Tailing a vehicle on foot was an ask they could ease their magic restrictions for. Especially now, so close to something that wasn’t just speculation, they couldn’t afford to be so conservative.

  Exoskeletons, twine-thin lengths of matter that ran along Iris’s extremities. If she just relaxed her muscles, sent her brain’s instructions to those strings instead of her legs themselves, they’d do the work for her.

  Soon, they were travelling by rooftop once again. With scant cover and precarious footing, they travelled cautiously, dipping in and out of concrete windows, using the sound of the engines as their guide.

  They could afford to. There was little else to hear besides it and the rushing wind in their ears.

  Iris focused solely on moving as fast as possible, one foot in front of the other, one leap before another drop. The Queen, their third pair of eyes, warned them of nearby tornadoes of Aether, a problematic Spirit at their centre.

  Such a small Aether pull at such a speed would present like a buzzing fly to a human, here and gone in an instant, before one could even swat it away. But Spirits weren’t all made equal. Those who could perceive their human bodies could just as well put two and two together quickly.

  And news travelling by telepathy spread like a firestorm.

  Iris followed Evalyn’s lead, barely maintaining her momentum while her mother somehow juggled the chase with hunting the small convoy.

  Two trucks. Evalyn’s headcount had found a group of twenty-three slaves, and as per the agreement, three were taken.

  I guess they round up.

  Next had come a set of wooden crates, lugged from one truck to the other. A scrawny freedom-fighter had undone the bolts on one, and lying inside—nestled in a bed of golden hay—was a small machine gun, compact enough to fit inside a coat.

  Real bullets. Real, lead bullets that would stay inside a human’s body. That piece of the equation was yet to add up. Dwell on it too long, and it potentially derailed their entire line of inquiry. The F.S.A. using magic. It was already dubious.

  Then again, S.H.I.A. had done something similar.

  Didn’t matter. Nor did it matter whether they asked their questions nicely.

  They’d shoot her and her mother in a heartbeat, given the chance.

  The engines slowed, taking one last turn before they idled, the familiar rhythmic chug putting an end to the journey.

  Evalyn and Iris killed their momentum, taking a perch on the shy side of a slanted roof, ducking under its apex as they watched and waited.

  Before them was another derelict apartment complex. Six storeys of bare, crumbing brick and makeshift repairs loomed over a small, overgrown courtyard.

  Knee-high in drenched grass, a group of men trudged back and forth from the trucks to the building, collecting the cargo like a factory conveyer belt. Three would carry crates, the fourth would escort a person.

  A person who looked shocked out of their wits, in tattered clothes, the most genuine relief spilling from their eyes as smiling faces greeted them.

  Congratulations.

  You made it.

  The worst is over now.

  We’re sorry we couldn’t do more.

  We’re so, so, so sorry.

  “Iris?”

  The hundred-year-old tiles were digging into her fingertips, sapping the rest of her strength from her body lest she used the energy to do something rash.

  “Iris. You’re crying.”

  So, it wasn’t raining. Figures. It had been so common until then.

  But no, it may have been overcast, but the sky was holding its sympathy that day.

  “What are we…doing here?” Iris choked. “I can’t do this. Whatever we’re going to do, I can’t…”

  “Iris.”

  They were in the middle of battle. Out on the field. All her mother could offer was a simple cradle of her cheek.

  The warmth in those calloused fingers, forced to do things Iris could never dream of.

  “I know I’m harsh, but it’s because I care about you. And…because I care about you, I want you to cherish what you’re feeling right now.”

  And like it was as simple as breathing; her mother conjured a smile that radiated like the sun itself.

  “Even if it hurts, like it hurts me. You’ll know you’re human.”

  The hand left her cheek, and Evalyn stepped so far out of character, Iris found herself stifling a scream.

  She stood up in plain view of the enemy and raised her hands.

  Nervous mutters quickly escalated into shouts for arms. The uproar continued for seconds that felt like hours while her mother continued to stand in surrender, resolute in her decision. Iris could only lay there, stunned.

  “Geverdian Federal Police! I mean no harm. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge!”

  No shots were fired, and the muffled panic slowly fell into silence as well.

  “S-someone get the chief!”

  Evalyn closed her eyes and deflated her chest, only then showing her nerves.

  “I have one more with me. She’s going to stand up now. Again, we mean no harm.”

  Iris looked at her mother, fingernails still digging into the tiles.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Don’t be scared. I’ve got you.”

  Iris swallowed her spit. That alone took all her effort.

  Her fingers parted with the roof. Her knees were weak—her footing crumbled underneath her.

  But not having to place a hand on her gun, if it was all for that, then…

  Iris stood, perhaps not tall but with her hands in the air. Eagerly waiting for her was a small crowd, hands shaking on their guns. The lack of trigger discipline terrified her. She felt her instincts taking a hold, pulling herself inward, curling herself into a ball.

  “Forget about how scared you are. Watch their movements. Every single one. Mental exercise, you know…”

  Iris tried to follow her example, but her eyes only continued to blur over and drift.

  “I could never do this without you,” she said, the words slipping out of her weakened lips.

  She continued the exercise, biting her cheek until it hurt, waiting for a response from her mother that never came.

  She glanced at Evalyn and found a look she didn’t recognise.

  “The chief’s here!”

  A pair of men, one much older than the other, rushed out of the compound’s front door, huffing as the building before them led their eyes up to Evalyn and Iris.

  “We’re coming down now!” Evalyn shouted, taking a step forward. “Hold on to me.”

  Iris lowered her quaking hands and wrapped them around Evalyn’s waist. One at a time, one foot in front of the other.

  They reached the edge, and Evalyn hauled her over it.

  Nothing under their feet: Iris could do nothing but squint and hope she didn’t throw up her breakfast.

  Salty brine. The worst moment to remember it.

  Next came the impact, and the privilege of using her brain to feel the inside of her skull. An instant bout of nausea hit her worse than a bullet ever could, and she held onto her mother’s arm for dear life.

  She silently begged for time to recover, but they were still at gunpoint.

  “Take your holster off,” Evalyn muttered as she slowly reached for her rifle strap and lifted it off her shoulders.

  The clatter of their firearms against the ground was as convincing a surrender as they could offer. The F.S.A. seemed to agree.

  Still, the guns remained trained on them as their hands returned to their place above their heads.

  The older man, the so called ‘chief’, approached. Slim, and of greying hair, the scars across his body weren’t telling of battle. The wounds around his wrist, around his neck, told of a different breed of torture entirely.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “You, or one of your cells, told us to find you. Said you would only speak to us if we did. Was that you?”

  “Yes…you only want to…talk.”

  “…yes. Today, we only want to talk.”

  The chief watched them with wavering eyes that flicked back and forth from Iris to Evalyn.

  “Grab their guns! Pat them down!”

  The imminent threat to their life was erased, just like that.

  “Let’s be careful,” Evalyn muttered as she watched her guns disappear into the firepower-starved hands of the onlooking crowd.

  For a change of pace, the F.S.A. treated them to a sight that wasn’t the ugly end of a gun barrel. They pointed those to the ground now. A small luxury, but Iris would take anything she could get.

  Her knees were still shaking inside her pants. From tears to terror to plummeting off a building, there was a concussion somewhere in that sequence; it had slipped past her, though.

  And the chief could tell.

  “Get the girl a chair,” he ordered from behind a derelict bureau: as useful as a plank of wood on crates without its drawers or polish. It must have been the thought that counted.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Iris heard a pair of feet run out of the building, but she didn’t dare look back.

  Otherwise, the room was barren of any furniture, the roof was sobbing into a bucket, and the crude hand of a novice had boarded up the windows, crooked nails jutting from the planks and all. Nothing stood in the way of Evalyn’s talk; the chief had no other formalities left to cower behind.

  For a moment, Iris felt as though she and the chief shared a nervous gaze.

  “Thank you for hearing us out,” Evalyn began.

  The chief leaned forward, grinding his teeth. “What do you want from us?”

  “Honesty.”

  He eyes closed. A strong, frustrated exhale.

  “My name is Takari. That’s all the honesty I can give you before I hear your question.”

  “Batrice. G.F.P.,” Evalyn’s silver tongue replied without a note of hesitation. “This is Lily. Academy apprentice.”

  “Academy apprentice? Out here?”

  “She shows a lot of promise,” Evalyn continued with a straight face.

  Honesty…all Iris knew to do in such a situation was to keep her mouth shut.

  “We want to ask if you…or any other F.S.A. branch have begun an operation intent on harming Geverdian assets.”

  The chief’s thin brows furrowed, the wrinkles around his eyes growing pronounced in a betrayal of his confusion.

  “Sorry? Have we been after…your assets?”

  “Yes. Assets that were used in a hostage rescue roughly three years ago.”

  “Hostage—”

  The chief’s face relaxed, the wrinkles flattened, and he leaned into what was left of his tattered chair. “I see.”

  “Have you been getting your revenge?”

  The chief refused to answer too readily. Instead, he bit his lip, biding his time.

  The pair of footsteps emerged from the silence, clattering into the room and punctuated by the thump of a crate against wood.

  Iris dared a look behind her, pulled the crate closer, and sat down.

  Thankfully, it was stable. The blood rushed out of her head and her eyes spun. Unable to hold it any longer, she doubled over.

  “That’s a crate got this morning. We use them as furniture because we don’t have the money, or time, or spare wood for chairs.”

  For the first time, the chief cracked a smile; one so in disbelief he couldn’t help but laugh at them. “We’re doing everything we can to scrounge enough to get these bloody guns. You think we can go and do something as stupid as revenge killing?”

  Iris glanced at her mother. The chief seemed too animated to be lying.

  Evalyn kept her gaze sharp, however. She wasn’t done.

  “Bullets that disappear in the body. Do you know anything about that?”

  The chief’s smile turned into a look of pity. “You must be joking. Magic?”

  “S.H.I.A. wasn’t afraid to use magic.”

  The chief froze, at a loss for words, before he sank back into his chair, shaking his head.

  “I wish we could,” he muttered. “You know…do you know how close we were? If you had just been…a few days late…taken a different tactic—”

  “And you expected Geverde to wait patiently for its expats once you were done?”

  The chief’s skin seemed electrified, charged with a desire to bite back. Iris felt it in Evalyn, too. The tension in the air wanted to explode, yet they both kept silent.

  Bygones would never be bygones, but what was done was done.

  An explosion now would only result in a spat. Wasted time, wasted energy.

  “As far as I know,” the chief finally said, his last proclamation. “The F.S.A. has taken no measures against Geverde or her…assets. You have the wrong people.”

  It was enough for Iris. Evalyn had kept a fire going inside her that wanted to defend what she did three years ago. In comparison, Iris couldn’t even bear to shelter it with the tips of her fingers.

  She wanted to leave them alone, if only because she was too afraid to face punishment for her actions. Evalyn would say such a thing didn’t exist, but she could feel the consequences chasing her.

  “I understand,” Evalyn said, motioning to leave. “If you hear anything—”

  “Hear anything…what?”

  Evalyn paused, frozen like a photograph.

  The floorboards under her feet creaked as her weight shifted forward: a cat arching their back.

  Iris found the hands of higher powers weaving her fingers together into a prayer. She closed her eyes, hoping his hubris hadn’t gotten to the chief’s head.

  “I thought I asked for your honesty.”

  “And I am giving it. I may know something that can help you. And, to be honest, I am not willing to give it away for free.”

  Evalyn’s eyes glanced at Iris. More accurately, the pin in her hair.

  “Yes,” the Queen whispered.

  “What do you want?”

  The chief rounded the corner, magnitudes more confidence in his stride than the worried glances of minutes prior.

  “You Geverdians know a thing or two about Aether, right?”

  “Who does he think he is?” Evalyn grumbled loud enough to be heard, snatching her weapons off the guard by the door and storming out of the office.

  The last working clock struck the hour, and a new air of commotion had beset the decrepit base. Bodies rushing from point A through to point Z almost created an illusion that the place wasn’t as far gone as it was. The clatter of firearms, of bullets in magazines in crates, of grenades with jangling pins.

  Evalyn marched down the cramped hallways with Iris in tow, squeezing past all manner of freedom fighters: from gaunt to utterly emaciated, the same conviction burned in their eyes.

  “Oh, distraction! Give us cover! God’s sake, might as well have called us meat shields.”

  They stepped out into the empty lot. Six trucks—canvas roofs covering their cargo beds—backed into it, taking on supplies by the crate and manpower by the fire squad.

  Evalyn came to a halt in the centre of it all, Iris coming up to her side as she loaded a clip into the magazine well.

  “Is this going to be dangerous?” Iris asked.

  “Not for us,” she said, driving the bolt home. “Focus on keeping them alive, else our lead dies with them.”