Chapter Four Monika
Chapter Four
Monika
The disappointment on Vanessa’s face was a real test of my resolve after we sat down and worked out a new schedule—that was after Jem, the in-house Riot Creative attorney, about had a heart attack when she saw the amended contract I’d signed while lost in Taranis’s pearly purple gems. And his touch.
That was some freaky shit. I’ve never touched Roland directly and have half a heart to ask Vanessa if that’s what it feels like anytime she touches him.
But right now, with the sour, disappointed way Vanessa looks at me, I’m not asking her shit.
I’m in the doghouse.
The contract I signed was stupendously stupid.
Among the other challenges dealing with my time and how Taranis wants to handle competing requests is the fact that he gets first right of refusal of all the photos I take of him.
If I was working with an independent client looking to get photos taken outside of action settings, like a portrait, that setup would be the norm.
But when I’m taking pictures in action settings and dealing with clients repped by agencies and brands, it’s usually up to the brand, the firm, the organization, and the company to determine which photos will be used.
It’s strange even that Taranis’s contract with the COE doesn’t include that clause.
That he somehow got so many personal amendments granting him so much autonomy.
Because the superheroes are all technically brands of the COE, I send the pictures I take to the PR teams for those Champions directly—like I do with Vanessa and the Wyvern—and those teams decide which photos to keep, post, share with media outlets, and sell to other distributors. That’s not my bag. I don’t care.
But . . . I do care if my pictures may be hitting the interwebs hours or even days after the events I’m photographing take place.
My job as a photographer for the COE—why I took the full-time contract in the first place—is to be the cutting-edge documentarian of the most amazing actions of the Forty-Eight.
And I can’t really do that if I’m not able to share any of the pictures I take—or share them late.
But it’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine. Taranis is so nice. I’ll talk to him, to his team. It’s been ten days and I haven’t gotten to meet anyone from that team yet, but I’ll have to eventually—today, hopefully.
I glance at my phone again. It’s five till five. A car is supposed to pick me up at five exactly. The message I got last Friday from someone named Simone read:
“First assignment Tuesday. Pick up at five.”
I have no idea what the assignment is, and I’m a little frustrated I haven’t gotten a brief, that the only details I have heard were from Taranis himself when I made the potentially poor and very clearly libido-driven decision to sign a paper without reading it and join this escapade, which he called dangerous and nothing else.
If I hadn’t spent the last week bored out of my mind, I would have reneged.
As it is, my boredom is apparently stronger than my pride.
My libido is, too, but I’ve known that for a long time.
I have my camera bag holstered, but I wear my Nikon Z9 fitted with a 50mm lens around my shoulder like a cross-body bag.
It’s good for night shots, which I assume I’ll need, given the hour of my pickup, but just in case, I’ve got a zoom lens in my bag, another Nikon Z9, a 24mm lens, and a 200mm lens, plus my Nikon Zfc with a 16mm lens in my cargo pants as a backup and my iPhone in my other pocket as my backup to my backup.
I fiddle with my camera strap. I’m wearing all black again and the exact same camera I wore when I went on my first mission with the Wyvern.
He hadn’t reverted yet. He was just a guy with scraggly hair, a scruffy beard, zero fashion sense, and total dominion over fire.
He’d used that incredible power and his superhuman strength to rescue dozens of people trapped beneath an avalanche like it was no big deal.
He hadn’t taken any interviews afterward.
Hadn’t wanted to pose for photos with the saved.
He’d only wanted to get back to Vanessa.
I don’t meet many like him in my profession.
That mission was my first foray back into action photography—something war journalism–adjacent.
And even though I’d since accompanied the Wyvern on a few other missions—and the Olympian on one—they’d all paled in comparison.
Surrounded by all that snow, my pulse pounding as I snapped shot after shot, I’d felt .
. . home. Which is why, despite my irritation and mounting misgivings, I don’t hesitate to pick up the phone on the first ring when I see an unknown number flash across it at 5:00 p.m. exactly.
“Here,” a male voice says, one I’ve never heard before.
My adrenaline surges and I slide off the eccentric cushioned yellow stool at my kitchen island, knock twice on the butcher-block countertop for good luck, and head to the elevator, which opens up directly into my foyer.
My flat is bigger than I need, but once I saw that elevator setup, like a ritzy penthouse, I couldn’t help but put in an offer.
I hit the lobby with a spring in my step. “See you later, Taylor!” I shout at the door attendant.
Most folks think of a door attendant as an old Alfred type.
At least, that’s what I expected. I didn’t expect the morose, black-wearing, Wednesday Addams equivalent who greeted me on my first day here with a sneer.
Taylor is Eeyore, if Eeyore were a Black nonbinary twentysomething with a straight black bob and a little more sass.
They look at me with a flat grimace. “What are you so excited about?”
“I’ve got a date!”
Taylor gives me their drollest look—probably the most personality I’ve seen from them this week. “With who?”
“Danger!”
Taylor sulks and turns back to lean their forearms on their desk, all gleaming white marble in this opulent lobby. They huff out the side of their mouth, tufts of black hair blowing away from their face. “Boring.”
I laugh as I reach the revolving doors. “Mein Gott, ich hoffe nicht.” I wink back at Taylor over my shoulder and shout, “Don’t wait up!”
“Your enthusiasm sickens me.” Their dismay chases me out into the warm, windy night.
Pushing my hair back from my face, I come to a quick stop at the sight of the massive dark-green Humvee double-parked in front of my building.
It isn’t that I’ve never been in a Humvee before—I have.
It’s that, usually, the vehicles I travel in tend to match their surroundings.
A well-marked press van in Gaza. A beat-up Toyota on the streets of Port-au-Prince.
A bulletproof SUV during riots in Tehran.
But a matte-green Humvee elevated above all the other cars on the block of sunny Sundale?
I snort. The sun is still lingering in the sky as it makes its slow descent, and the bright orange of the sunset glints against the black windows.
Overkill, much? But when the back door opens and a tan face pops out and waves at me angrily, I roll my eyes and jump in.
“Hi,” I say to the man sitting beside me and the backs of the heads in front of me.
All men. All armored and armed. All wearing black except for the man in the passenger’s seat wearing a shimmering baby-blue uniform.
He doesn’t turn around when I get in the car.
None of them do. The faceless driver just pulls away from the curb, and we go rumbling down the road.
Since no one bothers acknowledging me, I don’t say more.
If that surprises any of the men in the car, it shouldn’t.
I’ve been into battle before, and I’ve been around men going into battle before—if that’s what this is—and I know how this all works.
The machismo and testosterone aren’t worth beating a head or a fist against, so I’ve learned to read the air and get what I need in as few words as possible.
“Gear?” I say to the guy seated next to me. He’s a Hispanic man underneath all that black fabric, and gives me a mean look.
“You were late.”
I wasn’t, but I don’t respond to that. “Do I need a vest or not?”
“Give her her fucking gear, or am I gonna have to hear her ask a third goddamn time?” The voice that lashes out into the car startles me.
I don’t recognize it, and I glance around like I’m looking for speakers through which this terrible voice sounds.
“Fucking incompetent pill-popping jocks. Don’t even know why the COE bothers sending you sorry fucks.
You only ever slow me down or get in my way. ”
Unlike me, these men don’t seem to understand that arguing with a man is pointless, especially one who sounds like the prickliest of all pricks. The one in the driver’s seat says, “We’re with the SDD, not the COE, and we’re here to protect you.”
The voice scoffs, and it’s a bitter, angry sound that I feel all the way in the depths of my chest. My mom may not talk nice to me all the time, but she’s never sounded half as violent as this. “Tell that to the last SDD bro with a missing leg.”
“We’re not even here for you,” says the guy next to me, and as he leans forward, I realize two things: He’s speaking to the guy in the passenger’s seat, and that guy is Taranis.
Whaaa . . . ?
“This is a simple fucking power grid fix. We’re here to make sure you don’t blow anything up you’re not supposed to, and make sure she stays safe.
” The guy next to me jerks his thumb over his shoulder toward me, clearly considering me a nuisance.
“And that she stays out of the way and doesn’t take pictures of anything she shouldn’t. ”
“The SDD isn’t happy with her on your tail,” the driver adds.
“I don’t work for them. Now, stop fucking talking. Can’t stand the sounds you make. And when we get to the train station, keep your goddamn guns holstered. Don’t need to get accidentally shot by one of you trigger-happy fuckers.”