Sam
At first, she thinks it might be another reporter.
Edward managed to keep them from her for a long while, but they still clustered daily outside the courthouse with their cameras and mikes and recorders, shouting questions at her in the hopes of a soundbite.
What does she know about Grand Central? How does she feel about Diamond Taylor?
How many others at the corporation are responsible?
Does she believe its holdings need to be split up?
Will she speak on the next shareholders call? Where is she going to go now?
But Diamond’s dead now, the trial over before it ever began.
The evidence Edward has against the woman was enough to indict her and Will for some of the unsolved murders in the city, for using her company for illegal purposes.
Enough to put the mayor behind bars, awaiting his own trial.
But the city notably goes light on Lumines for their role in the murders.
Doherty, the city’s new mayor, is in Lumines’s back pocket, after all.
Everyone is going to be watching you.
She smiled at him. You’ll be surprised how quickly they forget me.
I’m just saying. He leaned back in his chair. Infiltrating an organized group is a dangerous game. Can you do this?
She shrugged. Do you have anyone else who can?
Edward sighed, bowed his head. There was an earnestness about him that softened her heart, and she found herself touched by his genuine concern over her safety.
He earned himself some celebrity at the department for the arrests, suddenly became their wunderkind.
But with that came a new target on his back, a new awareness of him from the other syndicates.
I’m just saying, he repeated to her. Be careful out there.
She felt sorry for him then, a little, and hoped he’d be careful too. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, how much he didn’t know.
But aloud, she just said, Is that all?
That’s all. He nodded quietly at her. You’re free to go, Miss Lang.
And she left without looking back, their secret partnership buried in her heart.
Now, as she slows in her steps outside the gates, she takes stock of the person who has come to pick her up.
It’s Sebastian, as well-dressed as ever.
At her surprise, he gives her his unsettling smile. “Mozart,” he says, pulling open the car’s passenger door for her. “You haven’t been sleeping. Sand withdrawal will do that to you.”
“And you’re still alive,” she remarks.
He laughs at her remark and holds out his palm to her. There, she sees two beautiful, shimmering white pills. “Care to join me? You need a ride, and I have a proposition for you.”
Half an hour later, they find themselves on the east side of the city, seated at a private table in one of the Huntington Gardens’ lush courtyards, a display of afternoon tea between them.
Aside from a nearby booth occupied by their guards, no one else is here.
Sam stares out at the grounds and savors the feeling of sand back in her body, heightening her senses and bringing her the calm and focus that she hasn’t had for weeks.
The world feels detached, unreal. Hours earlier, she’d been inside an interrogation room with four concrete walls and a single chair.
Now she’s here, on an elegant white terrace, overlooking an expanse of roses that fill the air with the smell of late spring, sitting across from a man who, weeks earlier, had nearly killed her.
“They never found Will’s body, you know,” Sebastian tells her as he helps himself to the array of artful sandwiches and glossy desserts.
Sam just stares down at her wrists, at the wounds that Sebastian had inflicted there.
The synthetic grafts that Demeter had woven to replace her lost skin have healed by now, tattooed over her flesh as twin black bands encircling her wrists.
Her heart tugs back and forth between fear and grief at the memory of Will, his stricken eyes turned down at the golden needle she’d stabbed through his heart.
So. He is still alive. And how does she feel about it?
She’s not sure, and her confusion leaves her uneasy.
Her gaze goes up to scan the grounds, as if searching for Will there, wandering among the roses, his eyes perpetually fixed on her.
At last she says, “Maybe they didn’t look hard enough.”
Sebastian’s watching her, gauging her reaction. “Word is that he might have left the country, at least for now. No idea what plans he might have, or if he’s in good health.” He shrugs. “He’s probably heard about his mother’s death. Very sad.”
Sam tries to imagine what Will is thinking right now. He might walk out of the shadows and reclaim his position. He might seek revenge. Or perhaps he will just disappear forever, severed at last from the legacy of his family. Maybe he never wanted to be here.
“I’m not sure this is relevant to me anymore,” she says.
“Well, that depends. What are your plans, now that you’re free?”
I wish I could find Ari.
The words have been spinning in her mind every day since the raid, sustaining her through long hours of interrogation and withdrawal from lack of sand, until her feverish thoughts couldn’t separate her dreams from her reality.
She would shiver in her sleep, always imagining Ari coming to her with his hands in the pockets of his suit, his eyes warm, a small smile on his face.
Sam, he would say, here you are.
She would wake up alone, his name a whisper still on her lips.
She didn’t know whether he was alive or whether he’d safely left the city.
She didn’t even know if he was still in the country.
Wasn’t that why she wanted to save him, knowing that it might mean letting him go forever?
Shouldn’t she want this? But the thought of him no longer being nearby, that she would now go on alone, that she would plunge back into the long silence between them that had happened after they’d graduated, was so painful that she would curl back up in bed, pull the blanket over her head, and sink into the darkness again so that she could visit him in her dreams.
Ari, I still need you.
Now she sips her champagne in silence and looks out at the roses.
“I don’t know,” she replies at last.
Sebastian pops a sandwich in his mouth, then hands her a folder open to a contract. “Well,” he says, “here’s one idea for you.”
Sam finds herself looking down at a paper embossed with Belle Epoque’s crest.
“Eleanor Mien has reached out,” Sebastian says. “Now that Angel City has a new mayor who is indebted to Lumines, she is keen to fill the power vacuum left by Diamond and Will.”
Eleanor Mien. One head cut off, another head in its place. On and on it goes. Sam stares at Sebastian from over her untouched sandwiches, at this world that never changes.
“Belle Epoque knows Grand Central is deeply damaged,” he continues.
“We’re bleeding valuation by the day and could use some help.
So the Miens are pitching for a majority stake.
Belle Epoque has come to dominate the British and European markets, and Eleanor has been following your story with interest. She’s made an offer for you: join her and Hanya in the running of what’s left of Grand Central, and they’ll give you a generous compensation package along with a hefty share of the business.
Partial owner, and their right hand. Should you agree, they’ll expect you at Belle Epoque’s office in Londinium, where you’ll take up residence for part of the year. ”
He taps the paper as he speaks, pointing out the line in the contract about payment. The signing bonus is ten million dollars. Sam stares at it and feels nothing in her heart. Earning money seems like the easiest thing in the world. No matter how much she gets, more just keeps coming.
“Why doesn’t she promote one of her own?” Sam asks. “What about Hanya?”
“They both think it makes sense to keep a Grand Central insider on board, someone familiar with the operations and team, who can keep things running efficiently. All in deference to the Miens, of course. The board will need to vote on it, and you’ll have others to answer to.
” He nods at her. “But it’s a good offer, Mozart. ”
A faint breeze caresses Sam and brings with it the perfume of jasmine and lavender. “And who’s running Lumines?”
“Rudra. It was always meant to be his, anyway, before this business with Shakespeare.”
“What about all our labs, the factories? The Winged Towers? Do we retain ownership?”
“The government is in talks to break us up. A new bill is being hawked in Congress to officially ban sand production and usage. But my guess is that it’s all for show, and ultimately won’t pass.
Too many congressmen in syndicate pockets.
With Mien’s help, I suspect we’ll keep enough of our operations intact to be profitable again in a few years. ”
Sam listens in weary silence. Profitable again, in a few years.
Diamond and Will are only a small part of a larger engine, and that engine will continue so long as enough cogs remain in place.
With the right leadership, Grand Central will simply rise again, and the other syndicates will continue on with their business, and the entire show will go on.
There are simply too many alchemists in the world, too many people taking sand.
She would be na?ve to think she could stop something that has already revolutionized the world many times over.
Changing something into something more desirable.
But has sand made the world a better place? Or just a different one?
Sam closes her eyes and imagines a multitude of alternate realities: all the different paths that she could take.
What her life could be if she just turned this down and walked away.
Told Edward she didn’t want to do this after all.
Struck out to find Ari. Ran away with him and left the syndicates and their greed to fester on their own.
But that’s impossible, of course. So long as the syndicates stand, they will always own a part of her.
Look here at Belle Epoque, reaching out to her from the other side of the world, coaxing her back in.
No matter how far she runs, they will still be here, with all their cogs and wheels, churning and churning.
If she leaves, she will just find her way back, over and over.
Unless she stays. It is her deal with Edward, after all.
She remains in the circle. Moves her way up.
Perhaps this is the only way, taking something down from within.
Entangle her fist deep enough in the web, and she might be able to rip it out with one twist. It only works if they see her as one of them. If she belongs.
Belongs. The word sends an involuntary thrill through her, and she blinks, surprised by the sudden memory of Ari’s words that emerges, preserved in the amber of her mind.
Do you ever feel like you don’t belong here?
Once upon a time, she had dreamt of taking Diamond’s place in order to create something beautiful, that what the syndicates could offer the world was to make people better. Bring them closer to perfection. What now? What is her dream?
She’s staying because she’s working with Edward to bring them down. But there is also a part that Edward doesn’t know—she’s also staying because she wants to stay.
“If I accept this deal,” she says, “will you work for me?”
“Listen to you, little Mozart,” Sebastian murmurs, his hand drumming idly against the table. “I remember when you were still too afraid to use a fucking gun.”
“How can I trust you?”
“Trust my lack of emotional investment,” he replies. His eyes are flat and soulless. “Nothing is ever personal to me. I follow the deal.” He smiles darkly. “And if yours is the best one, you will have my loyalty.”
She stares at him and knows he’s telling the truth.
Decades earlier, it had been Diamond seated across from him, offering him a new life in exchange for that life being dedicated to her.
Sam watches him consider this new offer and wonders if he’ll really do the same.
Would he bow his head to her? Would she be able to keep him on a leash?
Would she be able to hold her own, in this world of alchemy?
She nods. “I’ll sign it,” she says.
He looks at her with his lips pressed together, as if mildly surprised by her answer. “Out of curiosity, why would you want to come back?” he says. “I thought you wanted out.”
Because, she thinks, there is only one way to destroy a system, and it is at its helm. It is from the inside.
But there is something else.
Something not logical, that she doesn’t want to admit.
It is the thrill that just rose in her at the thought of belonging.
It is the part of her that has grown up in this world, daring to think of how alchemists can fit into a new era.
Her knowledge, her skills. The luxuries that have accumulated in her life, big and small.
It is the part of her that she’d recognized as a child, the need for something greater, the ambition for more.
The inability to just give up on all she’s sacrificed.
It is the memory of those moments when she could imagine herself in Diamond’s position and envision what she could do, if given the chance.
It is the desire to be part of something.
It is the gnawing fear that, without alchemy, she’s nothing.
If Sam could see herself as she now stares back at Sebastian, she would see a set of eyes that look older than the youthful face they inhabit, the sight of a soul being chipped away.
“Because,” she says, “I belong here.”
Sebastian smiles thinly at her words, then raises his glass of champagne to her.
“That you do,” he answers.