Raven Chapter 2 Depths and Distractions 20
Raven
Once my internal meltdown over watching a family just happily exist finally ends, I know it's time to check on Emerson.
That elf has a tendency to forget the world outside exists, squirreling himself away with his books and weird contraptions.
Someone has to make sure he doesn't spiral. That someone is me.
When I reach his room, I notice the hidden door tucked into his wall of bookcases is ajar, a soft golden light emanating from within. I phase through and immediately see why he’d been fidgeting through Forrest’s whole meeting.
The room is dark except for the warm pool of light from his green-shaded banker’s lamp and the sleepy pulse of something alive on the opposite wall.
The beast of a computer doesn’t just sit there—it’s built into the wall, a sprawling hybrid of polished wood, glowing vacuum tubes, spinning brass tape reels, and delicate filaments of crystal that thrum with soft blue light.
It looks less like a supercomputer and more like a breathtakingly ornate clockwork safe, one designed to guard secrets that could crumble entire empires.
Under all the magic and modifications, the core is what he once called a mainframe computer.
Or, as he likes to point out, “the peak of human electronic design.”
I imagine if Frankenstein's monster were to pop into existence, he'd take one look at the thing and call it the technological equivalent of himself.
The gold plaque above it reads MORDRED in carved letters.
He told the guys once it was an acronym for something, but that's a detail I didn't retain.
My brain's been at capacity with soap opera levels of drama and intrigue for a while, and now I’m trying to cram in an entire miniseries called These Five Idiots and Their Adjacent Chaos . A woman only has so much real estate.
When I finally tear my eyes away from the hypnotic blink-blink-blink of amber and blue lights, I spot what he’s really working on: some kind of device splayed open like a patient on an operating table. Probably the demon radio he’s been trying to hack.
But it’s not the tech that holds me.
It’s him.
He’s so deep in focus the glamour has slipped.
The polished platinum hair is now opal-white, and his skin’s taken on a dusty lilac tint—like someone mixed moonlight with a bruise.
His pointed ears are out, his amber eyes are glowing faintly in the dark, fixed on the radio’s guts with a stare so intense I’m surprised the components aren’t melting.
This is the real him. And he tucks it away like a secret. Honestly? Feels like a crime.
I have no idea why he hides. Just another question in the endless pile.
It's so frustrating. They've had decades to learn each other's secrets, to have those late-night "tell me about your childhood" conversations that actually mean something.
All I get are breadcrumbs; hints dropped in arguments, glances exchanged over dinner, stories that start mid-way and end abruptly.
I can't just cut a hole into their plane of existence and ask. So I watch and collect whatever breadcrumbs are thrown at me.
And moments like this—seeing him un-glamoured, real, lost in a puzzle—feel like I'm looking directly into his soul.
"Hey, Em," I say as I stand behind him, wishing I could peer into his brain instead. "Whatcha doing?"
Of course, he doesn't answer. My gaze drifts to his hands—long-fingered, deft, stained with silver solder and a faint smudge of ink—moving with such precise, economical grace it almost feels like a spell itself.
If I had a body, I'd be shivering, imagining where else those fingers could wander.
Even now, the intricate runes tattooed across them glow faintly as he channels magic into the electronics on the workbench.
Am I jealous of circuitry right now? Maybe a little. Or a lot.
I love that he doesn't just fix things, he repurposes them.
He takes old things no one else wants and makes them new, breathing life into them.
I watch as a soldering iron whispers, fusing a tiny modern piece to something vintage-looking.
He hums, a low, tuneless vibration—a sound he'd never make if he knew someone was listening.
These are the moments this empty existence feels almost tolerable.
As he tinkers, I let the room envelop me.
In here, the world feels like a symphony of almost-sensations—close enough to imagine, just out of reach to truly touch.
The blue pulse of the electronics feels like it should be cool against skin.
The steady thrum of Emerson's own energy echoes like warmth hovering just beyond my ghost-self.
The texture of the worn Persian rug is something I've watched others sink into, something I understand through their sighs, their curled toes.
I know these sensations exist. I just… don't have the key to unlock them.
It's like reading a description of a color you've never seen. You know the facts. You just can't experience them.
A voice starts muttering, startling me out of my thoughts and pulling my focus back to Emerson. He's utterly absorbed, his brow furrowed behind a pair of vintage magnifying goggles perched on his nose. A stream of mutters flows from him, something that seems part technical manual, part poetry.
“…adjust the spectral bandwidth… broaden the sweep… there's gotta be a bleed-through somewhere…” He shifts a large vacuum tube, the glass glowing faintly in the dim light.
"...come on, you cantankerous relic… no, no, you're perfect, forgive me… just sing for me…" His fingers dance across a bank of knobs.
"... Hades' hells, it can't be this ephemeral…" He mutters as he reaches for a small, beautiful brass tool.
A sudden longing to touch it, to feel its cool weight, rises—and it doesn't surprise me.
This has been happening more and more. The desire sits like an anvil on my spectral chest, so heavy I let out a sharp breath I didn't know I was holding—a breath I didn't know I could hold.
I didn't even realize I was gathering my will, focusing that longing, until Em's hand pauses midair, the tool clutched in his fingers.
I freeze. He doesn't look up, but his head tilts a fraction.
“Odd,” he murmurs. “A draft.”
Joy—at the fact he felt that, felt me —rushes through me, and I can't help but spin around and start dancing like a madwoman. I didn't just move a thing for him to see; he felt me! Then reality hits me like a brick shithouse.
“What the hell are you doing, woman?” I screech at myself, stopping mid-hip thrust. “Do it again! Stop getting distracted!”
No matter how hard I try, though, I can't seem to recreate that feeling. That moment of connection. The fact that I was able to reach through without rage involved is unprecedented. No clue how to deal with this new information without also getting nauseatingly hopeful.
I sigh and give up, cutting off that future heartbreak early. Settling for vowing to pay better attention next time. If I want to replicate it, I need to figure out what I was subconsciously doing when it happened. And the only way to do that is to go back to doing what I was doing before.
He connects two final wires before closing up the leathery-looking case and flipping a switch. A vacuum tube jutting from the back starts to glow a soft orange, and the speaker crackles, spitting out a wave of white noise.
He adjusts a dial carefully, with a patience I know I can't ever hope to achieve, and the static shifts. A sound abruptly cuts through, perfectly clear: a cacophony of shrieks—both rage and torment—that makes me recoil.
“Holy shit, Em,” I breathe out. “You actually did it. You found a way to tune into literal hell.”
A slow, rare smile touches Emerson's lips. Not a nice smile, though—pure predatory satisfaction.
He doesn't power the radio down. Instead, his long fingers dance across a secondary panel on MORDRED's face—ivory toggles and obsidian knobs that click into place with soft, definitive snaps.
“Passive collection protocol engaged,” he murmurs, his voice a low thrum in the room's warm silence. “Log any major discrepancies. Filter for proper nouns, coordinates, recurrent syntax.”
With one last glance at the hypnotic blink-blink-blink of amber and blue, he turns and slips back through the bookcase door.
So now his creation is babysitting demons. Not the weirdest thing he's outsourced, though I feel like maybe I should be including MORDRED in the family therapy plans.
He walks into his bedroom, and I watch him dim. Not in a sad way—in a different way. The too-sharp edges soften. The points of his ears blur. That unearthly light in his eyes banks down to embers instead of flames.
By the time he's at his desk, he looks... normal. Or whatever passes for normal around here. The glamour's back in place—the one that's always there except for those rare moments in his workshop when he forgets to wear it.
I don't know why he needs it. I don't know what he's hiding from. Whatever it is? I want to punch it for making him feel like he needs it at all.
It doesn't take him long to pull up a nature documentary.
I groan. This one is particularly brutal, focused entirely on predators and their relationship with prey.
The bright side? The narrator is that classic old British dude.
I laugh because Em—both literally and figuratively—is also an old British dude.
Maybe that's why he watches them. I've never figured out why he always needs one playing while he works, but one day I'll ask him.
Along with the millions of other questions I've gathered.
I know that when a documentary this brutal is on, it means he's about to dive into the dark web's depths to unearth clues for their current assignment.
So I force myself to stay to keep him company.
As he sits alone in this room with nothing but his technology and the horrors on screen, I see it—the loneliness.
The weight of carrying all that darkness by himself.
I can't feel it, not really, but I recognize it. I've been watching it long enough.
And I want to tell him he's not alone. That his brilliant, lonely vigil is seen. That it's appreciated.
I'm there for who knows how long—hours maybe—and I'm just getting ready to do something , anything, to break Em out of this marathon hacking session.
I'm racking my brain for a plan, trying to block out the horrors on the screen behind me, when the soft British narration is suddenly drowned out by the door swinging open and a loud Scottish accent taking its place.
“Oi, Em! Have you seen my—bloody hell, what is that?” Kieran freezes in the doorway, his nose wrinkled in disgust at the scene on the screen—a lioness making a kill. “Why do you watch this stuff? It's morbid.”
Emerson doesn’t even flinch, his eyes still glued to his more modern computer screen, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “It’s comforting,” he murmurs, not elaborating.
"Out of all the things you could have said, Em," I say, "that was by far the most worrisome. Really cementing my commitment to that family therapy session I'll be booking the second I have fingers, aren't you?"
“Right. Well, it's putting me off my snacks,” Kieran says, finally stepping fully into the room.
He makes a beeline for a stack of technical manuals on a nearby shelf.
“Speaking of snacks, I know Dre and Niko stash protein bars in here for ye.” He rummages behind the stack, a victorious sound spilling from him as he pulls out a handful of bars. “Aha! Knew it. Ye forgot to eat again?”
Emerson finally stills, the constant tapping of keys ceasing for the first time in hours.
He runs a hand over his face, the glow of his eyes dimming as he pulls himself out of the digital depths.
He'd been hitting dead end after dead end, the frustration coiling him tighter.
I could see him teetering on the brink of a spiral, ready to intervene—but Kieran stepped in before I had to.
His energy is essential to this group. A little levity goes a long way.
“I suppose I have,” Emerson says, his voice rough with disuse, his usual slight British accent coming out just a bit stronger.
“Figured. Here.” Kieran tosses a bar onto the worktable.
It lands with a soft thud next to the mouse.
“Don't make me tell Dre you're skipping meals.
He'll start leaving snacks and notes. If Niko finds out, ye know he'll be camped in the corner making sure you're fully meeting your nutritional needs.”
He says that last part in a perfect imitation of Anik—or Forrest, honestly; they're both weirdly obsessed with health—before giving a little wave and stepping back out the door.
As Kieran retreats, already tearing into his own bar, the narrator's calm voice detailing the circle of life creates a bizarrely comic contrast to the scene that just played out.
I laugh to myself. Emerson's lonely vigil was, for a moment, not so lonely.
He picks up the protein bar, a slow, genuine smile—not predatory, but tired and appreciative—touching his lips before he finally turns back to his work. The spiral, momentarily averted.