After a few more grunts, she rolled over and struggled to her knees, then upright. "Get my radio, please." That word was certainly enough to impress the situation's severity even if a gunfight hadn't. The radio bworked in hand, and her next words were clearly not for present company. They were too humorless, too drawn from wells forcibly drilled. "Agent Wren assuming local command for overseer business. EYESORE is on premises at Site-24. Cause trouble, show fangs. Anyone with network access, send in a seventy-seven and get OPCOM direction." Four electric squawks answered that each sapped a little tension from Wren's shoulders.

Every light went out, only to be replaced moments later by a sparse array of red backups. Wren took a deep breath and raised the radio again. When she spoke this time, it had none of the affectation. "And since you RAISA chickenshits are listening in, just know that you stuck your hand in the wrong rat trap. You've got no friends here, no traditions beneath you, and no hope left." A litany of threats followed that polluted existence by their utterance and were impossible to withdraw once issued. Something oozed down Amitha's back as she finished packing her armored briefcase, an understanding that human form is insufficient for humanity if nothing else.

They crept through the darkened tunnels in single-file. Wren's fatigues shed wisps of steam as her vest's organic plates regrew, and Amitha's own borrowed armor hung heavy against the undershirt that had replaced formal attire in recent weeks. Warm, squirming, its existence almost distracted from the sight of a familiar place wrought in alien hues. There was little choice but to follow her escort through puddles of shadow, through stark shafts of light, all while Wren's head snapped back and forth beneath the guidance of superior senses. Around corners. Toward shadows. With each passage, she became more hunched, more feral, armed with weapons of war and so very many teeth.

If the solitary EYESORE operative arriving at her door had been a peace offering, its rejection clearly resonated. Packs of three and four appeared at the main junctions between corridors, forcing an irregular route through service passages and stairwells, each barely wide enough to avoid burning limbs on an exposed pipe or snagging sensitive electronics. None of the pursuers so much as sparked her extrasensory perception, thaumatic signatures distorted by means as thorough as their faces, voices, and very footsteps. Ghosts indeed haunted those halls, and Wren seemed intent on defying their spite even when surveilled by so many eyes.

Gunfire dinged off a pipe near Amitha's head, and she barely had time to wince before more bullets followed. From around a corner. From behind portable barriers. Wren returned fire, earning a yelp equally muted by equipment, and continued firing while Amitha hurried across the open corridor. For all the resources available, her bullets weren't infinite. Silence from that end was answered by a renewed barrage from EYESORE. It continued in alternating rounds until Wren howled "fire in the hole!" and hurled an empty magazine through stark red spotlights. Whatever panic it caused was left behind them as she sprinted after Amitha, grabbed her forearm, and continued running toward the parking bay.

The escape wasn't over, not by any means. Confirmation of their presence summoned however many specters remained. Gunfire echoed elsewhere. A muffled explosion. Such was their remaining number that even rounding distant a T-junction revealed two more who were recovering from a separate encounter with Alpha-1. 6'5" might as well be 8'0" when encountered thus, but Wren sidestepped a surprised swing of a combat knife anyway. Three remaining shots from her pistol thudded against heavier armor, leaving her to hurl it at one, duck the other's thrust, and pop back up to hammer her rifle's butt into a lowered chin. Bone cracked. Metal dented. She struck again before he collapsed, this time with a batter's swing that irreparably damaged weapon and skull both. Only then was it clear she had no means of evading the second operative's rifle when put to proper use.

Thoughts of careful rituals were well beyond Amitha by then. Equations and entreaties, haruspicy and hesitation, all forgotten in a dive for whatever ankle was within reach. Both hands formed that most perfect circle around it, unleashing forces suited to some petty hedge mage who misunderstood that which they wielded. Something approximating electricity surged past her victim's heart in its quest to arc between light fixtures, and Wren finished the job with a knife grabbed from the floor. Blood spraying from that butchered throat seemed all too appropriate an anointment.

"Why am I working this hard when you're magic?" she panted.

"Not that kind of magic!" said Amitha with more energy than intended while collecting her briefcase. "I create works. I perfect them! This site could be a smoking crater, but only with time to prepare."

"Yeah, well, that's something we're lacking right now. C'mon."

Although senior in age and rank, she allowed herself to be pulled along again. Down a corridor. Down another. Reversed, as a swarm of EYESORE agents revealed themselves, then sprinting down the longest straightaway yet. Amitha hadn't run so much since elementary school, a deficiency exposed by heaving breaths. Bullets pounded into the back of her vest, driving out leftover air, and she finally tripped over her feet.

Wren swung Amitha around with strength unsuited to those lithe limbs and drew her pistol in a single motion—not the standard-issue one, but the antique revolver. "Bless me, boss," she whispered, pulling its trigger with a thunderous click heard even as lead whistled past.

Concentric rings of fangs sprouted from walls, floor, and ceiling, racing down the corridor in a vast swallowing that tore apart armor with ease. The concrete, a gullet. EYESORE, a piddling snack. Its summoning resonated as otherworldly enamel found a skeletal frequency, and being dragged away was a relief by then. Rivers of saliva followed whose flow seemed unlikely to cease any time soon.

"Why am I doing magic when you have that?" she panted.

"Because now I only have two shots left! This thing is precious."

"More precious than our lives?"

The silence following them into the parking bay spoke volumes. Wren fumbled under the bumper of an SUV that had been parked in the same spot for years, finally emerging with a key that started its surprisingly lively engine. Collapsing into the passenger seat was such a relief that her heart might have come apart then and there. Hopefully someone at the safehouse could piece it back together. Under the yellow of highway lights, under the flickering of stars yet aligned, Amitha fell into a deeper sleep than ever before.

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"No, of course she isn't happy. I'm not happy either. Toy soldiers aren't half as much fun once they break."

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"Save it for after salvaging this. OKMGLOS has a lock and you have your orders. Any longer and leadership will decide the political pressure isn't worth it or us. Lambs don't get off easily."

They swapped napping and driving in 45-minute shifts, stopping occasionally at run-down rest stops in central Pennsylvania. Wren promised it was sufficient to evade anything in the playbook, but assurances felt hollow when ghosts of ghosts clung to her back and specters of specters haunted their footsteps. Every rustling tree in those parts seemed sure to contain larger predators, but even those didn't compare with the curses RAISA laid upon its enemies. Vanished bank accounts. Disappeared deeds. Even births and deaths were undone under their watch, records rendered null to the Internet, to paper, to memories. Perhaps the subtle fraying felt at her senses' periphery was only a first step.

What was she truly without those pins to the material world? Not a disappointment of a daughter, nor an excellent student; not a publisher of fearsome manuscripts or an employee whose deeds were buried in blacksites. Amitha shivered in the summer breeze until Wren ushered her back inside.

"You need to be ready to escape on your own," she said casually after starting the van. Fingers tapped against its steering wheel, and slit pupils shone in a roadside ditch. "No telling how things will sort out upstairs, and we're bound to show up on someone’s camera eventually."

"Are you suggesting they already have access to footage here?"

"Are you saying they don't have it everywhere?"

"Most groups overstate their capabilities. I was once assigned to support an OPCOM who insisted his task force could breach the Library so often that someone higher up actually started believing it."

"How'd that go for them?"

"We can't discuss it out here. I advised against the attempt, not that it earned me respect."

"Nobody seems to respect lil' ol' Ami," chirped Wren, reaching out to pinch her cheek as though teasing a child. "Don't worry, we'll make them remember us if it comes to that."

Pushing her hand away took more strength than expected, though the sheen of sweat helped. Whose it was and why it formed remained unclear. "Shouldn't you be thinking about how to escape before thinking about how we die?"

"Can do. Hold that thought."

She spun the wheel, careening into a wide turn as the road beside them exploded. Another missile streaked by, annihilating a gnarled tree whose foliage wasn't enough to protect against UAVs. Wren leaned out the window for a look, swore under her breath, and barely managed to swerve down a narrower path without toppling their vehicle. For her part, Amitha could see the faintest hint of it through the sunroof, a dark shape against clustered stars.

Evening had thankfully chilled enough that breathing against the glass left condensation behind. She sketched geometric patterns into it while Wren's cursing escalated to new heights. Such was her displeasure that it almost called into question whether EYESORE truly deserved unmatched spite, whether vile words approximated spells of their own. Amitha's magic had more practical effect regardless. She slapped her palm against the sunroof, transmuting glass into an avian shape that streaked upward in pursuit of prey. A ball of fire bloomed in the heavens moments later.

"Ha!" shouted Wren, overwhelming her ward's self-satisfied chuckle. She ruffled Amitha's hair this time, worse than ignorant of personal space, but it was hard to care when shards of melted plastic fell all around them.

Their journey concluded outside a warehouse that leaked strobe light through its seams. Bass accompanied the display, thumping loud enough to be felt in her teeth, but Wren didn't hesitate to knock on a side door. With both of them clothed in whatever could be bought with $43 in pooled cash—a cast-off jacket here, torn jeans there—they might truly have been attending whatever party raged inside. If only Amitha didn't feel twenty years too old for it.

The door's slat cracked open, exposing a pair of opalescent eyes that practically glowed with raw starlight. "What offerings do you bring to this most hallowed ground?" its owner asked, voice lilting.

"My dick, if you're brave enough to come get it."

Both eyes narrowed. Glistening like the edge of a sharpened blade, each expressed a condemnation outstripping anything wielded against them in Site-24, but soon opened even wider than before. "Ah, the muzzle returns as it ever does! Delightful irreverence, most delightful. Has our tithe run its course already?"

"Nah, I'm here for something else. Not looking to spoil your fun this time."

"Generous indeed. Please do partake."

With that, the eyes closed, the slat closed, and the door swung open. Lights indeed flashed within, music indeed pounded, but whatever filled the warehouse floor failed to meet such simple labels. Its mass gyrated unevenly, figments and fragments overlapping in a writhing mass of limbs and light. It wasn't truly there, of course, but it wasn't absent either, a half-being enraptured by dances performed beneath moonlight for centuries on end.

Wren paid it little mind, instead pressing through a more coherent crowd at the periphery with Amitha still in tow. At a table tucked away behind curtains of opaque green plastic, she spoke in hushed tones until an arm emerged clutching two pill bottles. If nothing else, at least the limb was human.

"Take one of each," said Wren after retreating toward the entrance. No opal-eyed bouncer was in sight.

"I'm sorry?"

"One of each. This one makes everything sharper, this one makes you fuzzy to other people. Don't ask me about chemistry."

"But–"

"Unless you can make some smoking craters real quick, we need an edge to escape this net. Weren't you the one who said we should focus on surviving? Come on. I don't want to shove them down your throat."

"Is this how Alpha-1 behaves with the overseers? Do you treat them like children too?"

A surreptitious glance at their surroundings followed, turned toward any signs of unwarranted interest by partiers inebriated or otherwise, and Wren leaned close enough that the smell of raspberry slurpee from hours before carried on her breath. "If you were an overseer, we would have torn RAISA out by the roots already. Summary executions in secret cells. Fires in their libraries. We would personally, personally, ensure that new hires hear such awful ghost stories about what happened that they refuse to believe them."

The glare enhanced by her few extra inches of height was intense, but it didn't stop Amitha from leaning even closer. "Why do you think I'm any less scary, Wren? Is it because I don't resort to violence at the drop of a hat? I promise, with a few strands of your hair, I could strip the flesh from anyone you ever called a friend and bind it into custom nooses from a hundred miles away. I'm not a child, not a piece of luggage, and definitely not a plaything."

Wren's nose crinkled at the intrusion into her own personal space, that numb haze offering little protection. "So… you're saying I should have grabbed one of those bodies on our way out of Site-24?"

Amitha sighed and grabbed the pills. Dry swallowing was unpleasant, and she barely felt an effect before being led through the doorway by her hand. Sharper? Sharper. Indeed, the world seemed awfully sharp as they walked into the crosshairs of at least twenty guns materializing from camouflaged hides. Smaller drones whirred overhead, directing spotlights that failed to block out an equal number of jittering shrouds.

"Back inside, Ami." Wren managed to draw that revolver from its holder—both having developed calcium deposits—before a bullet blew half her head off. Amitha grabbed for it, feeling like the only real thing in existence, but another bullet hammered her leg out from underneath all the same. One member of EYESORE immolated, an invocation that blinded her left eye in backlash. She swiveled the right toward another agent, every bit the vengeful wizard, and something else exploded nearby.

She remained the only real thing, and being real hurt. Lying in the dirt, she palpated her bleeding chest, finding something that felt an awful lot like heaving lungs in the process. Whether or not a spell could be enacted to piece everything together seemed moot when it would all be torn apart again. How disappointing. Just when her greatest ritual of all was nearly complete…

In front of her, Wren's corpse grabbed the revolver. More gunfire erupted, further pulverizing what remained of those keen eyes, of that smirk, but not before cold hands fired into the sky. Such an uncharacteristic act of mercy. Its existence soothed the pain nevertheless, stinging alcohol that quickly faded into the feeling of a warm embrace. Only when Amitha lifted from the ground did she realize its actualization. Of every hug, of every soothing touch, this felt separated by an insurmountable gulf from that which stemmed from mortal hands—a nest of fingers whose entwining left no gaps to slip through. One reached out to stroke the gaping hole in her chest, its component digits squirming out like villi to examine the nuances of broken ribs and shredded flesh, picking out bits of shrapnel as they went.

"This won't do at all," thrummed a voice entirely dissimilar to the simulacrum in Overseer-6's office. This held authority, true authority, and their surroundings quaked in response. Every gun echoed out too, their chatter buffeting the cocoon that only wrapped tighter around Amitha. Lead filtered through in bits and pieces, crumpled even tighter by the forces inherent in that construct. Each was delivered tenderly into her cupped palms as though a trinket to be cradled.

A single finger unfolded from that barricade toward the array of firing soldiers. It wasn't flicked, nor jabbed, but indicated intent in the simplest gesture available to any thaumaturge—an intent that seemed all but impotent in the following moment. No spellwork flowed forth, no tapping into leylines or other sources of power. Even a mortal wound wouldn't prevent their observation by her trained eyes. And yet, something trembled. The skeletal rituals now managed by others. The subtle wards imprinted upon members of the Foundation. The remnants of far older, more fundamental workings. Something trembled, and Amitha trembled too.

First went the guns. Screws came undone in unison, pulling inches away before hanging motionless as larger springs, plates, and chambers separated in a state of fruitless toil. Hammers pounded nothing. Unspent cartridges ejected all the same. Although still warded by holographic halos, the EYESORE team's confusion was evident; their hesitation, obvious. Well-merited too.

Their bodies were next ejected from all that protected them, blasted backwards through layers of cloth and armor—out from boots, gloves, and panoptic helmets. Amitha barely perceived an ethereal finger pushing each by the sternum. It drove raw, muscular forms from within dermal layers. It drove skeletons through those, then assemblies of organs still working to preserve an absent host. The hunters were separated thus. Layers of their existence hung over the asphalt, maintaining form and function in the most sickening anatomical diagram imaginable.

"Your work remains," the voice prompted, pulling Amitha upright by fingers wrapped around fragments of her ribcage. "Demonstrate the framework and I will carry it through. Let us bury these words once and for all."

Indeed, the time for hesitation had long since passed. RAISA's threats of an unmarked grave simply weren't acceptable in this life or any other; should her tomb rise, it must be grand beyond compare. A circuit formed in the gore-smeared crater ringing Amitha's chest, simple patterns funneling her will into deeper and deeper layers of the strata undergirding reality in pursuit of mechanisms by which to enact her fading will. A pulse here. A reverberation there. The Overseer's presence loomed throughout, noting what their own will had wrought.

"Ah, I see."

So much raw power poured into her construct that it seemed liable to sunder fate's workings entirely. No wonder subtlety needed outsourcing. The alignment of stars and states broke apart, shattering the meaning of every constellation above that stone axe, scattering its potential into forms unknown. The peasant. The dissident. The revolutionary. Such figures would continue to exist, but no longer could their eventual success be guaranteed under this disjunction. Half the night sky went black, a bulb unscrewed, and Amitha finally died beneath that yawning absence.

"That won't do either," were the last words she heard.

No research ever demonstrated what preserved Amitha after that; certainly none of her own, though plenty was conducted at Overseer-6's direction. Such was the life of a court wizard—the court wizard, especially when outranked only by the emperor herself. And what was a wizard absent a comparable knight? If only hers didn't have quite so many fangs.