Seeing your friends die over and over again is a terrible way to live.
I woke up and found myself alone. It was just like at the start of my vision the day before. I knew how this ended. Maybe I had enough time to stop it this time. I reached over for my cellphone and called Maeve.
Maeve isn’t my student or my apprentice or anything that would put her under my power. She’s Maeve, future ruler of the fae kingdoms. She always honors favours that I call in. Nothing more, nothing less. Never has she gone beyond what I’ve asked her to do. One day, I hope she’ll make that decision to go further.
If my vision was still true, Robin was being held by Florence in a lab in the basement of the school. I didn’t use my powers to check the future again. I felt the itch to, like some part of my mind needed to know how doomed my plan was and how badly I would fail. I refused.
Getting into the building was easy enough. No security was waiting for stop me or Maeve. Maeve could pass for a student, though, and I wasn’t exactly remarkable on my own. We made it down to the basement, where we encountered a group of young men. Maeve managed to lure them out to a coffee shop while I snuck the rest of the way in.
I wasn’t sure what I was preparing myself for. I didn’t want to think that far ahead, visions or not. I got to the threshold of the lab. Robin was strapped down to a lab table and Florence was getting ready to do... something with a scalpel. I wanted to rush Florence, knock her out and run off with Robin like a big damn hero. Maeve stepped in before I could and started negotiating for Robin’s release instead, as if Florence had any right to a proper supernatural negotiation.
I stood back, tense, ready for anything to happen. I had to give Maeve space, though. This was everything that I had been trying to work towards with her. If she could peacefully resolve this, maybe this was what I was waiting for. That’s when I spotted the molotov cocktail flying towards us. I couldn’t close my eyes. I stared at the bottle. I reached out with my mind towards the bottle. I missed.
Everything in the room was deathly still. Almost. I looked down at my hands. They could move. So could the rest of me. Maeve and Robin could move. Nothing else changed. Somehow, I managed to stop time in the lab. I felt sick.
But that bottle. I ran over to where it hung in the air, pulled it down and placed it in the lab’s fire blanket. I had no idea when time would start flowing again. Robin pulled free of her bonds and went to download something from the computer. It didn’t work. Probably whatever I did with the room affected the computer as well. Maeve took the moment to tie Florence’s shoes together, then bolted in the direction that molotov came from.
I wasn’t sure what would happen once Maeve left the room, so I just willed time to flow again. I guess. Florence fell flat on her face. I pinned her down and tried to make sense out of everything that was happening while Robin grabbed the data from the computer. Florence had no time for me. She never really liked me in the past, something about assuming that Robin’s injuries were the result of me beating her. Robin got a little bit more information out of her, but not much.
Robin looked at me and told me should go. I knew why Robin wanted me gone and I knew that Florence wouldn’t live past the next ten minutes. It wasn’t personal, except that it was. I took a deep breath and walked away from the lab in the direction that Maeve had run.
Why didn’t I protest more? Why didn’t I tell Robin to stop? I don’t have good answers. I had seen what Florence potentially could have done in my dreams. That’s not evidence of anything, granted. It felt intrusive to demand Robin tell me what happened.
There was one time where I found myself in Robin’s position. A woman was confused, scared and armed, a dangerous combination. She shot me and tried to rip information out of my head as I was bleeding out. Two things were burned into my memory: the agony I was going through and how none of my suffering never meant anything to her. I still have a nasty scar on my stomach from where her bullet cut through me. If people ask about it now, I tell them it’s from a car accident. Why should I tell them what actually happened? It wouldn’t change what did happen and they probably wouldn’t understand.
I bumped into Maeve down the hall. She had a pile of what looked like icy blue gel in her hand. She explained it was soul gel from Carla, who had given it to sworn fealty. Carla was off in the fae realms right now; the gel allowed Maeve to track where they at all times. While Carla wouldn’t stop trying to kill me, she would have the decency to alert Maeve before each new assassination attempt. It was the polite thing for a supernatural horror to do.
Maeve had finally stepped beyond what I had asked her to do. I succeeded but she doomed me in the process. She couldn’t understand why there was no comfort in being alerted to attempts on my life.
Robin dragged me away from the school and Maeve to Yellow 10. She dropped me off at the bar and told me she’d come back for drinks after she talked to Merov. I was okay with that. We didn’t really talk to me about what happened on the ride over or about why she left me at the apartment and how she came to be tied to the lab table. Carla was involved, based on the attack. I was fine with Carla trying to kill me, but now she was using Robin as bait to lure me out. I was not okay with that but had no idea how to fix it.
Instead, I did the only thing I could think of doing right now: drinking myself into oblivion so I couldn’t see what tomorrow would bring.
I met Derek at the bar. There was something off about the man. I really liked Derek as a person, but he was starting to feel like a failure of sorts. A mortal who had gotten in too deep and couldn’t be pulled back out. I reached out to touch his shoulder and... I saw things. His fears. Apparently Merov felt that he was being possessed by a demon. Derek’s feelings on the whole thing felt more mixed than I would have expected. I offered to buy him a drink.
Derek stayed a while and left to go back to wherever Dereks go when they’re finished dealing with the supernatural. I left Robin a message about how Derek might be involved with demons. I didn’t want her to die because of my fuck ups.
Hours later, Merov showed up. He wanted to apologize for not telling me about Carla and asking me if I watched my death. I was standoffish at first. The world was ending outside and there was nothing I could do to stop it and Merov, the one person who might have enough power to do SOMETHING about everything was woken up into this world late into the game. Much like Galen woke Prince Merovech up too soon and their attempt to save the people from Chilperic fell apart because or Merovech’s youth and recklessness.
Eventually, Merov took me to the roof. We touched. That strange power that went off with Derek didn’t go off with him. After, Merov made me an offer: he wanted to build a council to bring the supernatural parts of Boston into order and wanted me to be chancellor. I told him that I would think about it.
As soon as Merov left, I called Robin and asked her to come home. My timing was terrible, but all I could think of after Merov mentioned the storm outside was Robin. I slept with Merov because he was there and was Merov, honestly. He wasn’t the person I was in love with.
Robin came home almost an hour later. She was covered in gore and thought Carla had hunted me down again. Nothing that dire was happening at the apartment and she was frustrated that I would call her home when the world was ending. We talked. I told her that I loved her and that I was scared she would die before I was able to express that. She told me that she loved me back but that I had to live with her potentially not coming home one day.
She shared with me the true nature of the research that she was working on. It eventually lead to the ghoul plague in its current form, but it’s actual goal was a cure for supernatural powers. I let Robin take a sample of my blood. I have no idea what she’ll learn from it or what she could do with it; in the wrong hands, that blood sample could be a million times worse than the ghoul plague.
We talked about what could happen if she could figure out how to switch our DNA back into normal humans. I was hopeful, but I don’t want to dwell too much on a future that may never happen. Not when Boston is about to rip itself apart and might take all of us with it.
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