SECCON

  Containment//

  Sebastian had never seen night cut to day before but as the SUV slid to a halt, and the agent slumped over, something illuminated the ranch like the sun.

  It took a second for it to reach him through the shock that it was not midday. The darkness they were driving through a moment ago had not been his imagination. He had not simply blinked the darkness from his vision.

  Eyes locked on his sister, holding the smoking gun, another moment passed for Sebastian where he thought divinity itself was putting a spotlight to her sins.

  Between her shimmering arm and dirty, neon orange gown, Tabitha was as difficult to look at as she was to look away from. Despite her shaven head, she was still the red smudge of his childhood.

  The day had taken its toll, leaving her to crumble under the weight of her actions. Craning her neck up at the scrutinizing glow, she wearily tried to shield her eye from its brightness. Almost completely indifferent to the spectacle, she looked like she might fall asleep on her feet.

  Lord Tredici let out a breathy sigh. “Oddio!”

  The shadows began to dance around the ranch, when the light from above shrank to focus in on the front yard of the house. Leaning forward, Sebastian looked up through the windshield for any sign of its source. Glasses pressed against the glass, all he could see was a blinding white circle cut into the night sky.

  “Che sfortuna…,” Lord Tredici’s disappointment continued under his breath while he casually slid out of the car. Before closing the door, he stopped to give Sebastian a solemn smile. “Come, Dr. Hale,” he told him. “Andiamo, andiamo, there’s not much time.”

  The slam of the advisor’s door punctuated his grim eagerness.

  Not much time? Sebastian looked at the clock on the SUV’s radio. 11:03?

  Finding no answer to his confusion inside of the vehicle, he let his curiosity give chase to the advisor. He spent his entire exit staring up at the hole in the sky, squinting his eyes painfully against its cold brightness.

  For a moment, a small, trembling piece of him expected something to reach down and snatch him up, or the beam itself to simply take him.

  Clinging to the side of the SUV, he gave the light a moment to react to his intrusion. He imagined he could pull himself back in, if weightlessness overcame him. When it only hung there, like the menacing lamp of an interrogation room, his anxiety moved on to what was in front of him instead.

  Sebastian’s adjusting eyes found Lord Tredici not far into his casual stroll toward Tabitha. The advisor’s charismatic glow had been washed out by the harsh light above. Its glare highlighted every wrinkle and flaw in his aged skin, making him look every bit as tarnished as the woman he was approaching.

  Halfway across the yard, a large black cylinder suddenly appeared in the ground to impede the advisor’s advance.

  Sebastian could hear it scream through the air, just before it hit the yard. He felt it in his feet as it struck. A second later the sound of it being fired from above reached his ears. The bass of it tightened his chest.

  Thoop. Boom!

  When Lord Tredici jumped back in surprise, another landed behind him.

  Thoop. Boom!

  “Oh?”

  As he looked over his shoulder, two more landed to his left and right, one after another.

  Th-thoop! B-boom!

  Then four more appeared at the same time to fill the gaps.

  THOOPF! BOOM!

  Together, the eight sleek rods formed a cage with no ceiling. Placed with perfect precision, the space between each bar was just small enough to prevent the slender lord from squeezing through. And twice his height, even driven deep into the dirt, they were more than tall enough to prevent him from clambering over.

  Sebastian did not know when he had crouched, but he stayed that way as he shouted from beside the SUV.

  “Lord Tredici?!” His voice was shrill from adrenaline. He tried to collect himself. “Are—are you okay?”

  A casual thumbs up popped through the black bars. “Excellente, Dr. Hale!”

  Before he could slide his hand back through, something took hold of Lord Tredici’s arm.

  “Sono stanco, Blackbriar,” he said wearily, letting loose a heavy sigh.

  What? Sebastian latched onto the only thing he understood. Briar??

  A phantom thorn pressed into his mind.

  Out of the ring of shadow around the cage, the shape of a woman appeared.

  Stepping into the light, the darkness slipped away from her, like a black veil, leaving behind a tailored suit of the same color. Raven hair pulled back into a tight bun, it was held in place by a gold pin. With an umbrella in one hand, she held the wrist of the casual lord firmly in the other.

  Her back to him, Sebastian could only guess at who it was. While he tried to squint for clarity, the way she carried herself became increasingly familiar, even from behind.

  His guessing game was spoiled immediately by her speaking.

  “You’re tired?”

  Her voice had a natural rasp, deepened by years of smoking, contrasted heavily by her clean, overpronounced Queen’s English accent. It was the oozing sound of hundreds of years of British nobility distilled down into a woman who prided herself on appearing as such. When she spoke, it was with the deliberate confidence of the socialite-warrior she was. Whether at a gala or in the field, Sebastian’s mother wielded her words like a weapon.

  AB1? Shrinking further behind the SUV, his chest tightened. Why?! What is she doing here?

  “You have vexed me for decades, Thirteen,” she told Lord Tredici, still holding his wrist outside of the makeshift cage. “Beyond simply evading capture, or escaping containment,” taking her time, she twisted his wrist around before continuing, “you decide to go so far as to antagonize me?” She let out a quiet laugh. “And you’re tired?”

  Something in her voice filled Sebastian with dread. It was the tone that often carried an expectation he would do anything to meet if it meant an end to her disappointment. Without knowing what it was that she wanted, all it made him want to do was run.

  Get up and run, he begged himself.

  He could feel the impulse building in his legs.

  There was just no telling which direction they would carry him.

  “Antagonize you? What ever have I done, bella?”

  AB1 clicked her tongue.

  It was the sound of her frustration. The sound of impending doom.

  As a prelude, she wrenched his arm to the side.

  “Ahh! Ma dai!” Lord Tredici’s hollering went from playful to pained. “Smettila—stop! Please!!”

  You can’t leave him to her, Sebastian thought, as what AB1 would do, or was capable of doing, became a kaleidoscope of possibilities in his mind. He had seen what being left to her whims could do to someone. The evidence of it was somewhere on the other side of Lord Tredici’s prison, watching, just like he was.

  “How can something so obsessed with maintaining its own name and title, be so devoid of consideration for how it refers to its betters?”

  “Betters?” Lord Tredici scoffed. “This is why, see? Betters!” He dry spit through the bars. “If I antagonize, this is why it is so!”

  “You admit it then?”

  “Oh mio Dio!” Lord Tredici groaned, and then tried to pull free of her grip. “Release me, witch!”

  With another click of her tongue, AB1 yanked Lord Tredici’s arm, causing his head to slam into the black cylinders. The muted thud of his skull was joined by sizzling as the material reacted to his skin.

  “Ah! Basta! Basta! Stop! Pleeeaaase, enough!”

  Sebastian stood without thinking about it. He took a step forward without thinking about it.

  Before he could say anything, what looked like onyx statues stepped out from the shadows of the trees encircling the yard.

  “If it’s you who wants my ire, boy…,” AB1 said without looking at him. The last word was a lash.

  Sebastian froze. She did not need the SecCon team. She did not have to finish the threat. Her tone was enough. She could have said anything to stop him in his tracks. It just happened to be exactly what she would say to him as a child.

  …just say the word, he heard echo through his mind. His mother’s silhouette was cut into a door frame there, standing between the boy and his curiosity. In her hand, she was holding what he thought was a rose stem.

  “Please, AB1,” Sebastian begged. “I don’t know what Lord Tred—”

  An annoyed click from AB1’s tongue interrupted his imposition. The glare over her shoulder was pitch black. “First, you allow this—,” she pulled Lord Tredici’s arm for emphasis, “—variant to traipse freely around Archive VII.”

  Turning to face Sebastian, she maintained her iron grip behind her. “Then not only do you abet in the release of Variance Irradiated Object 035 into Perpetual Site-02, you followed 013—,” she yanked his arm again, “—to a containment site to abet in the escape of another?”

  Her voice grew colder, deliberately slow to drive the thorn in. “Archivist A-0-1-3-8, Dr. Sebastian Hale, I relieve you of your position as director of Archive VII. As of this moment, you are hereby terminated from all roles within the Blackwell Foundation. You will be lucky to escape imprisonment for your crimes.”

  “I—,” Sebastian’s heart was in the dirt.

  …just say the word. He had known the spell his words would cast, and still he spoke them. Not only was the threat implied made real, Sebastian had been made complicit in his own punishment. You knew what would happen.

  Lord Tredici reached his other hand through his cage to fight her grip. “And just what have you done with my Cannella?” He let fly a flurry of Italian under his breath. “Parla! Speak! You have not caged her, no?!”

  AB1 returned her bridled ire to the casual lord struggling against her grasp.

  “And you, Variance Irradiated Object 0-1-3,” she pulled Lord Tredici closer, despite his two-handed attempt to free himself, “do you remember our agreement atop Sibilla?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Lord Tredici started laughing at her. As it built to a howl, his fighting stopped, and his free hand fell back into his cage. “Tell me…what has changed?” he asked without stopping to let her answer. “You have tried many times,” twisting his hand around, he flicked the closest pillar, “even with perpetuality on your side, you only fail. è inutile.” Another casual laugh punctuated his point. “Come now, bella. Let us be finished with this game.”

  There was another chiding click of her tongue, and a wrenching pull of his arm to emphasize it. This time AB1 extended his arm, until he yowled in pain.

  When Lord Tredici slipped his other arm through to fight her, again, something weaving itself through the black rods reacted to him.

  As she pulled away, AB1’s grasping hand was replaced by bramble. It wrapped itself around his wrists, binding them together, and then to the rapidly growing wall.

  “Dio mio, it stings! Why must you—Ah! Strega! Ow-ah!”

  Sebastian immediately recognized the rose bush blooming before him. It was a tangle of green thorns and leaves, with red blossoms exploding all over it. He recognized the gardener. Even without her gardening tools. There was just no explaining, in that moment, how the garden of his childhood home in upstate New York had sprouted in Virginia.

  “If what Director Charming reported about your interaction with my daughter is true,” AB1 said, stepping back from the living cage, and opening her umbrella, “then I suppose the thirteenth try’s the charm.”

  The spotlight overhead snapped off, leaving only the SUV’s headlights to illuminate the scene. Watching her disappear beneath her umbrella, and then behind the cage, the image of his mother standing in the doorway, barring him from entry, flashed through Sebastian’s mind. Her hand was bloody from the string of thorns she was holding.

  And then, with the crack of lightning, a downpour began.

  Security//

  Standing beneath the sterile glow of SecCon’s hatch into the world, Tabitha froze. It was not from fear, but from hopelessness.

  A team from Security & Containment is what you sent in when subtlety became an afterthought. The little red button on the wall you press when shit hit the fan and the benefit of bringing the situation to a screeching halt outweighed the cost of by any means necessary. During her time with Blackwell, she had been on the receiving end of their indifferent grace more than once.

  Standing there, she wondered what the other side of their indifference looked like.

  As a variant, and a widow-maker at that, she was left searching herself for any sign of the comfort she once felt in the harsh glare. Before that night, it would have meant unassailable hope. Realizing what she had done, despair washed over her, snuffing out any will to fight.

  If she ran, she was dead. If she fought, she was dead.

  If either thought even crossed her mind, she was dead.

  And as the day quickly began to catch up with her, in cascading aches and pains, the thought of being held indefinitely beneath an ice cube no longer sounded all that bad. A daydreaming part of her hoped the bed in her containment cell would be comfy. The rest of her knew she would lie in shards of glass, if it meant she could lie down at all.

  Watching the golden advisor stomp toward her from the SUV, Tabitha did not know what to make of his approach.

  Too tired to flinch, she barely reacted to the first perpetuality anchor appearing between them. As her eyes slid over the flawless surface of the jet black cylinder, she was certain it was meant for her.

  Bit much, isn’t it? she thought, half-remembering being told by Agent Harris that each one was worth something like billions, if not trillions of dollars. For a weary moment, she wanted to laugh at the lengths they were going to. Just point me to the nearest bed.

  “Oh?” the advisor said from behind the device, his surprise sounding put on.

  Then another drove into the ground behind him.

  Tabitha was too tired for the confusion of watching the advisor be surrounded by the pillars. Unless they were meant to protect him from her, her immediate thought was that they missed.

  But SecCon does not miss.

  When the last four landed, the compounded force of them striking the ground nearly took Tabitha off of her already shaky legs. Stepping back to get her balance, she felt the press of a dozen eyes land on her from the shadows. They were somewhere in the treeline, analyzing from the shadows, and waiting for her movements to become too sudden.

  An invisible hand in the small of her back helped steady her.

  Just a little longer, kid.

  Tabitha heard her brother yelling something from the other side of the newly formed cage.

  “…are you okay?”

  For the briefest moment, some foolish piece of her thought it was her that he asking. That it was her that he was concerned for.

  When the caged advisor answered for her, Tabitha’s heart sank.

  “Excellente, Dr. Hale!”

  Suddenly, her arm was vibrating.

  The hum quickly climbed her arm, up into her skull, to jab at her ruined eye. Dropping the gun to clutch her head, she searched her crystal-ridden hand for signs of new growth. As her palm glinted and sparkled like a brilliant geode, she watched its iridescent crystals begin to fill with smoke. At their limit, they began increasing in size to accommodate.

  She could feel the shattered ring finding further purchase in the bones of her hand. Each pop and crack was like lightning down to the marrow. What felt like a rain of needles or thorns followed it up the skin of her arm. The longer she looked at it, the more she thought it might split her hand down the middle, if it continued.

  “You’re tired?”

  The familiar voice pushed everything else aside. A nostalgic scent struck with it.

  It cut right through fresh, trickling pain, to find the bygone glacier at its source.

  Finding nowhere else to run, Tabitha followed the smell of tobacco smoke and roses backwards, as she retreated into herself.

  ~~~

  The yard of Briarnook Manor was as vast as it was brimming with life. Every bit of land freed by the felling of lumber for its sprawling Tudor-style home had been repurposed into an elegant garden. When that was not enough for Eleanor Rose Hale, twenty-five acres were cleared to make room for more of her flowers. From inside, a sea of color dominated the view from every window.

  In the eyes of a child, its manicured yew hedges and shrubs, lined with stone walls and brick paths, came together to form an almost planetary kingdom to rule over.

  For the twins, it had been split right in two.

  Tabitha’s fief encompassed the entire backyard. There, her halls were adorned with roses of every color, and her court was comprised of cardinals and sparrows and rabbits. It was from them that she learned how to find paths into the hedges, through briar, and into secret hollows. In the walls of her labyrinthine domain, she found more maze in which to hide behind.

  “Tabitha!”

  Into the heart of the garden she scrambled, skin and clothes be damned. She did not balk at the scrape of thorns, dragging herself between two rose bushes. She had felt their bite before. It was what waited for her if she was found.

  Her mother’s call grew closer. “Tabitha!”

  No matter how far she pulled herself, or how much blood was drawn, there was no escaping her. For every path Tabitha had found, her mother knew two. It was by her will that they had grown, and her hands that shaped each with care.

  No matter how much time the girl had spent ruling in her stead, in the queen’s presence, the court sang of secrets, and halls of the kingdom itself bowed.

  That was the only way her mother could have found her there, deep in the center of a random tangle of briar. And that was the only way her arm could have slipped through the stinging wall to grab at Tabitha without injuring herself.

  Only a single drop of blood ran down her finger from the ring of thorns she chose to wear.

  “I swear, girl, if you bent a single stem!”

  ~~~

  Someone had cut the lights off, and the rain on.

  The resonating hum of the shattered ring had become the sound of wild growth, and Tabitha’s skin was crawling with it. She did not know when her legs had given out, but as she sat there in the pooling water, her body felt like it was being dragged into the ground. It was only the downpour that kept her conscious.

  Nearly nodding off, her heavy head rocked forward to jolt back awake just as someone’s black boots rounded the cage. She could barely keep her eye open, let alone crane her neck up to see who it was.

  The rain stopped striking her when the boots reached her.

  “What have they done to you?”

  Tabitha recognized the raspy, smoker’s voice, and the fragrance of rose covering smoke. She did not however recognize the words or the soft tone in which they were spoken. Her eye slowly climbed the darkness, half-expecting to find a stranger standing over her.

  Instead, she found an outstretched hand she knew by more than just the briar ring and drop of blood drawn by it.

  AB1? Tabitha’s heart did not know if it wanted to rise or fall. She did not have the energy for either.

  “Mother’s here, my love,” AB1 told her, extending her thorn-bound hand. “Let me help.”

  The words struck her square in the forehead. As their meaning took root, something began to grow there, binding her face into a scrunch. Before her last bit of energy could run down her face, Tabitha used it to lift her crystalline hand.

  She was slow, addled by exhaustion and pain.

  Her mother was not.

  With an impatient click of her tongue, AB1 snatched Tabitha’s wrist. Her iron grip drove the thorns wrapped around her finger deep into both of their skin.

  Tabitha knew the bite well, but not the crawling thrum rising up her arm. It sounded like nature itself trying to burrow into her head. Every shade of green flashed through her vision as the buzzing of bugs and creaking of trees and rustling leaves erupted down her arm.

  Suddenly, the gleam in her left eye rose to meet her growing fear.

  Reaching out for it like sunlight, the vines snapped toward its warmth, carrying her entangled consciousness with it.

  Somewhere behind the bandage, the motel waited in the iridescent expanse. In the sky a sun choked by briar fought to illuminate the dim scene.

  Tabitha’s left eye opened to find herself unable to move, or speak.

  She was trapped, again.

  Only now, it was not her body, but her mind, if one could somehow be separated from the other. It felt no different than the interview room, helpless and robbed of agency. She could only play witness and victim in the horror that had become her life.

  In front of her, the Crown Vic sat parked up against the motel, trunk locked up tight.

  Above it, she saw Agent Harris, bound by thorns to the side of the building. She wanted to struggle and thrash about at the sight of him, but there was nothing to struggle against or thrash with.

  “So this is what became of you, Field Agent 0928,” AB1 said, stepping out from behind Tabitha’s perception. “And the car is here, too?” The advisor’s clothes were different, dressed in a dark green evening gown and heels, as if to entertain, rather than her field attire for work. It was something she had found locked away in one of Tabitha’s memories of her. “Fascinating.”

  “You the mom?” Agent Harris asked, shifting around in his bindings.

  Walking up to the back of the car, she tapped on the trunk. “Did VIO-083 wind up here as well then?”

  “Sorry, sorry. Not mom,” he said, laughing. “Never mom. You don’t like that title, huh, AB1?”

  “I see you’ve done some snooping, during your time here.”

  He scoffed at her. “Nah, she shared that with me herself. Didn’t have to pry.”

  “No, you only had to dig your way in through her eye,” she returned, mirroring his scoff. “Not even I would use such brutal methods.”

  Agent Harris’s teeth squeaked as he grit them. “That your daughter’s blood on your thorns, witch?”

  AB1 clicked her tongue. Her thorns tightened around Agent Harris’s body.

  “You know that doesn’t hurt right?”

  “No, I suppose a figment of my daughter’s imagination wouldn’t feel pain. We always wish better for our creations, don’t we?”

  “Is that what this is?” Agent Harris spit and struggled against the thorns. “Better for your daughter?! What you’ve done?!”

  “All I have ever done has been for this girl,” AB1 said, trying to open the trunk. “The world is a better place for her because of the things I have done, and continue to do.” Placing her briar ring to the keyhole, she filled it with stinging vines, until they were spilling out of every seam. “And she is poised to further that goal, because of me.” She crouched for leverage. “But this…,” wrenching her arm up, she forced the back of the Crown Vic open, “…this is for me.”

  Inside, the shimmer of gold waited for her.

  She reached into the trunk and ran her fingers through the liquid gold.

  “This is about that Italian geezer’s luck? Why?!”

  AB1 brought a handful of the liquid luck to her mouth, then drank it.

  She cringed at the taste.

  “Yeah, tastes like shit, huh? I hope ya fall in and drown in it.”

  Laughing, she took another scoop and drank.

  Then another.

  Over and over, until the golden light was gone.

  “What the hell do you need good luck for?”

  AB1 held her hand between her and Agent Harris. Clenching her fist, dozens of thorn covered vines appeared in her grasp, leading to his bindings. “Good luck is only half of the trick.”

  “What?”

  She sighed heavily. “If you have anything left to say to yourself with this reflection, girl, I suggest you do it now. This will hurt.”

  Agent Harris shook at his bindings. “What the hell are you talking a—”

  AB1 yanked on them. She pulled them taut, until the vines began contorting his body.

  “—ahhh! Shit! Hey! Listen, kid! I’m with yaaaah—ya hear me?!”

  Clicking her tongue at him, she put her weight into it.

  “I’m with ya every step of the way, k—”

  As the thorns tore Agent Harris apart, the image in Tabitha’s left eye ripped away from her vision.

  In the night of her right eye, Tabitha’s mother dropped her hand.

  She wanted to scream, but had forgotten how.

  "W-what did you do?"

  AB1 flourished her hand at the rose bush cage.

  The briar wrapping itself around the perpetuality anchors began to tighten. It pulled them together, dragging the black pillars through the earth, until they were pressing into the advisor from all sides. Where the anchors touched his skin, meticulous patterns etched into the devices became visible. While the advisor screamed out in pain, they began glowing with golden light.

  Someone else could be heard yelling over the downpour, begging, as they ran toward the cage.

  Tabitha could not make out what he was saying, but Sebastian’s cries reminded her of how to do it herself. Overcome by grief and anger, and not having the energy to do anything with either, she began screaming into the mud.

  “Bring him back! Bring him back! GIVE HIM BACK!!!”

  AB1 clicked her tongue in disappointment.

  Closing the umbrella, she pointed it at the cage of roses.

  “5…4…3…2…”

  On the count of one, Tabitha let out a scream that she could not hear over the bolt of lightning that cracked the sky. It struck directly at the heart of the cage, releasing a brilliant flash of golden light.

  Blinded, it was the familiar bite of thorns that pulled her out of her daze.

  All of a sudden, Tabitha was being dragged across the yard.

  She kicked and screamed and fought against the briar as it pulled her toward the house on Gander Ranch. “Nooo! Please!” Fear had found some hidden reservoir of energy to spend futilely clawing at the dirt leading to the front porch. “Pleeeaase! AB1, PLEEEAASE! SEBASTIAN! SEB!!”

  But her mother was nowhere to be found.

  And there was no gleam in her eye to stand against her terror.

  “ISAAAAAAC! ISAA—”

  Yanked up the steps onto the porch, the breath was knocked out of her.

  She did not find it, again, until she was being dragged up the long set of stairs leading to the second floor. By that point, she could only cry out in bursts and yelps, as each wooden step knocked her in and out of consciousness.

  In a brief moment of clarity, Tabitha realized through the low light that she was being brought back to the office she had fallen asleep in.

  Bursting through the door feet first, she felt herself being pulled up into the hole in the ceiling.

  Her last thought, before being enveloped by the void waiting there, was what she had lost.

  Haven.