There was a smell of smoke in the air, specifically of a wood fire, and the sound of crackling wood. It was a smell of his childhood and adolescence, and of many day’s hard travel through wooded terrain. Killian raised a brow and headed towards a distant orange glow.

Rounding a corner, they came out on a balcony wrapping around the light-well of the hollow tube-like building, the sky above without moon and speckled with stars; a thin trail of smoke rose from a cafe set up along the promenade looking down into the massive Complex. Above, the ceiling of the next level actually sloped away from the light-well, giving would-be patrons a beautiful view of the night sky. Of course, there were no patrons. His first instinct was that the cafe was on fire, a barista having left something on heat during evacuation, but the fire was actually on the terrace of the cafe. It seemed as if someone had taken all the wooden chairs and decorations and started a blaze in the copper firepit, usually used for ornamental purposes only. Above it, a piece of pork was slowly being roasted, tended to by a tiny old woman. She glanced up at them as they came into the light of her fire, and frowned, snapping a piece of wood over her knee. Killian sighed and holstered his pistol.

“You ain’t heard the evac order, kiddos?” grunted the old lady, prodding at the meat with a fork. The grease from the haunch of pork dribbled into the fire, sizzling. She met Killian’s eyes and he saw the strange, violet eyes of a Pre-Cog. A Seer. She had probably known they would come.

“I could ask you the same,” murmured Killian, stomach growling at the sight of the tender roast. It’d been nearly twelve hours since he’d eaten. While investigating, he liked to keep a little hunger going, snacking on handfuls of nuts occasionally; it seemed to sharpen his mental clarity, an old habit developed while hunting game. Nothing like a little hunger for motivation.

The old woman’s eyes glittered in the firelight. She was a retired Child, no doubt, a psionic with the ability to gaze a short distance into the future. No one really knew how a Seer could do this, but the running theory was the ability to instinctively sense a trend using “quantum foresight” and “aggregate quantum wavefunction collapse analysis” (he was entirely too unlearned to follow the explanation from the well meaning scientist afterwards), and follow the trend to it’s most probable conclusion; a Little Sister could predict outcomes with 85% accuracy, a Big Sister could increase the percentage to 95%, and an especially talented Big Sister could draw close to 98%. Someone with such strong precognition had been not be seen in a generation, though. Such high-functioning Seers were very rare, even if the Seer class itself was the most populous of all the Children born. Most went mad quickly, and another large percentage succumbed to congenital defects. So, the total percentage of highly accurate Pre-Cogs among the Children was probably closer to 0.001%.They were exceedingly valuable to the Families, so it seemed strange that one would be sitting here, contentedly roasting a pig over an open flame within the Complex. He wryly wondered what the probability of the absurd scene was.

The old Seer waved her hand abruptly. “Sit down. Have something to eat. We need to talk.” Taking a large carving knife, she sliced a generous portion off the roast meat and flipped it onto a plate with practiced ease. She handed it to Lucina, who took it numbly. “Xiánq! It isn’t a snake, girl,” grumbled the old woman. “You look half-starved anyway. Eat.”

Lucina seemed to rouse herself and began to eat, pulling off pieces with her fingers. Food was tightly rationed to the Children, carefully regimented to their nutritional needs, and often tasted and looked like macerated cardboard. She seemed a bit dazed at finding an old crone roasting a pig outside a posh cafe. “What…?”

“...am I doing here? Enjoying my retirement as only a Child can, by doing whatever I please. And what I please is to not follow any more directions from my beloved Family. They tend to be asinine anyway, what with that gǒu tuǐzi they call a COO calling the shots.” She handed another slice to Killian.

Killian smirked and wagged his head, sitting across the fire from the old Seer. “You’re quite the blade-tongued old woman, aren’t you?” In his case, old habits died kicking and screaming, so he dabbed the meat to his tongue before tasting it. Years of survivalism led to an instinctive wariness of food being handed to you by a stranger. He began to chew at the greasy, warm pork. “Where’d you get a whole pig, anyway?”

The Seer smirked at him through the fire, the dancing flames casting mad shadows across the wrinkles of her face. She shrugged enigmatically at his question and cut her own piece of pork. “Blade-tongued, heh! Better a sharp tongue than a dull wit. Anyway, you stop caring what people think after a certain point in life, especially as a Child. I’m the elder number 10,” she muttered in way of introduction, pointing her carving knife at him.

There was currently another number 10, but that Pre-Cog was barely thirteen years old. The old woman had probably been retired when the new 10 was born. “Yeah, okay, but what’s your name?” Killian asked, waggling a piece of pork at her from between his fingers.

“Sybil. I thought that was clever back in the day.” She shrugged. “Anyway, what are you two báichī wandering about in the dark for, eh?”

“You know already, don’t you?” said Lucina pointedly, wiping her fingers daintily on a linen napkin that she’d found nearby on the floor. For such a small thing, she had eaten ravenously.

Nodding, Sybil directed her gaze at Killian. She looked vaguely pained, a deep sadness roiling just below the surface. “Yeah, I do. You’re looking for wayward 23.”

“Have you seen him?”

The old Seer nodded again. “Mmm, naught an hour ago. Ran in that general direction.” She pointed an arthritic hand behind her, the way they had been headed originally. Killian made a move to rise from the ground, setting aside the meat, but Sybil waved him to sit back down. “Stop. Sit. Eat.” There was something very authoritative about a Seer, the self-assurance and confidence of knowing the future seemed to course through them, often making it difficult to manipulate or change their direction in thinking. He stopped. He sat. He ate. “You need to hear me. Things are not so plain as that massive horn you call a nose.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Lucina couldn’t help but stifle a chuckle, and he gave her a sidelong look, self-consciously touching his nose. She considered this strange man for a moment, this dark Outsider. Along the side of his neck, running from his ear to his clavicle was a long white scar, and she wondered idly about the story behind it. A strong jaw covered in dark stubble ran to a pair of careful lips ringed with frown-lines, carved with years of serious thought. His nose was a bit big, perhaps, but not unsightly. His eyes, however, hazel and hard, glinted in the firelight. He never looked her in the eyes, of course, but they were studious, bright eyes, speaking of an intelligence and sharp thought hidden there. Killian’s thick auburn hair was pushed back from his eyes, slightly wavy. He was a handsome man, she thought. Couldn’t help but think.

The girl frowned at her own thoughts, and turned back to see the Seer staring straight back at her. Almost subconsciously, she made an Empathetic connection and probed Sybil’s mind, hardly trying at all. And the old woman did not fight her off. The gaze remained unbroken, solid, revealing. Lucina….Saw. The future unfolded like a triptych, unfurled like a rose-bud blooming. Time became a flat plane and it bent, wrinkled, parts drew near, others fled away, past, present, future. A vision shivered into being from the roiling cosmos of twisted chronos, manifold coils of future events unwinding, straightening, revealing. Startled, she gasped and turned away, breathing hard through her nose, eyes wide. It all occurred within a fraction of a second, and her mind was thrown in disarray. She tried to hide her shaken state, even as Sybil turned towards Killian.

“Boy, do you realize you’re hurrying to your doom? Hm? Subject 23 is no ordinary Big Brother, you know. He’s more.”

“Yeah? You seen my doom?” Killian smirked wryly, bitterly. “So certain, huh? Guess you can’t argue with an immutable future, then.” He was feeling less than generous at the moment, a little irritated at her assertive attitude, her certainty.

“You still intend to go through with it, you shǎguā?” Sybil’s tone was not harsh, or condescending, but soft and quiet. Her words held all the bite that was required. Again, he saw the vague sadness deep in the old woman’s violet eyes. Her imprecations and insults held no heat and no weight. But it was the undercurrent of sorrow in her voice that gave him pause.

“Gotta job, don’t I? Been hired to do a thing, I’m gonna do the thing. And no one says I’ll live to be a hundred, anyway.” He shrugged, idly checking his sidearm, that force of habit that had kept him alive many a-year, turning it this way and that. The firelight gleamed off the burnished metal, making the warmth of the light seem cold and shallow. He didn’t have much to live for anyway. A bed? A few sentimental belongings? A job where isolation was practically a requirement? Career? The Families? He wasn’t a believer, not by a long shot. He was no supplicant, or sycophant, not a zealot. He was not even really ambitious. But he had his job, and he’d do it to the best of his ability. “If there’s one thing I understand, it was doing a job well, thoroughly, neatly. I like the resolution of a thing.”

Killian glanced at Lucina, who had been staring at him, and she quickly slid her eyes away. That was the second time he’d seen her staring at him. Was she still trying to probe him? “What have you seen, old lady?” he sighed. “What’s the future show?” He didn’t take his eyes off of Lucina.

“You’re doom,” she repeated with the crackling voice of the truly old, her fingers carefully probing into the pig meat, pulling strips of cooked flesh off carefully. “It’s simple, no?”

“You said you had something to say, and I assume you had more than that.”

Sybil chewed on a piece of meat for a moment, getting through a bit of cartilage. “I suppose I do.” But she didn’t speak immediately. The wood shifted in the fire, throwing sparks towards upwards like a cloud of lightning bugs. “Reading the future isn’t easy. It’s like reading a poetry book, in a snowstorm, while riding a horse. So, you deal with unclear glimpses, moving fast, and then there’s interpretation. So, we see something, but what makes a Seer better or worse at knowing what comes is his or her intuition.” She pointed at Killian, then at Lucina. “A loner with nothing to live for, and a girl filled with fear and fire. Interesting combination.”

“Well?” grunted Lucina, growing annoyed, unsettled thoroughly by the entire encounter. Her fingers engaged in their nervous habit of picking at her dress.

The old woman became recalcitrant, suddenly preoccupied with her food, her jaw working at a piece of meat for long moments. Finally, she folded her hands, squinting at them over the fire. “Just a glimmer, mind you. And far off, I think. And uncertain.” With her warnings in place, her voice grew droning, almost a chant. “The voices of a thousand Children, their psionics twisting the air, their hands red with blood. A maelstrom revolving around a single point, and single person, drawn as if by gravity. In unison, with one voice, they cry ‘Emancipation!’. The figure, the hub of the great Wheel, raises their fist, and that mass of seething, pulsing, grinding Psychicae burst forth on the surface of the the Earth, and all is washed away in their wake.”

After a moment of silence, Killian waved a hand. “Revolution? The Children are going to revolt? Impossible.” He leaned forward, squinting at the old woman. “You’ve gone mad in your old age, Seer. The Children can’t possibly revolt. They’re rolling out blood nanites, the Families’ psychological hold is iron tight, conditions aren’t nearly bad enough to foster dissension, and the Outside Government is also actively hostile against Psionics, so it would be out of the frying pan, into the fire. And even if one Family falls, they’ll just be cannibalized by the other six.” He snorted sardonically, wiping his fingers of grease on his pants. “And what has that to do with me? You mean that because Subject 23 survives to lead the rebellion, I’ll die, right?” It was a blunt, matter-of-fact statement.

Lucina froze at his words. “You don’t know that for sure,” she said quietly.

“It’s me or him, girl,” the Captain snapped, staring at Sybil with hard eyes.

“I didn’t provide any interpretations, because I don’t see this one clearly,” pointed out Sybil. “You’re drawing your own conclusions here and that’ll have to do. But it’s what I see.” She shrugged again, as if she’d run out of words to say.

Killian stood. “This was a waste of time, then,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe in Fate, Seer, and that’s what you’re tryin’ to sell me. The world isn’t so simple, ain’t so black and white as all that. And you’ve all been wrong before. I’ll bet on the margin a’ error implicit in your voodoo.” He inclined his head, motioning Lucina to rise. “I got a job to do,” he said with resolution.

Lucina stood as well, but did not immediately shake her gaze from the old woman. She bowed low at the waist, hand pressed to her heart. “Thank you for your words, Seer.” She and Killian disappeared into the night, leaving an old woman staring into a campfire in the middle of a cafe, a paltry oasis of light in a dark ocean.