Zahra’s ears were ringing. The confusion set in slow, to a soundtrack of fluttering papers and crackling fire; the volume swelled. The chaos followed.
Though her eyes were open, she wasn’t really seeing anything. All around her seemed muted in colour, as though the very vibrancy of life had been sucked away in the wake of the explosion. No, no! She had failed, but how…? What had she done wrong?
Clutching her bleeding hand to her chest, Zahra slowly rose to her feet and winced as a headache pulsed its way around inside her temples. Everything was still naught but a blur, but she staggered away, back toward the exit of the train station foyer. Away from the smoke. Get out, escape. Follow Mystica’s rules. It was ingrained in her now: ‘if all goes to hell, make for the hills.’
The glass on the doors had been blown out by the blast. Zahra paused for a moment before carefully pushing the frame that remained with the sleeve of her cardigan. Outside, the sun shining down on her seemed an insult to the gravity of the situation. Fairly so, the smoke trickling out of the broken windows stained the clear afternoon sky above, a billowing black column in the midst of a calm sea.
With shaking legs, Zahra clambered onto the sidewalk and fell back to her knees. Too much adrenaline. She didn’t even feel the impact as her kneecaps met the pavement. Her heart danced inside her chest, and she gasped for air. It was a wretched, guttural breath.
“How…?” she whispered to herself as people ran past her, to and from what had once been the train station’s entrance. Amidst the shattered glass and rocky debris, she fell onto her side, then rolled onto her back. Glossed brown eyes stared up into the aether, watching the smoke flutter away. It looked like a dark fist extending upward, an act of defiance against an absent god.
Put it in order… a voice, deep and brilliant in its timbre, implored. Find the meaning in it…
He told us what it all was about.
Two teams, two options, one coin flip.
And still, two captains, two monsters,
Two wolves among us.
The brilliant follower, oh, she was,
But alas, not the favored, for merit
Was lost on the elder, the wisest,
Whose tastes remained in his apprentice.
So she’d chosen wisely, placed her faith
In the traumatized, solitary flower,
Whose name was lost even to herself,
The one who gods themselves did call:
“The Dahlia.”
--Cyrlos DiAmina, “She Who Wears the Skins of Gods” (2142 A.D.)
Bleeding on the sidewalk, surrounded by the groan of emergency sirens headed her way, Zahra tried to compile the events of the previous hour. But her head was still foggy with the guaranteed concussion she’d just received. Nothing made sense. It was all just a rushing blur – a faint recollection of various shapes, colours, scents, thoughts. Until it came to her. Mitsuko’s arrival. That Japanese girl Mystica met last year. That girl whose sister had been killed by one of the Ancient One’s old foes. Eldred. She had snuck up behind Miles and held some sort of kunai to his throat. Joked around, told Miles he should stay mindful of his surroundings, even if time was frozen. And then Mystica had said something. He commented on her English.
“I see your English is coming along well.”
But he had said it in Japanese. He pandered to her, and she’d replied in English. They were pandering to each other. And that’s where the clarity of thought disappeared.
Zahra held strong to consciousness, letting the throbbing pain act as a self-contained alarm clock for her mind. The adrenaline would be wearing off soon, and she’d lost a fair amount of blood, which now began to pool beneath her shoulder and left arm. Wouldn’t be long now before she had no choice but to throw her hopes onto the coming paramedics. How very foolish of her, for it was then that, loud and clear above the chaotic chorus all around her, she heard the sound of footsteps.
“What are you doing?” asked The Dahlia, her head appearing over Zahra. The only response given was a long grunt-groan from the fallen girl. The Dahlia sighed and bowed her head, allowing the sun to cast an impenetrable shadow over her face.
How in the world…? As the tunnel vision began to overtake the edges of her sight, another memory returned to Zahra. The last thing she had seen before the bomb went off. She recalled a flurry of yellow cloth as The Dahlia leapt toward the perpetrator. In slow motion, she relived the few moments before the pain. Frame-by-frame, she saw in tandem the downward motion of the bomber’s thumb toward the bomb’s trigger and The Dahlia bounding over a turnstile. It seemed downright impossible, but that half-crippled survivor of a genocide had fucking jumped over a turnstile and tried to tackle the shady blonde man holding the boom-button. That wasn’t even the most unbelievable part. That moment had arrived when The Dahlia was overtaken by the explosion.
Yet here she was, standing over her fallen comrade, seemingly unharmed. Then she raised her head, the shadows retreated from her visage, and Zahra knew immediately how The Dahlia had survived. Catching the glint of the afternoon sun, the wandering psychopath’s usually-brown eyes revealed their true colours. Even with the white cataract of scar tissue blotting out the left eye’s vibrancy, Zahra could see within The Dahlia’s irises a ring of the clearest, most subaqueous blue. In her head, Zahra could see once more The Dahlia’s eyes just prior to the explosion, reaching across time and space with a most unexpected compassion. They had looked the very same as they did now.
“Mystica…?”
The Dahlia sighed and tapped the sidewalk with her cane. Her gaze moved to examine the blood Zahra had shed on the ground. A cluck of the tongue and she approached the bloodstain, scrutiny unbroken by movement. Another sigh, and then, surprisingly, a smile from the Old One’s newest vessel. Once more, she tapped her cane, this time into the pool of blood. Conjured unto itself, the blood began to fizzle, as though it were being boiled. Slowly but surely, the pool evaporated out of existence.
“Can’t be leaving evidence, now can we?” mused Mystica. With a slight twirl and flourish of the cane, she turned back to Zahra, only to find that the poor girl had finally lost consciousness. She chuckled with a shake of the head.
“I know you’re not listening,” said Mystica, approaching her slumbering follower, “but that could have gone much worse. You thought to knock out the surveillance equipment before your team moved in. Smart move. Now I just need to poof us out of here and there’ll be no evidence we were even here. Alibi established. No blood, no video. One bomb. One left. Don’t worry, Mitsuko’s alright. She was still in the ventilation system on the second floor. Far enough away. But you needn’t worry about such matters in your condition. Sleep now.”
And all was dark for several hours thereafter.
Another late-night broadcast. This time, however, it had been decided that the recording would be distributed through a simple virus that downloaded an obscure audio file extension to the user's drive. Encountered primarily on pornographic websites, the virus would make use of any unused bandwidth to distribute the file on an even wider scale.
"-ut did you really think I'd just let you get blown up by some extremist meff?"
"I don't know! You're manipulative as shit, so I can't ever take your word at face value! I can't tell when you're lying, nobody can."
"A bit hard to read the poker face of a consciousness whose true form has no face, eh?"
"A little, yeah!"
"Pity, then, that some brave fools seek to play a game of words when the game is most certainly beyond words. Pity to us all, hm? Now shut up and drink your proto-Andromedian tea, what 'fore it sours!"
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