There were very few things, in Victoria Dallon’s estimation, more satisfying than exercise. It was the most obvious form of self-improvement, with tangible results visible over the course of time, even if they took months. It was also an excellent way to relieve stress; throwing herself into an intensive circuit and venting her frustrations on dumbbells and pull-up bars until she was too sore and weary to be angry about anything.
It was also reassuring to know that she could run for miles without tiring, and dislocate a jaw with a single punch if it came to that.
She kept her eyes forward as she rose up from a squat, the eighty kilogram barbell rising with her as she held it on her shoulders. Victoria had been running circuits for almost half an hour now, and she was really starting to feel the effect of the kettlebell swings, box jumps, pull-ups, sprints and deadlifts. Still she continued, with single-minded determination.
She was proud of her strength, and the effort it took to maintain it, even as she was aware of her limitations. She knew, for one, that she’d never be able to match the troll on the other end of the gym, his oversized muscles heaving as he lifted no less than four hundred and eighty kilogrammes over his head.
But his barbell was longer than hers, to fit his longer arms, and reinforced to deal with the weight it was expected to handle. She wasn’t about to begrudge him his strength, because she knew he was putting in just as much effort as she was. Victoria would never be as strong as him, or any other troll that put even a little effort into exercise, but nor would she ever be able to cast spells, or become CEO of Saeder-Krupp. What she could do was become as good as Victoria Dallon could be, in body and in mind.
As she finished the set, she laid the barbell down and moved over to the wall of the gym, collecting the medicine ball she’d left there and throwing up against a target painted about three feet above her head height. As it bounced off, she caught it and used the momentum to drop into a squat, which she then used to springboard the next throw.
She repeated that motion thirty five times, her legs burning, before she was finally done. After quickly returning the equipment to its rightful place, she sat herself down on the floor and began a long routine of stretches that would hopefully ensure she was still capable of standing up that evening.
As she did so, she couldn’t help but notice another of the gym’s occupants. There was an elf working out on one of the rowing machines, half-heartedly pulling at the bar while his eyes kept drifting back and forth, looking between some random point and… right at her.
Oh hell, Victoria thought as he slowed, about to let go of the bar as he clearly saw something in her expression that absolutely wasn’t there. So she narrowed her eyes, and he faltered for a moment before continuing to row at a much faster pace, pretending like he’d never intended to stop, or even that he’d been looking at all.
Victoria looked away as well, but then she caught the gaze of the troll on the other end of the room. He simply rolled his eyes, the corner of his lip curling up past his right tusk in a sympathetic half-smile as he went in for another lift.
Victoria mirrored the expression as she returned to her stretches, finishing off her routine in peace before grabbing her water bottle, taking a deep drink, and striding out of the gym.
Outside, it had started to rain, and heavily. Victoria might have welcomed the refreshing chill, but the pathways of the New Brockton University campus were all covered by translucent awnings to protect against the occasional acid rainstorm that rolled in from the factories of the rest of the North End.
The campus itself was built into the slopes of Captain’s Hill, with academic buildings and accommodation blocks rising up in tiers linked by staircases and escalators. It was a relatively new university, paid for by provisions in President Dunkelzahn’s will in twenty fifty-seven. Anders Memorial University, the older institution by several centuries, had shifted towards an entirely STEM-focused institution when it was expanded and renamed by the Richard Anders Foundation after the death of its namesake, and New Brockton University had served to redress the balance by providing an institution that was more focused on law, social sciences and the liberal arts.
Victoria enjoyed the way it felt almost separate from the city, nestled in a closed campus between the sparse mansions of the Captain’s Hill Estates and the river. It was only a few miles away from the Midtown apartment she’d grown up in, but it felt so much further.
Her own accommodation block was at the edge of the highest tier of the campus, which paradoxically meant it was one of the cheaper buildings on the site. After all, travelling to and from classes meant traversing either an entire hill’s worth of stairs or packed elevator rides. It was also further from the city, and the bars and clubs of Constitution Hill.
The doors of the building opened automatically for her, reading the electronic tag in her student ID card and matching it up with her System Identification Number. Her room was on the eighth floor, up an elevator and almost at the end of the corridor, one of fourteen two-person dorm rooms on that floor. Each room, save for the studios, shared a bathroom with the one next to it.
Victoria’s room was evenly split between the two competing influences of its occupants. Victoria’s half was a mess of organised chaos, with shelves of textbooks, periodicals and magazines spilling over her shelves and onto stacks on her desk, all of them ordered in a way that made absolute sense to her and was completely incomprehensible to anyone else. Above her desk, Victoria’s noticeboard was covered in a spiderweb of competing notes for different subjects and modules, with a few photographs pinned in the corners.
The other half of the room was more orderly, but often in a much more artistic way. The noticeboard bore neat flashcards and elegant mind maps, with bright colours separating each topic. It was almost contradictory in places; the orderly structure of the notes competing with more artistic elements, as the person who made them experimented with expressing herself.
Victoria’s roommate wasn’t back yet, so she peeled off her gym clothes and spent almost twenty minutes in the shower, before throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a black tank top, and sitting herself down in front of a mirror to start carefully putting her make-up on in preparation for that evening. She worked methodically and in utter silence, until she was distracted by the buzz of her commlink.
She looked down, smiled, and immediately flicked through her contact list until she found the right number.
“Hey Victoria,” Crystal picked up on the second ring, “glad I could catch you before tonight. You looking forward to it?”
“It’ll be interesting,” Victoria replied, peering at herself in the mirror to check she was done before leaving the shared bathroom. “But honestly, it’s kind of stressful. A lot of big names, you know.”
Crystal scoffed, and Victoria smiled as she imagined the expression on her face. “Oh come on, let your hair down! You’d better enjoy yourself, or I swear I’ll head back up there and drag you out clubbing until you’re finally acting like a college student should.”
“Not all of us can just coast along on our magic powers,” Victoria drawled. “Some of us might have to actually work for their living. Are you still heating all your food yourself or have you actually bought a stove since I last saw you?”
“I mean, I have a stove,” she admitted, without a hint of shame. “The apartment came with one. No idea if it works, though.”
Victoria laughed. “You’re such a slob. How’s Shenandoah treating you, anyway?”
“It’s really beautiful out here. I had no idea there was this much nature left anywhere in the world. It couldn’t be more different from the city. The campus is nice too, but a lot of these people have some real sticks up their asses just because they’re from magical families. All prim and proper, and of course they’ve already got work lined up by their family’s connections for when they graduate.”
“And how about you?” Victoria asked. “Anything lined up for when you graduate?”
“Well there have been a lot of emails and letters from different companies, including some of the big ten, but they’re all pretty formulaic. I’m sure everyone on campus has received them, and the Shiawase letter just had ‘Candidate Name’ instead of Crystal Pelham. I’m not sure I want to be just another cog in a company’s machine.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I might try for government work,” she answered, “or a smaller company. Maybe an NGO. Somewhere things are a little more personal, and the work more interesting than just being a glorified security guard. At least I don’t have to figure it out just yet. But what about you? Still sticking to your plan?”
“If the FBI will have me, yeah. If not, I’ll probably work for Knight Errant for a few years then apply again.”
“Oh? Is that something Prince Charming suggested?”
“It’s not like that,” Victoria blushed. “The FBI doesn’t take many graduates, and Knight Errant has a good reputation. I’d certainly rather work for them than most of the competition. I wouldn’t touch Lone Star if they were the last company on Earth, and Minuteman and NYPD Inc aren’t much better.”
“You know, I can picture you as some sort of ultra-cop. Like a film star, or something. You’d be the straight-edge professional, and then they’d pair you up with some maverick who doesn’t play by the rules.”
Victoria chuckled, but her heart wasn’t in it. For an instant, she debated telling Crystal about what she’d done, about hiring a team of professional criminals for the sake of revenge. But that wasn’t a burden she could share.
“I’m coming back to the city in a few weeks,” Crystal continued, and Victoria wondered whether she’d been silent just long enough for it to become awkward. “Just for a weekend. We should meet up, you me and Eric. It’d be like old times.”
“I’d like that.” Victoria smiled, remembering all the time she’d spent over at her cousins’ house. At times, it had felt like she’d spent more time there than in her own home. It wasn’t just that she was an only child; things were calmer there, for all that Eric and Crystal got on each other’s’ nerves sometimes. She’d often ended up playing mediator, being the middle child of the three.
At least their problems were something I could fix, or at least understand, she thought.
“Great!” Crystal exclaimed. “I’ll get in touch with Eric, see if I can hammer out a time and a place. For now, though, I’ve got to go. We’re doing a midnight ritual tonight, and I need to get ready.”
“Spooky,” Victoria chuckled. “Well, have fun dancing naked around a firepit, or whatever it is you do. I’ll let you know how tonight goes.”
“Don’t worry, I will! See you, Vic!”
She hung up, and Victoria set her commlink down before moving over to the window. Her room might be on the edge of the campus, but by a stroke of good fortune that meant it was tall enough that it looked over the campus buildings and out to the distant spires of the city centre. She tried to picture the slopes of ascending skyscrapers as the vast mountains of the Shenandoah valley, but she just couldn’t manage to bridge the gap between the man-made world and the natural.
Besides, Victoria was a city girl at heart.
Victoria turned as the door to her dorm room was opened by a short woman wearing a lilac raincoat, with a backpack slung over one shoulder and a folded-over suit carrier in her left hand. She smiled as she saw Victoria, and Victoria returned the gesture before her eyes widened as she took in the logo on the side of the suit carrier.
“Hey Vicky,” Lily greeted her. “Sorry I’m late, I lost track of time.”
“Oh come on,” Victoria replied, “you’ve got absolutely nothing to be sorry for. I really appreciate you setting this whole thing up, and for picking it up for me.”
“What can I say,” her roommate shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll take any excuse to spend more time with Sabah.”
“Lily, you’ve been seeing her for six months,” Victoria said, with a faux-serious expression on her face. “You’re going steady. You don’t need an excuse to go and see your girlfriend.” She emphasised the word, and enjoyed the faint blush that spread across the korobokuru dwarf’s face.
“I don’t want to bother her,” Lily admitted, sheepishly, looking down at the floor. “Don’t want to interrupt her creative energies, or something.”
“When she was measuring me she called you her muse,” Victoria pointed out. “Seriously, hit the metro some time and head down to her studio. Bring some coursework if you don’t want to get in the way, but you’re too cute a couple to keep apart.”
“Enough already.” Lily’s voice was somewhere between a whine and a laugh. “Today’s supposed to be about your love life, not mine.”
She set the suit carrier down on Victoria’s bed, and Victoria immediately fell silent, approaching the sleek black bag like it was some reverential artefact. She pulled the zip down carefully, then brushed open the carrier and audibly gasped at what she saw.
At its most basic, the one-shoulder dress was sleek and black, an hour-long measuring session at Sabah’s studio ensuring it would fit her perfectly, but that was underselling the amount of time and effort that had been put into it. As Victoria peered closer, she could see faint flecks of gold hidden among the black fabric, weaved so tightly together that it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended. Under the artificial light of the dorm room, it made the black look like it held a sea of golden stars among its depths.
Thicker gold thread was weaved all across the upper part of the dress, creating intricate traced patterns that somehow put Victoria in mind of magically-harmonised designs she had once seen in a textbook of Crystal’s. They continued up the line of the dress, following it over the wide shoulder that gave the impression that the dress had been folded together from a single piece of cloth, with no straps or embellishments beyond the threaded patterns. She couldn’t even see any seams.
“It’s beautiful…” Victoria murmured, entranced.
“Not yet it isn’t,” Lily said with a smile. “Try it on, then you’ll see.”
Victoria nodded, gingerly taking the dress out of its case and positioning herself in front of the mirror as she dressed. The material was smoother than silk on her skin, and the cut of the dress hugged her body perfectly from her shoulder to the hemline just above her knees, without a single part that was too loose or too tight except for where it had been deliberately designed to be so.
But what amazed Victoria was the way the starfield suddenly came alive as the material made contact with her skin, the gold seeming to shimmer and flicker without any regard for the way the light was actually hitting it.
“This isn’t electrochromatic fabric, is it? I didn’t think it could be made this thin.” she asked, her eyes still focused solely on her reflection in the mirror.
“No, apparently that’s out at the moment,” Lily said, moving to stand next to Victoria. She smiled, looking up to meet Victoria’s gaze in the mirror.
“That’s your soul. Sabah put a geomantic web into the dress that reacts to your essence, creating a pattern that’s completely unique. If a mage wore that dress, it’d be almost completely gold.”
“Incredible. Seriously, I can’t thank Sabah enough.”
“You can,” Lily chuckled. “People are going to ask you who you’re wearing, and you’re going to tell them it’s Parian. Besides, it’s Dean who you should thank.”
“Don’t remind me.” Victoria’s smile faltered. “Seriously, I have no idea how I’m supposed to make this up to him,” she said, not really talking about the dress.
“It’s all relative,” Lily shrugged her shoulders. “The idea that it’s the thought that counts goes both ways. Money means less to him than it does to you or me, so he pulls these extravagant gestures to do justice to how he feels about you.”
“I know,” Victoria sighed, thinking of how he hadn’t even blinked when he covered the cost of the Shadowrunners. “Still, please don’t tell me how much this costs. I really think I’m better off not knowing.”
“Probably,” Lily shrugged, before rolling her eyes as Victoria reached for a shoebox at the bottom of her closet. “I really don’t think you need heels, you know. You’re already taller than Dean.”
“It’s not about Dean,” Victoria countered. “It’s a powerplay. It sucks, but a lot of people there will probably see me as just his accessory. I want to prove them wrong, and that means looking them in the eye and acting like I have every bit as much right to be there as they do.”
“Forget looking them in the eye,” Lily said, “you’ll be taller than most of them. And I’m going to end up with even worse neck pain than I already have.”
Victoria blushed and looked away, suddenly conscious of the sixty centimetre height difference between her and the dwarf. “Ah, sorry. But it’s how these people think.”
“I get it. When in Tokyo, do as the Japanese do.” On the table, Victoria’s commlink buzzed. “Speaking of, that’s probably the Crown Prince now.”
“Yep,” Victoria confirmed, not even acknowledging the nickname. “He’s trying to ask what’s taking me so long without actually asking me what’s taking me so long.”
“Did it work?” Lily asked.
Victoria, typing with one hand, waved the other in a ‘so-so’ gesture.
‘I’m on way down now,’ she sent. ‘You can’t miss me.’
Victoria set her commlink down, grabbing a pair of earrings from her wardrobe and slipping them on before pulling out a small black box. Inside was a pair of clear contact lenses that Victoria applied with practiced ease, blinking twice to ensure the fit. The ocular screens connected to the circuitry in the earrings, pairing with her commlink.
Victoria mused that while women’s fashion was still light on pockets, at least modern technology had mostly condemned the handbag to the charity shop of history.
“Seriously, thanks, Lily. And thank Sabah for me. I’ll try and be quiet when I come back tonight.”
“Or spend the night at Dean’s and make as much noise as you want. Have fun” – she smirked – “Cinderella.”
Victoria made her way through the halls one again, moving with carefully-practiced poise on her high heels. Dean was waiting for her outside the building’s entrance, dressed for the evening in a sharp black suit – from Zoé, Victoria thought, though she wasn’t sure – with a crisp white shirt and a rich red tie, held in place by a golden tie clasp with the logo of Ares Macrotechnology on its front – the helmeted head of an Ancient Greek warrior, in profile.
His eyes – Victoria noticed with some satisfaction and more than a little pride – were wide open, drinking in every detail like a man stranded in the desert might look at a mirage – a loving, genuine and slightly desperate look, as if he was afraid she might vanish into the desert sands at any moment.
“Well?” Victoria asked, doing a slow pirouette. “What do you think?” She smiled. “It’s okay if you need a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor.”
“Victoria, you look radiant,” he managed to say.
“You’re not so bad yourself, you know,” she replied, though to be honest it wasn’t her favourite look of his.
Dean was dressed exactly like you’d expect the scion of corporate nobility to look; someone who already dresses like they’re in charge because they can be sure of a golden ticket to the top courtesy of their parents and connections within the company. The party would be full of people dressed just the same as him, for all the individual brands and colours might vary somewhat.
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Victoria wasn’t fond of suits in general; there were some brands out there that weren’t afraid to innovate on the centuries-old paradigm, but it still seemed too close to a uniform for her tastes. Uniforms had their place, of course, but they stifled individuality by design. Dresses had much more variety to them, much more freedom to be expressive.
She much preferred the outfits Dean wore when she was able to bring him away from the constantly judging eyes of high society, or the self-contained Ares ecosystem of the Bellamy Arcology. She’d never seen Dean more honest, more expressive, more alive than when he absolutely lost himself in the crush of a Bad Canary concert, far away from the isolation of the VIP boxes.
He was wearing a merchandise t-shirt from one of Canary’s older tours, one Victoria had bought when she took him to the Market, and as the powernoize din deafened the pair of them, his every movement, every expression, was filled with the pure, genuine joy that was why Victoria fell for him in the first place, once she’d managed to spot it beneath a lifetime of learned behaviours. She’d been teasing that Dean out ever since, and she wasn’t going to stop for as long as their relationship lasted.
It's why the smile on Dean’s face was wholly genuine, in spite of his carefully-constructed hairstyle and suit. It’s why Victoria didn’t even mind that he was accompanied by a bodyguard, especially since she already knew her.
“You’re looking sharp too, Geneva.”
The elven woman smiled, glancing down at her neatly-cut pantsuit, the only decoration a magical sigil on a necklace. Victoria knew the suit was armoured, even if she couldn’t actually see the armour. It was also probably her work uniform. Normally, when Victoria went out with Dean his close protection detail tended to follow from a discrete distance to give them some space, so they’d wear all sorts of outfits to blend in with wherever the pair were going that day. At a formal event like this, apparently the bodyguards were meant to be visible.
“Thank you, Miss Dallon. That’s an incredible dress. It’s magical, right?”
Victoria had long given up trying to get Dean’s bodyguards to call her Victoria. It had been a long fight to get them to stop calling her ma’am, which just made her feel old.
“The fabric reacts to my essence to create the pattern. Which kind of makes me want to see what happens when I do this.”
Victoria strode forward and wrapped her arms around Dean, pulling him into a tight hug and going in for a kiss. He was still, for a moment, as propriety warred with emotion, before enthusiastically returning the hug. At his touch, the starfield on Victoria’s dress came alive with flickering supernovas as it reacted to two sources of essence.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you.”
She pulled back from the hug, the starfield settling.
“And thanks for going to Sabah for it. I’m sure she really appreciates the business.”
“She does excellent work,” Dean said, “and she’s local. I might see if I can drum up some investment for her; Ares is lagging behind in the fashion department.”
“Isn’t high fashion a bit far from the heavy industry sphere?” Victoria asked, as the pair of them started to make their way back through the pedestrianised campus.
“None of the big ten can afford to have spheres,” Dean explained. “Companies like Medhall can specialise because it allows them to undercut their competition and helps their growth, but once a company has reached the size of a triple-A corporation, they have to diversify or they’ll be brought down by a thousand cuts. They might have areas they’re more experienced in, but they have to be able to provide everything, fashion included.”
As Dean spoke, Victoria couldn’t stop herself from thinking about how this sort of thinking was why their relationship was so strained at times. Both of them came from different backgrounds and wanted to get to different places, for all that Dean was already showing a willingness to go against the company by attending university in Brockton Bay rather than attending one of Ares’ own institutions.
Even that had been justified, at least outwardly, by arguing that attending a local university would help Dean navigate Brockton Bay’s uniquely dynastic political scene, dominated by local families and old names. They were from very different worlds, and perhaps that made it impossible for their relationship to work in the long run, but both of them were determined to make the most out of their mutual infatuation while it lasted.
There was a car waiting for them, a luxury-model Ares Roadmaster – which meant ‘armoured personnel carrier’ was a closer fit than ‘car’, to Victoria’s eyes. The vehicle’s silhouette was typically boxy and militaristic, and it had no windows whatsoever behind the driver’s cabin, where the glass was patterned with faint hexagons that were the only visual sign of the intricate armour within the transparent pane.
Standing by the car was Dean’s other bodyguard for the night, a musclebound ork with faint seams visible in the skin of his arms and face, the only visible signs of his extensive cybernetic augmentation. He wore a suit in the same nondescript colours as Geneva, and – while he wasn’t visibly armed – Victoria knew he had a hidden submachine gun built into each of his cybernetic arms, alongside a whole host of other offensive and defensive cyberware.
“Hey Jerry,” Victoria greeted him, receiving a polite nod and a “Miss Dallon” in return, as the ork opened up the passenger door of the Roadmaster, a compact set of stairs folding out of the side of the van to provide easy access. Dean stood to one side of the steps, his hand holding Victoria’s own as he helped her up in an entirely unnecessary but typically gallant gesture.
Inside, the back of the truck held a u-shaped leather couch, with a carpeted floor and tastefully minimalist lighting. All around the couch, and along the top halves of the doors, white panels ran the length of the space. As Victoria and Dean sat down on the couch and Jerry swung the door shut behind them, those screens flickered into life to display a panoramic view of their surroundings, as if the armoured sides of the vehicle weren’t even there.
For a few minutes, Victoria did nothing but look out those windows, her body turned and her arm resting on the back of her seat. She watched as they descended down the slopes of Captain’s Hill, then rose up onto the elevated road that crossed over the river towards the towering spires of Downtown.
The couple fell into a comfortable silence as Jerry weaved the vehicle through traffic, content to simply watch the city pass them by. When they’d crossed the river, Dean finally spoke.
“Are you worried about tonight? I don’t want to push you out of your comfort zone.”
Victoria turned from the city, giving him a reassuring smile.
“I’ll be fine. It’s not my usual scene, sure, but I know I’ve dragged you along to plenty of strange and unfamiliar places.”
Her smile turned a bit strained for a moment, and she looked away before continuing.
“Honestly, if I’m worried about anything, it’s… auntie Jess.”
“You’re worried about the Shadowrunners?” Dean asked. “I asked around; Faultline has a good reputation. Her teams are professionals. They’ll get the job done.”
“That’s the thing,” Victoria sighed, leaning back in her seat, “I’m wondering whether they should. I mean… it’s revenge, isn’t it? Andrew Garcia took my aunt’s life, so I’ve paid a bunch of thugs to take his.”
“They’re not killing him, though,” Dean pointed out. “Just capturing him.”
“Unless something goes wrong,” Victoria replied, pointedly. “Even if everything goes right, I’m still tearing someone away from their home for the sake of satisfying a grudge.”
“It’s more than a grudge,” Dean pointed out. “It’s an injustice. Yes this is personal to you, but that doesn’t make it any less unjust. It just means that you have the means and the motive to actually do something about it.”
“I guess…” Victoria demurred, turning back to the city. “Either way, what’s done is done. I’ve sent out the hunters, and I couldn’t call them back even if I wanted to. Besides,” she smiled, “if we’re about to descend into the viper pit of city politics, I’m going to need to get my head in the game.”
The Forsberg Gallery was an old building, built over sixty years ago in a style that was seen as daring at the time, looking more like a collection of blocks than a single, cohesive building – with gaps, arches and tunnels that broke up its silhouette and caused it to almost whistle in high winds. Time had seen its twenty-six-story grandeur dwarfed by the hundred-story-plus skyscrapers of Downtown, to the point where it now sat as the sole outlier in a chasm of buildings.
But Brockton Bay has always turned necessity into innovation, and with lights fixed to the sides of those immense buildings, the Forsberg Gallery was permanently lit up in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of colours that used its irregular shape to cast mesmerising patterns of light and shadow onto the glass fronts of the buildings that surrounded it. The city itself remained split firmly down the middle over whether the effect was beautiful or tacky to the extreme, but it remained the largest art installation in New England regardless of what they thought, and that drew in tourists.
The front of the Gallery had been cordoned off behind sleek velvet ropes and less sleek security fences, with Knight Errant cops mingling with the Gallery’s own contracted security. Inside the wire perimeter, dozens of photographers, reporters and journalists crowded behind the velvet ropes, on either side of a long, red carpet like the entourage of some medieval court.
Victoria could see other guests moving down the red carpet, a queue of VIP vehicles lining up one after another to deposit their precious cargo. With so many of the city’s notables in one place, she was sure that the visible security was only a miniscule percentage of the total amount.
Within moments, their turn had come and the Roadmaster pulled to a halt in front of the red carpet, with dozens of camera lenses aimed right at the door. Victoria felt her heart pounding in her chest as Geneva dismounted from the passenger seat and the panels flickered back to their flat white colour as she opened the door.
“Ready?” Dean asked Victoria, who nodded in spite of the way her heart was pounding in her chest.
As the door swung open, and the clamour of the city rushed back in, Dean was the first to step down the ladder. Once he was out, he turned back to Victoria and held out a hand for her as she descended.
The pair of them walked along the carpet arm in arm, focusing on each other or on the gallery’s doors rather than on the constant clamour of the journalists as they jostled for the best angles and light. Victoria couldn’t help but wonder what held their attention more; her, or her dress. She knew that ultimately she’d take second place to Dean in the articles – ‘Ares Heir meets College Sweetheart’, ‘Who is that girl on Dean Stansfield’s arm?’, ‘Who’s wearing Who at the Gallery?’
She might have been annoyed by the inherent unfairness of it all, if she cared at all about society gossip rags. Besides, it’d definitely drum up business for Sabah, so at least some good would come of it.
They ascended the staircase to the gallery itself, passing by armed and armoured security without so much as a questioning look before stepping through the doors and into the lobby, where the clamour of the press was muffled by white noise generators and a live band played a smooth fractal phase song.
Dean nodded to the greeters welcoming them to the Gallery, before the pair of them were politely ushered into an elevator that carried them up to the event hall that occupied the topmost floors of the gallery.
Once the doors opened, the pair were presented with a sea of figures in all manner of formalwear, from suits and dresses to half a dozen different uniforms. Most prominent among them was the deep blue of the Brockton Bay Fire Department, but Victoria had been expecting that. This was, after all, their fundraiser.
In an era of near-universal privatisation of police and emergency medical services, firefighting remained one of the few professions in which private companies were the rare exception, rather than the norm. Those private firefighting companies that did exist usually catered to airports, heavy industry, or were owned by megacorporations for use on their own sovereign territory.
It simply wasn’t economical for a company to step in when the vast majority of firefighters were unpaid volunteers. Dean had told her that switching those volunteers out for contracted companies would result in costs increasing, rather than decreasing, so fire departments remained largely under the ownership of the municipalities they patrolled.
It meant that they were often free from the suspicion of external influence that accompanied private police services, and even those corporations that enjoyed extraterritoriality would often let firefighters onto their premises. After all, it saved them the trouble of hiring their own in-house firefighters and shouldering the cost of preventing an emergency that might never happen.
It also meant that donating to a fire department was one of the purest forms of civic charity there was, and annual events such as this took advantage of that golden PR opportunity to ensure that the Brockton Bay Fire Department could survive without so much as dipping a finger into the city’s coffers.
Dean and Victoria circulated through the room, which flickered with irregular light as the second-hand reflections of the neighbouring skyscrapers sent the night’s pattern of light through the glass ceiling that capped off the Forsberg Gallery. The pair accepted champagne flutes from a passing member of the wait staff, dressed plainly in a black skirt and white blouse, and made small talk as Dean walked Victoria through the notables in attendance.
Inevitably, he started with the delegation from Ares. His father was there, in his position as the Executive Officer Commanding Ares Macrotechnology’s Brockton Bay division. Victoria had met Alexander Stansfield before, of course, and her conversation with him was just as stilted as it was before. She was sure that nobody his son ever dated would manage to meet his expectations.
From there, Dean introduced her to a number of other local Ares figures and their occasional children, all of whom were much more immersed in Ares’ militarised corporate culture than Dean was, with even more rigid dress styles, haircuts and minimalist make-up, all matched by a particular sort of posture that gave the impression they were always standing at attention. Ares Macrotechnology grew out of much of the military industrial complex of the USA, and it really showed. Dean was only insulated from it because he was expected to take over in Brockton Bay someday, so had a much more outward-facing education to help keep Ares’ public face friendly.
The one person in the Ares delegation that Victoria was genuinely interested in talking to was also the only one in uniform. She was an olive skinned human in the forest green dress uniform of Ares’ Marine Corps, with a row of medals on her chest and a professionally neutral expression on her face. Dean introduced her to Victoria as Major Hana Besam, the commander of the garrison at the Ares Docks, and at Dean’s encouragement she told Victoria how she’d originally enlisted with the corporation’s military wing in Kurdistan.
Victoria was fascinated as she recounted the countries she’d seen in her time in the military, and was almost disappointed when Dean suggested they move on to continue the circuit of notables.
He didn’t actually introduce her to the Medhall delegation. After all, they were Ares’ main rivals for influence within the city; the two companies its first and second largest employers respectively. He did introduce them to her, however, pointing out Max Anders in a steel grey suit, his wife in a radiant white dress and their son, who was wearing a visibly strained smile that would no doubt cost his father’s company some ground in the invisible game of prestige and soft power.
The CEO of Medhall was talking to two blonde women in matching carmine red dresses – twins, in fact. Victoria recognised them immediately as Jessica and Nessa Bierman, also known as Fenja and Menja – or the Valkyries. They were the public face of Valkyrie Paramedical, and part of the Medhall subsidiary’s most famous High Threat Response team. There was a reality TV show following their operations, and persistent rumours that the pair had been Shadowrunners before being personally scouted by Max Anders himself.
Victoria was sure that their decision to show up in dresses, rather than uniforms like the representatives of the city’s other emergency services – private and public – contained some hidden message, but she couldn’t figure it out.
Dean was much more willing to speak to the delegation from the city government, both because it was important to keep them on side and because Mayor Christner was apparently closer to Ares than Medhall. Victoria was happy to shake hands and make polite conversation, but increasingly her eyes were being drawn to the figures circulating the party in black dress uniforms trimmed with yellow.
Fortunately, Dean caught her mood and effortlessly introduced her to a Knight Errant guest who had Victoria’s heart beating in nervous eagerness. Colonel Wallis was a grizzled veteran, with an obvious prosthetic eye surrounded by scar tissue and the kind of handshake that only an artificial arm could deliver. What had Victoria so starstruck, however, was the fact that his uniform was trimmed with red, rather than yellow.
Colonel Colin Wallis ran the city’s Firewatch detachment – the elite of the elite within Knight Errant – and the service medals on his uniform outlined a long history of extermination missions against Insect Spirit outbreaks. Victoria considered it an honour to even be speaking with him, and she couldn’t help but feel that her professed desire to work in the FBI sounded a little hollow when speaking to someone who’d personally worked with the bureau to root out holdouts of the infested Universal Brotherhood cult.
Colonel Wallis was polite, answering Victoria’s questions concisely and with more than a little patience, but it was clear that he thought he had better things to do with his time than make nice with high society – something Victoria entirely agreed with – and that he was only humouring her because of Dean’s social status.
Commissioner Emily Piggot, the overall head of the city’s Knight Errant department, was similarly professional but brusque. Victoria quickly made her excuses to leave the stocky dwarf be, Dean and her moving to mingle at random with the guests who weren’t obviously tied to any particular faction within the city’s dynastic politics.
Dean managed to discreetly steer her away from accidentally saying hello to the patriarch of the Lavere family – who’d attended the fundraiser alongside his daughter despite the fact that his links to the mafia were all but public knowledge. So the pair of them stood in their own little bubble of arrogant isolation, with nobody willing to do so much as talk to either of them for fear of immediately falling under the suspicion of Knight Errant.
It was as Victoria was talking to a small, unassuming man who was apparently in charge of CrashCart’s operations in the city that her attention was suddenly drawn to an AR window that had been overlayed onto her vision with her contact lenses.
She gave Dean a meaningful look and stepped away from the conversation with a muttered apology to the bureaucrat about needing to make a call. It was the team she’d hired, calling her directly.
“Hello?” she asked, once she was sure she wouldn’t be overheard or disturbed. Dean moved to stand next to her, to prevent anyone from coming over to ‘make conversation’ with the lone woman in the head-turning dress.
“Ms Johnson,” the voice on the other end of the line was deep, and Victoria immediately matched it to the ork. The team’s leader. “I'm calling to let you know we have a parcel for delivery. We're eager to hand it over."
“Really?” Victoria asked, shocked and excited at the news. "That's great news! Hold on a sec, I'll arrange a dropoff and wire your funds to your fixer."
Dean nodded, his own commlink already out as he sent messages of his own.
“Knight Errant can meet them under Archer’s Overpass in ten minutes,” he said. “They’re routing officers now, and I’ve sent them a description of your team.”
“Thanks,” Victoria smiled, before reactivating the microphone hidden in her earing. “Okay, they're on-route and expecting you. I'll send you the address."
She did so, then hung up and looked at Dean with a grin from ear to ear. She stepped in close and for a moment considered damning propriety and going in for a hug before instead grabbing him by the hands and politely yet firmly dragging him across the room.
“I know we can’t leave just yet, but I’m full of energy right now and need to burn it off somehow.”
The dance floor in the centre of the room was pretty sparse, with most of the guests too busy networking to take note of it. It was actually where most of the firefighters in attendance could be found, taking the chance to dance with their partners at the fanciest party they’d ever get to attend. Most of the others on the floor were minor guests who’d bought their tickets out of either genuine charity or just a desire to attend a nice party, rather than to gain entry into the halls of the mighty and powerful.
Either way, it was the one space in the room where people were actually there to enjoy themselves, and Victoria and Dean gracefully danced among them to the neo-classical music played by an orchestra sequestered on the room’s mezzanine level. The moment enough time had passed that it wouldn’t be a faux pas to leave, Victoria leant in for a kiss and the pair of them left the party without a word to anyone.
Victoria knew that people would notice them go, but she hoped they’d just assume they were sneaking back to Dean’s studio apartment for an extensive makeout session.
Instead, they got back into the Roadmaster as Dean’s bodyguards drove them to a Knight Errant precinct in the North End of the city – a blocky building surrounded by razor-wire fences and ever-vigilant automated security turrets. They parked in the vehicle depot, surrounded by armoured trucks and marginally less-armoured patrol cars. Once they stepped out, flanked by the two bodyguards, they were greeted by a uniformed Knight Errant officer, her features hidden behind a full-face helmet.
“Ma’am, sir. If you would follow me, please.”
The woman behind the yellow faceplate was sharp, immediately recognising the way Dean had stood back a little to put Victoria in front. This was her victory, her night, and she followed the officer into the precinct with trepidation and eagerness warring in her heart.
The corridors were filled with Knight Errant officers – some anonymous behind bodysuits and armour, while the administrative staff were dressed in simple black and yellow uniforms – and Victoria felt more than a little out of place in her dress and high heels.
Still, she pressed on, as the officer led her and her entourage to a nondescript doorway labelled ‘Interrogation Room 1.’
The officer entered the room, and Victoria was about to follow her when she saw Dean pause at the threshold, standing back.
“This is your moment. Whatever you need to do, do. When you’re done, I’ll be here for you.”
Victoria nodded, and stepped across the threshold. Inside, the officer from before was accompanied by two others – a truly immense man who must be a troll, if his sheer size was anything to go by, and a female officer who could be elvish behind the helmet, judging by her lithe build. The latter was surprisingly much more intimidating than the former, and practically exuded menace as she stood there with her arms crossed, staring down at a broken man handcuffed to an interrogation table.
Andrew Garcia had changed in the seven years since Victoria had last seen his face, plastered across news cycles, billboards and protest signs. Back then he’d looked like a skinny kid, a little weasel who’d got lucky. He’d filled out somewhat since then, but it was still unmistakably the man who’d killed her aunt.
Victoria couldn’t actually see his face; he was staring despondently down at the metal surface of the table like it somehow held the secret to his salvation. She almost leant down to try and get a closer look at him before deciding against showing any sort of weakness. The elven officer, however, had clearly noticed the movement and grabbed Garcia by his hair, tugging his head back and forcing him to look at Victoria.
Victoria was almost disappointed when she didn’t see even a hint of a sign that he recognised her, and with a shake of her head the Knight Errant officer let go, allowing Garcia’s head to slump back down.
“It’s really him…” she wondered out loud before asking, almost rhetorically, “where has he been all this time?”
“There’s a complication there,” the lead officer murmured into her ear. “He has dual citizenship; the UCAS and Medhall. It seems someone over there liked the guy, and set him up with a place to lie low.”
“What does that mean moving forwards?” Victoria asked, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Nothing could mess up a win quite like a corporation could.
“Medhall’s extraterritoriality agreement is with New Hampshire, not the UCAS. It might be best to have a quiet trial, out of state. We can get him before a judge on federal hate crime charges.”
Victoria paused for a moment, thinking it over even as her mind pulled up memories of her aunt; of family get-togethers, birthday gifts and presents, of the way she smiled, of how obviously in love she was with uncle Mike, and how he’d been so distraught after she died that he’d moved to Ontario to get away. Of how most of the problems within her extended family could be traced back to the ripples that spread out of her death, and the stresses of that time.
“No,” she said, firmly. “Put him before a court in Brockton Bay, on the murder charge. Before you announce a date, I want all the evidence you have on him so I can leak it to the press. When he killed my Aunt, her whole life story became public knowledge within hours. I had tabloid journalists chasing me for comments when I was fourteen, saw pictures of my aunt being burned by Chosen scum on the streets, or held aloft as some patron saint of elves.”
Garcia was looking up now, his eyes wide with understanding if not recognition. That would do, Victoria thought.
“The one thing I don’t want anyone to mention is Medhall. I want the city to see this man as the scum of the Earth, because that’s what he is. Medhall won’t claim him then; they won’t even look at him. His freedom, his life? They don’t outweigh the reputational cost.”
The officer nodded, and Victoria dearly wished she could read her expression behind the helmet.
“By the book, then. Mostly.” She turned to her colleagues. “Maruyama, Hess, take this wretch to the cells.”
As the trio of officers escorted Andrew Garcia out, Victoria sighed and planted her palms on the table, breathing heavily as she tried to centre herself. Once she was sure she wasn’t about to break down, she left the interrogation room and locked eyes with Dean, whose face was the very picture of patient concern.
“Did it help?” he asked.
Victoria sighed.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I know it can’t hurt.”