I was relieved to see they seemed to get along well. It wouldn't be surprising if there was friction. The last time she'd seen her father he was still giving her a weekly allowance and occasionally doling out groundings for language. A dynamic that was entirely different, now, but he seemed to take it well in hand.
"You can place your lair here!" Kinsley pointed towards an outcropping off the side of the sitting room with an oversized fish tank.
"Ah." Vernon surveyed the lush surroundings, still a bit stunned. "Isn't it... kind of in the middle of everything?"
"Yes," Kinsley said matter-of-factly. "I've had it warded specifically so any system-created den will be larger than its initial parameters. Your staff—"
"My staff?"
"Two amoral lab assistants—though we can add more if needed—your all-in-one nutritionist and professional chef, the in-house masseuse, therapist, and private theater are all less than a five-minute walk from the lair. There's also containment and hazard disposal staff at your beck and call, though you'll be sharing them with the rest of the estate until I have a chance to expand more."
"How much... is this costing you?" Vernon asked, the stern evaluation of a parent filtering into his expression.
"Ballpark two percent of my weekly income. Ten, if you include my employees. A reasonable ratio of expense." Kinsley shrugged. It was all arbitrary to her, a reality she'd been living with since after the first transposition. But seeing it for the first time was jarring for Vernon.
"This is all... a lot." Vernon said, unsteady on his feet. Before he could so much as swoon, a thin man in formal wear placed a small stool behind him, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Don't fucking touch me," the necromancer snarled, jerking away and knocking the stool over, slinking away from the man in the helmet.
I forced a projection of calm through his mental defenses.
"Daddy?" Kinsley swallowed, her voice painfully vulnerable. "That's a hospitality spirit. He's just looking out for you, like I told him to."
"Well, I'd like him to keep his hands to himself." Vernon growled, still fixated on the spirit.
It reminded me of myself. How I felt when I was unceremoniously thrust into new and foreign circumstances, and how quickly that confusion and discomfort could turn to anger.
"What?" Kinsley asked, the question stammered. "I-if you don't like it, we can fix it. Everything here is to my taste, I tried to pick something we'd both like, but if it's all wrong I can do better—"
"It's fine... sweetheart." Vernon said, completely unconvincingly, rubbing a palm against his forehead. "But I don't need a therapist. Or the rest of this. It might be better for both of us if I keep my lair away from your home. Safer that way."
"You want to be away from me again?" Kinsley asked, genuinely hurt.
"It's not..." Vernon's fists clenched at his side.
I bumped into Vernon hard with my shoulder, then patted him on the back with just as much force. "Man, you've been stuck in a lab for months with barely anyone to talk to, this must be incredibly overstimulating."
Vernon glared and opened his mouth, fully prepared to spew venom before I pounded him on the back again, triggering an outbreak of coughing, then directed a question at Kinsley. "There anywhere quiet he can chill out, find his bearings?"
Sometimes it was hard to remember that Kinsley was a child. This was not one of those times. She looked small and scared as she ever had, completely vulnerable, like a single cruel word from Vernon could shatter her forever. Her mouth pulled together tightly, and her chin trembled. "Yeah... there's a new meditation room down the east wing. Frosted glass windows. Can't miss it."
"Got it."
I hauled Vernon by his forearm, half-dragging, half-leading, until we reached the meditation area and were mostly out of sight, where I dropped the nice act and tossed him in. He stumbled across a rolled up yoga mat, eventually falling onto the soft foam ground.
"What the fuck is your problem?" I demanded, crossing my arms.
"None of your business." Vernon snapped.
My eyebrows shot sky-high. "Oh? What about that part where you didn't die in the transposition? That place I just dragged you out of. The fact that both me and your daughter, my friend, have been grinding like hell to get your moody, temperamental ass free and clear? Because I'm pretty sure, given all that, this is my fucking business."
Vernon softened, then looked to the side, disgusted. "The assistants, the therapist. It's all barely disguised oversight. She wants to... monitor... me."
"Yeah, and?" I challenged. "Considering the shit you can do, someone in your position should never be without oversight. For your own damn good. You had oversight at the Order as well. Difference is, if anyone here gets worried you get to sit on a nice plush couch and talk about your feelings, instead of a crossbow bolt to the back of the head."
"No. I agree. Necromancy should be controlled." Vernon gathered himself up, paced alongside the wall. "But Kinsley shouldn't be this close to what I'm doing. Her staff will inevitably send reports." He smiled tightly. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. The experiments are barbaric. She'll never look at me the same."
"You wanna talk to me about discomfort?" I thought of their history and shook my head. "Your daughter formed an alliance with the man who kidnapped and ordered the shit kicked out of her, because doing so gave us a better chance to keep the peace and bring you back."
Vernon's brow furrowed. "Aaron?"
I nodded. "Kinsley hates him more than most people, which to be frank, is a very high bar. But she made the deal anyway. Swallowed her pride. Because you're the most important person in the world to her. She understands that maintaining a position of power requires compromise, and that compromise is often ugly."
"It's hard enough to focus on this gruesome work in solitude." Vernon grimaced into his hand, chewing his nails again. "Someone looking over my shoulder will slow progress. I'm so close. I can't afford any inefficiencies."
As if in a trance, my legs carried me forward, until I loomed over him. "Then use your goddamn words and tell her that. Calmly. Communicate your concerns. Tell her you're going through a difficult time, that you had next to no privacy in The Order, and you'd feel more secure if the people she hired for you didn't give her a gruesome play-by-play of your exploits."
Slowly, the color drained out of his face. "She'll take it personally."
"It's a little late for that." I deadpanned. "Plus, it's reasonable. It makes sense. Right now she's standing three feet behind that frosted glass, wringing her hands, distraught, wondering why all the resources and effort she dumped in to making you feel welcome only pissed you off. Take whatever time you need. Then go out there and fix it."
/////
To Vernon's credit, he did. The joyous atmosphere was more muted than before, but she still gushed with excitement as she carried on the tour of the Sanctuary's increasingly impressive amenities, many of which were equally new to me.
Vernon laughed, gaped in wonder, and applauded in all the right places. Now that he was finally over the initial shock, the awkwardness seemed to fade, and for the first time I glimpsed what must have been their usual back and forth.
There was a distant, stirring sadness beneath it all I did my best to ignore. Since the early days, Kinsley had relied on me much the same way my siblings had. She wanted to learn, and surprising even to me, teaching had given me no end of satisfaction. She was an excellent, attentive student, and at some point, she'd become my second sister in everything but name.
Now, as I watched Vernon and Kinsley play a simple duet on the ridiculously ostentatious grand piano that formed the centerpiece of the entryway, there was a distinct sense of an ending. The closing of a chapter.
It was probably for the best.
The current Kinsley was considerably crueler than the little girl who sold me cookies at the end of the world. Couldn't take full credit for that, a prominent mean streak was practically a prerequisite of everyday life in the dome, but it was, at least partially, my fault. In a way, the reunion was timely. Watching her giggle, regale her father with stories, and occasionally dance around in excitement, was a relief. Because it meant the mask I'd helped her build wasn't permanent yet. It could be altered, even removed, her inner child simply suppressed, rather than smothered.
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Teaching someone to survive was easy enough. I'd done similar for all my siblings. But I couldn't teach her how to live.
Because you can't teach what you don't know.
"And this is the bowling alley," Kinsley announced, throwing open yet another door.
I took that moment to slip away. There was more I wanted to talk about. Plans to review and confirm. But we'd already gone over those plans, again, and again, and again. Study was over. The test was coming. And from experience, cramming never fucking works.
It took a few minutes to find my way out of the Sanctuary.
Fresh air flooded my lungs, along with the acrid scent of fireworks. Kinsley would prioritize Vernon for the immediate future. And perhaps more importantly, she'd have someone to cling to for support, after I was gone.
I walked towards where Jackson was back in the car, idling.
"Oi! Dickhead!"
Somehow, it made me laugh. I turned to find Kinsley standing on the steps behind me, her arms crossed.
"Cursing in British, now?"
"Slinking away mid-conversation like temu Batman?" She shot back.
"Needed to get going." I shrugged. "Didn't want to interrupt."
"No." Kinsley shook her head slowly, then descended the rest of the stairs in three short hops. "This is how it was before. You were always evasive, ready to leave the moment I wasn't paying attention. It'd be nostalgic if it didn't piss me off so much. What gives?"
"I've done as much as I can. Bar a few things still left on the list." When I thought through everything I'd accomplished since Miles' ultimatum and wondered if it would even matter. "Guess the reality's setting in."
"You're shivering."
"It's cold."
"Can you beat him?" Kinsley asked, point blank. In the shadows, half her face was obscured, the visible half older than she'd appeared minutes before. The mask was back.
"There are a lot of irons in the fire, ideas, strategies..."
I'll be fine.
Somehow, I stuck to the truth. "Miles doesn't bite the way normal people do. He often reacts the opposite way I'd expect, at the worst time, sometimes with disastrous results. Every time I think I have a read on him, he just... flips the board. Right now... unless I find something to seriously tip the scales in the next few hours... it's a coin flip. Fifty-fifty."
"That scares me. Because you're usually so confident." Kinsley chewed her lip.
"Scares me too." I stared out into the night. "I think the last time I felt this at risk was the day after the market took off."
Kinsley cocked her head. "The day after the Open Forum?"
"Yup." I recalled the memory and shook my head. "I'd considered negotiating more aggressively. Pushing for a percentage of profits."
"I remember you hinted at that." Kinsley huffed. "Spent days figuring out how to explain it wasn't possible. Was terrified you wouldn't believe me, and that once you asked, our partnership would be over." She squinted. "But you never did."
"It's the weirdest fucking thing." I shrugged. "I had a plan, every intention of executing it, but when the time came, before the open forum, I just... couldn't. Kept remembering how afraid and alone you were, how you'd literally hallucinated in isolation. So I just... didn't do it. And when the market boomed to success, I kept waiting, all throughout the transposition, for you to tell me to kick rocks. It wasn't your region. There was nothing nailing your feet to the ground. You could have jumped ship at any point and time, taken all the work and effort we'd put in together and claimed it as your own. But you never did."
"What kind of monster would abandon someone who helped them?"
"A common one." I chuckled. "Perhaps the most common. But you really came through for us. In a way few people ever have. So, thank you for that. Truly."
I turned back to the night sky, listening to soft footfalls approaching behind me as she suddenly clung to me tightly. "We've been over this. You're not allowed to just fuck off. Stop saying goodbye."
This was exactly why I'd tried to avoid saying goodbye.
"It wasn't supposed to go this way. Trust me."
"But you're ignoring the obvious." Kinsley hissed. "Fuck the feds. Fuck 'em all. We put the gray Mercs together for a reason. Why do this the hard way when I could just use them?"
"Jesus." I rolled my eyes. "Everybody's out for blood today. You take out Miles you kick the hive."
"Then we take them all. Do a little digging, pull their command structure out of the brain of some high-level clip-on, and take them out one by one." She snapped. It was tempting to just shrug it off, but I could tell how serious she was.
"So the feds are all dead and I'm still alive. Great. What happens next?"
Her face scrunched up. "I mean—I don't know."
"You're talking about dismantling one of the last, functioning wings of our government, slaughtering at least a dozen people, if not more. You damn well better know if you're planning to do something that significant."
"Fine." Kinsley paced, chin resting on a fist. "It wouldn't be great. Even if we did it perfectly—and nothing ever goes perfectly—someone would see something and rumors would spread."
"You'd also need to make sure every mercenary who took part in the op either escaped cleanly or died. No one could be captured, under any circumstance. And if you really wanted to hide it indefinitely, you'd need to do something with the ones that escaped."
Kinsley paled, looking at the ground, thinking hard.
"What else?"
"There'd be widespread disorganization. Panic. Word spreads quicker now, about as quick as it did in the old world. They're established allies, so it would indirectly weaken the Adventurer's Guild, which isn't great for us."
"Zoom out." I prompted.
Kinsley's nose wrinkled as she concentrated. "The feds are gone, the adventurer's guild is weakened... The Order will make a play for power?"
"Possible. But stick to what we know."
"Shit." Kinsley's jaw clenched. "The necromancers."
"Exactly. The feds are barely keeping a lid on the necromancer situation. One attacked us less than two weeks ago and my sister almost died. From what Miles' hinted at, they've hunted dozens. Dozens with the potential to do what that asshole in the tower almost did. Take the feds off the board and they're left alone to do a fuck-ton of damage until every guild and group in the dome gets fed up with losing their friends and family in droves and does something about it. Think the Salem Witch Trials, only most of the witches deserve it, and you now have the misfortune of having a witch at home."
"Yeah." Kinsley breathed. "That would be... all kinds of bad."
"This is the way you have to think before seriously considering drastic action." I warned her. "Because with your resources, enacting it is as easy as giving an order."
"Always a fucking lesson." Kinsley grimaced, stumped. "There's got to be something more I can do."
"There is." I agreed. "Keep a watch on things from the outside. Stick to the plan and run out the clock. And remember. Even if it goes bad. Revenge is a distraction."
"Oh, I'm ending him if he kills you."
I raised an eyebrow and waited.
She rolled her eyes. "But only after he's old, and gray, and has no bearing on the critical ebb and flow of our growing society, and any imminent danger has passed, and we're all holding hands and reading rainbows."
"So never."
"Fuck you." Kinsley turned away, swiping at her cheek. "Check your DM's. Turns out, I can send out quarterly bonuses—And I've awarded said bonus in goods. Including the laptop you mentioned."
"Thanks." I thought back to the USB drive, deciding I'd review the file in the car, on the way to the Galleria. "Got headphones?"
"Buy 'em your damn self, I'm not Santa. Good luck, Matt. Gotta go check on my dad."
I shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to bring it up, but fully aware that if I didn’t, we might never get another chance. “Have you thought about what I said, about the second transposition?”
It hadn’t been a pleasant conversation. The topic was sensitive, and it marked the first time she’d ever told me to fuck off instead of working through the problem.
Kinsley froze. When she spoke, her voice was barely more than a whisper. “It’s been everything I can do, not to think about it.”
“Obviously it’s unpleasant to think about. Nobody wants to imagine their friends and allies being pitted against them–”
“It’s fucking conjecture, Matt.” She turned back towards me, gesticulating wildly. “Just because things have been consistently bad doesn’t automatically mean the worst thing you can think of is an automatic shoo-in.”
“I was right the first time.”
That stopped her flat. I continued. “The entire point of the transposition was to destabilize. Erode our alliances, force everyone back into tribalism and territorial thinking. Your debut and support throughout the cataclysm threw a wrench in that plan. And continues to. Merchants are the only reason the dome is as functional as it is. So the target is obvious.”
“Yes, I get it.” Kinsley scoffed, covering anxiety with bravado. “If you’re right, they’ll pit merchants against Users. Force us into conflict. ”
“If that happens, and I’m still around, I’ll do everything I can to get you out of it unscathed. But you need to make precautions in case I’m not–”
“It’s already done.” Kinsley interrupted. “The gray mercs are already working out well.” She ran a hand through her hair. “They’ll keep me safe. Relocating somewhere isolated means I’ll need to downscale, which pisses me off, but it’s better than getting burned at the stake because slender-dick decided to stick his eldritch tendrils in my business. I have a place picked out. And a plan.”
“Good. Don’t tell me anymore, it’s better if I don’t know.” Finding out she’d already made arrangements flooded me with relief. One less thing to worry about. “Play it quiet. Play it close. And remember that however it all shakes out, this wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for any of it.”
Sensing the conversation was over, Kinsley brusquely walked away, refusing to face me.
Goodbye, friend.
/////
Less than half an hour later, I leaned back in a state of utter shock. Watching the file again was just as rough the second time. A thousand puzzle pieces fell into place. Suddenly the time spent pouring over Miles' apartment was entirely worthwhile.
It was all so clear now. The path forward. What needed to happen.
The part I'd play.
I felt sick.
Trembling, I opened my UI, and composed a message.
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