Her name was Hazel. I really wanted to make it easy for her to seduce me for her evil cause, but I had no idea how to proceed. I wished I had mating plumage and could do a crazy dance to clarify matters.

But things kept getting in the way.

"Did you give me this?" I rubbed my new tattoo.

"That was Rune Guy Rick. He's a creep and not great at tattoos."

"Rune Guy Rick." I nodded as if this nonsense were common to a worldly guy like me. "How long have you been here?"

She shrugged. "A few months. Here with my folks. True believers."

"Are you a true believer yourself?"

She shrugged again.

I'm not good with people, but even I could tell something was off. She'd stopped making eye contact. She seemed nervous.

The coffee shop was a few tables under the black tarps. I don't know if the coffee was any good, since coffee's always bad at all times.

A long silence. I waited. She was trying to say something important.

She met my eyes. "You get this, right?"

"I sure do," I said. I didn't change my posture or expression. I didn't look around to see who was watching us. Watching her. "I get it."

"Oh thank god." She sat back.. "Can you believe it," she said in a low voice. "Someone like me."

I'm afraid I got a little sulky. "Um. It was working pretty well."

Her jaw dropped. "Are you serious?"

I nodded sadly, and I got a smile out of her like a sunrise. She laughed, even. She was blushing. "What do we do now?"

"Okay, that…that part's over, right? I think I have my brain back."

Her eyes, brown and lovely and amused over the coffee cup. "Sorry."

"If I think about this, it seems you might actually be in trouble."

She nodded into her coffee, watching me over the rim of the paper cup.

"Parents," I said.

She nodded again.

"They need to get out of here. So do you."

Her eyes widened. "Yeah."

"Can you find a way to get my phone?"

"I can sure try." She was still holding her coffee to her face, and had been for an absurdly long time. "You…you're not what they said."

"Do I even want to know?"

She shook her head and finally set the cup down. Reached for my hand, squeezed it twice.

"Oh man, this is gonna kill me."

She grinned. "I…have a girlfriend."

"God dammit!" I clutched my chest, and she chuckled. It was all friendly, a jokey exchange, no hard feelings. But also not. It was the most Serious of Business.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Okay. I was going to find a way out, and see if I could get Hazel out, as well as her parents and her dumb girlfriend.

The room they put me in was part of the hospital, but more of a barracks situation. Several bunks. Mine was near the wall; I was in with several other men. Middle-aged and older. None of them spoke to me. That was ideal.

They rolled in one after the other, finishing whatever work secret militias do during the day. They turned on their phones and vanished into entertainments that appealed to revolutionaries. Or watched that show with Gary the Corporate Mascot, I have no idea. But I was effectively alone.

"Mateo-Owen. Can you hear me?"

I didn't sit bolt upright like a vampire rising from his coffin, but it was a near thing. I would have knocked my head against the bunk above me. "Yes! Lux? I've been so worried, are you okay?"

"Don't talk out loud, can you subvocalize?"

"Like this?" I whispered.

"No, quieter. I'm hooked into your petrous temporal bone. Just sort of…imagine talking. But move your mouth as if you were talking. BUT! Don't make any noise. This is a real thing people do, I swear."

"Like this," I didn't say. "You want me to keep my mouth closed, not talk and don't make any noise at all."

"Perfect. It works if you don't move around much. Anyway your femme fatale put me over in the room next to you, right near the wall."

"She's not my femme fatale, unfortunately."

"Poor dear. You know who she looks like?"

"The Open-Minded Nurse from Planet Bodypaint."

"These guys got your number. She looks just like Mandy Nakahara, the Undine. Part of the Feast of Fools. One of the most powerful beings in the … ever."

"I don't understand. Why do that?"

"Your other version lives on the Feast of Fools. He married the hell outta that girl. Had a Maker Queen do the ceremony. Owen and Mandy are very powerful and he's freaky into her."

"What's that got to do with me?"

"She loves him like crazy and the two of them are utterly disgusting. Once they had sex, right? But they're a power couple in every sense of the word and they accidentally destroyed the town of Custer, Idaho when they did it. Now they're more cautious but everyone knows what's happening when they go travelling to some deserted area. These guys are capitalizing on this with you."

"You're saying I have a type. Nothing wrong with having a type!"

"And they know the type."

I thought about it. "I'm in trouble."

"You wanted that kind of trouble. Admit it."

"I sure did! I was trying to dream up secrets she could get out of me. Make it worth her while."

"I think this is indoctrination."

"Me too, but she's so hot, Ms. Lux."

"Still want to leave?"

"Very much. They made their case and I wasn't impressed. Then they threw a woman at me who would never be into me, forcing her into it. But it's likely they know I'm not on board."

"How would they know that?"

"I'm in here without her, just with five other men." I swallowed, nervous about this next part. "And I told her I'd get her family out of here. I…wasn't in my right mind."

"They got your number. What's your take on the guy, Preston Covenant?"

"He's a Todd through and through. Then he'll make a speech and become Preston Covenant. That's the scary part. He believes what he says. He's a deluxe ranting trenchcoat."

"And how about you?"

"New tattoo I didn't want. A Rune. What about you, I don't think I understand your state of being. Are you stuck in the phone?"

"I am indeed. They have countermeasures here that keep me from talking to my other instances or just switching platforms. Otherwise I'd have called the Feast to bring down the Wrath of God on this dump."

"I don't need you to rescue me, Ms. Lux."

"I want to be rescued myself! You can stay here and get turned down by Agent Sweetass. I wanna leave."

"I'm so glad you're all right. Was it bad?"

"No, I just went into sleep mode. Ai people have a number of advantages–"

She had cut off in the middle of something.

I considered knocking on the wall next to me, but didn't. I tried the door. Locked.

The other guys watched me over their screens, through their holographic displays. There was a sense of impending … something.

Tomorrow.

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