Black Wing Facility Gamma resided in an abandoned psychiatric hospital and, despite being repeatedly repaired, renovated and refurnished, carried from its past an air of stiffness and sterilized anxiety. There simply was something psychiatric-hospital about it that no amount of beige paint and IKEA chairs could possibly remedy.
Perhaps it was the fact that, much like patients in far too many psychiatric hospitals, the residents of this facility were not treated as people but rather as mutant lab mice. Their “handlers” - prison guards - could be fascinated with them, or scared of them, or disgusted with them; they could treat them with caution or pity or distaste, but one thing was forever unattainable to the subjects, and it was something reserved only for fellow humans:
respect.
A day in Black Wing was excruciatingly slow and controlled. They were all waken up at the same time with a siren, after which a nutritionally complete but mostly joyless breakfast was served in their rooms. Plates were always taken away half an hour later. If food still remained in them, it was taken away along with the plates.
The morning was filled with strictly controlled and monitored activities; projects were tested, experimented on and studied. They completed assignments and carried out research tasks, and their say in what they were comfortable with was limited. For Bart, who had special privileges, this also meant being taken on missions every now and then outside of Black Wing. She spent the rest of her time in the basement, where trained soldiers amused themselves with various scientific-sounding activities, such as throwing knifes at her while recording how long it took her to detect and dodge them.
In the afternoon there was lunch, taken like breakfast in their rooms and alone, then occasionally a meeting with a psychologist or a research assistant. Throughout the day, the projects’ behaviour was assessed and scored according to a template. If that behaviour met a certain criteria, the projects were allowed to spend a few hours in the common room, socializing with each other under mild supervision. And this was the only thing that gave Bart meaning.
On Tuesday evening, she was escorted into the common room by two armed guards as per usual. The guards were terrified of Bart and she knew it, which allowed her to squeeze out some more special treatment in the form of carrying a handbag with her - a cheap, bright red plastic thing with glitter on it. As always, they winced a little as they unlocked the door for her and gently pushed her in. This gesture was akin to inexperienced zoo keepers throwing meat into a cage full of lions - it filled them with both awe and utter primordial horror.
“What’s up bitches,” Bart announced loudly on entrance.
The majority of the group ignored her, with the exception of one - a tall, freckled woman with a head full of fiery red hair, dressed in clothes of so many colors, even a shrimp would not be able to distinguish and name them all.
“Hi baby!” The woman beamed, patting the bench she was sitting on. “I love your hairstyle.”
Bart, who did not have a hairstyle and had simply gotten her hair tangled in a different pattern that day, thanked her for the compliment nonetheless.
“Hi, Corey,” Bart greeted, and fell into the seat with a heavy thud. “What did the tea say today?”
“The tea said that I am on a creative streak,” Corey explained, “and that I should pay more attention to my dreams. It also said that you will bring me interesting news today, so.” She smiled coyly. “I’m all years.”
Corey Amethyst, who was known outside of Black Wing by a variety of names which were on a similarly profound level of both beautiful and fake, was a trained tarot reader, tea leaf diviner, a psychic, a clairaudient, and a witch.
She was also a flower shop girl by the day, but that was a far less interesting fact of her life that she preferred to keep secret.
Like many professional tarot readers, Corey excelled at the ability to produce a string of pleasant-sounding generalized statements and pinpoint the tiniest reactions of her client to carry on the reading in the right direction. She was also outstanding at creating a certain atmosphere and a particular aesthetic which made you so open to ideas, you would be ready to accept that you were your own great-grand-aunt.
Unlike almost all professional tarot readers, Corey was, in fact, a real diviner - a holistic diviner, to be precise. What that meant is that she considered someone’s story as a whole, no insignificant details set aside. As a result, she could with astonishing clarity see completely true but also microscopic and seemingly irrelevant snippets of people’s past, present, and future. For example, Corey could accurately determine what you had for breakfast three months ago, which part of you face was itching at this very moment, and what will be the middle name of your future wife’s mother.
She had no control over it, of course; in most reading, she relied on less holistic, more traditional methods. Few people needed to know, even with total accuracy, whether they ought to take an umbrella with them exactly forty two days later.
Nevertheless, Black Wing found Corey’s ability profoundly useful. Small details were pointless to one person, but on a large scale and with the help of massive data processing algorithms, each spec meant something. It also elevated Black Wing’s status to a new level of respect. Just last week, through one tiny piece of knowledge of one man’s exact day of having a terrible migraine, the CIA was able to stage a coup and overturn the Bolivian government.
Not that Corey knew about that. She just knew that the migraine she divined would never occur again for that particular man.
“Your tea leaves lie.” Bart smirked. “I don’t have news… only the useless bullshit that Ken tells me. I also have this,” she added, and emptied the contents of her red bag onto the floor in front of her.
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The contents contained several Oreo packaging butterflies, two fun-size bounty bars, a jar of glitter, a plastic knife, a pack of chewing gum, and, finally, a whole deck of DIY tarot cards.
“A gift,” Bart proclaimed, handing over the deck to Corey.
“You didn’t!” Corey squealed in excitement.
She grabbed the deck and began to sort through it with a quick, well-trained motion of her fingers. Each card was drawn meticulously by hand and colored in crayons; the symbolism was only vaguely inspired by a Rider-Wait deck, but it spoke to Corey all the same, if not better.
“These are gorgeous,” Corey said. “Thank you, Bart.” She glanced at her friend, eyes full of love and appreciation. “They only give me cards when I am doing the tasks for them.”
“These are yours. To keep.”
“I will do a spread for you,” Corey decided, making herself comfortable on the seat.
“Wait,” Bart stopped her. “I have a thing first. Not an interesting thing but I’ll ask. Have you ever heard of a Project Prometheus?”
Corey shook her head in response. “But there is something going on here lately,” she added. “Supervisor Adams is away a lot, and everyone seems… tense. More stressed than usual.”
“He isn’t stressed,” Bart disagreed. “He’s… excited. And that means someone’s about to have not good things happen to them,” she explained. “And it could be me happening to them. Wait.”
Bart raised herself from the seat and regarded the common room like a predator surveying the open savanna. She wasn’t friends with these people; most of them were too terrified to even talk to her, but, there was one thing they gave her that she never got from any of the Black Wing employees: respect.
“Ever heard of project Prometheus?” Bart asked in a hushed whisper, going from one person to the next.
She knew they were being watched, but she also knew that the guards did not have a single fuck to give about what they talked about, and that made her feel safe and confident, like a shark in familiar waters but with less unwanted publicity from wildlife photographers. Unfortunately, this yielded few results. Most people just flinched, shrugged, and asked her to leave - roughly in that order.
The only person she actually got a conversation out of was James, but that was hardly surprising and more of an unfortunate side-effect rather than the intended outcome.
Before he was discovered by Black Wing through a combination of gossip and Twitter inquiries, James was a holistic psychotherapist. What set him apart from others in his profession was a unique, uncanny ability to detect lies in all forms - including lies that the patients were telling themselves. This made him severely effective, but also meant that 99% of his clients quit on first session. Not many could deal with a person who knew more about them than they did themselves.
James was incredibly useful to Black Wing as a reliable human lie detector and an elegant interrogation and/or torture tool. This time he had succeeded in dragging Bart into a half an hour long discussion about her goals and values in life and she exited the conversation even more confused than she was at the beginning. He also did not know anything about project Prometheus.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bart said upon returning to the bench next to Corey. “Doesn’t change it.”
“Change what?”
“It will be our best shot,” she explained and beamed, delighted just thinking about it.
“No-no-no, mon ami.” Corey frowned. “Way too early! We need much more people on our side before we can strike out.”
“We have me,” Bart disagreed. “That’s the most important. We also have you. And James.” She pointed at the man who did not know what he was in on, but was prepared to do anything to save himself from boredom. “A few more people and it’s good.”
Corey sighed. Then she sighed again for good measure and pulled out the self-made deck.
“Let’s ask the cards,” she suggested, and turned to face Bart. “Meditate with me. Let’s concentrate our energy.”
Bart did not tell Corey this, but every time they meditated together, she just used the time to daydream about various things she wanted to have, such as a new bicycle and a waffle maker and a Japanese katana sword. She did not know what kind of life she could even have outside of Black Wing. In fact, she rather suspected that the Universe would find ways to throw her into bloodbaths of her own causation even if she moved to New Zealand and lived in a tiny cottage among the sheep. But who said she couldn’t have bicycle rides and waffle breakfasts in between sessions of slicing people with a katana?
“Alright,” Corey proclaimed. “Now, let’s see what the cards have to say.”
She shuffled the deck skillfully until five cards fell out of it one by one and landed on her lap. She picked them up with care and laid them face up on the bench in front of her, examining the selection with a thoughtfully look on her face.
“Queen of swords!” Bart exclaimed cheerfully, pointing at the card.
It depicted Bart herself, sitting in a spinny chair and wielding a katana.
“The cards are telling us to exercise caution and precise decision making,” Corey said, looking deeply into the image. “It may be a time to act soon,” she added, pointing at the Chariot, “but not foolishly either,” she added, pointing at the reversed ace of swords.
“The cards agree with them then.” Bart grinned.
“We are protected in our journey,” Corey replied in a serene, melodic voice. “The Moon hides our intent. And the High Priestess is our divine guidance. I also see flames… and I see an older woman showing us the way.”
“Be careful who you call old.”
Both Bart and Corey flinched in surprise, forced to look away from the cards. In front of them stood Charlotte - a short, plump woman with a head full of bright gray hair.
Charlotte had, perhaps, the most peculiar holistic ability of all the currently detained subjects, and it resided in her dreams. Every day she led a pleasant, boring life of a primary school teacher and a mum to five cats. But every night, she became someone else. Her dreams took her around the world and presented her a slice of life of various random people, a new person each time. These slices ranged from lives of simple people like her, teachers and doctors and cleaners, to remarkable persons of incredibly high social standing like presidents and CEOs. And for small chunks of six to eight hours, she got to be them in precise detail.
She remembered those precise details upon waking up as well. From the time she was in middle school and for the next fifty three years of her life she also kept records of those dreams, in neat handwriting, in stacks upon stacks of notebooks that she kept in boxes in her attic. Black Wing confiscated all these boxes of notebooks when she was taken; they were studied carefully by technicians and specialists. Charlotte herself was now designated Project Norn. Her friends were not notified and her class at school was given to another teacher. She was, however, allowed to keep in her Black Wing cell all five of her beloved cats.
“May I sit down?” Charlotte asked, and Corey moved on the seat, letting her join.
“Right. So I hear you were asking around about project Prometheus.”
“Maybe I was,” Bart confirmed. “Do you know anything?”
“I know you should drop the snooping,” Charlotte responded. “Your plan is already complicated enough, and God knows if I am to stand on your side in that madness, you should at least keep your mouth shut and not attract attention to your already loud person.”
“I was just asking.” Bart frowned.
Charlotte was a rare kind of woman with enough intangible authority and silent power that made even Bart feel like a seven year old student in a classroom.
“Well,” Charlotte continued, “you should have went straight to me. I was him,” she explained. “One night, many years ago.”
“And?”
“And,” Charlotte lowered her voice, “forget about it. It isn’t relevant. What is relevant is that supervisor Adams will get swept up enough in this to leave. It’s big enough. To him at least. And by the time he will find out that Prometheus is not at all who he thinks he is, well… here, it will be too late,” she assured them. “Because he won’t have anything to come back to in here.”