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Info
Possible Kill Screen
Author:FleshMaddAvalon and
Nonacherontia
This piece contains death, genocide, and utterances of homophobic slurs.
The first installment of a trans romance where two warlords understand their respective coworkers really need to die—for the greater good, of course.
Chapter 1: Ashes to Ashes
Waiting for O5-1 in an abandoned restaurant, Coda remembered her last visit to Afghanistan.
It was almost three years ago. She was having tea with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary freedom fighter and Minister of Defense in the post-Communist government. The green Kahwah in the pot bubbled like the gentle current of the Amu Darya river, and the harsh desert sand stung against her poorly covered countenance. The idyll of their meeting belied a harsh reality: Massoud's young Afghanistan was tearing itself apart again, and Islamists would soon march on Kabul.
"You fought the Soviets, and now you're fighting other Afghans," she asked. "This conflict may never end. Everything you did in the last war, and this one, may have been in vain. Your enemies say God is on their side, and yet God sits on his hands. If defeat is certain and the fighting in vain, why bother persisting?"
He did not answer her question, gazing past her at the horizon. His smile was cryptic, almost chiding. She knew his heart rate was sixty-five, his blood pressure untroubled. Whatever was in that steely gaze, absorbing the temperate waves of the scrub grass, was the truth.
Almost three years later, and a week ago, Afghanistan failed for the last time.
In a cataclysm of violet light, twenty million Afghans and the earth they stood on were explosively converted into a second sunrise that lit the global skies for eight minutes before vanishing. They reported the scent of burnt ozone as far away as New York City. With billions witnessing the disaster, the Veil was irreparably, irrevocably broken.
The streets were quiet while humanity processed what it had lost in their bunkers and churches. That shock was a dam for an ocean of rage and fear. It would flood the cities, burn the libraries, and butcher the politicians who'd held the curtain closed before killing anyone suspected of being the men behind it. Even then, the wizards behind the curtain knew better than to leave trails.
Coda checked her crystal-face watch. She had arrived ten minutes late, yet O5-1 was nowhere to be seen. Meeting an Overseer under the nose of Al-Fine was practically a capital offense, but Coda was out of options, and at least if they executed her, she wouldn't have to watch the world burn.
After the Catastrophe, the unthinkable became all too sensible. As Coda concluded her presentation on the post-Catastrophe world, felt something revolutionary brew among the members of the Council of 108.
"…over the eight decades of its existence, the Coalition has a policy of terminating or decommissioning most anomalies it discovers." Coda swallowed, realizing she was about to pull the pin on a few kilotons of panic. "The Foundation just contains them. While our strategy is better from a risk-management standpoint, there was always an opportunity cost."
"And that is?" D.C Al-Fine voice poured into the air with the low croak of footsteps on an old wood floor, the jingled vowels of an Eton/Oxford RP speaker doing nothing to suppress his drawl.
"Well, every anomaly the Foundation contains is a possible asset. The GOC has its occult programmes and loyal officers in every Security Council country's military, but we're at a logistical disadvantage. Our sword is sharper, but the Foundation is a hydra."
Al-Fine leaned back in his seat with a crunch of suit and leather. "The GOC is supposed to have a minimal military readiness to terminate the Foundation's anomalies during an active conflict."
Coda tried to hold Al-Fine's gaze. "In an active conflict we start, assuming the collapse of the Veil is imminent. Because the Veil collapsed so quickly, we've lost the readiness advantage. The ball is in the air, ready for either side to spike. That changes the math, and I've updated my models to reflect this."
"And what does your math say?" Al-Fine leaned over the desk in a show of attention.
"If the Foundation mobilizes even just twenty-five percent of just the anomalies we know about," Coda took a breath, then let the prognosis drop like a brick. "the combat power generated from that alone would exceed everything we have on the Western Hemisphere."
Gasps, sighs, frantic scribbling, dancing dialing. D.C. Al Fine leaned back in his chair, and Coda couldn't tell whether the absence of wrinkles in his brow showed serenity or whether he had stumbled onto some solution Coda was not privy to. "Thank you, Coda. I shall take a moment to address the choir."
He stood up and removed his spectacles—purely for show, of course; Coda knew they were prosthetic—and his voice shifted from his cozy whiskey-sanded croon to a thunderous, almost demanding tone. "They have access to the same data we do," DC Al-Fine folded his hands together, "and are arriving at the same conclusions. I've found that seizing the initiative makes the difference in war."
He raised his eyes to look at Coda. In a droll voice, he asked, "What do we do if we want that initiative?"
She felt like she could hear her thoughts for the first time as she tried to convince herself he wasn't implying what it sounded like he was suggesting. "We wouldn't want it."
"Yes, we wouldn't, but what if we had to?"
"We don't have to!"
"Did you listen to your presentation? It certainly seems within the realm of possibility if nothing else!" D.C. Al-Fine composed himself. "Alright, if I made you…"
Coda honestly wanted to lie, but she knew everyone in that room already understood what was about to come out of her mouth. They just wanted to make sure the record showed she was the one saying it. She covered her mouth for a second and did a quick breathing routine to make sure her voice didn't betray her emotions, then spoke like she was presenting on business strategy:
"You call together our puppets in the NATO countries and you be honest with them, because they'll already suspect its the end either way. Fire the starting pistol and let them coup their governments so we can integrate their militaries into our force structure. Global martial law."
She let the final and complete death of democracy as a preparatory measure sink in and then she launched into the real horror show:
"And then you hit Response Plan Pizzicato. Burn the rulebook. Open the silos. Empty the warehouses. By T plus fifteen minutes, our nuclear deterrent needs to be in the air. T plus two hours, we launch an offensive with everything we have against their weakened lines. By lunchtime, eighty percent of the Foundation's presence on Eurasia has to be obliterated, or they will hit back, and we're looking at a decade-long Occult War if we're lucky.."
D.C. Al-Fine clapped his hands in a display of appreciation. "Well said, Coda."
Coda cut him off. "Sir!" Panic clawed its way through her insides, and the realization made her heart clamor in her ears. This isn't a discussion. He is going to do it. "I… the… why would we do this? Why not just talk to them?"
Al-Fine's voice was all luxury and whiskey again. "Coda, you're the number cruncher here. You tell us, would you trust the Foundation not to strike first?"
"Declaring war on the Foundation could—no—will kill millions of people!"
"Millions will die anyway if the Foundation strikes first. Compromise solutions rarely make everyone happy! Compromises are—"
"Haven't they gone through enough?" Smothering her dread was like trying to smother a pile of rattlesnakes. "When the human toll is this great, we should be prepared to risk-—"
"I understand the risks! Do you?"
"Do you?!"
For the first time in their discussion, Al-Fine's voice broke its veneer of tranquility and exploded— "Do you?" He slammed the table with his fist, punctuating every syllable. "This is it! I'm telling you. This. Is. It!"
The meeting ended as D.C. Al-Fine collected himself and asked the council to take an hour's recess and consider the next steps. While passing Coda on his way to the exit, he muttered one phrase to her she knew all too well. "Harden your heart."
In other words, get with the program and vote because he expects us to share the blame for an imminent global holocaust.
She waited until the door to the conference room whistled shut, and then got on her knees and squeezed herself under the meeting table. A surveillance blind spot, it was a place where she could safely sink her teeth into the skin of her wrist and muffle her scream of rage. She slammed her elbow into the wood behind her again and again. The pain reassured her humanity that it was being heard, that it could go back to sleep. The pain deafened the howl of her soul and cleared its cache.
When she was through, she pulled herself out of her hiding spot and straightened her clothing, taking out a compact mirror to make sure sweat nor blood from her wrist ruined her make-up, to sort out her hair. Her teeth had left streaks of damp red on her wrist. She decided to blame it on her cat. She usually blamed it on her cat. She did not have a cat.
They will do it, and your name will be on the order that does it. Her thoughts felt involuntary to her, like it was a second Coda speaking. The voice was an all-too-familiar one, though. This second Coda remembered every time Al-Fine 'accidentally' used the wrong pronoun on his memos. The same Coda her father broke a sweat trying to crush into powder. The Coda whose bruises did not heal. Coda did enough to contain it, but she worked for the Coalition and knew containment was never sufficient for many.
She departed for her office in the Shostakovich wing. She left her materials behind since talking and facts would be relics in the world to come. She left her coat because she knew the cold billowing under her skin wasn't the kind more layers could fix.
She entered her office to find her secretary, Petra Shahi, waiting for her. She was dressed demurely in a turtleneck sweater, her hair tied back in a professorial bun, and obligingly tender brown eyes. The term 'Secretary' was pure misdirection. Petra was a born agent of chaos in the bureaucratic and kinetic sense, and Coda suspected she would be in prison if she had to do anything else for a living.
She was also the closest thing Coda had to a loyal friend.
"They're doing it, aren't they," Petra said. She's too good at reading my eyes.
"You don't know that, and you shouldn't know that." Which is a long-winded way of saying: Yes. Be afraid.
In a brief flash, Coda saw Petra's wide mouth and unshakeable smirk wither into a wrinkle of dread before Petra stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. Her veil was restored, and she took a drag. "Ah, Coda, this is why we don’t play poker. I suppose Al-Fine is leaning on the other hold-outs for a unanimous vote. Better for appearances."
Coda rolled her eyes. "Thanks for the primer on how our politics works, Mrs. Shahi. Are you done telling your superior how to do her job?"
"You’re my superior?" Coda tilted her head, and Petra hurriedly bent her head, “Sorry. I haven’t slept in a week, subsisting on company-issued meth and blood sacrifices to Mercury. Just… how bad’s it look?
Coda thought about lying. If the Occult War was so simple as a light switch that would simply end all life in a flash, it might be worth it. But death would come too slowly, much much too slowly, and the survivors would envy the dead. They would have time to regret every wasted moment before the end.
"Petra, listen to me very carefully." Coda sucked in her breath, "You get the rest of the week off. Go and be with your family."
The cigarette almost dropped out of Petra's mouth. Her expression slackened completely. It was one thing to compute despair, another to stare it in the face. "I…" Petra stumbled like her mouth was trying to catch up with her frenzied heart and brain, "No."
"Petra," Coda grabbed Petra's shoulders, "I'm not kidding. It could be within hours."
"Respectfully, ma'am, fuck all that." She plucked the tube from her mouth and blew a plume of smoke to her right, and when she turned to face Coda again, her usual smirk painted her lips. "Won't. Can't. All that panic and crying and getting told I'm full of shit, and I can't explain anything because of OpSec policy. Screw all that noise."
"It's my call, you can tell them—"
"I can't, okay? I can't. I can't. Can't face them. Up here, I can pretend it's all the video game it's always then. Down there, I can't…" Petra looked down to hide the paroxysm of anguish threatening to break through. When she looked again, her defensive cockiness reappeared. "If the plane's going down, I want to be in the cockpit, not the tail. Stop wasting both our time," Petra reached into her mailman bag, fished around its contents, and pulled out a package in a manila envelope. "This came in for you, by the way."
"Has it been screened?"
"No idea just popped up on my desk."
"You think it's loaded?"
"I opened it."
"You opened my mail?" Coda rolled her eyes, "Petra, how do you both violate Coalition policy and needlessly risk your life at the same time-"
"Please," Petra waved her hand, "A clean exit's better than this stupid waiting." She pressed the package into Coda's hands. "It's just a phone. Now give me something else to do."
"I'll tell you when I know what I'm doing. Take a nap or something. Chill. Smoke the weed you keep stashed in the closet." Coda's diction shifted around Petra. Somehow, Petra's irreverence made Coda more comfortable slackening her mask just that bit more.
"Get out of here, Coda. Sleep is for banals." The in-house slur for 'normal' people was thrown around quite a bit after the Catastrophe.
"Do it, or I'm putting it in your performance review."
"Psh," Petra turned and walked away, "If self-care was a job requirement you'd have been terminated years ago."
Coda walked into her office, vacant of her usual staff (she had sent them home with far more success than she had with Petra), and turned on the Anti-Meme field to ensure she was not being spied on. She emptied the package on her desk.
Just as the cell phone—a power-guzzling brick that was a fad among wealthy banals—clunked against the wood, the brick vibrated and shook the table. "Curiouser and curiouser," Coda reached for the phone, which snapped open at her touch. She hit the green button and put it to her ear.
"Hello, Coda."
Coda almost dropped the phone.
She'd know that voice from anywhere, "Leaderboard," the point-man of Foundation inter-GOI diplomacy, and the biggest fascist on the Overseer council: O5-1.
Maybe today is just some ridiculously involved prank. Everyone's certainly acting like clowns. Her face was beginning to ache from how frequently she had to keep it static. "Are you crazy?," Coda hissed. She threw herself under her desk and placed the phone so close to her lips she was practically biting the plastic, "Both of our groups would nerve staple us for setting up a diplomatic backchannel—"
"It'll never get back to either of them—"
"Oh, good, then I'm hanging up. Let the Overseers do their jobs and start the negotiations—"
O5-1's voice was cold and matter-of-fact: "The Overseer Council is hours away from a war declaration. I only just postponed it."
Coda's blood ran cold. O5-1 could have lost his mind. Afghanistan has us all on edge. O5-1 has no way of knowing my posture on war, so what could his decision calculus have been to call me? And if he's telling the truth…
"Excuse me for just one moment." Coda carefully placed the phone on the floor and then savagely chewed the skin of her wrist again to muffle yet another shriek. Not only was the biggest warmonger on the Council of 108 poised to plunge the world into Armageddon— his logic for doing so was dead-on accurate. If anyone got wind of this call, Coda could be implicated in high crimes against her office and the Council would immediately vote on initiating Pizzicato.
The phone was back in her hand, and she cleared her throat. "What are you after?"
"Peace."
Are we on the same wavelength, or is he somehow tapping mine? Coda made her voice threatening. "You're not the first person to offer me the impossible. I've bargained with gods. You can read about the others on our termination logs."
"I only ask you hear me out."
"How?"
"Meet me at the restaurant Rue De Ma Cher, in Bergen. Thirty minutes."
"Wait, wait, I can't—" He had already hung up.
Someone more comfortable with the random destruction of all their hopes would have reported the call to Al-Fine and resolved to do their duty, no matter how bleak the outcome seemed.
She considered with what might become of her if she was caught secretly consorting with the enemy: a drooling, nerve-stapled husk. None of her predecessors had outlived their time in office, and given her preponderance of magic and intellect, she could see a case being made that her soul was too dangerous to be left intact. Would it be a state institution, a nursing home, or would they let her rough it as an inarticulate bag-lady near some Coalition-linked soup kitchen?
Her hands shakily reached for her compact again, and she checked her features for post-panic blemishes for the second time in twenty minutes. No trace of the tempest inside her made it to the surface. The only thing she couldn't disguise was her eyes and the deep sadness within them.
It took three years, but Coda finally understood what was in the Lion of Panjshir's gaze.
She was no Ahmed Shah Massoud.
Chapter 2: Tête-à-Tête
The sonic boom of scrambled fighter jets rattled the cutlery and glasses, but Coda still heard it when the front door creaked open and looked up at her guest.
It was O5-1, catching its bell before it could ring. She jumped to her feet as she sized him up, and found it difficult not to stare at the creature in front of her.
O5-1 cut a striking figure in his well-worn-yet-well-made suit. The folds hugged an athletic frame, with slight swells in all the right places. His wolf-like grin showed at least two teeth had to have been grafted onto his gums from something inhuman. His feminine cheekbones were his most prominent natural characteristic, sculpting an elegant face despite his savage mouth.
Coda was most fascinated by his hands, a patchwork of flesh and metal and covered with sarkic runes. The roughness of the skin clashed with the delicate slenderness of his long fingers. It was a mixture of the natural and artificial into something original.
I didn't expect him to look so…transhuman. Coda thought.
Coda did her best to look unmoved and extended her hand to greet him. O5-1 looked at her hand quizzically and then back at her. Something about the gesture seemed amusing and irritating, and he shrugged and sat down.
A stubborn silence lingered between them.
Coda decided to swallow her pride and break the ice. "Well, it's your meeting. Did you have an agenda?"
"I don't do agendas if I can help it. I don't like letting my colleagues know what I will say."
"We're not colleagues."
"Exactly." If that's how he treats his colleagues, why should a peer adversity expect better?
"Then I'll start." Coda quit smoking years ago but wished she had a cigarette handy so she could do something other than hold O5-1's predatory gaze. "Why does the Foundation want to go to war with us?"
"Well, most of the reasons your boss gave were incorrect. The genocides never really trouble us that much. Your Ichabod Extermination Programme1 gives us the raw material for Scranton Reality Anchors. We have many of the same enemies and share a vision of a future-history where one plus one always equals two. We're very compatible."
Hope. A pleasant surprise. An verbal olive branch, and I didn't have to offer a thing to get it! Then she computed the rest of the situation, and the hope soured considerably. "If that's true, why is the Foundation gearing up to attack the Coalition?" Coda said, "And what do you mean, 'my boss gave'? Were you eavesdropping on my meeting?"
O5-1 smirked. "Those are exciting questions. I have a different one that is somewhat pertinent."
Without thinking, Coda rubbed her mouth with the back of her wrist. "Aye? Let's hear it."
"How would you kill me?"
If O5-1's olive branch gave Coda a bit of common ground, that question neatly sawed it in half. Coda let the question hang in the air while she struggled to respond to it— one voice in her head suggested she try to play along to establish rapport, and indeed, a small part of her would enjoy the verbal horseplay-
Then a much louder voice reminded her that her counterparty, during a last-minute peace negotiation, just asked her how she'd kill him.
Maybe if I pretend he never said it, it won't have happened. "The only amnestic a loyal soldier needs is their selective memory," D.C. Al-Fine would often say, with varying degrees of irony.
"Moving on," Coda swallowed, letting the tactile friction distract her, "Uh, let's say these talks went entirely your way. What would that look like?"
O5-1 raised his eyebrows as though impressed with the question and stared at the window casting the orange haze of approaching dusk upon the empty dining room. "The same thing you seek. The Natural World is 'dead', for all intents and purposes. The intuitive axioms of its logic are obliterated as completely as the Khyber Pass. We now live in the Managed World, and we would be its stewards."
Ask a fascist what his heart's desire is, why expect any other answer than that? She coughed. "Uh, right, I think the world doesn't need to be managed by anyone but the people living there and…" Then the concern she tried to swallow rose back up in her mind, and she remembered her previous concern. "Uh, can we just…rewind a bit? How exactly did you know what D.C. Al-Fine told us during the Emergency Session?"
"Well, if we're rewinding the conversation, I'll just answer the question I asked you before." And before Coda could stop him: "I'd paralyze you with saxitoxin and suffocate you in your sleep. Chop you into the smallest bits I could manage, boil you down, put you in a blender, then take you to work in a flask and sip you as a treat."
Is this a joke? If there were muscles responsible for human dignity, hers were burning in lactic acid, O5-1, my actual Foundation counterpart, someone who is supposed to be my bloody equal, is talking to me like I'm strapped to his table in a room lined with sheets of plastic. This is someone who is my counterparty, and THEY think I'm an absolute joke!
"Okay," Coda rubbed her mouth with her wrist. "What do you—," He wouldn't talk this way to Al-Fine, or any other member of the Council! "What do you want?" Her mind boggled at the words as they spun through the air.
Why am I taking this from him? From any of them? "Just," she slammed the table, and Johan jolted from the surprise, half-lidded eyes snapping open, "What is it that you're trying to offer?"
"I'd like to play a drinking game." The way O5-1 spoke, it was like he was explaining to her that a ceasefire means the shooting stopped.
"I see." And that's a wrap! She popped to her feet and slammed the chair hard into the table. "These talks are concluded. Good-bye, O5-1."
"Where are you going? We're not finished yet." O5-1 said, reaching out to Coda. "I'm just trying to break the ice!"
"Twenty million people died. Thousands are killing themselves or each other. Possible billions are about to die in a war… I get enough of this disrespect from my coworkers. I am not suffering it from a zoo-keeper."
"Where are you going?" He, too, had jumped from his seat and was advancing towards her. "We're trying to save the world!"
She backed away from him. "I'm going back to headquarters. I'd rather negotiate with the dependable homophobes upstairs than the lunatic in front of me."
"Wait—" And then something caught her wrist.
It was O5-1's hand, slender, thin-fingered, but rough. The veins were so close to the surface that she could feel the blood pumping underneath the gold and silver skin. O5-1 had accosted her. "Coda… please.
Yet something about it made her want to stand and think. She thought of D.C. Al-Fine. The misgendering. The random questions about whether she could beat him in an arm wrestling match. The insane portfolio Al-Fine dumped on her to manage as she was an 'inspirational figure.' The casual deadnaming. The unsolicited advice on how she could look more 'believable.' How all of that neatly rhymed with O5-1's dreadful behavior.
"Let go of me." She snapped her train of thought off at the stem and focused on the here and now.
His face: a smile that looked pasted on, melting down to a thin-lipped frown. His pupils were dilated, his eyebrows were raised, and his complexion was pale. Is that regret?
"Let go."
"Please. I'm sorry."
She could not remember when anyone at her level apologized for casual disrespect. She was expected to take it with stoicism and with grace.
It didn't matter. "Either you're playing me, or you're a lunatic." Her lips were set in a thin scowl. "Meanwhile, this meeting could cost me dearly even if we did figure something out! It's a lose-lose gamble, and I am leaving the bloody casino."
"I'm not playing you. I'm not lying to you."
The tenderness in O5-1's eyes, the way his hand was firm but not painful—quite the opposite. Coda didn't realize there was a sweet spot to how hard one could crush her wrist, having never discovered that.
I could almost meditate like this.
"Get away from me." She gritted her teeth, ripped her hand away, and then walked over and shoved him for good measure.
"What the—" O5-1 nearly tripped over his feet.
"Cry about it or kill me." Coda turned towards the door-
The phone in her pocket buzzed. She turned towards O5-1. Is this pleb playing games now? He raised his hands in a show of innocence. She scowled and answered the call.
"Who are you, and how did you get this number—"
"They're fucking you." It was Petra, and she was taking deep breaths as though she had run quite a while before making the call.
"They're what-"
"They're fucking you. They're using a wartime parliamentary measure to hold the session in your absence—"
"No." No! No! No! "That's ridiculous. They couldn't—" Yes, how much more of your life will you waste on presuming they respect you. "How—"
"Akechi, D.C. Al-Fine's main guy. Quite the gossip. He called me about a surprise meeting in the Wellington Room. He didn't elaborate, so I rushed over to confirm things, then hauled by ass to the IT nexus."
"Are… are you…" Coda attempted to deep-breathe her hyperventilation away. Missiles could very well be in the air within five minutes if the subliminal triggers in the silo and submarine personnel were fresh enough.
Let nature take its course, trust the hand that fed you all these years. O5-1 had done a sterling job of reminding her what insufferable lunatics and 'special interest hires' comprised that zoo's staff. I haven't given decades of my life to the Coalition only to sell it out to this junkyard-dentured bagatelle!
"Petra, why are you in the IT room?"
"I think you know." There was a sound of jet-black-painted nails hitting a keyboard and a firm clack of an enter-key being struck. "What am I doing?"
But this isn't for him. This is for me. Any strike against them, even now.
Coda made her decision. "Okay. Do it." She rattled through the sixteen-syllable passcode. Petra entered it. A wind-chime greeted her efforts.
"Petra, you understand this is technically an act of espionage against the Coalition. You will be looking over your shoulder as long as you live—"
"…and done." Petra already knew what to do and had done it, knowing Coda would try to talk her out of it.
"You idiot! Why throw your life away over this?"
"The way I see it, I'm dead either way, and I'm rather particular. I think this bought you thirty minutes. Don't waste them."
"Petra…" Coda's voice cracked. Injuring the Foundation or the Coalition brought a dark cloud over the offender's life. Petra was a born saboteur, but security was an obsession at the Coalition, especially where divided loyalties and pettiness were concerned. The rest of her life was likely borrowed time.
Coda controlled her voice, "Shahi, if you get caught, you tell them you were doing it on my orders—"
"You're bloody right. I'm throwing you under the bus, but just for the fun of it, not to look up your skirt. It wouldn't help my case at all," Petra's voice sounded grim. "I'm going to configure a safe room so I can continue to support you as long as I can."
"What do you want your family to be told if…"
"Coda, do you think someone accepts a job offer to work for you people if they really care about their family?" Her laughter sounded a little more forced. Coda wondered if the finality of her act was beginning to sink in. "Shit, just realized I really don't want you people taking me alive if I get found out. Uh… the cyanide tabs—"
"Should be in the sugar bowl. But don't—."
"Just don't fuck this up. I can take care of myself." Coda heard the snap of a lighter and the low sizzle of lit tobaco. "Geesiyad Allah ma xilo.2
Petra hung up.
"You made a friend." O5-1's careful and rhythmic drawl rasped behind Coda, and she turned around—he had set the table with two foamy champagne glasses and the gold-embossed bottle between them. "Ordinarily, I'd short that commodity in our line of work, but you seem to have cultivated a real one. Well done. Care for a drink?"
Coda walked to the table and picked up her glass. "What are we toasting to?"
O5-1 picked up his and looked at the bottle for a moment. "How about peace in our time?"
"Agreed." Then she splashed O5-1's face with its contents.
"Why—"
"Don't disrespect my staff." Coda pulled out her chair and sat down while O5-1 glowered at her. "Let's play your game, but if nothing comes of it, I'll make every second until the bombs kill us a skin-less, unyielding Tartarus for you." There's no going back now, is there?
O5-1 retook his seat. "Delaying a wartime emergency vote by thirty minutes. Humor me a moment, Coda, how did you manage that?"
Coda crossed her arms. "We pulled the fire alarm."
"No kidding?" O5-1 leaned forward with hungry eyes. "Do tell."
Triggered the Level 5 Fire suppression protocols so the entire Council would scatter to safe rooms while the rooms have the oxygen sucked out of them and are flushed with Halon and Orichalchos. Hacked the safe room comms so they can't communicate. Petra always warned me the Council would stab me in the back, I put together this contingency just to shut her up.
Coda actually said, "No."
"You seem quite sure of yourself for someone who is, by her own admission, out in the cold."
"I'd rather die than let you win. This ends in a peace between equals, or a peace of unburied dead."
"Well said," O5-1 leaned back in his chair. "But there's no peace without trust."
"Then give me a reason to trust you."
"Fine." She saw his hand move, and she reached for her own sidearm "Consider this a sign of good faith."
A thick envelope struck her forehead and bounced on the table with a dull smack. Coda growled in frustration as she retreated from the living gun holstered by her shoulder. "Gods, how do they put up with you over there?"
She opened the envelope and pulled out a deck of cards, then shuffled them for a better idea of what they were. Thin, lithe in a strange way, like the memetics within gave each a semblance of life. Carefully inscribed on the steel of each were symbols in a variety of languages. The edges sheened, and each card was covered with memetic pictographs of a strange nature.
She knew that they would remain gibberish until she read the mnestic key. Indeed, she found a squashed paper crane between the twelfth and thirteen cards, and unfolded it to see a memetic basilisk written on the page. All at once, the cards' contents blossomed in her head like a divine prophecy.
The cards clattered to the table like logs felled in a twilit forest.
"O5-1…what have you…" The constant tightness in her chest melted away. A different kind of chill flowed through her veins. Her heart pounded in her ears. Her being had been hooked to a livewire. "O5-1!"
Over the decades, the Coalition (and presumably their Foundation counterparts) developed means of quickly and efficiently terminating each member of the leadership of the opposing faction. The only thing missing from the firing solutions of those Occult weapons were the keys to the Occult defenses guarding each Overseer, keys that the Coalition had never been able to acquire. And that the Foundation had been holding on to to defuse the threat.
In that envelope were the keys to the final and utter destruction of the Overseer council, the kill-intel on all thirteen members, laid out before her like the assembly instructions for an IKEA sofa.
Chapter 3: Heart to heart
It would certainly change some minds among the Council of 108, to have an active countermeasure in the event of a Foundation assault in the short term. It wasn't sufficient leverage by itself to force the Foundation to offer serious terms. The second the O5s found out their kill-intel was leaked, at least a few of the Overseers would be able to adjust their defenses in time. They lacked the Administrator's kill-intel even if they went through with it. The Foundation would only be crippled, not slain outright.
And most pertinently, mass murder was not Coda's goal. She lived long enough to understand that no stable peace could come of murder except that of the unburied dead.
Yet a vision of a brighter future blossomed within her like an inner sun kissing her skin. "This wasn't a joke, after all." Coda said.
O5-1 tilted his head and smiled. "You look surprised."
Coda realized her wrist was in front of her mouth, and she pulled it away. "All due respect, the ten minutes was the worst diplomacy I've ever encountered. For reference's sake, I've signed peace treaties with actual gorillas."
"Perhaps that's a sign you can trust me." O5-1 said. "Why suspect someone so bad at hiding their defects?"
Coda smirked. "In your case, because you're both bad at it and subverting your faction. Why are you doing this, anyways?"
"A similar reason to you." O5-1 poured Coda a fresh glass of champagne. "We both work amongst demons and the walking dead, and there's nothing worse than a demon victorious and the dead refusing to die."
"I would say I'm more worried about the impending global holocaust and destruction of human civilization."
"Yes, that."
"Not that I disagree." Coda felt a pang of regret for wasting time not trusting him. "A toast then, to a fruitful negotiation."
O5-1 raised his own glass. "To govern, occlude, and fortify."
Coda hesitated for a moment and then let her glass touch his. "That sounded like a slogan of some kind."
O5-1 downed his glass in one drink, "Just an idea of the future."
Her own glass disappeared into her mouth. She reached for the bottle and filled her glass and O5-1's again. Euphoric, grateful, giddy. She had forgotten what hope felt like. She could mainline it like heroin, drip it into her veins in the mornings and float on it like the comfortable bed she requisitioned for herself, before it was ruined.
"Okay, one more for good measure and then we get cracking," Coda said. She and O5-1 shared a grin, then their glasses followed their predecessors. "So, O5-1, if that was a good will gesture, what's your major ask?"
"About that." O5-1 frowned. "You mentioned using those cards as political leverage. That's not going to work so well. They expire in three days— the Occult keys rotate about as fast as the thaumaturges can generate them. The Overseers spend a pretty penny in blood and treasure trying to accelerate the cycle."
"Three days…" Coda's tactical brain raced to see the angles, "Would the Coalition know this?"
"It's common fucking sense. Somebody would ask the question, and good luck lying to a Council half-comprised of psychics."
"If I can't use these as diplomatic or political leverage, what good are they?"
"Yeah, Coda, it's almost like there's only one practical use for them." The corner of O5-1's lips pulled upwards, making his dimples dance, a pitying smile. "Do the math."
Her excitement remained unimpeded, but now a familiar voice squeaked its objections: I'm not considering this. I can't consider this. I'm… I'm a technocrat! An administrator! Not an assassin!
The other part kept an open mind.
O5-1 clapped his hands together twice to get her attention. "I called this a goodwill gesture because it shows I'm serious about peace. Yet this is just step one of my peace plan. Step two, you use those cards however you'd wish. You could kill us all, but the Administrator would remain completely unchecked. However, you could spare me so that I could finish the job while the Administrator's down for the count."
"Down for the count?"
"The Administrator's occult-biology is tied to the Occult power of the thirteen Overseers. If twelve of the thirteen die, the shock would cripple him long enough for a well-placed assassin to finish the job."
Coda narrowed her eyes. "Oh, is that all?" She scoffed, trying not to feel the familiar panic surface again. She poured herself a third glass of champagne and downed it too. "See, here I assumed you were going to offer the moon and the stars as well, but I suppose I was dreaming too big there."
O5-1 continued as though she hadn't spoken. "You give me a deadline, say…ten minutes from the reset—assuming our thaumaturges are still doing their thing in the chaos. If I don't take out the Administrator and surrender in that window, then you kill me too and do what you have to do."
Again, Coda's wrist was near her mouth. I really should get that habit looked at by someone. She slammed her hand on the table. "And then what?"
"Then I surrender to the Coalition, and we move forward on business!"
"Trusting you."
"The way I look at it, you can trust someone who has as much to lose as you do just having this meeting. Or you can trust those myopic, homophobic, and genocidal sons of bitches who have given you so much less support and respect in the entire time you've held you've office than I've presented with you in five minutes! What choice do you have?"
The last thing Petra told her came to mind. In Allah's eyes, no brave woman is disgraced. "There's always a choice." And yet you know which one you want to take, you are just mining for the humanitarian rhetoric that will make planning a coup feel righteous when you should be thinking about his endgame!
The voice of reason or delusion was deafening, compelling, indisputable: You want this. It said. You really want this. Stop pretending that's not the case! This is not just a life-saver, it is your legacy! No one will be able to dismiss you once you carry it out!
Her phone began to buzz. It's Petra. Relief mixed with worry (Am I getting soft? She's just some dumb pawn!) made her hands shake as she flipped open the phone. "Petra! What's your status?"
Instead of Petra, an automated male voice spoke: "Urgent civilian call from—" she heard a static howl encrypting her Aunt's name. "Do you accept?"
She signaled O5-1 to give her a minute and ran to the bar, behind the bar stand, and turned away so O5-1 couldn't read her lips, though he was sitting with his back to her. "Yes."
A surprise call from a relative she had not spoken to in decades on the eve of the apocalypse. The timing couldn't be worse, but anything labeled as 'urgent' at a time like this had to be particularly dire.
"Alexsander," her Aunt's voice was hollow and detached, "Your father's dead." Not even bothering with the pleasantries.
Coda bit her tongue at the use of her deadname and crushed the instinct to switch to her other voice, "I'm sorry to hear that," she thanked whatever Gods that protected her heart from the filial grief, "Was it peaceful?"
"We found his body in the basement after the White Sky3. Killed himself. Gunshot. Temple."
"I see," Coda exhaled in a low whistle, "Did he leave a note?"
"Yes."
"Did he mention me?"
"He mentioned his son." The bitterness of her aunt's words was so potent that Coda tasted blood hearing it, "He insisted only his son could attend his funeral. He has no son, not anymore. Thanks to you."
"Did he say there was a reason?"
"Your father was sick in the head the past few years. Seeing the White Sky broke healthier men."
"So, the funeral…"
"A few days ago."
"I wasn't invited."
"You were not here for him in life. Why trouble him in death?"
Coda wanted to say many things, but her office's dignity stayed her tongue. "I suppose with him gone, we have no connection left. I would prefer this is the last time I hear from you."
"We never had a connection. His son did, but you're not that person, are you?" She heard her aunt breathe for a minute, "I would pray God spares your father having to greet your soul in heaven, but we both know you aren't going there when you die, semetico." She hung up.
There was a moment where Coda wanted to tear the skin off of everything around her, break her hands punching holes in windows, kill her voice screaming at the walls. It passed, and Coda felt nothing. Nothing upon nothing, infinite seas of blackness. All tucked in the pad-locked, welded-shut zinc coffin where her heart resided since she was a child. Now it was getting ripped open with the dead-flesh hands of an angry ghost.
She reached into the liquor cabinet, wrapped her hands around the lips of three bottles of vodka and whiskey, and walked to the table. Without caring about the contents or target, she let them drop from her hands like she spread flowers over a grave and let O5-1 scramble to keep them from rolling off the edge.
She sat down and poured herself another glass of champagne. "Shall we continue our negotiation?" Her voice was unnaturally high, and her consonants sharp enough to cut the ears. "We are running short of time. I hear your proposal, but I need more reassurances of your good faith."
"Well, fuck, that makes sense." O5-1 said. "I'm all ears. If you want to test drive those cards, O5-4's kill-intel lends itself best to cause ambiguity. That's what comes of downloading one's personality to a dog's body, though. The comparisons to a zoo or him to a bitch, are not without merit. O5-13 lacks the same technical ambiguity, but that dwarven heterochromatic whoremongering piece of shit has so many enemies that they will be too busy celebrating to think too hard about it."
Coda chuckled. "I'm sure a few bodies will impress D.C. Al-Fine. He always liked muscular displays. Maybe…" She found it hard to breathe. "You can send them to me in a pretty box."
She saw herself find it rather hard to breathe. It's not an astral projection event. It's not…
She's twelve again.
The sound of the wind whipping through the lily-of-the-nile's brought sweet senses to her nose as she slowly snuck through the grounds of what would become the Jardim Botânico do Porto.
She didn't want to be seen in what she wore, a simple sundress stolen from her sister's wardrobe.
Approaching the garden bed wall, she giggled as the sound of tinkling wind chimes flitted through the air. Without trepidation, she turned the corner and walked into her father.
He towered above her, salt-and-pepper beard wavering in the wind, and his resting placid face twisted as his lips curled, and he bared his teeth. His fist reeled back, and the Portugese from his throat was visceral in a way she had never heard before.
"You fucking faggot."
She was coughing up blood well before he stopped hitting her. He had enough discipline to ensure his hands only occasionally touched her face. It took weeks for the black eye to heal.
She saw herself chattering about turning over Sites before the coup to ease border tensions. She named a few humanoids for whom the Coalition had a terminal interest.
She was perfectly able to function during a dissociative event. It was a necessary talent in her line of work.
The room, its stillness, and O5-1 reasserted themselves over her memories, and she felt real again.
She saw new lines along his cheeks.
"O5-1, what are you doing?"
"Are you okay?" O5-1's voice staggered like his breathing doubled up on itself. "Just breathe, Coda, just breathe?"
"O5-1, stop. You're a stone-hearted fascist. You've more bodies on you than a Sarkite mausoleum! You don't have these feelings you're pretending to—"
"First, I'm not a fascist, I'm an accelerationist. Second, it—"
"We don't have time!"
"Stop trying twice as hard to get half as far, Coda! It'll never be enough! Just be you!"
"Stop making this personal!"
"Coda, look at me." O5-1 showed her his own eyes welling with tears. "You're not alone."
It was easy for her to compartmentalize when she was among people, and it was effortless in a professional environment. Whatever O5-1 was, it was neither a professional nor a 'people.' He was a singularity to her.
"It's the nature of the system. It's in the marrow of my existence." She mumbled. Something about O5-1's weakness exacerbated hers. It was an effective sabotage except that it was self-inflicted.
"It's in mine as well, and I'm done hiding it from you," he said, "Watch."
O5-1 grabbed a fistful of fabric on his suit, coiling his fingers. With a high-pitched howl, he ripped his suit and dress shirt apart so the skin on his upper chest, shoulder, and arm was bare. The fabric made a glittering trail as it wove through the air.
What showed underneath was a body made to be as muscular as possible, toned, and stressed to the limit. On his chest was a network of scars, and Coda immediately understood.
He waged the same war she did against the prison of his own body and the aggressors who wanted to make sure they served their life terms there.
Perhaps it was the champagne, perhaps it was the trauma, Coda leaned over the table and touched the scars, saw the chest, and looked up at the face ripe with tears. O5-1's were fixed on DC Al-Fine's chest. "The way it rises and falls is so beautiful," he whispered, like raising his voice would somehow undo the moment.
He froze as she touched him. "Why?"
O5-1's eyes glazed over like he himself was transported. His voice heightened in pitch, and his words lost their casual smoothness and became just as aristocratic as Coda's. "Growing up, it was just me and my mother and Aunt. My mother never failed to find an excuse to beat me. It started well before I…when I was still trying to make things work. In childhood, I was never conventional enough for her."
She couldn't help it. Her heart broke for O5-1. "You were wasted on her."
"Either I was promiscuous for spending time with boys or lesbian for not wanting to marry them. My aunt, I think, knew the truth about me before I did. She couldn't rescue me from my mother but did her best to comfort me, protect me in her own way. It didn't help— I don't have the scars anymore. But they were there, physically. "
He lunged towards the half-full champagne bottle. Coda handed it to him, and he took a giant swig of its contents before slamming it onto the table. "Auntie died well after I joined the Foundation. I went to her funeral. I couldn't shed a tear. I don't think I wept since I was eight."
"Then mother died. My memory's fuzzy on that week, but the term 'shit-faced' and 'manic' come to mind. Inconsolable. It was like a fever dream. Something in me broke, or I think I realized something was missing. The hatred. All that hatred is quite the motivator. And then it was gone."
O5-1 looked into Coda's eyes and said, "Looking at you is the second time I've ever wept."
Sanity was never Coda's strong suit. She needed a tough outer shell to work in her profession, but all it took was a series of personal tragedies to permanently misalign her mind in a clusterfuck of disaster. With the vodka clutched in her hands, knuckles whitening, she began to feel tears fall down her face.
Suddenly she felt an anchor, sheening metal and smooth skin: O5-1's hand gripping hers. She held onto it for lack of anything better and let herself barrel down into the deep black pit that lingered under her, if only for a moment.
It wasn't drinking together. It felt more like she was body-doubling her self-medication. The bottle of gin soon died, and it made a playful rattle when it hit the ground. Another followed it, and this one was a dark-brown whiskey of a local vint. Then they stopped using glasses altogether, instead drinking as much as each could before relinquishing the bottle with a sensual gasp and thrusting it into the hands of the other.
Coda floated on a sea of comfortable nothing. "We are…" Her lips tripped over slippery words, "so drunk right now."
Why did I choose to get absolutely shit-faced? The timing's inappropriate. She covered her mouth with her wrist. Unless there is something I'm trying to work out?
She shrugged, then pointed at O5-1. "You are all mouth and no hands. If I bit you, would it be blood or nougat in my mouth?"
O5-1 snorted. "The fuck are you talking about?"
"What you said, about how you'd kill me," She dragged a finger in front of her throat for emphasis. "It's ridiculous. Coalition executives are as hard to kill as Foundation Overseers are. It would require the intelligence breach of the literal millennium just to get anywhere close to my bedroom, let alone do the rest of the stuff you said."
"It's just spitballing, you bitch." O5-1 had a way of throwing that word around so it sounded almost complimentary. "Why you hung up on it?"
"What you described was just so…" She fished for the right word, "Intimate."
"Murder between friends ought to be." O5-1 sank his face into his hands. "Do you know…" His hands slid from his face onto the table, "You are my best friend?"
"That's rather pathetic, 'One." Coda's nostril flared as though she really had smelled something foul, "Considering we're not friends."
"You can't talk shit, Coda," O5-1 hiccuped, "You don't have any friends."
"No. No! Absolutely no friends," Coda threw her head back and cackled. "No, I don't." She crossed one leg over the other and stared O5-1 dead in the eye. "When did you realize nobody was ever going to love you?"
O5-1's eyes started to water as his brain swam through oceans of lost time, his heart thumping like mad. "You know how, when you're a child, you stare at yourself in the mirror and wonder how much you can do to make your mother love you?"
"Takes me back," Coda's affected a tone of feigned nostalgia, "Takes me way back."
"Even though she's a manipulative bitch. Even though she puts all the pressure on you to marry the man she thinks you want. And you can try as hard as you want, but the trying only aggravates her more. Then, one day, she does something that makes it clear that wasn't gonna happen. Something with a knife." O5-1 leaned back and burped. "Learning curves, am I right?"
"Yeah…" She felt a warm presence on her hand-it was O5-1's, blanketing hers. Comforting. Safe.
From the start of their brief acquaintance, she wondered why someone would care for her so deeply, offer her the world for pittance in return.
The moment his hand touched hers, she figured it out.
That piece of shit.
Chapter 4: Sangre por Sangre
"Can I ask you a question?" The fuzziness departed her voice. Coda could hold her liquor when the situation warranted.
"Anything."
"This plan of yours…there's a bit of a complication."
Instead of surprise, O5-1 grinned, a look of effusive pride. "Let's hear it."
"Say I went through with this and massacred your council. You're the last man standing. Then you kill the Administrator, assuming you can."
O5-1 pounded his chest. "I will beat the brakes off that Oxbridge swine."
"And then you make peace with us—assuming you're true to your word, which is at best a calculated gamble," Coda said. In response, O5-1 shrugged, and made a see-saw motion with his hand, "And to make the peace stick, you'd probably have to offer incredibly humiliating peace terms. The Coalition would become a Foundation vassal."
"Probably."
"How would that look to the rest of the Foundation?"
O5-1 leaned forward over the table. "I imagine they would think I was the biggest bitch on the Council since Kain brought his girlfriend to work."
"It would look very much like you sold out."
"Indeed." O5-1 said.
"The only way you could sell this is if you retaliated in a proportional way."
"Getting warmer."
"And…" Coda tried to keep her face straight and her breathing constant, but it was getting increasingly difficult for her, "There's no guarantee that the Council would accept this peace deal anyways. They might consider your coup an opportunity to strike first with even greater advantages."
"Fucking right. They would be bitches not to."
"You must kill the Council of 108 to have a hope of stopping the war your way." Coda's jaw dropped. "You need me to help you kill my colleagues for peace."
O5-1 looked like he was about to burst into laughter. "Yeah, how about that?" He seemed utterly oblivious to the sarcasm dripping from her voice.
"Uh huh," Coda felt her jaw drop. She could feel grief, horror, terror-something about the full scope of O5-1's intentions made everything that transpired before feel like even more of a manipulation, more of a betrayal. He was the same as everyone else in her life, seeing her weakness and alienating her from her nature.
She struggled to keep the rage out of her voice. "You're saying the only way your 'peace-plan' can work is if I give you the kill-intel on my colleagues as well."
"Top marks. Strangers on a Train."
"Okay, O5-1, I see your proposal. I understand its merits. I have a counter-offer." She pointed to the door. "Get out."
She imagined someone clawing in the air after losing their grip on a cliff. O5-1 scowled. "What the fuck? I thought we were making progress!"
"You let me think all I had to do was help you execute a coup. What if I hadn't figured this part out until it was too late? Were you counting on me to be so desperate I'd be more willing to kill my people for you?
"You were already desperate enough to meet me. And I to talk to you. I want us both on the same page!"
"So when was I to be briefed on the full strategy? Would it be after you'd gotten me inebriated?"
"Don't be absurd!."
Did you see my crying as your 'in,' or was I not debased enough for you? Please, give me some answer that doesn't insult my intelligence—"
"Don't insult my integrity!"
"The man plotting a double purge in the middle of a peace negotiation is talking to me about integrity."
"Your organization treats genocide like a business. Ours is a fucking concentration camp on a global scale! These fifty-four twats are a rounding error! Where do you get off judging me?"
"I have my honor to consider, 'One. Without it, I'm just some queer with a professional sugar-daddy and a lot of luck."
"Your life has value, period. You don't need Al-Fine or anyone' stamp of approval—"
Coda wanted to pull her hair out. He is just not getting it! "I am done with you lecturing me about my life-choices! It's no longer in your portfolio! Stop talking about me!"
"I don't understand. Why would you throw in with a gang of psychopaths who are already planning to destroy everything you've built?"
"What's the alternative?" She noticed O5-1's expectant expression. "You? As you? You're kidding me! You think we could ever be a team together? We're practically different species."
"We…" O5-1's voice cracked, and she heard a snapping sound as O5-1's hands gripped the table so hard the wood gave way under the pressure. "We are alike! I told you those things about me—"
"You think some developmental trauma makes us kin?" She looked at him head to toe. "Do you blame this rigamarole on your mommy, too, or was I supposed to be her stand-in?"
"What was any of this?." O5-1's voice training fell apart as it warbled between two different pitches, like O5-1's past and present flesh were wrestling for control of his mouth. "You cried in front of me. We drank together. I told you things about myself I haven't told anyone in years! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"What you are," Coda spoke delicately more to ensure each syllable cut as deep as it could, "is an emotional handkerchief. Our little heart-to-heart? That was entirely me vetting your stupid proposal because I knew it stunk. We have no connection. I could have paid for what I got from you."
The hiss that emerged from O5-1 could have come from a drop of water on a coal-fire:
"You bitch."
Few words in the English language could truly make Coda experience true murderous intent, and that was one of them. Since physical extermination would only serve to prove O5-1's fundamental thesis, she went for the emotional variety.
"Do you think you intimidate me? Run off and find a coed to stalk, Norma Bates!"
O5-1 let out a howl that sounded like a 'WOAH' shot out of his chair and dragged it behind him as he stormed within inches of DC Al-Fine. "So läuft das also4? So läuft das also?"
DC Al-Fine stayed still, unmoved. "Sit down and be quiet, boy. There's nothing tough about you!"
"So läuft das also?"
She spat on the ground, "Your impotence makes me like our chances."
He got within a millimeter of her face. She could smell his breath of mint and oak-barrel aged liquor. "What's that augmentation in your eye? Anderson robotics? I'll rip that thing out and shove it down your boss's dick-shaped throat!"
In moments like these, Coda's body would feel numb. She considered it her most prized asset. "You were a bed-wetter, weren't you?" Coda chuckled. "I think I found why the 'Norma Bates' thing ticks you off."
O5-1 replied to this crack by throwing the table at the wall behind DC Al-Fine.
"Is that all you got?" Coda's voice shook with rage. "I bet you my father hit me harder than you ever could. I bet your mother hit you harder than you ever could. You—"
Then Coda stopped talking altogether. What use was it to continue talking? There was nothing left to say.
"Why?" O5-1 sounded confused. "You are a Coalition executive, yet they treat you like a glorified intern, and you know why. You gamble whether you join me or them, because whether they execute you for the sabotage or you die in their war! And if they win? They will have no use for a try-hard queer, not in the world they want! Why?"
She could not argue with him on the merits. And he would not understand if she tried explaining to him what duty meant. We both stare at the abyss, but he blinked.
"Coda. Why?"
Then again, on the merits, he was utterly untrustworthy.
"Coda, talk to me!"
So Coda did not say anything more. She smiled.
O5-1 crumpled to the ground, sitting cross-legged as if he was a child being chastised by a parent. His mouth opened a few times, as if to speak, but instead he leaned back on his elbows and looked at Coda's serene expression. She had the impression of a fire having burned itself out.
The tranquility was split in twain by the piercing siren erupting from the pager on Coda's uniform. There was a lot of urgent text in all caps, but only one conclusion: The Coalition was activating Pizzicato.
"Petra!" Coda pulled out the phone and dialed the IT nexus. No response. She dialed her office. No response.
"Wait, excuse me?" O5-1 got to his feet with a grunt. "An Occult War has effectively broken out, your life's work is in flames, and you're worried about your secretary?"
"Yes," Coda jumped out of her chair and checked her side-arm. "Because one, if she's been detained, I'm next before long. And two, I'm not much good to anyone at this rate."
"You are a fucking hypocrite." O5-1 shook his head, but his voice suggested something like grudging admiration.
Her phone buzzed and she answered it. "Petra?"
"Hi, Boss." Her voice sounded uneven and dreamy, almost drugged.
"What's going on?"
"You probably heard by now. They disengaged Fire Suppression and did the war vote without you."
"Naturally." If they did that, they probably knew it was sabotage. "How did you get out?"
"Truthfully, I started running the moment they locked down the IT Nexus. Might have used one of your guns to shoot my way out."
"Where are y—"
"I don't actually have a family."
"What?"
"That was just something I said during our interview to get sympathy points. I've got a girlfriend, was going to spend my last hours with her."
"Petra, what are you talking about?"
"Sorry! Blood-loss does funny things to your train of thought…"
"Petra!" Keep it together, Coda, you're no use to her falling to pieces. "Petra, Petra, stay with me! What happened?"
"They winged me. They're looking for me, just wanted to warn you and, uh, I'm going to try to find a spot to bleed out so they don't find my body. If you wouldn't mind coming to this address…" Petra rattled it off, "sniffing around, you'll find me. I don't care if it's haram, cremate my body. I'm too vain to decompose…"
"Petra!"
There was a click. Coda threw the phone and threw her own chair on the ground.
"Fuck!"
O5-1 placed a hand on Coda's shoulder. "Listen to me very carefully, Coda: You are the dumbest, boot-fucked bleeding heart I think I've met at this level of organizational politics."
"Get your hand off of me—" Coda wrenched her shoulder away from him and checked her side-arm for a bullet in the chamber.
"—and holy fuck, I love it. Now, the streets of Bergen are flooded with soldiers. They will assume Petra was acting under your orders and sack you, and it is quite the walk to where your underboss is holed up."
"It'll take some time for them to carry it out, longer for the paperwork to process." Coda ran a quick inventory on the Occult and augmented weaponry secreted throughout her body, did the magical equivalent of musical scales with her tactical and strategic spells. "In any event, saving my people and helping you kill them are two very different propositions." At least I can do some good before I go. Anxiety, dread, but also some sense of pride swelled in her heart. Contrary to O5-1's belief, she hadn't sold out everything.
"That insufferable title of yours." O5-1 let out a small "Oh," as though struck by an epiphany, "I think I have just the cure for your mental malady." O5-1 tsk-tsked, then picked up the cell phone and dialed a number.
She heard the voice of D.C. Al-Fine's assistant Akechi Kaya. "Please state your authorization code or prepare to be terminated—"
"Akechi, this is Erlkönig."
"Authenticate."
"Protest ist, wenn ich sage, das und das passt mir nicht. Widerstand ist, wenn ich dafür sorge, dass das, was mir nicht passt, nicht länger geschieht.5
"It's been a while, Erlkönig."
"Execute Fall Gericht, Codeword, Downfall. Yes, on my unilateral authority." O5-1 hung up, then snapped the phone in half.
"What…what was that?"
"You know, back in the day, when someone got syphilis, and it advanced too far, they'd actually infect the patient with malaria? The idea was, the malaria would inflict the safest survivable fever that could burn out the syphillis, and presumably anybody would rather suffer that than their brain rotting." O5-1 withdrew a pocket-watch from what was left of his coat. "It's the staple example we give junior staff so they understand why the Hippocratic Oath isn't in our line of work. To heal, sometimes you need to harm others."
"What?"
"Fortunately, it's not you who is getting the malaria."
D.C. Al-Fine's voice blared from the pocket-watch. "Yes, we've got that limp-wristed dove dead to rights on sabotage. The moment we've got weapons release, I want…I want…my nose is running like a…tlaon faucet right now…somebody hand me a…"
There was a general commotion of by-standards, a sound like a bag of potatoes dropping to the ground, a noise Coda could identify as the gurgling of a man choking on his blood, then a loud wet pop and a chorus of screams. O5-1 closed the watch and tucked it back into his suit, patting it for good measure.
Coda screamed. "What…what did you just do? You had the kill-intel on D.C. Al-Fine this entire time?"
"I had something better. A job referral from a friend on the inside." O5-1 looked at Coda meaningfully and laughed.
"What are you talking about?!" Her brain was a howling, keening mess.
Coda's ears ached as her pager screamed again. Pulling it out of her pocket again, she saw just one sentence that made her blood freeze:
"D.C. Al-Fine medically unfit to assume duties. Line of Succession protocol activated. Coda elevated to acting-D.C. Al-Fine, please-"
She dropped her pager, collapsed to her knees, then buried her mouth in her wrist and screamed into her skin, and even though her teeth broke her skin, the pain wasn't nearly loud enough. Then, the news caught up with her stomach, and she threw up into the aged wood at her feet and screamed.
Everything's lost. It is all lost. There's no running from it and no fixing it. What now? What now?"
She heard him clear his throat behind her.
"O5-1, I'm giving you thirty seconds to withdraw, or I will drop you where you stand."
There was the creak of floorboards and the familiar weight of O5-1's arm cradling Coda's shoulder, and this time she neither leaned into the embrace nor shook him off. His hot breath tickled her ear. She couldn't tell if the tone of his whisper was triumphant or apologetic. The words he spoke were too impossible for her to pay heed to such nuances.
"Enough with the formalities, Diana," O5-1 took her hand and folded it in his. "Call me Johan."