Evalyn was there. Younger, her gorgeous red hair floating through a white void like a fleeting spark yet to grow into a flame. The red dress she wore was flamboyant; it hugged her figure and gleamed with sequins like rubies woven together. There were no markings up her arm, her skin was without scars, and her toned muscles were still hidden underneath the façade of an innocent young girl.

A profound sadness hid in her hazel eyes, the kind Iris had only ever seen in clients who had exhausted all their options. They held razorblades to their wrists every second of the day, their fear of death wrestling with the fear of themselves. Evalyn had seen that fear before; she knew what it felt like to hold the cold barrel of a gun to her head.

Elliot was there. He was younger but not innocent. The scent of spilt Aether lingered from his jumpsuit and his jet-black hair. He was thinner, and his shoulders weren’t as broad as Iris was used to. The unkempt hair fell over his face, marring his sight and his path forward to the girl in the red dress, and his body wavered, unsure of whether to turn back or leap forward.

There was longing in his eyes, a want to shed his skin and become something else. He wanted to keep his jumpsuit but not the residual Aether that made it stink like death. He wanted to be a hero, not a butcher, even if it meant doing the same thing. There was hope in those sharp eyes, but that flame was wavering, like Evalyn’s hair in the void.

Crestana’s mask. The shutters moved. It cycled through the facial expressions like a machine. Happy, sad, frustrated, angered, excited.

Crestana’s aura. It pulsed in different languages. It beat like the heart of a human. Happy, sad, frustrated, angered, excited.

The cycling stopped, and the pulsing ceased. They deadened like death, but the façade remained. Like shadows, the negative of the light, they were neutral. Unwavering. Unemotional. Inhuman.

Inhuman. How Spirits should be. How Spirits ought to be. Not like her. Not like her.

Abomination.

Defective.

Weakling.

The culmination of corruption, of imbalance, of domestication.

They sought balance. Those who followed its teaching, its concept, sought balance. Not out of a desire for peace but a fear of obliteration. Annihilation at the hands of redundancy. Spirits who grew redundant the more they divided.

Spirits who devolved. Strayed from their original concept, their founding idea.

Crestana. Who is to say that you aren’t defective? Who is to say that you are a natural progression?

Your people will judge you. Your people will judge you as that is their right.

But they will judge the world because they are prideful and conceited.

They will judge the world and find it lacking.

That is not in their right, but they will do so anyway because they feel the world is wrong.

You are a microcosm to them. The object of their frustration, their desire for change.

But you are the object of my protection, my desire for love.

Mother. My mother. Your mother.

The mother who despised you. The mother who looked at you with cold eyes and a colder heart. The mother who looked down the bridge of her nose towards her pathetic, defective daughter who desperately tried to ignore her unchangeable condition, her existence as an omen to the Spirits that their time would end if change did not occur.

The mother who left you a message. The mother who warned you about who was behind what was to come. The mother who hung herself in protest, out of guilt. A clumsy, desperate, misguided effort to atone for her sins that resulted in nothing more than an ultimate escape.

A flawed mother. A deeply flawed mother.

Not like mine. My mother is perfect. My mother is strong; my mother loves me. The sadness in her eyes isn’t real, and the fear she held is long gone. She wasn’t perfect before, but she is now. She made herself perfect, and now she has to reap the consequences. I have to reap the consequences.

I have to live in this world. I have to clean up your mess. I have to follow the foolish desires of the prideful and the greedy, or else they will maim me, kill me, target me as their common enemy. I can only bring peace by turning on them all. I can only bring peace by killing them all, destroying the world, giving it another chance to make things right.

They think they can do it, but I know I can.

You know it too, don’t you Iris? You know you can. You know you want to.

You know you should.

A cold, damp sensation jumpstarted her brain and shocked her out of her dream. Inside light. At such a time of year, it wasn't much darker than the outdoors but much warmer than sunlight filtered through an overcast sky.

She blinked the sheen of sleep out of her eyes, and Crestana came into focus. Like a mother caring for a child, she was leaning over her, tending to Iris with a cold towel and wiping away the sweat on her face. Her shutters widened when she noticed Iris stir.

“Mr Maxwell, she’s awake,” Crestana alerted, her tone rather polite.

“Is she?” Elliot’s voice said from somewhere in the room. It was the safe house, her supposed home she’d only seen the inside of twice. The first time to stow away Alis, and the second to procure a lamp for her desk in Evalyn’s office.

Elliot walked over and sat down next to Crestana, a broad smile stretching across his face as he put a palm on Iris’s forehead.

“How you feeling?”

“Dazed,” Iris answered. “What happened.”

“One of the dome incidents happened while we were in the bathroom. Do you remember? Somehow, we got out safe, and Mr Maxwell found us unconscious.”

Iris glanced at Elliot, who grinned and raised his eyebrows before getting up.

“I don’t know how, but you didn’t…you didn’t disappear.”

Iris noticed Crestana’s grip on her hand. It tightened the more she talked, the more she thought about it.

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“You didn’t disappear because of me. Thank goodness. Thank goodness.”

Her shoulders began to curl into themselves again, and Iris watched the girl lose herself to guilt and incompetence. Neither was true, both were lies no different from self-flagellation.

Iris embraced her tightly. Even she was surprised, but something else in Iris seemed to deem it the correct course of action, and she was too slow to retaliate.

Not that she wanted to. The moment she took Crestana in her arms, Iris understood why she had done so in the first place.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Iris whispered, but her sentiment was met with silence. She felt Crestana stir through the creaking of her mask, the movement of her body, the change in her Aether.

“How can you care about me?”

Her client wrapped her arms around Iris’s waist, holding her tighter as she dug her mask into her shoulder. “You almost died, your dad almost died, but you still care about me.”

Iris kept her grip on her client’s shoulders. The desperate cries of confusion hurt to hear; they begged for an answer Iris did not have yet. Crestana was her client; until recently, she thought that would be reason enough for her, reason enough for her to put herself through hell and protect someone who couldn’t protect themselves.

“I’m just glad…okay?”

Iris pulled away, holding onto Crestana’s shoulders as she did so. She gave her client one more look before turning to her father, sitting at the dining table and spreading butter over a piece of toast. She shifted her legs from the couch to the ground, only realising the severity of her condition once she tried to stand. Crestana caught her, and she found her footing. Together, they stumbled to the table, where Iris took a seat beside Elliot.

He handed her food, and she gave him another hug.

“We’ve been doing this too often,” he said.

“What?”

“Meaningful hugs after thrilling escapades.”

“I think they’re nice,” Iris argued, squeezing him.

“The hugs, yes. The escapades, not so much.”

He leaned in and whispered. “You’re going to tell me everything later. But for now, I’m proud of you.”

He rubbed her shoulder and kissed her forehead, holding her closer than she had ever felt before. Iris wanted to take the compliment as it was, but pride wasn’t an emotion she could share with him. Proud, as if it was a performance. Iris had only seen it as a desperate struggle she barely escaped with her life.

They stayed like that for a moment, the feeling of his warm embrace too engrossing for her to notice Crestana looking on in abject silence.

Iris said something strange.

“Do you want to join us?”

Crestana snapped out of her trance, startled. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” Elliot whispered. “I’m a weird old man.”

“Shut up Dad,” Iris hissed back, elbowing him.

Iris watched as Crestana broadened her shoulders, puffed her chest, and gripped her towel tightly.

“Yes. Yes, I would.”

Evalyn’s feet wouldn’t stop tapping. Aeroplanes were not her strong suit, but her worry for Iris made her ill to her very core. Her body couldn’t even vocalise its discomfort, and she’d been suffering in silence next to Colte for the past hour.

The man flew, too much, perhaps. He’d made his cramped seat home with no qualms whatsoever and had already begun working through a late breakfast. Evalyn, on the other hand, couldn’t even think about food. If the sickness wasn’t enough, her thoughts were clouded with that of her daughter. There were no phones on aeroplanes; she’d have to go without a status report until she landed on solid ground.

“Evalyn,” Colte said.

“What?” Evalyn asked, turning towards him. His face was serious, eyebrows downturned with a solemn expression. It looked as though he was working through his thoughts just as much as he was his food.

“Evalyn, I’ve realised something. Well, no. I had this feeling from a long time ago, but I’ve written it off until now.”

“What is it?”

He put his bagel back into its paper bag and turned to her. “I think I know the motive.”

“What?” Evalyn asked, perking up in her seat. “What is it?”

“I think it has something to do with the cult.”

“The cult? So you think that Caynes is doing this for some agenda?”

“No, no. I don’t know why exactly Caynes is doing this…sorry motive wasn’t the right word. I’m just…I think the family is in on it.”

Evalyn crossed her eyebrows. “Excuse me? They’re sabotaging their own factories?”

“It’s a thought! It’s a thought, but I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t know why, but it’s a Spirit-supremacist cult worshipping this big Spirit and using the factories of a prominent member as part of some sort of ritualistic sacrifice of humans. Does that not make sense? Does that not sound like this family is using their resources for some sort of purpose?”

The international acquisitions of the Mallorine family were recent, recent enough that numerous police forces had cited its rapid ingress into rival business territories as the most likely motive.

“It would explain why the mother took her own life. I mean, their own family, their own cult was putting her daughter in danger. She must’ve found out what they were planning before she died. That’s why she hid that warning.”

And her lover’s suicide. Seeing the state Crestana was in might’ve driven him to suicide. Plenty of people used death to escape from debts; it wasn’t a far leap to assume he took the same route to escape from a murderous cult.

Principals, businesses, who was to say that power didn’t extend to the police? The military? Spirits in the high echelons of society that Forecer knew would intercept his plea for help even if he ran to the highest authority in the land.

“I know I can’t prove it, but everything fits,” Colte sighed, rubbing his temple. “It fits too well. Gods that poor girl.”

Evalyn closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, the sickness in her growing by the second. “Can this plane go any faster?”

In the few hours Iris had spent unconscious, the city had changed. What Iris thought would be a simple commute to Crestana’s aunt’s residence had become a maze of security detail. Word had travelled the lines, from Elliot to Elvera to the metropolitan police.

As Iris and Crestana were ushered into the back of the police car, Iris watched as Elliot talked to a police officer, an Inspector by the rank on his epaulettes. Evalyn had made Iris memorise each rank, to determine who she could safely talk down to and who she was to avoid.

A brief conversation passed, and Elliot jogged over the sidewalk to them, leaning into the doorframe. “It doesn’t look like I can come with you.”

“What? Why not?” Iris asked in stark opposition.

“You’re both in police custody right now. The only reason you’re allowed to stay with Crestana is because you’re her security detail. I’m not.”

“Surely you can come,” Crestana said, “you’re her guardian, and there’s not a chance the authorities know she’s actually my security detail.”

“Security detail, servant, Iris gets put in that category as long as she’s hired by your aunt. That gives her exemptions that I don’t get.”

He ruffled Iris’s hair, then put a hand on Crestana’s shoulder. “Just remember your training, Iris. Fall back on your defences and run away if it gets too tough. I’m going to do what I can from here, and I’ll give you a call when I head for the Steel Whale, got it?”

He squatted and gave them both a meaningful smile. “I’m sorry I’m not as much help as Evalyn is, Iris. But I’ll do the best I can.”

Iris smiled and gave him another hug. “Mum said that you not being needed is a good thing, because it means we aren’t at war.”

Elliot chuckled, squeezing her in return and kissing her cheek. “I guess she’s right.”

“You’re not useless, sir,” Iris heard Crestana say. “Iris needs you. I don’t know where we’d be without your support.”

“Yeah Dad,” Iris smiled, taking the compliment as light-hearted encouragement. But between the way that Crestana’s shutters drooped and the way Elliot’s smile turned solemn, Iris sensed there was something she was missing.

“The way you cared for Iris and me this morning…. Not all parents will cry for their children like that.”

“Maybe, but the good ones will always try to make sure their children are safe, even if they can’t live to see it.”

“You cried, Dad?!”

Elliot pinched Iris’s cheeks and wriggled her face to and fro. “I don’t know where you got that idea from,” he grinned as he stood and closed the door shut. He stepped back, nodding to the officers before waving. The car started, and the two watched his figure grow smaller until they finally turned around the corner.

The sound of turboprop engines roared high above the city, and Iris watched them pass through the window of the car. The city had changed, and what was once a simple commute across the district was interrupted by an emergency crossing.

A temporary roadblock made of iron bars and enforced by traffic control. Flashing lights warned commuters to pump the brakes and a deep rumbling of the concrete warned them as to why.

Crestana leaned over Iris to look out her window as two units of Higher Order Armour came marching down the street before them, their chassis painted blue and white, adorned with the mark of the Metropolitan police.

Hand-me-downs from the military, but no less terrifying. Diesel machines that had once terrorised the city returned as their protectors, but the way their march shook Iris to her core still triggered some sublime, innate fear inside her. The way their limbs were uncannily human, the way their overbearing stance supplanted humans as the top of the food chain.

But more than that, they were harbingers, like the tremors before an earthquake, the gust before a storm.

The units passed, the barrier rose, and Iris was left with a sickening pit in her stomach.

The empty, pristine ruins surrounding the Rhelik had guaranteed the city another scar, one that Caynes had yet to finish carving.