She stood in the shower, leaning against the wall, cooling her head against the cool white tiles. Hot water flowing over elegant shoulders and a graceful neck, making her short shorn silver locks gather into spikes.
Ophelia woke up late, just a little past noon, she’d been doing that a lot lately. Her last two years, were much different compared to the two hundred plus that came before. For one, for the first time in the longest time, she was unemployed.
She hadn’t been unemployed since she was six years old. Well, if one was being truly technical, she was actually still on the job, but her current job was to ‘not’ be on the job.
Two random and inexplicable liaisons somehow turned into a regular thing and with a nod and wink from a certain green-skinned lass, that became relationship. An odd relationship, yes. One that was definitely hard to put a label on, but definitely something that was committed, official and very real.
All across the Argus continent there were Ministry agents dating and marrying in the open. And there was an even larger amount who did so secretly. All of this taking place with Ministry's full blessing.
After all the more the agency was integrated into the world, the more of the world they had access to. Playing the part of wives, mothers, husbands and fathers, while simultaneously keeping the world’s fate as their priority.
Seamlessly blending into thousands martial clans, sorcerer covens, crime families, nobility and royalty, for public order’s sake and for the greater good, the ministry wasn’t above arranging a few new relationships and destroying old ones.
Naturally Monde’s newest power, made up of some of the most dangerous individuals in the entire planet, wouldn’t be an exception. In fact they’d already tried to set something up with a few of their agents, finding a moderate amount of success in the lower ranks but none with higher ranks where decisions were really made.
It had given the cantankerous old cranks in the Ministry’s Senior Board, no small amount of amusement to realize that it had taken the Head Administrator herself to get the snake by its head.
That was Ophelia’s new job now, watching and if possible guiding, the movements of the Bone Tree Company’s wonderboy, for the sake of world order.Ophelia didn’t even necessarily mind it, if one’s job was to play shepherd to a herd of demonsheep, it only made sense that special attention had to be paid to the most dangerous out of all the wooly beasts.
The harm he could do, meant that he either had to be watched or eliminated and as elimination would likely be just as costly as leaving him alone, watching the man and his company was all they could do.
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The only problem in all this was, when she woke up one day, after the first eleven months of the ‘relationship’, stunned to realize that she was compromised.
While Ophelia might have taken offense to anyone calling her old, she was aware that she was no spring chicken. Despite her appearances she’d been alive for nearly centuries time, and had always been embroiled in the world of deceit and espionage. She wasn’t the sort to do something silly like falling in love.
And in truth that wasn’t what happened. Whether it was the intimacy, or the young man’s bluntly honest manner she’d still be very much the cynical Head Administrator that she’d always been. Gauging every word for hidden meaning and staying loyal to the ministry and the cause of the greater good.
Love wasn’t what felled her, at least her mind that wasn’t it. Shat got her, what finally happened to make her start wavering and questioning herself, was the day the man finally let her in.
Trusting her in full. Giving her a direct line to his mind, a sanitized connection, yes, but still a connection. An intimate act amongst those of the telepathic persuasion. She entered his mind and was almost immediately traumatized by what she found there.
It wasn’t the man’s mind, that was actually almost sterile, almost mechanical, what nearly broke her was all the things that the man was open to. It was like standing at the mouth of some manner of monstrous waterfall.
All the things that he was receiving. All the data that he had stored there. If she Ophelia was privy to most of the world’s secrets by way of her mental work, he Billy, was privy to all of them.
Possessing something that stopped just short of omniscience, ignoring most of it, because there was just too much to be addressed. This was worse than the browser construct that his company was leasing to the agents. Much worse.
This was pure unfettered, unfiltered information, from everywhere, from Monde and worlds beyond. With her access to his mind she knew everything that was and everything that would be, and all the consequences that would come forth.
She knew everything about every power, she knew everything about every person, once she turned her head to Ministry all its secrets were laid bare. Seeing thoughts became child's play, once one could see the very lines of fate and causality.
Ophelia found out things that even she hadn’t had the clearance to know and that incident alone should have reporting back to the Ministry instantaneously. The discovery was enough to make them possibly rethink their entire approach for how to deal with the man.
It was just possible that it might have been enough to make it worth going to war with the man. Possible, but not likely, but still the consideration should have caused her to act. It had been one thing when revealed his “subsumption” of the planet. Neither she or the other senior members of the Ministry had really believed that or known what to do with it.
This, this complete and total dominance in the field of information warfare was something else altogether. Something that made the man and his Bone Tree Company even more infinitely dangerous, than they’d already been.
Plans needed to be made, there were people who needed to be alerted. Agents who maybe needed to be pulled from the field. Instead she looked at him, she looked up at his sleeping his face, she looked out at the moonless night and then closed her eyes. Sleeping contented, her numerous concerns falling back into the background of her thoughts and fading into nothing. Replaced with the numerous new calculations, plans and questions that were quickly taking their place.
When she woke up the next morning, she tendered her resignation and informed her agency, of the situation and the fact that she herself had been compromised.
She would still watch the man for the time being she could still be trusted to at least give reports on him and what he was doing, but she couldn’t be trusted. She couldn’t be trusted anymore, there was now a part of her that was wondering, if maybe, just maybe, it might be easier to serve the greater good on his side the fence, instead.
What was worse was that understanding this, didn’t change anything, having warned the Ministry as was her duty, she already knew that she wasn’t going change course. Like a high speed train, she was already set on her track, the only thing that was left was either move forwards or crash.