Sylvia.

  The thought of her: her slanted, sharp jag of a smile, her almost feline, long-limbed frame, her infinitely sensitive touch. It shunted Shiv’s thoughts back to the present, the force of the recollection rebooting her sense of self just long enough to start reclaiming her sense of narrative.

  Where was she?

  Some sort of bunker. A dim, unadorned room, windowless. She didn’t have any specific reason to think so, but she just knew it was underground. Lining the room, standing along the walls, were a series of men and women in maroon robes. She was among them. A glance down revealed her robe sitting too-snug on her, just tight enough to choke.

  An old man, grandfatherly in a blatant sort of way, spoke in low tones in the center of the room, addressing the gathered crowd about some sort of grand plan. A gaunt, squinting man behind him watched along. Shiv felt an instant revulsion at their faces, but struggled to place why.

  “-three hundred, maybe more,” the old man continued. “We won’t get all of them. Half would be a very generous estimation. Go fast. Once they’re aware that something’s… amiss, they crowd is liable to stampede, and there are only two major exits.”

  He gestured to the floor plan pinned up on something like posterboard in the center of the room. The plan seemed to depict a wide, rectangular room. A gymnasium, or something like it.

  (“-down fourteen. They should put Peter in, he’s been on the bench long enough-”)

  Shiv shook her head. The memory had been disruptive and vivid, more like a pop-up ad then a normal recollection. The voice had sounded so real, so tauntingly familiar. Who-

  “Remember,” the old man said, disrupting her train of thought. “Move fast and hit hard. Not too hard that you kill anyone, but you need to disrupt people or they’ll get out, and trample each other along the way. Again, we don’t want anyone dead, but I can fix a broken leg or shattered ribs just fine. Just fine.”

  Bitter guilt roiled in Shiv’s gut, tempered by a growing, caged-dog fury. Where was she? Why couldn’t she move? This man was asking her to do something awful. Why was she listening?

  “No need to be subtle. Our friends downtown blew the lid off of the secret of us Blessed and our existence when they melted a parking garage in front of half the city.” The man chuckled, a cartoon Santa delivering some festive pun. “No, now we smash and we grab. If we can get, let’s say, fifty, sixty people into our fold, and that number again given over to me for my personal reserves, we’ll have the force we need to stand up to those clumsy devils.”

  She struggled mightily and managed, almost surprising herself, to take a shuddering step from the wall. The old man notched an eyebrow at her.

  “Bouchard?” he said, angling his head towards the squinter.

  “On it.”

  The gaunt man flicked a hand in the air, his fingers shimmering with a nauseatingly wrong shade of yellow, shattering Shiv’s concentration. With a gesture from the old man, she was on her knees, her inner monologue being yanked back out of her consciousness, water sucked down a drain.

  Sylvia.

  Their first date. That awful hatchback they’d reappropriated for the night. The smell of secondhand weed and that too-strong almond conditioner she used to be so into.

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  Shiv was in a tunnel now, an inch of water seeping around the edges of the ridiculous, featureless slipper-shoes she was in.

  The grandfatherly man was back, a silhouette set against the bright light at the far end of the tunnel. Across from him, casting his own strange light, was a man whose head was on fire.

  “-as much as I can on my own. I’m not the type to have reservations about my own ability. I’ve learned a lot, but I’m plateauing, and I need focused instruction, now, from someone with more context.”

  Not a man. A boy. He was short, but now, hearing the keening whine in his voice, Sylvia could tell that the face hidden behind the dancing flames was a teen’s, at the oldest.

  The grandfatherly man nodded sagely. “And I’m more than happy to provide that guidance, young man. More than happy. If more people your age took this kind of initiative, the world would be a brighter place, I’m sure.”

  The flaming figure nodded eagerly. He fidgeted with the buttons on his blazer. He was dressed oddly formally for a shady meeting in an abandoned drainage tunnel.

  “Regardless, I assume you’ll expect some sort of compensation from me. If it’s money-”

  The old man waved his hand. “No need for that, not now, not any more. Just your cooperation in a few key efforts, that’s all I ask. I could use a talent like yours.”

  More eager nodding. “If this work is the, uh- The violent sort. If you want me to be fighting someone. Another, er…” the boy gestured to himself, then to the old man, to Shiv and the six other robed thralls in his wake. “I’d expect to have the right to absorb their essence, if possible.”

  The old man grunted, hands rasping as he rubbed them together. “That may not always be possible.”

  “Just occasionally. Enough to keep my growth linear.”

  The old man tilted his head, considering this. “I’ll consider it. Otherwise, it sounds to me like we have a deal, young man.”

  The old man leaned forward, almost lunging a little, hand angling for the boy’s, ostensibly to shake it. The boy flinched away, flames flickering almost enough to reveal his face.

  “Something the matter?”

  The flames licked and danced with what looked like consternation. “I- One more condition, and, and I mean no offense. But I don’t want you touching me.”

  “Oh?” The old man tried to infuse the syllable with something like an amused chuckle, but he failed to completely obscure the overtone of frustration lurking just under its surface.

  The boy seemed to glance from the old man’s hand, to his own, then back. “It’s a hunch. But I- I assume that whatever you’re doing, to make people- To do that to them,” he nodded, directly toward Shiv.

  She felt a suffocating urge to scream out, either for help or in indignation, she couldn’t tell. To turn and sprint down the tunnel, or to lunge at the man and the boy and tear them apart.

  Her feet remained rooted obediently to the wet concrete.

  “-you do it by touching them.” The boy fidgeted as he spoke, his cadence suddenly fast and flat, a lecturer re-hashing old material. “From my observations, the fields we have around us, they need to physically overlap with an object or energy source to interact with them. And while you seem to have great range with your- your ability, if you look close, there’s always a very thin thread connecting your, uh, let’s say avatar, and it leads back to you. More like your field is extending incredibly far, through an infinitesimally thin thread, and less like you’re affecting them purely remotely. So it’s logical to assume that to create that connection, you’d have to physically interact with the victim’s field first.”

  “Victim?” the old man said, voice faux-offended. “My children, many of them, would be dead if not for the rejuvenating qualities of my Blessing. They owe their lives to me. You’ll find that their loyalty to me is pure and their gratitude genuine.”

  Shiv wanted to spit, to scream, to bite her own lips until they bled. She stood stock-still.

  The boy seemed unconvinced. “Be that as it may, I’d rather retain my independence.”

  He glanced at the thralls. Shiv couldn’t read his face, but she imagined, based on his posture, a frown of mild distaste. “And I refuse to wear a robe.” He straightened a wrinkle from his slacks. “They’re not my style.”