An Old Memory in the Met, Part VIII

This follows An Old Memory in the Met Part VII, Part VI, Part V, Part IV, Part III, Part II, and Part I…

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Shirin strolled into the Met.

Stop.

Reverse the scene. It is a crude reduction of all the events that lead up to the moment, and not a great representation of what Shirin actually had done. Shirin did a number of things before strolling into the Met. One has to understand how an Ifrit navigates the world.

Going back hours, it is morning in Manhattan. The sun is cresting the towers to the east, illuminating the glass, metal, and stone on the west side of Central Park. The city is murmuring itself awake from a dull roar of the early morning commute to the hustle of New York animating itself to a liminal level of self consciousness. The buildings, the streets, the restaurants, the cafes, the stores, the bodegas, the carts… all of it is a body that is alive because of the humans that move among it all. New York wakes up just like any person does, it stretches in the early morning light, and starts the day.

Just off the bustling thoroughfare of Central Park West, an old man is standing at a street corner, idly watching the crowd stream past. He is waiting for something… special. A spark. A certain je ne sais quoi. A person that is a standout, but for reasons that are not be wholly clear. Beautiful, and distracting, but not overstated. The old man required a person that could be a focal point, and yet, not overly focused on until it was absolutely required. The old man’s fingers were bluish, his eyes bloodshot. His heart was laboring under the strain that he had been under for a day now, waiting for the right time. The old man himself, what made him him, was buried deep within his own subconsciousness, restricted to being only an observer as something else animated him like a marionette. His puppet master was kind and thoughtful, but fierce. The old man ruminated on his life, realized that the being that rode him like a horse was no different than how he had treated his son all those years ago. Now, he realized why his son does not want anything to do with him. He frowns and ponders the realization deep within, as his body betrays none of the internal turmoil and instead watches the undulating crowd pass by unaware.

A tall, graceful woman is finally materializes on the far street corner, among the many others waiting for the lights to change. She is impeccably dressed, carrying broad shoulders under a white jacket, soft-blended satin trim along the edges, highlighted marvelously by oversized black buttons along the front paired beautifully by smaller matching buttons at the cuffs. Underneath, her red blouse is light and airy, suggesting robust cleavage without explicitly showing it, a single gold chain with a pendant of glass dancing ahead of her with enraptured reflections of light. Her white skirt is a pencil, and her legs are anything but, terminating powerfully into a tasteful set of black heels, her shapely calves screaming at anyone glancing sideways to appreciate hjer personal trainer’s hard work.

Her name is Jacinda. She is beautiful, multi-ethnic, and walks with the confidence to make any one blatantly staring to appreciate the fact they took the time to do so. One moment Jacinda is walking down Central Park West like it is her own runway, heading to an appointment that she knows is important, but doesn’t want to hand her cards over too early. It could be the job opportunity of a lifetime, and she knows she will absolutely fucking crush it. She is owed… it is her time. But she is attempting to rationalize it to herself, self denying the hope and the excitement, just so any inevitable disappointment will have a lesser sting.

One moment, striding confidently, the beginnings of a grin at the edge of her mouth… the next… an old man touches her arm, and puts something small and black in her hand. She is confused, but, then, her head grows foggy like she is addled. Or drunk. Or high. Or something… odd. The old man lets go, stumbles away, and Jacinda puts the small black thing in her ear. She has no idea why. She just does it.

The old man leans against the wall, feeling like he is waking up for the first time in days. His head immediately clears, and his heart starts to slow down. His fingers are so very cold, and he is fatigued in a way that he hasn’t felt for decades. He briefly wonders why he is on Central Park West, but chalks it up to the fallible memory of the significantly aged as he starts walking back to his apartment thinking on the apology he owes his son. The confusion of why is where he is doesn’t seem to bother him, and for some strange reason he lets it go. Maybe he was feeding the birds. Maybe he played some chess in the Park. Maybe he just needed a walk. It didn’t matter. His son mattered. That mattered most. He had to fix it.

Jacinda spun on one of her impeccable heels and walked into Central Park. The sky was blue, the birds were singing, and the trees were in blossom. Yet, Jacinda knew something was wrong. She tried to stop and turn back around, but she can’t. It is like she is an observer in her own mind. Jacinda started to panic, but her stride continued on the path into the Park, passing women pushing strollers, joggers, walkers, lollygaggers, layabouts, and students lounging on the early morning green. There is no panic in her stride, there is no panic on her face, and her body chemistry stays exactly the same. No sweat, no dump of adrenaline, no flight or fight response… just pure easy movement, as if she was on a break and enjoying Central Park.

A hand. It pulls at what defines Jacinda as Jacinda in her consciousness. Then there are two hands. Then ten, then twenty, then a hundred. The hundred handed one pulls at her mind, smothering her and yet, comforting her? It is like being pulled into a hug by an overly present grandmother, you suffocate against her aproned front, but the smell, the feel, and the memory of the last hug all get wrapped up together in the now, and one feels a sense of peace.

Jacinda felt peace. She didn’t seem to care so much about her appointment, or her outfit, or her hair. She just let go. Not that she had much of a choice. An Ifrit was within her. The Ifrit was in control.

Outside of her Domain, an Ifrit had a choice. Be a thief or be obliterated. Shirin did not feel guilty in stealing bodies. She gave them back. Most of the time. Sometimes she found herself in a person that had done terrible things. Sometimes that person did not come back… sometimes an Ifrit makes a choice that should only be reserved for God. As a Fallen would.

Shirin walked Jacinda’s body with assured confidence across Central Park, heading towards the Met along the winding pathways. She strolled the Transverse, then took one of the branching paths towards the only building of its size on the Central Park border.

Being an Ifrit was a double-edged sword. Sure, she could jump between bodies, but she rarely could enjoy her own. It was like living a life buried under a sea of pillows, always a far off participant, like a drug addict viewing their own life from afar, too addled to bring much care or thought about the moment they faced. Shirin faced those moments, but from behind glass, the strangely dichotomic approach of being both the participant and the observer.

But the sky was clear, and in the Park, one could almost feel the old Fey magic in the grass and the stones. The Faeries had tried so damned hard to carve out a place for themselves. They wanted a wildwood, the kind of place that genetic memory had for the humans, when the forests were full of dangers and mortality was but a single failed breath away. The wildwoods were ancient, the throne rooms for the dancers and the courtiers, the battle grounds for the watchers and the watched, the delicate balance between the never ending feuds and petty squabbles that served as the only Fey entertainment until an unwary human wandered in to change the games.

The High Daughter of Mab had been wise in their dealings to get the whole green set aside when they had the power and influence to do so. Not so wise in who they dealt with to bring it about, but still, the Park and by extension, the Met, was a brilliant idea, even though the Fey ultimately were fucked sideways in the whole thing. Typical humans taking and taking and taking, until there was nothing left to take, and yet, humans still found a way. The designer of the Met, Calvert Vaux, had some real balls to fuck over Méabh’s daughter, Cainnear Dearg, all those years ago.

That’s what humans do. They take and think nothing of it. There is a grand balance to the universe. An Ifrit doing a bit of the same between bodies was a trivial thing. An unnoticed thing when the real fucks like Calvert Vaux are kicking teeth in with little regard for who was there first.

‘Manifest fucking destiny’, Shirin thought to herself.

Finally, Shirin strolled into the Great Hall of the Met.

Jacinda was beautiful, striking even, but with a confidence that allowed her to move invisibly in the crowd. She was just another guest in a sea of guests. Some were schoolchildren, some were college students, most were tourists, and then there were the others… the artists, the free willed, the rebels and the dreamers. With those, Jacinda blended in like a fish among many.

The Watcher did not see her enter and it did not note her passing. The wards buried under stone and concrete in the columns that formed the grand entryway did not hum or resonate, but Shirin could feel them buzzing, like hives of bees sequestered behind the walls. Shirin was not worried that wards would hit her, as she was a both a passenger and the captain in her Jacinda-shaped vessel, and she navigated Jacinda deftly through the crowds away from the angry buzzing as quickly as she could muster without looking like she was in any sort of rush. She bought a day pass at the digital kiosk, and wandered towards the security office where the Watcher laid in wait. Not directly mind you, but on an indirect path, following the flow of the crowds one moment, pulling away and joining another crowd.

“I am going in.” Al’s voice whispered in her ear. “Starting the deliveries to the bloodsuckers.”

“Understood. I am heading to my destination. I should be ready when you are.” Shirin replied in Jacinda’s soft and raspy voice. “Liz, the wards are angry. I could feel their hissing when I walked by.”

“I am working on it. Wave at me, love.” Liz replied sarcastically. “They are hot, aren’t they? They don’t like being touched.”

Shirin turned her head slowly, glancing over the crowds to find Liz in an alcove, sipping from a coffee cup with a shit eating grin on her face. Liz waved lightly, her fingertips appeared to be smoking.

“You good, Liz?” Shirin said calmly, turning away from the Witch of Wales and back to her destination.

“Everyone’s fingers smoke a bit, right? That’s normal?” Liz teased. “I have everything under control. You take the Watcher. I can’t deal with both that monstrosity and the wards. I don’t have enough coffee.”

“Well good thing I am here,” Shirin teased.

“No, that’s not the problem. The coffee shop is packed, love,” Liz shot back. “There are sheeple everywhere!”

“Can we use the comms for the right reasons, please?” Milos chimed in.

“Yes, boss.” Shirin smirked behind her hand.

“Milos, if I want to use the comms to tell you that are a cunt, is that acceptable?” Liz asked deadpan.

“No. Liz. It is not.” Milos’s frustration was nearly palpable over the commlink.

“Well you are. A cunt. Now shush. I am trying to twist these Wards so your bloodsucking ass can walk out of here with purloined goods and, honestly, you are distracting me.”

Shirin headed towards the security office. Security was multifaceted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met covered the basics, with thousands of cameras covering every angle of each exhibit and lobby, every piece of artwork, and all the shared public space. One would think cameras would be a problem for any theft, and they would be, if the thief was a human and performing their theft the human way. For the non-human contingent, such thefts would have little concern for such technologies.

Magic rendered technology inoperable.

The real security of the Met was not in the cameras, or the small army of six hundred human security staffers that rotated around the premises, or the space sensors, or the proximity alarms, or even the laser grids that covered a handful of exhibits. All of it was performative theater in its own way, because the real security had been designed and built into the bones of the Met when Calvert Vaux had drawn the engineering design out with a pencil on sheets of oversized vellum. The Met had been designed from the ground up to be secure from the very creatures that would walk in dripping with magic, so human technology, even things that Calvert Vaux could not have imagined back in the mid-1800’s would not have been effective in stopping the Fey from wandering into a human place and taking whatever they may have desired.

Calvert Vaux had had a trump card the entire time. Knowing his significant otherworldly debts had to be paid, he knew he had a chance to subvert those he was owed. He had a newborn son among his many children, his legacy was secure, and he could make sure his family would be safe from those he owed. From there, one could infer where his doomed choices had lead him. Shirin knew the story, and the thought of his choices made her sick. She knew that if she had ever had the opportunity to jump into Calvert Vaux, he would be one of those special few that would never wake up at the end.

Shirin stopped near the grand stair, leaned against the wall, and nonchalantly watched as the crowds moved by. She could feel their minds like glimmers of brightly colored fish reflecting the sunlight from beneath the waves, the outlines of their spirits more prevalent than the clothes they wore, each of them a story unfulfilled, still being written, even now as they moved languidly through the museum. She pushed her senses outward, past the wall she leaned against, and into the security office on the other side.

This was the tricky part for an Ifrit. Maintaining the hold on Jacinda, who had the only working commlink residing in her ear, and finding one of the six hundred security staffers that was mentally weak enough to allow Shirin to take some semblance of control without them realizing it. The security office itself was expansive, larger than most people would ever realize. And in the back, behind a false wall, sat the real target.

The Watcher.

Being this close to the pile of flesh that used to be Calvert Vaux’s son made her exceptionally uncomfortable. But that was nothing compared to how gross is would feel when she was inside that pile of flesh. Jacinda’s arm skin started to pucker with goosebumps at the thought. She had to avoid the Watcher until she was ready.

Liz spoke up again. “We, uh, may be having some problems. Milos, they are not all sheeple.”

“Are you ok?” Shirin cut in. “I can head back?”

“Shirin, stay on your task.” Milos interjected. “Can you do it, Liz?”

“I can do it just fine, Milos. I am a ffycin professional. Its who just breezed by me. With his retinue. And half of them are sniffing at the Wards. They are picking on my work, I can’t just sit here in plain sight…”

“Who’s there, Liz?”

“Anton de Lionne.” Liz’s majestic sneer could be heard through the link.

Like it was taunting all of them, both the comm and Milos stayed silent.

“Did you hear me, Milos?”

“He is on retainer,” Milos finally replied. The admitting sigh of guilt was nearly verbal.

“Did you not think that worth mentioning in the planning stages?” Liz was pissed. “You know, the part where we plan, Milos. And we talk about these sort of things?”

“I didn’t want you to worry about it.”

“Well now is a fine fucking time, then, isn’t it?” Liz started…

… And Shirin’s attention snapped back to her lingering cloud of spirit floating around the impeccably dressed Jacinda. Shirin picked up a glimmer, the telltale sign vibration of a soul heavily burdened. The brush of a person focused on other things, their mind swirling with concerns, worries, and the pressures of modern life. A person ripe for a soft word, a gentle caress, the comfort of warm hands…

Shirin ignored her commlink and pushed away from Jacinda, keeping her hands warm and reassuring, and reaching out for the person as they neared. She could feel their body heat, their consciousness, the light of their small human soul. Precious, like a candle nestled in an alcove during a storm.

Then she was Tommy. Tommy was staring at a report on a tablet, but he was not reading it. His fingers hovered over the email notification, which itself was on his phone, which sat nestled in the corner of the tablet screen like it was nestled against a storm. Life is nothing but irony.

Shirin quickly glanced over the hovering email. Diagnosis of cancer. Tommy’s mother.

‘Poor thing.’ Shirin whispered within Tommy. ‘Everything will be ok.’

‘Huh?’ Tommy thought and said aloud at the same time. “Huh?”

‘The bills? The stress? The time? It’s ok, Tommy. You will figure it out.’ Shirin continued.

“Anyone else hearing that?” Tommy turned and looked at his coworkers. Some were watching screens, some were chatting idly about the comings and goings of the staff.

Mickey, the recent new hire watching the dashboard pulled her airpods out and made a face. “Hearing what?”

Tommy tilted his head and Shirin remained quiet.

“I swear I could hear a voice,” Tommy fake smiled and pretended that everything was normal.

Shirin pushed her mental balm outwards in a healing wave. Everything was normal. Everything was fine. She felt his heart slow, his panic subside.

She stepped to the forefront of Tommy. He felt the hands pulling him backwards, first one, then two, then ten… the a one hundred handed one gripped him gently, pulling him backwards… and he did not struggle. He felt safe.

‘Good boy.’ Shirin commented as he fell backwards in his own mind. She felt the impression that he thought she was beautiful. Like a sun dappled tiger hunting its way through summer foliage. She whispered, ‘And a thoughtful boy. Your mom will be ok. I promise.’

‘How do you know?’ His voice floated from the dark of his subconscious.

‘Faith.’ Shirin replied honestly. She turned Tommy towards the door and walked.

“Tommy, where you going?” Another security guard asked.

‘That is Frank Anderson’, Shirin heard Tommy whisper from the deep.

“Quick bathroom break,” Shirin replied.

“But we have a meeting in five with Myers and that flamboyant chap that they have running inspections.”

Shirin waved it away. “Be back in two mins, Frank.”

“Alright, alright, just hustle? If I have to defend you again to Myers, it’s your ass.”

Shirin guided Tommy out the secure door and headed down the stark back halls of the Met. He exited into the public area, and then made the long circuitous route to find Jacinda leaning against a wall like she was a million dollar artwork herself.

Seeing herself within another with another’s eyes was something that one never got used to. And she had been doing it for thousands of years. It was a self-recognizing contradiction that the Creator never had meant for his creations to do. It was why she was Fallen. She was outside the Grand Design. An exception. An uncarried remainder. She knew why, and she understood the logic of it, but it was a near biological revulsion in being Other and yet whole.

Shirin pulled the ear commlink from Jacinda and handed it to herself in Tommy, who put smoothly into his own ear without stopping. Tommy walked on by, looking the other way, to make the next part look believable.

Jacinda stepped away from the wall, and started to remove her clothing. Slowly. Shirin felt guilty, but it was the plan. They needed a distraction. A big one.

And a beautiful, striking woman walking naked through the Met as if nothing was amiss?

That was literally the definition of a significant distraction.

Jacinda would awake somewhere frightened, starving, and with the blood chemistry of someone in adrenal crisis, but she would awake. If anything, the news may help her career in the long run. Beautiful people could spin their own narratives in this world. Shirin would plant a seed of the thought deep in her subconscious, and hopefully it would help. A small gift, yes, but better than nothing after what Jacinda was going to do.

Shirin pulled her consciousness from Jacinda completely and left her wandering forward dreaming and yet dreamless, striding with purpose, each article of clothing slowly dropping to the floor behind her like a trail of breadcrumbs showing the way she went.

Shirin spoke under her breath with Tommy’s voice, “Ma’a assalamah fi rihlatik.“

She turned and took the long way back towards the security office, avoiding the path that the others would take to locate a naked woman strolling through the galleries, seemingly calm, taking in the sights, and otherwise completely ignoring anyone that tried to engage with her. They would float around her, wondering what to do, and none would dare approach until the police arrived.

“And the goose is off running,” Shirin said.

“She was gorgeous. A good time to be had by all in the next few minutes.” Liz came back first.

“I was disconnected, anything I need to know about?” Shirin replied.

“No. Under control.” Milos replied. “Liz, status?”

“I am on the last one, my fingers are turning to glass from the heat, but nothing a nice cup of tea won’t fix.”

“How are you doing, Al?” Milos asked.

“Dammit Milos, you are going to give me a heart attack.” Al came back, he sounded breathless.

“Oh you sound different. Young one, huh?” Milos said.

“Shut up, almost there. Give me five more minutes.”

“10-4.”

“You sound like an absolute idiot, Milos.” Liz laughed.

Tommy that was Shirin badged a secure door and entered the back hallways that interconnected many of the exhibits, offices, and secure spaces of the Met. Shirin paused at the next junction, and almost as if she had made it happen through otherworldly clairvoyance, nearly the entire staff from the security office emptied into the hallway and hustled off in the other direction.

Shirin allowed herself a small grin. She walked up to the door and badged her way in.

The girl… Mickey. That’s it. Mickey sat at her station still, her eyes wide. She glanced at Tommy. “I am surprised you didn’t want to go help.”

“I have a meeting,” Shirin replied.

“But, yeah, this lady is naked. And I mean, naked as the day she was born.”

“Oh really?” Tommy replied, Shirin tried to make it sound like he was surprised.

“Are you gay?” Mickey replied with a grin. “Because even if you are, it doesn’t matter. This woman is a work of art.”

“I take it you are,” Tommy said. He glanced at the screens and then walked towards the rear of the office.

“I might be now. This has me asking myself some hard life questions,” Mickey laughed.

“I am going to head to the conference room to meet with Myers and Anderson.”

“Yeah, ok. Although I think Anderson was in the group that just rushed out.”

“Thanks.” Tommy closed it off and pulled the rear door open. Ten steps to the right sat a sealed wall that had been closed for nearly a 150 years. Inside, remained some semblance of an entity she was here for. This was going to be the worst jump of her life.

Shirin laid a hand on the wall, feeling for a connection. The Watcher was always there. If the building had a soul, and that soul was living flesh that protected everything within it’s walls, that soul of about a thousand or so pounds of skin, fat, and viscera pulsated on the other side, strung between the webbed artifacts of old magic. The display was an aspiration of an angelic state, a body hung between phasing webs of energy, pulling the body apart, yet keeping it alive, morphing into something that was no longer human, but not classifiable as anything else either. The Watcher was a sacrifice. An ever-living, ever-suffering sacrifice that created a limitless blood payment in an endless ritual.

It was barbarism of legend. The darkest of the cruel ancient struggles pulled forward to exist in a modern age.

And the poor child had never been given a name. It was a Vaux, yes. But it was never meant to have a name. What it was defined it enough. No need to offer it humanity when it was never meant to be human. It was the Watcher.

Shirin felt the movement of it’s attention sweeping near her as she extended her presence. The Watcher had finally found her.  

She flicked the commlink out of Tommy’s ear, let it fall to the floor and jumped. She jumped violently, with abandon, leaping the gap as if an oncoming train was barreling down towards her. She knew she was alone, but at least she would have choices if she could subdue the Watcher.

Tommy sagged against the wall, overwhelmed by a sudden and overpowering sorrow about his mother. He had no idea where the feelings erupted from or why he was in was in Hallway A2, but he slumped downwards, feeling his eyes well and sobs developing in his chest, crawling from his diaphragm through his throat to leave him in wretched gasps.

Shirin was within. She was in the Watcher. And all she felt was overwhelming pain.

She seized. Her mind folded in on itself in the mire of the Watcher’s convulsing consciousness. It was not human. It was not even close to human. It was closer to her own form, and it was writhing around her as if she laid in a pit of snakes, unfathomable and slithering eternally.

A manifold thought washed over her, every phrase spoken at once. In unison with a single voice overlaid with itself countless times.

Shirin revolted inwardly, recoiling as if by reflex to jump back to Tommy, or anyone really, if they allowed her to escape this terror. The slithering was in her own mind, pushing and pulling, convulsing around her. She could feel the anger. The terror. The being of what the Watcher was altogether black. And this was created by man? By a father? A human did this! To his own flesh and blood! His son!

Shirin felt herself slip towards a dark maw, an energetic enfolding of shredding, rendering, all consuming consciousness. Something that had eaten other psychic beings, that pulled in other prey, to digest them and make them a part of their own flesh. The ultimate defense against the Fey, the things that preyed on the humans, here it laid in wait, an apex predator.

She was running out of time.

“STOP!” Shirin screamed. She surprised herself with her fury. It was something she had not felt for a long time. The rage coalesced around what Shirin considered herself. It parted her from the Watcher, and she cleaved as if it was a great scimitar in her hands, carving her space within the mind of the fell creature. “Get the FUCK off of me!”

The Watcher recoiled.

It paused.

And then it wept.

She heard the cry of a child. The cry of toddler, lost. Wandering for decades, wondering why they were abandoned. Wondering why they were in a prison, yet able to see everything. Wondering why they were in tormenting pain, but never free from it. Wondering why they were forsaken, when all the other things they observed were not.

Shirin was Fallen.

She had fought in celestial kingdoms. She had waged war in the darkest folds of space and time. She had taken impossible risks and leapt from realms and loved in and been loved in ways that most human minds will never comprehend and she had touched the hands of the Creator and she had rebuked Him and she had felt terror that would make any thing that deigned to live afraid to enter the sunlight in fear of being smote.

And.

And… but.

But she had been an Angel first.

Shirin was an Angel still and this was a broken child needing to be loved. Shirin did exactly that. She rushed in and gathered him in her arms. She folded her hundreds of hands around him and murmured into his hair, she pulled him into a version of what he should have been, a child, with brown shaggy hair and blue eyes and bright laughter at the antics of the ducks snapping at bread in the pond. She pulled his identity to what he could have been if he had been given the chance. As she did this, she pulled at the threads of his body, freeing them from the webs of energy which encased him on all sides.

She knew she would hold him as he died. She had no name to give him. But she tried anyway.

“For this moment, little one, you are loved. For this moment, you are free. For this moment, my little Vaux, you are safe and sound and I have you. Sleep. No pain. No terror. Just blessed sleep, that I rock you in, my little one. You are loved. For this moment, I love you more than anything than I have ever loved.” Shirin whispered.

The Watcher passed. She felt his spirit depart with a sudden tug from all of her hands. Shirin had not tried to talk to the Creator since she had been thrown to the energies of the cosmos. But now, with tears she felt being cried in a form that she could not comprehend, she tried anyway.

“My God, Allah, oh my Father, El Shaddai, I pray you hear your child of the Fallen diaspora. Hear my prayer, my Creator in Heaven, take this child and care for him, hold him and love him. I pray this on your Name.”

The Watcher’s corpse shrunk and Shirin knew that soon the vortex of webbed energies would consume it, causing the ritual to collapse, and the cornerstone to the Met’s anti-magic security program would be gone forever. It was a shame that it had survived a hundred and fifty years. Shirin hoped that in wherever hell Calvert Vaux was currently burning, hopefully the fires would only get more intense. She slowly returned to Tommy, exactly where she had left him, a sad boy in the form of a young man, spinning in an uncaring universe while facing impossible choices.

Tommy sat alone, sniffing morosely, wiping at his nose with one hand as he flicked through the email from his mother with the other. Shirin took gentle control of him, mindful not to disrupt his fragile state of mind further. She suffused him like a wave of gentle summer sunlight, warming him through and through. She wrapped her hands around his psyche, cradling it as she had the Vaux boy, and she pulled him backwards to the safety of the dark.

‘Lots of broken children today,’ Shirin sighed inwardly. She stood, surveying the floor, and finally located the commlink. She picked it up and shoved it unceremoniously into Tommy’s ear.

She could hear Al talking to someone. Sounded like small talk… asking about a missing vamp in the monitoring office.

Shit. Shirin was behind schedule.

She turned back to the security office and walked as fast as she could without breaking into a full on sprint. She slapped the card against the reader, pushed the door open, and was relieved to still find only the lone Mickey at her station.

“FUCKING HELL.” Al announced over the comm.

“You burn them?” Liz was nearly ecstatic.  “Was it spectacular?“

“I did not,” Al sneered back. “Eating one was worse enough. Cutting the feeds in three, two, and one…”

Shirin walked over to the board where Milos had told her to look. Sure enough the remote feed line for the Security NOC, noted with a small green light flicked over to amber.

Shirin spoke quietly, “I see the comm line offline. It’s disconnected. I am shutting down this end.”

She patted Tommy’s pocket and found a pocket knife. She flicked it open and deftly sliced all the network cables coming in to the monitoring desk. Mickey continued to listen to whatever was blasting over her airpods, unaware of the sabotage taking place directly behind her. Shirin pulled the cover off the PC under the desk and popped the CPU and heatsink upwards, bent a few of the pins with the edge of the knife, put it back together, and left the machine unpowered. Replacing network cables was an easy fix. Replacing a machine with bad hardware was quite another. That should keep them busy for a day or two.

Put an obvious problem in front of everyone and the other problems would be take even longer to discover.

Shirin was comforted that even as the world got stranger and more advanced, it was just as strange and backwards as it had been thousands of years ago. The more it all changed, the more it all stayed the same.

That was a comforting thought.