Today will be a good day.
Maybe it was already too presumptive of Nix to assume so, but considering their lockdown, there were unlikely to be more horrific scenarios where she would be forced to fight for her life.
Two days in a row is enough.
This third day after returning to the past was going to be quiet. Well, considering her ward-mates could no longer go out into Coral which left the ward busy, quiet was probably not the right word. Uneventful, then. It would be an uneventful third day back… unless Tarchon was quicker with his cleanup than Nix expected.
Being locked inside was less than ideal for her plan to evolve, but it was made up for by how stressed K’tan looked when she’d passed him in the kitchen. She’d done her best not to smirk, but now that he was out of sight, she let it free.
She intended to have Little God keep an eye on the overseer. Considering the eyeball’s ability to observe without being seen, that should be enough to give Nix some ideas on how to take advantage of the man’s tendencies and work together a plan to bait him into a ritual. But the problem was Little God himself. The being didn’t understand even basic human motivations. To him, eating breakfast was the same as driving a knife through someone’s heart. It made extracting important details difficult.
“Nix!”
Dan’s voice attracted the attention of many other teens as he — with Ari trailing close behind — rose to meet her. She barely had time to react before the boy was tugging her down the hall and into one of the lesser used storage rooms.
“We want to help,” he said as Ari closed the door behind them.
“Wha-?”
“What’s your plan? How are we going to kill-”
Ari hissed, and he cut his question short.
“Ah… I mean about that thing you said last night.”
Nix looked at Dan for a moment, then at Ari. She sighed.
I really shouldn’t have said anything. Surely I could have stopped him from going after K’tan without telling him I was planning the same.
“Next time, don’t drag me into a closet. Did you want to make people suspicious?” Nix said. “For now K’tan still thinks I like him; if we suddenly start meeting like this away from any eyes at all, he’s definitely going to be raising an eyebrow.” She looked pointedly at Ari. “Especially after last night.”
K’tan would be terrified that she remembered something, after all. Any sudden change in their behaviours would only be seen in a paranoid light.
“So?” Nix asked, trying her best to hide her own nervousness. “Remember anything from last night?”
“Yes, actually.” Ari’s eyes dropped to Nix’s ugly gloves and raised a questioning eye at her.
Nix’s heart shunted into her throat and she suddenly couldn’t speak. She knew didn’t she? She never should have given into the mutation. It would have been better to leave the girl to die. Now that it was out, Nix was going to repeat her past and everything would be ruined.
Her hands flexed, and she considered murder.
These two had been kind to her, but would she accept a bit of kindness over her own safety? Never. If they had to die for Nix to survive, then so be it. She would be disappointed to miss out on such enjoyment as friends… but it wasn’t worth repeating her past.
“I remember following K’tan through the streets,” Ari finally continued. “There was also the cultists, and a box they put me in. But after that, everything is too unclear. Like a nightmare. Nothing definite.”
“I see.” Nix suppressed a relieved breath and relaxed her hands. She wouldn’t have to end the two she least wanted to.
“Unfortunately nothing that really helps us,” Dan said. “Besides the confirmation that K’tan did try to sell her. But if you plan on… you know… then we want to help.”
Nix glanced at Ari, who nodded, even if she didn’t look as determined as Dan.
Was there any way she could… turn them down? Even if they wanted to kill the man as much as she did, she didn’t want to trust them with her plan. She didn’t want to involve anyone else so that she could use her claws if things went wrong, and not have to worry about the consequences of others being there to see.
“So, what is your plan?” Dan asks.
“I’d rather do it alone,” Nix said. “Just… keep out of it.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“Huuuh?” Dan looked her up and down. “You want to take him on alone, when you look like that?”
Nix scowled. “I hardly intend to make it a brawl.”
“Well, you’re not the only one to have resolved themselves. Either you let us help you, or we work separately, and get in each other’s way.” Dan crossed his arms and looked at her expectantly. “Besides, if the worst comes to worse, it’ll be better to have three on one than you alone.”
He said that, but surely he knew that against someone with an evolution, freshly named teens wouldn’t have a chance, regardless of their numbers.
Nix groaned. She didn’t hide it; she was frustrated, and by the slight smirk that graced his lips, Dan already knew he won.
As much as she disliked having to include others in her plans when she didn’t trust that they wouldn’t ruin things, it was better that she knew what they were doing. She would hate to enact her plan, only to find K’tan had seen through it because Dan had idiotically tried to stab him right before.
“I don’t have anything concrete yet,” she started, reluctantly. “But after last night, K’tan is panicking. I intend to watch and wait for now, but once this lockdown is over we have some options. He’ll want to meet with the Fleshsmiths as soon as the shutters open. We can ambush him on the way, or lead one of the Fleshsmiths’ rival cults to do it for us. Now that you two are involved, we could pool our savings and buy some poison, or a ritual we can set up in a room before trapping him within.”
That last one was the closest to her current plan. If she could trick the man into entering a lockable room, she could do the same thing she tried to do at the Fleshsmith’s warehouse… only this time without tearing her name open.
To actually follow through with her intent to use the man as a sacrifice, she still needed to workshop her plans… and now that she had to deal with these two, all of her more promising ideas would have to be thrown out. Couldn’t exactly sever a man’s spine with your claws unseen if you had two pairs of eyes following you around all the time.
Nix had considered the idea of approaching Tarchon the moment he returned to tell him everything… but if this went through an official line on inquiry — only possible because Tarchon was a high creed of a rival cult — the Fleshsmiths had all the time in the world to slip him out of what he deserved. Nix didn’t want to give him the chance to escape her.
Besides, doing so would just get the Fleshsmiths to focus their attention on her. Attention she didn’t need.
“All right. Watching and plotting sounds good for now. We’ll try to keep an eye on where K’tan goes, and who he speaks to.”
Nix looked at the boy with reluctance. Little God was already doing so, but she couldn’t exactly tell them that. “…don’t be obvious.”
“Of course,” he said. “Then we’ll meet in Nix’s room at curfew.”
“What? Why mine?” She didn’t like the idea of her space being intruded.
“Well, if you want to involve our room-mates…?”
“No.”
“Then there’s no other choice,” Dan said. “Unless K’tan grows suspicious, we’ll meet there.”
Wonderful, Nix thought. Why not? What’s mine is yours.
It was annoying, and she would need to be extra careful of revealing anything — not that she had been careless so far — with this pair too interested for their own good. Last time, she’d been able to hide her wings even as they grew to hug her back. As nobody paid attention to her, she’d lasted for quite a while before she caved and told K’tan. With these two trying to be around her so much more, it would become increasingly more difficult to hide the lumps along her back.
What’s worse, is that their very efforts to speak with her attracted eyes from their ward-mates. Nix had always been alone. Everyone knew that. So to see some of their fellows actually engage with her was a spectacle. Nix could only hope it wouldn’t stir the pot and motivate some like Kal and Tru to do anything rash. Or K’tan. The man had said he would try to ‘work’ on her back when he was speaking to K’kali.
Together, they walked back to the lounge where a few dozen teens chattered. Only those that weren’t busy trying to enact rituals or prepare themselves for whatever tasks the cult initiations demanded sat here. And near the back, watching over them with a passive air was K’tan. The white knuckles of his interlaced fingers the only indication of stress.
They were determined to watch K’tan, but they could hardly make it obvious, so instead they found an unused corner behind a games table to hide from most eyes, yet stay within K’tan’s.
The man’s eyes followed them the whole way.
Nix wished she could read his mind. Was he worried about Ari remembering last night? Was it the lockdown? Or simply that Nix had seemingly broken free of his efforts to isolate her? He didn’t reveal anything through his expression, so she could only guess.
“Do you mind if I draw you?” the sudden question surprised her, and not knowing how else to respond, she simply nodded her head.
Ari placed her hand on the ground, and in moments, the floorboards flowed out of their natural form and snaked into her fingers. A pencil formed, and she was suddenly whipping it along a small sketchbook she pulled from her bag.
“Should you really be doing that?” Nix asked.
“What?” Ari looked up from her book. “They replace all the flooring and walls when the generations switch out anyway. I’m pretty sure they expect us to destroy things when we begin experimenting with rituals and our names.”
Before Nix could respond, there was a loud clearing of someone’s throat from the middle of the lounge. She lifted her head and found a couple of caretakers from one of the younger wards.
“Has anyone here seen Overseer K’kali?” he asked the room. “We’ve not been able to find her since early this morning.”
The only answers he got were negatives. But K’kali? She was the one working with K’tan. Nix glanced to him out of the corner of her eye and found him clenching the table; his veneer of calm fracturing.
Nix felt she knew exactly what happened. The other overseer snuck out to get in touch with the Fleshsmiths. But she hadn’t returned.
Why wouldn’t she return? Either she died, got caught, or abandoned the ward. All of which were really bad for Nix’s overseer.
K’tan was in deep shit, and he knew it.
“Oh.”
Nix turned back to Ari, who was staring at the page in her hands.
“I thought you might not have been… considering the lack of effects in the past months, and how you’re clearly not sick as often as you used to be, but your curses really haven’t disappeared.”
Nix looked at the sketchpad, where the entire page was scribbled black. The central figure was barely even visible. Shadows leaned in from the sides, obscuring, covering, and drowning the silhouette of Nix. Her curses must appear in drawings just as phantoms do. It was a curious sight, but not one she was all too surprised about.
Ari shivered. She scrunched up the page and threw it away.
I can’t be that hard to look at, Nix thought, her eyes following the ball of paper as it landed beneath the table. Right?