Occhiolism
Begun
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Cass’ hands remain on my shoulders as we return to the building.
It’s not like I feel bad. No. It’s not guilt in killing Omen.
It’s that I couldn’t the first time.
Percy hurt me in a way that might never heal, but she never deserved that. And I clearly could have stopped it.
I should have.
But why hadn’t I?
“Arya,” Cass’ lips are beside my ear, tickling the hairs along the shell. “We need to look around.”
I refocus on the world to find we’re back in the lobby.
“Where?” I ask, my voice quieter than I’d like. Hell, my entire body feels numb. Like I’d been plunged into a cold tub.
Cass turns me to face her. Her eyes trace a path from the top of my head to my feet. “I need you to focus, love.”
I nod quickly, my fogged brain barely parsing the words. Like I’d just ran a marathon and hadn’t been given time to catch my breath.
“I—” I huff out a sob, bending forward with my hands against my knees. “God, I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” her voice is so soft. “I know I will need your strength when I finally get to remove Darkrend’s head from his neck.”
“You really want to use his skull for soup, don’t you?” I ask, the visual somehow cutting through the sludge. “That’s, like, the second time you’ve said that.”
This time, Cass lets out a bark of laughter that pulls me from the fog. “God, yes it is.”
I let out another sharp breath and straighten. “We should start with Damien’s office. That’s where Omen was and she was carrying something.”
Cass nods and moves to the elevator.
“It’s—” I begin, but she smashes the damn panel with a wave of red energy. It makes a sloosh sound as the entire building hums to life.
“I should have tried that before,” she hums. “Interesting.”
“What?” I ask, crossing the plaza to stand beside her. The elevator’s soft dinging grows as the carriage descends.
“Call me a conspiracy theorist,” Cass begins, the elevator opening as she speaks. We step through and turn to face the empty plaza. “But what are the chances that Damien Roberts just so happens to know my identity, know my weakness, and had Omen as a secretary.”
I turn a little to look at her, but she’s staring off again. Zoned out.
The door dings open and we step into the very wrecked office. Cloud-covered sunlight does its best to brighten a dreary scene, but the bag Omen had held is easy enough to find.
Cass bends down and unzips the duffel.
“Well,” she whispers, looking up at me. “Guess we found it.”
“Why is it so hard to hack into?” I ask, staring over Blair’s shoulder.
The doctor had looked particularly like prey in the predator’s nest when we returned to the Old Chicago forward base. Instead of taking the asylum-seeking Remnants and supernaturals to the Citadel, Azazel had elected to begin setting up camps within the two mega-buildings.
Blair had been given their own office and access to the researchers, doctors, and assorted other professionals near the top of the larger building. When we’d gotten here, though, Blair looked like they wanted to be anywhere but amongst the most powerful beings in the world.
Now, though, they seemed to have forgotten their precarious situation in lieu of a puzzle to solve.
“Because she went to a crackpot who sold the analog stuff,” Blair says, a little distractedly. “Maybe she couldn’t afford it, or—”
“Or she knew it would come in handy,” I whisper, watching the way the doc’s hands flick around the keyboard.
Percy’s bionic arm is hard to look at. Not the least because Omen never actually cleaned it off. Part of her collarbone is still attached as are scraps of flesh that look degenerated and gross.
The morbidity is only enhanced by the fact that I can feel her on it. Like a lingering bit of her energy.
But Blair insisted they would clean it off when everything on the storage unit was ‘data-mined’ as they called it.
“Look—” Blair’s voice catches the attention of everyone in the room.
Cass crowds beside me as Azazel, Morgana, and Bast fill in the other half of the very small computer space.
“She managed to pull hundreds of files off DAEMON’s infrastructure,” Blair whispers, almost reverent. “I have no idea how this worked.”
“It shouldn’t have,” I say, pointing at the first document. “That says restricted.”
“It’s almost like the tech was so low grade that DAEMON hadn’t even expected or predicted it being a problem they’d need to ward against,” Morgana says, sounding impressed.
“She knew that” I whisper, looking at Cass. “Why did she know that?”
Cass shakes her head, looking just as confused—though a lot sexier about it.
“It’ll take a few hours to go through all of this,” Blair begins, but a file catches my eye.
“There,” I point, jabbing my thumb against the screen.
“Stop smacking it,” Blair grumbles, scrolling up the file. “Darksire?”
My breath catches at the phrase.
“What?” Cass asks, and everyone turns to face me.
“Shit,” I breathe out. “Shit, is that a computer thing?”
Blair scrambles to the computer and clicks the file.
A series of blueprints populates the screen. Each looking more complex than the one before. Each of a single machine the size of a building.
Each looking like the vision. Like the very first Communion of this whole, sordid problem.
“Darksire Project,” Blair says, voice small, they highlight the description and read, “for the creation of a more perfect Entity.”
The bylines list only one person.
“Darkrend,” I breathe out. “Damien Roberts is Darkrend.”