Episode 7 - The Horned Hare

  Chapter 67 - Hunter

  “I’ve tried trust. I've tried promotions and rewards. I’ve tried control. You tell me, Conrada. What do I need to do? Name your price.”

  Regina is about the most human I’ve ever seen her be. Even her disgusting confidence seems worn thin, like the act takes effort for her to maintain today. My mouth is dry. I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t have easy answers for myself. I shrink in my chair across from her in the conference room and look at my hands beneath the conference room table. It's the first time I've seen her since I electrocuted her, she doesn't seem like she's held a grudge.

  My left hand is wrapped in bandages to keep the burns clean while they heal. My skin is pink and blistered on my knuckles where the frost touched me. The blisters are full of yellow liquid now, at the delicate stage where keeping them clean and unburst is important. I want to pop them, and drain the foul-looking liquid from them, but apparently that lets the infection in and makes the healing slower, or leads to scarring. Good. It feels like my whole body is full of foul yellow liquid. I want to cut it out, spill it on the ground. Some scars would help me remember how sick and sad and terrible I feel.

  Nessa’s body was taken unceremoniously to recycling. Symbionts leave no matter behind unless they are carefully preserved while the symbiont still lives, just like all those floating jars in my father’s lab. But humans are full of matter that could be useful to someone else.

  I don’t know if I care about what happened to the woman; I don’t know if this was worth the price I paid. If she got away, it would be a thin silver lining in this mess. Pooka is not with me, flying somewhere high above the city. It is the closest thing to freedom we have. We complied with Aquila’s request not to let him in the building for now. I leave him to his quiet.

  There was no holding cell this time. I think the shock of Nessa’s death has left the whole company shattered. It wouldn’t matter if they even tried. Our powers have evolved past any leash that could be tied around my throat except the threat of death itself. I have become the weapon that was promised when Regina purchased me… and I’m not sure if even she thinks it’s a good idea anymore.

  She sighs. “I’ll take any advice you can give. Even I don’t know how to sort this out. Adrian’s position… had its flaws, but the positives far outweighed the costs-”

  “You’ve used him for years. Do you know what he could do to you?” I accuse venomously.

  “Yes,” says Regina.

  She does not defend herself. She does not explain her reasoning. She just sits across from me in silence and lets the weight of that single word expand to fill the space between us.

  “You knew?”

  “Vespa are culled for a reason, as much as that word displeases me. But, I’ve trusted Adrian, and his judgement, like he were my own brother. I don't know what to make of this... good graces with Apex are too important - he knows this. I don’t know what you ?said to him to have convinced him to have taken such an unusual step back from the operation. It was potentially bad judgement on my part to let the two of you work alone so much, but I just thought you had grown close after working together in Control and it seemed better you had friends than not. The question is what do you know?"

  I clamp my jaw shut.

  "You're a bad liar, that's the right decision." Regina sighs dismissively, "I think it might be best if you take a period of separation from the company. While I clean up. This one will be harder than last time.”

  Something in my heart draws tight at those words, the same anxiety I felt when my contract was purchased from Murasaki over a year ago. I lower my eyes from her again, sniffing.

  “You are being placed on secondment with a company known as The Lupine Cooperative. Aquila retains your contract. The details of your control implant will be passed to them, along with you and your symbiont. If you continue to pose a danger to others and they feel the need to pull that chain, there is no coming back - I'm not sending an antivenom. Consider this your performance improvement plan.”

  Regina slides a tablet across the table for me. The text on the screen is obviously a contract.

  “Let me be clear about what they do and do not know about you. We have told them you have an Equus, and that is the service they were in need of. They obviously know you are difficult to control, and a high risk in residential and urban spaces, given I’ve had to explain your leash to them. But, they were very desperate if they were coming to me. Otherwise, they only know your name and basic biographical information but I have not provided a full personnel file to them. Do not let them think you are anything else - especially not their management. You remain an employee of Aquila.”

  “Why protect me still?” I ask.

  “Because I hate to let Owen know he was right that you were a poor investment. I guess Adrian’s support for your employment should be questioned now as well. I hate being wrong.” She pauses, leaning back in her chair to regard me. She has no makeup on today, she even looks her age which is still far younger than I know her to be. “And if I’m honest you remind me of myself. All aggression and youth, and mistakes one after another. Help me out here, Conrada.”

  “I’m not you,” I say.

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  “No. You could be greater. Everyone has probably been telling you to settle down a little. They are wrong, even after… this.”

  I lift my eyes finally to meet her. Regina remains still, brushing a curl over one shoulder as she regards me. For the first time in my life, I feel like she’s not lying to me. The false sincerity I always find so hollow in her voice rings clear for once, like the cry of struck metal. “Know your place. Put your head down. Do what you're told. That’s the advice you’ve been given, isn’t it? More than once I would bet.”

  “What would you know?”

  “Far more than they do. We are cut from the same cloth, you and I. You are as incapable of 'settling down' as I am - it was why Owen scouted me for his spin-off company, my name was all over Apex security files when I was your age. You stumble because you are not committed. You keep letting survival distract you from your true objectives. You must learn to cast it aside. We are hunters, you and I. Each hunt must have one, and only one, kill. Otherwise, every other target in the herd will continue to distract you, turning you from your path. You will keep missing.”

  “How? How am I meant to do that? Everything is always important. Nessa was important! And you! You put this thing in me, stop pretending you care!” I want to scream at her. I want to reach across the table and dig my nails into her skin. I want to watch all of her confidence and certainly tear to shreds in my hands. It feels as if the only thing that could possibly make me feel better about myself would be to see her torn down.

  Regina stands in a single motion, tenting her fingers on the table in front of me. “I care about you more than anyone else in this whole world. Who else would give you this many chances? What I have done, I have done to protect others from you. But... I see you, and, more importantly, I see what you could be. You think I enjoy scraping my fortunes off the boots of those with money and power!? You think I have not dreamed my whole life for the opportunities you were born with? I have only ever looked upward, and lamented that the sky was not for me. But you… You will set fire to them one day, likely long after you have stepped over my bleeding body to do so if that is how it must be to forge you. And ‘til that day, I will do whatever is necessary to sharpen you, so that you can do what I cannot. It hurts me so much to let you make these mistakes, but I must. This is love, what I do. The only love creatures like you and I respond to, the kind that is cruel as often as it is soft. I’m only sorry I did not realize this the day we met and tried other tactics instead.”

  I am stunned to silence, my lower lip trembling as I look up at this tiny woman who bears down upon me like an insurmountable wall. Violent rejection of her every word boils at my surface, but something far deeper listens silently. I hold back the denial on the tip of my tongue for the first time in our conversation… because she is right. And I hate it. I hate everything about her, and I hate that she is right the most.

  Regina remains still, watching me in thought. Then her mood shifts. “I’m cutting off the messages from Murasaki as well.”

  “How-?”

  “I did this sort of thing long before my darling son did. I saw his work with my own symbiont the day he installed it. Cut off, you hear? Not that you could get them where you are going. I’ll decide if you get it back, if you come back alive.” Regina turns to leave, and I scramble to my feet, a snarl of frustration spilling from my lips. Before I can grab her, she’s slipping past the door. “The full details of your contract are there, Owen and I have both already signed - it is just waiting for you now. A representative is coming to pick you up in a few days.”

  The door shuts, and my grasping fingers ball into a fist that I slam into it with a pointless, dull thump. It doesn’t even shake, giving me none of the violent catharsis I crave. I finally let loose a scream, but it comes out as nothing more than a high-pitched, foolish screech of frustration.

  Pooka is too far away from me to call on his powers, or I am too emotionally scattered to find that certain control. I don’t know which, but I think if I could have… I might have torn apart the room - and I know that it would have done nothing to quell the complicated mess inside me.

  Regina is right, I need to learn commitment. But I don’t know what choices to commit to when they might cost me so much and everything feels important.

  I pack my bags alone in my apartment.

  My belongings are far more numerous than the last time I did this, so for the first time in my life I need to decide what to leave behind. Sorting through my things gives me a chance to reflect on my feelings and the messy spring Pooka and I have stepped into from our winter.

  There is a tree. On the edge of a cliff.

  It stands alone, clinging with wind-beaten roots to a sheer rock face. When the rain falls, though it trickles away, the tree ekes a meager drink. When the sun shines, its leaves burn to brown despite needing the light. But in the cool of the morning, a wind blows gently and leaves rustle in the air. Dew collects in the shade. And the tree lives.

  There are thoughts that are clearer than others.

  We live and die on a cliff.

  The first is that I regret killing the hare. I do not want Pooka to be a weapon, as easy as that temptation is. I fear it for myself and I could never take him down the same path he has walked so many times - each time to wake again to a world unchanged. Though he has forgotten it - he was once a spirit of joy and vigor. I know that, I have seen it in his memories, a gift to those he came to that carried not the potential for relentless violence - but for relentless rebirth - like green buds after bitter cold and storm clouds that shake the world and wash it clean again with their passing. That is something I am certain of. I will master his rage, and my own, to free us from its blindness.

  The second clear thought is that nothing comes easily or fairly. That vandalisms and short sighted, impulsive solutions have failed me again and again - they offer temporary relief and a rush of excited adrenaline, but how have any of them made real differences or been worth the prices I paid for them? I was willing to pay, when it was me paying them, or dwell in my own guilt when others paid prices on my behalf… but now someone else has paid the highest cost for choices I have made and the guilt might overwhelm me. And while I know logically helping that unknown woman was the right thing… It is hard to feel good about it.

  Other thoughts remain messy. I don’t know where to go next. Maybe some distance is the right thing. Fuck Regina, I hate her.

  On the desk is my stolen lighter, gleaming in yellow-bronze. Almost unconsciously I slip it into my pocket, feeling the satisfying small weight in my good hand. As I take down my drawings one by one, stowing most of them flat, I open the message from my friends and family at Murasaki that it took me so long to find the bravery to read. There is a mix of messages, some performatory from other members of the lab who I know had mixed feelings about me, and some heartfelt from those closest to me. It always twists my heart to read. But my eyes linger on the one from my father, right in the center of the note.

  You will be a young woman one day who knows how to strive for everything your heart wants, and that some of us have given up on. I know it, even if I never get to see it.

  I love you. - Dad

  Murder Pizza

  [WLW LitRPG Satire]

  That wasn’t in the recipes!

  What’s on the menu?

  ? Lesbian leads.

  ? Bingeable short story.

  ? Cozy NOM. This is a pizza book.

  ? Tongue-in-cheek entertainment.

  ? System messages with a side of mockery.