Until utopia begins. Until utopia begins. Until utopia begins. Until—

“Lieutenant-General,” Fault’s frigid words sounded, jolting Elvera from a contemplative torpor like a cold can against her neck. She turned in the Prime Minister’s direction.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You never did end up telling me what your opinions were on the situation.”

Only one degree removed from the Prime Minister’s desk itself, the Lieutenant-General had been invited to take up temporary residence in Fault’s office. It was an impractically vast space, sufficient enough for an entire team but built undeniably with a single person in mind. The walls simultaneously amplified the Prime Minister's presence and drew Marie's eyes back to her.

“No ma’am, I don’t believe I did.” Yesterday's interruption had carried on overwriting the rest of the day’s schedule. If that was reason enough for Fault to place Elvera by her side, she could only be flattered her advice was so valued.

“So?” the Prime Minister asked, resting her chin in her palm, looking rather evil when seated before the grand Sidosian coat of arms.

“So indeed,” Elvera continued. “Could I ask you a question first, ma’am?”

“My thoughts on the matter?”

“Not in their entirety, ma’am. Just…what do you think the enemy’s goal is?”

“Vesmos or this rogue faction?”

“Our rogue faction, ma’am, I daresay Vesmos is being led by its nose as much as we are.”

“Oh?” Fault said, raising an eyebrow and her posture. “How so?”

“If you’d answer my question first, ma’am.”

Fault crossed her arms, failing to hesitate when the moment arose.

“The NSC is united in its thinking: we're seeing yet more dregs of the Hardridge-era government. They’ve taken an opportunity and, with the military’s help, are attempting to develop a technology that can wipe out Spirits in our borders.”

“I agree,” Elvera said, truthfully. “But my question is if that’s the…entire picture.”

“How come?”

Elvera suppressed a deranged chuckle escaping from the side of her mouth. “I find it hard to believe myself, ma’am, but there’s been instances like this before. Several groups of interest come together less in alliances and more in perfect storms. They'll strike deals like corporations when trust is usually the biggest factor to these people.”

“You think something else has a hand in all of this?” Fault asked, leaning forward into her desk. Elvera watched the eagerness steep from Fault’s posture, the slight hints of urgency, curiosity in her tone of voice. The support Marie could glean from such a person, such an authority, was tempting.

Cementing what was still yet baseless hearsay and rumour into words, not just thought but spoken…was too dangerous.

Not yet. Not while she couldn’t hear it from the horse’s mouth.

“It’s convenient, is what I was theorising,” Elvera said, “and that a shadow pulling the strings would explain away a…phenomenon, that’s otherwise too cruel to be true.”

“It certainly would,” Fault said, deflating a little as she sank back into her chair. “But we can only deal headlong with what is in front of us.”

A very apt sentence for her character. Elvera feared it was exactly what the enemy was counting on.

The shrill shriek of a telephone bell ran through the room’s quietude, pleading with Fault to release it from its suffering, which she did in record time.

“Hello….” Her eyes flicked to Elvera. “It’s for you.”

A redirected call, likely from her other temporary office. She bridged the distance and leaned over the Prime Minister’s desk, taking the receiver and pressing her ear against it.

“Hello?”

“Marie? God was it a hassle getting to you,” Evalyn complained, already exacerbated. “What the hell changed between today and yesterday?”

“Nothing drastic, what’s this about?”

A wrap of knuckles against the door. Fault stood up to answer.

“Things…Marie. Several.”

“Let’s start with number one.”

“Alright. I tailed and bagged someone from the facility.”

“Evalyn!” Elvera hissed. “I wish you’d at least tell me before you pulled a stunt like that—”

“I know, I know. The trail led back to Sidos City. Got him to speak in his apartment. The guy is a political staffer for the Minister of Defence.”

“The minister of…not exactly surprised there.”

“Me neither. Says that the Minister began scheduling more and more appointments to the facility months ago, eventually pressuring him to visit the site in his stead and report back with progress.”

“Does he know what they’re building?”

“Anti-Aether technology, that’s the name he uses.”

“Anything about the scientist?”

“I asked, and no. Says that he doesn’t know where the designs came from or who gave them to the MOD.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he….” Elvera turned to the Prime Minister as the door closed, the attendant behind it shrinking back into the hallway. “What was the second thing?”

“When I tried to call home last night, Colte picked up instead. Says Iris called him the night before from somewhere West of Excala. I don’t know where she is right now.”

Elvera lowered her voice to a whisper. “Give that hostage to me, I’ll handle it while you go find Iris. She’s with her friends, I’m sure of it. Try not to worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Evalyn replied. “I’m fuming.”

The phone hung up, and Elvera dropped the receiver as the Prime Minister walked over, a brown envelope in hand. “He said it was left at the reception desk this morning. Blank address, no information on who it’s from or who it’s addressed to.”

“Then why are we the ones dealing with it?” Elvera asked.

The Prime Minister removed the paper inside the envelope as she rounded the desk, throwing them down so they splayed outwards.

The first file was a personnel profile, complete with a headshot clipped to a set of documents. Personal details, employment history, current positions. A familiar face: pudgy around the cheeks and wispy hair that reminisced of a long-gone full widow’s peak.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

“Jason Norris, Director of the Interior and second to the Minister of Home Affairs. It’s everything the government has filed on him.”

Underneath was a map crudely cut from a travel magazine, the overly blocky streets still littered with fun facts and attractions. In red marker, a line was drawn across it, beginning at one dot and ending at another. Times marked out each end, an X cut the route in two.

“The line ends at Parliament House….”

“Eight forty-five…so the start must be his address. Is it correct?”

“Yes, it is.” The Prime Minister checked her watch. “It’s only been an hour since we opened for business, so no one batted an eye. Now the entire city is out looking for him.”

The Prime Minister, clasped her hands behind her head, exhaling through her teeth as her eyes flashed around the room.

A route marked out in red.

“It’s a threat. For all we know he’s going to turn up dead at any moment.”

Trysha often hitched rides on car boots for free. One of the few upsides to her life since the day a Spirit forced onto her something she never asked for—a selfish legacy that overwrote any she might’ve looked forward to. Now, when she gazed at her fingertips, it wasn’t her prints she saw, but the asphalt flying underneath the tyres.

She closed her eyes, recalling the red line a colleague had drawn down a colourful map. The second turn before the car slowed to a stop at a red light.

The city centre in peak traffic. If the sun wasn’t bad enough, the fumes from the engines around her did the trick. She unbuttoned her shirt, knowing no one would notice either way. It had excited her the first few times, dressing and or undressing however she wanted before the eyes of many, but that rare novelty had long since worn off.

She swung her legs, the grip on her handgun barely holding by a finger. Conservative compared to the axe she’d been given on her last job, although considering her target it had simply been the most efficient tool.

‘Forget how similar the M.O.’s are’, her colleague had insisted. ‘Just worry about getting the job done, it’ll work out for us either way’.

With such an obtuse goal, she couldn’t see how the pursuers of Utopia could fail in reaching it. But Trysha had come to see that was a positive of theirs. Their final destination was unfathomable, unreasonable even, but Trysha couldn’t picture the world going in any other direction.

Even if it isn’t in the exact way they picture it, it’ll ‘work out for us either way’.

The car started again, wheels slowly rolling through narrow, congested roads where cars were an afterthought fitted to streets designed for pedestrians. The grey and black lapped up the heat, turning into the walls of a kiln Trysha begged to be free of as soon as possible.

She turned her head, past the three men comfortably seated in the car, and out to the stout building that still dominated from several blocks away. Terraced roof, arching atrium, greyer than grey could ever be.

The car slowed as Trysha’s grip on her handgun tightened. Another traffic light.

The mission admittedly wasn’t her forte. She’d once fancied herself an expert thief, robbing valuables from under rich and powerful noses. But apathy was easier to maintain and simply pointing a gun at someone before walking off had proven to be an easier payday.

She didn’t have any nobility to prove to anyone, at least not anymore.

The brakes squealed as Trysha’s grip around her handgun tightened. Hopping off the boot, she waltzed around the car, levelling her sights with the rear wheel.

Silenced, chambered with a competition-shooting calibre. With engines idling, she might as well have made a pop with her mouth as she depressed the trigger and punctured a hole through the rubber.

The bang of the tyres replaced what sound the gun should’ve made, and air began to whistle from the hole, sending the car’s rear half into a gentle, lopsided decline.

Soon, the shotgun door opened, and a suited man stepped out. Young, perhaps her age. Kids at home, a wife if the marriage was good. She’d give him a hell of a story to tell her that night.

Trysha stepped aside as the man slammed his door closed and beelined for the flat tyre, eyes passing through her as he did so. She watched the man for a second, thoroughly occupied in working out the issue. Satisfied, she rounded the corner, coming to the roadside door.

Trysha hadn’t watched him enter the car as she’d only hitched the boot halfway through the journey, but the cheeks, the hair, or rather lack thereof, matched the photo sitting on her fold-out desk like a glove.

Jason…Norrick? She couldn’t remember.

At such a rate, she could start a coup. Parliament house was a few blocks away, and no human would be privy to her movements in the slightest.

But one thing saved Sidos’s government, a small difference in objective that kept Trysha from pulling the trigger on the Prime Minister’s head and instead on the Director of the Interior’s.

A small detail in the end result. Instead of a coup, which, if even successful, would only restart a long-dead civil war the masses had already forgotten, she was to spur a new conflict with new belligerents, new stakes, and new toys.

Or, well, she was only paid to do the latter. They had people already working on the former.

She grabbed the handle and politely opened the door, the car obliging with a hollow thunk. The Director of the Interior turned towards her, eyes only coming up to her chest. She forgave him for looking at, or rather through, such a place; he didn’t have long to reflect on his actions anyway.

The second time around was no less nerve-wracking than the first. From the constant radio chatter to pencils etching lead onto paper notepads, the needling sounds like cutlery against porcelain kept his eyes open out of sheer spite.

A mid-morning call had interrupted their latest briefing, cutting short news reports around a ‘developing situation’.

The unexplainable assassination of a high-ranking official. Broad daylight, peak traffic, zero witnesses. The circumstances were so concordant with a previous murder it didn’t take more than a coin’s worth of brain matter to put two and two together.

The feud with the unconfirmed enemy had grown another set of legs to scurry away, out of Sidos’s control like an oversized cockroach. And, like it were a god’s will, the early bird had come down from the sky to snag its early meal.

Alarm bells, red lights, scramble, scramble.

Two fighters had taken off twenty minutes before the current moment; both Geverdian, both piloted by Amestris’s Children with shape-shifter magic. Their novelty was long since lost on him, but the same couldn’t be said for their usefulness.

Marking a Spirit on visual or radar was reason enough for a spy plane to turn tail and run, if they were spying over Geverde.

Over Sidos, Elliot hoped they would only be taken as minor nuisances like a curious crow was to a sniper.

Disjointed, static-ridden reports funnelled into one another, growing like a snowball with every new word. Much of it was the same, to Elliot’s dismay and confusion. Clarity of their ghosts was inversely proportional to their visual—the two undercover fighters only confirmed this with their own eyes and instruments.

On and off, flashing like a dying ember before burning once again, often for no more than half a minute at a time.

Elliot etched the spans down in his notebook once again, chronicling the half-hour run as faithfully as he could. Fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds on the clock: an abnormally long visual drop-off, and as the pattern dictated, an intensely fierce ghost.

Elliot jotted down the times and flicked between his current notes and the previous. Back and forth, back and forth.

Slight differences, a second or two at most. Considering the changes in weather and mismatching angles of attack it was to be expected.

But only a second or two difference between the previous day and the present. He abandoned his notetaking, turning his attention to archiving instead. It wasn’t a conclusion that the analysts couldn’t come up with in two minutes flat, if anything they’d have better proof for it.

But it was nagging him, and that nagging bore fruit.

Complete visual drop-off first recorded at four minutes and fifty-six seconds, repeated again albeit five seconds later. Visual later reconfirmed thirty-three seconds later, extended to thirty-nine seconds the second time around.

An abnormally long period of ghost fluctuation between seven minutes and fifteen seconds to seven minutes and forty-four seconds. Repeated again, with slightly varied time stamps but for the same length of time.

Airspeed was unchanged—perhaps it had something to do with the camera shutter’s limitations.

“The target is carrying a payload underneath the fuselage.” The report snagged Elliot by the snout, dragging his ears back into the present. “It looks like…some sort of vent? Or an intake?”

Vent. Intake. He couldn’t make nose nor rudder of it for the moment.

Elliot closed his notebook, raising his head to get a read on the room as the radio reports slowly fizzled out. The analysts would have all the data he needed to confirm his theory, what he needed to worry about was the steps that came next; the people he’d be working with.

Lukewarm enthusiasm, if he measured the mean of every person in the room. Elliot himself sat somewhere between fierce notetaking and auscultating the radio. A few were doing so silently; arms crossed, eyes closed. Others had their focus elsewhere.

The radio, the analyst’s telegraph stations, the last pin for the day digging into the cork, many men in the room found the back of his head infinitely more interesting.

And they drilled his scalp until cigarette burns were smouldering through his hair.

Elliot got up to leave prematurely—his theory would have to wait.

“Oi Sir!” a voice called through grinning teeth. “Heard some rumours that you bailed on us back in the day for some chick. Was she worth it?”

Elliot stowed his pen in his pocket, standing up and making for the door.

“What use would it be explaining to you, Lieutenant? The last time you felt a woman’s touch was probably when she gave birth to you, prick.”

“Better watch your damn back,” the Lieutenant grumbled to his mate as Elliot walked past, making him stop in his tracks.

“What was that, Lieutenant?”

“Said you should be cautious, Sir. People grumble about new officers. Hazed them a couple of times, too.”

“Well, if they know who I am they’d better hope I don’t find them first.” Elliot turned around to face the pilot. “Or would you be a good little wind-up soldier and tattle on them for me? Since your loyalty knows no bounds.”

The pilot remained silent, a scowl marring his face as he drilled his pen into his notepad.

“Thought not,” Elliot concluded, turning again for the door.