—Léon—

Iara wasn’t a tall woman, but she towered like a giant over the wounded captive, her chest heaving. In front of her, Grizzly Bear’s body stopped shaking and slumped forward. If he wasn’t tied to a chair, the mass of beaten muscles and tattoos would’ve fallen on the ground.

"Yeah. Surprise!" Iara said with mock excitement, walking back to her divan. She slouched on it, massaging her temples, and then snatched a metallic box from the round table. "Now, please tell me how the fuck does he know you? Better yet: how does he know the location of our HQ?" Iara plucked a mint drop from the box and threw it in her mouth. The box clanked when she dropped it on her table alongside the baton. She snapped her fingers and pointed to the prisoner. "Fix it, love."

Anachronica nodded and walked forth. She spread her hands on the sides of his face and closed her eyes.

“Warp,” Iara began, “tell me how you know him.” She straightened her back. Without the electric baton in her hands, she was back to being the polite, gentle, generous socialite the world knew her by.

Léon shifted in his seat. “I saw the guy several times on the news. You know he’s famous, Lady Iamí. Everyone knows who he is.”

“Is that it?” Iara asked.

At their side, starting by the palms of Anachronica’s hands, an opaque red mantle grew around the prisoner. It was semi-transparent, covered with vein-like webbed lines, and it formed a humming dome around Grizzly Bear. Inside it, he jerked in small, inhuman motions, too fast and too gross, like in those old exorcism horror movies Mary loved.

Léon grimaced, eyes zeroed in on the red dome. His voice was tight, fast, and breathless. “I also think—think—he almost arrested me once, in a bank robbery, a couple of months ago. But that’s all I can remember, I promise. And what the hell is happening in there?”

While Anachronica’s face was licked by the blood-red light from the dome, Iara sighed and said, “She’s fixing him. Reversing our past thirty minutes of fun. Maybe you can’t remember her doing the same for you when Master of Knives lost his mind.”

Of course. The scar in his eye. How could he forget that?

Anachronica groaned, then staggered a step backward. Under Iara’s intent gaze, she doubled her efforts, making the dome even brighter. With a loud clack, she lowered her hands. As the dome darkened and disappeared into a thin garnet-colored mist, Anachronica straightened her back. Her legs seemed wobbly and her head heavy, but she gritted her teeth and raised her chin.

Grizzly Bear was indeed fixed. His wounds, cuts, and bruises were all gone. To prove they once existed, Bear’s clothes were still burned, torn, and stained with large blotches of blood.

Bear sighed. “Bloody hell, it’s good to have a tongue again.”

“For now,” Iara said, amused. Not as amused, she turned to Satina. “This is not the first time you’ve pulled something like this, Bureau. What did this bastard say to convince you to bring him here?” Her tone hardened. “I thought you had learned your lesson with Master of Knives, but it seems I was wrong. I clearly won’t stay put and see anyone ruin decades of my hard work.”

Satina’s eyebrows shot upward.

The incident that took half of Léon’s sight had happened long ago when Satina and he were just starting in New Continent. Back then, neither of them knew the difference between Invidia’s villains and the freelancers, and neither of them knew how difficult it was to get a stable job as a villain in that town. Because of it, Satina agreed to take the infamous freelance, Master of Knives, to meet with Anachronica and maybe set up a job interview. He looked frightened, desperate, even. And when Anachronica refused to see him, he snapped.

Léon blew his bangs aside. He still had the scars spread across his arms and torso from trying to keep him away from Satina. The cuts were so deep and so many, Anachronica didn't have the time to heal everything. Even if she had, she said, she'd leave the scar in his eye so he'd learn his lesson: never trust a freelancer; they have nothing to lose.

A week later, Master of Knives was found dead in a ditch close to the docks, stabbed by his own set of knives.

One of them was deep into his right eye.