Iris watched from the bed as Evalyn pulled her arms through her coat sleeves. Outfit complete, she stood still, metaphorically dipping her toes into the bath.

Unfortunately, it didn’t pass the human thermometer test. Her face crumpled, and she took the coat off, leaving it with her briefcase on top of the unmade bedsheets. Turning to Iris, she smiled.

“You’re forgetting something.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Your head must feel pretty light at the moment.”

It was Iris’s turn to crumple her face.

“Our worry is that the F.S.A. agents will burn everything they have the moment they suspect a thing. Use any leverage you will, just make sure word doesn’t get out of that garage to any employees not on shift. We’ll be close behind to clean up the mess, so use your faces if you need to.”

“So cut their phones, seize radios, apprehend them all at once, and only then do we start talking.”

“Any earlier, you might lose our best lead.”

“Can’t we kidnap them first, talk later?”

“If you can find an abandoned basement somewhere, sure. Hotels are risky, the embassy can’t divert government funds into a property for something the Council doesn’t know about, and bringing them here is out of the question.”

She turned around.

“And, it goes without saying, activating a full-blown Mind Palace that close to the city, Spirits will flock to it like flies. So don’t even think about it.”

With that, the Witch and Wizard bid them farewell, with no real guarantee of ever meeting again. Still, the handshakes were brief, and they exchanged no names. The mission continued, the only through-line ever proving that they had any interaction at all.

That embrace Iris shared with a stranger, it may as well have never happened.

The car they borrowed from the embassy was a box of junk. Barely running, it was the type of job that would need an entire shop’s worth of mechanics to assess, gawk at, and leave bewildered before they could even undo the first screw…or find it, for that matter.

Iris watched her mother take a final right turn, disappearing behind the corner of Mob Reet Garage and Mechanical Repairs. The stout building barely stood out from the dust-laden streets surrounding it, brick and mortar filled with fine sand until it coloured the entire neighbourhood brownish yellow.

It was a ghetto; construction company dorms for humans who had no master’s basement to sleep in built and lived in ones of their own make. What little business could thrive in such an environment like a sapling in the desert, did so by all means necessary. The area just didn’t scream ‘business prospects’ to Iris whatsoever.

“I sense no Spirits nearby,” the Queen whispered into her ear. “No human witnesses either. Empty as a Wednesday.”

Iris confirmed with her own eyes the street was thoroughly deserted. She looked up, finding the corner of the garage roof and reaching towards it.

Her hair disassembled, pieces conjoining both into a liquid grappling hook and her helmet. The plates closed over her head, and the silver of the hairpiece dug into her scalp. She compensated, loosening it around her crown.

The grappling hook stuck to the tin roof and held firmly despite the sand, digging solid teeth into the metal with a distant, soft crunch. She tugged on the rope, then reeled herself in.

Flying through the air, she positioned herself feet first, softening the landing with more purple matter before climbing herself over the edge.

Infrastructure was poor in such a part of the city; subterranean, let alone Aether phone lines, were a luxury. Iris read the closest utility pole, the two cables running underneath the electricity infrastructure being the two that routed communication. The thick black lines followed the path running along the street until it branched off and into the garage’s roof.

Iris severed the connection, watching the cable line fall limp before moving across the rooftop, keeping to the rear end of the building.

Underneath her was an alleyway, overflowing dumpsters lining the path one after another. She hopped down, catching her own fall before looking around.

A back entrance several paces left of her presented an enticing option, but the risk was too great. Ventilation shafts, all too small for her to crawl through. Asides from that, she was staring down a brick wall.

“The door,” the Queen whispered.

“What about it?” Iris asked, eyes searching for another option while her ears searched for the sound of Evalyn’s voice. The car was no longer sputtering, so hopefully it wouldn’t be long before the entire garage headed her mother’s way.

“Get me to the door,” the Queen reiterated. “I can help.”

Iris reconsidered the first and most obvious option. Her gas was odourless, but not colourless, and any probe liquid or solid would not go unnoticed for long.

She conceded, keeping her footsteps quiet as she approached the metal door.

“Slip the jewel underneath,” she said.

“You can see?” Iris asked, panicking as she recalled every heinous act of disrespect she’d done assuming Her Majesty was temporarily blindsided.

“Only when it is required of me,” she clarified. “I am not so Tuesday as to invade your privacy.”

Iris wished ‘privacy’ also included keeping voices to her ears and not her head, but she held her tongue, feeling the icy edge of the executioner’s axe leave the nape of her neck.

Undoing the hairpiece, she passed it underneath the generous, rusted gap underneath the door and waited patiently.

Second by second ticked by—muffled bickering from beyond the brick wall filled the silence.

“Someone is taking their lunch, another is similarly on break…reading.”

“One on either side?”

“Correct.”

Iris bit her lip. There were little chances of her slipping in undetected. Divide and conquer it was.

She refitted the hairpiece to her head and stepped back a few paces, crouching behind the safety of a dumpster before moulding a lump of purple matter into a sphere. She flicked her wrist, sending it into the door and making it clatter.

One…two…three…

She tried again, this time knocking flakes of paint off the rusted surface.

One…two…

The door opened, and a worker stepped out. Malnourished and tanned from the sunlight, his jaw was still working through something as they glanced down the street, left and right.

If luck had it, the other worker’s book was keeping them occupied.

Iris waited until the mechanic before her appraised the damage, closing the door behind him and cutting himself off from the outside.

She took the opportunity, lashing out with a tendril and delivering a solid blow to the back of his head, catching him as he fell. She lowered him to the ground, before grabbing the doorhandle.

“Right,” the Queen whispered as though reading her mind.

Iris opened the door and stepped through, eyeing the second worker and dealing a similar blow to them before their nose ever left their novel. They slumped over in their chair, asleep for the moment.

Iris paused for a few seconds, watching the worker for any twitches or spasms. None. A clean job.

She assessed the room: what could qualify as the remains of a kitchen sat in one corner of the room while the rest remained sparsely furnished. A blackboard divvied up into days of the week afforded her a clearer picture of their adversaries.

Seven employees in total; all assumed F.S.A., five of which were currently on shift, two of which were currently unconscious.

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She wedged the door to the room with purple matter, digging it into the concrete floor with spokes for added assurance. Finally, Iris breathed, passing her eye over the room.

“Radio to on the kitchen counter,” the Queen said, and Iris’s eyes followed. Using a tendril, she punctured a hole clean through it.

“See any others?” Iris asked.

“No. The office?”

The building was tall enough for two floors; most of it would make up the garage floor, a reasonable guess being everything beyond the door she had wedged.

“Can you check under the door again?” Iris asked.

“Certainly.”

Iris reached through her helmet and undid the pin, using the wedge to bend a hole in the base of the metal door. She’d seen automotive garages before; they were popular fronts for illegal operations. It wouldn’t be strange to consider most of the building was open floor, placing the only available space for an office directly above.

“Metal structures are obscuring my view; what are those?”

“Focus.”

“Hardridge is engaging with two workers. They don’t look too pleased.”

“What else? Any rooms?”

“No. The space is quite wide open. It matches the profile of the building exterior.”

“Above then,” Iris hissed, fitting the hairpiece back into her fringe and undoing the wedge on the door. She looked around, crumpling her nose at the mess she’d made.

At her command, several tendrils wrapped themselves around the man outside, dragging his unconscious body into the room.

“I don’t do restraints well,” Iris admitted. “They disappear when I don’t think about them.”

“The cupboards over there are held together with…what is that material?”

“Duct tape.”

“Surely there’s some left over.”

Iris released her tendrils, each molecule disassembling into gas that filled the entire room, seeping into the gaping gaps between each piece of furniture.

Cockroaches, rat droppings, a handheld radio she destroyed by hardening the gas inside it…

“There,” she whispered, singling out the tape inside a kitchen drawer and retrieving it, condensing the gas into tendrils once again. Tearing off pieces, she securely bound four hands and two mouths.

Iris next moved up to the door, pressing her ear against it. Distant talking, which she assumed was the fruit of Evalyn’s labour. Besides that, it was dead silent until muffled shouting broke out, startling her.

“Upstairs,” the Queen said.

If directed towards another worker, that would make all five employees accounted for.

Iris opened the door slowly, feeling outside air against her skin as she tucked herself behind a set of car hoists, rusted beams flaking their paint onto her jacket. She looked to her left and found a set of staircases in the far corner of the workshop, leading upwards above the break room.

She peeked around her cover, scanning the area for any unaccounted-for movement. Two mechanics were craning their neck under the hood of Evalyn’s car, completely engrossed. With their backs turned, the floor was temporarily hers.

She gathered purple matter underneath her feet, silently floating an inch above the concrete from cover to cover. From one beam of the hoist to the other, crossing the gap to the next hoist.

Talking, only this time it was louder, echoed by the vast walls of the building. Iris stopped; a mechanic had turned in her direction.

Too many sightlines; what avenues of movement were safe had changed at the drop of a hat. She pressed herself against the beam, replaying in her head the position of every worker as the footsteps continued to draw nearer.

One by one, the steps falling in sync with her heartbeat as she desperately kept control over her breathing, imagining her next moves should things go south…

A crash of metal against concrete, and the footsteps paused, reversed, and turned into a jog.

Iris dared a brief peek around the corner to find her mother stumbling on the floor, driver seat door ripped off its hinges as she smiled like an idiot and held onto her flat cap. Her marking was gone, hidden under heavy concealer.

Iris took the opportunity, making for the stairs. The door to the office creaked open, and heavy footsteps against the metal stairs followed as someone descended.

She dived underneath the last few flights of the staircase and caught her fall as the third and final worker passed directly overhead. Their footsteps also faded into the conundrum.

Iris stood and rounded the staircase, climbing them and reaching the door.

“Stop,” the Queen said. “It’s a Spirit.”

“So?”

“You cannot render him unconscious so easily.”

“Then what do I do?”

“Leave it to me.”

From her vantage point, she could see the small catastrophe swallow the workers’ lines of sight, but it wouldn’t last for much longer. She felt her heart beating against her ribcage and finally sighed.

“All right,” Iris said. She turned the door handle and opened it.

Immediately, the air changed. What was minutes ago making her sweat through her jacket now had her grasping at every bit of warmth she could find. Proper paint surrounded her, mauve dye hiding flimsy walls while carpets hid rotting floorboards. The lines converged in front of her, on a Spirit occupying the far side of the room. Jagged lines jutted out at random angles, the only piece of clothing fitting the inconvenient physique being a tie around what Iris was forced to deduce was his neck.

“Who are you?” the boss asked, worry only catching up to his voice after the sentence.

But even given the head start, he couldn’t outrun her hairpiece.

The aura that radiated from the Queen’s perch wasn’t directed at her, but she was drunk off it, nonetheless. An otherworldly presence filled the room, shouldering the air out of the way, leaving Iris breathless. Her knees grew weak, taken over by an inexplicable need to kneel; to declare her subservience.

If it were not for the Spirit of Destruction’s pride sitting somewhere deep in her psyche, she would’ve given in. The pure charisma and leadership of a natural-borne leader, a ruler, using Aether as its medium instead of words and tangible communication.

The effect it exerted on the Spirit across from her was even greater. She watched as the jagged lifeform buckled under the sheer weight of it. They didn’t last long, soon dipping their head and rattling the desk in the process.

Stay.

The word resonated within the four walls of the room: a single, firm command, of which in human language took the form of mindless zeal or silver-tongue words. This was instead primal, like the snarl of a wolf or the growl of a bear.

Iris approached the desk, duct tape in hand, seeing that the boss barely moved a muscle since the Queen had issued her command.

“Will it hold?”

“Not for long. Best to secure any extremities.”

“Theres too many,” Iris muttered, crouching beside the boss to examine the silhouette. Instead, something else caught her eye.

“Is that a panic button?”

“What is that?”

“It’s a silent alarm. It calls the police.”

The glass seal was broken, the button depressed. Somewhere in that fall, the boss had found the opportunity to make her day hell.

“That’s a problem, I’d assume.”

“Isn’t that obvious?”

Iris sprinted out of the office and made for the bottom of the stairs, throwing away caution in the wind as she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“The police are coming!”

No other reaction came besides an explosion of Aether as three golden limbs forced the garage doors shut, plunging the place into darkness. Iris followed the golden glimmer, finding a golden suit of armour in place of her mother when she rounded the last corner.

“You’re F.S.A. aren’t you?” Evalyn asked, skipping formalities and diving headfirst into business.

The three bound engineers shook their head out of reflex. Evalyn sighed, tightening the bounds like a hand under stress.

“We have sufficient evidence to implicate every one of you for terrorism, and that isn’t a risk I’d imagine you’re willing to take. Am I right?”

Evalyn crouched before one worker in particular, hiding his fear behind gritted teeth.

“You have no foothold here anymore, we know that. So you do us a favour, and we don’t have to make martyrs out of you all for something that’s no longer worth it.”

None had an answer for her, so she pressed forward.

“Three years ago, the Fadaaki military destroyed an F.S.A. base in the desert. Do you know if anyone is keen on taking revenge for that defeat?”

The workers kept their mouths shut. Evalyn stood up again and began to pace.

“We want to do business with them. If you do what we say and relay our message, the dirt we have on all of you stays hidden.”

“You came onto us. Why should we do what we tell you?” one asked, drawing Evalyn’s ire.

She drew closer, nose to nose with the man until he was shying away from the light.

“Because if you do as I say, then one of your cells goes down the drain and you walk away today alive. You don’t, and not only do you all get executed, but every single damn cell we could pull from your communications gets busted as well. Make the right choice.”

Distant sirens floated through the garage doors, slowly siphoning away their time.

“These men are too grounded in their faith,” the Queen said, although it seemed she excluded Evalyn from the chatter. “Hardridge’s talents don’t suit extracting information, but yours might be.”

“How?” Iris muttered.

“Your Mind Palace. I’ve seen it before, felt its terror. It’s only grown since then, hasn’t it?”

Iris bit her lip, doubting how wise an attempt would be, dreading what a worst-case scenario might look like.

“I can’t just—”

“There is little time.”

“But if it becomes a full Mind Palace—”

“You may interpret it as intuition as a Higher Order Spirit myself; your other half is too prideful to let that happen. Unless it wishes to risk your death, Iris, it will push back against you.”

The sirens slowly grew louder. Evalyn’s questioning was yielding no results.

“Fine,” Iris muttered.

“I will give you a hand,” the Queen said. “Focus on that hallway.”

Iris closed her eyes, and the sickly walls used her imagination as another putrid shortcut to reality. The cardboard walls, the bristling carpet, the child slowly dying in the snow.

She focused her mind on the carpet, the feeling against the soles of her feet. Slowly, it became more and more vivid. Not only the carpet, but the choking, stale air of the hallway, the way the lights flickered, the way the walls closed in around her.

Open it.

The Queen’s command brought her to her knees, and the reality that had filled the container of her imagination suddenly spilled forth.

Only parts. She held onto the hallway itself, both her and the other half of her, albeit for different reasons. But what came forth first was the carpet, the mangled tufts of hardened fabric that pricked and plucked at the workers’ fabric, holding onto them as the air choked them out.

The other half of her held onto her wrists, pulling her away from the Queen’s influence. As Her Majesty’s Aether grew, so did the grip on her hands grow desperate. More and more, it constricted her hand, tugging on it with rotted, maggot-ridden flesh.

Iris knew what was tugging at her, that sack of decaying flesh. As much as she wanted to give in herself, she couldn’t bear to look at it, let alone listen to it. Reality was waiting for her. Iris kept her eyes closed, listening to the small whimpers of the F.S.A. agents grow more and more distressed.

“Don’t waste this opportunity, Hardridge.”

Her mother stumbled over her words, but eventually they came nonetheless.

“Anything big, anything that suggests a revenge campaign.”

“Radio…they said on…on the radio that…oh my God…”

“Radio, what did they say?”

“…big operation…out of West Teremoar…”

“It’s where all the veterans went! The attack! The people you’re looking…for…”

“The people that survived?”

“y…yes…something…big.”

The police sirens rang in her ears.

“Stop.”

It was her mother’s voice. Iris opened her eyes, and the three workers collectively panted, heaving for air. Evalyn kneeled once again.

“Do you have any proof? The F.S.A. depends on this.”

The worker in front of her gathered himself, speaking through sharp, laboured breaths.

“No, but…we don’t know…about anything else. It’s…all regular jobs. Slave rescue…ugh God…regular business, not…revenge.”

“It’s not worth the risk, especially when you could be investing resources to something more useful?”

The worker nodded before doubling over, heaving ragged breath after ragged breath. The sirens were upon them now, just outside the closed garage doors.

Evalyn held them down as she turned to Iris, eyes still hidden behind the armour.

“I’m giving you twenty-four hours to relay this message to a wiretapped phone across the road. If we do not hear from you at all, then the evidence we have on you lands on the Police’s desk. Got that?”

The workers nodded. Evalyn’s eyes never left Iris.

“Let’s move.”