Provenance thought that leaving the sinner to reap what they sowed was a form of justice, no matter how cruel or primitive the punishment was. After all, once the mob took over, the punishment rarely matched the crime, if one could be decided on in the first place.
No one was above the law, but no one was beneath it. That was the ideal, but once the country moved, whoever lost the tug of war—be it government or monarchy—had to move with it. Lucky for his case, police had, in a way, cut the line before the tug of war ever started, hiding away the perpetrators in a way that left it ambiguous who exactly was responsible for the arrest.
They were at a tie with the public, combatting numbers and volume with resources and secrecy. Little got out to the masses, so the beast circled, searching in a fog for something to direct its fire at and harassing everything equally with a rationed fury.
Even Provenance could only discern a fun fact list’s worth of information: all casualties, an overload of Aether had culled the oldest and left the rest incapacitated. Various distances from death's door, that’s all his sources could say for certain. Hush hush on the whereabouts as well. Any leak and there’d be protests at their doorstep. Rumours had circulated they were being kept en masse somewhere in the Royal Excalan Hospital, but upwards of fifty victims—all of extremely high class—being admitted to the same hospital for the same ailment would kick up more than just rumours.
He wrote shapes into his coffee art with the thin end of a spoon as he scribbled his thoughts on a napkin, a habitual tick of his that he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. It was never coherent, but nonetheless needed to be burnt, an occurrence so common he’d invested in a quality lighter, depriving a much more deserving cigar enthusiast.
He could sympathise with the public: a drive without a goal, blindly accelerating in every direction, hoping they wouldn't run out of fuel before they found the right one.
Provenance tried to keep his calm as he went through the same struggle, striving to regard Caynes's death with respect but feeling it slip away every time he dialled the dead man's number.
The recording could switch on a certain day, and play the answers to his myriad questions if he dialled a certain number of times.
No. It would’ve been more likely that Caynes was still alive, getting a chuckle out of every ring of the phone.
“You look terrible.”
Provenance looked up from his coffee, assuming it was one of the diner waitresses finally snapping, their daily mundanity driving them over the edge.
But it wasn’t the uniform, and instead, a drab overcoat framing a white blouse, the hem of a dull green skirt fluttering about the knees. He looked the woman up and down as though trying to recall her.
That wasn’t his intention, but her albino eyes nonetheless continued to scrutinize him with a vacant glare.
“What? Surprised I had a body?”
“No, more so I’m surprised you don’t have a brain.”
“I’m more than just a brain, which is more than I can say for you. I didn’t feel like being a disembodied foot-tapping Spirit, so I wasn’t.”
She sat across from him, shedding her overcoat and folding it over her lap. “What does it matter to you anyway? As long as I do my part.”
“As long as you do your part, yes, but you can't do that from a prison cell, or worse."
“Then you start being invisible if it’s so important,” she said, waving a waitress over and ordering a coffee. “Being a mutant is bad enough, I don’t want to go around flaunting it. Makes me forget I’m human.”
Provenance watched her settle in, the poised demeanour and perfect posture exactly how Wesper had described it when recommending her. Trysha Kepila, a Witch tethered to a far west human nation in name only, whose true calling was whoever offered the most cash.
So he found it strange when she landed at his doorstep, asking to see the new era so many Wizards and Witches preached about. Bloodshot eyes, hair damaged, and teeth in perpetual chatter. It had taken five months for her to recover, although Provenance had nothing to do with the process. He had simply given her work, that was all he could reliably do.
“I’d like a progress report,” he said as the waitress left Trysha with her milky, light-brown coffee. Already a bastardised version of the pure-blackish brown of his cup, she then added sugar to the mix and began to stir.
“Progress is that your target is in the ground,” she mumbled before taking a sip. “Tool’s at the bottom of a canal, and if the radio is anything to go by, no one has any clue about what happened.”
“What about his research?”
“I took what he had on him: just a manila folder’s worth of blueprints, nothing special. Not much use without him in the room to explain them.”
“And his hotel room?”
“One of the others searched it before I left that morning. Said they couldn’t find anything in the way of research on his personal effects, nor any of the notes from you suggesting he escape to Sidos. He was travelling light.”
“Perhaps he thought he could keep his secrets in his own head.”
“Which means his knowledge dies with him,” Trysha said, finishing his line of thought. She took another sip, her eyes regaining a small sliver of life every time she did so. “Our contact says there’s also been some movement in Prime Minister Fault’s inner circle,” she continued.
“And I’m guessing it isn’t about housing prices?”
“How did you guess?” she said without a hint of a smile. “A National Security Council, although if it has to do with your Vesmos contacts, he said he couldn’t say for certain. It's Sidos, they call enough meetings about domestic terrorism.”
Provenance nodded along, thankful the developments were entertaining enough to pique his interest.
“Are you going to warn them?” she asked. “Vesmos, I mean.”
“No,” he replied, honestly. “I have no obligation to, and none of their movements were my idea in the first place.”
“You just connect the dots to make sure we arrive at the worst possible outcome, huh?”
“You may think of it as meddling, if it makes things easier to understand,” Provenance suggested, wrapping his calloused hands around his mug. “In reality, it’s more pathetic than that.”
“How so?”
“…because all it is, is trying to do over countless lifetimes what real power could accomplish in a heartbeat.”
Trysha watched him, confliction in her widening eyes as she scraped away the sleep from her tear ducts. “You mentioned it was a long game, but I didn’t imagine the extent.”
“Well I’m hopeful we’ll see the edge of that extent soon,” he said, reassuring himself as much as he was reassuring her. “All of us, from all over the continent, regardless of how long we’ve been waiting.”
Trysha placed her cup on its saucer, half empty and coated in brown froth.
“If you listened to a request, I’d help you find what you’re looking for.”
He turned his gaze to her while she turned it away from him.
“What is it?” he asked, making his subconscious assumptions do the work of filling in the gaps. Another cheque, a fatter payout.
Instead, she pursed her lips as though embarrassed to ask, circling her finger around the rim of her mug.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Make sure I get what I lost when we make the world again,” she said.
It was a gross misinterpretation of the Tetrica Resonances Provenance had spent years pouring over; a misguided hope sprouted by someone who had read the book, understood the gist, and then used it to justify their own desires.
Provenance didn’t pretend to care. No one could warp his own mission, and he was perfectly positioned to play off their overstimulated imaginations. None of it would matter, as long as the final goal was achieved.
So he lied.
“Yes, I believe I can do that for you,” he said, unable to be completely confident in his lie. The sole moral his silver tongue couldn’t compromise on entirely.
At this, Trysha seemed to smile a tired smile, and for the first time, Provenance truly understood how desperate she really was.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” she said, savouring Provenance’s hollow promise and her sugary coffee. “He’s younger, a sweetheart but terrible in bed. Gullible, unfortunately.”
“How did you figure that out?”
“Intuitively. But he knows I have him nailed down as the type to look up at the ceiling looking for the bloody word. He got self-conscious, started second-guessing everything his coworkers told him.”
She shifted her backside forward and leaned over her cup while Provenance observed the performance. Her voice had risen in volume, and a small smile had grown across her lips. “One time—quite recently actually—a coworker of his told him that the old, unused wing was going back into service to accommodate an influx of patients with Aether Circuit Damage. He thought the guy was pulling his leg until his boss scolded him for not showing up the next day.”
“Really? Your poor boyfriend. Must be having a hard enough time already.”
“Yeah, but he chose it after all. Studying years to be an Aetherologist in the country’s top mental institution isn’t something that happens by accident.”
“I guess not,” Provenance shrugged, barely able to contain his relief.
Trysha pulled up her sleeve and checked her watch, eyes—now reborn thanks to the caffeine—widening as she gave Provenance and an uncanny smile.
“Speaking of the devil,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet him soon.”
“Sorry for keeping you so long,” Provenance said, forcing a smile, and Trysha returned a wave that wouldn’t look out of character for any normal woman her age.
For someone desperate to retain her humanity, she was awfully adept at changing hers at the drop of a hat. As for which one was real, that was none of Provenance’s business.
Elvera watched the Prime Minister address her National Security Council from afar, seated on the fringes of the room as Fault headed the centre table. She’d heard the mere action in itself had been a sort of announcement to the rest of Parliament.
Something was going on; that much at least was now public knowledge in the cabinet. Blood was in the water, and the small congregation of twenty weren’t to let a single morsel slip past the flimsy grey doors at the end of the chamber.
It was the second meeting, one called out of urgency when Elvera had come knocking on the Prime Minister’s office with new information. She had seen Fault’s eyes widen and tire all at once, and the strength drain from her shoulders as she read the report.
“Excalan intelligence has separately confirmed two pieces of new information that increase the severity of our situation twofold.”
Fault flicked her eyes around the table as though running a final gut check on each member’s trustworthiness. To thrive in such a cutthroat environment, the instantaneous manoeuvre was undoubtedly the stuff of legend.
“Lieutenant-General, if you’d be so kind.”
Elvera took the stage involuntarily. Rubbing shoulder-to-shoulder with her Sidosian counterparts was low on the list of ways to start her morning. The room seemed to glare at her collectively, a plain outsider in the NSC, from the shine of her shoes to the antlers sewn into her epaulettes.
She cleared her throat, finding it unnerving how similar the sensation was to when she addressed the council.
“Troops from the 42nd Heavy Infantry Division have been spotted guarding what the Prime Minster has informed me was understood to be a small mountain outpost on the fringes of the Northern Chain Ridge. Depending on how this line of inquiry develops, we could be looking at large-scale insubordination or corruption.”
Different faces, or rather, absent ones compared to the list of names she’d been handed moments before entering the room. The short, cropped beard of the middle-aged Minister of Defence was notably missing. It made sense, considering the circumstances. There was a risk of further splitting in the party, but letting the potential perpetrator in on their every movement would only send them further on the back foot.
Elvera could only guess as to the animosity already present.
“Secondly, a foreign researcher was assassinated in Excala after organising a meeting with a local journalist. According to an anonymous letter they addressed to the contact, they had developed technology capable of destroying Aether. That information had, at some point, been handed to Sidosian Authorities, before he supposedly caught wind of a plan to dispose of him. Thankfully we managed to catch the story before publication.”
Elvera watched Fault as she gave pause in her speech, her eyes flicking around the room again, gauging reactions and reading faces.
“Considering timings and commonalities, a possible narrative is that this weapon, whatever shape and form, is being held at this outpost by domestic authorities of…significantly high status. This information has since leaked to Vesmos, and culminated in their ongoing espionage attempts.”
She turned to the Prime Minister, giving a faint nod. “Ma’am,” she uttered, before reclaiming her seat and closing her mouth. She wasn’t at liberty to say who her sources were, but the only person who understood that was the last person she was worrying about.
Say your piece, be passive, and things will sort itself out. Evalyn had learnt in person that no one would shoot the messenger if they stood in Fault’s good graces, a theory that Elvera wasn’t all too happy testing.
Pride. Perhaps the Sidosian humans had fought Spirits for so long that their pride had rubbed off on them. Watching one’s leader rely on information from a former enemy without even the presence of the Minister of Defence: even if they held no will to the woman herself, she could see the gears turning in many of their heads, unwilling to admit just how divided their government still was.
Scars. Scars of Sidos’s history, even with S.H.I.A.’s rule in their rear-view mirrors.
“So, because of the circumstances, the senior members of the National Security Council congregation of July 1941 have voted against the attendance of current Minister of Defence, Jared Campbell. All information must be kept strictly confidential to the people in this room, orders and correspondence with auxiliary bodies regarding the matters discussed, including the Military branches, will be vetted beforehand. To not do so will be considered an act of treason, and relevant punishments will apply.”
She stretched her shoulders, lining her spine with the back of her chair as she regained a silent command over the room.
“Are we clear?”
The Prime Minister hadn't made it ten paces from the meeting's conclusion before the cropped beard made its long-awaited appearance.
"Was that what I think it was?" he asked, Elvera noticing the subtle differences between his photos and the real thing. The cropped beard was patchier around the cheeks, and the face wider than she remembered them looking.
She followed Fault from outside their security perimeter as the Prime Minister blanked on his question entirely. Her mouth barely twitched, and not in response to his presence.
He gave chase, following them down the empty corridor and out into a reading space, the books and furniture more for show than function. Not that it contributed much.
"That was an NSC meeting," he said, although to Elvera it sounded as though he was stating the obvious. "You can't just kick me—"
"Perhaps surprisingly to your narrow perception of my leadership, the decision was not one I made myself. Every member I disclosed the information to prior to the meeting came to the same conclusion."
"You can't—"
"Tell me what I can and can't do when you figure out how to tell your subordinates that they can't deploy military divisions in our borders without an NSC cabinet or Home Affairs's permission." she seethed, the words slipping through her teeth like a cat's hiss. "Get that right and we might not be in this mess in the first place."
The Defense Minister's face curled into a grotesque shape, halfway between a sneer and weep. "You bloody tyrant," he said, tearing his eyes away and storming in the opposite direction, picking up enough speed to flip the hems of his suit jacket.
Elvera watched him turn a corner and disappear from sight, wondering if he knew where he was going.
"What did you think?" Fault asked, catching the Lieutenant-General while her attention was still wrapped in the corner the Defense Minister had disappeared behind.
"I get the impression that you've already made up your mind, ma'am," she said, finally turning back to Fault, who shifted a chin in a way that could be considered a nod.
"I think it goes without saying," she said. "Then what about the situation?"
"The situation?"
"I value your expertise," she said. "The woman I mentioned, Evalyn Hardridge, she gave me a...stern talking to when I first met her."
'That sounds like her', is what she wanted to say, but she kept her pride for her god-daughter contained as their security urged them to continue their journey.
"Where to start," Elvera mumbled under her breath as Fault waited for an answer, her face as expressive as a blank slate.
From the beginning, a sense of doubt had nagged at her, the sort of feeling she reserved for when she was led to believe unbelievable things. Her line of work had come with a fair share of unbelievable things to believe, a rough split down the middle between false alarms and new realities she was forced to consider.
Sidos's government, the researcher's assassination, the Vesmosian spy plane—a natural course of events, all things considered. Variables colliding in such a way to create the worst possible scenario was plausible.
But between S.H.I.A.'s magnum opus, their deals with the F.S.A., the Vesmos crisis and Caynes's coopting of the Temple, the hand of God was cropping up more and more as the years went by.
Perhaps it was a retrospective bias, but like in the past, those same perfect circumstances had collided to exacerbate three already separate storms into one giant tempest.
"Tetrica," she said, the word dancing on her lips as images of Colte fluttered through her mind. There were words they could apply to the phenomenon now: 'Tetrica Resonances', 'Until Utopia Begins'. With shape, with words, it was now impossible for her to ignore.
And if her instincts, her 'gut check', so to speak, were correct, they had to snag the threat tying the entire operation together before they lost sight of it again.
Fast.
"Prime Minister!" a shrill voice called from behind them. Their security reacted first, placing themselves between the messenger and the recipient. Out of breath, clutching her knees, she began to speak between panting breaths.
"Geverdian Deity Division has spotted a fast-moving unidentified aircraft over the Northern Chain. The Lieutenant-General is needed back at her office immediately."