Pierce the Velvet

Link to article: Pierce the Velvet.



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**Content Warning:** Mentions of drug use, overdose, and suicide.

Pierce the Velvet by [[*user xexnoncores]]
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<< [[[A Murder and Relief in the Dark]]] | Pierce the Velvet | [[[To Love a Snake With Blue Eyes]]] >>
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= [[size 2.0em]]
February 2nd, 2024
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“…And…no. 461…” O5-01 says, steam hissing from his knuckles. “You understand that you are never to go more than five days without checking in with a Foundation proxy?”

“I do.”

“No. 462: Do you understand that we, the O5 council, reserve any and all rights to authorize your termination without the standard due process of normal Foundation procedures, as outlined in EHO5C Section 6B, and in the event of such a catastrophe, there will be no compensation to any surviving kin or beneficiaries listed within assets contained in this program?”

“…Yes.”

“No. 463—this is the last one—you understand that any willing or knowing contact with a PoI, GoI, except that of which was outlined in clause 217, or otherwise designated hostile entity to the Foundation will result in not just your termination, but the termination of this entire experimental program as—”

“Yes, I understand that.” Her eyes blink in sync with a quickly drawn breath. Though her words are cold, they are rushed in a scattered fashion, forcing themselves through a heart of grating and corrosion. “…Completely.”

“Alright, wonderful. Glad we got that out of the way.” His words carry like a steel drum stewing with matchsticks; each one falling out is similar to that of a gunshot. “I hereby conclude this recording and attest that all parties involved with this officiation have heard and agreed to its terms in their full, complete capacities.”

O5-01 clicks the recorder off as a door opens from behind. Sunlight glut-rushes in, warm and inviting. It floods to fill the brutalist space, curling fingers into whatever edge and corner it can manage.

“Selena Ruiz Montgomery Cortez—or, as you were previously known—O5-07—as of 2:13 pm today, you are hereby designated as retired, the first in the Foundation’s history. Please proceed to the front desk so that Lisa can get you out of here. The surf in Tampa is absolutely gorgeous, I’ve heard. So are the neighbors.”

His bronze hand beckons outward, teetering on demanding. Selena bristles with his candied change in tone and that open palm so swiftly showing its face, toes curling as she stands up. Her throat dries too, despite the fact her body is tense like hands wringing water from a stone.

“Thank you, O5-01,” she whispers, face retreating into its usual asphalt stoicalness. No point in any more formalities now. Those can slide off in the car and the first inhale of seaside air where she’s going.

“No problem…” he trails off as she’s walking out. He turns around as she gets halfway. “…Don’t fuck this up for us now, yeah?”

Dead in her tracks, Selena stops. She knows she shouldn’t, but O5-01’s nonexistent eyes drill into her nonetheless. Old habits die hard.

“The more I think about it, the more I wanna be in Paris before 2070,” he continues, as casually as if they were still co-workers. “Shotgunning Mont Blanc ’til I can’t see the sky anymore seems like a good way to live life.”

“You could just do that now and get it over with,” Selena retorts, without missing a beat. “No need to become part of the Foundation’s bureaucracy again for what can be accomplished in an afternoon.”

“Oh? Are you having second thoughts about your arrangements now? Of all times?”

Pause. The metal of the room echoes his baritone octaves so perfectly that one has to wonder if it was all intentionally crafted to amplify his presence. He’s even sitting in the same place his chair hovered over in meetings.

“…I’m kidding,” he follows up finally, after twenty painful seconds of silence. With a whirring smirk, a gridwork of teeth arranges themselves to grind down on one another. “I know you’d never turn this down. And getting shit-faced would take me a week, by the way.”

//That// noise will not be something she’ll miss. “Then indulge yourself in a pound of coke like the previous O5-10 did,” she replies. “That must have been a fun way for her to have expired.”

“Uh, no thanks,” he responds with a hand wave. “She was completely liquified by the time we managed to breach her personal office, and I would like for there to be at least something of me to bury in Manila when I kick the bucket.”

What a horrible memory. Selena will never be able to forget the reactions: O5-02 cried for the first time in thirty years watching that bloodied personality apparatus wheeled out on a gurney, while O5-12 took three days off only to attempt to kill herself the same way two hours after she got back. She was declared brain-dead until they managed to put her last clone online. Then she was just dead.

“…Anyways, seriously—get out of here. Now,” O5-01 asserts gruffly. “Your replacement is coming in an hour, and I will have no more delays to their designating numeration. You left some big shoes to fill, you know?”

She rolls her eyes but nonetheless complies, half-cursing him under her breath in the same one she swears she will see this through. The door slams behind her back with enough force to make an intern jump, but all she can do is look out towards the light.

It tickles her face with a gentle grin. It may be a hot day, but it’s a million times better than the frigid office she’s known for years. If she was a lesser woman, she would have asked herself when the last time she took a proper vacation was, but she’s not, so instead she thinks to herself where she’s going to get lunch. There’s a good barbecue restaurant supposedly five minutes from the house she’s moving in, right? And there’s supposed to be a bunch of food trucks out on Palm Street every Saturday too. Were they serving Cuban or Lebanese food? Or was that the next town over, and this was where the Puerto Rican trucks gathered instead?

Whatever she’s got, it sounds good. She decides she’ll indulge in all of it this week on her way out yet another door, an ID card slipped from her pocket into her palm. A black car’s been waiting out here for hours, but she ignores the annoyance of the driver and looks out the window.

It’s her life now. She can do anything she wants with it. Right?

= [[size 2.0em]]
June 30th, 2024
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Eighty degrees outside and seventy-two percent humidity. The green table-side clock reads 9:27 am in digital letters.

Selena’s eyes slowly peel open as gulls caw outside her windowsill. Their white bodies glow under the cloudless sky, their shrill cries melding in with the rest of the oceanic soundscape. While waves beat themselves senseless against a chalky beach below, the rest of the world’s noise strips itself back, her vision finally coming into itself.

Ah, good to know she managed to go back to sleep. It’s been difficult breaking out of the routine of waking up at 5 am sharp, even more so without the cacophony of traffic snuggled right up next to her. For some reason, the rolling of tires was melodic—there was a steady, mechanical heartbeat to count on whenever an engine was involved, like a metronome of veins that never ceased. Though she knew deep down such vibrations were supposed to register as dissonant, and probably were if she really searched herself, it was all she had for the longest time, and the best she thought she’d ever deserve.

It’s long past the time to question the validity of her being here though, away from the bleeding papers, the interrogations, the formalities of extraction. That was a notion ruminated on during the formation of this program, executed during the re-parsing of Council history and the practically unending fountain of misery which followed them all, and buried to grave once it received the red stamp of approval. All of that was, in her mind, an attempt by her own self-sabotaging flesh to drag her down when counting the number of O5s who managed to make it to the end of their careers, because the number just…didn’t compute, at least at first. What was the number of Council members who ever asked for retirement before she did?

Zero. Zilch. There were none. Not a single one.

There was nothing ever officiated because of how great of a risk they posed as civilians. O5-01 joked frequently during the fact-finding phase of establishing this that the Council killed off those who didn’t want to perform their duties anymore, but when Selena inquired further, he clammed up. When she tried actually going into archival records to find out, she was given a firm //never do that again// speech from him in all of his asinine glory.

It made sense then, because aside from her, their bodies had all been so heavily modified by various anomalies that there was no way amnesticization could possibly wipe everything out cleanly. Those bodies carried with them a score of scars and impaled desires which were loathe to give up the chalice, loathe to give up their minds even more. What other ways did they have besides suicide or homicide?

But now…

Did they ever think they had a way out at all? Did the possibility even exist in their minds as an intangibility to make real?

…Ugh, she needs to stop getting consumed over the past again. There’s been so many moments between normalcy when the realities of who she once was come crawling back. When will her mind rest? Isn’t the beach enough? Can’t the shining blue surf swallow her whole?

She yawns, and runs through what she could do today. There’s supposed to be a meet-up of antique Corvettes downtown at noon, and a few hours after that there’s going to be some kind of animal expo at the mall. Was it just for snakes, or reptiles in general? The pamphlet’s been lost amidst a stack of newspapers and magazines she’s buried herself into in a vain attempt to build a sense of place, so she doesn’t know. It’s a paltry way to build community, to nurture roots down here in this busy little town, but it is what it is.

Mumbling something unintelligible except to her own mind, she begins getting dressed. Her mind rolls, first along paved streets and second amidst tan-bricked buildings, soothing itself with assumed monotony.

As soon as she’s got her shoes on, her phone rings.

“Must be that guy from the pottery workshop…”

The one with the five dogs. He was nice at first, as nice as a stranger could be to someone they had never met at a community class. Later that day he made the news for getting so drunk that he vomited all over the bartender. Just her luck.

At least she wasn’t going to get glares for mingling with civilians now. Take things in stride, Selena.

She looks down for the number and—

…Shit.

“Hey, Lisa.”

A mouse-pitched voice cuts the tranquil atmosphere. A cracking wheel under platinum pressure that one could only halfway stand.

“Selena, they’re almost done with deliberations.”

She rolls her eyes and pinches her nose. “How bad is it?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“I didn’t ask for details—you can at least tell me my odds of survival.”

Selena can practically hear Lisa tapping her foot in frustration on the other end of the line. No wonder she had been able to put up with O5-01 for so long.

“I’m not going to lose my pension here telling you such classified inf—”

“Regulation-wise, you’re already too far in responding to me like that,” Selena interrupts her. “Do I need to remind you of how -01 usually likes these calls to be done?”

He would have probably given his secretary some grace in a situation like this, because she was only calling out of officiality, but Selena wouldn’t have. She had two of hers terminated under her watch for their failure to abide by Foundation secrecy policy, having been goaded into loose lips by terse comments made towards them. It was a slippery slope; all it took was saying one wrong thing and the enemy knew your game plan.

A pause, and Lisa sighs. Selena’s mouth knits itself into a heavy frown as she hears pens being pushed aside and footsteps.

She must be facing a wall now.

“…They’re insanely mad about it.”

“Yeah, well, they know I didn’t mean anything. Not my fault that Jude Kriyot was my pizza guy and that he dyed his hair blue.”

“They’re aware—” Lisa stutters, inhaling sharply. “It’s just—the terms of your, you know—and especially after what he and his idiotic friends did to Site-106 last month, they’re //so// not happy about the millions in losses—”

“So am I fine?”

Selena’s heart flutters, but it’s more a reactionary byproduct than anything. In her mind, this was all a farce, more corporate-bureaucratic nonsense to bring her back down, but she’ll live. She has to. She always has. Whether this was on purpose after her two decades in power, the result of grudges manifesting, or just their asinine analytics finally finding a proper cause to unnerve themselves over—it’s no longer her business. No longer her problem.

She can only hope they’ll see her cause as a worthwhile one under their thick skins.

“…Yes,” Lisa finally says, after what Selena knows was probably more looking around. The former tries stuttering something out before a huge buzzer echoes out, tearing through the both of them.

“Please, Selena, be more careful—! Ah, Ihavetogonow—!”

Lisa squeals as the call flatlines.

“Bye,” Selena says, throwing her head back and groaning. If she was less unnerved, she would have laughed at that. Why O5-01 always insisted on such noise to signal the end of meetings, she never knew, and she didn’t ask or want to. All she could do was wear earplugs and hope for the best.

There’s a want to swear and a want to take the news in stride as she tries to collect herself in the stillness. Her mind races, but with nothing in particular except pictures of faces, of those to avoid, of those she knew by their string of disruption or relevancy to her former duties.

God, it sucks, doesn’t it? He seemed kind enough to be someone normal in his stupid beanie and bleached shoes, but already he had changed. Already he had morphed into something she was no longer aware of, and now Selena was paying the price for that. Now she was paying a premium on information she no longer had within arms’ reach.

It was all change she didn’t have, change she would have to slip in between seats and words of security details, asking if there’s anyone in the area she should be on the lookout for, as if she was a teen with a mother who hated her and yet couldn’t stand to see her having fun on her own. Change she would have actively have to deposit, taking a precious spoon out of her drawer in exchange for her life as she mumbles to some intern agent who didn’t even know who //she// was.

God, was that really what she wanted to spend the last thirty years of her life doing? Looking over her shoulder all the time, unable to see the view in front of her?

…

What a horrible way to start a morning, honestly. Selena gets up and looks out her window to watch the birds hover in the sky, admiring how far up they were. Ah, to be so carefree.

No point in dwelling on it now. She needs to the best of this, make the best of things. She needs to get her head out of rut ruminations, of muddy waters that don’t exist yet.

So, what should she do now? Should she go make coffee? Check the news on her TV? Everything was such doom and gloom as of late, but not so much out of the ordinary as to deceive her that the world was missing her in her council chair.

Maybe she should finally visit that new bagel place downtown. The embedded agents at the station wouldn’t stop raving about them at her last check-in, talking about nice it was the owner donated her profits to the local ABA center. But it doesn’t open until eleven, right? She should check on that, because it’ll be too crowded if she doesn’t make it in ti—

Out of nowhere, her phone rings again.

She freezes, letting it scream and rumble in her hand until she looks down to see “UNKNOWN CALLER” in big, plain letters.

A deep pit forms in her stomach. But when she thinks about it for more than a nerve-soaked second she realizes—wait, it’s probably just a robo-caller. Right, those things. They were a part of normal life, a symptom of her “normal” fake name (which she hated remembering) being disseminated by the Foundation into the great digital cloud. She’s going to have to request another number change now, just to ease her paranoia, although in some way she wonders if it means something that the system sees her as a data point now. Something to extract, with a life, hobbies, and smile to personalize product advertisements around.

The phone stops ringing, and she sighs. //Thank you,// she thinks, and slides it into her jeans until it rings again.

“UNKNOWN CALLER” once more.

Oh. This one is persistent.

She looks around for a camera. There’s supposed to be two, one at her front door and one in her garage. They were standard security cameras, but still hooked up to the Foundation mainframe.

And they had unusually good hearing. The best modern technology could offer with a little bit of Maxwellian-tinkered microchips.

The phone rings out one more time and Selena holds her breath in the silence. Crashing sea foam, no matter how many teeth it possessed, could not possibly hope to break this stillness and the tension wiring quickly in her legs and arms.

A fourth time—that number meant death to some people, didn’t it? Now she answers.

“Who are you?” she snaps sharply. “Explain yourself right now. How you got this number, and why you keep insisting on calling m—”

“Is that how you greet an old friend, Selena?” a Cockney-accented voice chimes. It’s clear as a high bell with an undercurrent of venom dripping from its crown.

“…Excuse me?”

She glares at the floor, flipping over the possibilities of who this might be.

“Hm? Don’t recognize me? Pity. Though I suppose it has been a while since we’ve spoken with each other…”

The cogs begin turning, and Selena’s face boils.

“But were your little ducklings really not aware of my…what do the youth call it? Transmutation? Transition? Tch. How unbecoming—isn’t that your club’s whole job? To keep tabs on me?”

Oh no.

No. No. //No.//

A bellowing laughter fills the phone as Selena’s brain is mashed by its own inanity, pulverized, and regurgitated again with its wrongdoings.

“Hahaha! Oh, I see I’ve stunned you into complete silence. Wonderful! You should see my new look then, if you’re this abashed by me; I look positively radiant, //so// much more so than in those tatterdemalion rags you’ve got on my file.”

Selena bites first her lip and then her tongue in a muffled, soundless screech. Once she’s done, her voice forces itself into a hissing whisper. Because of course this bastard is already going on about self-owned looks, what else would…she do?

“Percival, how did you //get// this number?” Her hand claws into the smooth wall. “And I’ll update it when you put a gun to your mouth.”

“My, my, my! Has retirement soured you already?” she asks, faux-sniffling before slithering back to her morbid candor. “That’s not the cadence I’ve come to know you for. I deserve a little bit better than that, surely.”

“//How do you—?!//”

Selena nearly draws blood with her teeth, but stops herself in time to take a deep breath. A very, very deep breath.

Calm, calm, calm. She has to calm herself. This is a deliberate foot-setting, so it’s best not to wade too deeply. A poorly-thought out reaction will only set off whatever trap this is.

The correct answer to her dilemma is to hang up the phone and report the call, but she doesn’t. Instead, she leans herself up against the closet door with her head bent down, glasses straining the nastiest of glares.

“…You’re pretty bold for calling a Foundation-tapped line,” she starts.

“Well, it’s not like this one is bugged,” Percival replies. “That would be trouble for the both of us.”

“Just for you,” Selena insists.

“How so?”

“Take a guess.”

“Aw, you should go on and tell me! This is just a conversation between us, I assure you.”

“As if anyone would trust you.”

“Stating the obvious? What a wonderful use of that brain you’ve still got left. Why don’t you tell me more?”

Selena shivers as an edging horizon slowly peeks its head. With shadowy hands as long as the white cliffs of Dover, and as gnawing as a diamond crown, she has to perform some kind of area denial here. Now.

Silence. Waiting for breath, for the rare pulse from Percival’s heart. She could have driven a stake through it if she wanted, listen to it sputter and fizzle out as she gasped for air.

Percival is the one to break the iron curtain first.

“…Nothing interesting going on in that head of yours?”

“Nope,” Selena replies.

Percival’s voice tones just a bit south into sour. “…What a shame.”

“What, did you expect any different?”

“From you? Absolutely. Where’s that ravishing woman I once laid my eyes on?”

“Idle flattery isn’t going to work on me, Percival.”

Area denial, area denial. She has to keep this up, make her hang up. Selena will //not// lose to this posh snake.

“They all say that. It only takes the right arrow and vintage to change their minds…”

“Then I guess I’m lucky you’ve got neither here, talking to me over the phone.”

“Ah, well—I still get to listen to your lovely voice, don’t I? Music to my ears, even if it’s banal chatter…that’s all one can really ask for on a day off, mhm?”

Selena’s hand makes the slowest crawl up to her mouth that it has had in years.

…Silence again. Swallowing dry spit, Selena lets her heart crawl up into her ears, where a death wish and self-preservation begin setting each other’s skin on fire.

There’s a new area of denial now, and she has to take it or else…

“Playing games won’t get you anywhere.”
Her voice razors an edge she has to force back out of its slip into reflection. This is business as per usual, just business as per usual.

“Must you really refuse me, Selena?”

Annoyance. That’s good. Maybe mild, but still. She can taste the drooling anticipation Percival is quelling behind a suited verbosity through the phone screen. It’s a desire that comes from someone who killed those who told her no and would raze entire countries just for being uncouth to her once.

She sighs, and Selena drums her hands in a circular motion listening to it fade. In agitation, frustration, and…something deeper. Something as red as bloody velvet, as cutting as spasmed veins.

“Yes, so hang up now. It’s already too late for your signal not to be tracked.”

She’s lying. This is the one phone relinquished to her that isn’t being traced 24/7, granted as a sign of both grace and freedom. She had to fight for this during the planning stage, because practically everyone in the room looked to her with disdain. Disbelief, even, if she wanted to be more accurate. Even the assistants.

Those faces singe at her mind as Percival waits for longer than Selena knows is normal. There’s nothing prattling on in her background either, so she must be alone as well.

“…What big swords they’re encumbering you with,” she finally titters, as if she’s flicking her nail on a golden scale. “Is all of this your standard defense mechanism for any ruffian which runs its hands through your feathers? Tch.”

“It’s standard procedure for someone who has swallowed as many Sarkites as you have. What was the number again, one thousand and fifty?”

Exactly the number of years she was destined to live. The details of Percival’s past were as closely guarded as an O5’s true name, but that did not mean it held the same power. No—they dug up that bloody contract she forged in 1416, and all of the skulls that came with it. She was a sloppy eater, and the contract was forged not in the unknowable cosmic script she boasted about to her colleagues, but medieval English.

Yeah, there was something fun to bring up at her dinner parties. Selena never could hold back snickering at what the double agents reported her reaction was when that was uncovered, laid out bare to Amos and Ruprecht. Nobody was left alive in the building except for her daughter, Iris, not even the cargo worth five million dollars, nor the artwork worth triple that. All of London’s windows were forced to shatter from the sheer mortification of someone who had before sold herself on being untouchable in the most godly of ways, from the breaking of a mystery which served as a guillotine she forced her adversaries to buckle and vomit under.

“Lead-mouthed ant,” she hears her spit under her breath. Selena clamps her free hand over her own mouth to hide its growing smile. “And here I was thinking of inviting you to a retirement party, just the two of us. But I see you’ve acquired a putrid little spine there, with thorns and all.”

“Can’t be any more unpleasant than what you’re used to already.” It all rolls off Selena’s tongue so slickly as if she’s done this before.

“Well, it would have certainly been more magnanimous than whatever pilfering triteness they set you off with, most likely not worthy of your great accomplishments. You know how I hate to see good work uncelebrated, Miss Seven.”

//Don’t call me that,// Selena thinks. “I don’t know you, actually,” is what comes out instead.

“Oh please, dear. You’re such a bad liar.”

Selena grits her teeth trying to shove many, //many// thoughts back into her closet. All dressed up in wined-out skeletons and Vegas-crusted eye sockets, drowning in the booze she never had.

“Don’t go all two-faced on me just because you’ve got some laymen friends in a backwater town. A few clean beaches doesn’t make an area livable—to be fooled into such a lie is bad tact, and quite frankly, it disappoints me. It disappoints me more than you know.”

Selena’s face goes hot. Her toes curl in her tennis shoes, as her tapping becomes louder, and louder. Can the cameras hear this? No, they shouldn’t; the angle of the closet is too acute from this distance and the padding inside is exquisite. You could kill a man in here and not hear his pleas for help.

Right?

She pushes down guilty memories to let rising saline flood her veins slowly. She pushes down guilty memories of red lights, of slit pupils eyeing her up and down with a fanged smile, of the gardens where the serpent reared its head and…

…Was it a lust for carnage that she wanted then? When she insisted for them to find some place by themselves, was she intentionally trying to sow chaos and discord in her own favor?

Percival was a ‘detain on sight’ PoI for a reason. The Foundation stopped estimating the amount of money she possessed years ago, because it was simply too much to keep up with.

“It’ll be simple,” that voice chatters on. “Just something between the two of us on a private island of mine.” Its tone dips into a satin nightgown, into an obsidian three-piece suit looking down on someone who had never been desired before. What was that person supposed to do when confronted by someone who had never not gotten what they wanted?

“And don’t worry about it being too opulent, I get the impression you’re not a woman impressed by such displays—but nonetheless. All it would take would be a single word to an associate of mine, and…”

She stops, long enough to let the conversation breathe. Selena finds herself finally doing the same for the first time in…well, she doesn’t remember, and it feels like a rod being shoved down her throat. It feels like a rod being shoved down her throat, one with eyes so blue they could make sapphires jealous.

“…You must be having fun, Percival.”

It’s a sentence that comes out of her mouth as smoothly as the lens of a camera.

“Risking your life again after all this time just to say hi and invite someone like me to another one of your parties. Are you doing this out of pity, or shame? Because I don’t think I want part of either.”

Those words, however, do not. There’s a half lie here in that Selena doesn’t want her pity, but somehow, she’d be willing to stomach shame. She’d be willing to stomach shame just long enough to see that face truly come of itself and lunge at her, before she plunged a thaumaturgic bullet down her skull and that was that.

…No, actually. She doesn’t want to do that either. That wouldn’t even kill, what is she thinking?

(And she knows it won’t kill because she watched two implant themselves in her spine.)

“Bold of you to assume it’s not just good old-fashioned British hospitality,” she chuffs with a click of her tongue.

“I’m serious,” Selena asserts. “You’re pushing this farther than is good for you.”

“Concerned with my health now, are you? Oh, I’m so flattered. You should be concerned with your own for once.”

“The only time I’ve ever been concerned for you was that night when I could have shot you and faced zero repercussions for it.”

…Yeah, it was time to bring that up now. This was getting out of hand and lasting way too long. The festival died twenty years ago, just like that agent did.

“A bullet for bullet, eh? One in the body with a machete in its hand, and one straight into your eye? You would have //loved// to let me get away with that.”

Selena snickers to herself. What a macabre recollection, but there’s a reason she’s laughing. There’s no one else in the world who got to witness the magnificent Percival Darke cornered like she did, begging for her life with all of the swears and ancient insults as she did.

There’s no one else in the world who has seen those eyes as wide with fear as she has.

Selena keeps laughing, as the image she holds in her head digs up more and more anxious hallways. This is horrible—this is atrocious, unbecoming of her. It’s pig-headed, fun, selfish and stupid.

But she still doesn’t hang up, and neither does Percival.

“I wouldn’t have let you get away with it at all,” she snarls through a thick sneer.

“Yes you would. I saved not just you, but Iris, didn’t I? I’m sure that could cover up an offense to your sense of manners. What, don’t you demons play by rules and contracts and tit-for-tat?”

“You’re a little piece of—I am //not// a demon, you—”

There she goes. Selena just has to hold this for a little longer. Get one last punch in, and make her hang up.

“You’re a demon in all but name, yes you are. That’s all you’ll ever be, all you’ll ever amount to, those piss-minded gargoyles who eat their own shit, Percival. Aren’t you halfway there with the contracts and memos already? The pounds of ink your idiotic executives swallow on a monthly basis—”

The phone hits a dial tone. Percival hangs up without another word and Selena is left alone. Again.

A crow caws outside, and Selena falls to the floor, unsure of whether to burn in pride or with tears. Her glasses sway uncouthly from side to side across her big nose, threatening to collapse and break.

They’ve already got a scratch in them she’s been ignoring. Put it aside like the rest of the maintenances she’s been putting off for as long as was feasibly possible. That was the easiest way, that was the way of least cortisol.

…What a stupid way to win that. What a stupid way to risk it all. Name-calling like a five-year-old, like a kid on the playground who doesn’t get what they want. Playing a back and forth like this was some TV show about a bunch of nobodies who lived in a walkable city.

But that was all she knew, wasn’t it? That was a cynical way to boil down negotiations, the art of cooperation and existence among similarly bloody colleagues but, well, it was right, wasn’t it? Signaling, relinquishing position, feigning nice, appealing to the origins behind the eyes looking at you—she did all of that, yeah? Didn't she?

Selena sucks in air thinking of O5-01 looking down on her from his chair. There’s a stark contrast to his blank face and that unknowable blue piercing the same darkness.

One synergizes her harshly, forcing her into a team strategy that she rarely, if ever wanted to be a part of. He knew she hated voting on the big initiatives and yet insisted upon her input each time anyway.

Percival, however…

She asked for her hand once. When she still sounded like an angelic baritone, polished to perfection. She asked about the job, the sites she knew of much too closely, all things Selena would never be allowed to divulge, and yet she waited ever so patiently for her to answer as if she could. As if Selena was someone full of possibilities instead of just a very big numbered fish capable of wiping sites off the map at her beck and call.

…No. Once again, she has to force herself not to reminisce on those times. If she does, she will only…

She will only…

…

She taps the most recent caller and waits. Limply. The darkness of her bedroom cradles her from the stripping sun as her phone illuminates her face with a somber glow.

Percival picks up, somehow, and Selena forces the first word in before she can even begin yelling at her.

“I’m sorry.”

Silence. Not unusual now, but it still hurts. Selena can’t feel her face or her chest.

“…Sorry? I…You called me to deliver an…apology…?”

Even Percival sounds taken aback. She has a cigar in her mouth now, no doubt. The phone catches its demure sizzling with derelicting impunity.

“…Yeah,” Selena says, unaware of the power she carries, forcing someone like Percival Darke of all people to bend over for an apology. That will dawn on her later when she’s taking a cold-water shower to collapse, but focus on the present for now. “…I’m sorry.”

“Well, that’s…quite the statement, Miss Heptad Autocrat. Very bold for your kind.”

//It’s a bold move for anyone to try and please you//, Selena thinks. “Are you still open to that party?”

Selena can practically hear Percival licking her lips, but she doesn’t care. Let her eat all the ash she wants.

“…Only if you promise to be cordial.”

“Okay. You have to promise me protection. I…”

Does she want to tell her that she’s got goddamn cameras in her house? She’s already in too deep, and yet…

“…I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the nature of my arrangements, yes?”

“Indeed, you don’t.” She laughs this time, and it melts in Selena’s ears with stoning resistance. “Here, let me indulge—I’ll take on the burdens of planning this, and we meet up at a rendezvous point in a week under a cover story for those swine-mouthed bottom feeders. As long as you can call me where they can’t hear…”

The sun begins setting on Percival’s end, and she sighs. Selena’s hands drip with sweat listening to such a smooth sound.

“This will work out in your favor.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” Selena blurts louder than she knows is good for her. There’s a real sting of shakiness to her voice that sounds like bricks crumbling. Not falling, but the foundation heaving, releasing their bodies and seeping into the loamy earth.

A bead of sweat drips down her forehead in her sixty-two-degree, air-conditioned bedroom. By now she’s fully crammed herself into the back of the closet, feet a mess amidst what were once organized piles of shoes, belied above by rows upon rows of mismatching shirts, most tending towards black.

“…Don’t worry. It’s me, isn’t it?” Percival purred, her tone mellowing, softening. Whether in pity, disappointment, or genuine concern, Selena doesn’t know and doesn’t want to ask.

“What can you give me to prove that?” Selena asks, as she finally takes off her glasses to stare into the blurry darkness.

Percival takes a second to answer, but the smile she slips into is so obvious that Selena can practically feel it kissing her ear.

“…The same kindness I graced you with that night. You purloined something of mine…and yet here you are to tell the tale.”

//And I took aim at your ego too,// Selena thinks, smiling. Lopsidedly, nervously, but it’s still a smile, despite everything.

“Guess you really never thanked me properly for Iris, huh?” she asks.

“I suppose.” Selena doesn’t need to see her to know she’s rolling her eyes. “Goodbye for now though, Miss Lucky—I have a gala I need to put on make-up for. Keep your pretty face intact for me, please?”

She hangs up before Selena can respond. That was probably on purpose. No, most definitely.

A blue jay screams somewhere in the deep distance, in the forest at the edge of town nobody talks about. The one which can’t be razed because it’s of too much sentimental importance to the elders, and yet the youth get nothing out of it because of the ‘STAY OUT’ signs. A security guard patrols the perimeter, every day, annoyed by the squirrels and snakes hiding in the trees, what he has been assigned to protect, as he is eager to see its unsightliness gone despite the easy money it makes for him, and him alone.

No one is an island except a forest in a concrete jungle. When Selena finally shakes herself out of her own static-sloughing thoughts, she ponders if she should visit there before all of this goes down. Without a doubt, it reminds her of Percival, of her fascinatingly idiosyncratic opinion of nature. Was the private island she bought originally some historied nature reserve? Knowing it’s here in Florida, it must have closed the loop of its life with a bribe, fat with anticipation as soon as her sin was completed.

How come Selena can’t hold her head high like that? She is already, doing what she is, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s never felt like it in all of her life. Whoever said your confidence got better with age was wrong in the most cosmic of ways—all that you figured out was what you were able to get away with without making a mess, and what you knew more than anyone else.

What Selena does know now is that she’s done this before, so she can do it again one more time. One last time.

And what she knows more than anyone else is the reason why she doesn’t want to be here, and yet fell into the viper pit anyway.

There’s a temptation to call back Percival just to hear her voice again, but she deletes the number from her history and deigns herself instead to calling the dog guy.

When he picks up, all she can do is zone out to his jolly greetings and questions about where she’s been while she thinks of what she’s going to wear in a week.
[[/div]]

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