It happened while we were waiting for the others to get back from the police station.

The sound of an explosion followed by a volley of almost continuous gunfire. It travelled through the streets and reached the warehouse, quickly joined by a chorus of screams and a stampede of hasty feet on the outside. My blood ran cold in an instant.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Far from keeping a low profile in response to Welt’s death, it seemed that the cabal had every intention of ratcheting up the stakes until the entire country descended into chaos. This would be on the front page of every newspaper in the nation, and people would not sit idly by in response to what appeared as an attack on the protestors sanctioned by the government.

I grabbed my gun and headed out onto the street, almost being flattened by the surging crowd who were fleeing the scene in the process. I fought my way through, ducking beneath them and sticking to a clear path on the left side. Once the first wave was gone my progress became much faster. It was not fast enough.

It happened in the plaza near the palace. By the time I arrived on the scene, it was already too late to do anything about it. The crowds scattered and ran away once the violence started. All that was left were around four dozen unmoving bodies splayed across the cobbled street. It was a disturbing sight. All they wanted to do was make their voices heard, but a certain group of people found that unacceptable.

Discarded protest signs were stained with blood. Various belongings like shoes, bags and other items were left strewn across the plaza with them. There was no sign of the people responsible for the murders. A few stragglers poked out from behind doorways and upturned carts to see if they were still in danger.

They were killed with magic and bullets. Some of them were left in a state that was difficult to describe in words. The sheer impact of the blast, combined with whatever they struck during their flight, left their bodies twisted and deformed. The lucky ones were simply shot dead and left where they lay.

A ball of lead settled into my gut. I was used to gore but the context behind this massacre filled my veins with outrage. Someone was letting these maniacs loose to kill as many people as they liked. They didn’t even have a good reason to do so. A lot of them were high on the rush of being ‘immortal.’

I stood on the corner and observed an armed detachment of police officers charged into the plaza. They too were forced to reckon with the fact that the culprit had already disappeared into the urban jungle. The lead officer barked orders, splitting up the armed cops and sending them off to track them down. A few remained to usher the civilians away and start cleaning up the mess.

I turned on my heel and headed back towards the safehouse while keeping my head turned down. I didn’t know if they’d caught on to what I was doing yet, but there was no need to risk being collared by the police at this stage. Veronica was waiting by the door with her hands in her pockets.

“Why did you go out there?” she asked.

I glowered at her, “The only reason any of this ridiculous nonsense is happening is because Durandia wants us to contain the chaos. I have to take a proactive approach to keep that from happening.”

I thought that Veronica would understand that by now. All of this and the ‘robbery’ of her only daughter were interconnected. Veronica didn’t accept the cause and effect behind all of these events. I pushed her inside and slammed the door shut behind us, thinking better of heading out to chase them down myself.

“Being proactive doesn’t mean exposing yourself to needless risk. They must have spread our names and faces to the other members of the conspiracy by now. They could apprehend us at any time if they see us in public.”

“It wasn’t needless. What I saw out there is going to anger a lot of people. Walser descending into violence will have unpredictable results, but none of them are good.”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Did I say that the threat is much larger than a restoration of the crown already?”

“I don’t believe you did.”

“I strongly suspect that Durandia is worried about their meddling with the Veil. Welt wanted to use Genta’s knowledge to summon demons from there, to harvest their organic material to use in his experiments and to create more soldiers. Welt is gone – but the man responsible for that research is still alive.”

“Sloan.”

“That’s right. I think he’s the man we should be concerned with. I also suspect that he is the one pulling the strings on their troops now. He was the most closely connected to the demon project after all.”

“But what would the worst-case scenario be?”

I shrugged, “Destruction of the entire world? Durandia and Xenia made it sound as if this type of intervention is only done under extremely dire circumstances, not that you’ll be happy to hear it.”

Veronica rolled her eyes at me. She could put on her pragmatic face all she wanted, but I still felt that she would rather take a chance on the world ending rather than letting her daughter be used as a trojan horse for a game played by a bunch of faceless gods.

“We kill two of them and someone even worse takes their place. I don’t know a damn thing about Sloan besides what Genta told us.”

I was in the same boat. Genta painted a vivid picture of how far he was willing to go to get what he wanted though. The boy I’d encountered before was his son, who he had injected with the compound in an attempt to ward away his illness. Whether that story was accurate or just self-serving fiction remained to be seen.

Genta could not illuminate us on his Sloan’s motives. He spent a long time around him and his son, yet there was never a direct mention of what they wanted from Welt. Genta supposed that he was a glory-hog scientist looking to break ethical boundaries and revolutionize warfare. The simplest answers were most often the correct ones, but that was a far cry from an all-out apocalypse scenario that demanded bending ironclad rules set by the gods.

He needed to industrialize the process to achieve that hypothetical goal. He’d need a source of blood for the summoning circles, some magical grunt, and an expert in the field to make sure the runes were all correct, and that wasn’t the difficult part of the process. He would also have to find a way to reliably kill demons who possessed many dangerous and confounding abilities.

Anything built by human hands would not be able to contain the likes of the Alchemist. It could instantly transmute anything it saw into liquid gold, regardless of how implausible such a feat was. That was the raw power of a creature that existed with pure magical energy running through its veins. Rules and natural laws were for suckers like me.

What if the Alchemist was a tame demon in comparison to what Sloan wanted? His greed wouldn’t let him stop there or use halfway measures. He wanted the real deal, the full-fat product that Genta warned him about. Those warnings only made his desire grow stronger. In short; I could see him screwing it up and potentially ending the world.

As we walked through the empty storage area on the ground floor, Veronica stopped me in my tracks with an entirely different line of questioning.

“Who were you?”

“Why the sudden curiosity? I thought you didn’t want to know anything about it.”

Veronica crossed her arms and leaned against one of the pillars that supported the office floor above. She wasn’t going to give me a straight answer. Veronica wasn’t even sure if she wanted to hear it. She was resolute in declining to hear the story before.

“Are you hoping for an interesting tale? There was nothing interesting about me. I was nothing more than a cold-blooded killer. That’s why Durandia chose me.”

“You didn’t get a choice?”

“No. I was shot dead and woke up in a different body the next morning. She didn’t give me a handful of memories to make the process easier – so I had to learn. I put on this fake accent and learnt about noble etiquette, and stole newspapers from my father after he was finished with them.”

“Like a chameleon. I noticed it right away. You always position yourself in the right places at the right times, and use your identity to ward away suspicion.”

“I suppose that’s accurate.”

“I’ve never once seen the real you, then? Is there even a ‘real’ you to speak of?”

I exhaled and laughed, “I’m very real. I never found an issue with separating my character from my personal life but this is different. I’m Maria Walston-Carter now, and there’s no changing it. This performance is me! I have to live with that. It’s another layer of scar tissue on the top. That’s all people are in the end.”

“Is that supposed to be a hint to your past life?”

My gaze sharpened; “Everyone wants to believe that there’s something tragic hiding behind the curtain. Let me clear that up for you. I never had a good reason to do any of that. It was a job, like how a factory worker goes through the same routine every day without thinking about it. They get paid to operate a machine, and I got paid to put bullets in people.”

Veronica already knew that scratching at the surface would not repeal the daughter she sought. It was too late for that now. The callousness of what I was saying still came as a shock to her.

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“The Goddess really picked someone like you?”

“She wanted a killer, so she got one. I won’t pretend this is atonement. I’m going to be a selfish bastard all the way to the end. All of the rules I placed onto myself only served to protect my own sense of righteousness, but I never felt for one moment that I was in the right.”

Veronica snapped. Her hand lashed out and grabbed the collar of my shirt, pulling me so close that I could feel her breath spilling out against my face.

“I want my daughter back.”

“You never had her in the first place.”

Veronica clenched her fist and hoisted it into the air, intending to retaliate for my response, although it was immediately tinged with hesitation. Was she comfortable hitting me? The answer was clearly no. I held out my arms and left myself completely defenceless.

“You got screwed. We all did. I thought you were used to it by now. Stop acting like I’m the one who inflicted this on you. I might be easier to reach than a Goddess - but it won’t make you feel any better about it.”

Veronica released me and shook her head. She had almost acted impulsively and punched her daughter in the jaw. She didn’t want to do that even if she was technically the spirit of an older gentleman from another universe.

“What if you go away when all of this is over with?” she posited.

“That would be for the best, and it would be convenient, so it isn’t going to happen.”

“You’re willing to give up a second life that easily?”

“I’m a horrible person. Every second I get here is one more than I anticipated. Why the hell would I be rewarded for causing so many problems in my past life?”

“Do you think that the Goddess has reason to punish me?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know what you’ve done while at WISA, what lines you decided to cross, or how many people you hurt and killed. I don’t believe that Durandia has a particular objection to taking a life so long as it can be justified.”

“How reasonable of her...”

The front door opened and the rest of the gang stepped through, just in time to miss the near-fistfight between me and Veronica over a problem outside of our control. Even I didn’t have any ideas for how to get one over on Durandia. She could see the future, and that was ignoring what other powers she possessed. Was it even possible to harm a being made from energy and emotion?

Veronica felt strongly about it – but I wasn’t in the same position. Durandia hadn’t truthfully taken something important away from me. The only personal slight I faced was her using me as a tool to achieve her ends, and that was a utilitarian mindset that I had adopted many times before. Trampling over me to save an entire world was a fair deal.

Samantha was already onto us.

“You two look like you’re about to have a barmy. What did we miss?”

“We weren’t fighting,” Veronica said defensively.

Frankfort pulled out a stack of three papers and handed them to me. They were a neatly typed list of every address connected to Welt within the twin cities. A stamp with a case number and assigned officer had been placed on the top left corner of the cover sheet.

“They wouldn’t give us the original, but this is a copy the detectives were using to investigate what happened,” Claude explained.

Veronica peered over my shoulder and cross-referenced the addresses with what she learnt about their operation before Jones took over. At least some of them were correct, so the record looked to be legitimate. They had searched the apartment and found it hidden somewhere.

“Welt was very careful not to leave any incriminating documents around – but I suppose his secret safehouse was as good a place as any to keep what he didn’t burn,” Frankfort theorized.

There were hard limits to how much secrecy one could maintain when running a criminal enterprise. Welt was not going to remember each and every weapon cache and deployment location off the top of his head. There had to be a list at the origin so that orders could be given and so that everyone involved understood what was going on.

“We don’t have much time now. That attack at the plaza is going to light a fuse and make this entire city go up in flames, and I have to go back and deal with these caches before they can use them. You’ll all have to work with the other me.”

My future self did not give a specified time for me to go back with but I assumed it was soon after I received the list. The only certainty was that I had to go back and follow up on all of the leads that they did in the exact same way. I considered making a copy of the list, however, sending Claude and the others out to retrieve it was no trouble.

Claude was happy about it too. I elected not to rob him of that personal development by trying to play smart with my bootstrap paradox. I scanned the room to try and figure out where I was hiding, but there was no sign of me.

“Why do I keep hiding?” I wondered.

Samantha shrugged, “Maybe you think that your present self can handle all of this stuff, and she’ll show up once you leave?”

Which begged the question of what exactly I was doing without the others’ help.

“Whatever. I need to start planning for a rescue operation at the jailhouse. Frankfort, do you know that place?”

She nodded, “Somewhat.”

“Good enough for me. I need layout and security information.”

Onwards and upwards...

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

Jonas Rentree rushed to the operation’s headquarters the moment he heard the gunfire and explosions echoing across the city. There he found Brandon Sloan and his son, issuing orders and assuming direct control over the situation. Jonas slammed his hands on the desk and called for his attention.

“I look away for two seconds and you sic those rabid dogs of yours onto the people outside the palace! Have you lost your good senses? We did not agree to this.”

“Do you object to fighting back against them?”

“There is no fight. You aspire to waste a precious resource killing weak-willed bystanders and attracting undue attention.”

“Undue attention?” Sloan scoffed, “We already control the palace, the police, and the military! Ekkehard could snap his fingers and have the entire affair buried in an instant. The only roadblock is you and the rest’s unwillingness to do what needs to be done.”

He stood from his seat and stormed away. Jonas pursued Sloan through the halls.

“Brandon, you can’t be serious!”

“It’s survival of the fittest, my friend. The cowardly and meek are going to go back to their homes and hide, while the rest grab their weapons and prepare to fight for their ideology. The victor will be written into the history books as the virtuous side in the conflict. The truest measure of any ideology is its ability to survive.”

“The only thing you’re going to do is weaken Walser even further. We cannot afford a mass sacrifice of working-age men letting blood in the streets. There are vultures circling us as we speak, waiting for any sign of weakness or hesitation.”

“Don’t speak to me about hesitation! What do you think our enemies are saying when they see these braying hordes clogging the streets and demanding revolution? A show of strength is the correct course of action. I will not have them presuming that we’re incapable of controlling our ship.”

“The only image we project now is one of rank anarchy!”

Sloan stopped in place and put himself into Rentree’s personal space.

“Do you have a problem with what we’ve achieved thus far?”

“No. I do not.”

“The Compromise has been confined to the rubbish where it rightly belongs. The King has been reasserted as the ultimate force within our government. The last task at hand is to end any thoughts of restoration from the Republicans. We must have the courage to take the final step.”

Rentree did not see dispatching armed goons to fire into a crowd as a portrait of courage. Sloan was not there on the ground putting his safety at risk, but he refrained from saying any more than he already had.

“I am concerned primarily with where you feel this will end. I hope you have a decisive and effective plan in mind, lest we plunge Walser into more violent fighting like that which defined so much of our recent history.”

Once upon a time politicians and lobbyists alike posited that the Civil War would be quick and simple. Those who felt the strongest and radicalized into violence would die first, and then all of the pieces would fall back into place. What they did not know was that by drawing blood they only inspired more citizens to join the cause. Many did not fight merely for the republican ideal, but because they had friends and family murdered in the chaos.

‘Quick and simple’ rapidly morphed into elongated and indiscriminate. Dozens of armed factions fought over the future of the country, and no matter how dire the consequences there always seemed to be more people willing to throw their bodies into the maelstrom. The fires kept burning – and they were only extinguished with an uneasy truce.

Rentree recalled quivering with rage when the Compromise passed through the house and was signed into law by the King. It was no victory for the monarchists, despite those who foolishly comforted themselves in the media and secret smoking rooms with tales of the citizenry’s fleeting flirtation with democracy.

Here they stood, years later, with tensions as high as they had been when the war ended. The revolution proliferated and exported itself to other countries around the continent and across the seas. Kings and nobility were expelled from their traditional places and left to lick their wounds while the common man grappled for control.

Rentree wanted Walser to be an example to them. The damage could be undone.

“I have some good news – by the way.”

“What kind of good news?”

“You may recall that Genta Cambry proved unwilling to assist us in harvesting more usable material for use with our soldiers, that and he claimed to have no memory of the important information.”

Inside a small locked room, tucked away from all of the commotion was a singular man. He was sitting in the corner with his head in his hands. His grey hair and wispy moustache made him look much older than he truthfully was.

“Who is this?”

“This gentleman is a reformed member of the cult which ran amok some months ago. Normally I would pay no mind to them, but with Genta proving to be non-cooperative I decided that speaking with one of the few surviving members of the Scuncath could prove useful.”

“He knows how to summon more of those hideous creatures?”

“Yes. He was there when they created the summoning circles.”

Rentree was off-put by his behaviour. It looked as if he didn’t want to be there.

“Are you sure he can be trusted to help?”

Sloan laughed, “He doesn’t have to do anything. All I want is for him to make one of those circles for me. I doubt he has the ability to create one that will intentionally sabotage our efforts.”

Sloan could already make a basic circle – but the creatures it brought forth were both small, non-threatening, and disappeared after a few brief moments on the other side. He could have theoretically killed them in that time, but the harvest would be less than ideal considering the lengthy dilution process the bodily fluids would then go through.

They had to be big, and preferably dangerous. Sloan would never admit to as much – but he did take note of Cambry’s reaction to his initial plan, and further research into the incident at the fort reinforced the threat they posed. It would take time and money to construct his ideal farm system.

But he was not as craven as Genta was. Sloan saw it as a challenge to be undertaken. Man had tamed the elements, they had transformed the world into a place small enough to be encircled within months, and now they stood on the precipice of another technological revolution.

The Veil held many secrets. It was through the Veil that humanity would go farther than they ever believed they could before, and Sloan wanted to be the man credited for it. His face would be in every textbook and he would be spoken of with esteem even hundreds of years after his death!

Rentree and the others did not understand his motivations. Welt promised him the space, time and resources to achieve that lofty aim, as he also felt strongly that the elevation of mankind was a priority. With Welt gone – Sloan wanted to retain control over the situation and ensure that his supporters followed through on their end of the deal.

“When we’re done here, Walser will truly be the unrivalled envy of the entire world. Our ascension will be admired in every country and on every continent. Our example will lead them to better themselves, is that not the most altruistic outcome imaginable?”

Rentree concurred, “Welt spoke at length about that idea. He said it was why he chose to work with you. I will support your efforts as long as I find them reasonable, but might I suggest leaving the politics to us?”

Both he and Sloan knew what he was proposing and why. Sloan had already done enough damage with the attack on the plaza and there was no easy way to fix it. Sloan could safely hand over control to Rentree with the understanding that he would be forced into following a similar path of violent action.

“I hope you don’t become meek, Rentree – but I would like to focus on my work.”

Rentree eyed the cultist wearily, “I will not.”

Sloan smiled, “Good. I always knew you were the most prudent one.”

Rentree begged to disagree. He was a fool for playing along with this.