Chapter 364: What It Should Stand For

The teleport back to the Preservation isn’t anywhere near as off-putting as the first. Call nods as I appear in the room, then steps to the side so Lament can appear. I shake my head.

“Not right away. First we need to fully purify you.”

“Gotcha,” Call says and spreads his arms, stepping free from his armor. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I crack a purification in my hand and direct the mist to wash over him. He breathes it in readily, coughs at the saltiness, and waits patiently for it to do its work. Now that I can focus on just this, it feels almost like a knot’s being undone in his brain. Pathways that were blocked before come undone with barely an effort. Nothing drastically changes in the moment, but I have a feeling that he won’t be seeing anything fly over the Preservation any time soon.

He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and shoots me a look. I nod for him to put his arms down and drop Lament’s coin on the ground.

“You’re all good. Whatever my purification can undo has been undone, and anything else will need a lot more firepower than I can spare right now.”

Call rubs his wrists and frowns. “That’s really it? Wow. But I guess if it’s so easy to imprint something on someone’s brain, it should be this easy to undo it.”

Huh. That’s a new angle to see it at. The easier a spell is to put on someone, the easier it must be to undo it… I’ll have to remember that.

“Hope you’re right, and I didn’t just miss all the deep-seated stuff,” I sigh and fiddle with one of my earrings. “Lament’s having a nice little chat with some of my colleagues right now about the details of the Preservation's deal with Stonestep Solutions. You know anything about that?”

Call’s face scrunches right up. “Stonestep Solutions? The assassin guys from Palastia? Why–and how–would we be working with them?”

I shrug. “Politics. You don’t have to worry about it, though, because we’re going to do something about it. Fair warning, it includes murdering a few people on the other world.”

“Does it have to?”

“‘Fraid it does. I was promised they’d do the same or worse to me, and I don’t feel like trying to bargain with people like that. Much easier to permanently deal with them and do things the right way.”

Pearl nods in agreement with my vicious opinion. Call doesn’t look like he agrees with the methods, but the idea that the Preservation is working with Stonestep Solutions seems to bother him enough that he doesn’t openly argue with me. He sighs through his nose and looks around the room at the plain accommodations and at-risk machinery as an unsaid topic twinkles in his eyes.

“What does the Preservation get from the deal?” he eventually asks.

“Too much.”

He grimaces. “And what are they promising?”

“Things they don’t own.”

His grimace turns into a snarl. “Damn it all. Okay. You do what you have to do, and if that involves me having to do things that I have to do, I’ll do them. Just… promise it’ll make both words a better place when we’re done.”

I flash my teeth in a wide grin. “Oh, the world will be a better place. Even if we have to tear out all the cancerous growths with our own hands.”

“Eugh, you make it sound so… macabre,” Call shudders and steps back into his armor. “I know it’s a little late to be asking this… but… are we killing Lament when she teleports in?”

“No. I got under her skin in some of the right ways, but she’s resisting in others. If I’m right, she really want to prove to me that the higher-ups aren’t as bad as we know they are,” I flip a projectile through my fingers and point it at the space above the coin. “But if she appears with guns blazing, we’ll have to do it. I don’t want to think she would, but if it forces us to expose ourselves…”

Call bangs his knuckles together then crouches into a ready stance. “You don’t have to say anything else. I’m ready whenever you are.”

Alright. I feel at the coin on the ground, visualize Lament still talking with Ebb and the others, and set my jaw in preparation. Magic snaps to connect the two, and in the blink of an eye, Lament appears in the middle of the floor. Her eyes widen in surprise with her guard completely down. As she turns to me I lower my hand and slide the coin up into my sleeve.

“Welcome back. How was the hospitality while I was gone?”

She purses her lips for a moment before summoning her helmet. “It was fine. You want me to show you how good we can be? I’ll show you how good we can be. The next time I get called out to deal with a disaster, I’ll bring along one of your teleporting coins so you can come see for yourself how good we are.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Call asks. “The last rescue mission she saw ended with her rescuing two people from a Highroller; not exactly the most trust-building thing I’ve ever seen.”

Lament pivots and jabs a finger at Call’s chest. “That’s your point of view, but I know better than to just believe someone. Until I have concrete proof that anyone up top is as bad as you’re claiming they are, I won’t lift a finger against them. Do you understand me?”

She turns again and jabs a finger at me this time. “Do you?!”

I reach out and grab her finger. She makes a startled little noise in the back of her throat and tries to pull away, but my grip’s a lot stronger than I thought it was. Something deep in the back of my mind wants to push the armor-clad digit back and back and back until metal and bone creak under the weight. My tongue darts against the inside of my teeth as I push that idea away and let Lament retreat like she so wants to.

She cradles the finger as if I actually did something to it. I look away in the direction of all the damage that the falling mech parts did to the city, then turn towards the hangar where that mech came from. There’s obviously more information that we don’t have in both places, and the one person I know could tell us more is currently in speaker custody. If we can get to Lizzie before they interrogate her…

“Call. How long before they start grilling Lizzie?”

He stands tall and summons his Class Card. “I’d say we have a few hours… ah, shit, no. They just assigned someone to healing duty for a suspect. We have thirty minutes before they’re set to start their shift.”

“They’re just letting Lizzie suffer until then?” I ask with disbelief. “Her arm was scorched by radiation. That could do some serious damage even if they treated it right away.”

“Well, the approved healers weren’t available until now. Even if there was literally a healer in the hangar with us, they didn’t have the right clearance. Or should I say loyalty,” Call chuckles darkly. “If we leave right now I think I can get us some chat-time with Lizzie before the healers and psychics get to her.”

“Then that’s what you’ll do. Lament here has something she needs to do,” I say and lock eyes with her visor. “All those people dead and terrified from the mech. You’re going to go help them right now, and I’m going to go investigate the hangar for anything I missed the first time around. You did what Ebb told you to?”

Lament balls her fists. “I did.”

I close my eyes to make sure she, in fact, did. My awareness says yes. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but I’m not feeling overly hopeful right now. I snap my fingers loud enough to startle everyone–including myself–and the two speakers scatter like cockroaches in the light. Lament runs without looking back. Call pauses halfway down the hall, looks down at his Class Card, and sends me a message before running off again.

“Do you really think Lament’s going to go help?” Pearl asks sceptically.

“She better,” I mutter. “If she wants to convince me the Preservation is worth preserving, then she better not run away from the actual people that need the damn help.”

Pearl hums in agreement. “It’s a pretty simple test, but a good one.”

I’d like to think so. With a breath through my nose and a crick in my spine I bend down and put the act of a skittish refugee back on, walk out into the hall, and make my way down the stairs. The creak of a door precedes a small family walking into the stairwell with some normal class-bearers in Preservation uniform assuring them that things will be fine. I walk right past them without so much as a peep of suspicion.

“So your rent will be fifteen hundred a month…”

Searing anger fills the back of my mouth at the mere mention of money. I glare up the stairs at the workers’ backs and the obviously traumatized forms of the family. One kid’s holding a stuffed pink bunny rabbit with an ear singed off. The other’s on her dad’s back… hanging limply from two missing legs. Freshly missing legs that’re still in bloody tattered rags for pants. And I don’t know how I missed it before… but they’re all dusty.

“Shelby,” Pearl warns. “Your cover.”

Her voice trembles with a rage that matches my own. Fifteen hundred for a shitty little hotel room like this. I can’t… I can’t even imagine charging someone for shelter when their homes were probably just destroyed. And this fast? This callous? Did anyone from the higher ups even come out to give a speech, or some words of comfort, or anything? They must’ve, even if just to keep the illusion that they give a shit about the people who just had their lives ruined.

“...Roomates…”

Pearl snarls at the one word we both make out as clear as crystal. I refuse to believe this. There’s no goddamn way they meant ‘rent’. That has to be the monthly payment they’ll get from the Preservation until someone fixes their buildings. Otherwise it’s just plain cruel.

I want to do something about it so goddamn bad. But slaughtering those two workers won’t do goddamn anything. Neither of them looked particularly happy about delivering that news, and the one on the left had a shaky emptiness in her eyes and a lot of dust on her clothes. Because they’re just people, too. Trying to make the best of a horrible situation. A situation that someone decided to bleed some rent money out of.

“When we find who makes these decisions, we’re going to rip their tongue all the way down their throat so they can taste their lungs.”

“Make sure we do it fast. Someone could die from before they suffer enough.”

I nod in agreement and finish my walk down the stairs before I realize that I don’t know who said what in that quick exchange. Before I have time to parse what the hell that means, my awareness latches onto a massive group of people on the ground floor. Voices hit my ears a few moments later, but they’re way too few and far between for the size of the crowd. I turn the corner with my hand on the wall, ready to attack on the off chance that I’m seeing things wrong.

Dust-coated people fill the ground floor like sardines. Preservation workers, mostly Class-bearers, mill among them with a mixture of crying-reddened eyes, empty stares, and the frustration that only comes from the inability to do something. I squeeze my thumb inside a closed fist and stop at the edge of the group to really take everything in.

The workers trying their damndest to make things a little bit better. The clerk behind the desk frantically trying to find the right paperwork. A scream of frustration from one of the better dressed Class-bearers directed at whatever text is on his Class Card. I carefully sidle through the group as the man continues to scream, and as I slip by him on my way out, I sneak a peek at his message.

‘All confirmed dead.’

Tears flow freely down his cheeks. He lets out the most visceral sob I’ve ever heard, almost like he’s tearing his own heart out with emotion alone. For a few seconds he just stares up at the ceiling while I move over to the door. As I leave he lowers his head, stares blankly at a wall, and turns to look at everyone else in the room. His mouth pulls into a thin line, and protective resolve etches itself onto his face.

“Remember him,” Pearl whispers. “People like him are the ones we need.”

I nod in agreement as the man moves to a family and offers to take a silent child from an exhausted mother. She smiles warily and shakes her head. The man nods knowingly and moves on to try and help whoever else will accept it. Normalcy and kindness in disaster. That’s what the Preservation should be about.

And it’s what they’re going to be about after a bloody restructuring.