The tension in the air is palpable.

  I always thought that was an absurd saying. After all, I’d never felt so much tension that it was almost a physical thing, so I'd always sort of assumed it was either an exaggeration or one of those old sayings everyone uses but nobody really knows the origin of anymore.

  But, standing here beside two people I know to be at the top of the food chain and a third that seems to have even them acting respectful, all while a blind man could tell they clearly have some unaired grudges between them, the air itself seems to grow heavier. Maybe it does—the Captain never did tell me if she could do that. Or maybe it’s just their auras, competing for dominance. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d met a SAU whose very presence seemed to have an effect on their surroundings.

  Whatever it is, I still have a job to complete, and so I bravely clear my throat to get their attention. All three heads turn to me, and I instantly regret it, but I push forward regardless.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but we should probably get her to this ‘Kur’ before she wakes up,” I say, gesturing to the damned woman lying on the ground.

  The woman I don’t recognize—Jonathan called her ‘Sandra,’ but I know better than to parrot that without thinking—smiles warmly at me, “Of course. Janus will handle that right away, now won’t he?” she doesn’t turn away, but the question doesn’t seem directed at me either.

  It doesn’t even take half a second for the portal to open beside me. Janus steps out, wordlessly bows to everyone except me, and effortlessly picks up the damned and carries her back through the portal. Not a single other person moves or says a word until the new lady suddenly hums contentedly and steps through the portal after Janus, beckoning the rest of us to follow with a wave of her hand. The Captain hurries after her, with Jonathan a little slower behind. I enter last, just before the gateway closes.

  I half expect to be taken wherever they’re going to lock her up, but instead I just find myself back in the room where this whole thing started, with Janus immediately slipping off again the moment we arrive. I stand back awkwardly as a conversation begins.

  “You should’ve told me you’d returned,” Jonathan comments, clearly having recovered from his earlier confusion.

  “I just did,” the unfamiliar woman replies, “Janus brought me here when I requested a return gateway. Lynn filled me in when I arrived.”

  Jonathan starts, “Sandra-”

  “Operative Vermillion,” she corrects harshly, “That is what you put on the mission order, after all. You remember, right? Your little excuse to get rid of me for a while.”

  “The council issued-”

  “You wrote it, you convinced the council to vote for it, and you benefited from it the most,” the woman—Operative Vermillion—counters, “Stop pretending it was anything but a political move on your part.”

  Around this time, the Captain closes the gap between us, and whispers in my ear, “This is not for our ears. Come.” she beckons me out of the room, and I follow as the argument continues behind me—Jonathan clearly losing. The door shuts behind us and muffles their voices, but I’m still left highly confused.

  “What is happening here?” I ask, “Who is she and why does Jonathan seem almost…submissive?”

  “Don’t let anyone else hear you say that,” the Captain says, unnervingly serious, “but I suppose I can explain. She will probably try to recruit you soon, after all.”

  I immediately have more questions, but try to keep silent as the Captain leads me into another room and shuts the door behind us.

  “There are currently three distinct factions within the reaper corp,” she begins, “The conservative faction led by Operative Guardian, the neutral faction led by myself, and finally the progressive faction, led by, naturally, Operative Vermillion—the woman you just saw. There’s a lot of history there that is not really mine to tell, but suffice to say those two have near-opposite ideas as to where the corp will end up in the future.”

  She stares deeply into my eyes, “Have you ever wondered why I’m the Captain of the reapers, when there’s Jonathan?”

  I nod. The thought had crossed my mind, but I’d assumed that ‘captain’ was just a lower rank than had been implied.

  “I’m sure you’re aware of at least the basics of our system of government,” the Captain continues, “There’s the Lower Council, the elected branch which handles most basic policies, and the Upper Council, whose secret members handle national defense and other classified matters—such as the Reaper Corp. This is important largely because the Upper Council happens to be a massive bunch of cowards.”

  She sighs, “Jonathan and Sandra both want the Reaper Corp to be only temporary, but have different ideas of what will come after. The council, however, would prefer we just stuck with the system that already works, and thus has postponed making any sort of decision on the matter by appointing me—the strongest reaper outside the two of them—as the Captain. Are you following me so far?”

  I nod again, “Messy politics, but you haven’t explained what the competing ideals even are. Don’t tell me this ‘Vermillion’ also believes in nonviolence.”

  “Of course she does,” the Captain replies with an inappropriate degree of nonchalance, “Do you really think I would’ve vouched for you if you were the only one? That’s just a recipe for instability.”

  I blink, “…what?”

  “Jonathan, as you may or may not be aware, is the mastermind behind the concept of the reapers. It was his idea. However, it wasn’t the entirety of his ideas. Jonathan believes wholeheartedly that, given enough time, he can ensure that every SAU on the planet is either on our side—either as hero or a reaper—or dead. After that, he claims, the entire world could recover and enter a utopia ruled by SAUs. Sandra, however, believes he’s relying on unproven extrapolations to arrive at that conclusion, and that the best way forward is to research a way to keep SAUs permanently imprisoned—likely with some synth technology—and that, once we have, we can do away with the reapers altogether and return to a society similar to before the Upheaval. So far, both are equally likely to be wrong and have similar levels of support, so the discussion has gone nowhere. The council and I have done our best to ensure it is so.”

  “I- wha-” I stutter, “a-are you even allowed to tell me this?”

  “Why not?” the Captain smiles her wolfish grin, “It’s just politics. It’s not like I’ve explained the top-secret experiments going on at Kur or the evidence behind Jonathan’s theory of SAU eradication. I haven’t even told you the identity of any members of the Upper Council. Frankly, I’d almost expected I might have to.”

  I’m pretty shell-shocked for a good few moments.

  I can’t even decide what is more mind-blowing: the messy politics of the Reaper Corp, the notion that someone has already been working on my goals years before I even had them, or that Jonathan genuinely wants to eradicate all evil in the world—or at least his narrow view of it. The last time I had this much of a flood of shocking information was when I was first dragged into this mess, all the way back when I fought that guy with the hound.

  It’s almost exciting. Almost.

  I carefully take a few deep breaths, settling my nerves. I have to focus on the positives here. I saved a damned’s life not a few minutes ago, and that might have otherwise been the highlight of today, but now it’s at the back of my mind. I also have to think about this new character, Operative Vermillion, and if it would be worth it to work with her. After all, I have little information to work on here, but it sounds like she agrees with me—or rather I with her.

  “…how many people support each side?” I ask.

  “Including the leaders, Sandra’s faction has four members, Jonathan’s—as of recently—has five, and my neutral faction possesses thirty-two,” the Captain explains surprisingly patiently, “So it’s likely that, upon finding out about you, Sandra will try to recruit you to even the numbers out. Naturally, these numbers only include reapers, as the Upper Council’s membership is still very much outside your pay grade, so to speak.”

  Confusion is starting to be a recurring theme today, “Are…are there only forty reapers?”

  “Forty-two, including yourself,” the Captain replies, “Did nobody tell you that? Actually, did anybody explain anything? You seemed confused during the strategy meeting today too.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I shake my head, “I think that was supposed to be your job, ma’am.”

  The Captain scoffs and waves her hand dismissively, “Eh, I’ll get Multishot to do it later. I don’t have the time for stuff like that. Anyway, as you can probably tell, the status quo is unlikely to change, Jonathan will probably end up getting his way, and Sandra doesn’t want that. She was gone for a while because of some political finagling, but now that she’s back, she’ll try to recruit you to even the odds. If you need to know anything else, ask her. I’ve already done everything I need to do.”

  She stands suddenly, but in a moment of reckless curiosity, I stop her.

  “Wait,” I say, “I still have one more question.”

  The Captain looks at me with a bemused smile, luckily ignoring my insubordination. I’ll probably pay for it tomorrow in training, but I take the chance anyway.

  “Why was Jonathan…acting strangely around Operative Vermillion?” I ask.

  The Captain’s wolfish grin returns, “I don’t know everything, recruit, but if I had to guess, I’d say it has something to do with how their siblings were married.”

  And then she stands up, and exits the room, leaving me alone in the darkness.

  You’d think I’d get used to the feeling of having several bombshells worth of state secrets dropped on my head one after the other. After all, this is far from the first time it’s happened, and at the rate we’re going, I doubt it’ll be anywhere near the last. And yet, without someone to shake me from my stupor this time, I easily spend the next fifteen or so minutes staring into the dark, trying to process what I just learned.

  In retrospect, there were always signs. What the Captain said about only letting me become a reaper because I shared the ideals of Operative Vermillion makes sense. She benefits from the balance being maintained, so it’s no surprise she’d jump at the opportunity to introduce a new reaper for Vermillion’s side without lifting a finger. That she can beat me up in training is likely just a bonus. And of course Jonathan has to have had some kind of check on his power. Something tells me there wouldn’t even be a council if he had just got his way.

  But in the same vein, this is entirely game-changing. Previously, the only support I really had among the reapers was at best Multishot, and I still don’t really know where his loyalties lie. Probably among the neutral faction, if I had to guess. But now there’s a new player, one who seemingly is just me but with more power. Is it even a question if I should join the progressive faction? Do I even have anything to lose?

  There’s definitely more to this than I’ve been told. Even ignoring the obvious drama going on between Jonathan and Vermillion, I can’t be entirely sure there aren’t more important secrets that might change my mind. It’s unlikely that anything could convince me to fully take Jonathan’s side, but the Captain all but confessed that there were more things she wasn’t telling me. This ‘Kur’ for example, seems like a pretty big secret. A prison would be my guess. After all, they took the damned woman there.

  This all leaves one burning question. A question that, unfortunately, may very well end up being answered for me if I cannot answer it myself. The most important question of them all.

  What the fuck do I do now?

  It’s at the point when that thought crosses my mind that I finally decide to stand and exit the room. No more sulking; I have to move. I take long strides back down the hallway to where the Captain and I had left Jonathan with Operative Vermillion. Just when common sense catches up to me and I remember that I can’t just barge in there and start making demands, the door swings open.

  I realize with a start that it’s Jonathan, and that he has an angry red, vaguely hand-shaped mark on his left cheek. I press up against the wall and stay dead quiet as the symbol of the nation’s power storms through the hallway, visibly displaying the remnants of a slap to the face. It would be an almost comical sight if not for how my hair begins to stand on end as his violent aura floods the hallway. I breathe a sigh of relief as he disappears from sight, and cautiously enter the room.

  Operative Vermillion is inside, still dressed in her bloodstained white flowing clothes, staring pensively at the wall before her. I knock politely on the door and she turns to me. She seems startled for the briefest moment before smiling, and around her eyes is the barest hint of red, as if she’d been crying.

  “Ah! Charlie Gardner! Just the girl I wanted to see,” Operative Vermillion walks over to me and places a soft hand on my shoulder, "Sorry about my introduction—or lack thereof—earlier. If I’d known you were Fred’s daughter, I would have given you a little more hospitality.”

  “You knew my father?” I ask, “Oh, who am I kidding, of course you did. Everyone knew him—everyone except me.”

  Her smile falters, “I’m sorry. That must be a sore subject. I’ll get to the point: I think we can help each other. We want similar things, you see. We have similar goals.”

  “I had been told something like that, yes,” I reply, “but, with all due respect, I’d like to hear from you precisely what you intend.”

  “Careful.” Operative Vermillion replies, “I like that. Let’s see—how best to put this…”

  She ponders for a moment, then seems to come to a resolution.

  “I could tell you quite a bit. I could talk about how I’ve been the only voice of peace among the reapers. I could tell you of the victories I’ve won, or how I’ve resisted the push to further militarize the USC. I could even tell you how long I’ve fought in an attempt to undo the horrors of the Upheaval. But words are wind, and I’d far rather just show you.”

  She smiles, “Janus, take us to Kur.”

  I half-expect nothing to happen, the man too far off to hear, but, in an instant, a gateway opens beside the two of us. Vermillion nods, and gestures to me to go in. After a few brief heartbeats of hesitation, I do.

  The world shifts once more in a way that is quickly becoming familiar to me, and I exit into a space filled with dry air and white light. Tall walls of light-colored bricks extend outward, covered in a sterile smell that hits my nose fiercely. And then the feeling hits me, and I stumble, shocked at the sudden rush of horrible weakness.

  “Woah there!” Vermillion exclaims, grabbing me before I can fall entirely, “Be careful there. Sorry for not warning you, but to be honest, I’ve gotten far too used to it myself.”

  “What…just happened?” I ask, still reeling. I honestly have no idea what I just experienced. My entire body seems to function as normal. I can still stand, and after a moment I do on my own, nor is moving at all an issue. It’s not at all like the Captain’s ability, and yet…

  “See for yourself,” Vermillion replies.

  I look up.

  The whole space before me is absolutely covered in red, glowing patterns. Circles filled in with stars, squares, and other geometric patterns cover every inch of the floor. They seem almost like magic, as it is portrayed in some fantasy novels from before the Upheaval that I read once. Except, for all the presence of SAUs, magic is still very much still fantasy. Or, at least, so I’d thought.

  “What is that?” I ask, “…how?”

  “Operative Malediction,” Vermillion replies, “One of the three reapers currently on my side, and the second most important to my efforts. Come, I’ll show you what he’s been working on.”

  Almost aimlessly, I follow her through the hall to a small window cut into the brick, which prominently displays a room—no, a jail cell. A man hangs from chains in the center, pale-faced and dressed in an orange prison jumper. He wears a pair of black glasses which entirely blot out his eyes, and, of course, a massive glowing red circle of runes hums beneath his feet.

  “This,” Vermillion explains, “is Oberon.”

  I pale instantly—far more than even the weakness had made me.

  “Oberon Vasile?” I murmur incredulously, “But he…he should be dead. He was supposed to have been killed in the last days of the war.”

  “That is the official story,” Vermillion continues, “In fact, it was the Captain who was sent to kill him, when he fled the old capitol after it fell. Too many people had heard of the famous ‘Wielder of the Night’ for the council to not at least address the issue. But I thought he would be an interesting subject for a particular experiment—that is, could we have kept him jailed indefinitely. You know his ability, it should’ve been possible.”

  “Darkness,” I whisper with almost reverent horror, “He can control shadows. If you kept him in bright enough lights, then…” I trail off.

  “Then he would be powerless,” she finishes for me, then sighs, “That was the idea, at least. It turns out that it is really hard to keep a SAU of that caliber held for long. He eventually figured out a way to call upon even the thinnest of shadows, and almost forced his way out by targeting the lights first. I had to drag him back in myself, and after that I recruited a young upstart reaper—the very Operative Malediction I just named—to help me keep him here forever. If you might be able to guess, we’ve found a little success.”

  She turns to me with a serious expression on her face, “This is my life’s work—one of nearly a dozen such cells in which I have dedicated years of effort studying the best ways to keep SAUs in prison, rather than killing them indiscriminately. Make no mistake, I too will kill if I have to, but I think in this we can both agree that there is a better way. I need help making that better way come true, and I’m asking for your help to do that.”

  I turn to her as well, “You have…a demon among men locked away in a cage who knows where, and by your own admission, you have found success in keeping him here. Why, if you don’t mind telling me, are we even still killing damned at all?”

  “Because,” Vermillion replies with an eerie simplicity, “For all the effort my allies and I have spent here, we are but a fraction of the whole, and no change can be enacted with less than a dozen men and women, no matter how influential.”

  I shudder, “What would you ask me to do?”

  She raises an eyebrow, “No hesitation? Where did that caution from earlier go?”

  “I’ve already sold my soul to one devil in the pursuit of justice,” I reply bitterly, “Whether you are truly on my side or not, what’s one more?”

  She chuckles dryly, “I suppose so. Well, if you’re sure, there is only one thing I’d like to ask of you for now. I’m content to let you slowly grow your power and influence within the corp as you already were—your ability is not particularly useful to my research, unfortunately—but I do have one thing I think is far too important to that goal for you to ignore.”

  “And what would that be?” I ask, actually getting a little curious despite myself.

  “I want you to participate in the Hero Exhibition.”

  Any response I might have immediately dies on my lips. In a series of bombshells today, this is somehow the one I have the most mixed feelings about. Everyone knows the Hero Exhibition, that oh so glorious performance once a year where the greatest heroes in the country show off their abilities to a cheering crowd of thousands. It’s meant to inspire hope and let great heroes shine—and likely, given what I know now, pacify any doubt in the institution. If I participated, I’d be among greats like the city champions and even the big three.

  It’s easy to see why she’d want me to do this. I’m probably the only other dual hero/reaper combo aside from Jonathan in the corp. This event is one that, of all her supporters, likely only I could ever benefit from. I have no doubts she could get me in—all evidence suggests she’s as influential as Jonathan. I can only doubt if I’m ready for such a thing.

  I clear my throat with a dry cough, “I-I would need a lot of time to prepare.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing we still have three months then, isn’t it?” Vermillion replies, “What do you say? Are you in? Would you like to help me change the country?”

  How could I possibly refuse?