Evelyn Winters shifted uncomfortably on her sofa, looking out through the massive floor-to-ceiling window and down towards the dark ocean below, specked only by the lights on the ships heading towards the harbour. Never in her dreams did she think she would be here. She was sure nobody else expected her to be, either. Maybe that was why her skin was so clammy, even if her experience told her the humidity in the room was nothing other than standard.
They do these things, she reassured herself.
The ding of the elevator on the far side of the room made her shoot to her feet, glancing towards it partly out of caution and partly from a feeling of potential embarrassment, only to find it was no longer the…thing in the armoured suit, but rather a woman in relatively plain formal vestments, plus a large scarf that dropped over most of her other clothing and concealed a good portion of the lower face. Most striking though, was the pair of small antlers jutting from just behind her hairline, still covered in fuzzy velvet. Antlers Evelyn apparently stared at, for she stopped and smiled with her eyes. “You’ll be seeing a lot more of that, I can assure you.”
“What is this now, another test?”
“No, the council was pretty satisfied with you. No, I’m taking you down to the Yuletide ball.”
Evelyn looked down at her leather jacket and t-shirt. “Do you have something better?”
The woman stepped closer, placing herself on the other side of the couch and extending a pale hand. “Alayna Tomić, Distribution Branch.”
Evelyn looked at the hand for a moment, and then took it. It was warm. She had expected it to be chilly by the way she looked. “Handler?”
“On a temporary basis only. There’s been some stretching of resources to accommodate a new project somewhere else, so I’m here now.”
After a long look at each other, they released the handshake.
“I hope you like alcohol,” Alayna said, heading back to hold the elevator.
“Could’ve led with that.” Evelyn lopped the duffel bag on the sofa over her left shoulder and stepped in, frowning at the brightness of the interior, and watched the doors close with the both of them inside. “Doesn’t seem very professional of you though.”
“It’s a gala. And the essential personnel don’t drink.”
“But you all take a copious amount of drugs?”
Alayna snickered. “You realise you’re in, right? We’re past the point of ‘you people’. You’re one of us now.” She gave Evelyn a light pat on the back.
She resisted her instincts screaming for her to fight back. She didn’t like physical contact.
The lift stopped, eventually, and piano music met them as the doors opened. The room beyond was curved along the side of one of the Lighthouse’s auxiliary towers, with a similar window to the one above, though this time the assembly of ships was more easily visible, their lights unified in a golden sea of fireflies stretching out into the dark, starless sky.
Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief - earning another giggle from Alayna beside her - and stepped out onto the slight balcony that elevated the lift doors from the rest of the ballroom floor. Her hands found the chilling metal of the gilded bannister, overlooking a crowd of people she had yet to get to familiarise herself with. And yet, despite her lack of recognition for a single of them, many that noticed her raised their cocktail glasses in quiet salute.
She just smiled and waved back.
“Go mingle or something. We’ll talk about work later.” Alyana walked down the steps, and like a wraith, vanished in between the various guests.
Evelyn swallowed, and made her own way down in the other direction, sweeping her eyes across the diverse crowd. She spotted more with antlers, just like Alayna had said, but some pairs were extensive and intricate, some small and juvenile and some broken and lopsided. A number of the antlered individuals were also entirely covered in fur, looking more yokai than human entirely, but she had been assured there weren’t any here. In between those were the half-Fae with enlarged lower jaws and jutting canines from below, and the occasional miniature humanoid in miniature ball gowns that flitted around on flimsy wings like they were dragonflies, and-
“A drink, ma’am?”
She blinked, and finally realised that a waiter was standing right beside her, his large, fluffy canine ears at the top of his head twitching as he held a small platter lined with martini glasses that were filled with something pale and cloudy, exuding a patience the likes of which Evelyn only saw from afar.
“S-sure.” She quickly took a glass, and made sure to smile and nod to the waiter in thanks, before turning around and taking a sip.
The drink burned all the way down her throat, and then back up to her nose, making her feel like a dragon breathing fire. She coughed, sloshing the glass and spilling a little onto the granite floor, before grabbing onto a nearby standing table for support. “Shit!”
“Whoa, easy there!” a different man with antlers exclaimed, coming to stop at the same table. Evelyn’s vision was cloudy with tears from the choking, but she could’ve sworn that for a second, the pupils of his eyes were slit-like just a moment, before they once again became a vibrant blue. “We get that reaction all the time from the new ones.”
“The hell is this?” She looked up at the glass, and then back at the man, half-hoping she would see those strange eyes again.
They were only blue. So blue she could fall straight into their whirlpools and keep sinking.
“A kind of white rum distilled from some byproducts in the cannery. With lime, and synthetic honey.” He sipped from his own glass, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment as it too, burned him going down. “Feels more like whiskey to me.”
“You can say that again.” She smacked her lips, and pushed the glass aside on the table. “I’d have a good whiskey.”
“Bar’s right over there.” He tilted his head over to a pillar near the big window, with a spinning mechanical apparatus behind a counter whirring around as its many arms shook and mixed drinks for a small gathering of guests admiring its handiwork. “Just tap your watch to it.”
She looked down at her wrist, where her mechanical timepiece was mostly hidden under the sleeve of her biker jacket, and felt her face flush a bright red. “Uh…”
His face lit up. “Oh! No watch yet. Right. Come on, I’ll order for you.” He placed his own half-finished drink on the table, and to her surprise, took her by the arm and began to lead her towards the robot bartender.
Had it been another day, another time, she might have broken all four of his limbs and left him screaming on the floor. On this occasion, however, she couldn’t be bothered.
Might as well.
With a simple wave of his wristwatch-like device over one of the sensor studs under the, Evelyn came to learn that his name was Aleksandr, that he’d had the alcohol equivalent 27% of the programmed limit, and that he really, really liked the rum that had almost set her respiratory tract on fire.
“Whiskey, right?”
“Uh, right,” she said.
He began scrolling through the list of drinks, each with a little graphic associated with it and a name written underneath in what she at first didn’t recognise, suddenly realised: it was Yugraelic, plain and simple.
Wait.
In her mind, that was entirely the wrong word. She’d studied just enough Yugraelic to apply for this job, but unlike Angloc, which came naturally to her a first language, or Xingram, which she picked up after her years as a freelancer with a local Daimyo, Yugraelic was fucking hard. What made it worse was the fact that many of the languages that formed into it had also fed into Angloc, except this one looked like a child had rearranged all the root words haphazardly and then formed entirely new word structures and grammar out of them, as if a mishmash of what seemed to be old Earth indo-european languages wasn’t hard enough. No matter what she tried, it just wouldn’t-
“Here.” Aleksandr placed a tumbler into her hand, which she didn’t even realise was outstretched. “We don’t have Scotch unfortunately. Embargoes and whatnot. Hope normal malt is okay.”
“It’s okay,” she said dismissively, then looked up at him, a head taller than she was. “Where are you from?”
If Aleksandr was even slightly taken aback by the sudden turn of topic, he didn’t let it register on his face as he gave her a warm smile. “Talosa. Not imperial territory though. Joined in ‘91. You?”
She sighed. “Theremis.”
“Oh, that’s close. Like, seventeen-hour planet hopper?”
“Seems a hell of a long way.”
“Are you homesick?”
Evelyn scowled at him. “What?”
“Look, I get it, okay? Vermillion doesn’t exactly recruit people with the best backgrounds. I was the same way. Can’t imagine what your deal is but…I really hope it gets better.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Hmm?”
“Integrate. Into this.” She gestured at the people around them.
Aleksandr shrugged. “One day it just clicked. For me at least.”
“That easy?” She took a sip of the whiskey, letting its myriad of flavours dance around on her tongue like she had done hundreds of times before. “Why do I feel it’s going to be very different for me?”
“What did you do before this?”
“Nothing nice. Not much human interaction.”
He sucked in his teeth. “That’s gonna be a tough one.”
“You’re telling me.” Feeling out of it, she downed the rest of the whiskey, appreciating the smooth burn rather than whatever the hell the special rum had been. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Aleksendr craned his neck to look over the crowd, and pointed to the section of the room curving behind the elevator column. “Should be there.”
Evelyn didn’t wait for him to finish, simply handing her empty glass back to the bartender bot, and serpentined her way between all the guests to get to the frosted glass door with “WC” embossed on it. At least some things never changed.
Like the rest of the Lighthouse’s interior spaces, the toilet was dressed in different types of granite, with the sinks being hewn from a marbled black, and the stalls were glass on smooth grey stone; combined with the off-yellow lighting, she almost felt like she was back in one of the fancy hotels she’d camped in, waiting for her targets.
The faucet of the closest sink turned on, as if sensing her intentions, and Evelyn splashed some cold water on her face. She glared at herself in the mirror through the dirty blonde bangs that flopped down over her face.
When did things get so complicated?
It didn’t. The answer came from the back of her own mind. She knew it was correct. Then why was everything so…
She rubbed her eyes, thankful she hadn’t worn makeup. Makeup was for stakeouts and ambushes.
“Are…you okay?” a voice came from behind her.
She spun around, putting her back against the sink and instinctively gripping it.
One of the stalls was slightly open, and a short woman was peeking out of it. She had no antlers, or strange eyes, or orcish chompers. Just a regular old human.
“I’m fine,” she said defensively, producing a wad of paper towers from her jacket and wiping her face.
“You don’t look fine. Are you new too?”
Evelyn paused, choosing her words carefully. “You’re new.”
“Ha. Yeah. Inducted last week. It’s been rough.”
Evelyn crossed her arms. “Am I in for something horrible? They got hazing here?”
“No just…this all feels like pretend, you know?”
She said nothing.
“Like I’m not really here. The drug doesn’t really help. Everyone’s so distant even when they try to be friendly, like they learned it from a textbook.”
She nodded. “Same experience.”
“Maybe it’s just cultural differences. Maybe it’s the Red Ice. I don’t know. It makes my magic so powerful but I just can’t shake the feeling like-”
“-everything is wrong,” Evelyn finished. “You might have a point. Ever since I got here everything just seems a little bit off.”
“Maybe it’s the field.”
“The field?”
“The Lighthouse makes a field. Makes it safer to take a lot of Red Ice. Might be a side effect.”
“Might be,” she muttered, looking at her hands. They still felt like her hands, at least. “But you’ve done a week. It’ll be a month soon. Maybe you’ll get used to it.”
“What if I never do?”
“That’s just life, isn’t it? Then maybe do something else. It’s not like this is a blood contract. I mean, what’s the worst thing that can happen to us, death?”
The other woman lapsed into a look of contemplation. “But what if you can’t…die?”
Evelyn felt her hands get clammy again. Nobody ever asked that question in a good context. “What do you mean by that?” she asked calmly. Her training had kicked in by this point, forcing her pulse steady.
“What if nobody ever accepts you? For the rest of your life? And what if death wasn’t an option?” The woman was staring at Evelyn now, all traces of emotion disappeared.
“I don’t know.” Evelyn’s right hand inched towards the back of her waistband. “But whatever it is you’re going through, there is a way through it. If you give up then what’s the point?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself. What’s your point?”
“I…” She trailed off, her hand on the grip of her sidearm tucked away at her back. A lump formed in her throat. Maybe it was the field, or the drugs, or the half-Fae people who acted in ways she never thought she’d have to deal with. But that didn’t matter, so long as she made a choice. Whatever this thing was…she didn’t know how to continue that train of thought, nor did she really want to.
“I want to be better.” She pulled the sidearm, firing three rounds through the stall door, each bullet an electromagnetically-propelled whisper as it left the barrel…but the stall was empty.
The bathroom door crashed open, letting Alayna and a large orcish man with an assault shotgun storm in. They saw Evelyn, the open, empty stall, and lowered their weapons.
“What was that?” Alayna asked.
Evelyn felt the blood rush back to her face. “I thought I saw something.”
“So you shot it?”
She shrugged, and dropped her gun. “Don’t like being snuck up on.”
Alayna rolled her eyes. “I’ll have security look into it. Probably a rat or something.”
“Yeah.”
The orcish man exited the bathroom, scratching his head.
Alayna propped her submachine gun on the bathroom wall. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t know if I belong here,” Evelyn said before she could stop herself. Goddamnit! Stupid Evelyn, stupid!
“You know that’s not the first time I’ve heard that.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“It’s good you told me. But you have to take it slow.” She looked out through the open bathroom door. “You know what, I probably suck as a handler.” Alayna extended her hand again. “Friends?”
Evelyn squinted. “Really?”
“Never know if you never try.”
Evelyn just stared at the hand. “What’s going on out there?”
“Some kind of meteorological event. Or Yule miracle if you prefer. Wanna see?”
She bit her lip, and thought about the thing in the bathroom stall. A part of her still wanted to know whatever the hell it was…but then again, she could live with that. And if she could live with that, then maybe the next phase wasn’t too hard, Yugraelic be damned.
“Small steps.” Evelyn took Alayna’s hand, and was led back out into the ballroom.
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