CHAPTER 4 - FERMATA

  “Where were you?”

  The words wash off Siena like water off a duck’s back, but she faces Gabriel regardless, eyes tired and shoulders sagging. Inside her neck still resides the painful ache of Keisha’s rapier piercing through it like paper. That is what the human body is, after all. Watery goo packed up in a nearly paperthin membrane. And yet, look at them, Siena thinks as she looks up at her family.

  Her brother reaches out to her, but she takes a step back. His hand freezes mid-air, then falls limply to his side as he grimaces. “Your clothes are dirty—and bloody. Are you hurt anywhere? Do—do you need a hospital?”

  She shakes her head, eyes continuously glancing at her cross-armed, glaring mother. “No. I’m fine. I just…” she trails off, realizing she hasn’t thought about whether she is going to lie or not, and settles on a half truth, “met someone at a park. Some girl—

  “Some girl?” Gabriel scoffs.

  “—and she cut herself up on accident and some of her blood got on me.”

  Really, it would be so much easier if she could simply kill them both and run off. Live in the wilderness and not have to worry about people and words. Alas, not only would that set the Agency after her—along with her kin—it would permanently stop her from rejoining the orchestra. She would remain an anomaly forever.

  He gets a good look at her—a really good look at her. Her bruises, her shifty eyes, the way she’s standing stiffer than usual, as if relaxing would render her undone.

  Then, he sighs. “I’m calling the police. You got attacked—”

  “Gabriel.” Their mother’s voice strikes like thunder despite the simplicity and coldness of her tone. It is as if a snake has wrapped around their necks and rendered them silent; to speak out is to throw your life away. “Come on, sweetie. There’s no need to call the cops. She’s fine. A Magical Girl like her can’t be put in danger by some girl.” Like a switch has been flipped, her words are honeyed, now. Gentle. She gently rubs his shoulder, but there is not a care in the world in her eyes—Siena sees it. “Nana, come inside and clean yourself up. Come see me after.”

  Siena’s finger twitches. Ash under her nails.

  But she follows through, ignoring her primal urges, and steps inside the house.

  There is no fight left in her brother. Any sign of worry he might have had for her has sloughed off him like rotting skin, and he instead now stands behind their mother as he stares at his feet with his hands wrung together. Siena climbs up the stairs and into the shower when the water is nice and warm.

  She loves Gabriel. The softness in his heart in a world that has rarely rewarded him for it. How easily he holds it out in his bare hands and shows his sensitivity to people no matter how many times they have wronged him, no matter how often he’s left standing there with nothing in return.

  She hates Gabriel. The disgusting, puppylike love he has for someone who has done nothing but take him for granted, and how it makes doubt about the Conductor creep into her mind. How he struggles to stand up for himself because their mother has systematically taken that out of him—carved it out piece by piece, word by word until there is nothing left.

  The water feels odd on her skin.

  She has no energy to ensure she doesn’t look disheveled when she goes to her mother’s room. Her vice of choice tonight is a gambling website where she will proceed to lose the money Siena has earned this past few months as a Magical Girl. She liked it better when the blog—her so-called business—was her sole focus.

  And the money would only increase, if her memories serve her right. New girls at the job make a large amount, but nowhere near what Twilight Ember or Shadow Lily would.

  When it is just the two of them alone, her mother doesn’t wear a mask. She’s figured out long ago that her daughter knows her truth. Beyond her addiction, the story of Valentina’s life is one of pretending to be someone else to survive. Oh, Siena had heard the story a thousand time, because it came with each fuck up as if it absolved her of her sins.

  An abusive mother and father, an abusive first boyfriend, a neglectful, alcoholic husband. Siena has heard it all; she could recite it from memory with each inflection and each fake tear squeezed out of her dead eyes like water out of a stone. It doesn’t matter.

  Valentina turns to face her. “I don’t care about the shit you do outside, hija. I really don’t,” she says in a low, growl-like whisper. “But you are not involving your brother in your nonsense.”

  “Involving?” Siena smirks, although it wavers. “I—is him worrying about me something you dislike?”

  Her mother frowns, not expecting such a retort. Despite her uneasiness, her stumbling over her words, the beads of sweat coagulating on her forehead, her abject fear of her parent, Valentina has never seen any of her children stand up for themselves.

  She is Siena, yes. Fused memories and feelings. But they are a pair, and right now, it isn’t the human half who’s running the show. Not after she fought desperately for survival when her old self would have allowed death to take her.

  “You’ve changed,” she simply states.

  “Seattle—”

  “No. No, you’ve changed. I noticed it when you got home,” her mother says, wagging a finger.

  Siena gulps, holding her breath—

  “You used to be such a good girl, but you keep changing.” She clicks her tongue and shakes her head, pacing about the room slightly. Her screen glows faintly in the dark—rows of spinning reels and neon jackpots flicker across a gaudy slot machine website. “It’s just the way you look at me now. It’s giving me attitude, even now.”

  —and breathes a sigh of relief. Yes, the glaring was the issue, not the fact that she was not from this world.

  Siena wants to bring forth another retort, but her throat feels tight, and her body is screaming at her to keep the interaction short. There was never any violence growing up, but words can sometimes be far more insidious than any hit.

  “I don’t want anything to do with you,” Siena says weakly, almost like a child—no, not almost. “As soon as I leave for Colorado, that’ll… be it.”

  Without missing a beat, her mother adds. “And you’re still going to send money each month, right?” She crosses her arms and taps a finger on her elbow.

  “N—”

  “Gabriel still lives here,” Valentina interrupts. “I still have him. You want to take care of him.”

  She didn’t—

  She wanted to—

  The clenching of a fist tight enough for nails to indent her palm keeps her focus. “I’ll… send money.”

  An evil grin splits her mother’s face, and she sinks back into her chair. The computer glow doesn’t reflect in her eyes. “Then we’re done here. Out.”

  She doesn’t keep her waiting. Siena barges out of the room, slams the door and leans against a wall while she grips her chest. She can’t confront her—not yet. This heart of hers wouldn’t allow it. Hell, even without her social restrictions, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to bring herself to choke the bitch with ash.

  She hadn’t given up, however. She would bide her time, free Gabriel from her clutches and bring him to Colorado eventually. Right now, should she ask him, he would no doubt tell Valentina and she’d manipulate him further. If she feels safe, she wouldn’t act out of line.

  Goodness gracious, humanity was difficult. Siena lets out a small sob as she looks out at the moon through a window and laments.

  “Conductor…”

  No one answers. No one would ever answer. There is only the sound of her own voice.

  It is lonely.

  ——

  “Listen, Keisha. This is not the moment to be disappearing on your own for two whole days in Albuquerque,” the word is said like some racist would speak of a developing country, “doing who knows what. The entire country’s—the world is on edge! Everyone is watching us, and when you act out, you embarrass your country. Are you even listening to me?”

  She clearly isn’t. This is why she hates Colorado—the chain of command, the way some fucker she could end without blinking could yell and talk down to her because it says she’s subordinate on a piece of paper. Shadow Lily chews on a piece of cherry gum and gives her Handler the usual smile and nod while she slowly inches toward the door out of his office.

  Samuel—she thinks that’s his name, but doesn’t know given that she goes through Handlers like she goes through a pack of candy—groans, placing his head in his hands. “Shadow Lily, I’m talking to you,” he snaps. “Pay attention!”

  She gives him a polite smile. “Yes, sir.”

  Evidently, what she thinks is a polite smile sends him over the edge, because the middle-aged pencil pusher groans again and shakes his head.

  “That’s it. I can’t do this,” he sighs. “I work with other difficult girls, but you take the cake. I’m sorry, but you’re going to be assigned to someone else.”

  Shadow Lily blinks once. Slowly.

  “Oh?” she says, completely unsurprised.

  Samuel straightens, already sounding tired of his own words. “Yes. Effective immediately. You’re being transferred to God knows who. You don’t respond to authority, you ignore protocol, and frankly—” he gestures vaguely at her, “—you treat this job like a joke.”

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  She considers that. Chews her gum. The cherry flavor has gone flat.

  Keisha, even before dying, had always held this belief. There was a lot of good in the world she could have done had the lethargic bureaucracy of the Agency not stopped her because no, this wasn’t her assignment. No, she couldn’t operate outside of North America unless specifically permitted and rubber stamped by a million people both in the Agency and in the involved countries, along with their Agency counterparts. No, she couldn’t speak her mind to the media. No, she couldn’t behave however she wanted in public. No, no, no, no!

  Years in the machine, years of service, and she’s still being treated like a drone. Of course, Golden Promise never has that issue.

  Well, this was all before. These people can all die for all she cares—but the annoyance was not buried particularly deep enough to no longer surface even through these new lenses.

  “That’s because it is a joke,” she replies, still smiling.

  He exhales through his nose, the kind of sound people make when they’ve given up pretending to be patient. “You’re dismissed.”

  “Thanks Sammy. See ya never!”

  She turns back and waves without looking at him before exiting his office.

  Walking through the North American Magical Girl Agency national headquarters in Colorado is like living in the future. Many states have adopted Essentia within their daily lives, but Colorado is at the head of the race by far. The place hums with Essentia in the air and lights seem to come from the walls themselves; floors glow faintly under your feet with lines of energy moving through them like veins. There are holograms that float around the lobby with headlines and maps and news and advertisements and everything you can think of.

  Robot-servants skulk around, each purposefully built for a specific task and therefore looking vastly different. Some are built like thin disks that stick to walls, and sneak under desks and in every corner to clean. Others resemble narrow metal frames on spiderlike legs they use to crawl along ceilings and cable racks, carrying tools and replacement parts in their hollow bodies. A few look more like rolling cabinets than machines, gliding by on hidden wheels with drawers that slide open and shut on their own as they distribute equipment and paperwork. There are too many of these; none of them look even vaguely human. They are shapes built for function alone.

  Keisha likes these ones better now—they remind her of herself. She used to enjoy the security automatons more because of their humanoid shape. They drift through the hallways without a sound, taller than any person and bulky with long limbs and smooth, jointed plating.

  Each automaton bears thin lines of blue Essentia glow at their seams, pulsing slowly, steady as a heartbeat. Where a face should be is only a narrow visor.

  Colorado’s nearly the most populated state in the country now, one of the richest, one of the fastest growing, and the Agency wears that fact like a medal. Proof that this is what the future looks like when you let it happen.

  It makes little isolationist New Mexico funny to look at. They’d passed a law a few years into the Second Technological Revolution when people figured out how to use Essentia in more devices than just bigger and bigger guns near the turn of the century to cling to their old way of life. There are a few states like this in the country, and Keisha has to admit they have their charm.

  But that’s just politics—not something Keisha looks at much outside the bare minimum she needs to know for her job.

  She greets many along the way out of HQ, mostly employees and a few Magical Girls here and there. While she was nowhere near the strength and firepower Star Sentinel, Neon Valkyrie, Blue Comet—or let alone Golden Promise could bring, her deep, technical knowledge of her power is up there and allows her to punch far, far above her weight.

  Plus, she’s nothing like those Agency darlings anyway.

  She gets to her car soon enough with a slight smile. “Best thing about this darn job. The assigned parking space.”

  It isn’t a flashy model like a lot of the girls like to buy. Like half the cars around the state these days, it’s electric—with the other half running on Essentia. The paint is a plain, washed-out blue; the body is a little scuffed from use, and the interior smells faintly of old air freshener and dust.

  For a moment, she rests against the hood of her car, taking in the headquarters from the outside. The building looked more like a football stadium than anything else, if you ignored the enormous Essentia gun turrets the size of ships—the same ones they had in Seattle. In the far distance over the city center of New Horizon, she spots drone holograms advertising in the sky for countless corporations which had set up shop in the state.

  “They don’t call it Essentia Valley for nothing,” she mutters as she gets into her car.

  It takes her a bit to get out of the enormous parking lot filled to the brim with cars. Things are usually always busy, but much more so after Seattle. Her finger taps on the steering wheel as she drives in an attempt to capture her master’s wonderful tune, but no rhythm does it justice. There is no singing or sound this planet is capable of making that can capture its brilliance.

  Her car is deathly silent to any observer. To her, it is filled with something vast and unearthly, a presence that doesn’t behave like music at all; it is layered yet endless, unfolding in ways no mind can fully comprehend.

  Through this song also comes instructions. The Conductor had been largely silent as of now, no doubt recalculating a perfect plan of action. Stand. By. That had been the usual note, but this one comes with a warning.

  Keisha stops at a red light, jaw clenching with hatred instilled upon her at birth by her creator and innate and from the girl she had killed. She sniffs, wrinkling her nose, and clicks her tongue. “What shall be done?”

  He takes a few seconds to answer; he needs, after all, to track everything across the universe he has invaded along with the—

  Stand. By.

  The Magical Girl groans, feeling herself deflate, and all the made-up plans she’d just made up in her head spilled out of her mouth with her sigh. She feels so amped up, but has nowhere to release that energy. Usually this comes in the form of beating up the Choir, but Earth has been pretty quiet in that regard. No attacks have been observed worldwide since Seattle.

  You’d think that with Golden Promise asleep, now would be the time to strike even harder.

  Keisha thinks back to her fight with Siena yesterday, a smile creeping up her lips, but some asshole honks at her for driving too slow; she lowers her window and gives them a thumbs up. Suburban homes surround the Agency Headquarters as far as the eye can see and turn into a feverish maze where everything looks the same. Without the map on her phone there’s no way she’d ever find her address.

  Her home looks the same as everything else besides the fact that it’s not a familial unit, and she’s neutral about it—but it isn’t like she has a home to go back to. It’s a plain suburban house with beige siding, a tiny lawn—

  “Is that fucking Megan?” Keisha leans forward as she parks into the driveway, then cackles.

  Twilight Ember is standing in front of her door while holding perfectly still as if she were one of the automatons at headquarters. Whenever she’s alone, she’ll drop all pretense of being human and act like some fucked up alien.

  “I suppose we are aliens,” Keisha says, getting out of the car. She waves at her sibling with a wide grin. “Meg! Aw, how long have you been standing there like some creep? Maybe I should invest in security…”

  The raven-haired woman doesn’t laugh at her joke. Instead, she cuts straight to the point. “You ignored my texts. You both did.” She unfreezes and takes a few steps forward. “Your meeting with Siena. How did it go?”

  “Oh you know. Girl talk and such.” She waves a hand noncommittally. There is no way she would ever tell her she could have murdered that flaky girl. “Anyway, want to come inside? We can watch a show or something. Loosen you up a little.”

  “No. I’m going back to HQ. I’m busy.” Heat ripples through the air. Her clothes blur, then darken, the colors bleeding into one another before settling into a dress of deep, smoldering crimson that fades into black at the hem.

  “I can drive you—”

  “Flying is faster.”

  Flames jet out below her, and within a split second, she is a streak of fire and heat burning across the sky.

  “Aww. Guess I’ll text some of my other friends in Colorado.”

  ——

  Twilight Ember’s clothes smolder with crimson, the smell of fire tingling in her nose as she lands at the doors to the massive building’s hospital wing. Her face loosens, warping into a gentle expression that reminds the world of a cozy fireplace and a cup of hot chocolate during Christmas. Megan once was a comforting presence for those who knew her—her massive family, her ex partner, her friends, her colleagues, her fans at home and abroad. She might be different now. Cold and calculated, hateful of this sinful race.

  Thus, she commands respect when she steps into the hospital. Greeting after greeting come from more people than she can manage as she ascends to the final floor, and she smiles through all of them, nodding, touching a shoulder here, meeting a gaze there. It is muscle memory. It is the duty to the Conductor. It is who she was, and who she must continue to be.

  As far as Magical Girls go, Megan Carter was the perfect one to take over. She was influential and successful, but not under the constant scrutiny that came with being at the very top. She had enough reach to matter and enough distance to move quietly. There was still a great deal of groundwork to lay, and as the fallout from Seattle faded and the Agency began to settle, there would be plenty of work ahead. If only her two sisters were as goal-oriented as she is.

  Worries for another hour.

  Right now?

  Pulsating light flashes out from below the door and the vision panels—not mere light, for there is a difference. Like looking at a flashlight and catching a mere glimpse of the sun’s radiance and realizing how small you really are. No one is allowed besides the most important staff, but it isn’t as if they’d done anything to tend to her. Golden Promise is being healed by the Luminaries themselves; the entire floor is deathly quiet in order not to disturb America’s hero during her well-earned rest.

  A rest that is coming to a close very soon.

  It’s much sooner than even the Conductor expected, and now Megan had plenty to worry about such as Lucienne Monroe being able to alert the agency to their existence. Siena had attempted to take her over and that poor, pathetic little thing had failed. Now it is up to her to make sure that they all survive this in one piece and serve the Conductor for months or years to come.

  Megan despises the fact that her hand trembles on the door. She enters.

  Here lay the strongest Magical Girl on the planet with the second most powerful in the country sitting by her side. Megan’s muscle memory makes her do the sign of cross—she’d been raised a christian.

  “You came,” Star Sentinel says, but her attention is fully Lucienne’s. She pulls the tarp back on her friend’s face as if she were a corpse so the room wasn’t blinded by her radiance, and then turns to face her. “Thank you for coming on such short notice, Meg.”

  Galaxies in her eyes—Megan has to catch her breadth at the sheer volume of it all. There are tears dried on both her pale cheeks. Her black-purple hair is a mess, and she looks like she hasn’t left the hospital since Lucienne had been checked in.

  “Always,” Megan says after a gulp. “You wanted me to come here?”

  “Mhm. Please, come and sit.” Estelle gestures at a chair, eyes turning back to Golden Promise. “She’s been stirring as of late. They’re saying it’s probably good news, but we have no way to truly know,” she rambles as Megan sits. “Her entire body’s like this—like the sun.”

  “Are your eyes alright being in this room all day?”

  Estelle ignores her. “Years, I’ve known her, I’ve worked alongside her, and I’ve seen the things she can do. There is nothing on that beach who could have done this to her. Nothing known.” She licks her lips—a nervous tick—and places a hand on the tarp affectionately. “Silver Mercy’s dead, but Shadow Lily survived. I’ve tried contacting her as of late, but pinning that enigma down is a chore. Even her Handler didn’t know where she was.” Her fingers freeze. “But you speak to her. She can give us insight into what happened.”

  “I’m on good terms with everyone,” Megan answers with the usual smile and nod despite knowing this woman could crush her body under the gravity of a thousand suns if she were to get the jump on her. “But Keisha’s already been to the general mission debrief and the incident report about their fight at the beach. I doubt you’ll find anything new.”

  “Do this, Meg. For me. Please.” The stars in her eyes collide and explode like fireworks. “I’m doing this the proper way.”

  Star Sentinel is known across the Agency for her aloofness, but she is also one of its most determined. She steps over people to get what she wants, no matter whose arm she has to twist, because she carries with her the indifference of the cold, dead universe. If not this way, then she would barge inside of Shadow Lily’s house, interrogate her, and merely get a slap on the wrist—or she’d find wherever she was staying eventually. The matter would be kept out of the public eye to not tarnish her or the agency’s reputation.

  Like this, she could control her and go over Keisha’s answers. Hopefully.

  “I’ll try to talk to her. You should have your meeting within a few days?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Megan’s pleasant expression doesn’t waver. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Tomorrow is when Siena arrives at New Horizon via train.

  There would be a lot of work to do.