The well-tended grass does not desist from my feet as I walk it, the hair, so to speak, of the Agency campus grounds. As he must, Hector takes mechanical strides besides me, or rather to my left, to keep pace. His hair of some cobalt does not ruffle in the zephyrs, but I trouble myself to keep my hands from touching my own parts of red.
“You know, R’aegoth, with BMP’s you could easily get it changed,” Hector says. “I know you’re against the stuff, but everyone here does it! I use it, Mik’vael, even Sara. She got back while you were purifying.”
I nod, my stride unbroken. “That is good, Hector. I suppose Lowers hospitals are capable in their own right.” It is even better that, myself the subject of the conversation, we are done with discussing his Whirlwind Fury technique, which we discussed yesterday after his presentation, and shortly before we emerged into the sunlight.
“But R’aegoth, you’ve never been to get shorned.”
The Menagerie is now ahead, my steps succeeding to meet it. Its bulbous shape reminds me of the chestnut pie at brunch earlier with Hector. “It is not the coloration that piques me, Hector. It is the irregularity of the red.” Had the change occurred such that the two colors formed a banner, I could have made use of it, perhaps gone to the Menagerie for deeper shading, perhaps write an R on my pate. But it is jagged.
I wait for his tuned response and I look once more upon the Training Glass to our right, a venue I solicit every day. Less to augment my faculties, and more to supervise Hector, who at this moment is muttering inaudibly. Perhaps he is pondering the words I gave him on his Whirlwind Fury.
I look to my left, past Hector’s face bound in concentration, at the Alter Stone. It is not an edifice I have put foot in, as I need no weapon; but Hector may need a different blade, if training cannot justify his rank. When we’d parted at the cafeteria, Mik’vael had even made that recommendation. Hector, of course, had unwittingly replied that he’d only go with his two-ranked superior.
As such, he attends his one-ranked superior to a shorning.
We are now beneath the frieze that sits above the entrance. On another day Hector would have pointed out how today’s eight extinct species for the frieze were different than before, provided his memory. But as we watch, the front of the chestnut pie opens like the mouth of perhaps the whale, which is on today’s frieze arrangement, reaching from end to end. A whoosh of air blows out from within the Menagerie to further emulate the creature, and a fellow Agent walks out.
It is First Agent William, of the Third Bureau of Communication. As she passes us by, I note that, as expected of her affiliation, she is wearing a different receptor on each ear. Her uniform has emblazoned in silver our shared affiliation’s symbol.
As such she passes by too quickly for Hector to blubber, and we pass into the mouth of the Menagerie. The alter hypercarbon closes seamlessly behind us.
On today’s occasion the interior resembles what must be the whale’s stomach. The ceiling is usually far above, but today massive cylinders arc from both sides to one twice their width running the far length of the Menagerie’s roof. As I look, they sway to and fro gently, as the surrounding wall structure pulses.
I hear the sentient bark of an alter terrier.
I settle my eyes. “Ah, hello, R3-MD. I am here to have my hair cut. Hector is accompanying me.”
“Errf.” Understood. “Rrrrr-aerf.” Good to see you again, Agent. These are, of course, the only words it can be saying.
“Good boy!” Hector exclaims, breaking out of his reverie to kneel and pat R3-MD on the head. R3-MD shrugs his hand off and turns around. “Grrrf.” Only a subordinate.
“Let us follow it, Hector. They are not a pet.”
Hector laughs. “R3 spends all day as a guide. We should treat it well!”
I shake my head in disapproval as we walk after R3-MD, which wags its tail perfunctorily.
“AND HE STEPS UP TO THE PLATE! ROBERTO CLEMENTE, BOUTTA HIT ONE OUT FOR THE FANS.”
Yadda, yadda, yokai. I don’t play baseball. Field of dreams, don’t give me that bullshit. I peer behind the corner of the store that sells dolls, I despise their sordid faces. Up ahead past this town and the sleeping mankers is the sentinel, past the signs that scream at me not to secede from the Lowers. I am not supposed to leave, but have tried before, and something or someone inside me is shushing that sentinel in the scarlet suit. Run, sylvan, run!
I break into a run. Not a single soul stops Roberto, as he slides into second base!
“Salutations, ma’am,” I say, saluting.
She turns around from where she stood facing the horizons to face me. Safe. Now, wipe that dirt off your pants. I rub my hands together. “I’m heading to High, please. The Government seat.”
The first and previous time I’d come here, it wasn’t to leave, but to see their methods of preclusion for there was only one person per horizon to prevent us Lowers folk from running out in screaming shambles. But this time. But this time I have the vest.
The sentinel is wearing one of those earpieces that people above Lowers all wore. Shoelaces and shenanigans. “Playing Truth or Dare today?” she asks, smiling. “Here, have some chocolate.” She pulls open a drawer, reaches in, removes a holy bar of Saint Bessie’s. Extends her red-coated arm through the semicircle slot like they have in cinemas. I take it, and flick it above the border. It plops onto the grass beyond.
“Tell your friends that we don’t bite. I have plenty of chocolate!”
Is what I tell her, before she does, and she stares at me, surprised. I am no ordinary high school lad. I play shortstop, not second base. “Surprised, miss? Check these out.” I reach into my pocket, and pull out a pair of shiny sunglasses. Don ‘em. “Now take a look at that.”
If fire was burning, it was on my head. My head held sunglasses, which burned with eyes of fire.
“Now, I’m going up to High. They tell me that that’s where they take care of the Furies, you know, the terrorists.”
If she is shouting S.O.S. by earpiece, I don’t see it. “Now let me pass, stickbug.”
The clientele are returning. The ground opens up, a crevasse gapes from the sod, and robots emerge. Not Artificial Intelligence, but servants of our delimited history. The lady is commanding them, and I laugh in the face of entertainment. Pretty toys, but I prefer the guard.
I walk through them.
I emerge from the pool, fully naked, and step with wet feet onto the reflective surface of the floor. The scales of Alter that drift off my body and collect on the alter linoleum gather together, collect, and return to the pool in one silver strand. Untethered to any artificial material, the pure form of our Sector’s techure, it can only stay in one cohesive whole after being used to shorn me in the pool. It remains there beneath the fluttering lights of the Menagerie’s Shorning chamber. Today they send dots and beams about like an insect that was called the firefly. There are hundreds of them.
The Shorned Mirror awaits me by the pool. I walk to stand directly in front of it, and wait a brief while for the Alter to completely leave my skin and pores.
I gaze at myself in the mirror.
As expected, my form underwent no change, as I have maintained it every day in perfect condition since I first came to these grounds. The face remains cut, and as I spread my legs apart and raise my arms, the figure is as stolid as the Thousandtree beneath the Director’s office.
The hair I see in the glass (unaltered) is red.
Seablood under a whale’s settling carcass. Tonguepant drooping out between a dog’s incisors. Head of firefly reared exposing yellowlight mating signaler.
My hair was brown before––brown the color of tree bark, brown the color of bio terra soil, brown the color of the Thousandtree.
Beneath the surface of the Thousandtree is a mahogany skin.
And that was the color of my hair, for while this is my first time shorn, agents Sara and Xeric have used it, to name some I know, to return their bodies to unadulterated states, before the demons of spore and dust infiltrated their vessels. Did the purification of the Fury provoke it? Red hair is not a common natural color; however, agents Bola of the First and Lind of the Second Bureau have this color without use of body-maintenance prescriptions. But then, I do question the altering of my hair to brown––I have no memory of conforming to such prescriptions, nor do I recall dyeing it by more complex or antiquated means. In short:
I do not remember whence or when I made this change in me.
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I walk over to the imitation tree stump, constructed of an alter material, where my clothes lay folded. I first push myself through the torso, a fully synthetic alter carbon in grey flynder. I then climb into the waist, a sleek-fitting yet gently padded geest make, before settling within the legs which are made in the same material but slighter for mobility. The soles follow, tight grips, that between the perfect floor and perfect skin provide bearable resistance.
As before, the symbol of the Agency lies twisted from right shoulder down to left ankle. I turn about, contorting it, and no matter which way I turn––and I am flexible––the letter remains ill-formed.
At least on Hector’s fit the R ends just below his waistline.
“R’aegoth! Let’s take a look!” His voice comes from beyond the alter horizon. A poem might do in normal circumstances, but these were not normal circumstances. I conduct a final, cursory viewing of the R’aegoth in the mirror––the collection of follicle-sprouted lances remains entirely a pungent blood––not as enthusiastic as scarlet, but deeper than that. “Coming, Hector.”
“AND ROGER CLEMENS STRIKES OUT NUMBER TWENTY AGAINST SEATTLE! HOW FAR HE’LL GO, NO ONE KNOWS!”
I am in a line of humans, each of us prepared to face the grinning doofus ahead, a tall wannabe Clayton with runaway blue hair. Not a ball nor a glove but a sunfish or piranha lies held in his hands, made of a silvery material that might rival––
“Please walk through the gate,” the attendant at the arch tells me.
I step through.
“Next,” they say to the person behind me. “Please stand in line with the others,” and I move in formation with the other MVP candidates, before the fake kershaw. The way he’s holding the fish stick––I don’t like it.
We are being herded into rows of eight. The room is vast, vast enough to hold a full game, were our rows shepherded by nine. I spare a look at the seven other wannabe catchers in my row. Besides their clear practice of running ballboy errands ad infinitum, as evinced by their hearty legs and torsos, a pretense of determination is slapped upon their faces.
They certainly look ready for a game. They’re also looking directly at the unreal pitcher, who is pacing back and forth along the rows. As I peer down the gymnasium’s length I see many rows.
If I had Utmost a bat, I could run up and start swinging already. I am here to talk to the people who regularly have batting practice with people like that black-haired girl and people like
Don’t say my name aloud in front of him!
. I peer into the far reaches of the gymnasium––no Gaebus. I have to wait, then. I watch Hector as the Blue Jay inspects the All-Star candidates.
“Rae, I like your hair. Was it always red?”
I must deny it. If I have no memory, in essence it did not exist. “Your own coloring is natural, Bola. I have only had brown hair for as long as I remember being a member of this Agency.”
The end-strands of her own red, styled so as to mimic the still extant jellyfish’s tentacles attempting to depart her head, wave in the air almost of their own accord as she nods. “Well, I only got here quite recently, so I’ll believe you!”
“Thank you, Bola.”
“What is belief but a foregrounding of the failure to accept truth?” N’ziet asks, sitting on his haunches besides Hector, who is waiting for his completed weapon. I am in the Alter Stone, for the first time, for my subordinate’s sake. “We’d like to paint this picture of reality in our heads, but the picture’s always there, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t it too early for philosophy?” Sara asks, arms crossed.
“Dri, that’s an interesting idea!” Bola exclaims. “Your own, or which era of like-minded individuals?” She adjusts her receptor as she speaks, as the hair strands wave their follicles.
N’ziet stands, sparing a look at the terrible thing being processed on the Stone by Tenth Agent Artok of the Second Bureau. I do not know what they are constructing, but Hector’s silence means amazement. “All philosophy is different colors from the same paint corporate. Although in my context, not GAT, the Agency which ranked me at Eighth. A fine placement,” N’ziet avers.
“So it is, N’ziet,” I respond. “Bola, as our newest Tenth you have the arrangements for the next round of Agency Examinations?”
“That I do!” she replies, using her receptor to establish a holoscreen in front of her, wide enough for the six of us to see. “This day next month, I decided, to commemorate our Bureau’s second natural red!”
“It is not natural, however,” I begin, but Hector cuts me off by slapping his palm to the thing slowly gaining material form on the Stone. His hand, of course, slips through the holo-surface, and I believe Hector is not lacking in intelligence enough that he would let his hand be woven into the blade. Tenth Agent Artok would preclude that event, however. “You were shorned, R’aegoth, that is your congenital coloring,” N’ziet reasons. “Bola, how will the Examinations this year? Worth attending?”
The holoscreen, cast entirely in a low gauzy pink, synchronizes with the hair of its caster. “You see the three layers here? I call it the Coconut Cream Cake!” With her right hand, which bears three rings of altering shades of red, she moves across the screen to encompass the three layers of the Examinations from bottom to top. “The bottom layer, the foundation, takes place in the gymnasium of course, to test their physical abilities!” I hope Hector is listening. “The middle layer, the coconut filling, will be in the Library, supported by the Second and Third Bureaus!” If he is listening, his ears must rise to this. “And finally, the topmost layer––the hazy cream––will take place in the Menagerie.” If I stare closely at the screen, I can describe the levels of difficulty in each, ascending of course, with the cream on top.
“And who will be proctoring, from the First?” Sara asks.
“Each of the pairs will appoint one?” Bola queries, looking at myself.
I nod to her. “Correct procedure. Between Xeric and Mik’vael, Hector will go, Sara may decide for herself, and so on.”
“Joe wouldn’t be there anyway.” The Fifth Agent turns to glance at her immediate superior, who is still gazing with longing at the cooking board. “Do we choose which layer to proctor?” she asks, rubbing her arms in thought. They must not have fully recovered from the Furies incident; such is the inadequacy of Lowers medicine.
“Nope! Once you tell me who’ll be going, I’ll make the assignments.” She looks sideways at me again. I nod. “And that’s all, I believe!”
N’ziet turns his head up to stare at the ceiling. Artok continues to ply the altar, a rough smile simmering on their stark face. Hector is still silent; a grace. Bola eliminates the holoscreen and curls her hair around a finger. I look at Fifth Agent Sara, who is tapping her shoe on the floor. “And the Furies?” I ask.
Bola ceases. “I wasn’t on that assignment.”
“I know, but we have a month before the Examinations.”
Shiiing, comes the weapon-making. “Done,” Artok states.
Hector whips it off the plate in one erratic movement. “Enough time to create a new technique, R’aegoth!” It is not an energy saber, which is a potent weapon, but something else entirely. I care not for the attempt at description.
“Creation is inadequate,” N’ziet follows, but he looks at me interestedly. “If it’s revenge you want, an empty thing, and not yours, R’aegoth?”
Sara cannot hide it well enough from me, so I continue, as Hector attempts to swing the thing through the air. “The Fifth Agent’s honor was snuffed out.” Sara nods. “The directive was to gauge their organizational strength. And Mik’vael has judged that it is inferior to ours.”
“In our last conversation of strength, we decided that if their fire-user was stronger than Valha’ya Glorae, then they’d be a threat,” N’ziet says. “As Mik’vael, who ranks below Xeric took out the fire-user with ease––”
“With ease, N’ziet?” I query. I am most piqued by this claim.
“Yes. I witnessed it––she took him in an instant.”
“Continue.”
“With Glorae presenting a threat to Xeric, if we assume that there is no Fury in between the fire-user and Glorae, even if we take into account their leaders––who go on a rotation––we have R’aegoth. Who I think can be Second Agent.”
“What are you suggesting, that we take them out now? After all these years?” Sara asks. She uncrosses her arms.
“How long has it been?” Bola asks in turn.
“Nine years,” I tell them. I remember a battle with one Fury on a rare day of snow. Eight years ago, with the then-leader. The battle that gave me my current rank. “We find their headquarters every few years, and they relocate; we have some sparse encounters.”
“But we’re closer than we ever were before.” N’ziet points to Hector, who has at last let his weapon fall to the ground. “With our Fourth Agent, who has not yet shown us his true combat potential.”
Hector is nodding hard.
“You must be joking.” Sara.
“I am.”
Hector resumes moving the thing around. I shake my head at the poor joke.
“We have someone on the inside, don’t we?” N’ziet asks Bola, who looks surprised but, to my surprise, nods. “Yep! They joined the Furies only last year!”
“How do I not know this?” I ask Bola. Sara looks at her too, as do Hector and even Artok. N’ziet only smiles. “Mik’vael instructed us to not inform you until we managed to secure one of their top fighters. Had Xeric triumphed against Valha’ya back then, we would’ve told you then,” he says. Bola nods, providing a nervous smile. “How do you think Mik’vael even found them after they caused the theater incident?”
I can only think that Agents lower than I knew about this operative, for a full year, and I, the Third Agent, was not made privy. “Does Xeric know?” I ask.
“He does not even. Perhaps he might have succeeded, had he known,” N’ziet answers.
“To the Enclave, then?” Bola asks. “I scheduled the Examinations a month from now, to give us appropriate time for a full operation.”
“Have you also arranged which of us will participate in this?”
“I have not! We can talk with Mik’vael in the Enclave, before seeing the Director.” Her jellyfish afro waves.
“To the Director, let’s go!” Hector announces, moving his new weapon in what must be its proper format. “Let’s show these Furies who’s boss.” He prances in front of us, almost skipping, away and to the exit of the Alter Stone.
The four of us follow in suit.