The music kept playing and the people kept moving. To them, it just looked as if someone was getting handsy.

“We have every exit covered and snipers on the roof. You won’t make it five steps.” my unseen assailant said. Not to me, but to Jodie, who was tensed and ready to spring. Another one came up behind her and put a gun to her spine. I looked to her, waiting for the signal to move, but she shook her head imperceptibly. Not here. Too many witnesses.

“Here’s what’s going to happen, Chloe,” he said, emphasising my name, “We’re going to start walking out, and Jodie is going to follow a few steps behind. We’re going to go slowly, you’re going to keep your arms by your side, and we’re going to exit out that door over there.” He nudged the gun slightly to the right, in the direction of the fire door, and I nodded. “Come on now.”

I moved towards the door. My assailant wasn’t right behind me anymore but he was a few steps behind, and I could feel the gun, still aimed at me from five feet away. I glanced around, hoping for someone to see me, say something, cause a commotion that would muzzle the agents in some way. I didn’t trust them not to start shooting if it came to that, but if I could get their eyes off me for just a second I could slip away get Jodie her opportunity. There, just the right opportunity. A man about my age in a black muscle shirt. He was staring at me, if he came over I could throw him at them, escape, back to Sid. One life for hundreds of people like me and even that wasn’t set in stone. I walked past him without looking, cursing myself.

As soon as we got out someone ambushed me with a bag over my head. To be expected. The taser jammed into my belly wasn’t, and I doubled over cramping. Someone else wrenched my neck to the side and jabbed a needle into me, the whole machine was like clockwork and within seconds the black cloth of the bag started swirling around in front of me. My eyes grew heavy, and the last thing I heard before I fell asleep was someone shout, and then Jodie scream.

I woke up in a thick plastic chair under a harsh white light. The walls were a dingy white on all sides, the white of many bleachings. The table was heavy plastic and thick zip-cuffs were plastic, there was nothing metal in the room. Matthias sat opposite me, and clicked a stopwatch, setting it down on the table. It read seventy-nine minutes and thirty-two seconds.

“Good morning.” He said asplaced his interlocked fingers on the table, “Sorry about all the confusion. I’ve got a few questions for you.”

I spat at him. Or, more accurately, I spat on the table in front of him, my mouth was too dry for much else. He looked at it, bemused, and then back at me. “Sorry about the cuffs, it’s more of a formality really. A holdover from back when we thought it was all mystic hand signs and that jazz.” He got up and went over to the door. “Knife please, and a cloth.” both were distributed through a letterbox, onto a tray. He picked them up and set them both on the table. First, he cleaned up the spit, then took the knife, ceramic rather than metal, and cut my hands loose. “There you go, much better. It’s kind of degrading to be tied up like that, I don’t like it any more than you, but you know how the higher-ups are, right?” My feet were still bound by the same ties. I studied him without talking. He looked friendly, a bit like a surfer, with swept-back light brown hair and the bartender’s white button-down, rolled up to the sleeves. “So.” He said, once the knife and cloth had been passed back, “We’ve already talked to Ms Nash, I’ve just been sent here to fill in the gaps, as it were. Good quick thinking with the fake names, by the way. So, first off, the grimoire that went missing. What exactly were you planning on doing with it?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

He sighed, “Look, the interrogation is over. My colleague got everything he needed out of Ms Nash. I’ll tell you what we know, and if we work together there might be a way to resolve this where nobody gets hurt. You know, I go talk to my higher-ups, you hash things out with yours. Peaceful resolutions. Okay?” He went back to the door and took a brown folder, the kind I’d seen in police procedurals. “So, let’s paint a picture. Four in the morning, you, Brigette Grabowski, Chloe Nash and two other witches break into a secure facility- well done on that by the way- and steal a grimoire, killing over ten people and injuring seven more in that explosion of yours- less impressed, too much collateral for my taste.” Matthias opened the folder up, “you escape, but are eventually found and brought here. Now, we have your names, we have your locations and we have people watching Grabowski and the rest of them.” He opened up the folder and placed four photos out on the table; Jodie, Sid, Addie and me. They’d got every name wrong before the last couple of hours. My name was written under Jodie, scribbled out and replaced in red all capitals. Sid was labelled as someone called Brigitte Grabowski, Addie was known only by his codename, Orpheus. For a moment I was tempted to laugh, but then I saw the name written under me. Chloe Nash, and above it, struck through with a red line, Dorothy Ferguson.

Dotty.

Below, our address, Sid must have taken it out in her name, and Mathias kept taking out photos. Her old flat, where the murders took place, and our new one. He knew enough to ruin her, kill her. I grit my teeth so hard they might have cracked and looked up at him.

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

“So?” I sounded calmer than I felt, I felt like throwing up.

“So, Ms Nash, unless you give us the resources to go in peacefully, my higher-ups are going to do something very stupid and very bad for both of us.” He leaned in over the table as if we were sharing a secret, “Those people you killed? They were my friends, I knew some of them. Hell, I used to date Charlotte Kent- she’s the one you stabbed to death on that first night we came for you. But I don’t want bloodshed any more than you do.” He sat back in his chair, exasperated. “Come on, Dorothy. We can fix this. Together.”

“I… no. I want a fucking lawyer.” It sounded stupid even saying it but it was what I’d been taught to say to people like him.

“I can’t do that, Dorothy. See, my organisation, we don’t technically exist, so we’re cleared of all the red tape that the government usually go through. No due process, no Geneva Conventions, and no lawyers. We flipped a coin, see, me and my colleague.” He took another photo and put it on top of the grainy security cam shot of Jodie. It was a mugshot, she was bruised, bleeding from her mouth and one of her eyes was swollen shut, but she stared at the camera with a fire inside her. She was indomitable. “I got you, he got Chloe. You could do a lot worse than me.”

“A lot of guys say that.” I chided. He laughed, a short, but genuine laugh. “I’ll leave you here a moment, to consider things. But if you don't cooperate, things are only going to get worse for both of us.”

He left me alone in the room, taking the files but leaving the pictures. Jodie, Sid, Addie, Me. Jodie again. Dotty. I couldn’t tell them anything, they were genocidal murderers, but Matthias seemed genuine. Maybe there were people who wanted to make the world safer. I had enough blood on my hands from the fight. That man, with his neck still at the wrong angle, something within still trying to push its way out. It was a dream, but maybe I could work with them, find a middle ground.

Then I thought about Addie, his careless smile and all the deception that lay behind it. Matthias had even been wearing the same kind of shirt. They were the same, those two men. A friendly face that reached around to stab you in the back. What did it say about us to use the same tactics? The light above me flickered slightly, plunging the room into yellowy grey, before returning to an unsterile white.

Jodie. I needed to find a way to Jodie. I looked around, everything was plastic, my rings had been taken off me, even the staples on the pictures had been torn out. That left me with no magic.

An hour passed, I counted it by the seconds, and then another. They were leaving me to stew. It would be getting close to dawn by now. I racked my head for anything useful. The walls were solid, the door even more so, and I didn’t doubt that they had a camera on me. In my head, I ran through everything I knew about magic. It sapped my energy, except with I used fae creatures, it needed metal shapes, except when it needed seawater. I still didn’t know what that was for, neither did Katrine. Aside from helping with Kvinne i Skogen, the woman in the woods. Did the water hold memories? Some kind of circuit? A round scrying bowl, it specified roundness. Was the water itself acting as a circle? Was that it?

I slumped forwards and rested my head on the table as if trying to sleep. I couldn’t tell if I was being watched but I wasn’t about to risk it. My knuckle was by my cheek now, protected from view by my other arm. I bit the skin of my knuckle till it bled and immediately regretted not choosing somewhere less painful. I didn’t have my healing necklace, It was locked away in some evidence locker, never to be seen again. I drew on the table with my knuckle, first a pentagon. I thought of Jodie, locked up and beaten, burning brighter than the sun. Inside it, I drew another, emptying my mind of everything but the concept of my own thoughts. Inside that one, a triangle. The Vigilem controlled energy, the texts all said, but controlling concepts was a better word for it. Concepts like energy; like magic, which worked on some level of dream logic; and hopefully, like distance.

I touched it, careful not to smear it and charged it, trying not to think about the fact that I’d just rubbed an open would on an uncleaned table. I started slowly, blood was barely conductive, I didn’t want to burn it out. I smelled charring anyway, but after five minutes I had a working component. My mind, her mind, brought together into one. It was messy, but I activated it.

I was back in the club, holding a woman I didn’t recognise. She was tall, wiry, and for some reason I couldn’t understand she was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. The lights and sounds were quiet, all blending into the background in a way they never did for me. The woman broke away and looked at me. “Chloe?” In the moment of realisation we shifted again, I back to my body and her back to hers. The music picked up again and the lights fought their way into my periphery. We stayed, embracing each other.

“How did you find me?”

“I didn’t.” I whispered, “We’re still in the facility. We need to get out.” she looked at me again, her face growing red and cut up. She looked up at me, half in desperation, half in anger, “How?”

“You can make a circle, use your own blood, it’s conductive. Barely. Come find me.” I kissed her again, and two thoughts jumped between our minds. The circle, and the glimpse of the outside I’d gotten from Matthias leaving. A third thought came through, from her. Her arms were tied to a post, she was slumped, but still at eye level with the man who was beating her. He was wearing hand wraps, and she stared down every single blow. I was looking through her eyes, I realised, as it was happening. I felt her bite her own tongue, trace it on a circle around the roof of her mouth.

The last thing I saw before the connection cut out was the man’s head snap backwards, and the sound of crunching.