XIII
The Wolf’s Reflection
Oslo, 2077
The city lights twinkled like stars outside the window. This wintry twilight was Ma?l’s favorite—it cast Oslo in deep purples and pale oranges, and turned the waters of the fjord to wine. Snow gathered on the windowsills and rooftops, falling in large flakes that lazily drifted down from the clouds.
Ma?l was sitting, reclining, in an armchair in the corner of his office. An open book lay on his chest. He’d fallen asleep after a meeting with some of Ymir Skandatek’s particularly stress inducing executives. He’d only intended to take a break for thirty minutes or so, using the time to read the next chapter.
Since leaving Nástr?nd, he’d read as many books as he could find. He was trying to learn as much as he could about the world he and his siblings had missed out on. He’d started with classics, like Homer’s and, Alighieri’s , and Dostoevsky’s . Then he’d read philosophy starting with Nietzsche’s .
When he asked his family for their recommendations, Liv had given him Norbert Wiener’s . Ares insisted he pick up . Sofie had given him a worn hardcover copy of by Robert W. Chambers. Following the adjustment of her Heimdall implant, Astrid had latched onto the colorful, dynamic imagery in graphic novels. She’d given him a four volume collection of Mike Mignola’s .
He was partway through the second volume, and had intended to read the next chapter of the graphic novel, but he’d only made two pages of progress. Ma?l turned back the pages and placed his bookmark at the start of the chapter. He checked the time—he was likely one of the last people in the building. Standing, he tucked the book into his bag, pulled on his coat, and slung the strap over his shoulder.
The lights in the hall were dimmed and as he locked his office door behind him, Ma?l couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched from the shadows. The source of the feeling soon revealed itself: Soren Alvik, the Security Chief was already making his rounds.
“Evening, Boss.”
Ma?l smiled at the sound of Alvik’s deep baritone. The Security Chief was one of only a few people in the company that Ma?l considered a friend. Since he was almost always in the office late into the evening, he’d made a point of striking up a good rapport with the others who were frequently present in the twilight hours.
“Soren. How are you this evening?” Ma?l asked as the older man approached.
“Not too bad, not too bad.” Alvik grinned. He was taller and older than Ma?l, with broader shoulders. His dark skin was just beginning to wrinkle, and he had only a few dark patches left in his graying hair. “You’re here late—later than usual, I mean. Decided I had to come check on you when you didn’t stop by my office on your way out.”
“Busy day,” Ma?l said. As Alvik approached him in the hall, Ma?l turned and matched his stride. They walked side by side toward the stairwell on the opposite side of the floor. “And it’s hard to keep track of time when the sky darkens so early in the afternoon.”
“Lived here all my life and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” Alvik said, scratching his beard. He took a sip from the small water bottle he kept in his jacket pocket. “The cold either.”
“I thought you liked the cold.”
“I like the ,” Alvik corrected. “Snow is beautiful, but the cold makes my knees ache. The hydraulics in my right leg start complaining louder than my ex-wife, not to mention my left knee—still organic, you know, and sure damn feels like it.” Sure enough, Ma?l could hear Soren’s knees clicking with each step as they descended the stairs.
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“Gotta make a stop on the way out,” Ma?l said as they were coming to the landing for the fourth floor. He pushed open the door and held it for Soren as the older man followed across the threshold.
The conversation continued until they reached a small office lit solely with red lights. The color was almost overwhelming as it spilled through the glass walls of the office and into the surrounding halls. The name on the door read
“I’ll be just a second, Soren,” Ma?l said before knocking and pushing the door open.
“I’ll take a quick lap of the floor then,” Alvik said, giving a thumbs-up before leisurely meandering down the hallway.
Holtmark’s office was a mess of empty coffee cups. She sat in her wheelchair, staring at her computer screen. A trio of cables snaking their way from the back of her skull to the computer tucked under her desk. A virtual reality headset was propped up on her forehead.
“Almost done,” she said without looking away from her work. Lines of code spilled down the screen in steady green columns.
“You’re going to burn yourself out at this rate, Dr. Holtmark,” Ma?l said.
“Mr. Ulveson, you and I both know I do my best work when no one else is around,” she said, spinning her chair to face him, moving with expert precision.
Karin had been born with a degenerative spinal condition that had rendered her paralyzed from the waist down. She had, at one point, qualified for full-body mobility prosthetics, but had refused them. Instead, she’d bought an old manual wheelchair and turned it into an extension of herself that seemed more natural than any cyberlimb ever could.
“Still watching the quarantine zone?” He asked.
“Of course,” she said, glancing back to the screen. “The north relay spat static all afternoon, but the weather on the mountain’s been clear all day. The static stopped about three hours ago. I’m sure it’s nothing important, but I want to be sure.”
“How much longer do you need?”
“A little over an hour.”
“All right. Send me the logs when you’re finished, please.”
“Sure thing.”
Ma?l gave a small nod and stepped back into the hall. The door clicked shut behind him. He was glad to be out of the smothering red glow. Soren was at the far end of the corridor, just finishing his survey of the floor. Ma?l caught up to him by the stairwell, and the two continued toward the lobby.
When Ma?l and his sisters had freed themselves from their mother’s control, he’d shed the name she’d given him. Once, he had been Jotunheim—but no longer. He had declared himself , the wolf that broke its bonds at Ragnar?k and gone, with his siblings at his side, to fight in the final war. When they pushed Sofie to take Yrsa’s place as CEO, she became the first of them to take on a surname. It had originally been only a formality, a measure to ensure that the paperwork would be completed with no loose ends. When Liv and Astrid had taken the same name, it became something more.
Ma?l, finding that didn’t sound natural to his ear, took the name for himself instead. , it meant. And it felt right, despite the sense of severance from his sisters. That feeling had quickly faded when Sofie had come to him to ask for help. She’d never desired the power she now found in her hands, so when Ma?l saw the distress on her face, he agreed to step into the role of Director at the Ymir HQ here in Oslo.
Once he’d settled in, he had commissioned an art piece that now adorned the tower’s entry hall. It was both a way to mark his territory, and a reminder of the path he had chosen to walk and the one he had left behind.
The lobby stretched upward into darkness—three stories of glass and steel washed in the pale glow of Oslo’s winter night. The city’s lights reflected off the marble floor like a second, inverted skyline. Opposite the entrance doors, the mural dominated the far wall: a vast expanse of glass and polarized resin that shimmered faintly with its own inner light.
The mural was actually two, a lenticular image on a massive scale. From one angle, it depicted a massive gray wolf—its shoulders a full head above the men surrounding it—bound in a gossamer scarf. One of the men stood in front of the wolf, a solemn expression in his eyes, as the beast’s fangs drew blood from his right arm. From the opposite angle, the composition shifted. The wolf’s bonds had been broken, and it stood triumphant over the bloodied body of a one-eyed, bearded man clutching the bladed tip of a fractured spear.
The light from the mural bathed the lobby in subtle color, the whole space breathing with it. It was the building’s soul—part art, part warning. Visitors often mistook it for a display of corporate bravado, but to Ma?l it was a declaration of his identity, a reminder of the path that they had all chosen by following Sofie:
The two men lingered in front of the mural for a while, finishing their talk, then exchanged quiet goodnights. Soren smiled, starting back toward the security office, his footsteps fading into the hum of the building. Ma?l stayed where he was, eyes fixed on the shifting lights. For a while, he was alone with the wolf as they each stared at their reflection in the other. When he finally turned toward the exit, he was no longer alone.
