“I thought I said it was a horrible idea to meet with me, Jones.”

Huddled in the corner of a private gentleman’s club, Bernard Jones and Micah Greenblatt made a strange duo. Jones was techy, high-strung, and always concerned with following rules and social expectations. Micah was his opposite. He was bloviating, easy-going, and loved to indulge in sleaze.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read what you sent to me. I want you to look me in the eyes and repeat it so I know that you aren’t pulling my leg.”

“What? Is this some kind of ritual humiliation? Do you want me to sit here and make a complete arse of myself for your amusement? I told you not to meet with me – and your first instinct is to demand that I come and find you at this club!”

“Listen. I already told Welt about the report I received from the volunteers at the Royal Academy, and he didn’t want to hear any of it. I didn’t accept it either, but now you’re claiming that the very same girl is threatening your life too.”

“And you’re not going to claim that I’m only saying this because I overheard her name before?”

“That’s why I want to speak with you now. It’s easier for me to discern the truth if we’re face-to-face. Was there any truth to what you stated?”

“It was all true! That horrible little wretch broke into my new factory and almost turned me into a pile of discarded meat and shattered bones! Maria Walston-Carter, it was her, I can guarantee it. Black hair, red eyes, and a scowl that could scare a man solid like a damn statue.”

Jones covered his face with his hands and exhaled.

“But the real problem was the two women who were with her. I think they were both WISA agents. I almost blew my top when I found out that you might have been involved.”

“No, I wasn’t. That was Veronica Gladwell and former handler Frankfort. I knew they would be problematic for Welt’s plan, which is why I tried to nip them in the bud while I had the chance.”

“So they’ve teamed up with Maria Walston-Carter? What about her Father?”

“We’ve been keeping a close eye on every noble worth their salt, and as far as I know Damien Carter has been away from the coast for weeks. These are trained spies – so if something were amiss they would notice right away.”

Micah grunted, “He never did like getting involved in politics, but it’s hard to imagine a young girl like his daughter doing this of her own volition.”

“What did they want from you?”

“How the hell should I know? They talked about getting to you, which is why I explicitly said we should only communicate through written letters. I don’t even know if they’re watching us as we speak.”

Jones shook his head, “You ought to put some more faith in my agents, Micah. They have this entire city block locked down tighter than the central bank’s main vault. Nobody comes or goes without them seeing it.”

“That would be news to me, considering you’ve turned down my requests for extra security.”

“I already told you, I don’t have the people to spare to watch one of your dirty little parties. Is it honestly too difficult for you to refrain for a few weeks while the trouble blows over?”

“Welt brought me into this plot because he valued my ability to get what he wanted from the stubbornest nobles. Some of them care a lot about appearances – and are very easy to leverage when their dirty secrets are circulating amongst the nobility. I could cause half of the couples in this city to split within the week if I wanted. Those parties are how I play my hand.”

“Even so – you have to adjust when the plan is in motion. At the present moment, maintaining order and keeping Walser from descending into anarchy is the priority, and it’s mainly my responsibility at that. I don’t understand why you can’t see it from my perspective.”

Micah held his tongue and refrained from delving into yet another long, drawn-out argument with Jones about how important their respective roles were. Micah’s insecurity about not being an important piece of Welt’s plot was evident, and even he was capable of seeing that his intentions were not selfless. He wanted to earn a good return on his investment, and that return had to be even bigger now that his life was being threatened.

“Besides – you said that I’m the one they want. They should leave you alone.”

“Jones, they threatened to mulch my body in one of the machines! Do you think of those three as the type of ‘leave’ something alone?”

Jones leant forward in his seat, “They want to get to me. All we have to do is give them exactly what they want. This is an opportunity that we’d be foolish to pass up on. We can arrange this ‘unexpected’ meeting with me, and I can have some of Welt’s men take care of them. Veronica and Frankfort are as tough as they come, but they won’t be able to fight off a few of those soldiers Sloan created.”

“Are you certain? What if you get injured, or killed, or whatever else they have in mind?”

“I won’t be anywhere near the fighting. You have the initiative here Micah. You should remember well who your allies and enemies are. Co-operating with them is only going to end in tears. Let’s get rid of them as soon as possible and call the whole matter dealt with. All you have to do is trust me. We’re on the same side.”

Micah murmured to himself and slicked back his messy hair.

“If you say so.”

“My job is to keep Welt safe, and it is no exaggeration to say that Veronica and Frankfort pose the greatest active risk to his life as we speak. That is enough reason for me to help you.”

“I get it! I get it! Let me think for a moment, we could rearrange one of my parties to be more tasteful and have your men on standby to catch them. We would have to make it obvious to them that you are going to attend.”

“Can’t you tell them that?”

“I don’t know where they are. They threatened me, told me to drag you out in the open, and ran away.”

“I see. They must have a method to keep an eye on you, then. We’ll have to do a sweep of the venue and keep all of this in mind. We have to be one step ahead of them if we want this to work, but they won’t show their faces if they are not confident that I’m present.”

But they couldn’t kill him and be done with it. Veronica and her gang of thugs had to both kidnap him and extract Welt’s location in one fell swoop, and there was no way that he would ever willingly offer that information to them. Those restraints were advantages that he could exploit.

Bernard could hardly wait! He was going to have a lot of fun arranging the house of cards so that it fell exactly the way he wanted, and then Welt would have to take him more seriously.

----------------------------------------

What Bernard and Micah didn’t know was that our plan was being designed with their particular approaches in mind. The best way to win a game was to ensure that you loaded the dice and rigged the deck. No matter what they decided to do – we would come out the winners in the end.

For a man like Micah, winning and losing were concept he could not divorce himself from. He saw life as filled with winners and losers, and he wanted to be a winner. He always went with the sure bet. It was easy to take a risk averse approach and still make obscene amounts of money through brute force. Money turned into even more money, and failures could be ignored to some extent.

The very last outcome he would expect was one wherein he lost no matter what he did. I checked the time on the watch and mentally considered how deep he would be into spilling the beans to Welt or Jones at that very moment.

It was obvious that Welt would keep a tight handle on who knew where he was and what his security arrangements were. There would be a tight-knit group of insiders and trustworthy people who would be permitted to see him in his hiding place, and Jones was going to be one of them. He was the head of WISA – a position that allowed Welt to prosecute and investigate whoever he pleased with almost no restriction.

If Jones were to go missing for an elongated period of interrogation from Veronica or myself – then Welt would know after a while. He would miss a scheduled meeting, or one of his underlings would ask where he had gotten to. Welt would likely respond by immediately moving to a new location that Jones didn’t know.

Throwing him into the basement of our warehouse hideout and letting him rot was not the ideal strategy. Relying on Welt being an idiot and not doing making contingencies was not a sound approach to the problem. People more often than not were idiots, and didn’t consider every detail of their plan, but on the off chance that Welt had we couldn’t risk it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Okay – I got myself an invite to that party that Micah was talking about.”

“You did?”

“For some mysterious reason it’s turned into a gathering that’s appropriate for all ages,” Adrian said with mirth, “You wouldn’t happen to have had a hand in that, would you?”

“Perhaps our salacious friend simply had a change of heart? Regardless, I assume that means security will be very tight. You’re going to be the one on the floor. Confirm that Bernard Jones is in the building, or at least nearby to conduct the operation, and then do as I asked. It should be safe.”

Veronica entered the office with a bag, laying it out on the table for my inspection.

“Here you go, Maria.”

I pulled the buttons aside and took a brief look inside. A pearl-coloured dress, covered in sequins and a lot of other expensive details, was what I was planning on wearing in case I had to dive headfirst into the party to get at him.

“Getting that was a lot more work than I anticipated,” Veronica complained.

“Are the streets that bad at the moment?”

“Yes. You can barely find the space to move through. These protests don’t seem to be losing any momentum, and it’s only a matter of time before the pitchforks and torches come out to cause some real damage.”

I was shocked that it hadn’t devolved to that stage. already. People were rightly furious about all this, and the newspapers weren’t fooled for one second about the coronation of Ekkehard, which happened behind closed doors. Welt’s attempted arrest and the trouble surrounding it made it plainly obvious who was really in charge.

The headlines were brutal and they never stopped coming. They were probably trying to stop them from publishing negative stories behind the scenes, but with the police and WISA tied up in stopping an outright armed rebellion, there was little time or manpower to raid their offices and put those threats into force. Welt was relying on his own cabal of sycophant publishers to counter it with positive pieces instead.

The problem with that approach was that it quickly shredded any and all credibility those papers possessed previously. The most zealous, pro-monarchy rags around could get away with it, but ones that still dressed in the thin veil of impartiality had to give up the ghost after a few days and return to a more neutral stance lest they become completely ineffective.

Adrian’s eyes bounced from me to Veronica.

“Why don’t you give up this illusion and call her Mother?”

It had been a while since Adrian decided to step headstrong on an obvious landmine like that. Veronica couldn’t believe that he would even dare to air that type of question unprompted.

“Our relationship is purely professional at the moment,” I explained, “I cannot simply begin calling her ‘Mother’ given her lack of presence during my upbringing.”

“But you didn’t-”

The air turned deathly cold. Adrian stopped mid-sentence and refused to continue.

“I didn’t what?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s clearly something, Adrian. Now spill it before I get angry.”

He was uncomfortable with the situation but continued regardless, “Samantha. She might have told us the whole story.”

I stared at him for a minute in complete silence. Veronica was totally in the dark as to what he was speaking of – but she could tell that it was a serious issue for me. I started to pace back and forth in the office while picking at the side of my nose in a nervous fit. Samantha was honest to a fault but I never expected her to reveal all of that to Adrian of all people.

“I’m going to kill her,” I concluded, sarcastically.

“Wait! Wait just a moment, Maria. She made sure we knew that it was only a pet theory of hers, and me and the others are the only ones who know.”

“Who?”

“Me, and Max, and Claude...”

“So everyone? Why the hell would you ever tell Claude a secret that important? Now I understand what he was blathering about!”

Maybe Claude did not accept the full story, but he still was inclined to accept that I was bequeathed my abilities and knowledge by the Goddess. The reincarnation part was probably a bridge too far for him.

“Why are you getting so upset at me? You’ve been putting on this act the whole time!”

Adrian had stepped over a line and now he was reacting the only way he could, by trying to go on the offensive and turn the conversation on me.

“Would you have believed it if I told you originally?”

“No.”

“Then stop whining!”

Veronica slammed her hand on the table, “What are the two of you bickering about?”

Adrian was not going to make the same mistake of revealing this to Veronica. She was my ‘mother’ after all. He was already close to getting into a fight with me over this, and I had no idea what Veronica would do if she knew the truth about who I was. I couldn’t give her the answers to her questions anyway. She would inevitably ask if Maria was ever a real girl at all.

Was it crueller to create a body for me to occupy than it was to steal someone else’s? Durandia clearly thought that it was the better of the two options. I assumed my old body was too dead for me to keep using. I decided the best option was to give her the cliff notes of what was going on.

“The reason I know how to fight and to kill is because the Goddess picked me.”

“...The Goddess?”

“It would be impossible for a normal teenager to do this. Call it divine intervention, but Samantha and I have been selected to solve this problem before it swallows Walser and the world whole. For that purpose, she instilled me with the knowledge and ability to fight back.”

She walked around the table and grabbed me by the shoulder; “Do you honestly expect me to accept that? Don’t be absurd! WISA must have gotten to you somehow!”

She was projecting her feelings onto me. There was a lot of resentment under that accusation.

“You already know as well as I do that WISA’s sleeper agent program was ended decades ago. What did Frankfort say? Was she ever suspicious about it? I don’t see an alternate explanation that you’d find palatable.”

“That continuing in secret seems a lot more likely than some pie-in-the-sky story a bunch of arseholes made up!”

“It’s too bad that we’ve met and spoken with her then!”

“You can’t meet with a god!”

“You can if you have the right bloody machine!”

I shrugged my way out of her grasp and stepped away.

“It’s your choice whether to believe what I say, but I’m not to type to offer belief. I only accept what I can see and experience for myself – so I shouldn’t expect the same from you. To be frank, there is no universe in which we could have survived until now with anything less than the foresight of a deity.”

Veronica considered the way that all of the pieces kept falling into place right when we needed them, or how we managed to survive vicious gunfights and battles against horrible odds with only minor injuries. In my eyes this was not a matter of whether I could achieve our goal, it did not depend on what Welt and his cabal did.

The only judgement that mattered was Durandia’s.

She could have been waiting for the opportune moment to kill me and tie the story up in a neat little bow. It would be an appropriately grim end for an intelligent being who destroyed whatever they touched. I was here because she thought I was useful, and when that usefulness ended...

Veronica, Max, Adrian, Samantha, Claude – they could all think what they wanted to, and they could all have their own opinions, but I felt that they were not worth worrying about. They would not be the ones holding my life in their hands.

“Maria, you really ought to stop lying at this point.”

I glared at Adrian with killer intent. His body stiffened, arms straight down and shoulders squared.

“She doesn’t believe to palatable version of the story already, and it wasn’t a lie.”

“Oh please, by all means,” Veronica shouted.

Adrian stood on the sidelines – having thrown a hand grenade into the situation and outed me at the worst possible time. I was going to strangle the bastard when this was over and done with. His faith in the value of honesty was sorely misplaced.

“Okay, if you want the full truth I’ll give it to you. It’ll make more sense coming from me than Adrian. This entire series of events has been carefully planned by the Goddess from the very start. You and Damian meeting, giving birth to me, your self-imposed exile, my arrival at the Royal Academy, the implantation of these memories and skills. It was all for the sake of averting this disaster that now looms over us.”

Her knuckles turned white; “Don’t joke around.”

“It’s not a joke. You were in control the whole time, but she already knew what we were all going to do. The same is true of me as well. And...”

The air turned cold as I revealed what would surely outrage her the most.

“...she ensured that one of her important ‘pieces’ had a suitable body and position to inhabit when they arrived. She presumably used her powers to ensure my birth, and then implanted my personality into this form at a later date.”

Veronica blinked, rapidly, as she tried to comprehend the revelation that I was offering her. It was the type of insanity that would normally demand a repeat explanation, and that was what I gave her before she could ask.

“For a decade or so, the Goddess was secretly piloting ‘Maria’ to take on that role – and then she swapped places with me. I don’t just know how to kill, I have decades worth of knowledge and experience. I lived an entire life before coming here.”

Her confusion turned to denial; “You can’t... that’s not true. You and Samantha are making this up! Do you honestly expect me to nod along and agree with such a ridiculous story!”

“No, which is why I wasn’t planning on telling you.”

“You’ve clearly lost your mind. I should have put my foot down earlier. Is this just a way of minimizing what I’ve done? To try and imply that I never had a daughter in the first place? I gave everything for you! I wanted nothing more than to be a parent!”

My accent wavered, “You have never been and never had any intention of being a parent – Gwyneth. You were perfectly happy to die working for WISA so long as it protected me and Damien from whatever the crisis of the day was. Was that less terrifying than giving it a go and finding out that you couldn't cut it?”

If this was getting personal I wasn’t going to use her alias for the sake of comfort. She was visibly distressed by the implication that her ‘daughter’ was never there in her body. She couldn’t accept that. She had to come up with an answer that didn’t involve gods or predestination. Was I being rebellious? Spurning her for what she was?

She hoped so – but hope wouldn’t stop that gnawing anxiety that what was being said was true. It was a devastating piece of information to learn when you had dedicated your entire life, rejecting your personal connections and wants, for the sake of creating a safe environment for a fake person to grow up in.

She silently turned away and left the room to cool down. I approached Adrian with a furious scowl on my face.

“This is a good thing to have on our minds while working on this Welt problem, thank you very much, Adrian!”

I punched him in the side, winding him and causing him to stagger back against one of the tables. He clutched his aching ribs and scarpered away before I could pummel him again.

I was genuinely angry with him; “You don’t tell her or Frankfort a damn thing unless I let you!”

“I get it! I get it!”

What a disaster. Adrian escaped through the other door to hide from me before I gave him a black eye to go with his bruised kidney. I grabbed one of the chairs from the floor and tossed it across the room with a loud clatter. I was getting a sinking feeling in my stomach. Veronica was one of the only reliable hands I had available who could fight and do the dirty business of espionage.

She needed to be on our side, and Adrian had shredded her motivation to continue with his big mouth. He wanted to show off. He knew what Veronica did not, and he couldn’t resist the urge to rub it in her face and put me in a terrible situation. He might have grown up since his Father’s arrest – but he was still Adrian Roderro. A teenager with too much responsibility and way too much pride.

I crossed my fingers and hoped our plan would go smoothly - because his ass was on the line if his careless words screwed everything up.