Bedevil learns the record keeping in Houston is awful. Most of it’s on paper, for god’s sake, when the Templar network is right there! Houston’s not the only city she knows of that resorted to paper filing after the Affect scrambled a lot of normal computer tech, but it is the largest. And with two major network providers in Templar and PK, it’s amazing they’ve never moved to one of them.

Mr. Spiral has nothing else to say. Either he’s truly terrified or Pandahead really does keep things compartmentalized. Which would be smart. So Mr. Spiral rots in his cell below the Shrine, until they can figure out a trial date and get him moved somewhere more secure.

She works herself sick for three days trying to find more, comes up short. She can’t even find a mention of a Pandahead in their criminal records.

On the fourth day, at the crack of dawn, she decides enough is enough, and to get on with the thing she’s been procrastinating on: disentanglement.

That morning, she bathes well. She luxuriates in the private, heated shower in her Shrine apartment. She squats down to her heels and lets the water run over her back, breathing in the steam. Rather than reinvigorating her, the shower makes her want to put on pajamas and go to sleep, but the day is far from over. She conjures up a simple yellow shirt and some jeans, socks and comfy Old States sneakers, something balancing presentability and comfort.

Bedevil plops face down onto the bed in her apartment, and lets out a long, whining groan into the duvet, the kind of groan that precedes dental work and unpleasant conversations. For as long as she feels she can allow herself, she keeps her face buried in the blankets, breathing in a long and forceful rhythm.

Once she’s had enough of sniffing the comforter, she turns her head and stares out at the city. From her apartment windows, which offer her a floor to ceiling and wall to wall picture of the outside world, to the glorious skyscraper jungle of Houston. And somewhere further off, to the southeast, beyond the suburbs of outer Houston, there is a baleful red glow that is not the rising sun, but the marker of where Carnality and Megajoule had their final calamitous clash. The Smiling Tower rears up above that glow with its horrifying and surreal grin.

Where the love of her life died.

Just as Julian’s death had left a permanent marker on the horizon, it had left a permanent scar on her Affect, and for some damn reason, that scar had made a part of her like Home Run almost instantly.

“Time to shave it away,” Bedevil murmurs to herself.

Her doorbell buzzes, catching her by surprise. She furrows her brow, not expecting any visitors, and then a bit of hope blossoms in her. Perhaps this conversation can delay her unpleasant appointment.

She opens the door, tilts her head down to see Tim Prince at the door, casually scrolling on a sleek black tablet with a white symbol on the back. A big fat PK.

Third-party tech didn’t bother her so much, the Vanguard hired out all the time. But the nature of PK’s specifically that makes her wary. It’s the only tech that seems to be able to be mass produced, that could exist beyond the will of the engineer, which they suspect means his death. Whatever gift Park Dae-seong had could be freely shared with his workers. Not even the Templar line had accomplished this; there’s only one Templar, but the technology can be templated and copied thanks to a secret known to Oracle and Oracle alone.

“Tim, what can I help you with?” she asks, hoping he’s the delay she’s after. He annoys her, true, but she’ll take being annoyed over disentanglement.

“I saw you have an appointment at one of the pop-up disentanglement centers downtown.” Tim sighs and says, “I unfortunately also have an appointment, and I hoped that we could share our misery.”

She suppresses a grimace and grabs it around the throat, willing it to change into a smile. “Sure.”

The red-tinged, early-morning sky greets them outside, but no one else. It’s still too early for the general rumble of activity she’s experienced in the downtown so far.

Tim keeps to himself, buried in his tablet, and so Bedevil keeps to herself, too. She tries reviewing the facts of the case, what Home Run told her the other night, but her mind is horribly empty and numb. All she finds is dread when she turns inward, so she instead rests in the rhythm of walking toward the pop-up center a few blocks from the Shrine.

She stops at a vending machine on the way, hoping for a little pick-me-up before the ordeal. She orders two cranberry juices. While she waits, she vocalizes a harmony and taps the machine in rhythm with the song she’s singing. The cranberry juices drop out of the machine, and Bedevil turns them into cranberry vodkas.

“How come you’ve never put out a song on the Vanguard label or through one of the music companies? Not interested in raising your absurdly high profile even further?” Tim asks.

“My music is for me. Not interested in making it yet another aspect of my cape life.” Bedevil takes a swig of her cranberry vodka, sees Tim watching her awkwardly. “I’d offer you the other but they’re both alcoholic now.”

Tim wrinkles his nose, makes a gesture as if to say “It’s alright.” But then, he chews on a thought for a moment before asking: “Why don’t you get disentangled from it?”

“From… what?” She looks down at the drink, realizes what he means. “First off, rude.”

Tim pales, holds up a hand as if he didn’t mean offense, but Bedevil just laughs at him.

“Sorry, couldn’t help it. Well. You can’t, really, not from physical things like…” She doesn’t say the word “Alcoholism” out loud, but that’s what it is. She might be a functional alcoholic, but she can admit she’s an alcoholic. “You know.”

“I’ve never heard a cape talk about it before, and I’ve never understood it myself…” Tim looks around at the street as if someone is listening in. “I had a friend, a lesbian. She went and got disentangled. Then had to go in again three months later. Less time passed between her needing to go back than between my dentist appointments.”

“Because it’s physical,” Bedevil says, taking another swig. “Disentanglement only breaks bonds and suppresses emotions. It stops engrams, not physical root causes. So if someone goes to get treated for a drinking problem, they’ll have to go again very soon, because all it does is suppress the desire for a little while. ”

Tim considers that. “Of course, then you could use that to ride out withdrawals.”

“Could.” She’s tried it once or twice. Withdrawals tend to override the disentanglement.

“Why does the Vanguard this to people? We want them to fear Home Run, so we start a Villainization protocol. But then we want them to be disentangled, too.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Villainization is good for the capes. We get more from positive, hopeful emotions, while the cloak gets all that negative stuff. Sure, they might gain some power, but that’s also why we put disentanglement protocols in place.” It’s a knife’s edge to walk, in all honesty, but she doesn’t say that out loud. No use making Tim more anxious about a potential Carnality. “The Affect is a thorny fucking mess, Tim. Every angle we can control it from, we should. Otherwise, we’ll be up to our eyeballs in Home Runs, monsters, and demigods before we know it. That’s why we encourage the cape worship. Less demagogues and ideologies, more protectors and safe people minding their own business.”

They fall into silence as they walk the rest of the way, until Bedevil suddenly gets curious. “What are you going in for?”

“Anxiety,” Tim says, quietly.

“About Home Run?” she asks.

Tim shakes his head. “No, I’ve seen a dozen like him these last four years. It’s the pressure of the position, I’m afraid.”

Bedevil frowns. How did he pass a psych screen if his job makes him anxious? City communication directors are supposed to be… well… stoic. They have to present an unwavering image.

And in fact, right now, Tim doesn’t seem that anxious at all. He might be very good at controlling his Affect as well. After all, he’s the city’s face.

She also hasn’t seen a broadcast where Tim gave off a bad impression, so perhaps she shouldn’t judge him too harshly. However, she does keep feeling at his Affect, looking for any signs of dishonesty. She doesn’t find them… but she’s still not marking Tim off as a simple anchorman. He keeps showing up… someone wants him to keep tabs on her.

The pop-up facility has taken over what looks to be some kind of bar wedged between much larger towers - a simple square made of dull red bricks, with small frosted windows that only give off the smallest amount of cold light.

Even this early, a line winds out of the building, hundreds long. They are held at bay by a quick-fab metallic security wall placed around the entrance, manned by two brutish capes in Templar exoskeletons. They both wear colorful costumes, but the dull gray armor hides most of it except for a couple of splotches of purple and crimson. The woman, the one in crimson, seems to be the one in charge of letting people through.

Head bowed, Bedevil trudges up to one of the capes, bypassing the very long line. Bedevil shows her ID to the worker, as if this person doesn’t recognize her on sight. “Yeah, go on in,” she says, not even consulting the clipboard. Capes get VIP access.

“I’ve been here for three days straight and I still can’t get in, and she just walks up?” an elderly man complains behind her. But as he sees who it is, he starts, bows his head to her. “M-my apologies. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

She ignores them, but glances back at Tim. “You coming?

Tim shakes his head. “No, I’ll wait. The old fashioned way.”

Once again, Bedevil searches his Affect. No lie. He intends to wait. But why wouldn’t he take advantage of her position? She can’t help the furrow of her brow, the wrinkling of her nose. Mostly she feels like she gave something up to him, without realizing. But, with nothing to really go on, she shrugs, and heads inside.

#

The ceiling is oppressively low, and Bedevil wonders as she reaches up to almost touch it, if Krater could even fit inside this building. The lights are old school fluorescent, harsh and buzzing, and the walls and floor are made of the same beige material, occasionally broken up by nameless, generic landscape paintings and motivational posters.

Bedevil approaches a plastic folding table, where a man who seems to have rarely slept ever in his life waits with a tablet for checking people in. “Appointment?” he asks her in a monotone voice.

Bedevil pulls her ID card and offers it to him.

The man nods and hands her back her card, saying, “Head up the stairs. One of the attendants will get you to a room.”

She climbs the creaky stairs that likely once had hundreds of people climb them on any given night, and she can almost hear the ancient echoes of happier times. What was this place like before the Affect, she wonders? Swanky, full of young folk in the prime of their lives? More sophisticated, for the upper crust? Or more of a club, as has remained popular even after the end of the Old States?

It’s hard to say. She comes up to a bland hallway, where she’s greeted by a nurse in pink scrubs. She smiles and says, “Bedevil! General appointment?”

Bedevil nods grimly.

The nurse leads her toward the operating rooms, down a hallway where the walls are white and the paintings are replaced with clipboards and poster boards full of pages and pages of tiny notes Bedevil doesn’t care to try to read. Faint groans of pain come from one of the nearby rooms. An older woman, just shy of wailing. Bedevil wonders what wound in her Affect she is having closed up - a compulsion to eat only fried potatoes and nothing else ever? A personality disorder that makes her lie all the time springing anew?

“General appointment is fine for the lobby,” the nurse says to her as she closes the door behind them. “But I need to know what you’re here for specifically.” She is a short, stout woman who walks with a proud swagger, looks to be in her forties, and doesn’t seem to mind hearing people’s cries of distress through the walls.

“Home Run. Making sure I don’t give him any engrams.” Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem. Like any cape, she’s undergone extensive training on mastering her own emotions when it comes to cloaks. But this one is different.

The nurse leads Bedevil to a locker room. “I’ll be back shortly. Please leave all jewelry and personal items in a locker. Please remove your shoes and any Affect tech.” When Bedevil finds the locker she wants and glances back, the nurse is gone.

She removes her shoes and tosses them inside the locker like she’s chucking a baseball underhandedly, and stuffs her watch and wallet into the shoe that landed upright. She places Dotty’s dormant form, which is the shape of a large pen, gently next to the shoes.

The nurse returns a few minutes later and leads Bedevil to one of the dozens of operating theaters. The disentanglement chamber is circular, made of metal, lined with dozens of wires and apparatuses and screens. There’s a single door leading into the chamber, and a console near that door for the nurse. She walks over, types in some information, and then the door opens. “Please step inside.”

Bedevil sits down in the chair, which thankfully has some sort of lumbar support, and the nurse pulls a series of straps over her shoulders, buckling Bedevil in. “Are you familiar with disentanglement?” the nurse asks as she adjusts the strap to Bedevil’s chest.

Bedevil sucks in a breath through her teeth and nods, sharply.

“This should be a light procedure given the nature,” the nurse says, strapping Bedevil’s arms in. “Mild discomfort at most.”

“Lucky me!”

The nurse exits the chamber and shuts the door, casting Bedevil into total darkness. A moment later, the room begins to hum, and a ring of pure white light surrounds her.

She’s awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock. Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock. Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock. Awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock.

Sound of machinery of razor.

Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.

His intense gaze leaps into her mind.

“Do you often feel lonely?”

Yes, all the time.

It hurts, in a place she can’t name. Something is being ripped out of her. Something is being cut away.

The way he talked.

His awkwardness.

Will I ever feel this way about someone again?

Leave me Julian, please.

The pain deepens, caramelizes. Darkens. She cries out.

The nurse’s voice: “Are you okay? This shouldn’t be-”

Worse than the feeling of losing herself in molecules, worse than the worst hangover. Her entire soul aches as something is ripped out of it. Something that has its tendrils around a fundamental part of her. It, thank Metis, does not take that part with it, but it rips and claws at her Affect as it comes out. Waves of intense dysphoria and suicidal thoughts wash through, the killing thought, the thought that says, I wish I could disappear.

And then, finally, it is over.

The machine whirs down.

Sweat pours down her brow, her fingers cramp from how hard she gripped the chair. The door swings open and the nurse comes in, looking concerned. “I’m- I’m sorry Bedevil, that wasn’t supposed to be that intense of an operation.”

Bedevil had suspected that was going to happen. She sighs and shakes her head. “Not your fault.”

#

Once outside, her head throbbing from the disentanglement, she starts to trudge back to the Shrine. But as she begins to make her way back, she realizes she hasn’t seen Tim Prince. He didn’t pass her on the way in. He could have just gotten into his appointment, but it’s still early in the day. He could have ended up abusing his status when he realized how long it’d take… but then why lie? Why go through that charade?

A chill shoots through her body. She can’t know for sure, but maybe he was watching her.

Bedevil wants to call Oracle, to have her scan him… but she can already hear the chiding, the lectures, the “My attention must be on Doppelganger, not on someone who gave you the creeps.” Plus, her mother had already done scans on all the major officials in Houston. They’d all come up clean, including Tim Prince.

She sighs, shakes her head, lets it go. If he was informing for someone, she’d simply not allow him near her while she did her work.