Solomon has been missing for nine days. The rest of Bird’s Eye, other than Adelar, is gathered at Lisa’s house; they can’t risk meeting at the old station after what happened. Lisa sits on the couch, looking ahead seemingly at nothing, elbows on the table, her face buried in her palms. On her sides, Yaroslav and Durazo sit. They all wait in silence, until the front door opens and a disappointed Adelar steps through.
“Still nothing?” The wolf asks in a low voice, lifting her head.
“Nothing at all.” Adelar responds, shaking his head.
“After all this time, still no leads?” Yaroslav speaks up.
“We have her messages and that letter.” Adelar closes the door behind him and walks to the couch where the others are sitting. “And that doesn’t amount to much.”
The eagle takes that familiar letter out of his pocket and reads it over once more as he slowly paces around the living room.
“We have your cat. You’re not getting her back. Do not interfere with us and she’ll be safe.”
The words made Adelar feel the kind of rage he didn’t think he could experience ever again when he first read it. What made it all the worse is the lack of sender information on it, no way to track who wrote it.
“So, that’s all we can do now, eh?” Lisa shrugs with a wry smile. “Just sit around like a bunch of arseholes?” She scoffs. “Not even at base, no less?”
“It’s better than possibly having our conversations be listened to.” Adelar folds up the letter and puts it back in his pocket.
“I understand not telling the authorities, but we went through base so many times.” She stands up to turn around and face the eagle. “You still think it could be-”
“We can’t be too careful.” Adelar says in a forced, neutral tone. “Besides… We could have had an interrogation at least if the suspects weren’t all dead.” He adds with a hint of cynicism.
“Oh, pardon me, mate!” Lisa puts her hands on her hips. “I’d like to see you be calm when there’s some wanker throwing black fire at ya!” She walks around the couch and in front of Adelar. “And we still don’t know what it would have done to us if Father wasn’t there!”
“We did what we could, Adelar.” Yaroslav chimes in, turning his head in their direction. “We scoured the surroundings after the place burned down… As I said before, we couldn’t find that lion either.”
“Which I think we should be more concerned about.” Durazo remarks. “She’s seen us, she knows what happened…” He pauses and shakes his head, looking at the floor. “Maybe she told the rest of them. Who’s to say that Solomon is even alive after that?”
“DON’T SAY THAT!” Lisa yells out, forcefully tapping her cane against the wooden floor, leaving a barely noticeable mark. No one says anything for a few seconds after.
“Listen…” Lisa says with a sigh after calming down a little. “I just hate being so… Helpless. We’re basically the only ones who can help her and there’s nothing we can do about it, not a damn thing!” Looking defeated, she sits back down on the couch.
“There’s a good good chance that the police aren’t working with them.” Yaroslav suggests.
“There’s also a chance that they are.” Adelar retorts. “Or that they’ll just pay them off if we say anything to them about it and we end up at the bottom of a lake.”
Lisa checks her phone as she sips a cup of tea, only to nearly spit it out in surprise. She puts the cup down on the table in front of her through a coughing fit.
“Well, lads...” She says excitedly after clearing her throat. “We now know where she is!” She exclaims, standing up to show the others the good news: Solomon’s phone’s updated location.
“Where?” is all Yaroslav says as Durazo and Adelar lean closer to have a look. The feline’s icon is set at just about the middle of England, far away from Lanolow.
“Her phone was turned on then!” Lisa goes to look into the exact location. “Hold on.”
“But then what?” Durazo questions, half happy about finding something after more than a week, half concerned. “We can’t just walk in there!”
“A financing company?” Lisa raises an eyebrow. “Won Leu-ie Finances?”
“No…” Adelar walks around the couch to take a closer look, incredulous.
“Oi, I know I prob’ly butchered that, alright?” The wolf replies with a frown.
“It’s not that!” Adelar takes the phone and has a look for himself. “You wouldn’t… You were low, but not to this level!”
Lisa takes back her phone before Adelar’s arms light up in flames, causing her to recoil.
“Mind lettin’ us in on that before you burn my bloody house down?” Lisa says with slight offence.
Adelar’s flames go out as he sits down at where Lisa was sitting, burying his face in his palms.
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“That… bastard!” He says, trying to hold back his anger.
“What do you know about that place?” Durazo inquires, shining his light onto Adelar, which seems to calm him down, somewhat.
“I guess your past really does come back to haunt you.” Says Adelar, the others listening to him intently. “Ludwig von Leue, head of Von Leue Finances. Someone who I used to call a friend. He used a large sum of money for dubious investments, which paid off for him.” He curls his fingers into a fist. “Money which belonged to us, not just him.” He recalls, his eyes filled with anger. “He was always powerful, but for him to be a part of that org… He’d have to be connected to Lion’s Den as well then. Which means…”
“He has Mystic Ones.” Says Durazo.
“Exactly.” Adelar leans back on the couch and continues. “He used that money and left me in the dust. But of course, I didn’t give up. I worked my way up to where I am now…” His expression turns into a scowl. “And I won’t let him take anything more.” He stands up with a look of determination. “We’re going there, and we’re getting Solomon back. I’d like to have a few words with him myself as well.”
“I’ll call Thali for backup.” Lisa states, already writing a message.
“What?” Adelar turns to her questioningly. “Why?”
“Just trust me on this one, yeah?” Lisa looks up from her phone with a smirk. “I’m certain she’ll be more than happy to help us.”
It has been five days since Solomon arrived at the System, her morale has only gone up since her last meeting with Shaquia. It may be an illusion they put up to make her feel comfortable here, but if that’s the case, it’s working better than she’d like to admit. The lack of progress in her training discourages her slightly, but in time, she knows she will master this power of hers. She’s the only one alive, as far as she knows, if she can’t do it, who even could?
Her skill has to lie in her power, for it certainly doesn’t lie in her hand-to-hand combat skills as it turns out. They tried to teach her a way to defend herself with just her claws, but that was short-lived. Stefano described her fighting as “remarkably slow for a feline”. Therefore, it was put off so she could focus on her power more. It may not look like it, but she can almost feel the progress she’s made.
“Tomorrow will be a big day.” Shaquia announces as she and Solomon approach her room.
“Ludwig will want a personal audience with you. Be at his office at 9 in the morning. By yourself.”
Those words are enough to get the cat secretly excited. Finally! The man himself will apparently trust her enough not to have Shaquia follow her around! “Took him long enough.”
She wishes the lynx goodnight and goes to bed shortly after.
Her dream is as she has come to expect it to be. She sits down at a building, so does the figure.
Solomon then gets an idea: she stretches out one arm and writes “Can you read this?” into the sand before her. Unlike how dreams are usually, the text doesn’t change when she looks away and back, which she finds odd. The figure looks at what she wrote for a few, long seconds, Solomon guesses that it’s trying to comprehend it. It stays motionless for an awkward minute before Solomon tries writing the same in her native tongue, French. The figure’s gaze follows her hand as she writes, and to her surprise, it begins writing symbols into the sand in a similar manner. They remind Solomon of the ones she saw in the book, although she still can’t understand them. “That’s… Interesting.”
The figure lifts its head to glare at her with its piercing, green eyes. That is something she’ll never get used to… Looking into those eyes fills her with dread, so she tries not to make eye contact.
“What do you even want from me?” She asks, snapping her gaze at the figure’s “face”. It then reaches out with its right hand as if expecting a handshake, like it’s been doing for the last few nights. Every time, Solomon felt more and more compelled to return it. What would it do if she did? Why does it want that? Would this all cease if she just did it? For how long can she resist the temptation, and her curiosity? All questions that rush through her head as she considers the offer.
She looks at its dripping hand and contemplates for a few long moments. She knows that eventually, she’ll give in. The figure has been in her dreams for so long, it would likely haunt her for the rest of her life in this desolate, dead dreamscape… No more than two shadows chasing one another. With one last thought, she makes up her mind.
“I’m so sick of shadows...”
She reaches out and firmly grasps the figure’s hand, surprised that she doesn’t just wake up. It has a feel to it, not just a shadow after all. However, it doesn’t feel like she’s holding the hand of a person, something is just wrong… She wasn’t sure what to expect when she did it, but nothing certainly wouldn’t have been her first guess. For about a minute, she sits there, opposite to the figure, holding its hand. Nothing happens, absolutely nothing.
“So is this… It?” She eventually asks and then recoils slightly as she sees teeth form on the figure’s head. Teeth, the bone around the mouth, then an entire feline skull can now be seen. Solomon tries to pull her hand away, only to find that she can’t.
Whatever darkness covers the figure is disappearing. She can see its cervical vertebrae, then its shoulder blades and collarbone, ribcage, arms, pelvis, tail and leg bones become visible one after another. The figure is unrecognisable from what it was, now taking the form of the skeleton of a feline. The only things to suggest that it’s even the same figure are the pair of piercing, green eyes, appearing as no more than circular lights in its eye sockets and its hands dripping with the same, green liquid. An intense sense of fear rises inside Solomon, it’s just a dream, she’ll wake up soon, she’s sure… She stands up and tries to pull away, but the figure, now a skeleton, won’t let her. Despite being just bones, its hand is strong, keeping her from running.
“Let me go!” She yells, but the being ignores her.
The skeleton opens its mouth and stands up, its eyes staring into Solomon’s very soul. It turns her around and grasps her from behind, holding each of her hands. She struggles to shake loose, but can hardly even move as it embraces her. She then feels a searing pain in her hands and arms, and as she looks down, to her horror, she sees the skeletal limbs slowly sink into her own shadowy body.
“No! Stop!” She cries out in desperation, but it’s no use. She feels the skeleton sink into her legs, tail, upper body and worst of all, the back of her head, the sensation akin to repeatedly being hit with a sledgehammer in every part of her body.
She cries out in pain, regretful for touching the figure in the first place as she closes her eyes. The feeling lingers for a few long moments after the skeleton disappears into her completely, followed by her collapsing onto the sand, writhing. She grasps at the sand around her, trying to stand up.
She then opens her eyes… And finds herself to be in her designated room, every part of her body aching. With a feeling of terror, she looks down at herself, especially her hands, but nothing seems to have changed. She stands up, almost falls over from a sudden bout of dizziness, and sits back down on the bed. She isn’t quite sure what, but she feels like something definitely changed inside her. For just a few moments, she feels a sense of intense gratitude.
“What… Was that?”