Nothing happened at first when Quinn summoned Misha, which was both anticlimactic and unexpected. Usually, all Quinn had to do was speak Misha’s name, and Misha arrived immediately. In this case, Misha still hadn’t appeared after a couple of minutes.

“Is that usually how it works?” Hal asked, arms crossed as he leaned up against the far wall.

“No,” Quinn said. “Not usually. Normally, she’s here a lot faster than this. This is very unexpected.”

“What exactly are we here for?” Malakai asked.

“You’re here to provide me with some backup while I pose some very uncomfortable questions to our supervisory golem. They probably won’t want to answer, and thus I’d like some backup. That’s why you’re here.”

“Seems like a good enough reason,” Hal said. “That is, if we can get this person here. Do you have another way to summon them?”

“No,” Quinn said. “But I’ll just try it again.”

This time, she spoke Misha’s name out loud, and it still took several seconds for the supervisory golem to appear in front of them.

“Yes, Librarian?” Misha blinked, their moon-like eyes looking around at the three other people in the room. “Oh, I did not realize that you had company. Well met, Lynx, Malakai, and Sir Hal.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow at Hal this time. “Sir Hal?”

“Later, ask me about it later,” he said.

Quinn laughed. At least there was a bit of brevity before they got down to the bad stuff.

“Anyway,” Quinn said, “We’ve asked you here for a few reasons.” To be honest, she wasn’t exactly sure how to bring this up. How did you bring up, ‘Hey, are you actually a subversion of the coding required to create a supervisory golem placed here by our enemies to undermine our authority and dismantle the filtration system of the universe from the inside?’ It wasn’t exactly the sort of question that lent itself to easy insertion in everyday conversation. And so Quinn realized that she had to go about this a bit more delicately.

“Oh, why are we all here?” Misha asked.

“We’ve come across some information we need your input on.” There. Quinn liked the sound of that better.

Misha gave a very small smile and inclined their head.

“Were you busy?” Quinn asked suddenly.

Misha blinked in Quinn’s direction. “No, I was...” Misha paused for just a second there as if they really had to think about what it was that they’d been doing. “Yes, I was in the storage room allocating...” They paused again. “Allocating items for the upcoming excursions you’ll be taking for retrievals.” Misha finished the sentence off a lot more confident than they started it with.

“Excellent,” Quinn said. “How are the preparations coming?” Quinn was desperately trying to find a hole, trying to find somewhere where Misha wasn’t the Misha that Quinn remembered, that Quinn wanted Misha to be.

Misha nodded. “Yes, I do believe we have most of the items ready, and I have sent a request to Milaro and his entourage to verify delivery of several other items we will need coming up for a couple of the destinations you are heading to. Is that all, Librarian?”

“No,” Quinn said. “Did you not hear us the first time we summoned you?”

Misha blinked. “Excuse me? Not hear you? I always hear you, Librarian. It is the connection. I cannot not hear when the Library or the Librarian summon me. That is... but...” Misha paused as if going over today’s recollections. “There... No, I did not hear you,” Misha said suddenly. “I apologize. That seems very remiss of me.”

Quinn eyed the golem. They looked exactly like they’d always looked. Short, metallic, with gleaming skin. They were quite slender, and the silver of their skin had a black undercurrent, but perhaps it seemed darker than she remembered in this moment. Quinn wasn’t entirely sure. Their wispy, liquid silver hair was still spun finely and draped all around their face, and their eyes still shone like a mother-of-pearl crossed with opal.

That Misha had so much of the Library’s functions on their shoulders already felt unfair, but they still seemed completely and utterly robust, despite the fact that right now they were a hundred percent malfunctioning. It was a definitive gut feeling Quinn couldn’t shake. Or perhaps there was something in a subroutine or whatever it was... Quinn racked her brains on how to deal with it.

Hal asked the first difficult question before Quinn could, probably too tired of waiting, even though Quinn knew that she was processing the information much faster than anybody else in the room. Well, maybe not than Hal. He was like a primordial freaking being.

“I was curious about how you manage all the scheduling.”

“Scheduling?” Misha said. “You mean for the various aspects of the Library that rotate constantly to energize the books and replenish the Library systems? Is that the rotation you mean?”

“Yes, that’s the scheduling, I mean,” Hal said.

“Oh good, I did not think you needed me to schedule the assistants. I believe you already have somebody for that, Librarian?”

“Yes,” Quinn said, wondering why Misha had just changed the subject. She’d never known Misha to change the subject before. “And so you have the scheduling under control, then?”

“Yes, the next pillar can be activated in, I believe, two and a half days.” There was an off metallic clang echoing from the words.

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Quinn frowned. Misha’s tone of voice didn’t sound right. There was an undercurrent of static on a few of the words. “About the storage room. Has it been easier to keep it stocked?”

Misha turned their attention directly to Quinn. “It is no longer difficult to keep it stocked as Milaro has put the trade system back into place and we have regular shipments coming from all of our previous trade partners to make sure that the Library continues to run unimpeded and uninterrupted.”

Quinn frowned. The answers were too almost robotic. And while a golem, none of them had ever struck Quinn as robotic.

“I’m sorry, Librarian,” Misha said, and the words sounded stilted. Not as smooth as usual. “I do not appear to be feeling quite myself.”

Quinn frowned. “What do you mean, ‘quite yourself’?”

“Sometimes there are gaps where I do not recall having completed a task. I previously attributed to the Library’s data problem.”

Quinn frowned again. “What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, on occasion, I have completed tasks I did not realize I had set myself to do. As if there is a gap in my memory, just like the Library.” Misha paused before continuing. “But with the Library healing, I am afraid my instances have not diminished.”

“Can you elaborate on that?” Hal asked. As he did, there was a flicker in the golem’s aura, as if it changed something out.

Misha blinked. “I believe I just did.”

“So,” Malakai said, his voice completely upbeat as he intervened, “The storeroom is in great shape, but I know my grandfather has had difficulties with some of the suppliers, so that not all components you need are in stock yet. Since we recently had to produce so many golems for the hospital, how do you feel that went?”

Misha turned their attention to Malakai. Something flickered through the moon eyes. Something dark. Quinn almost stood up, but Hal shot her a glare.

“What do you mean?” The golem asked, almost choking on the last word, making it garbled.

“When the hospital was initiated, the relevant golems were necessary. Did it strain resources?” Malakai frowned as Misha still appeared confused.

Quinn interrupted the awkward conversation. “It’s usually been your responsibility to order golem creation. I hope I didn’t step on any toes.”

Misha blinked again, glanced at Malakai, looked over at Hal, and looked back at Quinn. When they spoke, the tone was different and very unlike Misha, unless Misha was irritable and in a hurry, as had happened just a few times with Quinn. Their mouth contorted into what almost seemed like a snarl, but the expression was gone before Quinn could register it fully.

“Of course. That was acceptable. Golems were necessary for the hospital. If they had not been activated, those people would have died.”

Malakai took a half step back from the strange, alien tone coming from the supervisory golem. Misha shook ever so slightly, trembled, stamped a foot, and shook their head this time. “I am terribly sorry, Librarian, what was the question?”

Quinn slowly rose and walked closer to the golem, looking them over. “You don’t remember that you just answered?”

“Oh, I did not just answer,” Misha seemed confident of their answer. “I thought I answered, but I know I did not end up saying anything.”

Quinn cocked her head to one side. “How do you feel the golems for the hospital wing turned out, Misha?” Quinn asked again, rephrasing it ever so slightly.

The flicker happened again, dark shadows crossing the eyes, but this time they came back out the other side clear, like the beautiful mother-of-pearl and opal mixture Quinn was used to.

“I believe they turned out just as they should. A doctor, a surgeon, and nurses. Why? Was there something wrong with them?”

Quinn shook her head. “No, I just wanted to make sure you still feel needed in the Library because we do have two supervisory golems now.”

Another flicker through Misha’s eyes. “Yes, I have many other responsibilities. Running a 350 person capacity hospital almost filled to the brim of patients on top of that would impede my functionality severely. Do you have other questions?”

The ‘you’ held a flicker, a garble of sorts, and the shadow passed over the eyes and stayed again. “The hospital requires a different level of functionality than the Library. It is pure life force focused rather than nurturing and enriching and sucking the life out of everything.”

“Excuse me, what was that?” Quinn asked.

The shadow departed and Misha shook their head. “I am sorry, Librarian, can you repeat that question?”

Quinn glanced at Hal who moved forward. “There was no real question. It was more a statement on your behalf. Do you not recall saying how the patients were sucking the life out of everything?”

Quinn wasn’t entirely sure what she’d been expecting to happen. With Lynx, Malakai, Aradie, Hal and herself, it might appear confrontational. Maybe she thought they’d just sit and hash it out, perhaps they’d have a long and well-reasoned, well-thought-out discussion about the pros and cons of sabotaging the Library and thereby the entire magic system of the whole freaking universe.

But this was no tea and cupcake story because Misha changed. Right in front of them, the once small golem loomed. Their height morphed, gaining about a foot which made it taller than Quinn. Not that that was difficult. The silver hair tarnished and the eyes flashed with a deep rolling thunderstorm rather than their luminescent mother-of-pearl origins.

“You think you’re so clever.”

Quinn balked.

The voice was malevolent, filled with a level of hatred Quinn had never heard in her life. Not even from Tenejo. “Why do you think we think we’re clever?” Maybe she could misdirect it somehow and confuse it. Probably not.

Hal stepped closer. He stamped a foot on the ground and a protection casing flared around Misha’s body. Quinn didn’t even know when Hal had had time to set that up or if it was just a power and something he could just do on a whim with a click of his fingers or a stamp of his hoof.

“Speak.”

Misha, or whatever this was, writhed inside the cell Hal placed them in.

“I will not answer to you, King of Nothing.” The thing laughed, and the sound crept down Quinn’s spine like tar.

Quinn cocked her head to one side. “You were here when she was, weren’t you?”

Lynx stepped closer, peering in through the casing. His eyebrows rose, and he took a step backward quickly. “Wait... you’re Supervisor. You should have been reclaimed by the Library.”

“Of course I am. Why would I allow myself to be reclaimed as if I were nothing? Discarded.” It practically spat the words out. “None of you are worthy of the magic you seek to hoard. And this Misha is not worthy of my core.”

It was as if Supervisor planned to simply destroy Misha and put a bit of a kink in the whole Library plan. Nothing happened, though. They looked confused, angry even. And obviously tried something again as effort clearly showed on their face.

A sudden whirr of hummingbird wings dashed into the space.

“What are you doing to me, Sprit?” It screamed.

Betty tsked. “Now, now dear. This is not how anything should be happening. You were allocated to the Library long enough to know you won’t get away with things now we’re aware.”

She turned to Quinn and gave her a soft smile. “So sorry for barging in, but this little fellow here has a bit of a problem with authority.”

Quinn gaped at the Sprite, unsure what to say. Although she could tell it took Hal all the effort, he could muster not to laugh.

Betty then turned back to the prisoner. “Now dear, you need to sit down and listen to because I remember you, even if you don’t remember me. And we, we have a score to settle.”