Fire and Water

## Mission debrief of Patricia Jane

*‘Come in, have a cup of tea. This is the first time that you requested to be debriefed alone, agent Jane.’*

*‘Yes sir. It seemed … wise, this time.’*

*‘So, begin.’*

While Patricia picks up her cup of tea, checking the temperature before she takes a sip, she feels the familiar twinges of Levi trying to gain access to her mind. He tends to do that during a debrief. Sometimes she blocks him, for practice. Mostly she doesn’t bother to fight him. Today, she puts up resistance.

*‘After you’ve met my nieces and nephews here, we got on the plane. Sophie flew, Nicole was the co-pilot. Nothing much special happened on the way. Just Franklin stepping out in mid flight, but that was expected so I managed to cover that without intrusive mind procedures. When we arrived at the hotel, another group arrived as well. I noticed someone familiar. It was the redheaded boy I bullied into…’ She falters. ‘I bullied after which he torched my parents. I never expected to see him again, I never even wanted to think about that evening again.*

*‘I put the children back in the van immediately, we drove off to a safer location. I asked Franklin and Nicole to scan him and his group and to gather more information. It was obvious he was a mage, to be specific he belonged to the Friends of the Soul, Consanguinity of Eternal Joy. Nearly as bad as a Nephandi.’*

Patricia takes a sip of her tea. It is a white tea of excellent quality, she enjoys the dark, rich flavour enhancing the more delicate and sweet overtones of honey and vanilla. It is perfectly steeped, a second longer would have made the bitter undertones come forward too much.

*‘Unfortunately I don't have a first hand account of what exactly happened. I fell asleep. Franklin’s scans showed that it was my genius demanding attention, so they were not too worried. I came to in a hotelroom with five kids and a cat in Tungsten armor. It was obvious that Franklin had gotten babysitting duty.*

'*Nicole was prepping a neutralization. She had found out the mage’s name: Joerge Salbon. Apparently she had also asked you for access to my files, since it was obvious I had met him before. Thank you for not making me seem evil at an unenlightened 14 when you gave Nicole the necessary information.’ she says with a small smile. ‘Nicole also informed Senex, since the Consanguinity believes they are part of the Euthanatos. Senex disagrees with that and said he would pay them for killing Salbon. Since that had also been your advice, they didn’t object.’*

The archmage is still trying to gain access to the mind of his agent. Patricia manages to thwart him in every way. She is slowly losing some willpower though. Levi is somewhat surprised. This is harder than he is used to. Normally if she even bothers to put up a fight, it is more like a practice match. This is serious.

*‘What are you doing, Jane?’* he asks with some concern.

*‘May I first finish the debrief please, sir?’* Patricia quickly calculates how much time she has left before he will break through her defenses. More than enough to finish.

*‘Salbon took another hotel, close to our new hotel. One of the others found a note he left: Fs-cej-op:nep-25-ex. Since we already knew which fraction he belonged to, Nicole quickly figured out it’s meaning: Friends of the soul - Consanguinity of Eternal Joy - Operation: Nephandi- 25th target - exterminate. So it was obvious he was targeting a Nephandi. Due to Franklin’s scans we weren’t completely sure who though. It might be me, due to my reputation.’*

Patricia wards of another mind attack. Levi switched from subtle to full on attack. As if nothing happened, she continues: *‘It might also be little Hanzi. Franklin’s scans showed that he suffers from Jhor. We contacted Senex for a possible quick fix. We, that is the NWO would have taken longer. Since he might have been in immediate danger, the precaution seemed necessary. Furthermore, I added his tainted aura to my own, so that if someone was tracking it they would come to me.’*

Mid sentence, she tries not to wince. That was a particular harsh attack. She speeds up her pace.

*‘However, the kids  kids seemed safe enough with the Tungsten suits and agents Green and White. So we prepped to neutralise the mage. Well, we prepped me playing bait. Unfortunately I started trailing water and fell asleep again. Apparently also did Franklin. After we woke up, we neutralized the threat. He didn’t even need me as bait, we just went to his hotel room. He had taken some protective measures, but we figured those out beforehand, so it was easy. Maybe too easy. If they go after me for my reputation, they ought to know I am not such an easy target. We have to find out if something is behind this. I wanted to talk to him, before evaluating his future use. It seemed like he needed a second chance, so we offered him to Senex.’ I only did a quick mind probe though, so I could be wrong. If so, we can be sure Senex will kill him.’*

Levi frowns. *‘The murderer of your parents. And you, of all people, did not want to take revenge. What happened while you were asleep?’*

She skirts the question: *‘Mostly I decided that I would not be an objective judge of his character. And if we involved the NWO it would always come to me making that judgement. For the rest, I will come to that part, sir. First I have some requests.’*

*‘On the way back, Sophie flew into the edge of space. With a normal, earthbound plane. This means she endangered the lives of children and crew. The agents can survive an exploding plane and drifting into space. But this risk is way too large to take with children. Especially if the only reason to take this is to fuck with me. So I want Sophie disciplined for unnecessary endangering children and for skirting the dimensional anomaly without permission.*

*‘Furthermore, thanks to this space adventure, Hanzi was enlightened. Considering he is only ten, and he is suffering from Jhor, this is a problem. Since Nicole could have prevented this but made the conscious decision not to, I request her assistance in providing the necessary therapy and safety measures for Hanzi until he comes of age. He is going to have a normal family life for as long as possible and choose a career path willingly, as a capable adult. Green or White can do most of this work. They might need a clone.*

*‘Last but not least: I will inform Sophie that by wanting to fuck with me, she has broken up a happy family. Nicole will know that too. You might want to schedule some time with DIMH for both of them.’*

Levi noticed the ruthlessness in her tone of voice. He had seen this ruthlessness before. Not when she tortured someone. That was glee. It was when she tortured someone while it pained herself. When she was willing to torture her fellow agent and friend for the greater good. When she turned someone in who truly was a friend.

There is this ethical thought experiment, where a trolley is hurtling down a track towards five people. You are on a bridge under which it will pass, and you can stop it by putting something very heavy in front of it. There is a very fat man next to you. The only way to stop the trolley is to push him over the bridge and onto the track, killing him to save the other five. If Patricia was around, you’d better hope you were on the track. She would not hesitate. Hell, it was exactly what she did when she killed the innocent Mr Anderson to save the masses.

*‘That was not all. There is a last question, sir:*

 ***‘How long did you know?’***

She gathers every last ounce of willpower to get an honest answer from the stronger mindmaster. Her last defenses down, she waits for his answer. Her mind is focussed on her genius. To show him the dark, wounded her. Black wings broken of, leaving gaping wounds. Torturing uncounted amounts of people. The epitome of evil. She was a Nephandi. And she was going to use it for Good.

*‘First things first: though your genius is damaged by corruption, you, Patricia, are not Widderslainte. If you had been, there would be no struggling against it, it would be part of your nature. You would have been lost already. It is known that a nephandus that is killed fast enough after going through their cauls the damage might not be permanent. You were lucky in that regard.’*

*‘I was. The world was.’* she answers. Well, most of it, she thinks, while unconvincingly blocking the silent movie that keeps playing in her mind from her supervisor. Starting where she hesitantly steps towards the dark lake. The lake that had always tried to lure her in. She remembers she used to dip her toes into it, a long long time ago. But her mother always called her back. She did not really want to go against her mother’s wishes. The mother who tried to raise her to be a good girl. Now, the lake was waiting, as always. Luring her in to explore it’s deep darkness. She needed to know. Needed to know If Franklin was right. Was her mother not her avatar? She stepped into the lake,carefully. It fractured into hundreds of mirrors, each showing herself with another victim. Showing the darkness in all its forms. Her darkness. Which was when she broke down. Her tears cleared up the lake even more. Showing her true genius.

*‘There is one slight problem though. A technocratic problem. I can explain this perfectly. To a mage. We don’t have an accepted theory about this happening to someone’s genius. It will be interesting to see what Nicole makes of this.’*

Levi continued: *‘Secondly, I didn’t. The truth is that most of my knowledge of genius is incidental. I have never been a good metaphysicist, and merely know enough Dimensional Science to destroy one without actually needing to initiate contact with it. A pest controller doesn’t need to know how to speak the language of rodents to get rid of them.’*

She suppressed a flare of anger when she realized his words could be explained as her genius being a pest. Her genius was hurt. She needed help, not eradication. She did bandage her wounds after all. Rationally she had to admit he was right. If she could not be controlled  And that he had chosen his words so that it could easily be explained otherwise.

*‘Thirdly, whilst I understand your anguish, it would seem you have missed a crucial part of Hanzi’s condition, he was on the cusp of awakening. Whilst Sofie’s actions were well-intentioned but extremely reckless, in a way they were a blessing.’ Levi smiled. ‘I’m not going to claim that she was aware of how, because I already received some tidbits. The only four aware where Salisbury, Taylor, Green and White. Regardless, by bringing them into space she actually created a stable more or less controlled awakening for Hanzi, one that was at maximum one year away if Franklins scans are to be believed.’* He thought for a second. *‘Though skirting the Dimensional Anomaly is not something I can ding her for, she will get reprimanded for exposing children to space in a normally not spaceworthy craft.*

*‘Involving DIMH would make sense, and it should be child's play to get Hanzi into an elite school, where he’ll be trained and yet have a relatively normal life. I’m absolutely certain that miss Taylor can be convinced to take on the administrative troubles that would bring. Is that acceptable to you?’*

*‘For now. The request for recompense for three scholarships for an international school will follow soon. After my sister and her husband have decided where to live, not just with Hanzi but also with the girls. I will not decide their lives for them.’*